May 2006 - Posts
I've known for some time now that it's possible to use Ado.Net to read from Excel files, I didn't know it was also possible to write to them.
At least I have found a workaround by using SQL server and registering Excel files as an external resource.
Reading and writing from excel.
Other Ado.Net tutorials.
I have no idea how this performs but it should be an interesting alternative to using the
Other methods of exporting data to excel.
There are some new releases in database tool land.
Aquafold released Aqua Data Studio 4.7 with a bunch of new features, including a query builder.
Multi database but java based :P
( Free for non commercial usage )
Red-Gate released SQL Prompt free download until september 2006.
I'm hearing some people think:
Ok cool that Ruby is happening and all that but we are a DotNet Community site.
Very true, but there are quite a few links to the DotNet world going on and developing at quite a nice speed.
The bridges available now are:
http://rubydotnet.sourceforge.net/ ( - 2003 )
http://www.saltypickle.com/RubyDotNet/ ( - 2004)
And under active development and most promising:
RubyClr from: www.iunknown.com ( active )
http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyclr
This seems to be very usable, he already has some advanced things like Databinding ActiveRecord ( Ruby ORM ) and a huge amount of other stuff working.
There unfortunately isn't a recent download link at the moment so for this we will have to wait.
The bad thing of these solutions is that there is the performance penalty of using the Ruby interpreter for executing Ruby code.
there are also some other solutions in the works which are full blown compiler implementations.
Ones I'm aware of:
Wilco Bauwer is working on a IronRuby compiler.
Also a university in Australia has a Microsoft sponsored project going on for a Ruby.Net compiler.
These 2 currently aren't ready for production or even have any releases out, but check back in a couple of months to see how far along they are :)
Offcourse there is also another way to use Ruby in .Net apps and that is by the scripting bridge already
This can be done using ActiveScriptRuby and then enabling the good old MS Active scripting engine.
Offcourse one can also use this technique to enable other languages like:
http://www.mvps.org/scripting/languages/
Ruby's star is rising fast at the moment.
It's star is rising fast it even has the thought leadership at the moment according to Don Box.
IDE support is rising for it as well in the form of free editors and paid editors alike.
RadRails is going strong in the Eclipse camp, this isn't really a Ruby perse editor but an editor made especially for Ruby on Rails.
Which is also playing a very big part in getting Ruby out to the world.
The editor is good but there is still a lot of room for improvement when your main issue for productivity is a key combo to switch views.
Which in this case means switching from controller to view to model since we are talking about a MVC framework with Rails.
It is a great feature though :)
A new player in the field is, Sapphire in Steel which is an editor plugin for VS 2005 which hits a bit closer to home for me :)
They already seem to have a first draft of a debugger running, code completion and quite a few other things are also on their roadmap.
Looking very promising....
In the commercial arena, it looks like: Arachno Ruby is hard to beat.
But this isn't all, there are also some project underway for getting Ruby running on our sweet lil CLR.
Hopefully I will be able to give an overview of whats coocking in this department soon.
Ok, last one before getting back to some serious posts :)
http://www.subservientprogrammer.com/main.aspx
This one features a programmer :)
So I should be wel underway to serious postings once again.