ADO.NET Video Followup
Yesterday’s post contained an excerpt from the What’s coming in ADO.NET video that I thought was great. In particular it was the thought that SOA is great technology but in the end is just plumbing. That is, the software equivalent of plumbing – something that is important but not something you should have to think about in great detail every day (unless you’re a plumber). The next key thought was that the “keys to the castle” is the data within the enterprise. Now I consider an “objects guy”, but one who thinks that the data component of objects is incredibly important in practical working business software. This lead to me why the SOA technology emphasis currently present in the industry bothers me. Its not the concepts or the technology that is the problem, its that too much of the total mindshare of the industry is focused on it.
All the work Microsoft are doing for ADO.NET 3.0 and LINQ sound wonderful. All I can say is hallelujah tinged with a bit of “I’ll believe when I see it”. The latter is more from the disappointment with the lack of object-centric concepts in ADO.NET 1.x and the run around we got with the never released ObjectSpaces. A lot of recent Microsoft development has benefited from the provider pattern, so its expected that there will be extensibility and no “one size fits all” issues.