Ideas for .NET Data Community Standup guests, products, demos, etc.

[ajcvickers]

Let us know which projects, people, demos, or other ideas you have for the show! This is the community standup, so we want to feature you, your ideas, and your projects! Comment on this issue and we'll update the list here with suggestions.

Guest/theme suggestions

• AutoMapper
• Provider writers! Get all the provider writers around a round table, and talk about what it's like to write a provider etc.
• Invite SqlClient team to show Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 2.0 and discuss roadmap and open sourcing experience.
• SQLite day featuring
  • System.Data.SQLite (mistachkin)
  • SQLite-net (praeclarum)
  • SQLitePCLRaw (ericsink)
  • SQLite Toolbox (ErikEJ)
• Dive deep into spatial data with NetTopologySuite (airbreather & FObermaier)
  • Scheduled! See Sept 30th 2020 - Geographic Data with NetTopologySuite
• ArcGIS (dotMorten)
• @Mimetis - Show us DotMim.Sync
  • Done! See Sept 2nd 2020 - Sync your database with DotMim.Sync
• @tonysneed - Trackable Entities and Handlebars
  • Done! See July 22nd 2020 - Using Scaffolding with Handlebars

Demos you would like to see

• Many to many demo
  • Done! See August 19th 2020 - Many-to-Many in EF Core 5.0
• TPT
• ToQueryString
• Index Fill Factor
• Partition Keys (Cosmos)
• How to configure single query VS multi query (when available) to load related entities
• EF value conversions (for enums and timestamp), and other gRPC best practices
• How to manage context lifetime and disposal

[ajcvickers]

Original threads from discussion on guests:

@JeremyLikness
There is another thread for specific demos see this. This thread is about highlighting community. Let us know what project, people, or other ideas you have for the show. It is the community standup so we want to feature you, your ideas, and your projects.

Thank you!

• @ErikEJ - @tonysneed Trackable Entities and Handlebars
  • @tonysneed - Thank you for the recommendation! Happy to share about Handlebars templates. There have been a number of contributions from the community that have helped it grow over the past few years.
• @bricelam - We could have a SQLite day featuring System.Data.SQLite (mistachkin), SQLite-net (praeclarum), SQLitePCLRaw (ericsink), and SQLite Toolbox (ErikEJ)
• @bricelam - Dive deep into spatial data with NetTopologySuite (airbreather & FObermaier) and ArcGIS (dotMorten)
• @bricelam - I'd love to have @Mimetis show us DotMim.Sync
  • @Mimetis - Thanks @bricelam :) I would love to present Dotmim.Sync ;) Just out of curiosity, is it interesting for the community to show this framework, even if it's not using EF ? (at least I'm using your Microsoft.Data.Sqlite provider ) Let me know ! (Be careful, you will have to listen a french guy trying to speak english ! )
  • @ErikEJ - It would be VERY interesting!
  • @bricelam - Despite the name, our goal is to cover all things related to data on .NET. 👌

[ajcvickers]

Original threads from discussion on demos:

@ajcvickers

Starting a discussion on what kinds of things people would like to see demoed in the EF Community Standup. Please try to be specific about what you want to see.

@ErikEJ - Many to many demo (when available)
@ralmsdeveloper - TPT - (Progress); ToQueryString - (Demo); Index Fill Factor - (Demo); Partition Keys (Cosmos) - (Demo)
@ilmax - How to configure single query VS multi query (when available) to load related entities #18022
@JeepNL - First of all: thank you for creating the EF Community Standup I really enjoy watching it. I'm using gRPC protobuf files with EF (Core) 5 code first for generating classes & SQLite (relational) tables (for my Blazor WASM project) and it's amazing imo. I'm just starting with it and would love to see some experts talking about the possibilities and best practices. Pretty soon after I started with it I needed to learn more about EF Value Conversion (for enums and timestamp) so that would be a great combo.

• @githubfanster - i'm interested in learning more about gRPC + EF Core possibilities and best practices too
• @ErikEJ - Invite SqlClient team to show version 2 and discuss roadmap and open sourcing experience.
• @roji - Provider writers! Get all the provider writers around a round table, and talk about what it's like to write a provider etc.
• @ErikEJ - And SQLite Toolbox 😎
• @janschreier - Thanks for the shows so far. I really enjoy listening to you guys explaining stuff 👍 on to my suggestion. I still don't know if/when I should/have to call dispose on a dbContext if that is long-lived. E. g. if I use a dbContext in an WPF MVVM app to work on a database record (using the context for changetracking) and thus not being able to wrap it in a using()-block. Here MS gets quoted that unless you do weird stuff on dbContext.Database you don't habe to call Dispose()
  https://blog.jongallant.com/2012/10/do-i-have-to-call-dispose-on-dbcontext/
  is this still true for EF Core? are there any patterns recommended atm by the ef core team? Properly not enough to talk about for an entire show but if you do a Q&A session, this hopefully might fit in =)
  • @JeremyLikness - It's a good practice to ensure your context is disposed when you are done with it. We have updated docs for WPF that should go live today, but in essence a common pattern is for the context to share the same lifecycle as the immediate parent control that hosts it. You can create the context as part of the constructor and dispose of it in OnClosing. You can also choose to create on per operation. If you're not using EF Core to track an object graph or handle concurrency, so for example you're using the disconnected pattern where you attach entities on save/delete/etc., then you can simply enclose the operation in a using block.
• @JonPSmith - I watched the August 5th EF Core community standup and @ajcvickers asks "why people don't use the nightly builds?" I just wanted to say that I use the EF Core 5 previews in my example code because as EF Core progresses it uses different versions of other, non EF Core, NuGet packages that I use in other features such as ASP.NET Core. This means I sometimes (maybe 3 times in the last 7 previews??) I get into "NuGet hell" where you can't easily do a "update all" and I have to find what non-EF Core NuGet package version are you using now and fix that before it will accept the new EF Core 5 preview. Also, my repo is available to readers of my book and they clone it as any time. Therefore they might get a new version of the nightly build and something could break. I hope this feedback is useful.
  • @roji - Thanks @JonPSmith. In many (most?) cases, transitive dependencies of EF Core itself shouldn't be a problem - updating to a new EF Core preview/daily should just bring those in. However, if your program takes a dependency on those as well, regardless of EF Core, then yeah, some nuget dependency hell may occur (though in many cases these are harmless warnings). (I'm mentioning this because some people are unaware of how transitive dependencies work and think they should be explicitly taking dependencies on nugets that EF Core depends on, which isn't the case...) I also agree that daily builds are probably not a great idea in sample/documentation code... We also avoid it in our documentation samples, although we do take dependencies on previews where a new feature is being shown.
  • @JonPSmith - I updated my comment to refer to "... other, non EF Core, NuGet packages that I use in other features such as ASP.NET Core."
• @ajcvickers - @JonPSmith Some questions. EF Core progresses it uses different versions of other, non EF Core, NuGet packages. Which packages are you referring to? Therefore they might get a new version of the nightly build and something could break. If your repo references a specific daily build, then why would people get a different daily build when they clone it?
  • @JonPSmith - Hi @ajcvickers. I had problems with the following non-EF Core packages used by ASP.NET Core app. PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions" Version="5.0.0-preview.7.20364.11" /> These changed at least twice. Yep, my bad - I forgot that each nightly build has its own signature. The other thing I didn't mention (and might only applicable to me) is that the previews tell me whether a feature is finished or not and often provider a short intro on how to use the feature. Using the nightly build would make that much more difficult to understand if a feature is fully finished or it might change. For instance I am waiting for the release on table UDF - I think the code is there but you haven't said its finished, so I might change.
  • @ajcvickers - @JonPSmith You should not need new versions of those packages unless you're also trying to run ASP.NET Core 5.0 or .NET 5 daily builds. Just a clarification on feature changes--even when we release and announce a feature in a preview doesn't mean we won't change it again before release. You are correct is saying that we don't announce until the feature is relatively usable, but that's somewhat different from being stable.
  • @JonPSmith - You are right again Obi-Wan - my training continues. I removed the two NuGet packages and it still compiled, so they weren't needed. I did get into a "NuGet hell" at one point early on and tried a few things including the DependencyInjection and Logging abstractions NuGet. Once there were there I had to update them when you updated in EF Core 5. I will see what issues I have when I update next time. Got it on feature changes. For my very specific instance, i.e. writing a book about EF Core, the releases are good review points but I can see that the daily builds should work well for other people.
• @DickBaker - great sessions so far, thanks. Given the widespread use of AutoMapper to shuffle data shapes around, I suggest that team invite authors of AutoMapper.Collection.EFCore to explain why/when/how best to use such useful package (+dependencies).

[JonPSmith]

Hi @ajcvickers,

I wondered if you would like me to come on a community standup and talk about some of the ways to performance tuning EF Core? I have an demo ASP.NET Core application (open-source) which implements a book selling site. I start with 700 books, then goes to 100,000 books, and then to 1/2 million books. I can show what I did at each stage, with the performance figures to see the differences.

What do you think?

PS. Just watched the Entity Framework Community Standup - EF Core 6.0 Survey Results. Really great info!

[ajcvickers]

@JonPSmith Sounds like a good idea. @JeremyLikness @roji

[roji]

Sure thing!

[koenbeuk]

@ajcvickers,

I would also be happy to come on the community standup to talk about EFCore.Triggered if you have me. It essentially brings database triggers down a notch to the level of EF (All made possible by the awesome ChangeTracker). I have a simple demo application that I can showcase with various uses of triggers to enforce various business rules. I can furthermore talk about implementation details and how EF triggers vary from domain events and database triggers.

[ajcvickers]

@koenbeuk Sounds interesting; @JeremyLikness @roji

[JeremyLikness]

@koenbeuk are you on Twitter? If so, DM me and I'll share my email so we can connect and schedule it.