In this multi parts series I'll explore how to build inheritance with Entity Framework showing 2 different approaches of inheritance in Entity Framework. Beside that I'll show how to build simple association between 2 entities and show how to provide custom code to retrieve other parts of the relation when inheritance is applied.

My plan not to exceed 3 parts as the subject is not that huge, it is just the demonstration with screen shots that will make the post large that is why I divided it to multi part. I am not good at screen casts beside I don't have a software license to produce one.

Inheritance Types in Entity Framework:

There are 2 models of Inheritance in Entity Framework and they both actually depends on the database design:

• Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance: One table in storage to maintain data for all the types in an inheritance hierarchy. So basically you have one table in database, but different types in your Entity Model that inherits from a base class and all mapped to that table. This post will focus on this type of Inheritance.
• Table-per-Type Inheritance: Separate table in storage to maintain data for each type in the inheritance hierarchy. That means you might have several tables with one-to-one relationships. Each table is mapped to single Entity in the model. But there is a base Entity that is mapped to the very base table. This is going to be the subject of my next part of this short series. Till then you can watch this video about it.

About the Sample:

The sample I am going to demonstrate here with screen shots is taken from MSDN sample in the links specified above. I found them much clear and easy to demonstrate beside I wasn't able to come out with much simpler sample idea.

More...

Amr Elsehemey started to blog about ASP.NET MVC. He picked up a good subject to blog about; Building ASP.NET MVC Blog Engine using ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, he named it "jBlogMvc" Yesterday he posted his first post in the series, and myself I am waiting for the rest of the series as for it is going to be very interesting, because I have couple of ideas in mind.

He is going to explore the code and posting samples as he developing this simple blog engine. We have been talking about this subject for few days now, and really he has some cool ideas to present. Keep tuned with Amr, I am sure he is going to amuse us with some kicking posts just as he did in his Design Time Support post series.

UPDATE: ALWAYS DOWNLOAD LATEST SOURCE CODE FROM PROJECT PAGE ON CODEPLEX

Few weeks ago Dave started the Advanced ASP.NET AJAX Server Controls book giveaway contest. And yesterday he announced that the control is almost completed, but the contest door is still open. So I thought to grape the bits and start testing it and build a simple sample. [View Demo]

The sample that I am going to demonstrate here will use ASP.NET Create User Wizard control with UserName Availability Validator. In this sample I'll show the important properties of this control as well as the current issues exist.

Prerequisites:

I'll assume that you already know how to configure and use the existing built in ASP.NET Membership provider. You'll need a sample database with ASP.NET Membership services installed on it.

The sample provided has ASP.NET Membership already installed and configured, you can download the sample and start explore it.

You page must have ScriptManager control on it, of course this is an ASP.NET AJAX control at the end.

More...

I've been worked with localization and globalization for a while now. During that period I faced issues and learned many things about the subject. Here I am going to share some of my own ideas and tips to avoid falling in certain issues. It worth to mention that I am talking from GUI point of view and not Application Data point of view.

Consider using Resource Files ".resx" or Database:

Well this is a matter of your needs. But I highly recommends to always consider ASP.NET Resource Provider. Then it doesn't matter to work with ".resx" of Database. By default ASP.NET has a provider for XML based resources which is resource files ".resx" But also you can get a great Database Resource Provider for free from here.

Actually to choose between both you should think about that all your UI localizable terms should be stored in one central location. I mean, do not put some in resource file and some other in Database. Like you define labels on resource files and grid headers in database!! or maybe error or information messages. Just build it right from the beginning and define one central location.

More...

Last year, Matt posted a cool post about How To: Use the HoverMenuExtender for GridView RowCommands. Last month I got an e-mail from Justin Riggs, he was trying to combine to things. The usage of HoverMenuExtender as described in Matt's post, and the Master\Detail GridView with CollapsiblePanelExtender I posted about few months ago.

He already made the sample which ease the job for me in this post, but he had and issue that the functionality wasn't work properly. So I fixed that and thought to share it here in case anyone would love to apply same feature. You can view demo here.

It is a must that you return to How To: Use the HoverMenuExtender for GridView RowCommands by Matt, and Building a grouping Grid with GridView and ASP.NET AJAX toolkit CollapsiblePanel by me before you go a head in this post.

More...

Available for download, both WSS 3.0 SDK and MOSS 2007 SDK Updates. I really love MS Download notifications

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK)
The Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 software development kit (SDK) contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, samples, and references to guide you in developing solutions based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Read more and download here. Or You can also view the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK online in the MSDN Library.

SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kit
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK contains conceptual overviews, “How Do I…?” programming tasks, developer tools, code samples, references, and an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) starter kit to guide you in developing solutions based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Read more and download here. Or you can also view the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK in the MSDN Library.

In my previous post I talked about what is not supported in LINQ to Entities and made a simple comparison with LINQ to SQL show that these unsupported things works fine in LINQ to SQL.

Here I am going to provide workarounds these things. First one will be wrapping the entities with Business Classes. And the second way will be using client evaluation which is converting to work with LINQ to Object. Before you go further, I recommend that you read my previous post to save your time.

More...

Recently and after .Net 3.5 SP1 & Visual Studio.Net 2008 SP1 released, I started to play with LINQ to Entities. Really Entity Framework is interesting. Maybe not the best ORM tool, but still it is interesting and easy to use plus it is all one IDE at the end.

At the same time I was watching screen-casts made by Rob Conery about Building MVC Storefront along with TDD. In fact he was using LINQ to SQL. And I liked his coding techniques presented in his sample application and screen-casts.

I decided to play around with LINQ to Entities with MVC. Here I am going to talk about my adventures with LINQ to Entities, and really it is completely different from working with LINQ to SQL.

My recommendation for every developer is to start by reading Supported and Unsupported Methods (LINQ to Entities). Yes it will save you sometime. Do You know LINQ to SQL? Then you are familiar with LINQ. But you need to know what there and what is not there in LINQ to Entities. This even Might help you to build a wish list for LINQ to Entities also ;O).

Here I'm going to use some code samples presented in MVC Storefront and show some of the techniques that will not work with LINQ to Entities. And I will compare code with LINQ to SQL. In some other post, I'm going to present some other workarounds provided by ADO.NET Team when I asked them about the issues I have with LINQ to Entities. Also I'll present my own workarounds. And I'll compare the Generate SQL statements. I am not query optimizer, so I will not say what is the best choice. But you can help me in that.
More...

Well, I'm done with this article that show in details how to build on demand loaded details from master data using GridView and CollapsiblePanelExtender control. Read the article.

Earlier this year Matt Berseth posted about Building a Grouping Grid with the ASP.NET 3.5 LinqDataSource and ListView Controls. Then I followed his post with 2 other posts discussing same idea but with different implementation:

• Building a grouping Grid with GridView and ASP.NET AJAX toolkit CollapsiblePanel
• Building a grouping Grid with GridView and JQuery

Later I got few comments about how to implement that using AJAX, in order to display the details data on demand. At that time Dave was demonstrating the usage of jQuery AJAX on his post Using jQuery to consume ASP.NET JSON Web Services. So I came up with another demo to apply on demand loading of details data in my post GridView Grouping Master/Detail Drill Down using AJAX and jQuery.

Again I got few other comments on how to apply same approach, but using ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender control. So here I'm going to provide how to do that using CollapsiblePanelExtender and ASP.NET AJAX PageMethods call to apply on demand loading of details from the master data. You can read my article and view Demo here.

Comments can be left on this post as currently pages feature of BlogEngine.Net doesn't support comments.

I've seen different type of tooltips around. And actually jQuery tooltip plugin was one of the best I ever seen. And then I thought to build some tooltip similar to those tooltips available on asp.net learning items. Just simple one to be displayed on left or right of the tooltiped item (element). And I decide to build that using jQuery.ui widgets.

Very simple and straight forward, all I needed is the following:

• A tooltip fully UI customizable to be displayed to the right or left of the desired element. And it should detect if the desired element is closer to right or left on the screen; so the tooltip to be displayed correctly to the right or left of the element.
• Ability to control when the tooltip to be displayed, on hover or focus on the element or manually using tooltip widget methods such show and hide.
• Callback upon on show and hide of the tooltip.
• Optional fancy show/hide animations.

I built a sample which you can download to demonstrate how this tooltip should work and you can view the demo here.

Before go through the code, I recommend first to read the following posts:

• jQuery.UI ProgressBar Widget
• jQuery.UI Messenger\Outlook like message notification Widget

More...