DotNetNuke Enterprise

From Ron Miller at Fierce Content Mgmt:

DotNetNuke, the open source web content management solution built on Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) .NET platform, introduced a new enterprise version this week. The biggest edition to the Enterprise version, which joins the Professional and Community editions, is a new content staging server, which provides a place to edit and approve content before publishing it to your website.

From Wikipedia:

The open source version of DotNetNuke is called the Community Edition and is available for free download on CodePlex. The Community Edition includes access to the source code of the framework and basic modules, and an MIT license [3] allowing flexible modification and distribution rights. The Community Edition is a popular web content management (WCM) system and application development framework for ASP.NET, with over 6,000,000 downloads and 600,000 production web sites as of June 2010.

Microsoft WebMatrix

.netDEvHammer has an installation video.

Here are 6 WebMatrix Tricks.

Visual Studio LightSwitch

From Tim Anderson at The Register:

Some two years in the making, it aims to simplify the building of business database applications, particularly at the departmental or small business level, but to do so in a way that respects Microsoft's current ideas about best-practice software architecture.

You can think of it as a modern-day Access or FoxPro, except that this is 2010 and LightSwitch builds Silverlight applications, both desktop and browser-hosted, that retrieve data over the internet or intranet and which might even run on a Mac.

From Andrew J. Brust at Visual Studio Magazine:

LightSwitch, which produces Silverlight forms-over-data applications, needs to target Windows Phone 7. Access Web Databases, which deploy as forms-over-data SharePoint applications, should perhaps have some conformity with LightSwitch, and vice-versa.

LightSwitch targets SQL Server Express by default. WebMatrix targets SQL Server Compact. Access Web databases target SharePoint lists and SQL Server Reporting Services. In other words, each of these exciting new tools targets SQL Server in some way (SharePoint lists are stored in SQL Server tables), but none of them targets the same edition of the product.

Custom Software

The first project I worked on was for Liberty Drug Systems in 1985. It was written in dBaseII and ran on TI PCs running DOS 1.X with 5MB hard drives. We could open only two files at a time. It was spaghetti code designed by a guy who sold systems to newspapers and a pharmacist. I helped deliver and support the first 50 accounts in NC, VA and WV. I understand the company was sold and a VFP version is still out there being sold.

I put myself about and began working for a furniture manufacturer and a local cosmetic surgeon. We spent a couple of years creating inventory systems for cost accounting. The surgical software company got sold and it was around for years, but I've since lost touch.

Around 1990, I designed a Section 125 Cafeteria Plan admin system and maintained it for a couple of years until the company folded.

In '93 I began designing systems to manage county mutual insurance companies and over time created a half dozen.

About that time I also began helping a local company grow to $10M in yearly sales of glider rockers. The owner was a cost accountant and over five years we created systems for GL/AP/AR, invoicing and inventory costing. Before the company was sold, we had the modules creating GL journal entries.

In 2000, I converted a Type II Serology application from FoxBase to VFP. It runs on PCs in hospitals all over the world, helping match organs for transplant.

Currently, I'm working on an interesting project which could turn into a big vertical.

Microsoft Visual FoxPro

I've been using VFP for about ten years since I made the painful jump from FoxPro DOS. Recently, I ported an app online with West Wind Web Connection. It was a bewildering experience and I have no desire to support .NET.

I say leave web programming to PHP and MySQL. Microsoft's WebMatrix and LightSwitch for Silverlight are targetted at small business developers like me, but I'm not having it. With VFP, I can still walk in with a canned system with user accounts and start designing files in a few hours. It's more robust than Access and a whole lot less fuss than SQL Server.