Sweet spot for RavenDB

@Ayende asks what the sweet spot for RavenDB would be.. The thing is a lot will become more clear with experience using it.  Right now, I envision a small to medium sized app that doesn’t have an overly deep object model and doesn’t require a lot of inter-joining queries (because that would mean a lot of map-reduce queries).

But RavenDB is scalable and seems to have good performance already so it should be capable of handling large data systems.  I just hesitate with any new database until it actually proves it can handle really large data stores.  You see, really large data stores have their own set of problems with performance and scaling which you don’t see in smaller systems.  Try dropping, reloading, and full-text indexing a multi-terabyte sql server db every 24-48 hours while keeping the data driven site up.  You’ll see what I mean pretty quick.

I have my reservations, but am otherwise very eager to use RavenDB in real applications.  It has a lot of promise; I even started a demo app called RavenBlog.  I find it really let you focus on business rules and implementation because you don’t spend nearly the time determining the persistence model.  And that is a VERY good thing.  (which is true of NoSQL in general)

So to summarize my answer: small-medium size apps with limited object models, but I think it could prove to handle bigger systems as experience proves out.

Gu 2010 ticket final week

Quick note... this is the final week for the gu ticket. leader board:

1) @coneybeer

2) @brandonkaid

3) 2 tied

Diabetes, donate, and Hanselmen's story

Go read and donate.

" I've been a Type 1 Diabetic using Insulin every day to survive for 15 years. I've worn an Insulin Pump for 10 years. Here's a stat for you, unless I'm hit by a truck, Diabetics die of Diabetes, not old age." –Scott Hanselman

Feel free to retweet his message.  a lot.

Visual Studio 2010 switch

Well, we’ve switched everything we could to VS2010 now, and are happy with that.  Even for projects that still require older versions of the framework.  The enhancements in VS2010 are worth it.  I still have a lot to learn about .Net 4, and I look forward to it.

Tour de cure

I try not to spam or go OT too much, but this is a cause that is dear to me. Tour de Cure (via @migueldeicaza. site)

VS2010 is alive!

Hey, I’m excited.  While I don’t know all the new features, I have been using it.  And I like it. I run it on vmware, and find it quite responsive.  It has a nicer look & feel, and a lot of intellisense improvements.  It’s available now for MSDN subscribers.  But wait about 15 more minutes until my download finishes so you don’t slow it down. :)

GU VIP Ticket Contest Round 2

Rally round the family(rage)… Round 2 starts now!

@coneybeer, @jaminman, @brandonkaid, @bryanhales are the 4 first round entrants.  They each have 25 points for getting in on the first round. This will be determined by points; so while you can still enter, they have an advantage.

Round 2 points

@azgroups has a little more than 200 followers, but there are at leas 1200 people on the discussion list. I think we can do better. For each person you get to follow @azgroups AND tweet me your twitter handle, you get 1 point. Person with the most points wins the ticket.  Oh, and you get 3 points if they follow @sevdnug and @azgroups.  But no dupes – if someone already signed up and tweeted for someone else, you can’t get them too.

It’s open to all whether you qualified in the first round or not.  Those 4 first round entrant just get a head start.  But you can catch up with a little work, and the BONUS points.  I’m pretty busy and don’t make it to as many group meetings as I would like.  I will subtly make an appearance somewhere in the next 2 weeks. If you introduce yourself and ask me to tweet your twitter handle, you get 10 points!

BUT WAIT!  There’s more! I have 1 celebrity following me on twitter.  Find that one and email me a favorite quote related to that person. That’s another 5 points. It has to be by email because I don’t want to give it away. (One per customer)

This will run until April 30th 2010.  The winner will be announced the following Monday.

a rough cms with clouddb

Over the last while, I’ve been adding some CMS features to the Computerist Solutions site.  It’s powered by data on CloudDB, and that’s worked well.  It gave us the ability to manage content using the CloudDB web interface right away, and I’ve added some CMS management directly into the csinc site over time.  It’s a little rough but good for our purposes.  Here’s a peek:

Yes, there is a little HTML editor in there too, thanks to JQuery and jHtmlArea.

GU VIP ticket contest entry chance

There are at least 4 authors who are members of @azgroups. Name 2 and retweet to enter for a chance to win a GU VIP ticket. Answers accepted on twitter only; to @csinc or @joshcoffman).

Follow @azgroups @sevdnug @wynapse @joshcoffman @csinc

Easter Greetings

Regardless of your faith or non-faith, I’d like to wish you greetings and good fortune today. I am a Christian so this is a special day in my mind. I never thought or planned on sharing such opinions but I felt compelled to wish everyone well and share my fondness of this holiday.

We are all human, and that’s about all that should be required to respect and wish well for each other. I’m just choosing my faith and hope as a reason to express it today.