Monthly Archives: April 2008

yaml, an alternative for XML

Posted by Dario on April 28, 2008 None comments

yaml is an serialization data language, an alternative to the markup language of XML. And I think is pretty cool their use it, because really is more readable than XML. It’s focus on the simplicity. Let’s go to an example took from the reality, this is how an NHibernate mapping file should look with the yaml format:

If you use NHibernate, you know, this is too much easy to read. As you see the delimitation is made for the indentation, if you know something about languages like Python this is very familiar. Of course, this is not provided, but who knows, maybe someone want to donate some hours to the OSS and make it ;)

Maybe a notorious disadvantage is that yaml don’t have schema. And you can guess the missing features because of that, the most important is the yaml-validation.

In the .Net world is not so popular, but in languages like Python, Php, Perl, C++ is well used. In the brand new baby of Google: Google App Engine, which the main language of the core is Python (actually right now is the only one supported) uses yaml of data definition.

XUnit 1.0 – Using ReSharper as Runner

Posted by Dario on April 24, 2008 None comments

Today I heard about this drop, that actually I was waiting for it. Time ago when this brand new project was release, we talked about it(Spanish post).

We have to remember that exist many Unit Testing frameworks, and XUnit is an special one, has many distinctive differences respect another frameworks like NUnit. Although the creator of XUnit is the same whom create NUnit, these projects are quite different. The main idea that led to creation of another new Unit testing framework for .Net was to leave some aspect that NUnit had strongly inherited from they source of inspiration: JUnit.


Download XUnit 1.0

To run the tests with XUnit we can use different runners:

  • xunit.console (included at XUnit’s binaries)
  • xunit.gui (included at XUnit’s binaries)
  • TestDriven (integrates with Visual Studio)
  • Resharper 3.1 (integrates with Visual Studio)

Here you can see XUnit in action running into Resharper:

NHibernate.Burrow 1.0 alpha released !

Posted by Dario on April 20, 2008 4 comments

I’m very glad to announce on this blog this news. Yes, NHibernate.Burrow is ready to download here, make a try, we need feedback.

But...what is NHibernate Burrow ?

NHibernate.Burrow is a light weight middleware developed to support .Net applications using NHibernate  as ORM framework by providing advanced and smart session/transaction management and other facilities.

Kailuo Wang, leader of NHibernate.Burrow, was working really hard on this project (and will continue doing it). Also with help of Nelo Pauselli, and Fabio Maulo. The official announce was made here.

Kailuo, is a good programmer and make good wikies too :) So, documentation about Burrow be found here.

Maybe if you felt the need of use NHibernate on Web, Burrow, could be your option. And maybe you can remember this super-visited article at Code project. This article talk about some good practices when you use NHibernate on a web enviroment. Good news for you, the examples on Burrow are based on this tutorial. This example be found on the SVN of NHibernate Contrib here. Check it out !