May22

BDC Meta Man new release – 1.2.0.9 ALPHA

Categories:

We've released some cool stuff recently for BDC Meta Man and hopefully you'll agree this new release continues the trend. We've improved the design surface user interface dramatically, now you can:

-Scroll around the design surface!
-Zoom in and out!
-Drag and drop to create association relationships!

Take a look at the picture below:

Adding this functionality has meant re-writing quite a bit of the UI code so we've decided to release this version as an alpha release. Please download it, and let us know what you think! If you find a bug you can add it to our bug tracking system here:

http://support.lightningtools.com/default.asp?pg=pgPublicEdit

And finally of course the download is available from the BDC Meta Man Downloads page:

http://www.bdcmetaman.com/pages/download.aspx

Enjoy!!!

 
May20

The BDC Meta Man Team Grows

Categories:

Although I always wanted to run a MicroISV, running a company as a single person sounds like a very lonely thing to do. I've worked as a freelance developer before working from home and while it was nice to work to your own schedule (ie late into the night), it can quickly get lonely. It was also interesting to read in Joel Spolsky's introduction of Micro-ISV that he recommended starting a company with a partner for various reasons such as complimenting each other skills, keeping each other motivated etc. With that in mind I'm really happy to tell you that the BDC Meta Man team is back to three. Joining Dmitry and I is Brett Lonsdale who like me is based in the UK. Brett has been working with SharePoint since SharePoint Team Services back in 2001 and has great experience as both a trainer and developer. As well as BDC Meta Man we've got some cool BDC web parts in the pipeline we should hopefully be able to show you very soon. Of course the Business Data Catalog is our center of focus, but all of us work with SharePoint in a number of ways so we've got plenty of other ideas for tools that we're investigating.

 
May20

FA Cup Final - dreadful

Categories:

What an awful game of football I had to put up with watching this afternoon. I'd been looking forward to the FA Cup final for the past few days. Not only was it the first FA Cup final back at Wembley but it was also the 3rd/4th play off game for the champions league J with the main event being on Wednesday. All the build up and atmosphere (transmitted over the TV) was great, until the first football was properly kicked! The first half was dreadful. I actually did fall asleep and missed the last five minutes. Second half was a bit more lively, but hardly was anywhere close to making up to the game that the occasion deserved. I blame both teams to be honest for going at the game in such a dull manner.

Of course if Wednesday is dull as well I'll hold my hands up. After 2005 however Milan have a score to settle, although of course so does Harry Kewell!

 
May13

Off to Sweden

Categories:

I've managed to stay at home for at least 3 weeks I think this time before having to go on my travels again! This time I'm off to Sweden which I'm excited about as I've not been there before. Sophie and I really enjoyed Denmark when our friend Flemming took us over so I'm hoping Sweden will be as much fun. I'm traveling over for a conference fellow SharePoint MVP Goran Husman has organized on Exchange and MOSS 2007. I'll be presenting on the Business Data Catalog the first day, and Excel Services the second. Fellow MOSS MVPs Patrick Tissegham and Michael Noel will also be there presenting (as well as Goran of course). I'll be in Stockholm until Tuesday evening when I'll be traveling over to Gottenburg to see the guys at Bamboo Solutions. We've some meetings on Wednesday but the rest of the time I should be free. If anyone happens to read this from Gottenburg and fancies meeting up on Wednesday evening let me know! I'll take lots of pictures of course of my travels, so keep an eye on the flickr feed. I must upgrade that to a pro account!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickswan/

 
May11

BDC Meta Man next features?

Categories:
All the posts on here seem to be about BDC Meta Man these days. Apologies for that, but it does show how hard we are working on it! After putting our Oracle integration we're reviewing what we should implement next. Please take a second and respond to the survey on the BDC Meta Man site. If you don't see the bit of functionality you'd like leave me a comment and I can get it added on to the options. Just a little to explain each bit...
 
1, Allow Store Procedures to be used for Methods
Create an empty Entity, and chose stored procedures to be used for methods that implement certain functionality ie Finder, Specific Finder, IdEnumerator
 
2, Create a wizzard for adding new methods to entities
This wizzard would include a SQL Generator that would allow you to create SQL Select statements easily for your Entities. It could also include the ability to select a Stored Procedure rather that SQL Statement.
 
3, Generate Insert/Update Methods within App Def files and generate web part code
The BDC is generally a read-only experience. How about we generate the Insert/Update methods for each entity and also output the necessary code to create web parts?
 
4, Read in App Def files so they can be edited
Does what it says on the tin!
 
5, Siebel as Data Source
Does what it says on the tin!
 
6, SAP as Data Source
Generally means improve web service integration.
 
May10

Requesting happy BDC Meta Man Users!

Categories:
We've put a lot of work into BDC Meta Man over the past 12 months or so. Whether you've been using the free Developer version or have bought a Professional license, we hope the tool has saved you days of your time that would have been spent in notepad hand writing xml application definition files.
 
We're looking to build a list of happy customers, companies, and testimonials for the BDC Meta Man web site. If you have used the product and are very happy with it please email me (or even leave a comment here), one or two lines, your name, position and company (or as much of this info as possible)
 
 
Thanks!
 
ps of course if you're not happy we want to hear from you as well so we get a chance to make you happy! :-)
 
May8

T Mobile Web n Walk data card and Vista

Categories:

A few people have mentioned to me that I must be very busy as there haven't been many posts to the blog lately. Yes I am of course busy but the lack of blog posts has unfortunately been down to Windows Vista. After running Vista as an upgrade to XP Pro (which I've got to say ran as smoothly as anything), I realized that there were no drivers available for my 3g T Mobile data card! I know many others have had the same problem and have even changed data providers because of it. Well I'm glad to announce that T Mobile have finally released some updated drivers to work with the data card:

http://lastmile.t-mobile.co.uk/datacardhelp/user/page.phtml?page_id=98&product_ref=web_n_walk_card

Now I'm back and mobile again expect more blog posts!

 
May8

BDC Meta Man 1.2.0.7 Beta – Oracle Integration!!!

Categories:

It has been a little while coming but Professional License users of BDC Meta Man will now be able to connect to Oracle databases and generate application definition files for them. This release has been labeled as a Beta as we realize there is a lot of testing to do on different Oracle databases, as usual customers of BDC Meta Man are keen to get their hands on the latest version and use it as a beta.

If you are trying out this beta version of BDC Meta Man, or any other version in fact, and have an issue you'll want to know about our new support forums. We setup and installed FogBugz over the weekend from Fog Creek Software. This should allow us to manage our own internal bug/feature list a lot better, and also allow us to support users in a much more organized way. If you have any issue or questions around BDC Meta Man there is now a new forum you can use that can be found:

http://support.lighteningtools.com/?bdcmetaman

We've also created a general Business Data Catalog support forum, so if you have any question around the BDC feel free to post them here:

http://support.lighteningtools.com/?business-data-catalog

The general support page with both these links on, and our BDC Meta Man contact email address is here:

http://www.bdcmetaman.com/pages/support.aspx

 

 
May7

BDC Meta Man news.

Categories:

Working on BDC Meta Man has been a lot of fun over the past nine months and a real testament to how remote development teams can work together. It wasn't until March this year, after over 6 months of working together, that Todd and I finally met at the MVP summit. We've still not met Dmitry, with our only contact being through messenger and email!

We set off on our BDC Meta Man journey not knowing where it would take us. I think all three of us would agree that currently it's taken us further than we'd have ever imagined. So it's with sad feelings that we have to bring you today's news.

Unfortunately Todd has to finish working on BDC Meta Man due to a conflict of interests with his other work at SharePoint Experts. We've been working this out since around the middle of March with a deal being struck and implemented on Friday 4th May. I want to stress that we're all very much still friends and this has all been worked out in a friendly manner. Sometimes these things just happen in business and I think it's a credit to all three of us that we managed to work this out quickly and so that we are all happy.

Although both Dmitry and I are sad that Todd can no longer be involved, we're very excited about BDC Meta Man and its related tools we have planned. We'll be releasing a new version later today that will include some great new functionality both for the Developer and Professional versions of the tool. We're working on a few changes on the web site also to hopefully offer you better support and access to information going forward.

As always we're interested in what people who use the application think and want to see implemented. Please keep your comments, ideas, and words of encouragement coming. They certainly mean a lot to all of us.