Nikhil Kothari's Weblog : Web Matrix Sneak Peek #4

I've been saving the best for the last.

Database editing has been improved greatly. Support for .mdb Access databases has been added. The same UI is used for designing table schema, and editing rows of data in tables. Tables are shown as documents instead of modal dialogs now, allowing you to open related pages and tables at the same time. Furthermore, Code Wizards are able to interact with database connections in a generic way - so they automatically work for both Access and SQL/MSDE. Theres also a couple of cool add-ins in the works that make use of the database services offered by the IDE. The two screenshots below just show a bit of the work done in this area.

A note on when you can expect the updated build to be available publicly. We're pretty much done with the development and testing at this point. Release plans being finalized. You can expect to see the bits available around the middle of the month... coincidentally right around the 1 year since the first technology preview.

Posted on Sunday, 6/1/2003 @ 10:59 AM | #Projects

Comments

11 comments have been posted.

Damit

Posted on 6/1/2003 @ 5:29 PM

Looks really cool, and something that I'd use (eagerly) when it comes out!

dc

Posted on 6/2/2003 @ 5:24 PM

Sure does look nice!

Scott

Posted on 6/3/2003 @ 6:35 AM

I haven't actually used Web Matrix in the past, preferring VS.NET. Some of these improvements do seem to take it beyond VS.NET (especially with User Controls - which VS.NET sucks at). What would be really cool is is someone could include some of the new Web Matrix features into VS.NET - providing a really good upgrade path - from free to the cost of VS.NET is quite a leap, but this could make it much more natural...

WebMatrix Fan

Posted on 6/3/2003 @ 3:15 PM

hurray for MSAccess support !! I just started using WebMatrix1 a few Months ago and was thinking about converting a very large (lots of tables with relationships) Access2002 database over to SQL2000 format. Now I won't have to. I am one happy person now. :)

Kingsley Idehen

Posted on 6/4/2003 @ 8:45 PM

Note: The Weblog url isn't live, ETA is over the weekend. My question/comment is this, why are you binding directly to MSDE/SQL and Access when you can bind to ADO.NET? I know I can pull this off manually, but why not give the same control level support to ADO.NET?

Nikhil Kothari

Posted on 6/5/2003 @ 12:30 AM

Why not ADO.NET? ADO.NET is about data access and executing commands, vs. the Web Matrix feature is about data administration... functionality that is not abstracted by ADO.NET.

Will

Posted on 6/11/2003 @ 12:41 AM

Its pretty has but when it comes to useability are any of these time saving features going to be built into the new version of web matrix?

Will

Posted on 6/11/2003 @ 12:41 AM

That is Intellisense, Autocomplete , codebehind?

QuantumMess

Posted on 6/11/2003 @ 6:32 AM

I am a perl programmer that was 'forced' into creating data access and retrieval from sql to a webpage. Knowing nothing about vb or sql, webmatrix made me look like I have been doing it for years!
Please remember that there are a lot of us out here, those that hunt the web for samples and examples that we can modify to fit my needs. The templates were a LIFE SAVER!! If you can 'bulk' those up and add more useful templates, more people like me will hail this product.
The one thing that I need, and I am having a lot of trouble finding.... I want to add a search function to my Master/Detail grid, so that the results of the search, show up in the master, and the selection from the master shows the detail... (and I would love to be able to choose via checkboxes, which columns are displayed in the details grid.) Am I asking too much? ;-)
THANK YOU for this product.
Oh, one last thing. Not sure if it is a bug or just lack of knowledge.... I was trying to display about 100 columns of data in the details grid. Of course that ran well off the page. So I tried to add serveral details grids, basically, just copying the last, changing the sub name, and chosing different data. This worked really well. I was albe to change the colors, place it where I wanted it on the page, etc. Problem I ran into was that after about the 25th column, I got an error that said it could not find the next column. It just would not work past that point. I had to go to a single details window, non-autocreate, and customized tables. <sigh> I liked the old way better... any ideas?

Julio Coelho

Posted on 6/21/2003 @ 3:44 AM

Congratulations about the project and the effort that's being done to develop a quality product.

I would like to suggest that the project could be open to the community as a open source, this will give a bust in is evolution or at list give the opportunity to share good programming.

chris

Posted on 6/22/2003 @ 7:04 AM

My images path and include files start from the virtual root folder like this <img src="/images/my_image.jpg"> and therefore Webmatrix doesn't display them. Is there a way around it?

Also, What Windows XP theme do you use in your screenshots of Webmatrix?

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