Check out Blinq...
What percentage of web applications would you say fall into the category of glorified View-Add-Update-Delete operations over a database? That is, you have data stored in a database and you want to expose a web front to look at the data in interesting ways (master details, etc) and add/update/delete the content.. Seems like there is tons of information stored in relational database that can make generating those types of web applications MUCH easier.
That is what we have done with the BLinq project...This is effectively a preview of some work we are considering for the next release of the free Visual Web Developer tool in Orcas. It leverages the new LINQ support to get the OR-Mapping then does some very cool page generation stuff.
BTW, that is where we get the name... Web Linq.. or Blinq... Can you guess that the developer named it rather than our marketing department ;-)
Take a look at let us hear what you think!
Overview
Blinq is a tool for generating ASP.NET websites for displaying, creating, and manipulating data based on database schema. Just point Blinq at a SQL database and it will create a website with pages that display sorted and paged data, allow you to update or delete records, create new records, and follow relationships between tables in your database. You don't need to write SQL queries to use Blinq; LINQ will generate optimized queries for you that request just the data you want to show. Blinq uses the May LINQ Community Tech Preview to access data. The code Blinq creates is simple and easy to customize to fit your needs. Everything in the website Blinq creates is meant as a starting point for a website that meets your needs perfectly, so have fun customizing the pages, experimenting with the code, and making it yours!
Features
The Blinq tool autogenerates web forms from database schema which enable the following by default:
Select, insert, update, and delete functionality
Details and foreign key navigation
Sorting and Pagination of records
A default style and design which provide a consistent layout
Comments
Anonymous
June 22, 2006
Am I the only one who initially read that as "Bling" (as in bling bling)?Anonymous
June 22, 2006
Yea.. I should have said that "Blinq" rhymes with “wink”...Anonymous
June 22, 2006
Thats sounds really cool....
The only thing that occurs to me - will it be possible to use business objects for data access and so on, or will there be lots of code embbeded in the aspx page itself?
I'm a business object sort of chap personally so I'm just wondering what the final pages will look like?
Many thanks!Anonymous
June 22, 2006
No, i see it as 'bling' too.... especially when it is underlined ;-)
One of my pet peeves is all of the code that is needed to get data out of a database, or the use of typed datasets that go beyond my comprehension very quickly.
I hope this will make my life a lot easier in those regards.Anonymous
June 22, 2006
This is really NO need of programmer/developer in future? I don't agree that everything should be automated. There is lots of minor things that automation can't do. Like we want- it should be? like we use our brain.
But for making scripts handy for developers would be nice. I don't agree like old days MS Access run Wizards to create ready made forms reports for you. But need nice tunning by developer as requirement for use. otherwise it can be done by any non professional/end user. Why still they required developers?
Every little thing has been created for use, human computer and so many other things we see daily, but no one can be replaced over human.
I also agree and use this tool to save my time for remembering how many tables, columns and relations I developed, that would a great advantage, but still need lots of developmend required by human hands/ business objects/logics/requirements.
Shamshad Ali.Anonymous
June 23, 2006
I, for one, enjoy writing web front-ends to databases about as much as I enjoy getting punched in the face, and I appreciate Microsoft's efforts to automate the busywork involved.
Thanks for easing my pain, guys.Anonymous
June 23, 2006
Sounds like Ruby on Rails scaffolding.... Or am I not seeing the whole picture?Anonymous
June 23, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 23, 2006
Looks very interesting and I'm curious to see how this is going to be built. Will we be able to get it with VS2005? Will it be available for Atlas and ASP.NET projects? How flexible is this tool and the code following it?
To be honest, this sounds an aweful lot like NHibernate, and while NHibernate is a great tool, I'd really like to use a similiar tool built by Microsoft.
I'll be following this and hope to hear more news in the future. Thanks!Anonymous
June 23, 2006
Blinq will definatly reduce the time of throwing together a site mock-up. My concern is companies that slap something together with BLINQ, think they are done, and then wonder why it doesn't perform when returning 100,000 records and isn't secure connecting through the firewall, not to mention the cross-site scripting attacks they are experiencing. It is good for prototyping, but we still need to consider our architecture and other good programming tennents.Anonymous
June 23, 2006
Simon said
---
The only thing that occurs to me - will it be possible to use business objects for data access and so on, or will there be lots of code embbeded in the aspx page itself?
I'm a business object sort of chap personally so I'm just wondering what the final pages will look like
---
Simon, Blinq promotes the n-tier model and creates the ORM layer and the DAL that goes against this. The aspx page will contain no code [unless you decide to use the PageDataSource option], only the GridView and ObjectDataSoruce controls. The rest of the code is abstracted to business object classes and methods to query SQL using DLinq - these can be found under app_code directory.
Hope that helps,
KashifAnonymous
June 23, 2006
Jim,
can you clarify some of the concerns you had - as far as requesting records goes - Blinq promotes in-built paging where the pagination happens on the SQL server and you can query small amounts of data, thus keeping your site performance in check, as far as XSS goes - Blinq uses the GridView/FormView and DetailsView controls for presentation/u[date which have been threat modeled to prevent such attacks - as far as sql injection attacks go - DLinq neutralizes any bad input when passing it to SQL.
Hope that helps,
KashifAnonymous
June 23, 2006
Chad - here is a blog post Tim Heuer did on a comparison of Blinq with rails scaffolding http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2006/06/16/12714.aspx
-KashifAnonymous
June 23, 2006
I hope that Blinq will work as hoped. Personally, I love all the LINQ tech.
The thing is that all the other LINQ technolegies are target for developers and Blinq is trarget for operator or web administrator or DBA which are not always developers. I think that they will miss the knowledge of a developer and as result of that the clients which access the Blinq site will not get as good experience as database front-end developed by a developer.
Another thing is that you always want just one more change which is not supported by the automated mechanisem. I hope that Blinq will be extensible enough.
Ido.Anonymous
June 23, 2006
hi
i just need to know how to start with this applicationAnonymous
June 24, 2006
I think this will be a great tool for CSR / Testers to use with Product DataBases.
I for one Love writing nTier applications with hundreds of CRUD classes to interact with a DataBase. I love total control.
I don't like DataSets, they're too clunky.
I do think this will be great for a developer to quickly throw up a few pages so the QA's can manipulate the Data They need (for web apps) without developing a seperate section, or giving them direct access to the CUstomer Databases.
It will be fun to play with.Anonymous
June 25, 2006
ZeroDev, install the 2.0 framework, the LINQ CTP and Blinq - install locations for LINQ and Blinq can be found at http://www.asp.net/sandbox/app_blinq.aspx?tabid=62 - then look under Program FilesMicrosoft Asp.NetBlinq - it has a read me which has details on how to run blinq.
-KashifAnonymous
June 26, 2006
I guess this is all "Microsoft on Rails".
Will be interested to see where it goes.Anonymous
July 15, 2006
There's a brief review of Blinq and links to a longer article about Blinq in "Visual Studio Magazine" at http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/generate-data-based-web-sites-with.html.
--rjAnonymous
July 25, 2006
Polita Paulus does a great demo on Blinq. Polita Paulus – BLINQ (hint, the demo starts at 7:15).... KeepAnonymous
August 16, 2006
 
We have just announced a new tool called Blinq which produces a webform from a database...Anonymous
September 02, 2006
Gigaframe.com has had this type of tool for along while and works much better. I'm a user and like it. It's well on very large databases.Anonymous
June 15, 2007
Meet Polita Paulus, software engineer who works on the ASP.NET team and wrote many of the data controls you use every day. She is alsoAnonymous
June 16, 2009
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