Happy Birthday DinnerNow

It's just over 1 year since we released the first version of DinnerNow to the Web, and I'm proud to announce today we have released DinnerNow version 2.5 - which targets the .net framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

If you are not familiar with DinnerNow, check out www.dinnernow.net for more info.

So what's new in this version?

Well, we've replace the entire ServicePortfolio solution with a brand new one which has considerably less code than previous versions and uses some of the new framework 3.5 features such as LINQ and workflow services. The result is something that should be more understandable, and aid in your learning.

We've also done away with the Console and Windows Service host. This time around ALL the WCF Services are hosted in IIS.

The workflow services have been attacked with my complexity axe, removing most of the mapping code. I always felt that got in the way of understanding the workflow - too many Order objects.

We've also moved things around a little, so DinnerNow works from https://localhost/dinnernow, rather than stealing your IIS root and messing with you hosts files and proxy settings. As part of this, check out the installation steps which show how you can generate via script your own certificate root and SSL certificate (which we bind to the site to support https)

You can also hit F5 in any app and it starts debugging. (Previous versions required attachment to the web application). This coupled with the Service hosting means an impromptu  demo is only a mouse click away.

The Web site has had a few changes too. We've tweak the CSS to work in FireFox, and also implemented more features using AJAX (and not just the update panel). The Web application is always something we hate touching as we are all server guys, so expect a few funnies.

The PowerShell cmdlets have also been tweaked to make it easier to demo and the installation is now almost 100% PowerShell. The dependency checker now correctly detects the OS (for a while Vista SP1 showed up as Server 2008 which caused a few problems when trying to install server roles)

The final piece is the Mobile Delivery application actually uses the CF 3.5 and WCF. It still looks like I designed the GUI, and we had to proxy the call back into the workflow service to enable the conversation to flow.

There are a stack of other minor things, too numerous to mention (and I'm sure to have missed something major out too - like the fact we re-factored the database ready for...).

We'd Love to hear from you about the new release. Comments, Questions are always welcome.

THIS POSTING IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2008
  On late Friday afternoon David and I posted a new build of the DinnerNow sample application on CodePlex. 

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2008
  On late Friday afternoon David and I posted a new build of the DinnerNow sample application on CodePlex

• Anonymous
  February 14, 2008
  James Conard blogged this recently. You can download the source code from CodePlex today. Also, read

• Anonymous
  February 14, 2008
  James Conard blogged this recently. You can download the source code from CodePlex today. Also, read