November 2008 - Posts
Finally got the new version of Product Key Manager done. Its getting late so I don’t have a lot of details right now, but if you are interested its up on CodePlex now.
I finally discovered the cause of deployment deadlocks with PKM 3, it turns out it was an issue with the same database file being used for development/debug as the ClickOnce deployed release version. I’m not completely sure why the deadlocks were occurring since I had no way of debugging it but clearing database and letting a new DB being created resolved the issues on my machine.
I’m going to make some changes to allow for version checking the database and different filenames for debug and release databases to avoid future issues. In attempts to resolve the issue I did implement some great improvements so I guess it wasn’t all bad. I’ll try to get a finalized version out soon.
I stumbled upon an interesting project today called Bindable LINQ which I have given the nickname BLINQ in the vain of DLINQ, XLINQ, PLINQ etc. What this does is make LINQ queries work with WPF binding, which really should be a part of LINQ to begin with but hey that's what happens. I haven’t used it too heavily but it works for basic LINQ queries, and has significantly reduced the number of queries and calls to the database I needed for Product Key Manager by using the WPF sorting and filtering capabilities rather than re-querying the database all of the time.
If you are using WPF and LINQ I’d recommend checking it out!
I haven’t forgotten about Product Key Manager, but I have been busy enough that I haven’t been able to sit down and verify its ready for release. There are a few potential issues that I need to sort out that might end up being more complex to fix than they seem. The big issue I have right now is a deadlock on the first launch after install, this has been tricky to debug since it occurs right after the application is launched by the ClickOnce installer only. This may be related to some phantom deadlocks that I had earlier that I can no longer reproduce.
If you are waiting on a new Product Key Manager release let me know so at least I know someone is waiting, otherwise I may end up doing a more drastic rewrite of the data access layer as that seems to be where the issues are coming from.
*Note* I typed this up while my internet access was down and posted it when it came back online.