.NET Core 2.0 – Ready for library developers (with Sterling DB)

Hi, welcome to another episode of visual studio toolbox semi host...and
today have got a special guest jeremy...introduce yourself welcome to show.
Thanks time here and nice and cool at...actually we had
a front come through so the temperatures drop feels a little bit like
redmond weather when it's good whether or not the not
...the health case that we have right now and the crazy stuff but yeah,
so, I'm a client developer advocate with microsoft of
joined the team I've worked with microsoft and the capacity of an mvp in a
consultant for about ten years and just recently joined the team
a couple months ago pretty excited...stoked about the
...we're excited to have you and the...you ran into each other a
think digitally before I mean a million names been around for quite a while you before the community but there's this
...pose the did the trick this episode so...you kick-off and
tell people about the kind of your journey the product built an answer what why you
wrote the blackboards they think they'll set the stage for why we're talking today sure absolutely
so the story begins many years ago in fact the very first
commit that I did this particular tool was in two thousand and ten and,
you know, like to think I haven't been a big code
...fan of writing a solution just to try to find a
course solution most of the things that I write...solving problems
right and the problem at the time was we had this great technology
called silverlight and people were using it everywhere but there wasn't
a really good local database solution for that, yeah, and, it wasn't a case where
...trying to build a full-fledged database we know that we can use web service calls and
connect the database front-ends but even for simple things like caching storing local
data it just wasn't there and when I went to look for
solutions most of the solutions required you to buy into the solution
what do I mean by that if I was creating an app for food,
for example, and,...I'm using that because I have a great...example I
might build classes that are food related classes
world to use these tools you had actually inherit from their base classes
are implement certain interfaces and go through a lot of changes to make it work
with silverlight so out of pure frustration I built a tool?
That my rule is very simple I shouldn't have to
change the classes that are already had my application but this tool should allow me to
be able to define what is the unique key on the class store the class
...bring it back and have some indexing capabilities and basically give
me a local database capability with really low friction really
low on boarding, yeah, paradigm a lot of us were familiar with right back then, you know,
silverlight ask we needed that I was already developer back into the cipher the
appreciated the need you are trying to solve and that kind of back and forth clean civilization without a
lot of complexity is a must...still must today and most modern oops or
whatever so the problems the same but you had a very particular moment in time you try to solve...yeah,
I had a particular moment in time and at the time, you know,
we were following the in the model of you model pattern
and needed ways to store sessions we used it a bit and silverlight but
the irony and I didn't see this coming was that right around the corner was a release
of windows phone and windows phone was released it was released with silverlight
supporter so as a very easy pathway to take sterling which
is what I named the database and I'll tell you why in a second but I
...sterling and
...it to the phone and it was one of the first database solutions
available locally on the phone so that really drove adoption some early fitness
trackers and some gps systems and a few pretty prominent
apps picked up sterling in the early days just because it was
...the first databases to get the market there,...but,
just a quick side story the name was actually I wasn't too super
creative obviously it's silverlight and this was sterling but I was always fascinated by the
fact that there was this deal in a silverlight as the core dl if
you've done it programming, you know, there's a core clr
...base classes and silverlight it was called ag core
and it is so obvious now that I know why but when I first saw that I was like why would they call this
egg core what is this a core...and I realized
...the chemical abbreviation
for silver ag I didn't know that that's
...only this over course I said I want to do something sneaky like that
from my database that let's call it sterling cool so
...create this product right this database technology in like what
...framework where you talking at the time and this was silverlight right I...my
...fuzzy like what was civilized...version or
other even worked right so when I first built it was
definitely silverlight for but around that time I think and,
this is actually important because it brings us to the present time too there was a
new title library that was just becoming popular called portable class library so once we
get to the phone we realize we have a code base for silverlight now we
have code base for the phone you ride around the corner was the whole windows
eight launch and some of that technology so they're needed to be
the solution so the portable class library came out and what was
nine libraries that covered enough api surface area that I was able to
quickly take sterling and build it as a portable class library so the way it was
architect it was all the core pieces that the serialized
nation and indexing and understood how to manipulate the database that was all
portable code back in the day which is interesting
I'll talk a little bit about that in a second but then the very specific items,
for example, and, silverlight in the browser with
isolated storage in the phone we had a special phone type
of storage device deliberations you always had to consider a pc I'll give you that you generic
code that there was always that's extra thing had to do right exactly...
Analog people realize this...pc I'll was sort of a
clyde right it was an illusion it a created these
type forwarding classes but at the day there were
there were two challenges with a pc all that I think you know, dot net standard
a addresses today but the first challenge was that you had a lowest
common denominator right so when you want to target platform xy and z is.
Minimum set of api that can be accommodated on these
platforms the second problem
those as more platforms came out that matrix became so complex
it was like if I checked these three what is the magic combination
of api that are supporting became tough so I kind of call that
the framework down approaches like here's the frameworks let's make it down,... what's common
...dot...standard is the standard out approaches let's implement a
standard that has a core set of api and then build these other projects
to adhere to that standard which in my opinion is a much better approach,
yeah, I mean plus the time solve the real problem we needed to share code across all of these places
with that was running at the time that the silverlight oops of the world the windows phone
the windows eight I was developer and all of those platform so pc...spent a lot of time like you said
check boxing just enough to get to work...building the specific libraries wherever,
wherever they were needed for something really device specific or platform
specific and you're right it was...I like the way describe that I never thought about it that way but it is
the approach of really building to the lowest common denominator I think I think today's world is very different
and...cool that we sort of...your project always...so what is
just a little bit about like what was your black postal about because it kinda takes that,
you know, your database project pc...work all of that and brings it to the modern era so how did you
gets today's points and what...you do so who is interesting it's
a small world at the time I was not working for microsoft but ten
cure was very involved with silverlight and in
two thousand eleven I think it was he treated oppose so when is jeremy get
...stereo?
I said well that sounds like a good challenge let me go see so I cracked open
...net cord the time the one that overs and,
let's go ahead and serialized something wait there's no binary writer
ok let's reflect on the class because remember the whole
rule for sterling was that I wouldn't have to modify my classes
...reflection to look at him wait the full wave guy surface areas...there so...really a
...for me and what's interesting is done at
core the first release addressed a lot of scenarios and we
use that actually quite a bit at my last consulting
company for greenfield projects if we're building something fresh we had the tooling
...where I think a lot of frustration came from was from
authors of tools and frameworks and libraries and even enterprises
ahead existing code...want to migrate there code
well they kept slapping into that barrier right of the api doesn't exist
there's just not enough overlaps, yeah, definitely...fear I think we have is developers
...it's even less about existing projects exhausting you don't touch those
...nearly as much as you'd like to it's more about the community of projects that, you know,
you depend on for the next project and can they get their with their
libraries because we all depend open-source so much compared to the silverlight days let's face
it it's even back then we were starting to more and more with project like yours
and today I can't imagine any real-world project on windows or dot net framework
in general without support from various framework so it sounds like you were part of the
problem space, yeah, I was definitely part of the problem space and what is interesting at the
time is the iteration that sterling grew too so it built support for the windows
runtime several because it was open-source and this was before
...you know, open sources been out for a long-time but in the dot net community it was
...as popular at the time
it was open-source on cope like so we had a lot of interested individuals on
...projects contributing and solving problems and it was really
neat for me as a developer to see that concept of,
... someone doesn't just have to come in and say hey there's an issue but they would literally
...here's an issue here's a match you can fix that so
it's frustrating not to be able to bring it into this the net core but,
you know, quite frankly at the time it was brand new too and I'm not sure the demand was so
I sort of set it out there said, you know,
what for a lot of the mobile applications now there's other solutions there's ports
...sequel light there's a lot of other tools that are available so I'm
...and, as much time at which brings us
to now because the announcement of the release of
done it core was coming up and I was very curious about what the
story is what the changes so I started looking into
...core to data and of course to do that you really have to
understand the separation between done at core which is the implementation
...standard which is the interface and describes what that
implementation needs to it here too right so it becomes a minimal requirements
...dotted core adhering to done...standard
...says minimally it's going to support all of the api into
...great let's to api are in
...and I started digging and I don't
...the exact figure but I think it's something like thirteen thousand
api that were in one that six the previous data
...jump to thirty two thousand,
yeah, it's in fact the natural of a change right it's a lot more api they're bringing
dot net really to the point where it's quite productive even for existing project right and that's a
thing where you try to look at it again, yeah, looked at it again and said okay, you know,
we've got xml serialized...we've got the binary readers and writers
reflection had thousands of new methods ported over so
it really...to the point that I said I wonder how hard it will be
to migrate sterling because I keep hearing, you know,
one of the challenges and stop gaps dot net core great for
new projects what about migrating existing I said I've got this perfect progress
our project that I put on the shelf that uses reflection uses
...realization uses a lot of advanced api and surface area let's see what
it takes, yeah, so, I...down the project literally?
Built a new class library targeting done
...standard two edges dropped all the files into that projects I use the
dynamic...new class.
At...which does the done it standard drop them in...to compile
the...compiler issue that I got was the resources
are using size using res x file and it was an old way of doing
you localization and that resource living compact
to it so I really quickly hacked it by making a static class and just
server surfacing are coded because this was for exceptions that were being thrown
site quickly went through the listen just copy them from the resource file into the class compiled
it worked I said well this can't be right.
We're next...for work and that someone's going to work us to have,
yeah, let's write a little test app wiring wire
in some objects and query them out and lo and behold it worked so
I was stunned and in my mind you have been consulting for a lot of
years and I've talked to a lot of people just in the past few years about
down at core and I think a lot of people were concerned about that aps surface area
so my mind it wasn't really about sterling that I wrote the
post-it was about all the new capabilities for two data and sterling was
way to show how that's change that story
change from literally two thousand eleven didn't even...touch it
to here we are two thousand seventeen with just one small tweak I'm able to
get compiled imported nice how many other libraries are like that well there is a blog
post that came out with theannouncement for dot net core to and, by that
teams estimate they said in looking at new get and scanning the api surface area
...get seventy percent of the projects should be ai compatible
we've done it standard so that's a lot of people that if they're not aware of
this new capability are missing out on having their library available
and a lot of different places right because we've got...and support for done
it standard with...we've got the dot net core we've got the net framework and
in preview I believe coming out I don't know when is a universal windows
platform yet...they actually...that already citing that just came out very recently but, yeah,
it's basically, you know,
up to each ecosystem to get up to dot net standard to your compatibility...with
...specification so it is a bit more work but I really feel for the
community of projects out there...it really is zero right we did we can't always have
...the minimum we have to head towards something that people can
actually build real solution towards and I think they would be cool to show the people
you're converted project is...you can demo for us all but absolutely I.
I have a screen here the I'm going to share for
you what I did is this project is out on get hub.
Let me just pull this up.
I'm going to show the...have four so it's sterling net core.
And, originally I just on a very simple test that I'll show you
what I wanted to write immediate test the demo today so I'm going to walk through
with that looks like in a second let me pull up my.
Visual studio code so basically in this project you can see
sterling course these are the bits of sterling we could spend hours going through
the pieces and,
I think it's a lot easier to demonstrate with how do I hook up into sterling, you know,
I'm just project including it I haven't
packages and you get package or anything but I'm just local reference but
...was literally created a cat class.
That has a stream key in a string name I created a cool color class
there's a good idea in a string name and then I created a planet class.
That has an integer id and a string name.
Sterling actually supported triggers went ahead and created a good trigger so that
if I don't initialize that id it can initialize it for me
generated do you do it for that and then I've got this database definition so
the database definition doesn't hair from an instance but you notice these classes have no
attributes no yo inheritance or anything it's very clear.
...so there's this fluent interface that defines what is the key so for
cat the keys...so...for core color it's a good
for planet it's an integer and then we've got this combo and
the combo class aggregates has an idea that has a core color planet...a
cat also one of the things that is unique about sterling...
behaves sort of like object document database but it maintains reference on tiger
...so smart enough if I save one of these combo
objects instead of serialized in the fall color just...serialized the key
and go look at the color serialized nation two-d serialized that so that was one of the
features to reduce the footprint of the size because remember this was phone days
...size...go out and buy two hundred fifty six...you know,
small cards that we could slip in there so the database does this we've
gotten initialization I've just created colors red-orange yellow blue
...panther cougar links these are just initialized there's it's
creating the objects building up its own key for some of them and this is literally it
...just db safe and
...serialized...sterling has everything it needs to know to do that and then
in our main program what this is doing is it's registering the database.
And, what I did with sterling is I separated the driver that
persists everything from the database logic itself so that man I could have
...in memory driver...in memory database like a...an isolated storage
driver I even had someone who wrote an as your table storage that's
...so there's it's extensible in that way so what this does is it
populate the database and then it...korean it does the queries
a couple ways just going to run this really quickly let me pull this and, get into the
right folder so this is my little get back shell so if I go
into sterling consul test?
We're just going to do it on build-out do release build.
And, let that spin out target what you'll see is it's going to
pull in the sterling.
Core base and build that so that's
the sterling core and then it's going to build the test app.
And, it's going to complete and then if I do a dot net and I actually
I'm just giving it...path to the application right now sterling
counsel.
If I could type correctly I only do this for a living, yeah,
so, it's saving colors I just put a thread...that's why it took that it's gap
...for...combinations it picks a random color.
And, then it's actually integrating through that combo box based on the
colors.
And, that's what you're saying come out
and then it just tells you the time to complete which is really slow here I think because I'm
sharing a landscape...runs a lot more quickly when I don't have the screen share
running into a sort of the most amazing thing about what...showing is that foundation the
once you got to that net standard to this now can...windows can run linux can run
...bp when that environment supports it anywhere without the standard is supported,... have this
...platform database engine from a project that you built in silverlight
days just to give our audience
...context on the time here and that's a great contacts in fact the end of
my blog post is literally pointing out that?
In two thousand eleven I wrote this little apps
...two thousand seventeen for the first-time I'm able to run it on
a linux machine without modification without doing anything special and that to me
is huge so I'm going to start this running now this is a little bit more advanced
example so what's running I'm going to go through the code what this does is goes out to
the publicly available usda nutrition database so those files are hosted
on a site I've got parsers in this important
that read the text files and parse them into actual full
model so that's what you're seeing here is like a food group which.
Is a pretty straightforward class if I can get it to pull up here actually memory
the man
...group is just a code...description but then we've got nutrient
so nutrient has two parts to it maps to food id so think
of protein carbohydrate fat content and then it maps
...definition because there's a very standardized definition for these so these are
...that objects now I'm just going to go and go to the food item
has an idea belongs to group we can mess that group inside of it
got description short description list the weight so that's if it's a cup dry a cup,
you know, code to whatever
and nutrients so what is happening down here?
Is we're actually reading those files and parsing them into these?
Classes and then storing them in the sterling database so I can run
accord in a second and just to show you again
we're just looking at straight csharp classes and if I look at my
use the database what I'm defining is I'm telling it
...has a string he nutrient definition as a nutrient key
sterling also supports the concept of indexes and this is why I tell people, you know,
sterling is not intended to be a sequel server cosmos db replacement it's
meant to be a local lightweight cash in fact the most popular use
case for sterling was what's called tombstone ing and the phone days and that was
...we models for your application state and one an easy way to save it off when someone
...the applications so that's the idea here but
what sterling does with indexes is because everything serialized
in the serialized with an index it'll keep that index
in memory which if you think about complex large objects and you
have thousands of those that's a huge memory footprint if I'm just storing,
for example, id and simple strings then I can store a pretty good amount
of those so in this index what I'm telling you to do and I can even create my own keys
on-the-fly that's what's beautiful about a sterling just calls my lambda expression to
evaluate the key so I'm telling it store is an aggregate key the food idea nutri
ninety but create an index on the amount in a hundred grams
...say there's this much protein and a hundred grams or
there's this much water in a hundred grams so what it's doing
is in that index it's keeping that in memory so even though does have the full food items
of memory it has the index of memory so you can very quickly get to the energy
that you want and then you can lazy load the full entity for the...mean those
...real-world scenarios...any sort of application and I've had to tackle
...multiple times you'll sometimes have to lower a lot of data and you want people to kind of as they
tried to look up various values...you just need a little bit help that doesn't come
for free especially when you get to hundreds of thousands of objects sometimes of data in them so,
it's kind of cool that you're able to take all those investments you made I mean this is called
...again like six seven years ago right it's old code it but it's code that's
well-written for...needed to do and you just freaking converted to that non-standard I'm very impressed
and this thing is still going as...is putting a lot of data, yeah,
it's a lot slower actually kicked off sooner again I think the sky this long my
system down but we can lou back to...I want to show this part this is my import
strategy so this literally takes a list of items?
And, you can see I'm using generics and imports it by box saving it now
this is a little walk e this is something ninety-degree factor because before we had
our awesome thread library with tasks we use background work omega
...backer
...go way back hereso, I know there's some conversion between the two but I just
use what was there so this is using a background in order to save
...list but what I love about being able to use generics
rate is csharp is a language is I
could have a strategy where even though I don't know ahead of time that type that I'm trying to
...my database...based on generic
...capacity food item for group and the same
save routine works and it just recording percentage done you can
see we're getting close to the end here but what blows my
mind is that this code using generics reflection and everything
else is the same code now that's going to run a mac.
And, this example everything I'm showing here this entire screen
this-is visual studio code so visual studio code will run on
mac it'll run on linux and it's done
...core which will run on all those target areas so all of this experiences
is the same no matter where you go you want done is...loaded the collection so now I'm doing a
query I just want to run this real quick and then show you the code and then...
acts...core is listing in the serial category foods by
...contents of we...comes out on top and then pass the
whole we stand here just in the top twenty and then we do it
again for carbohydrate content and then we do it again for fat
contents we can see okay what foods are I'm protein are high in fat the
way that looks if we come back over to the program.
And, I expand my terminal back.
Is using a link chord?
Some literally coming here.
According my nutrient key.
joining it to the full food item using my split key remember
aggregated the key so I can actually is part of my
link worries they split than just compare one side of it so this time I'm just
looking for protein order descending selected to
bowl and then I lazy load the food value that's why you saw a little
pause so even though it figured out a whole list of items only as I
...formed...serialized that full food
item from the dc realization and this at the time and again, you know,
I stress there's a lot of different very optimize solutions now but at
the time for very simple in obtrusive way to basically
...store some your view models or some of your cash data and then be able to korea
this was what the magic of sterling was about at the time, yeah,
that's awesome I think this sends a really clear message
...you know, if I was a library developer out there you know, it's easy to hear some
team at microsoft give some percentage right and say this percentage that percentage of the, you know,
developers can now look at their libraries and convert to this thing but you're, you're one of those people you're you
had a real project this wasn't conceived to demonstrate this was a
good example they just happen to be there and to me that's what media blog...authentic and I love authentic stuff
and there you go you showed running so definitely no-smoking there's this was real...you converted it's
up and get hub people should definitely take a look and if you're if you're starting a project today,
you know,
from the other side of the fence and you're a developer that that's looking dot net core you know,
what message would you give them...net core...in general like I think this
releases is from my perspective very solid by love to hear your thoughts on how far that has come
as a general framework I think it's come a long ways and there's,
there's certainly very specific scenarios that need very specific parts of the
library and the full framework if
you will that makes sense for that but in general especially?
If you're starting to embrace this concept and I hate to use overloaded terms I know
everyone saying microsoft mrs today right here but if you
think about it let's not focus so much on the name
and just the concept and that concepts been around awhile let's focus on one thing
do that one thing well test that one thing package that one thing share that one thing right
it's a component as part of an application if you're looking at components
I believe developers will find eighty ninety maybe close to a
hundred-percent of their surface area can be handled by something
lie net core and what's nice about it is what the current versions you can
mix and match right so the net framework and reference done
at standard so I don't believe developers are losing anything if they take a
core first approach and then if they need to build the bits
in the full framework that the...the writing small services
...guys endpoints there's a lot of advantage to doing core
first the lessons learned from how many years right of the
fall down at framework this was an opportunity even though the api surface area is
the same for that team to build it from the ground-up and there's been plenty of blog posts about
benchmarking and performance that's pretty impressive what those capabilities
are so we've got that coupled with the fact that for free.
As a developer you now can create a library or code base
that will run on so many different platforms and you never know when that little utility
your library right may become useful may take off someone else might need it
you may not think that your app is going to end up on a tablet or phone right
...if it does some day this sort of buys it to you for free
in the last thing I'll say that I think is important too is it
starts to be a developer today and not talk about the cloud that's what
...do day-in-and-day-out is the cloud but when I look at
software today I don't worry as much about how cool the technologies
of the language I'm worried about what does it take to get it from the concept
to then deployment right because that's cost of business how fast can
you get it to market how much of that pipeline...you focused on innovating
and doing what's important versus doing all this side stuff this
...be down every project, you know,
standing up a virtual machine configuring it and what's nice is
today we're recording this general availability of web
app on linux and container web app was announced
it that announcement just came out, yeah,
genetics what's that you just came out like today literally like as we
...preparing to record this episode right and I think,
you know, programming aside and what does it take, you know,
does it support generics whatever what is that pipeline for continuous
integration and deployment and there's some very mature pipelines that can package
...at core apps into container there's tooling that's built
in developers I'm showing visual studio code developers don't have to leave the
full visual studio to get this experience but what's nice is
with tools like this I can take something like container web apps I can
container eyes my dot net application take...core right click
at doctor file create image...out and deploy that
to an infrastructure that will automatically scale instances gives me a
...want five I want ten or based on cpu are
based on requests have all this auto scaling capability without the overhead of
me having understand all the nuances of the infrastructure behind...I think that's huge
is that coupling with this technology and what we have available in the
cloud for rapidly provisioning nodes infrastructure to run the
...core apps and that's what gets me excited about it,
yeah, it's really it's really come a long way I think if I had any hesitation to tell somebody to go tried
...core before I think to all...standard to already has taken those away
...they speak that in a centigrade like you I come from consulting background I know-how important it is for
people to actually solve real problems and be productive and
...budgets and all of that I mean that's the real-world people live...we get to play
...this cool...the other side of it so when we give a suggestion we're asking people spend their time
...their money and I think for once we can do this without that core
to on the really confident they've got a great web story that...story they've got component
...they can go to the clouded they could run...linux taken windows the skies
...it to take some puns...there but
yeah, that's awesome and we...the...you came on to show this to us...
...you...I had no clue just like when I wrote sterling it was
the solve a specific problem I had no clue
...solve it and become popular the way it was back in the day but this blog
...that I wrote I
wrote because I was excited I saw what was possible...I want to write about this and,
share plus and,
you know, this is kind of a guilty pleasure but defined it...that six-years-old and
finally be able to reply to that's us and at the end of the day
I replied when he said when you can import...that have out now
...at least...that was a lot of selfish fun but it went viral
...a lot of people picked it up and I think it is because there is a
desire to tap into the features and functionality and there was a little bit
of reluctance based on the history
...the track record not of issues which is lack of api surface area so I
really do feel with done it standard tuned net core.
...a major game changer and that people should take it seriously take a look at it and,
you know, what I'm going to put myself on the hook and
on the line for this but go take a look at try it out if you have issues...problems with
that reach out to me I'm very reachable my blog as contact information might get
hub does and because I'm interested in removing friction and helping make this happen I
can do myself obviously but I'll bang I'm?
Very transform of and I would love to see
that seventy percent of new get packages that can support on
...standard to score on standards...be really awesome night
...think jeremy symmetric coming on the show and we'll put the links to you
...have repo the blog post and your twitter handle so folks can actually reach out to even
...given some questions and...people have them and...you know, hooked evian again when you're symbols
...stuff to show us sounds cool I will do my best to work
...how awesome thanks again for me on the show...if...being here and the thanks for watching
...to detail...hope you come back again take your folks.
Inverse.