>>>>>>>Haiiii!!!! There's some good EF courses out there also. Some of the newer features are quite nice, and Migrations is pretty cool. Now if their query generation logic would just catch up to NHibernate.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Julie's latest EF courses on Pluralsight dealing with EF5 and EF in the Enterprise are really, really good. Between that and John Papa's Hot Towel SPA stuff ( using Durandel etc ) I'm actually getting some stuff working.
>>>>>
>>>>>I have EF in the Enterprise queued up for early this week. My current contract wants to implement Unit of Work in their existing WPF system, so stumbling on that video was great luck.
>>>>>
>>>>>I really need to get the Migrations framework down. I have been getting by with using Automatic Migrations but I need to get better control of generated structure.
>>>>
>>>>I think it is going to take me a while to warm up to migrations. Seems once the app is basically created I would rather make whatever enhancements or structure changes very manually, implementing the changes in SSMS and then adjusting the apps classes to fit. I'm just not buying Code First. Old dog and all that. I like the reverse engineering tool and the use of POCOs.
>>>>
>>>>Still am not quite sure where and how I am going to use SPs in this scenario, assuming the SPs will not be for basic CRUD. I like backend processing and I understand that if I am not using edmx I won't get the stuff generated as part of the model for SPs but there has to be a happy medium someplace. I'm about to watch EF Enterprise again to see if it all clicks this time as the first time through I was a lot fuzzier about a lot of this,
>>>
>>>You need to be into automated deployments before you see the value of migrations.
>>>
>>>I've been trying to sell this stuff because it fits nicely with an agile, team based approach. Reducing friction and all that. If you're a one man show (for some reason I thought you were) then your way probably works well for you, especially if you have no need of versioning your DB.
>>>
>>>I have a rich domain model using EF-filled POCO classes, but when it comes to grid or reports I usually end up using Stored Procedures because I just can't achieve the same performance. NHibernate has more tricks up its sleeve so I was able to do a lot more with that, but EF just isn't there yet. If you are willing and your code isn't top secret, I'd be willing to help you out a bit if you check it into Github. I've been looking for opportunities to get in some social coding.
>>
>>Thanks I appreciate the offer and will keep it in mind.
>>
>> I am generally the whole show - dba through code monkey and client wrangler but I recently did a 2 year full-time remote gig with Dow Jones Indexes and for the first time really had to get into the idea of teams and scrums and progress reports and QA and DBAs and hundreds of linked servers all over the world.
>>
>>Unfortunately did not get to play with EF there, but did get to do a lot of C#, realtime stuff and big time set based processing. Deployment meant scripts that went through review committees etc.
>>
>>Educational but would like to do something using ORM and web services and repositories/UOW etc next time around. Cutting my teeth now on a couple apps I'm in complete control of, so I can live with scripts as these are not real verticals but very custom stuff where I am DBA and very hands on with the back end ( not that there's anything wrong with that ;-)
>>
>>Have you used any of the tools from Hibernating Rhinos? On Julie's recommendation I am trying out EF Profiler and really like it. I know they have had their nHibernate product out even longer.
>>
>>My current project is to get back into using Linqpad with EF and seeing if that can help me develop my Linq to Entity chops.
>>
>>When I get this and my jquery/HTML5/Durandel/knockout nailed down I'll start looking for remote gigs again, but for now I'm keeping busy doing the kind of stuff I made a living at before Dow Jones backed up of a truck full of money and got me to actually work a 40 hour week. :-)
>>
>>( don't miss the hours or the meetings but I do miss that truck )
>
>All of that stuff you mentioned wanting to learn is right in my wheelhouse. I've given a few local user group presentations about them. And yes, I have used NHProf for NHibernate. I tried using EFProf for Entity Framework but I -HATE- the SQL it generates so ignorance is bliss in that case.
>
>My stack of choice is ASP.NET MVC, using SQL Server => NHibernate => Repository => StructureMap => AutoMapper, It's something I really enjoy doing and I think it's a great general purpose framework. I've recently switch NHibernate for Entity Framework (not my choice) and I've been using TeamCity for Continuous Integration. Really some fun stuff.
>
>I really do need to get more experience with Unit Testing though. I've also been pondering the whole SQL/ORM crapfest and have been looking for an excuse to go NoSql for a project - preferably something like RavenDB. Ayende Rahein my hero for the work he's done on NHibernate and Hibernating Rhinos and he's behind RavenDB, so I need no arm twisting to sell out on his products.
>
>I'd love to do small group proof of concept app sometime. I definitely don't get the peer review of my code that I need, plus I enjoy teaching and learning from other devs. I'd need 2-3 weeks to get past an extremely busy spike at work, but I would be willing. Maybe a general purpose blogging framework or something...
>
>You mentioned some front-endy web keywords - add Twitter Bootstrap to that. It will make your life easier.

I believe the Twitter Bootstrap is part of the stack John Papa is showing in his Hot Towel SPA (Pluralsight) I am really glad I got interrrupted ( by the DJ gig ) in my pursuit of Prism/WPF a couple years ago. Not seeing WPF as the future now. Learned a lot about architecture from studying Prism but now seeing more value in non-proprietary stuff.

We should definitely talk some time this summer about what we are doing. I love the idea of collaborating on something for the learning experience. The only thing i don't like about working entirely remotely and generally being a lone wolf is you don't get the cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences you do working with people who share your level of curiosity and mental energy. Fortunately, the technology has made collaboration no longer a function of geography. ( it is kind of cool to look at the correspondence in the 17th century between people in various parts of Europe wrestling with new areas of inquiry in science and math and thinking about what real-time collaboration would have accomplished.)