Old entries in the XPObjectType table - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

I am reviewing the priority of a quite dated SC item on the subject and wanted to ask the community for help. The problem may occur when old business class libraries exist in the application folder. By default, XPO tries to load them by the XPObjectType info along with the new versions. This may lead to a conflict at runtime or startup performance degradation. In the latter case, assembly type resolution may come at a cost (see the point 3.5 under How to measure and improve the application's performance).

Why are we hesitating to remove old XPObjectType entries by default?

1. Removing old XPObjectType records affects other apps accessing this database and is serious. Outdated service table records may relate to business class records too (inheritance mapping is in use very often). So, deleting them will lead to foreign key constraint violation. Creating a sophisticated generic solution for this is not easy task.

SQL Server-related methods of ModuleUpdater and pooled database connections

Before the end of this year, I wanted to inform you of some "home work" done by us to improve your XAF development experience with the ModuleUpdater API:

ModuleUpdater - CreateCommand and other SQL Server-related methods may throw NullReferenceException with pooled database connections

Another DBUpdater improvement - Custom user notifications during the database update

We continue flushing our features backlog, and this time I would like to tell you about a small DBUpdater usability improvement:

From http://www.devexpress.com/issue=S136591:

"I have implemented this suggestion in 12.2. Starting with this version you can call the static DevExpress.ExpressApp.Utils.ApplicationStatusUpdater.Notify method from your ModuleUpdater class to provide additional information about the database update, e.g.:
 
 ApplicationStatusUpdater.Notify("CreateReports", "Creating reports in the database...");

 You can also handle the ApplicationStatusUpdater.UpdateStatus event in your code to be notified of any status updates or to correct messages accompanying these status updates.  To demonstrate this further, I have attached a screenshot of the DBUpdater run output:"

Another DBUpdater improvement - Passing a custom connection string from command line

From S132999:

"I have implemented this suggestion in 12.2. Starting with this version you can use an optional
'-connectionString' parameter followed with a custom connection string that will be used by the DBUpdater instead of the ones specific in the application configuration file or application itself.

Here is an example of how to use the new parameter:

D:\2012.2\XAF\Demos\CS\MainDemo\MainDemo.Win\bin\Debug>DBUpdater.v12.2.exe MainD
emo.Win.exe.config -connectionString "Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false;Dat
a Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=Test""

A minor tweak to the DBUpdater tool: Splash screen is removed in the silent mode

Today I chatted with a customer who was having issues with the DBUpdater tool, because this console app displayed a small splash screen even if it was run in the silent mode...Sounds very familiar? Yeah, I saw this myself in the past a few times and I knew that this small icon appeared because DBUpdater setup XafApplication internally. After a quick search I found that I even logged a suggestion on removing this icon:

DBUpdater - Remove an application splash screen showing during the database

Good news is that it was not too hard for me to finally fix this today. So, in 12.2 everything will operate as you expected.