BIT.Xpo.Observables Nuget

by | Oct 8, 2018 | Nuget, Xamarin, XPO

An observable implementation of XpCollection and XPPageSelector.

After 15 years, DevExpress has finally made XPO available free-of-charge. If you’re not familiar with XPO, you can learn more about its feature set here. If you’ve used XPO in the past or are familiar with capabilities, you will love this.

As we already know a Xamarin ListView is populated with data using the ItemsSource property, which can accept any collection implementing IEnumerable but if we want the ListView to automatically update as items are added, removed or changed in the underlying list, you’ll need to use an ObservableCollection. Here is where XpoObservableCollection becomes the best friend for all the XPO fans out there.

XpoObservableCollection inherit from an XPCollection so to use, it is exactly as you would use an XPCollection, the only difference is that the XpoObservableCollection refresh the state of ListViews on Xamarin Forms.

XamarinXpoPageSelector takes it a step further by internally implementing XPPageSelector and presenting the XpoObservableCollection as a pageable collection. With this in mind, on the constructor of the XamarinXpoPageSelector  you need to pass the following parameters:

SortingCollection sorting = new SortingCollection();
sorting.Add(new SortProperty("Your Property", SortingDirection.Ascending));
XPCollection <Your Class> Collection = new XPCollection <YourClass>(UnitOfWork);
Collection.Sorting = sorting;

XamarinXpoPageSelector <YourClass> selector = new XamarinXpoPageSelector <YourClass> (Collection,10, XpoObservablePageSelectorBehavior.AppendPage);
       
this.listView.ItemsSource = selector.ObservableData;
  • Collection = An instance of XPCollection.
  • 10 = Page Size by default.
  • XpoObservablePageSelectorBehavior = AppendPage or SinglePage.

Use Append in case you want to add the results of the new page to the collection or Single page to clear the last page results before showing the new page.

And that’s it. The same awesome ObservableRangeCollection (from MVVM Helpers) that adds important methods such as AddRange, RemoveRange, Replace, and ReplaceRange, it is now available in XPO and of course, it is open source so go and take a look behind the curtains.

https://github.com/egarim/BIT.Xpo.Observables

https://www.nuget.org/packages/BIT.Xpo.Observables/

Until next time. Xpo out!

XPO and database replication

by | Oct 7, 2018 | XPO, XPO Database Replication

After 15 years of working with XPO, I have seen many tickets asking if XPO is capable of doing data replication and all the time DevExpress team answer those tickets saying that replication its out of the scope of XPO and that it’s actually true.

So, to start talking about database replication lets try to define what “replication” means. Here is the definition of replication according to Wikipedia

“A computational task is typically replicated in space, i.e. executed on separate devices, or it could be replicated in time, if it is executed repeatedly on a single device. Replication in space or in time is often linked to scheduling algorithms”

The keywords on the above statement are task, space and time, so to replicate a database operation we need to know the following information

  • What was the task?
  • Who performed the task?
  • When was the task performed?
  • Who needs to know about the task what was performed?

Now let’s think what are the steps that any traditional database does, in order to replicate the data between instances

  • It shares a copy of the database schema to the other instances/locations/devices
  • It logs the DML statements that happened to a main instance/location/device
  • It broadcast the statements on this log to the other instances/locations/devices
  • it processes the statements on the target instance/locations/devices

Now the question is, can we do the same with XPO?

thanks to the great architecture develop by the XPO Team, the answer is a big YES!!!

so, let’s compare how you can match traditional database replication with XPO

Traditional database replication XPO database replication
1 Share a copy of the database schema. In XPO we can re-create a database schema using the method UpdateSchema from the Session class.
2 Logs the DML statements. In XPO we can keep track of the BaseStatement at the DataLayer level.
3 Broadcast the statements

 

 

 We can transport the log of statements using any of the dot net network technologies like WCF, remoting or Web API.
4 Process the statements on the target instance, device or location

 

 

 To process any kind of BaseStatement we can use the XPO DataLayer on the target instance, device or location

 

So, it looks like DotNet and XPO provide us of all the necessary infrastructure to do a database replication so why not give it a try right?

XPO POST 5: Layered Architecture

by | Oct 1, 2018 | DevExpress XPO from step 1 to N, XPO

There is nothing than inspire me more to write a blog post that a regular Saint Petersburg day and by regular, I mean windy, cold, dark and rainy, but don’t get me wrong I love this city but when the weather is too nice as it was this past summer is hard to focus on writing.

So, let’s get started with the post number 5, today we are going to talk about the architecture of XPO.

If you are new to XPO you might find that the documentation is sometimes overwhelming especially because most of the articles blogs and tickets are written in totally different times and versions of XPO, so you might find some really old blog post where the WCF scenario is not supported and the XpoProviders are tightly coupled with the DotNet ADO Providers and some other cases where is the opposite case.

XPO is now 15 years old and its architecture has changed since the early versions, most of the time when you find documentation about XPO layer architecture you won’t be able to see all the layers at once.

After spending 1 month and Gilbert Arizona, developing software side by side with my dear friend and student Jose Javier Columbie and having endless technical conversations about XPO, I realize that it is not easy to explain how the XPO architecture works, so I decided to draw the XPO architecture in a formal document. Javier also drew the first version of this diagram on his notepad and as always half in Spanish and half in English as we tend to do as Latin Americans.

So, without further due, here I present you the XPO architecture diagram

If you want to get a copy of the diagram with clickable links, you can download it here XPO-Layer-Architecture.pdf

Now let’s start explaining from left to right.

Persistent Classes: this layer is basically defined by you as the programmer and is nothing more than the persistent classes you write to abstract business objects. Usually, this layer is your starting point as an XPO user, so I won’t go into deeper detail since if you are reading this post you already know how this layer works.

Data Access, Data Cache and Data Filtering: in this layer, the most basic object is the session also is the base class for all the other objects in this layer. A session is basically a cache of all the persistent objects that have been instantiated since you start manipulating your DataStore or the objects that you have queried in your DAL (Data Access Layer).

Most of the behaviours from the session are passed to its child classes, won’t explain the difference on the child classes in this article but for sure it will be on my list of topics for the following weeks.

Object Access Layer: this layer is the bridge between the session and the actual DataStore. So basically, it works as a translator for the CRUD operations done in an object-oriented manner to statement objects that will be processed in the data access layer level.

Data Access Layer: is the bridge between the object access layer and the data stores (classes that implements IDataStore) and its basically in charge of pass the statement objects to the data store so it can translate it to the proper SQL statements for a specific database like MS SQL Server, Postgres, Mysql, etc.

Data Store Layer: is the lowest layer of all and it’s in charge to translate the statement objects to DDL and DML SQL statements and execute them at the database level using ADO.

Also, as you can see in the diagram this layer can be transferred over the wire using WCF to extend the functionality on the communication with the database. Using WCF is really useful if you don’t want to expose the connection string on the application config or if you want to transport the communication to the database in any of WCF supported network protocols.