How hard can it be people?!?

Alright, you have .NET, you have ORACLE, and you have LOB fields (BLOB/CLOB, i.e. a place to store huge amounts of data for anything (BLOB) or for up to 4GB of text (CLOB) for those who don't know). How hard can it be to make a relatively coherant set of simple conversions, particularly for things over 32kb in size?!?! Obviously it isn't easy, or we wouldn't have to go through all of this mess. Needless to say I'm more than a little ticked off at both Microsoft and ORACLE on this one. It should be pretty normal to allow people to store things like files, images, and large strings on the database, and we've been doing it for years. So why does it have to be so hard to do? Why can't we just have a simple conversion from the .NET type to the ORACLE parameter? Why isn't there a simple way for us to pass BLOB parameters in .NET? It's time to get on the ball over there at ORACLE and Microsoft; give us a good solution.

Updates, DevExpress, Licensing, etc.

First of all I want to apologize for it being so long since I've updated. Work's been crazily busy, and the last thing I've had time for is updating blog entries. I would, however, like to post on a couple of things.

First a heads up. If you are currently working with DevExpress controls there may be a problem in Windows 2003 Server with their ASPxGrid's licensing call. I've noticed this with the site I'm building and when hosted on Win2k3 it takes almost three times longer to complete rendering of the grid on the server side. This issue may affect all their controls as well. I am currently working on that with their support team and Microsoft. If this is really a problem I'll post about it again and let you know.

Also, speaking of DevExpress, I actually tried what was described in this post and I have to say, Julian B, you rock! He actually took the time to talk to me and I believe him that the performance issues I've discussed will be looked into and resolved. Again, huge kudos to Julian. DevExpress is a good company, and though I have some issues with their controls (VS2k5 documentation) I am consistantly impressed by their commitment to customers. In other words, buy their stuff.

Okay, now for some cross posting blog mentions:
-Joe Duffy: When you have one too many threads, or want to do multi-AppDomain instantiation (say it with me, Rich-Client Plugins) this is the blog for you. I look forward to more cool stuff coming from Joe.
-Junfeng Zhang: This just confuses me sometimes, but it's a good detailed blog about the .NET Framework.
-Mark Russinovich: Mark is here for when Windows just makes you say WTH?
-Chris's Corner: Want some Vista hate? Go here, and not only learn what to hate about Vista but also why, when, and how much.
-Tom Hollander: Wow, I mean just wow. The P&P folks are the best at Microsoft. They're actually making things that are causing enterprise level development to be better, easier, and cheaper. Who would have thought? Power to the people Tom, power to the people.
-Peter Bromberg: Who is this guy and why does he rock so much? I dunno, but keep up the good fight Pete. He's a great dose of humor, politics, and in your face programming. If the code doesn't work Peter will beat you and your code until it does, and you'll like it!

Alright, that's it for now.