Sunday, February 16, 2003

the API of the System.Xml classes doesn't seem too easy to use. i might be using them incorrectly. in Electric XML, i'm used to writing things like: Element element = document.getElement( "foo" ); in MSXML i'm having to write: XmlElement element = (XmlElement) document.getElementsByTagName( "foo" ).Item( 0 ); if there are no better ways to write this, i'll write some helper classes to make the code cleaner. 1:16:12 AM    comment []

i decided to start off by porting some core parts of the GAIA kernel related to the P2P Federated XML Database. these portions are relatively isolated from other parts, and involve quite a bit of XML manipulation, threading, file access, and other such system operations.  so far, it's been fairly smooth. the things i've encountered so far are: - what's the equivalent of System.currentTimeMillis()? it looks like DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks should be close, but maybe a factor of 10 off? - i can't find a simple linked list in System.Collections. this seems odd, maybe i'm missing something. i need super-fast deletion of a list element, so ArrayList won't work - the System.Threading namespace looks pretty powerful - the EXML XML serialization code ignores transient data fields. i'm not sure what the equivalent .NET XML serialization mechanism is yet. getting used to the get/set approach for variable access was straightforward. porting the Java event listener code to .NET events will take a bit more thought. 12:49:48 AM    comment []

ok, now it's time for some major C#/.NET coding. in the past, i've written a large amount of C, C++, Smalltalk and Java, with a smattering of Assembly, Prolog, Lisp and Ada, so this shouldn't be too hard. i'm going to document my progress on my weblog, together with the various difficulties i encounter. should be fun! 12:43:47 AM    comment []