Perhaps I should be writing this in the newbie forum area as I've very new to SubSonic but I'm posting this here since my main focus at the moment is Oracle. Anyhow, I've a strong interest in using SubSonic as a data layer in a new web project at work. We're using Oracle 10g and the SubSonic homepage indicates that Oracle is supported. Technically, I guess that's true. The reality, though, is that stored procedures are ignored as are packages, tables in other schemas are ignored regardless of CRUD privileges granted...and so on. (Regarding the issue about objects in other schemas, I wonder if perhaps SubSonic is getting the available schema info from USER_TABLES/USER_OBJECTS instead of ALL_TABLES/ALL_OBJECTS..?)
Before I go any further, let me make one thing very clear....I *really* like this product. Please don't misunderstand my complaints here. I'm just
frustrated after banging my head against these issues for a week now.
Thanks to the tutorial, I generate my DAL without a hitch, reference it in my web project and I have no problems seeing the generated objects. Things went downhill for me after that...
I dropped an ObjectDataSource on a page, referenced one of my table objects using the MyTableController and linking it up with a standard GridView control. In the standard view, I see every column in my table plus some extra fields based on the generated object's attributes: sLoaded, IsNew, IsDirty, TableName, ProviderName, NullExceptionMessage, InvalidTypeExceptionMessage, LengthExceptionMessage. That's odd. I can remove them without much trouble, but I don't know why they're shown by default.
Of course, the gridview's "Delete" function doesn't work whether the extra fields are there or not.
Similarly, my primary key field is editable. Again, I can edit this via the ReadOnly attribute or else modify generated gridview to use a TemplateField instead of a BoundField, but I'm not sure why primary key fields are editable by default. Perhaps there's a switch to turn that off? Anyhow, when I *do* turn it off in the manner I just described, the gridview gets even more messed up....now both the "Edit" and "Delete" functions are broken.
When I try dropping a QuickTable widget on the page and wiring it up...I get an exception message warning of an Oracle error: "ORA-00936: missing expression".
When I drop a Scaffold control on the page and wiring *it* up, I get an Admin header and an add button. Nothing else. Clicking the add button does nothing but add an Editor header below the previous items, plus Save and Return buttons....nothing else. No view of existing table data. No place to edit any data.
Are these Oracle issues? Or am I missing something? I'd like to look into the documentation area but there's very little documentation and what little exists appears to be geared solely towards SQL Server. I understand that's the primary focus as most SubSonic users are using that database. Still, I cannot help but wonder whether there may be quite a few developers who want to use SubSonic with Oracle, but they're stymied by the fact that the tool doesn't appear to actually support Oracle in spite of claims to the contrary.
While I'm sitting here being a whiny little so-and-so 
, I have two other complaints...
- Blank pages when clicking directly on "parent" items in the SubSonic site menu (like the "Docs" item) instead of one of the child menus. It'd be nice to see the sub-links displayed there instead of "Going to add appropriate links here..."
- I work in a cube farm and it'd be nice to be able to access text-based tutorials/walkthroughs as an alternative to the video/Flash-based ones.
Okay, that's *more* than enough whining from me.
In all seriousness, I really like the tool and feel that the SubSonic team has done an outstanding job in getting the tool to where it is today. Also, I'm very new to the tool and I'd appreciate it if someone could point out any errors I may have made - either in my use ofSubSonic or in my understanding of the philosophy behind it. Any and all constructive criticism is welcome.
With that said....how can I contribute to the project? I'm not a code genius but I have some experience with both ASP.NET and Oracle. Also, I used to do tech writing so I could always help with documentation if that's needed. I'd really like to see SubSonic live up to its potential so please let me know if I can provide any help.
Thanks!