How to get into SubSonic?

Question

A month ago I searched for some tools that will generate C# classes out for my SQL database/tables. So I don't have to write DAL classes manually and to save a lot of time.

I came across "ORM" and subsonic. I watched the webcasts on the homepage http://subsonicproject.com/ and was pretty impressed by it.

But I am still missing more documentation/knowledge to feel comfortable with subsonic to use it in our projects. Today I read about the "migration" feature somewhere - accidental.

How to get into subsonic? How to get more comfortable with it? How to know about all the features/possibilities it provides? Are there any good blogs/tutorials/whatever for subsonic?

Danie

The actual official SubSonic site is at : subsonic.wekeroad.com. Subsonicproject.com is a secondary site no longer maintained and largely broken. (could you edit your post ?) – Molecular

Answer 1

SubSonic is irritatingly short on documentation (which is one reason I abandoned it). Scott Kuhl wrote a "Getting Started with SubSonic" document (just Google his name and SubSonic) but parts of it appeared to be out of date.

Here is Scott's blog - a place to start at least.

Here is the document's home page. I was curious as to whether the document is indeed out of date and I think it is: the web page has a last updated date in 2006.

Unfortunately, I know of no other documentation and I did look for it.

Update: See the link to documentation that Rob Conery provided in his answer.

Compatriot

Answer 2

Unfortunately, the best SubSonic "documentation" is in the form of screencasts, but they are very easy to follow.

Quite a lot about SubSonic on Rob Conery's (original creator) blog http://blog.wekeroad.com/tags/subsonic/.

Personally found the best thing is (like Matt said) to just use it, set it up in external tools in VS, get the connection string and a few other config settings sorted, and you're just about good to go. You can get the basics down in an afternoon.

The forum is quite active http://forums.subsonicproject.com/forums/, and a good place if you get stuck.

Overcome

i quite agree. using it extensively and then either googling or putting questions on SO is definately the way to go. after six months with subsonic, i'm more confortable with it than other prods except maybe mygeneration and nhibernate. it is the easiest to learn though :) – Isthmus

Does the forum still exist? As far as I can tell the link just goes to a general site about SubSonic (with very little documentation). – Playtime

Sadly, the forum seems to have pretty much died/been killed. There are still some signs of activity on github. I still really like subsonic, and given that it's free, you can't complain if the team decide to do other things, but I am starting to worry about the long term future of the product. SO probably the best source of info at this time. As cool as SO is, sad that the forum was closed. – Overcome

Answer 3

I admit it - our docs suck :(. I did try to put a site together: http://subsonicproject.com

Hope this helps.

Joshua

Rob, you are writing the docs. what is the new url? i was on the site but forgot to bookmark it. it was a very good begining. someone check twitter.com/robconery amongst the old tweets there must be a link. – Isthmus

The bane of every open source project. NHibernate, even with a manual (that came from the Java version) and book has lots of foibles that take hours of googling to discover the answer to. The business model is to make money from the training courses so it's understandable. – Robinrobina

subsonic.wekeroad.com. I didn't own the domain so I couldn't renew it when it expired. Twas hijacked. – Joshua

@RobConery that domain now redirects to www.wekeroad.com. Are the docs still available somewhere? – Ancell

Answer 4

Just start using it.

It is very simple and pretty straight forward. There are several screencasts on how to generate your classes with sub commander, once you have that just hit . and see what you can do with them.

Sensuality

Answer 5

I put together a template project referencing SubSonic generated off the Northwind Database. A very simple project, but should easily be enough to get started on your first project. Check it out here:

http://ajondeck.net/post/2008/12/29/ASPNET-20-SubSonic-Project-Template-With-SQL-Server-2005-Northwind-DB.aspx

Pisarik