Hi,

I am just curious why profiles weren't used in chapter 1 for the user's first name, last name and diary id? Is there an advantange to coding like this without profiles?

Thanks for the help,

Al

Hi Al,

This is an example of the "many ways to Rome". Profiles are a very useful feature, and solve many of these problems related to storing user data. Other chapters in the book do use Profiles, but it's also interesting to see how you can solve a similar problem without using profiles....

Cheers,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Hi Imar,

Thanks for the speedy response. I am really enjoying the book and finding it very useful. I decided to ask this question after reading several posts that mentioned some possible shortcomings of profiles (difficulty querying and scalability). Have you run into any problems using profiles that new users should be aware of?

Al

Hi Al,

Yes, you're right, there are problems with the default implementation of Profiles, querying being one of them.

All data is stored as a long string, with another column indicating where each Profile property starts and end. So:

ImarSpaanjaarsNetherlands

can be stored to indicate I have a first and last name of Imar and Spaanjaars and that I live in the Netherlands.
This indeed is very difficult to query for code outside the Profile feature, especially in JOIN queries. Finding everyone from the Netherlands with a first name of Imar is then pretty hard.

But, pluggable providers to the rescue: http://www.asp.net/sandbox/samp_profiles.aspx?tabid=62

The download contains two additional providers: one that uses a custom table with columns you can map to Profile properties, while the other allows you to do the same with stored procedure parameters.

This way, you get the benefits of rapid development with Profiles, while you still have a flexible and accessible data structure.

Cheers,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Hi Imar,

Thanks again for your help. I downloaded those providers and have already started working with the table one.

Take care,

Al