Introduction

The next alpha version of Starcounter 3.0.0, codenamed Nova, is available for general access.

Download Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930.zip archive with all required NuGet packages.

Please make sure to read our End User License Agreement for Starcounter Software.

Starcounter 3.0 alpha 20190930 main changes

• Starcounter database access is now provided with a Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection service.

• Starcounter.Star.Tool is no longer required to manipulate and communicate with the database.

• It is now possible to deploy Starcounter applications with dotnet publish command and run them in a Docker container.

• Overall performance has been significantly improved with multiple optimizations in the communication layer between application and the database.

Dependency Injection (DI) and Starcounter

• Read more about Dependency Injection on the official Microsoft documentation page - Dependency injection in ASP.NET Core.

• Checkout ASP.NET Core sample controller with Starcounter database access using Dependency Injection (DI).

Requirements

• Ubuntu 18.04.02 x64 or Windows 10 Pro x64 Build 1903.

  • Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is also supported.

• .NET Core 3.0.100, SDK for development, runtime for production.

• Enough RAM to load database of targeted size.

• It's recommended to have at least two CPU cores.

Note: Due to the alpha state of this release we cannot provide any guarantees, but we monitor our GitHub: Starcounter/Home issue tracker and stand ready to assist with any potential issues.

Installation

Note: This section assumes that you have required operating system and .NET Core 3.0.100 SDK installed.

Binaries

• Create a folder for Starcounter binaries, for example Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930.

• Download Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930.zip into the folder.
• Unzip downloaded archive into the folder.

Ubuntu 18.04

Install prerequisites.

sudo apt-get install wget unzip
sudo apt-get install libaio1

Starcounter relies on a specific version of SWI-Prolog.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:swi-prolog/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install swi-prolog-nox=7.\*

Download and unpack Starcounter binaries.

cd $HOME
mkdir Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930
cd Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930
wget https://starcounter.io/Starcounter/Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930.zip
unzip Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930.zip

Application

Create an application folder and initialize a .NET Core console application.

mkdir StarcounterConsoleSample
cd StarcounterConsoleSample

dotnet new console

All the following commands shall be executed from the StarcounterConsoleSample folder.

Setup NuGet to consume Starcounter packages feeds.

Create nuget.config file and add required package sources:

• local, points to the Starcounter binaries folder.

• Starcounter, points to https://www.myget.org/F/starcounter/api/v2.

NuGet tips:

• Default NuGet.config file can be created with dotnet new nugetconfig command.
• For more information on how to work with NuGet configurations, see this post by Microsoft.

End file should look similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <clear />
    <add key="local" value="[Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930]" />
    <add key="Starcounter" value="https://www.myget.org/F/starcounter/api/v2" />
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" />
  </packageSources>
</configuration>

Visual Studio Setup:

Visual Studio requires manual NuGet package sources configuration. For this go to the Tools → Options → NuGet Package Manager → Package Sources menu then add local and Starcounter feeds.

Note: Replace the [Starcounter.3.0.0-alpha-20190930] value with actual path to the folder with unzipped Starcounter binaries.

Add Starcounter.Nova.App package reference

dotnet add package Starcounter.Nova.App --version 3.0.0-*

Add minimal Starcounter database access

Replace content of the Program.cs file with the following:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using Starcounter.Nova;
using Starcounter.Nova.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;

namespace StarcounterConsoleSample
{
    [Database]
    public abstract class Person
    {
        public abstract string Name { get; set; }
    }

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            string connectionString = 
                "Database=./.database/StarcounterConsoleSample;"
                + "OpenMode=CreateIfNotExists;"
                + "StartMode=StartIfNotRunning;"
                + "StopMode=IfWeStarted";

            // Here we create a service collection that
            // we add the Starcounter services to.
            // When we call BuildServiceProvider(), we get an instance
            // that we can use to fetch service instances,
            // for example ITransactor, which we then can use to 
            // to make database transactions.
            using var services = new ServiceCollection()
                .AddStarcounter(connectionString)
                .BuildServiceProvider();

            // Here we fetch our ITransactor instance from the service provider.
            var transactor = services.GetRequiredService<ITransactor>();

            // And here we use it to make a database transaction.
            var name = transactor.Transact(db =>
            {
                // Here inside the transaction,
                // we can use the IDatabaseContext instance
                // to interact with the Starcounter database.

                // We can query it using SQL
                // (which returns an IEnumerable<Person>
                // that we can use with LINQ).
                var p = db.Sql<Person>
                (
                    "SELECT p FROM Person p WHERE Name = ?", 
                    "Jane"
                ).FirstOrDefault();

                if (p == null)
                {
                    // We can insert new rows in the database using Insert().
                    p = db.Insert<Person>();

                    // We write to the database row
                    // using standard C# property accessors.
                    p.Name = "Jane";
                }

                // Let's return the name as result of the transaction.
                return p.Name;
            });

            // And let's print it in the console
            Console.WriteLine(name);
        }
    }
}

• Read more about Starcounter database connection string.
• Read how to configure Starcounter database options.

For ASP.NET Core application:

Update Startup.cs class with the following:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;

namespace StarcounterMvcSample
{
    public class Startup
    {
        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            string connectionString = 
                "Database=./.database/StarcounterMvcSample;"
                + "OpenMode=CreateIfNotExists;"
                + "StartMode=StartIfNotRunning;"
                + "StopMode=IfWeStarted";

            // This adds and configures Starcounter services to our application, for
            // example ITransactor, that allows us to create database transactions.
            services.AddStarcounter(connectionString);
        }
    }
}

Note: Starcounter works with Kestrel Web Server only. IIS and IIS Express are not yet supported.

Running with Visual Studio Code

• Open Visual Studio Code in the application folder (from command line: code ./).

• Restore dependencies Visual Studio Code asks for.

• Click Ctrl + F5 to start the application.

Everything should run out of the box.

Running with Visual Studio 2019

• Update Visual Studio 2019 to the latest version using Visual Studio Installer.

• We checked version 16.3.0.

• Open StarcounterConsoleSample.csproj from Visual Studio.

• Click Ctrl + F5 to start the application.

Extra information

Before asking questions or reporting issues, please read these few lines, and maybe you will find an answer for your question.

• Currently there is no database tooling available except the bare minimum of dotnet star new and dotnet star start commands.

• Starting from Starcounter 3.0.0 beta, all required packages will be uploaded to one of the popular providers, such as NuGet.org, MyGet.org or GitHub Package Registry.
• Base namespace will be changed from Starcounter.Nova to just Starcounter.

• It is recommended to define all database classes and properties as abstract to reduce memory footprint when compared to virtual. Support for virtual properties might be removed in the future.

• Publishing application in a single file with dotnet publish /p:PublishSingleFile=true is not yet supported.