Developer. Consultant. Thinker. Trader. 25+ years building enterprise software.https://www.mattjcowan.com/en-ushttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/on-classical-education/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/on-classical-education/Why my wife and I chose Classical Christian Education (CCE) for our kids.Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/welcome-new-site/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/welcome-new-site/After years of the old funcoding blog, a fresh start: same ideas, better home.Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/migrating-content-from-wordpress-to-strapi/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/migrating-content-from-wordpress-to-strapi/In this post I'll discuss the process of moving the content and the files from my wife's WordPress site to the Strapi system I setup in the previous post(/funcoding/2020/05/04/installing-strapi-on-ubuSun, 17 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/installing-strapi-on-ubuntu-18-04/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/installing-strapi-on-ubuntu-18-04/In this post, I document my step by step install of strapi on an Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine, using MySQL, Nginx, Amazon S3 file uploads, S3 database backups, and touch-free auMon, 04 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/t4-with-llblgen/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/t4-with-llblgen/In this post, we look at leveraging T4 templates to extend the power of LLBLGen inside of Visual Studio .NET. Writing T4 templates to auto-generate code is almost a norm at this point it seems, it's bSat, 09 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/theming-servicestack-razor-views/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/theming-servicestack-razor-views/In this post, we look at adding theming capabilities to the ServiceStack Razor View engine. Source and live demo are included. This post is third in a series investigating ways to leverage ServiceStacTue, 25 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/restful-api-and-ui-for-typed-views-and-typed-lists/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/restful-api-and-ui-for-typed-views-and-typed-lists/In this post, we extend the implementation described in the prior post to include generating an HTML UI and RESTful Api on top of LLBLGen Typed Views and Typed Lists, leveraging the ServiceStack web sSun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/rest-api-with-llblgen-and-servicestack/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/rest-api-with-llblgen-and-servicestack/In this post, we're going to explore building a generic RESTful api on top of a database with custom CRUD and query conventions, using the LLBLGen ORM and code generator, a ServiceStack service layer,Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/service-based-data-adapter-for-llblgen-entities-using-servicestack/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/service-based-data-adapter-for-llblgen-entities-using-servicestack/This post is about leveraging the LLBLGen Pro and ServiceStack tools to allow users to use the existing LLBLGen Adapter API on the client to manage, manipulate, query and update entities on remote serThu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/simplemembershipprovider-in-mvc4-for-mysql-oracle-and-more-with-llblgen/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/simplemembershipprovider-in-mvc4-for-mysql-oracle-and-more-with-llblgen/One of the cool new features in ASP.NET MVC4 and the Visual Studio MVC application template is the SimpleMembershipProvider which provides a more concise membership provider to the ASP.NET framework,Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-mailchimp-integration-example/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-mailchimp-integration-example/In this post, we will leverage the custom service application infrastructure and solution we put together in the last 4 posts to enhance the service application with new features and capabilities. TheWed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-admin-ui-and-powershell/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-admin-ui-and-powershell/In this post we explore how to configure various aspects of a SharePoint 2010 service application. This includes building some customizations in the application pages and extending the service applicaSun, 07 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-base-solution/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-base-solution/In this post, we are going to explore the guts of our custom service application, expect lots of code in this post. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, the goal of this Service ApplicationWed, 03 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-logical-components/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-logical-components/In this post we explore the essential components that make up a service application and the relationships between them: servers, services, service proxies, service instances, service applications, serThu, 27 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-getting-started-and-why/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-service-application-development-101-getting-started-and-why/In this series, we will explore what it takes to build and manage a custom service application in SharePoint 2010. The most attractive reason to me for building a service application is to logically bFri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/code-generating-a-python-web-application-with-llblgen-sqlalchemy-and-the-tornado-web-server/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/code-generating-a-python-web-application-with-llblgen-sqlalchemy-and-the-tornado-web-server/While I work mostly with Microsoft technologies and .NET/C these days, I love digging into other languages when the opportunity calls. About a week ago, I thought up the idea of using the LLBLGen ProTue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/validating-and-binding-peopleeditor-and-custom-sharepoint-editorpicker-controls/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/validating-and-binding-peopleeditor-and-custom-sharepoint-editorpicker-controls/In this post we will look at various strategies for validating and binding PeopleEditor and custom SharePoint Editor/Picker controls. PeopleEditor controls are useful in SharePoint for selecting usersWed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/building-a-web-api-in-sharepoint-2010-with-servicestack/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/building-a-web-api-in-sharepoint-2010-with-servicestack/Recently, while building a custom service application in SharePoint, I was exploring various ways of creating a web API, hosted within SharePoint. Obviously, using WCF is the standard in SharePoint, bSat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/scripting-your-sql-database-using-smo-and-the-command-line/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/scripting-your-sql-database-using-smo-and-the-command-line/When I’m developing, I often start with a “database first” design, so having a utility that can generate my database scripts and dump them into a directory comes in really handy. During a developmentSat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/adding-llblgen-to-the-dapper-benchmark-test-project/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/adding-llblgen-to-the-dapper-benchmark-test-project/The Dapper project on GitHub has a performance/benchmark test project that compares a number of ORMs and data access strategies. While the project only tests a very simple fetch algorithm, it's a goodFri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/using-autofac-in-sharepoint-2010/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/using-autofac-in-sharepoint-2010/Up till now in my SharePoint 2010 projects, I’ve been using the very nice SharePoint Service Locator(http://spg.codeplex.com) implementation, from the patterns & practices group. This has been reallyThu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/plugin-engine-with-quartz-net/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/plugin-engine-with-quartz-net/Three or four years ago I stumbled on the book "Quartz Job Scheduling Framework: Building Open Source Enterprise Applications" by "Chuck Cavaness", while browsing the technology section of a Borders bFri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/how-do-you-learn-pmp-case-study/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/how-do-you-learn-pmp-case-study/I think a team is at its best when all of it's members have an awareness of the learning methods and techniques that work best for them. Experts in the field of learning have uncovered common characteTue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/custom-bookmarker-with-chrome-extension/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/custom-bookmarker-with-chrome-extension/A couple days ago, I launched a "Good Reads(https://www.mattjcowan.com/funcoding/good-reads/ "Good Reads")" section on this blog, where I could quickly capture some bookmarks for blogs I read using GoSat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/llblgen-ef-repository-pattern/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/llblgen-ef-repository-pattern/In this post, I will use the model-first approach in LLBGen Pro designer and some custom templates to generate repository classes for LLBLGen entities. I will create a simple membership API with someMon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/hello-world/https://www.mattjcowan.com/blog/hello-world/My name is Matt. I love lots of things, and one of these is coding. If you know me, shoot me an email and give me some suggestions on things to blog about :-). I'm looking forward to coding up some inFri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT