I installed everything and ran it using Visual Web Developer express. It works. Damn scary to create something that would take a day to create in only 3 minutes. Can I (should I) use this in production? Where are we going with this?

While it is still beta software, we are not stopping users from using this in production, though of course you would need to evaluate whether it has the level of functionality that you need.

As to where we're going with this, it will eventually be part of the next ASP.NET release.  In the meantime, we appreciate any feedback that we can get about improving the feature!

thanks,
David

Relevant language from the EULA:

1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. 
a. Installation and Use
* You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to test how it runs with your programs. 
* You may use, copy, and embed in your programs the SilverlightPlugin.js, or SilverlightPlugin.debug.js files.  However, you may not modify or distribute these files.
* Use in Live Operating Environment.  Because the software is a pre-release version, and may not work correctly, provided that you take adequate precautionary measures to back up and protect any data that may be affected by use of the software, you may, at your sole discretion and risk, use the software in a live operating environment. You may not use the software alone or with programs that are intended for
i. use in hazardous environments, life support or weapons systems; or
ii. conducting e-commerce transactions (exchange of goods and services via an Internet, Extranet or other computer networks), including without limitation shipping, credit card, monetary or other banking transactions.

one more question:

I recently started a project to make a BLINQ like module in DotNetNuke. I describe it here: DNN BLINQ: Blinq for DotNetNuke. What is your advise on this? I didn't know about this tool and now I'm thinking I should drop my idea all together. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Well, though it seems similar on the surface, it's really quite a different approach.  With Blinq, you are generating a bunch of pages, and then you are essentially using standard ASP.NET with no extra runtime support.  With Dynamic Data, no static generation takes place.  Instead, everything is driven at runtime.

Though Blinq has its uses, once negative about it is that it doesn't work well when your schema changes.  If you already generated all the pages and customized some of them, you have to regenarate and hand merge if you ever add a table or field.  With Dynamic Data, this scenario works very well.

Hope this helps!
David

davidebb:

Well, though it seems similar on the surface, it's really quite a different approach.  With Blinq, you are generating a bunch of pages, and then you are essentially using standard ASP.NET with no extra runtime support.  With Dynamic Data, no static generation takes place.  Instead, everything is driven at runtime.

Though Blinq has its uses, once negative about it is that it doesn't work well when your schema changes.  If you already generated all the pages and customized some of them, you have to regenarate and hand merge if you ever add a table or field.  With Dynamic Data, this scenario works very well.

You explained it perfectly. The final solution must work with schema changes otherwise whats the point. So my idea will not work.

Last question, should I wait until this is released and make a DotNetNuke module to work with it?

Sorry, just noticed your last question about whether you should wait for the release.  Well, the earlier you play with it, the more likely you are to find if you hit some blocking issues that need to be addressed.  So from our point of view, we'd certainly encourage you to play with the bits and report issues now.  On the other hand, you will probably feel some of the pain of dealing with bugs and incomplete functionality.  But I suppose that's part of the fun! ;)