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• NOVA Code Camp &ndash; Code Samples

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Thanks to everyone who attended my MVC 2 presentation at NOVA Code Camp. The code samples and PowerPoint can be downloaded here: Top 10 Ways MVC 2 Will Boost Your Productivity.

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• Digineer Is Hiring

  - by Christopher House

  My employer, Digineer is looking for BizTalk and SharePoint people.  If you or someone you know is looking for a great opportunity in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, get in touch via the Contact link on this page.

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• The Coming Storm of Blog Entries

  - by StuartBrierley

  Well, maybe. I have realised that I have many many ideas and notes for blogs entries dotted around my desk, along with a number of half completed entries that I have been meaning to get sorted and finished and posted. I am hoping that over the next couple of weeks I will be able to get some of these online, including my experineces installing BizTalk 2009 on two different types of environment, some useful utilities I have used and also some notes on issues that I have encountered recently and not so recently when developing BizTalk solutions. If not a storm it may at least drizzle.

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• mongoDB Management Studio

  - by Liam McLennan

  This weekend I have been in Sydney at the MS Web Camp, learning about web application development. At the end of the first day we came up with application ideas and pitched them. My idea was to build a web management application for mongoDB. mongoDB I pitched my idea, put down the microphone, and then someone asked, “what’s mongo?”. Good question. MongoDB is a document database that stores JSON style documents. This is a JSON document for a tweet from twitter: db.tweets.find()[0] { "_id" : ObjectId("4bfe4946cfbfb01420000001"), "created_at" : "Thu, 27 May 2010 10:25:46 +0000", "profile_image_url" : "http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/600304197/Snapshot_2009-07-26_13-12-43_normal.jpg", "from_user" : "drearyclocks", "text" : "Does anyone know who has better coverage, Optus or Vodafone? Telstra is still too expensive.", "to_user_id" : null, "metadata" : { "result_type" : "recent" }, "id" : { "floatApprox" : 14825648892 }, "geo" : null, "from_user_id" : 6825770, "search_term" : "telstra", "iso_language_code" : "en", "source" : "&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tweetdeck.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TweetDeck&lt;/a&gt;" } A mongodb server can have many databases, each database has many collections (instead of tables) and a collection has many documents (instead of rows). Development Day 2 of the Sydney MS Web Camp was allocated to building our applications. First thing in the morning I identified the stories that I wanted to implement: Scenario: View databases Scenario: View Collections in a database Scenario: View Documents in a Collection Scenario: Delete a Collection Scenario: Delete a Database Scenario: Delete Documents Over the course of the day the team (3.5 developers) implemented all of the planned stories (except ‘delete a database’) and also implemented the following: Scenario: Create Database Scenario: Create Collection Lessons Learned I’m new to MongoDB and in the past I have only accessed it from Ruby (for my hare-brained scheme). When it came to implementing our MongoDB management studio we discovered that their is no official MongoDB driver for .NET. We chose to use NoRM, honestly just because it was the only one I had heard of. NoRM was a challenge. I think it is a fine library but it is focused on mapping strongly typed objects to MongoDB. For our application we had no prior knowledge of the types that would be in the MongoDB database so NoRM was probably a poor choice. Here are some screens (click to enlarge):

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• "System.Data.OracleClient requires Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or greater." Error Message

  - by Jandost Khoso

  Quick resolution: Give full permission to AUTHENTICATED USERS in following folders. a) ORACLE_HOME b) Program Files\ORACLE   Check your PATH. You might have installed different clients in your system and your .NET application is pointing to a home with inappoperiate client. What your .NET application should load is OCI.DLL with File version more than 8.1.7. According to the MSDN document Oracle and ADO.NET:   "The .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle provides access to an Oracle database using the Oracle Call Interface (OCI) as provided by Oracle Client software. The functionality of the data provider is designed to be similar to that of the .NET Framework data providers for SQL Server, OLE DB, and ODBC. "     The MSDN document System Requirements (Oracle) says: "The .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle requires Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) version 2.6 or later. MDAC 2.8 SP1 is recommended. You must also have Oracle 8i Release 3 (8.1.7) Client or later installed. "   Both the .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle and Oracle Data Provider for .NET are data providers to access Oracle database. The former ships with .NET Framework and requires Oracle client version 8.1.7 or above. The latter is provided by Oracle company and requires Oracle client version 9.2 or later.     The Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) features optimized ADO.NET data access to the Oracle database. ODP.NET allows developers to take advantage of advanced Oracle database functionality, including Real Application Clusters, XML DB, and advanced security.   See the document Comparing the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Data Provider for Oracle and the Oracle Data Provider for .NET for more information about the difference.

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• Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects Guidance?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Early on in the Team System (now Visual Studio ALM) cycle a new product surfaced within Team System that was affectionately called “Data Dude”, but had the more formal name of “Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals”. The purpose of this product was to try and make the database a “first class citizen” in the development world. Those that started using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude) loved it, but everyone else did not get it. The capabilities were a little patchy, but the one thing it did bring to the party was the ability to put your database schema under source control. This was revolutionary as previously your DBA sat as far away from the team as possible, and usually in a dark cupboard, now they could partake of all the goodness of Version Control, Work Item Tracking and automated builds. The problem was that the understanding required to manage these projects was very different to that needed previously. Then the Visual Studio ALM Rangers got a hold of it…and produced some of the best guidance available. Figure: Download the guidance from http://vsdatabaseguide.codeplex.com/ This guidance discusses scenarios and approaches of using the Database Projects in Visual Studio 2010 to help you use the tools more effectively and maximize their value to your organization This guidance is focused on these five areas: Solution and Project Management Source Code Control and Configuration Management Integrating External Changes with the Project System Build and Deployment Automation with Visual Studio Database Projects Database Testing and Deployment Verification Each of these areas has common guidance, usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learned from real world engagements and the community discussions.   The guidance is broken down into three packages: Guidance documentation Hands-on-lab (HOL) documentation note: The documentation is available in XPS-only format packages or complete XPS,PDF,DOCX format packages HOL Package If you need assistance and no one else can help, then you may need to call the Visual Studio ALM Rangers. The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. They are supported by Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used. For more information on the Rangers please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358786.aspx and for more a list of other Rangers projects please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358787.aspx.

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• C# Toolbox: Debug-able, Self-Installable Windows Service Template Redux

  - by James Michael Hare

  I had written a pair of posts before about creating a debug-able and self-installing windows service template in C#.  This is a template I began creating to ease creating windows services and to take some of the mundane tasks out of the coding effort.  The original posts were here: C# Windows Services (1 of 2) - Debug-able Windows Services C# Windows Services (2 of 2) - Self-Installing Windows Services But at the time, though I gave the code samples I didn't have a downloadable for of the template on the blog.  After getting many requests for the actual source, I zipped it up and am posting it with this blog entry.  Click on the link below to download the archive.  The password on the archive is, imaginatively enough, password.  Hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment and suggest changes! Debug-able, Self-Installing Windows Service Template download Enjoy! Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,Windows Service,Toolbox

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• AJI Software is now a Microsoft Gold Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Partner

  - by Jeff Julian

  Our team at AJI Software has been hard at work over the past year on certifications and projects that has allowed us to reach Gold Partner status in the Microsoft Partner Program.  We have focused on providing services that not only assist in custom software development, but process analysis and mentoring.  I definitely want to thank each one of our team members for all their work.  We are currently the only Microsoft Gold ALM Partner for a 500 mile radius around Kansas City. If you or your team is in need of assistance with Team Foundation Server, Agile Processes, Scrum Mentoring, or just a process/team assessment, please feel free to give us a call.  We also have practices focused on SharePoint, Mobile development (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile), and custom software development with .NET.  Technorati Tags: Gold Partner,ALM,Scrum,TFS,AJI Software

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• NDepend 4.0 Released

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Last week version 4.0 of NDepend was released.  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high quality code.  A month ago I wrapped up my evaluation of the previous version of NDepend. The new version contains many minor changes, several bug fixes, and adds about 50 new code rules.  The version also adds support for Visual Studio 11, .NET Framework 4.5, and SilverLight 5.0.  But, the biggest change was the shift from CQL to CQLinq. Introducing CQLinq The latest version replaces the CQL rules language with CQLinq (CQL is still an option although the editor is buried).  As you might guess CQLinq is a flavor of Linq designed specifically for the code rules. The best way to illustrate the differences is with an example.  I used the following CQL example in Part 3 of my review: WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” This same query looks like this when implemented in CQLinq: warnif count > 0 from t in Types where t.IsInterface == true && !t.NameLike(“I”) select t I like the syntax and it is a natural fit, but I found writing the queries frustrating in the Queries and Rules Edit window.  The Queries and Rules Edit window replaces the CQL Query Edit window.  The new editor has the same style of Intellisense as the previous editor.  However, it has a few annoyances.  The error indicator is a red block.  It has the tendency of obscuring your cursor.  Additionally, writing CQLing queries is like writing plain old Linq queries, so the fact that the editor uses Enter to select from Intellisense instead of Tab is jarring.  These issues can be an obstacle to writing queries quickly.CQLinq makes it possible to write rules that weren't possible before.  Additionally, a JustMyCode domain is now possible making it easy to eliminate generated code from the analysis.Should you Buy? I recommend NDepend overall.  It has some rough points for me that I have detailed in my earlier evaluation (starting here).  But, it’s definitely worth the money.  The bigger question is: should I pay for the upgrade to 4.0?  At this point I’m on the fence, but I would go for it if you need support for Visual Studio 2011, .NET Framework 4.5, or Silverlight 5.0; or if you need one of the many rules that weren't possible before CQLinq. Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend. Resources: NDepend Release Notes

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• Launching "Script of the Day" - Learn an amazing IT script sample every 24 hours

  - by Jialiang

  Every day is an opportunity to learn something or discover something new.  Learn one IT script sample every day; Be an IT master in a year! Microsoft All-In-One Script Framework offers "Script of the Day".  "Script of the Day" introduces one amazing script sample every 24 hours that demonstrates the frequently asked IT tasks.  If you are curious about and passionate for learning something new, follow the "Script of the Day” RSS feed or visit the "Script of the Day" homepage, and share your feedback with us [email protected].     Subscribe to the RSS Feed: http://blogs.technet.com/b/onescript/rss.aspx?tags=ScriptOfTheDay

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Interlocked CompareExchange()

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Two posts ago, I discussed the Interlocked Add(), Increment(), and Decrement() methods (here) for adding and subtracting values in a thread-safe, lightweight manner.  Then, last post I talked about the Interlocked Read() and Exchange() methods (here) for safely and efficiently reading and setting 32 or 64 bit values (or references).  This week, we’ll round out the discussion by talking about the Interlocked CompareExchange() method and how it can be put to use to exchange a value if the current value is what you expected it to be. Dirty reads can lead to bad results Many of the uses of Interlocked that we’ve explored so far have centered around either reading, setting, or adding values.  But what happens if you want to do something more complex such as setting a value based on the previous value in some manner? Perhaps you were creating an application that reads a current balance, applies a deposit, and then saves the new modified balance, where of course you’d want that to happen atomically.  If you read the balance, then go to save the new balance and between that time the previous balance has already changed, you’ll have an issue!  Think about it, if we read the current balance as $400, and we are applying a new deposit of $50.75, but meanwhile someone else deposits $200 and sets the total to $600, but then we write a total of $450.75 we’ve lost $200! Now, certainly for int and long values we can use Interlocked.Add() to handles these cases, and it works well for that.  But what if we want to work with doubles, for example?  Let’s say we wanted to add the numbers from 0 to 99,999 in parallel.  We could do this by spawning several parallel tasks to continuously add to a total: 1: double total = 0; 2:  3: Parallel.For(0, 10000, next => 4: { 5: total += next; 6: }); Were this run on one thread using a standard for loop, we’d expect an answer of 4,999,950,000 (the sum of all numbers from 0 to 99,999).  But when we run this in parallel as written above, we’ll likely get something far off.  The result of one of my runs, for example, was 1,281,880,740.  That is way off!  If this were banking software we’d be in big trouble with our clients.  So what happened?  The += operator is not atomic, it will read in the current value, add the result, then store it back into the total.  At any point in all of this another thread could read a “dirty” current total and accidentally “skip” our add.   So, to clean this up, we could use a lock to guarantee concurrency: 1: double total = 0.0; 2: object locker = new object(); 3:  4: Parallel.For(0, count, next => 5: { 6: lock (locker) 7: { 8: total += next; 9: } 10: }); Which will give us the correct result of 4,999,950,000.  One thing to note is that locking can be heavy, especially if the operation being locked over is trivial, or the life of the lock is a high percentage of the work being performed concurrently.  In the case above, the lock consumes pretty much all of the time of each parallel task – and the task being locked on is relatively trivial. Now, let me put in a disclaimer here before we go further: For most uses, lock is more than sufficient for your needs, and is often the simplest solution!    So, if lock is sufficient for most needs, why would we ever consider another solution?  The problem with locking is that it can suspend execution of your thread while it waits for the signal that the lock is free.  Moreover, if the operation being locked over is trivial, the lock can add a very high level of overhead.  This is why things like Interlocked.Increment() perform so well, instead of locking just to perform an increment, we perform the increment with an atomic, lockless method. As with all things performance related, it’s important to profile before jumping to the conclusion that you should optimize everything in your path.  If your profiling shows that locking is causing a high level of waiting in your application, then it’s time to consider lighter alternatives such as Interlocked. CompareExchange() – Exchange existing value if equal some value So let’s look at how we could use CompareExchange() to solve our problem above.  The general syntax of CompareExchange() is: T CompareExchange<T>(ref T location, T newValue, T expectedValue) If the value in location == expectedValue, then newValue is exchanged.  Either way, the value in location (before exchange) is returned. Actually, CompareExchange() is not one method, but a family of overloaded methods that can take int, long, float, double, pointers, or references.  It cannot take other value types (that is, can’t CompareExchange() two DateTime instances directly).  Also keep in mind that the version that takes any reference type (the generic overload) only checks for reference equality, it does not call any overridden Equals(). So how does this help us?  Well, we can grab the current total, and exchange the new value if total hasn’t changed.  This would look like this: 1: // grab the snapshot 2: double current = total; 3:  4: // if the total hasn’t changed since I grabbed the snapshot, then 5: // set it to the new total 6: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current); So what the code above says is: if the amount in total (1st arg) is the same as the amount in current (3rd arg), then set total to current + next (2nd arg).  This check and exchange pair is atomic (and thus thread-safe). This works if total is the same as our snapshot in current, but the problem, is what happens if they aren’t the same?  Well, we know that in either case we will get the previous value of total (before the exchange), back as a result.  Thus, we can test this against our snapshot to see if it was the value we expected: 1: // if the value returned is != current, then our snapshot must be out of date 2: // which means we didn't (and shouldn't) apply current + next 3: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current) != current) 4: { 5: // ooops, total was not equal to our snapshot in current, what should we do??? 6: } So what do we do if we fail?  That’s up to you and the problem you are trying to solve.  It’s possible you would decide to abort the whole transaction, or perhaps do a lightweight spin and try again.  Let’s try that: 1: double current = total; 2:  3: // make first attempt... 4: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current) 5: { 6: // if we fail, go into a spin wait, spin, and try again until succeed 7: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 8:  9: do 10: { 11: spinner.SpinOnce(); 12: current = total; 13: } 14: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current); 15: } 16:  This is not trivial code, but it illustrates a possible use of CompareExchange().  What we are doing is first checking to see if we succeed on the first try, and if so great!  If not, we create a SpinWait and then repeat the process of SpinOnce(), grab a fresh snapshot, and repeat until CompareExchnage() succeeds.  You may wonder why not a simple do-while here, and the reason it’s more efficient to only create the SpinWait until we absolutely know we need one, for optimal efficiency. Though not as simple (or maintainable) as a simple lock, this will perform better in many situations.  Comparing an unlocked (and wrong) version, a version using lock, and the Interlocked of the code, we get the following average times for multiple iterations of adding the sum of 100,000 numbers: 1: Unlocked money average time: 2.1 ms 2: Locked money average time: 5.1 ms 3: Interlocked money average time: 3 ms So the Interlocked.CompareExchange(), while heavier to code, came in lighter than the lock, offering a good compromise of safety and performance when we need to reduce contention. CompareExchange() - it’s not just for adding stuff… So that was one simple use of CompareExchange() in the context of adding double values -- which meant we couldn’t have used the simpler Interlocked.Add() -- but it has other uses as well. If you think about it, this really works anytime you want to create something new based on a current value without using a full lock.  For example, you could use it to create a simple lazy instantiation implementation.  In this case, we want to set the lazy instance only if the previous value was null: 1: public static class Lazy<T> where T : class, new() 2: { 3: private static T _instance; 4:  5: public static T Instance 6: { 7: get 8: { 9: // if current is null, we need to create new instance 10: if (_instance == null) 11: { 12: // attempt create, it will only set if previous was null 13: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _instance, new T(), (T)null); 14: } 15:  16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } So, if _instance == null, this will create a new T() and attempt to exchange it with _instance.  If _instance is not null, then it does nothing and we discard the new T() we created. This is a way to create lazy instances of a type where we are more concerned about locking overhead than creating an accidental duplicate which is not used.  In fact, the BCL implementation of Lazy<T> offers a similar thread-safety choice for Publication thread safety, where it will not guarantee only one instance was created, but it will guarantee that all readers get the same instance.  Another possible use would be in concurrent collections.  Let’s say, for example, that you are creating your own brand new super stack that uses a linked list paradigm and is “lock free”.  We could use Interlocked.CompareExchange() to be able to do a lockless Push() which could be more efficient in multi-threaded applications where several threads are pushing and popping on the stack concurrently. Yes, there are already concurrent collections in the BCL (in .NET 4.0 as part of the TPL), but it’s a fun exercise!  So let’s assume we have a node like this: 1: public sealed class Node<T> 2: { 3: // the data for this node 4: public T Data { get; set; } 5:  6: // the link to the next instance 7: internal Node<T> Next { get; set; } 8: } Then, perhaps, our stack’s Push() operation might look something like: 1: public sealed class SuperStack<T> 2: { 3: private volatile T _head; 4:  5: public void Push(T value) 6: { 7: var newNode = new Node<int> { Data = value, Next = _head }; 8:  9: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next) 10: { 11: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 12:  13: do 14: { 15: spinner.SpinOnce(); 16: newNode.Next = _head; 17: } 18: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next); 19: } 20: } 21:  22: // ... 23: } Notice a similar paradigm here as with adding our doubles before.  What we are doing is creating the new Node with the data to push, and with a Next value being the original node referenced by _head.  This will create our stack behavior (LIFO – Last In, First Out).  Now, we have to set _head to now refer to the newNode, but we must first make sure it hasn’t changed! So we check to see if _head has the same value we saved in our snapshot as newNode.Next, and if so, we set _head to newNode.  This is all done atomically, and the result is _head’s original value, as long as the original value was what we assumed it was with newNode.Next, then we are good and we set it without a lock!  If not, we SpinWait and try again. Once again, this is much lighter than locking in highly parallelized code with lots of contention.  If I compare the method above with a similar class using lock, I get the following results for pushing 100,000 items: 1: Locked SuperStack average time: 6 ms 2: Interlocked SuperStack average time: 4.5 ms So, once again, we can get more efficient than a lock, though there is the cost of added code complexity.  Fortunately for you, most of the concurrent collection you’d ever need are already created for you in the System.Collections.Concurrent (here) namespace – for more information, see my Little Wonders – The Concurent Collections Part 1 (here), Part 2 (here), and Part 3 (here). Summary We’ve seen before how the Interlocked class can be used to safely and efficiently add, increment, decrement, read, and exchange values in a multi-threaded environment.  In addition to these, Interlocked CompareExchange() can be used to perform more complex logic without the need of a lock when lock contention is a concern. The added efficiency, though, comes at the cost of more complex code.  As such, the standard lock is often sufficient for most thread-safety needs.  But if profiling indicates you spend a lot of time waiting for locks, or if you just need a lock for something simple such as an increment, decrement, read, exchange, etc., then consider using the Interlocked class’s methods to reduce wait. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Interlocked,CompareExchange,threading,concurrency

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• Loosely coupled .NET Cache Provider using Dependency Injection

  - by Rhames

  I have recently been reading the excellent book “Dependency Injection in .NET”, written by Mark Seemann. I do not generally buy software development related books, as I never seem to have the time to read them, but I have found the time to read Mark’s book, and it was time well spent I think. Reading the ideas around Dependency Injection made me realise that the Cache Provider code I wrote about earlier (see http://geekswithblogs.net/Rhames/archive/2011/01/10/using-the-asp.net-cache-to-cache-data-in-a-model.aspx) could be refactored to use Dependency Injection, which should produce cleaner code. The goals are to: Separate the cache provider implementation (using the ASP.NET data cache) from the consumers (loose coupling). This will also mean that the dependency on System.Web for the cache provider does not ripple down into the layers where it is being consumed (such as the domain layer). Provide a decorator pattern to allow a consumer of the cache provider to be implemented separately from the base consumer (i.e. if we have a base repository, we can decorate this with a caching version). Although I used the term repository, in reality the cache consumer could be just about anything. Use constructor injection to provide the Dependency Injection, with a suitable DI container (I use Castle Windsor). The sample code for this post is available on github, https://github.com/RobinHames/CacheProvider.git ICacheProvider In the sample code, the key interface is ICacheProvider, which is in the domain layer. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain 5: { 6: public interface ICacheProvider<T> 7: { 8: T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); 9: IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); 10: } 11: }   This interface contains two methods to retrieve data from the cache, either as a single instance or as an IEnumerable. the second paramerter is of type Func<T>. This is the method used to retrieve data if nothing is found in the cache. The ASP.NET implementation of the ICacheProvider interface needs to live in a project that has a reference to system.web, typically this will be the root UI project, or it could be a separate project. The key thing is that the domain or data access layers do not need system.web references adding to them. In my sample MVC application, the CacheProvider is implemented in the UI project, in a folder called “CacheProviders”: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Caching; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 7:   8: namespace CacheDiSample.CacheProvider 9: { 10: public class CacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T> 11: { 12: public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 13: { 14: return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry); 15: } 16:   17: public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 18: { 19: return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry); 20: } 21:   22: #region Helper Methods 23:   24: private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) 25: { 26: U value; 27: if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value)) 28: { 29: value = retrieveData(); 30: if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue) 31: absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration; 32:   33: if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue) 34: relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration; 35:   36: HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value); 37: } 38: return value; 39: } 40:   41: private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value) 42: { 43: object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key); 44: if (cachedValue == null) 45: { 46: value = default(U); 47: return false; 48: } 49: else 50: { 51: try 52: { 53: value = (U)cachedValue; 54: return true; 55: } 56: catch 57: { 58: value = default(U); 59: return false; 60: } 61: } 62: } 63:   64: #endregion 65:   66: } 67: }   The FetchAndCache helper method checks if the specified cache key exists, if it does not, the Func<U> retrieveData method is called, and the results are added to the cache. Using Castle Windsor to register the cache provider In the MVC UI project (my application root), Castle Windsor is used to register the CacheProvider implementation, using a Windsor Installer: 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 6: using CacheDiSample.CacheProvider; 7:   8: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 9: { 10: public class CacheInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 11: { 12: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 13: { 14: container.Register( 15: Component.For(typeof(ICacheProvider<>)) 16: .ImplementedBy(typeof(CacheProvider<>)) 17: .LifestyleTransient()); 18: } 19: } 20: }   Note that the cache provider is registered as a open generic type. Consuming a Repository I have an existing couple of repository interfaces defined in my domain layer: IRepository.cs 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3:   4: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 5:   6: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories 7: { 8: public interface IRepository<T> 9: where T : EntityBase 10: { 11: T GetById(int id); 12: IList<T> GetAll(); 13: } 14: }   IBlogRepository.cs 1: using System; 2: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 3:   4: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories 5: { 6: public interface IBlogRepository : IRepository<Blog> 7: { 8: Blog GetByName(string name); 9: } 10: }   These two repositories are implemented in the DataAccess layer, using Entity Framework to retrieve data (this is not important though). One important point is that in the BaseRepository implementation of IRepository, the methods are virtual. This will allow the decorator to override them. The BlogRepository is registered in a RepositoriesInstaller, again in the MVC UI project. 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 7: using CacheDiSample.DataAccess; 8:   9: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 10: { 11: public class RepositoriesInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 12: { 13: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 14: { 15: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 16: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepository>() 17: .LifestyleTransient() 18: .DependsOn(new 19: { 20: nameOrConnectionString = "BloggingContext" 21: })); 22: } 23: } 24: }   Now I can inject a dependency on the IBlogRepository into a consumer, such as a controller in my sample code: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6:   7: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 8: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 9:   10: namespace CacheDiSample.Controllers 11: { 12: public class HomeController : Controller 13: { 14: private readonly IBlogRepository blogRepository; 15:   16: public HomeController(IBlogRepository blogRepository) 17: { 18: if (blogRepository == null) 19: throw new ArgumentNullException("blogRepository"); 20:   21: this.blogRepository = blogRepository; 22: } 23:   24: public ActionResult Index() 25: { 26: ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!"; 27:   28: var blogs = blogRepository.GetAll(); 29:   30: return View(new Models.HomeModel { Blogs = blogs }); 31: } 32:   33: public ActionResult About() 34: { 35: return View(); 36: } 37: } 38: }   Consuming the Cache Provider via a Decorator I used a Decorator pattern to consume the cache provider, this means my repositories follow the open/closed principle, as they do not require any modifications to implement the caching. It also means that my controllers do not have any knowledge of the caching taking place, as the DI container will simply inject the decorator instead of the root implementation of the repository. The first step is to implement a BlogRepository decorator, with the caching logic in it. Note that this can reside in the domain layer, as it does not require any knowledge of the data access methods. BlogRepositoryWithCaching.cs 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5:   6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Model; 7: using CacheDiSample.Domain; 8: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 9:   10: namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators 11: { 12: public class BlogRepositoryWithCaching : IBlogRepository 13: { 14: // The generic cache provider, injected by DI 15: private ICacheProvider<Blog> cacheProvider; 16: // The decorated blog repository, injected by DI 17: private IBlogRepository parentBlogRepository; 18:   19: public BlogRepositoryWithCaching(IBlogRepository parentBlogRepository, ICacheProvider<Blog> cacheProvider) 20: { 21: if (parentBlogRepository == null) 22: throw new ArgumentNullException("parentBlogRepository"); 23:   24: this.parentBlogRepository = parentBlogRepository; 25:   26: if (cacheProvider == null) 27: throw new ArgumentNullException("cacheProvider"); 28:   29: this.cacheProvider = cacheProvider; 30: } 31:   32: public Blog GetByName(string name) 33: { 34: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetByName.{0}", name); 35: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 36: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 37: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 38: { 39: return parentBlogRepository.GetByName(name); 40: }, 41: null, relativeCacheExpiry); 42: } 43:   44: public Blog GetById(int id) 45: { 46: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetById.{0}", id); 47:   48: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 49: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 50: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 51: { 52: return parentBlogRepository.GetById(id); 53: }, 54: null, relativeCacheExpiry); 55: } 56:   57: public IList<Blog> GetAll() 58: { 59: string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetAll"); 60:   61: // hard code 5 minute expiry! 62: TimeSpan relativeCacheExpiry = new TimeSpan(0, 5, 0); 63: return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => 64: { 65: return parentBlogRepository.GetAll(); 66: }, 67: null, relativeCacheExpiry) 68: .ToList(); 69: } 70: } 71: }   The key things in this caching repository are: I inject into the repository the ICacheProvider<Blog> implementation, via the constructor. This will make the cache provider functionality available to the repository. I inject the parent IBlogRepository implementation (which has the actual data access code), via the constructor. This will allow the methods implemented in the parent to be called if nothing is found in the cache. I override each of the methods implemented in the repository, including those implemented in the generic BaseRepository. Each override of these methods follows the same pattern. It makes a call to the CacheProvider.Fetch method, and passes in the parentBlogRepository implementation of the method as the retrieval method, to be used if nothing is present in the cache. Configuring the Caching Repository in the DI Container The final piece of the jigsaw is to tell Castle Windsor to use the BlogRepositoryWithCaching implementation of IBlogRepository, but to inject the actual Data Access implementation into this decorator. This is easily achieved by modifying the RepositoriesInstaller to use Windsor’s implicit decorator wiring: 1: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; 2: using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; 3: using Castle.Windsor; 4:   5: using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheDecorators; 6: using CacheDiSample.Domain.Repositories; 7: using CacheDiSample.DataAccess; 8:   9: namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers 10: { 11: public class RepositoriesInstaller : IWindsorInstaller 12: { 13: public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) 14: { 15:   16: // Use Castle Windsor implicit wiring for the block repository decorator 17: // Register the outermost decorator first 18: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 19: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepositoryWithCaching>() 20: .LifestyleTransient()); 21: // Next register the IBlogRepository inmplementation to inject into the outer decorator 22: container.Register(Component.For<IBlogRepository>() 23: .ImplementedBy<BlogRepository>() 24: .LifestyleTransient() 25: .DependsOn(new 26: { 27: nameOrConnectionString = "BloggingContext" 28: })); 29: } 30: } 31: }   This is all that is needed. Now if the consumer of the repository makes a call to the repositories method, it will be routed via the caching mechanism. You can test this by stepping through the code, and seeing that the DataAccess.BlogRepository code is only called if there is no data in the cache, or this has expired. The next step is to add the SQL Cache Dependency support into this pattern, this will be a future post.

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• There is No Scrum without Agile

  - by John K. Hines

  It's been interesting for me to dive a little deeper into Scrum after realizing how fragile its adoption can be.  I've been particularly impressed with James Shore's essay "Kaizen and Kaikaku" and the Net Objectives post "There are Better Alternatives to Scrum" by Alan Shalloway.  The bottom line: You can't execute Scrum well without being Agile. Personally, I'm the rare developer who has an interest in project management.  I think the methodology to deliver software is interesting, and that there are many roles whose job exists to make software development easier.  As a project lead I've seen Scrum deliver for disciplined, highly motivated teams with solid engineering practices.  It definitely made my job an order of magnitude easier.  As a developer I've experienced huge rewards from having a well-defined pipeline of tasks that were consistently delivered with high quality in short iterations.  In both of these cases Scrum was an addition to a fundamentally solid process and a huge benefit to the team. The question I'm now facing is how Scrum fits into organizations withot solid engineering practices.  The trend that concerns me is one of Scrum being mandated as the single development process across teams where it may not apply.  And we have to realize that Scurm itself isn't even a development process.  This is what worries me the most - the assumption that Scrum on its own increases developer efficiency when it is essentially an exercise in project management. Jim's essay quotes Tobias Mayer writing, "Scrum is a framework for surfacing organizational dysfunction."  I'm unsure whether a Vice President of Software Development wants to hear that, reality nonwithstanding.  Our Scrum adoption has surfaced a great deal of dysfunction, but I feel the original assumption was that we would experience increased efficiency.  It's starting to feel like a blended approach - Agile/XP techniques for developers, Scrum for project managers - may be a better fit.  Or at least, a better way of framing the conversation. The blended approach. Technorati tags: Agile Scrum

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• Creating Parent-Child Relationships in SSRS

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I have been working on SQL Server Reporting Services reports the last couple of weeks I ran into a scenario where I needed to present a parent-child data layout.  It is rare that I have seen a report that was a simple tabular or matrix format and this report continued that trend.  I found that the processes for developing complex SSRS reports aren’t as commonly described as I would have thought.  Below I will layout the process that I went through to create a solution. I started with a List control which will contain the layout of the master (parent) information.  This allows for a main repeating report part.  The dataset for this report should include the data elements needed to be passed to the subreport as parameters.  As you can see the layout is simply text boxes that are bound to the dataset. The next step is to set a row group on the List row.  When the dialog appears select the field that you wish to group your report by.  A good example in this case would be the employee name or ID. Create a second report which becomes the subreport.  The example below has a matrix control.  Create the report as you would any parameter driven document by parameterizing the dataset. Add the subreport to the main report inside the row of the List control.  This can be accomplished by either dragging the report from the solution explorer or inserting a Subreport control and then setting the report name property. The last step is to set the parameters on the subreport.  In this case the subreport has EmpId and ReportYear as parameters.  While some of the documentation on this states that the dialog will automatically detect the child parameters, but this has not been my experience.  You must make sure that the names match exactly.  Tie the name of the parameter to either a field in the dataset or a parameter of the parent report. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server Reporting Services,SSRS,SQL Server,Subreports

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• How to build Visual Studio Setup projects (.vdproj) with TFS 2010 Build ?

  - by Vishal

  Out of the box, Team Foundation Server 2010 Build does not support building of setup projects (.vdproj). Although, you can modify DefaultTemplate.xaml or create your own in order to achieve this. I had to try bunch of different blog post's and finally got it working with a mixture of all those posts.   Since you don’t have to go through this pain again, I have uploaded the Template which you can use right away : https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=65B2671F6B93CDE9!310 Download and CheckIn this template into your source control. Modify your Build Definition to use this template. Unless you have CheckedIn the template, it wont show up in the template selection section in the process task of build definition. In your Visual Studio Solution Configuration Manager, make sure you specify to build the setup project also. You might get this warning in your build result: “The project file “*.vdproj” is not support by MSBuild and cannot be build. Hope it helps. Thanks, Vishal Mody Reference blog posts I had used: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2010/05/14/building-visual-studio-setup-projects-with-tfs-2010-team-build.aspx http://donovanbrown.com/post/I-need-to-build-a-project-that-is-not-supported-by-MSBuild.aspx http://lajak.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/build-biztalk-deployment-framework-projects-using-tfs2010/

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• Of transactions and Mongo

  - by Nuri Halperin

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/nuri/archive/2014/05/20/of-transactions-and-mongo-again.aspxWhat's the first thing you hear about NoSQL databases? That they lose your data? That there's no transactions? No joins? No hope for "real" applications? Well, you *should* be wondering whether a certain of database is the right one for your job. But if you do so, you should be wondering that about "traditional" databases as well! In the spirit of exploration let's take a look at a common challenge: You are a bank. You have customers with accounts. Customer A wants to pay B. You want to allow that only if A can cover the amount being transferred. Let's looks at the problem without any context of any database engine in mind. What would you do? How would you ensure that the amount transfer is done "properly"? Would you prevent a "transaction" from taking place unless A can cover the amount? There are several options: Prevent any change to A's account while the transfer is taking place. That boils down to locking. Apply the change, and allow A's balance to go below zero. Charge person A some interest on the negative balance. Not friendly, but certainly a choice. Don't do either. Options 1 and 2 are difficult to attain in the NoSQL world. Mongo won't save you headaches here either. Option 3 looks a bit harsh. But here's where this can go: ledger. See, and account doesn't need to be represented by a single row in a table of all accounts with only the current balance on it. More often than not, accounting systems use ledgers. And entries in ledgers - as it turns out – don't actually get updated. Once a ledger entry is written, it is not removed or altered. A transaction is represented by an entry in the ledger stating and amount withdrawn from A's account and an entry in the ledger stating an addition of said amount to B's account. For sake of space-saving, that entry in the ledger can happen using one entry. Think {Timestamp, FromAccountId, ToAccountId, Amount}. The implication of the original question – "how do you enforce non-negative balance rule" then boils down to: Insert entry in ledger Run validation of recent entries Insert reverse entry to roll back transaction if validation failed. What is validation? Sum up the transactions that A's account has (all deposits and debits), and ensure the balance is positive. For sake of efficiency, one can roll up transactions and "close the book" on transactions with a pseudo entry stating balance as of midnight or something. This lets you avoid doing math on the fly on too many transactions. You simply run from the latest "approved balance" marker to date. But that's an optimization, and premature optimizations are the root of (some? most?) evil.. Back to some nagging questions though: "But mongo is only eventually consistent!" Well, yes, kind of. It's not actually true that Mongo has not transactions. It would be more descriptive to say that Mongo's transaction scope is a single document in a single collection. A write to a Mongo document happens completely or not at all. So although it is true that you can't update more than one documents "at the same time" under a "transaction" umbrella as an atomic update, it is NOT true that there' is no isolation. So a competition between two concurrent updates is completely coherent and the writes will be serialized. They will not scribble on the same document at the same time. In our case - in choosing a ledger approach - we're not even trying to "update" a document, we're simply adding a document to a collection. So there goes the "no transaction" issue. Now let's turn our attention to consistency. What you should know about mongo is that at any given moment, only on member of a replica set is writable. This means that the writable instance in a set of replicated instances always has "the truth". There could be a replication lag such that a reader going to one of the replicas still sees "old" state of a collection or document. But in our ledger case, things fall nicely into place: Run your validation against the writable instance. It is guaranteed to have a ledger either with (after) or without (before) the ledger entry got written. No funky states. Again, the ledger writing *adds* a document, so there's no inconsistent document state to be had either way. Next, we might worry about data loss. Here, mongo offers several write-concerns. Write-concern in Mongo is a mode that marshals how uptight you want the db engine to be about actually persisting a document write to disk before it reports to the application that it is "done". The most volatile, is to say you don't care. In that case, mongo would just accept your write command and say back "thanks" with no guarantee of persistence. If the server loses power at the wrong moment, it may have said "ok" but actually no written the data to disk. That's kind of bad. Don't do that with data you care about. It may be good for votes on a pole regarding how cute a furry animal is, but not so good for business. There are several other write-concerns varying from flushing the write to the disk of the writable instance, flushing to disk on several members of the replica set, a majority of the replica set or all of the members of a replica set. The former choice is the quickest, as no network coordination is required besides the main writable instance. The others impose extra network and time cost. Depending on your tolerance for latency and read-lag, you will face a choice of what works for you. It's really important to understand that no data loss occurs once a document is flushed to an instance. The record is on disk at that point. From that point on, backup strategies and disaster recovery are your worry, not loss of power to the writable machine. This scenario is not different from a relational database at that point. Where does this leave us? Oh, yes. Eventual consistency. By now, we ensured that the "source of truth" instance has the correct data, persisted and coherent. But because of lag, the app may have gone to the writable instance, performed the update and then gone to a replica and looked at the ledger there before the transaction replicated. Here are 2 options to deal with this. Similar to write concerns, mongo support read preferences. An app may choose to read only from the writable instance. This is not an awesome choice to make for every ready, because it just burdens the one instance, and doesn't make use of the other read-only servers. But this choice can be made on a query by query basis. So for the app that our person A is using, we can have person A issue the transfer command to B, and then if that same app is going to immediately as "are we there yet?" we'll query that same writable instance. But B and anyone else in the world can just chill and read from the read-only instance. They have no basis to expect that the ledger has just been written to. So as far as they know, the transaction hasn't happened until they see it appear later. We can further relax the demand by creating application UI that reacts to a write command with "thank you, we will post it shortly" instead of "thank you, we just did everything and here's the new balance". This is a very powerful thing. UI design for highly scalable systems can't insist that the all databases be locked just to paint an "all done" on screen. People understand. They were trained by many online businesses already that your placing of an order does not mean that your product is already outside your door waiting (yes, I know, large retailers are working on it... but were' not there yet). The second thing we can do, is add some artificial delay to a transaction's visibility on the ledger. The way that works is simply adding some logic such that the query against the ledger never nets a transaction for customers newer than say 15 minutes and who's validation flag is not set. This buys us time 2 ways: Replication can catch up to all instances by then, and validation rules can run and determine if this transaction should be "negated" with a compensating transaction. In case we do need to "roll back" the transaction, the backend system can place the timestamp of the compensating transaction at the exact same time or 1ms after the original one. Effectively, once A or B visits their ledger, both transactions would be visible and the overall balance "as of now" would reflect no change.  The 2 transactions (attempted/ reverted) would be visible , since we do actually account for the attempt. Hold on a second. There's a hole in the story: what if several transfers from A to some accounts are registered, and 2 independent validators attempt to compute the balance concurrently? Is there a chance that both would conclude non-sufficient-funds even though rolling back transaction 100 would free up enough for transaction 117 (some random later transaction)? Yes. there is that chance. But the integrity of the business rule is not compromised, since the prime rule is don't dispense money you don't have. To minimize or eliminate this scenario, we can also assign a single validation process per origin account. This may seem non-scalable, but it can easily be done as a "sharded" distribution. Say we have 11 validation threads (or processing nodes etc.). We divide the account number space such that each validator is exclusively responsible for a certain range of account numbers. Sounds cunningly similar to Mongo's sharding strategy, doesn't it? Each validator then works in isolation. More capacity needed? Chop the account space into more chunks. So where  are we now with the nagging questions? "No joins": Huh? What are those for? "No transactions": You mean no cross-collection and no cross-document transactions? Granted - but don't always need them either. "No hope for real applications": well... There are more issues and edge cases to slog through, I'm sure. But hopefully this gives you some ideas of how to solve common problems without distributed locking and relational databases. But then again, you can choose relational databases if they suit your problem.

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• Do you have a contract between the Product Owner and the Team?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Working in Scrum it is useful to define a Sprint Contract between the Product Owner (PO) and the implementation Team. Doing this helps to improve common understanding in, and sometimes to enforce, the relationship between the PO and the Team. This is simply an agreement between the PO for one Sprint and is not really a commercial contract and should be confirmed via an e-mail at the beginning of every Sprint. “The implementation team agrees to do its best to deliver an agreed on set of features (scope) to a defined quality standard by the end of the sprint. (Ideally they deliver what they promised, or even a bit more.) The Product Owner agrees not to change his instructions before the end of the Sprint.” - Agile Project management (http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/peterstev/10-agile-contracts#Sprint) Each of the Sprints in a Scrum project can be considered a mini-project that has Time (Sprint Length), Scope (Sprint Backlog), Quality (Definition of Done) and Cost (Team Size*Sprint Length). Only the scope can vary and this is measured every sprint. Figure: Good Example, the product owner should reply to the team and commit to the contract This Rule has been added to SSW’s Rules to better Scrum with TFS   Technorati Tags: SSW,Scrum,SSW Rules

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• Google Maps in .NET Problem

  - by H(at)Ni

  Hello, I've been struggling with Google maps till I found that someone implemented a wrapper so that you can use Google Map as an ASP.Net user control which is a great effort indeed. You can download it from this link. However, after using it for a while, I've found out that it is storing the Google map object only once in the session and getting it from there whenever needed which was a problem for me that when you update the map in some page, you'll find it updated on another page. So, I've digged deep in the code and updated it so that it stores the map object with a unique identifier that you set it as a property in the user control object like that: this.googleMapCtrl.ControlID = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); You can download the updated control files from here. Cheers,

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• Another good free utility - Campwood Software Source Monitor

  - by TATWORTH

  The Campwoood Source Monitor at http://www.campwoodsw.com/sourcemonitor.html  says in its introduction "The freeware program SourceMonitor lets you see inside your software source code to find out how much code you have and to identify the relative complexity of your modules. For example, you can use SourceMonitor to identify the code that is most likely to contain defects and thus warrants formal review. SourceMonitor, written in C++, runs through your code at high speed, typically at least 10,000 lines of code per second." It is indeed very high-speed and is useful as it: Collects metrics in a fast, single pass through source files. Measures metrics for source code written in C++, C, C#, VB.NET, Java, Delphi, Visual Basic (VB6) or HTML. Includes method and function level metrics for C++, C, C#, VB.NET, Java, and Delphi. Offers Modified Complexity metric option. Saves metrics in checkpoints for comparison during software development projects. Displays and prints metrics in tables and charts, including Kiviat diagrams. Operates within a standard Windows GUI or inside your scripts using XML command files. Exports metrics to XML or CSV (comma-separated-value) files for further processing with other tools.

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• Visual studio Real Dark mode (2010,2012,2013)

  - by Anirudha

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/11/02/visual-studio-real-dark-mode-201020122013.aspxWhen Visual studio 2010 released back in 3 year ago I soon show a demo to some people that how Dark mode of Visual studio will be great idea. Soon we got some theme plugin  which make us able to modify the look of visual studio.   http://studiostyl.es/ already provide lots of wonderful color scheme that make you able to modify the theme. These themes are also work in webmatrix 2.  Webmatrix 2 have a plugin for themes that is made by Yishai Galatzer that is awesome for webmatrix 2.   In Visual studio 2012 we got a native dark mode. This means we can configure it without any plugin or requirement of anything. In this post I have a demo to show you how to use Dark mode that is part of Windows 7 (and windows 8 too).   Few months ago I show a problem that webmatrix 2 run slow. it’s run better in windows 7 dark mode. Windows 7 dark mode simply refer to right click > personalize > High contrast theme in bottom of windows. This setting make thing a little bit faster.   When you have set this you have seen that Visual studio doesn’t react good anymore because it’s color scheme is broken now. What you need now is import any theme from http://studiostyl.es/ When you import this this will look good as this.   This is the demo look of Windows 7 phone Express 2010. It will react same for future version as 2012, 2013. Now see your VS react look dark. Everything is dark now. Your Firefox and IE will not run totally in blackish mode but you can use chrome. Chrome have less effect of dark. Now if you benchmark it then you will feel that everything that take a long time in loading now run fast.   Note :- This is experiments. Remember to have settings backup before apply new theme. All thing I do is make my VS run faster. If you have any trouble or idea please comment it.   Thanks for read my post

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• Null Values And The T-SQL IN Operator

  - by Jesse

  I came across some unexpected behavior while troubleshooting a failing test the other day that took me long enough to figure out that I thought it was worth sharing here. I finally traced the failing test back to a SELECT statement in a stored procedure that was using the IN t-sql operator to exclude a certain set of values. Here’s a very simple example table to illustrate the issue: Customers CustomerId INT, NOT NULL, Primary Key CustomerName nvarchar(100) NOT NULL SalesRegionId INT NULL   The ‘SalesRegionId’ column contains a number representing the sales region that the customer belongs to. This column is nullable because new customers get created all the time but assigning them to sales regions is a process that is handled by a regional manager on a periodic basis. For the purposes of this example, the Customers table currently has the following rows: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 2 Customer B NULL 3 Customer C 4 4 Customer D 2 5 Customer E 3   How could we write a query against this table for all customers that are NOT in sales regions 2 or 4? You might try something like this: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4)   Will this work? In short, no; at least not in the way that you might expect. Here’s what this query will return given the example data we’re working with: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 5 Customer E 5   I was expecting that this query would also return ‘Customer B’, since that customer has a NULL SalesRegionId. In my mind, having a customer with no sales region should be included in a set of customers that are not in sales regions 2 or 4.When I first started troubleshooting my issue I made note of the fact that this query should probably be re-written without the NOT IN clause, but I didn’t suspect that the NOT IN clause was actually the source of the issue. This particular query was only one minor piece in a much larger process that was being exercised via an automated integration test and I simply made a poor assumption that the NOT IN would work the way that I thought it should. So why doesn’t this work the way that I thought it should? From the MSDN documentation on the t-sql IN operator: If the value of test_expression is equal to any value returned by subquery or is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list, the result value is TRUE; otherwise, the result value is FALSE. Using NOT IN negates the subquery value or expression. The key phrase out of that quote is, “… is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list…”. The NULL SalesRegionId isn’t included in the NOT IN because of how NULL values are handled in equality comparisons. From the MSDN documentation on ANSI_NULLS: The SQL-92 standard requires that an equals (=) or not equal to (<>) comparison against a null value evaluates to FALSE. When SET ANSI_NULLS is ON, a SELECT statement using WHERE column_name = NULL returns zero rows even if there are null values in column_name. A SELECT statement using WHERE column_name <> NULL returns zero rows even if there are nonnull values in column_name. In fact, the MSDN documentation on the IN operator includes the following blurb about using NULL values in IN sub-queries or expressions that are used with the IN operator: Any null values returned by subquery or expression that are compared to test_expression using IN or NOT IN return UNKNOWN. Using null values in together with IN or NOT IN can produce unexpected results. If I were to include a ‘SET ANSI_NULLS OFF’ command right above my SELECT statement I would get ‘Customer B’ returned in the results, but that’s definitely not the right way to deal with this. We could re-write the query to explicitly include the NULL value in the WHERE clause: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE (SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4) OR SalesRegionId IS NULL)   This query works and properly includes ‘Customer B’ in the results, but I ultimately opted to re-write the query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN against a table variable containing all of the values that I wanted to exclude because, in my case, there could potentially be several hundred values to be excluded. If we were to apply the same refactoring to our simple sales region example we’d end up with: 1: DECLARE @regionsToIgnore TABLE (IgnoredRegionId INT) 2: INSERT @regionsToIgnore values (2),(4) 3:  4: SELECT 5: c.CustomerId, 6: c.CustomerName, 7: c.SalesRegionId 8: FROM Customers c 9: LEFT OUTER JOIN @regionsToIgnore r ON r.IgnoredRegionId = c.SalesRegionId 10: WHERE r.IgnoredRegionId IS NULL By performing a LEFT OUTER JOIN from Customers to the @regionsToIgnore table variable we can simply exclude any rows where the IgnoredRegionId is null, as those represent customers that DO NOT appear in the ignored regions list. This approach will likely perform better if the number of sales regions to ignore gets very large and it also will correctly include any customers that do not yet have a sales region.

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• October 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  It seemed very ironic that the day we have a presentation on the architecture of building applications for Windows 8 the Surface tablet is opened for pre-order.  Tom Benton started the evening enlightening the attendees on the user experience for those who had not seen it yet.  He even passed around his table from last year’s Build conference for everyone to play with.  This was followed with a tour of the capabilities and structures that make up a Windows Store App on Windows 8.  Taking it to its conclusion, he rounded out the discussion by covering the certification and deployment process. As usual it was great to see a lot of familiar faces last night.  We are always looking for more people to join in our discussions.  Stay tuned here for announcements up upcoming meetings and topics.  Also, if you have a topic you would like to present or see presented feel free to contact me through this blog. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Winodws 8,Windows Store,Tom Benton

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• Adding PostSharp to new projects, when it's installed for some projects in solution.

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  Recently I've posted my experience with installation of PostSharp Once PostSharp  is installed in  solution's packages folder for some project(s), I often need to add PostSharp to another project in the same solutionSection "Adding PostSharp to your project using PostSharp HQ" of documentation described the process quite well.I only want to add that the  actual location of  PostSharp HQ ( if it was installed from NuGet) is[solution root ]packages\PostSharp.2.1.7.15\tools\Release\PostSharp.HQ.exe.Also you need to ensure that the project is checked out,i.e. not readOnly.

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