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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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• Finally found a replacement for my.live.com&hellip;

  - by eddraper

  As I had alluded to before, the transition of http://my.live.com/ to http://my.msn.com/ caused me serious grief. I've been an RSS addict for many, many years and I found the my.live.com UI to be the ultimate RSS reader and gateway to the web. It had been my home page for a long time.  My.msn has a LONG way to go before it matches the elegance and performance of my.live. The site I ended up going with is http://www.netvibes.com/ .   It’s the closest thing I could find that could do four column tiles with a reasonable amount of information density .  I’d still prefer a lot less “chrome” and better use of space, but it’s as close as I’m going to get… One feature I really do like about netvibes, is the pagination feature.  The built in feed reader is also quite nice… All-in-all, I’d recommend netvibes…

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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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• Computer Arithmetic - Binary for Decimal Numbers

  - by MarkPearl

  This may be of use to someone else doing this course… The Problem In the section on Computer Arithmetic it gives an example of converting -7.6875 to IEEE floating point format. I understand all the steps except for the first one, where it does the following... 7.6875 (base 10) = 111.1011 (base 2) I don't understand the conversion - I realize that 111 (base 2) = 7 (base 10), but how does the .6875 part relate to the .1011? Or am I totally off track with this? The Solution The fractional part of the decimal to binary conversion is done as follows: 0.6875 x 2 = 1.375 = 0.375 + 1 (Keep the 1 separate) 0.375 x 2   = 0.75   = 0.75    + 0 0.75 x 2    = 1.5      = 0.5      + 1 0.5 x 2     = 1.0       = 0.0       + 1 The bit pattern of 0s and 1s on the right-hand side gives you the fractional part. So 0.6875 (base 10) = .1011 (Base 2) See also Stallings, chapter 19.

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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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• 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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• Migrating Core Data to new UIManagedDocument in iOS 5

  - by samerpaul

  I have an app that has been on the store since iOS 3.1, so there is a large install base out there that still uses Core Data loaded up in my AppDelegate. In the most recent set of updates, I raised the minimum version to 4.3 but still kept the same way of loading the data. Recently, I decided it's time to make the minimum version 5.1 (especially with 6 around the corner), so I wanted to start using the new fancy UIManagedDocument way of using Core Data. The issue with this though is that the old database file is still sitting in the iOS app, so there is no migrating to the new document. You have to basically subclass UIManagedDocument with a new model class, and override a couple of methods to do it for you. Here's a tutorial on what I did for my app TimeTag.  Step One: Add a new class file in Xcode and subclass "UIManagedDocument" Go ahead and also add a method to get the managedObjectModel out of this class. It should look like:   @interface TimeTagModel : UIManagedDocument   - (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel;   @end   Step two: Writing the methods in the implementation file (.m) I first added a shortcut method for the applicationsDocumentDirectory, which returns the URL of the app directory.  - (NSURL *)applicationDocumentsDirectory {     return [[[NSFileManagerdefaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectoryinDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject]; }   The next step was to pull the managedObjectModel file itself (.momd file). In my project, it's called "minimalTime". - (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel {     NSString *path = [[NSBundlemainBundle] pathForResource:@"minimalTime"ofType:@"momd"];     NSURL *momURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];     NSManagedObjectModel *managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:momURL];          return managedObjectModel; }   After that, I need to check for a legacy installation and migrate it to the new UIManagedDocument file instead. This is the overridden method: - (BOOL)configurePersistentStoreCoordinatorForURL:(NSURL *)storeURL ofType:(NSString *)fileType modelConfiguration:(NSString *)configuration storeOptions:(NSDictionary *)storeOptions error:(NSError **)error {     // If legacy store exists, copy it to the new location     NSURL *legacyPersistentStoreURL = [[self applicationDocumentsDirectory] URLByAppendingPathComponent:@"minimalTime.sqlite"];          NSFileManager* fileManager = [NSFileManagerdefaultManager];     if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath:legacyPersistentStoreURL.path])     {         NSLog(@"Old db exists");         NSError* thisError = nil;         [fileManager replaceItemAtURL:storeURL withItemAtURL:legacyPersistentStoreURL backupItemName:niloptions:NSFileManagerItemReplacementUsingNewMetadataOnlyresultingItemURL:nilerror:&thisError];     }          return [superconfigurePersistentStoreCoordinatorForURL:storeURL ofType:fileType modelConfiguration:configuration storeOptions:storeOptions error:error]; }   Basically what's happening above is that it checks for the minimalTime.sqlite file inside the app's bundle on the iOS device.  If the file exists, it tells you inside the console, and then tells the fileManager to replace the storeURL (inside the method parameter) with the legacy URL. This basically gives your app access to all the existing data the user has generated (otherwise they would load into a blank app, which would be disastrous). It returns a YES if successful (by calling it's [super] method). Final step: Actually load this database Due to how my app works, I actually have to load the database at launch (instead of shortly after, which would be ideal). I call a method called loadDatabase, which looks like this: -(void)loadDatabase {     static dispatch_once_t onceToken;          // Only do this once!     dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{         // Get the URL         // The minimalTimeDB name is just something I call it         NSURL *url = [[selfapplicationDocumentsDirectory] URLByAppendingPathComponent:@"minimalTimeDB"];         // Init the TimeTagModel (our custom class we wrote above) with the URL         self.timeTagDB = [[TimeTagModel alloc] initWithFileURL:url];           // Setup the undo manager if it's nil         if (self.timeTagDB.undoManager == nil){             NSUndoManager *undoManager = [[NSUndoManager  alloc] init];             [self.timeTagDB setUndoManager:undoManager];         }                  // You have to actually check to see if it exists already (for some reason you can't just call "open it, and if it's not there, create it")         if ([[NSFileManagerdefaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:[url path]]) {             // If it does exist, try to open it, and if it doesn't open, let the user (or at least you) know!             [self.timeTagDB openWithCompletionHandler:^(BOOL success){                 if (!success) {                     // Handle the error.                     NSLog(@"Error opening up the database");                 }                 else{                     NSLog(@"Opened the file--it already existed");                     [self refreshData];                 }             }];         }         else {             // If it doesn't exist, you need to attempt to create it             [self.timeTagDBsaveToURL:url forSaveOperation:UIDocumentSaveForCreatingcompletionHandler:^(BOOL success){                 if (!success) {                     // Handle the error.                     NSLog(@"Error opening up the database");                 }                 else{                     NSLog(@"Created the file--it did not exist");                     [self refreshData];                 }             }];         }     }); }   If you're curious what refreshData looks like, it sends out a NSNotification that the database has been loaded: -(void)refreshData {     NSNotification* refreshNotification = [NSNotificationnotificationWithName:kNotificationCenterRefreshAllDatabaseData object:self.timeTagDB.managedObjectContext  userInfo:nil];     [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotification:refreshNotification];     }   The kNotificationCenterRefreshAllDatabaseData is just a constant I have defined elsewhere that keeps track of all the NSNotification names I use. I pass the managedObjectContext of the newly created file so that my view controllers can have access to it, and start passing it around to one another. The reason we do this as a Notification is because this is being run in the background, so we can't know exactly when it finishes. Make sure you design your app for this! Have some kind of loading indicator, or make sure your user can't attempt to create a record before the database actually exists, because it will crash the app.

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• .Net Micro

  - by MarkPearl

  A while back I purchased a RFID scanner that could be connected to a PC and programmed via VS. It was a fun purchase an though the import duties nailed me, I was glad to get the little gadget. Last night while listening to .Net Rocks I heard of another company that sells similar components for .Net Micro. Check out their websites…. TinyClr GHI Electronics .Net Micro Website Trossen Robotics

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• Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch makes it easy to take a closer look

  - by Jim Duffy

  Following up on my most recent post about LightSwitch I thought I’d keep you in the loop on a valuable LightSwitch resource. The Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch provides a jump start to get you and the department-level-typical-Access-application-developing-power-user rolling with LightSwitch in no time. The guide is broken down into 4 easy to follow parts. Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 1) – Working with New Data Entry Screen Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 2) – Working with Search Screen Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 3) – Working with Editable DataGrid Screen Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 4) – Working with List and Details Screen I mentioned it in my prior post but don’t forget to check out Beth Massi’s blog for additional information on Visual Studio LightSwitch. Have a day.

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• Access Control Management Tool ACM.exe

  - by kaleidoscope

  The Access Control Management Tool (Acm.exe) is a command-line tool you can use to perform management operations (CREATE, UPDATE, GET, GET ALL, and DELETE) on the AppFabric Access Control entities (scopes, issuers, token policies, and rules). Basic Syntax The command line for Acm.exe follows the basic pattern of verb-noun. For example: acm.exe <command> <resource> [-option:<option value>] This tool will automatically generate random keys, which helps ensure that they can't easily be guessed by an attacker. Note that ACM.EXE is a thin wrapper around a REST Web Service (the AC management service). That helps to remember the commands it accepts, which are the typical resource management commands for a REST service: · Get(All) · Create · Update · Delete ACM.EXE.config file can be used to configure Host, Service and the Management key for a Service Namespace. Geeta, G

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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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• 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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• 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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• 5 Lessons learnt in localization / multi language support in WPF

  - by MarkPearl

  For the last few months I have been secretly working away at the second version of an application that we initially released a few years ago. It’s called MaxCut and it is a free panel/cut optimizer for the woodwork, glass and metal industry. One of the motivations for writing MaxCut was to get an end to end experience in developing an application for general consumption. From the early days of v1 of MaxCut I would get the odd email thanking me for the software and then listing a few suggestions on how to improve it. Two of the most dominant suggestions that we received were… Support for imperial measurements (the original program only supported the metric system) Multi language support (we had someone who volunteered to translate the program into Japanese for us). I am not going to dive into the Imperial to Metric support in todays blog post, but I would like to cover a few brief lessons we learned in adding support for multi-language functionality in the software. I have sectioned them below under different lessons. Lesson 1 – Build multi-language support in from the start So the first lesson I learnt was if you know you are going to do multi language support – build it in from the very beginning! One of the power points of WPF/Silverlight is data binding in XAML and so while it wasn’t to painful to retro fit multi language support into the programing, it was still time consuming and a bit tedious to go through mounds and mounds of views and would have been a minor job to have implemented this while the form was being designed. Lesson 2 – Accommodate for varying word lengths using Grids The next lesson was a little harder to learn and was learnt a bit further down the road in the development cycle. We developed everything in English, assuming that other languages would have similar character length words for equivalent meanings… don’t!. A word that is short in your language may be of varying character lengths in other languages. Some language like Dutch and German allow for concatenation of nouns which has the potential to create really long words. We picked up a few places where our views had been structured incorrectly so that if a word was to long it would get clipped off or cut out. To get around this we began using the WPF grid extensively with column widths that would automatically expand if they needed to. Generally speaking the grid replacement got round this hurdle, and if in future you have a choice between a stack panel or a grid – think twice before going for the easier option… often the grid will be a bit more work to setup, but will be more flexible. Lesson 3 – Separate the separators Our initial run through moving the words to a resource dictionary led us to make what I thought was one potential mistake. If we had a label like the following… “length : “ In the resource dictionary we put it as a single entry. This is fine until you start using a word more than once. For instance in our scenario we used the word “length’ frequently. with different variations of the word with grammar and separators included in the resource we ended up having what I would consider a bloated dictionary. When we removed the separators from the words and put them as their own resources we saw a dramatic reduction in dictionary size… so something that looked like this… “length : “ “length. “ “length?” Was reduced to… “length” “:” “?” “.” While this may not seem like a reduction at first glance, consider that the separators “:?.” are used everywhere and suddenly you see a real reduction in bloat. Lesson 4 – Centralize the Language Dictionary This lesson was learnt at the very end of the project after we had already had a release candidate out in the wild. Because our translations would be done on a volunteer basis and remotely, we wanted it to be really simple for someone to translate our program into another language. As a common design practice we had tiered the application so that we had a business logic layer, a ui layer, etc. The problem was in several of these layers we had resource files specific for that layer. What this resulted in was us having multiple resource files that we would need to send to our translators. To add to our problems, some of the wordings were duplicated in different resource files, which would result in additional frustration from our translators as they felt they were duplicating work. Eventually the workaround was to make a separate project in VS2010 with just the language translations. We then exposed the dictionary as public within this project and made it as a reference to the other projects within the solution. This solved out problem as now we had a central dictionary and could remove any duplication's. Lesson 5 – Make a dummy translation file to test that you haven’t missed anything The final lesson learnt about multi language support in WPF was when checking if you had forgotten to translate anything in the inline code, make a test resource file with dummy data. Ideally you want the data for each word to be identical. In our instance we made one which had all the resource key values pointing to a value of test. This allowed us point the language file to our test resource file and very quickly browse through the program and see if we had missed any linking. The alternative to this approach is to have two language files and swap between the two while running the program to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, but the downside of dual language file approach is that it is much a lot harder spotting a mistake if everything is different – almost like playing Where’s Wally / Waldo. It is much easier spotting variance in uniformity – meaning when you put the “test’ keyword for everything, anything that didn’t say “test” stuck out like a sore thumb. So these are my top five lessons learnt on implementing multi language support in WPF. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section if you feel maybe something is more important than one of these or if I got it wrong!

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• Oh that XML - did you ever try to read a raw file?

  - by GGBlogger

  If you've ever looked at a raw XML file - even a very simple one - you'll understand. XML files are nearly impossible to read in raw format. That's where various tools come in and there are a bunch of them including some very simple tools. If, however, you need some horsepower one of the best tools on the planet is LiquidXML! LiquidXML is a developer's tool. It's also an analyst's tool, a tester's tool and a designer's tool. Did I mention that it is compatible with Visual Studio? Once again I will be following up on this as time permits. But if this sounds like something you can use just visit http://www.liquid-technologies.com/. You will find a very complete description plus high quality training videos that will help you decide if this is a tool you can use.

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• A Basic Thread

  - by Joe Mayo

  Most of the programs written are single-threaded, meaning that they run on the main execution thread. For various reasons such as performance, scalability, and/or responsiveness additional threads can be useful. .NET has extensive threading support, from the basic threads introduced in v1.0 to the Task Parallel Library (TPL) introduced in v4.0. To get started with threads, it's helpful to begin with the basics; starting a Thread. Why Do I Care? The scenario I'll use for needing to use a thread is writing to a file.  Sometimes, writing to a file takes a while and you don't want your user interface to lock up until the file write is done. In other words, you want the application to be responsive to the user. How Would I Go About It? The solution is to launch a new thread that performs the file write, allowing the main thread to return to the user right away.  Whenever the file writing thread completes, it will let the user know.  In the meantime, the user is free to interact with the program for other tasks. The following examples demonstrate how to do this. Show Me the Code? The code we'll use to work with threads is in the System.Threading namespace, so you'll need the following using directive at the top of the file: using System.Threading; When you run code on a thread, the code is specified via a method.  Here's the code that will execute on the thread: private static void WriteFile() { Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.WriteLine("File Written."); } The call to Thread.Sleep(1000) delays thread execution. The parameter is specified in milliseconds, and 1000 means that this will cause the program to sleep for approximately 1 second.  This method happens to be static, but that's just part of this example, which you'll see is launched from the static Main method.  A thread could be instance or static.  Notice that the method does not have parameters and does not have a return type. As you know, the way to refer to a method is via a delegate.  There is a delegate named ThreadStart in System.Threading that refers to a method without parameters or return type, shown below: ThreadStart fileWriterHandlerDelegate = new ThreadStart(WriteFile); I'll show you the whole program below, but the ThreadStart instance above goes in the Main method. The thread uses the ThreadStart instance, fileWriterHandlerDelegate, to specify the method to execute on the thread: Thread fileWriter = new Thread(fileWriterHandlerDelegate); As shown above, the argument type for the Thread constructor is the ThreadStart delegate type. The fileWriterHandlerDelegate argument is an instance of the ThreadStart delegate type. This creates an instance of a thread and what code will execute, but the new thread instance, fileWriter, isn't running yet. You have to explicitly start it, like this: fileWriter.Start(); Now, the code in the WriteFile method is executing on a separate thread. Meanwhile, the main thread that started the fileWriter thread continues on it's own.  You have two threads running at the same time. Okay, I'm Starting to Get Glassy Eyed. How Does it All Fit Together? The example below is the whole program, pulling all the previous bits together. It's followed by its output and an explanation. using System; using System.Threading; namespace BasicThread { class Program { static void Main() { ThreadStart fileWriterHandlerDelegate = new ThreadStart(WriteFile); Thread fileWriter = new Thread(fileWriterHandlerDelegate); Console.WriteLine("Starting FileWriter"); fileWriter.Start(); Console.WriteLine("Called FileWriter"); Console.ReadKey(); } private static void WriteFile() { Thread.Sleep(1000); Console.WriteLine("File Written"); } } } And here's the output: Starting FileWriter Called FileWriter File Written So, Why are the Printouts Backwards? The output above corresponds to Console.Writeline statements in the program, with the second and third seemingly reversed. In a single-threaded program, "File Written" would print before "Called FileWriter". However, this is a multi-threaded (2 or more threads) program.  In multi-threading, you can't make any assumptions about when a given thread will run.  In this case, I added the Sleep statement to the WriteFile method to greatly increase the chances that the message from the main thread will print first. Without the Thread.Sleep, you could run this on a system with multiple cores and/or multiple processors and potentially get different results each time. Interesting Tangent but What Should I Get Out of All This? Going back to the main point, launching the WriteFile method on a separate thread made the program more responsive.  The file writing logic ran for a while, but the main thread returned to the user, as demonstrated by the print out of "Called FileWriter".  When the file write finished, it let the user know via another print statement. This was a very efficient use of CPU resources that made for a more pleasant user experience. Joe

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• Windows Azure Event

  - by Blog Author

  Get cloud ready with Windows Azure The cloud is everywhere and here at Microsoft we’re flying high with our cloud computing release, Windows Azure. As most of you saw at the Professional Developers Conference, the reaction to Windows Azure has been nothing short of “wow” – and based on your feedback, we’ve organized this special, all-day Windows Azure Firestarter event to help you take full advantage of the cloud. Maybe you've already watched a webcast, attended a recent MSDN Event on the topic, or done your own digging on Azure. Well, here's your chance to go even deeper. This one-of-a-kind event will focus on helping developers get ‘cloud ready’ with concrete details and hands-on tactics. We’ll start by revealing Microsoft’s strategic vision for the cloud, and then offer an end-to-end view of the Windows Azure platform from a developer’s perspective. We’ll also talk about migrating your data and existing applications (regardless of platform) onto the cloud. We’ll finish up with an open panel and lots of time to ask questions. Following this event, please join us for an engaging conversation about any and all Cloud Computing topics. This FREE event is hosted by Northwest Cloud, the cloud agnostic community group, and sponsored by Microsoft. http://www.nwcloud.org/redmond/2010-04-06

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• Going on 15 months for me...

  - by Ratman21

  About 5 face to face interviews, 4 telephone ones and except for the two weeks Census Job. But, after 15 months looking for work, I am still with out a JOB. What is wrong here or with me? Let’s see, hard worker (check), self motivated to do well on a Job (Check), Certified CompTIA A+, Security+  and Network+ Technician (Check), 20 + years experience in “IT” (CHECK), in good health, in 20 years of work only 15 days off due to health issues (Check), 18 years experience as technical Help Desk support (Check), can still work better than younger personal (Check), Strong trouble shooting skills for software, computer hard ware and circuit issues (Check) and Multiple software languages (Hey I have done some programming) Check. Hmm I don’t see any problem with me (of course I could have missed something, please let me know if you see what I am missing).    Now as to what have I been up to since I last blogged. The same things of course, Job hunting, job hunting and study.   I have set up sim of my home LAN and will be adding a wireless print server to the sim and in real life, soon.  I was able to pull up and copy the examples of Cisco router commands that I had on my old lap top, to my newer PC. Every time I used a new command while working the NOC on my last job.   I would cut and past a copy of the command on the router (and what it did) I was working on.  Along with notes on the problem and commands use for same router. I used these to make documentation for on how to handle these types of issues, for the other Operation Techs. My old notes are helping me in studying for the CCENT test.    As to Love Dare, I think it will take more like 40 weeks, than the 40 days of the book. Yes I am making progress, slow but, it is progress. I will have more on that in my next blog.

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• JSCompress fails to compress my js file - why?

  - by Renso

  Issue: You use the online compression utility jscompress.com to compress your js file but it fails with an error. Why this may be happening and how to fix it. Possible causes: Apparently not using open and closing curly brackets in an IF statement would cause this. Well turns out this is not the case. Look at the following example and see if you can figure out what the issue is :-)   function SetupDeliveredVPRecontactNotes($item, id) {     var theData;     $.ajax({         data: { deliveredVPId: id },         url: $('#ajaxGetDeliveredVPRecontactNotesUrl').val(),         type: "GET",         async: false,         dataType: "html",         success: function(data, result) {             $item.empty();             var input = '<textarea class="recontactNote" rows="4" name="DeliveredVPRecontactNotes_' + id + '" id="DeliveredVPRecontactNotes_' + id + '" cols="115">' + data + '</textarea>';             $item.append(input);             theData = data;         },         error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {             $item.empty();             alert("An error occurred: The operation to retrieve the DeliveredVP's Recontact Notes has failed");         }     });                  //ajax     return theData; }     Solution: The name of the method/function is the same as the message in the ALERT message when the spaces are removed: " DeliveredVP Recontact Notes" becomes " DeliveredVPRecontactNotes" and mathes that of the function. So I changed it to " DeliveredVP's Recontact Notes"

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• Handy Javascript array Extensions &ndash; distinct()

  - by Liam McLennan

  The following code adds a method to javascript arrays that returns a distinct list of values. Array.prototype.distinct = function() { var derivedArray = []; for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i += 1) { if (!derivedArray.contains(this[i])) { derivedArray.push(this[i]) } } return derivedArray; }; and to demonstrate: alert([1,1,1,2,2,22,3,4,5,6,7,5,4].distinct().join(',')); This produces 1,2,22,3,4,5,6,7

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• Visual Tree Enumeration

  - by codingbloke

  I feel compelled to post this blog because I find I’m repeatedly posting this same code in silverlight and windows-phone-7 answers in Stackoverflow. One common task that we feel we need to do is burrow into the visual tree in a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application (actually more recently I found myself doing this in WPF as well).  This allows access to details that aren’t exposed directly by some controls.  A good example of this sort of requirement is found in the “Restoring exact scroll position of a listbox in Windows Phone 7”  question on stackoverflow.  This required that the scroll position of the scroll viewer internal to a listbox be accessed. A caveat One caveat here is that we should seriously challenge the need for this burrowing since it may indicate that there is a design problem.  Burrowing into the visual tree or indeed burrowing out to containing ancestors could represent significant coupling between module boundaries and that generally isn’t a good idea. Why isn’t this idea just not cast aside as a no-no?  Well the whole concept of a “Templated Control”, which are in extensive use in these applications, opens the coupling between the content of the visual tree and the internal code of a control.   For example, I can completely change the appearance and positioning of elements that make up a ComboBox.  The ComboBox control relies on specific template parts having set names of a specified type being present in my template.  Rightly or wrongly this does kind of give license to writing code that has similar coupling. Hasn’t this been done already? Yes it has.  There are number of blogs already out there with similar solutions.  In fact if you are using Silverlight toolkit the VisualTreeExtensions class already provides this feature.  However I prefer my specific code because of the simplicity principle I hold to.  Only write the minimum code necessary to give all the features needed.  In this case I add just two extension methods Ancestors and Descendents, note I don’t bother with “Get” or “Visual” prefixes.  Also I haven’t added Parent or Children methods nor additional “AndSelf” methods because all but Children is achievable with the addition of some other Linq methods.  I decided to give Descendents an additional overload for depth hence a depth of 1 is equivalent to Children but this overload is a little more flexible than simply Children. So here is the code:- VisualTreeEnumeration public static class VisualTreeEnumeration {     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root, int depth)     {         int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(root);         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)         {             var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(root, i);             yield return child;             if (depth > 0)             {                 foreach (var descendent in Descendents(child, --depth))                     yield return descendent;             }         }     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root)     {         return Descendents(root, Int32.MaxValue);     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Ancestors(this DependencyObject root)     {         DependencyObject current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(root);         while (current != null)         {             yield return current;             current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);         }     } }   Usage examples The following are some examples of how to combine the above extension methods with Linq to generate the other axis scenarios that tree traversal code might require. Missing Axis Scenarios var parent = control.Ancestors().Take(1).FirstOrDefault(); var children = control.Descendents(1); var previousSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).TakeWhile(c => c != control)); var followingSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).SkipWhile(c => c != control).Skip(1)); var ancestorsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Ancestors()); var descendentsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Descendents()); You might ask why I don’t just include these in the VisualTreeEnumerator.  I don’t on the principle of only including code that is actually needed.  If you find that one or more of the above  is needed in your code then go ahead and create additional methods.  One of the downsides to Extension methods is that they can make finding the method you actually want in intellisense harder. Here are some real world usage scenarios for these methods:- Real World Scenarios //Gets the internal scrollviewer of a ListBox ScrollViewer sv = someListBox.Descendents().OfType<ScrollViewer>().FirstOrDefault(); // Get all text boxes in current UserControl:- var textBoxes = this.Descendents().OfType<TextBox>(); // All UIElement direct children of the layout root grid:- var topLevelElements = LayoutRoot.Descendents(0).OfType<UIElement>(); // Find the containing `ListBoxItem` for a UIElement:- var container = elem.Ancestors().OfType<ListBoxItem>().FirstOrDefault(); // Seek a button with the name "PinkElephants" even if outside of the current Namescope:- var pinkElephantsButton = this.Descendents()     .OfType<Button>()     .FirstOrDefault(b => b.Name == "PinkElephants"); //Clear all checkboxes with the name "Selector" in a Treeview foreach (CheckBox checkBox in elem.Descendents()     .OfType<CheckBox>().Where(c => c.Name == "Selector")) {     checkBox.IsChecked = false; }   The last couple of examples above demonstrate a common requirement of finding controls that have a specific name.  FindName will often not find these controls because they exist in a different namescope. Hope you find this useful, if not I’m just glad to be able to link to this blog in future stackoverflow answers.

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• TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 moves and some issues

  - by Enrique Lima

  There have been many things going on this year around TFS.  Most of them had to do with migrations (I don’t call them upgrades for the most part since it involved new hardware and such).  Many were implementations using the Conchango SfTS template (now EMC). But there were others that were CMMI or Agile 4.0. Everything would move just fine, no issues.  That was until you attempted to run Test Case Management or run the last configuration steps for Lab Management. There is an error that states a project is not ready to run or integrate with Test or Lab Management.  And while there was some documentation on how to adjust and update the Agile WITs to work with it, there was still some disconnect to making it work with CMMI. Now there is a great post on how to run the “fix” from end to end. Check the post here:  TFS 2010: Enable Test Case Management for upgraded Team Projects

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• Team Foundation Service Preview now open for all!

  - by Tarun Arora

  The concept of TFS in the cloud was first presented back in early 2010, the product team worked hard to preview a constantly evolving solution at the BUILD conference last year and after having completed 31 Sprints today the preview service has been opened for all. No more invitation codes required, TfsPreview has been made public! “Since we announced the Team Foundation Service Preview at the BUILD conference last year, we’ve limited the on boarding of new customers by requiring invitation codes to create accounts.  The main reason for this has been to control the growth of the service to make sure it didn’t run away from us and end up with a bad user experience.  In this time period, we’ve continued to work on our infrastructure, performance, scale, monitoring, management and, of course, some cool new features like cloud build. ”   - Brian Harry Since the service is still in preview, it is free for all… If you haven’t, now is the best time to try out the offering. There is no fixed time line on how long before service becomes chargeable but the terms of service support production use, the service is reliable and the product team committed to carry all of your data forward into production. “The service will remain in “preview” for a while longer while we work through additional features like data portability, commercial terms, etc but the terms of service support production use, the service is reliable and we expect to carry all of your data forward into production. ”  - Brian Harry As of today it’s possible to use TFS Preview with VS 2012 RC, VS 2010 SP1, VS 2008 SP1, the service currently does not work with VS 2005, this is something the product team is actively working on. You can refer to Brian’s announcement blog post here, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/06/11/team-foundation-service-preview-is-public.aspx

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• Book Review&ndash;Getting Started With OAuth 2.0

  - by Lori Lalonde

  Getting Started With OAuth 2.0, by Ryan Boyd, provides an introduction to the latest version of the OAuth protocol. The author starts off by exploring the origins of OAuth, along with its importance, and why developers should care about it. The bulk of this book involves a discussion of the various authorization flows that developers will need to consider when developing applications that will incorporate OAuth to manage user access and authorization. The author explains in detail which flow is appropriate to use based on the application being developed, as well as how to implement each type with step-by-step examples. Note that the examples in the book are focused on the Google and Facebook APIs. Personally, I would have liked to see some examples with the Twitter API as well. In addition to that, the author also discusses security considerations, error handling (what is returned if the access request fails), and access tokens (when are access tokens refreshed, and how access can be revoked). This book provides a good starting point for those developers looking to understand what OAuth is and how they can leverage it within their own applications. The book wraps up with a list of tools and libraries that are available to further assist the developer in exploring the APIs supporting the OAuth specification. I highly recommend this book as a must-read for developers at all levels that have not yet been exposed to OAuth. The eBook format of this book was provided free through O'Reilly's Blogger Review program. This book can be purchased from the O'Reilly book store at: : http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021810.do

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• Self Welcoming Post on geekswithblogs.net

  - by OscarRibbeck

  Hello!.As you may notice :), this is my first post on geekswithblogs.com . I  have been using the .Net Framework mainly to develop ASP.NET WebApps for some years now and I am moving from using the .Net Framework 2.0 to using the latest features on the 4.x Frameworks, I am planning to document whenever is possible some of the stuff I learn using this space kindly given by the staff of the site. The feedback I get will also be very important for my progress and my plan is to learn a lot from what you guys can teach me with your comments on here.I also found myself with the necessity of putting somewhere code samples because sometimes when you post on forums the entries get locked and you can't do anything to add relevant details on them. The code will either be explained on its entirety or will be posted on a link that has an explained working sample for you guys to test and learn from.My posts will be in English, and I am an intermediate English speaker/writer so bare with me if it's not perfect sometimes, I am always learning something new though.I hope this get to be a useful resource for anyone interested. Cheers and Happy Coding for everyone!,Oscar

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