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  • Microsoft hosting free Hyper-V training for VMware Pros

    - by Ryan Roussel
    Microsoft will be hosting free training for virtualization professionals focused on Hyper-V, System Center, and virtualization architecture.  Details are below:   Just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), Microsoft Learning will be hosting an exclusive three-day Jump Start class specially tailored for VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology pros.  Registration for “Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals” is open now and will be delivered as an online class on March 29-31, 2010 from 10:00am-4:00pm PDT.    The course is COMPLETELY FREE and OPEN TO ANYONE!  Please share with your customers, blog, Tweet, etc. – help us get the word out to strengthen support for Microsoft’s virtualization offerings. What’s the high-level overview? This cutting edge course will feature expert instruction and real-world demonstrations of Hyper-V and brand new releases from System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta (many of which will be announced just one week earlier at MMS).  Register Now!   Day 1 will focus on “Platform” (Hyper-V, virtualization architecture, high availability & clustering) 10:00am – 10:30pm PDT:  Virtualization 360 Overview 10:30am – 12:00pm:  Microsoft Hyper-V Deployment Options & Architecture 1:00pm – 2:00pm:  Differentiating Microsoft and VMware (terminology, etc.) 2:00pm – 4:00pm:  High Availability & Clustering Day 2 will focus on “Management” (System Center Suite, SCVMM 2012 Beta, Opalis, Private Cloud solutions) 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT:  System Center Suite Overview w/ focus on DPM 11:00am – 12:00pm:  Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 1 1:00pm –   1:30pm:  Virtual Machine Manager 2012 | Part 2 1:30pm – 2:30pm:  Automation with System Center Opalis & PowerShell 2:30pm – 4:00pm:  Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM SSP 2.0 Day 3 will focus on “VDI” (VDI Infrastructure/architecture, v-Alliance, application delivery via VDI) 10:00am – 11:00pm PDT:  Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 1 11:00am – 12:00pm:  Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Architecture | Part 2 1:00pm – 2:30pm:  v-Alliance Solution Overview 2:30pm – 4:00pm:  Application Delivery for VDI     Every section will be team-taught by two of the most respected authorities on virtualization technologies: Microsoft Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and leading Hyper-V, VMware, and XEN infrastructure consultant, Corey Hynes Who is the target audience for this training? Suggested prerequisite skills include real-world experience with Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization and datacenter management. The course is tailored to these types of roles: · IT Professional · IT Decision Maker · Network Administrators & Architects · Storage/Infrastructure Administrators & Architects How do I to register and learn more about this great training opportunity? · Register: Visit the Registration Page and sign up for all three sessions · Blog: Learn more from the Microsoft Learning Blog · Twitter: Here are a few posts you can retweet: o Mar. 29-31 "Microsoft #Virtualization for VMware Pros" @SymonPerriman Corey Hynes http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V @MSLearning #Hyper-V o @SysCtrOpalis Mar. 29-31 "Microsoft #Virtualization for VMware Pros" @SymonPerriman Corey Hynes http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V #Hyper-V o Learn all the cool new features in Hyper-V & System Center 2012! SCVMM, Self-Service Portal 2.0, http://bit.ly/JS-Hyper-V #Hyper-V #Opalis What is a “Jump Start” course? A “Jump Start” course is “team-taught” by two expert instructors in an engaging radio talk show style format. The idea is to deliver readiness training on strategic and emerging technologies that drive awareness at scale before Microsoft Learning develops mainstream Microsoft Official Courses (MOC) that map to certifications.  All sessions are professionally recorded and distributed through MS Showcase, Channel 9, Zune Marketplace and iTunes for broader reach.

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  • How to Transpose Rows and Columns in Excel 2013

    - by Lori Kaufman
    You’ve setup your worksheet with all your row and column headings and you’ve entered all your data. Then, you discover that it would look better if the rows were the columns and the columns were the rows. How do you accomplish this easily? There is an easy way to convert your rows to columns and vice versa using the Transpose feature in Excel. We’ll show you how. Select the cells containing the headings and data you want to transpose. Click Copy or press Ctrl + C. Click in a blank cell on the spreadsheet. This cell will be the top, left corner of the new table of data. Click the down arrow on the Paste button and select Paste Special from the drop-down menu. On the Paste Special dialog box, select the Transpose check box so there is a check mark in the box and click OK. The rows become the columns and the columns become the rows. The original set of data still exists. You can select those cells and delete the headings and data, if desired. Isn’t that a lot easier and faster than retyping all your data?     

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  • Is it more difficult to upgrade your certification from SQL Server 2008 to 2012 than to get it from scratch?

    - by Diego
    I was wondering about the new MCSA certification on SQL 2012 and how it seems to be more difficult to upgrade your certification from 2008 to 2012 than to get the 2012 from scratch. Reason I think that is true is because anyone with any MCTS SQL Server 2008 certification can upgrade it to a MCSA 2012 by passing 2 tests (457 and 458). If you try to get it from scratch, you need to pass 3 tests (461, 462 and 463 - which are pretty much the same as 432, 433 and 448 for SQL 2008). But the thing is, even though its one test less to upgrade, all the skills necessary to pass 461, 462 and 463 are squeezed on 457 and 458 so, it seems easier to get from scratch than upgrade. Any thoughts?

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  • Using RTL languages with MS Office in Wine 1.4

    - by saeed hardan
    I've installed MS Office 2007 in Ubuntu 12.04 using Wine 1.4 with no problems, and it works fine with the English Language. However, I need to use it to work with Arabic and Hebrew, and it doesn't work when I switch to a Hebrew or Arabic keyboard. The typing gets reversed. I saw an earlier post for something similar, but it is closed and I think it was for the earlier Wine 1.3. Supposedly Wine 1.4 has added RTL -- is there a way to get it working?

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  • How to Freeze and Unfreeze Rows and Columns in Excel 2013

    - by Lori Kaufman
    If you are working on a large spreadsheet where all the rows and columns of data don’t fit on the screen, it would be helpful to be able to keep the heading rows and columns stationary so you can scroll through the data. You can freeze rows and columns in your spreadsheet. To do so, select the cell above which and to the left of which you want to freeze the columns and rows. Click the View tab.    

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  • Why do so few large websites run a Microsoft stack?

    - by realworldcoder
    Off the top of my head, I can think of a handful of large sites which utilize the Microsoft stack Microsoft.com Dell MySpace PlentyOfFish StackOverflow Hotmail, Bing, WindowsLive However, based on observation, nearly all of the top 500 sites seem to be running other platforms.What are the main reasons there's so little market penetration? Cost? Technology Limitations? Does Microsoft cater to corporate / intranet environments more then public websites? I'm not looking for market share, but rather large scale adoption of the MS stack.

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  • Has Microsoft stopped offering the free Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image for IE 6 testing?

    - by Paul D. Waite
    For some time now, Microsoft has made available free, stripped-down, time-limited Virtual PC images for testing web apps in older versions of IE. The most recent version is here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575 But the XP VPC image has now expired (14th Aug 2011), meaning one can no longer test IE 6 using this method. Have Microsoft made updated XP VPC images available? If not, have they commented on the situation? Do they provide any alternative method to test web apps in IE 6? Update As noted by @PleaseStand, as of 16th Aug 2011, Microsoft has made updated images available that expire on 17th November 2011.

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  • Including Microsoft.XNA.Framework.Input.Touch in a project?

    - by steven_desu
    So after running through tutorials by both Microsoft and www.xnadevelopment.com I feel very confident in my ability to get to work on my first game using the XNA Framework. I've manipulated sprites, added audio, changed game states, and even went a step further to apply the knowledge I had and figure out how to make animations and basic 2-dimensional physics (including impulses, force, acceleration, and speed calculations) But then shortly into the project I hit a curious bump that I've been unable to figure out. In wanting to implement menus, pause screens, and several different aspects of play (a "pre-level" prep screen, the level itself, and a screen after the level to review how well you did) I took a look at Microsoft's Game State Management sample. I understood the concept, although it was admittedly quite a lot to take in. Not wanting to recreate the entire concept by scratch (after all- what purpose would that serve?) I tried copying and pasting the sample code into my own ScreenManager class (as well as InputState and GameScreen classes) to try and borrow their ingenuity. When I did this, however, my project stopped compiling. I was getting the following error: The type or namespace name 'Touch' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input' (are you missing an assembly reference?) Having read through their sample code already, I realized that this namespace and every function and class within it could be safely ripped from the code without losing functionality. It's a namespace simply for integrating with touchscreen devices (presumably Windows Phone 7, but maybe also tablets). But then I began to wonder- how come Microsoft's sample compiled but mine didn't? I copied their code exactly so there must be a setting somewhere that I need to change in Visual Studio in order to correct this. I tried creating a new project as a Windows Phone 7 game rather than a Windows game, however that only forced it to compile to a Windows Phone emulator and denied me the ability to change the resolution and other features which I clearly had the power to do in the sample code. So my question is simple - how do I properly use the namespace Microsoft.XNA.Framework.Input.Touch?

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  • Excel Matching problem with logic expression

    - by abelenky
    I have a block of data that represents the steps in a process and the possible errors: ProcessStep Status FeesPaid OK FormRecvd OK RoleAssigned OK CheckedIn Not Checked In. ReadyToStart Not Ready for Start I want to find the first Status that is not "OK". I have attempted this: =Match("<>""OK""", StatusRange, 0) which is supposed to return the index of the first element in the range that is NOT-EQUAL (<) to "OK" But this doesn't work, instead returning #N/A. I expect it to return 4 (index #4, in a 1-based index, representing that CheckedIn is the first non-OK element) Any ideas how to do this?

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  • Is it difficult to get a job at Microsoft?

    - by Maxtor
    I'm curious how difficult it really is to get a job working for Microsoft. Is Microsoft similar to Google in a sense that they hire people who are really good at programming? Also, does participating in communities such as the forums at Microsoft help (if at all) you with getting selected for an interview ? How about being a MVP in something like C# and/or .NET? Edit: This question refers only to programming jobs.

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  • Create an Action<T> to "set" a property, when I am provided with the LINQ Expression for the "get"

    - by Alex
    I'd like to be able to generate a compiled expression to set a property, given the lambda expression that provides the "get" method for a property. Here's what I'm looking for: public Action<int> CreateSetter<T>(Expression<Func<T, int>> getter) { // returns a compiled action using the details of the getter expression tree, or null // if the write property is not defined. } I'm still trying to understand the various types of Expression classes, so if you can point me in the right direction that would be great.

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  • Expression.OrElse, dynamically creating a condition.

    - by Jim
    Hi, I am attempting to create a dynamic where clause using the standard expression API. var query = ( from p in Parties orderby p.PartyId orderby p.FullName select p ).AsQueryable(); Expression<Func<Party, bool>> @fn = (p) => SqlMethods.Like(p.FullName, "%smith%") || SqlMethods.Like(p.Person.FirstName, "%smith%"); Expression<Func<Party, bool>> @sn = (p) => SqlMethods.Like(p.Person.FirstName, words[0]); ParameterExpression pe = Expression.Parameter(typeof(Party), "p"); Expression orelse = Expression.OrElse( Expression.Lambda(@fn, pe), Expression.Lambda(@sn, pe) ); The expressions above will ultimately be added to a where clause. I need to add a bunch of 'likes'. How do I do this? I get InvalidOperationException on the operator OrElse I have also tried Expression.Or Thanks Regards Craig.

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  • How do I Series: Connecting an Expression Blend Project to Team Foundation Server

    - by Enrique Lima
    I have heard of people wanting and needing to add projects created in Expression Blend to Team Foundation Server. Here is the recipe: 1) Create your project in Expression Blend … click OK 2) Select the option to open your recently created project in Visual Studio. Once that option is selected, your solution will open up in Visual Studio, close Expression Blend at this point. Now, I want to add this project to Source Control … Next, I connect to my TFS environment, and pick the location to save my project Once the project is added, I will get a status window of pending changes for my project, all that we are left to do is to check in those changes. Since we have checked in our project, we can now close Visual Studio, and we will proceed to open Expression Blend again. And select our project we will! We notice some differences from before, just by opening it What differences you say?!? Notice the lock to the right of the item name … And we also get this when we right click … And there we have it, it is a combination of tools to achieve this, but it is well worth it.

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  • Rules Manager and Expression Filter getting removed

    - by Mike Dietrich
    I doubt that many people are using the Oracle features "Rules Manager" and "Expression Filter" as usually people handle these things (such as ensuring that a zip code or a car number plate has a certain format) within the application code and not inside the database. Oracle Beehive for instance uses that just on the side.  Anyway, just learned today that Rules Manager and Expression Filter components will get removed once our next database release most likely called Oracle Database 12c will get released. So before upgrading to Oracle Database 12c you can remove EXF and RUL components (SELECT COMP_ID FROM DBA_REGISTRY WHERE COMP_ID IN ('EXF','RUL'); ). You'd simply do that by executing the following script before upgrade:SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/catnoexf.sqlThis will clean up Rules Manager and Expression Filter components inside the database. You could run ?/rdbms/admin/catnorul.sql before but I believe catnoexf.sql will clean up everything already. And you'll find all this information plus guidelines for migration of existing content in MOS Note: 1233535.1 - Obsolescence Notice: Rules Manager and Expression Filter Features of Oracle Database -M.

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  • Microsoft InfoPath "Outlook must be set as default e-mail program"

    - by chiccodoro
    When I try to publish an InfoPath 2007 form, I get the following message: To use this feature, Microsoft Office 2007 must be set as the default e-mail program. However, Outlook is configured as default e-mail program already. Any ideas? I verified that Microsoft Outlook is the default e-mail program in two ways: I went to Control Panel Internet Settings - ... - Default Programs I tried and entered mailto:myown-e-mail-address in Firefox and it opened Outlook.

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  • ODI 12c's Mapping Designer - Combining Flow Based and Expression Based Mapping

    - by Madhu Nair
    post by David Allan ODI is renowned for its declarative designer and minimal expression based paradigm. The new ODI 12c release has extended this even further to provide an extended declarative mapping designer. The ODI 12c mapper is a fusion of ODI's new declarative designer with the familiar flow based designer while retaining ODI’s key differentiators of: Minimal expression based definition, The ability to incrementally design an interface and to extract/load data from any combination of sources, and most importantly Backed by ODI’s extensible knowledge module framework. The declarative nature of the product has been extended to include an extensible library of common components that can be used to easily build simple to complex data integration solutions. Big usability improvements through consistent interactions of components and concepts all constructed around the familiar knowledge module framework provide the utmost flexibility. Here is a little taster: So what is a mapping? A mapping comprises of a logical design and at least one physical design, it may have many. A mapping can have many targets, of any technology and can be arbitrarily complex. You can build reusable mappings and use them in other mappings or other reusable mappings. In the example below all of the information from an Oracle bonus table and a bonus file are joined with an Oracle employees table before being written to a target. Some things that are cool include the one-click expression cross referencing so you can easily see what's used where within the design. The logical design in a mapping describes what you want to accomplish  (see the animated GIF here illustrating how the above mapping was designed) . The physical design lets you configure how it is to be accomplished. So you could have one logical design that is realized as an initial load in one physical design and as an incremental load in another. In the physical design below we can customize how the mapping is accomplished by picking Knowledge Modules, in ODI 12c you can pick multiple nodes (on logical or physical) and see common properties. This is useful as we can quickly compare property values across objects - below we can see knowledge modules settings on the access points between execution units side by side, in the example one table is retrieved via database links and the other is an external table. In the logical design I had selected an append mode for the integration type, so by default the IKM on the target will choose the most suitable/default IKM - which in this case is an in-built Oracle Insert IKM (see image below). This supports insert and select hints for the Oracle database (the ANSI SQL Insert IKM does not support these), so by default you will get direct path inserts with Oracle on this statement. In ODI 12c, the mapper is just that, a mapper. Design your mapping, write to multiple targets, the targets can be in the same data server, in different data servers or in totally different technologies - it does not matter. ODI 12c will derive and generate a plan that you can use or customize with knowledge modules. Some of the use cases which are greatly simplified include multiple heterogeneous targets, multi target inserts for Oracle and writing of XML. Let's switch it up now and look at a slightly different example to illustrate expression reuse. In ODI you can define reusable expressions using user functions. These can be reused across mappings and the implementations specialized per technology. So you can have common expressions across Oracle, SQL Server, Hive etc. shielding the design from the physical aspects of the generated language. Another way to reuse is within a mapping itself. In ODI 12c expressions can be defined and reused within a mapping. Rather than replicating the expression text in larger expressions you can decompose into smaller snippets, below you can see UNIT_TAX AMOUNT has been defined and is used in two downstream target columns - its used in the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT plus its used in the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT (a recording of the calculation).  You can see the columns that the expressions depend on (upstream) and the columns the expression is used in (downstream) highlighted within the mapper. Also multi selecting attributes is a convenient way to see what's being used where, below I have selected the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT in the target datastore and the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT in UNIT_CALC. You can now see many expressions at once now and understand much more at the once time without needlessly clicking around and memorizing information. Our mantra during development was to keep it simple and make the tool more powerful and do even more for the user. The development team was a fusion of many teams from Oracle Warehouse Builder, Sunopsis and BEA Aqualogic, debating and perfecting the mapper in ODI 12c. This was quite a project from supporting the capabilities of ODI in 11g to building the flow based mapping tool to support the future. I hope this was a useful insight, there is so much more to come on this topic, this is just a preview of much more that you will see of the mapper in ODI 12c.

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  • Symbolic Regular Expression Exploration

    - by Robz / Fervent Coder
    This is a pretty sweet little tool. Rex (Regular Expression Exploration) is a tool that allows you to give it a regular expression and it returns matching strings. The example below creates10 strings that start and end with a number and have at least 2 characters: > rex.exe "^\d.*\d$" /k:10 This is something I could use to validate/generate the Regular Expressions I have created with both UppercuT and RoundhousE. Check out the video below: Margus Veanes - Rex - Symbolic Regular Expression Exploration Margus Veanes, a Researcher from the RiSE group at Microsoft Research, gives an overview of Rex, a tool that generates matching string from .NET regular expressions. Rex turns regular expres...

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  • Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Microsoft met à jour sa suite d'outils Expression, avec une nouvelle version optimisée pour le référ

    Microsoft met à jour sa suite d'outils Expression, avec une nouvelle version optimisée pour le référencement en ligne Microsoft vient de rendre disponible une mise à jour de son pack d'outils Expression, utilisé dans la création de design d'applications. Expression Studio 4 embarque des outils pour permettre aux designers et aux développeurs de collaborer dans la construction d'interfaces utilisateurs dans différents environnements suivant les versions de la suite. Différents outils sont présents dans ces moutures : Web, pour le Web design ; Blend, pour le design de l'interface de l'utilisateur ; Encoder pour l'encodage vidéo ; et Design pour la création d'éléments ou de visuels de l'UI pouvant être importés ensuite dans Web ou Blend.

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  • Expression Studio 4 launch&ndash;Blend, Web, Encoder, Design

    Today (7-Jun-2010) at Information Week in New York, Microsoft announced the general availability of Expression Studio 4 which includes upgraded versions of Expression Blend (including Sketchflow), Encoder, Web (including SuperPreview) and Design. You can find out the details of each product and download a trial at http://www.microsoft.com/expression right now. With this release comes a free Upgrade for licensed version 3 (Studio or Web) users! All you need to do is install the trial version of v4...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

    - by Rick Strahl
    originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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  • Could Not Load Type Microsoft.Build.Framework.BuildEventContext

    Setting up a TeamCity build and got this error: C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\TeamData\Microsoft.Data.Schema.SqlTasks.targets(80, 5): error MSB4018: The "SqlSetupDeployTask" task failed unexpectedly. System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'Microsoft.Build.Framework.BuildEventContext' from assembly 'Microsoft.Build.Framework, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'. at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskExecutionModule.SetBatchRequestSize() at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskExecutionModule..ctor(EngineCallback engineCallback, TaskExecutionModuleMode moduleMode, Boolean profileExecution) at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.NodeManager..ctor(Int32 cpuCount, Boolean childMode, Engine parentEngine) at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.Engine..ctor(Int32 numberOfCpus, Boolean isChildNode, Int32 parentNodeId, String localNodeProviderParameters, BuildPropertyGroup globalProperties, ToolsetDefinitionLocations locations) at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.Engine.get_GlobalEngine() at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Build.DeploymentProjectBuilder.CreateDeploymentProject() at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Tasks.DBSetupDeployTask.BuildDeploymentProject(ErrorManager errors, ExtensionManager em) at Microsoft.Data.Schema.Tasks.DBSetupDeployTask.Execute() at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskEngine.ExecuteTask(ExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, Hashtable projectItemsAvailableToTask, BuildPropertyGroup projectPropertiesAvailableToTask, Boolean& taskClassWasFound)   The usual searching didnt bring back anything useful, but I figured out that Id missed a dropdownlist in the TeamCity project setup: Originally I was using Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 for my MSBuild task.  Changing it to 3.5 (as shown above) got me past this error (and on to the next one). Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

    - by Robz / Fervent Coder
    Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that don’t know it’s an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. With fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. To recognize the contributions they make, MVPs from around the world have the opportunity to meet Microsoft executives, network with peers, and position themselves as technical community leaders. Here is my profile: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile/rob.reynolds I want to thank those that nominated me, without nominations this would never have happened. Thanks to Microsoft for liking me and finding my achievements and contributions to the community to be worth something. It’s good to know when you put in a lot of hard work that you get rewarded! I also want to thank many of the people I have worked with over the last 7 years. You guys have been great and I’m definitely standing on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to KDOT for giving me that first shot into professional programming and the experience and all of the training! A special thanks to @drusellers for kick starting me when I went stale in my learning back in 2007 and for always pushing me and bouncing ideas off of me. Without you I don’t think I would have made it this far. Thanks Alt.NET for keeping it fresh and funky! A very special thank you goes out to my wife for supporting me and locking me in the basement to work on all of my initiatives!

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