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• When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Well, it depends…. If you are a small company that creates a finite number of internal projects then you will find it easier to create a single project for each of your products and have TFS do the heavy lifting with reporting, SharePoint sites and Version Control. But what if you are not… Update 9th March 2010 Michael Fourie gave me some feedback which I have integrated. Ed Blankenship via @edblankenship offered encouragement and a nice quote. Ewald Hofman gave me a couple of Cons, and maybe a few more soon. Ewald’s company, Avanade, currently uses Areas, but it looks like the manual management is getting too much and the project is getting cluttered. What if you are likely to have hundreds of projects, possibly with a multitude of internal and external projects? You might have 1 project for a customer or 10. This is the situation that most consultancies find themselves in and thus they need a more sustainable and maintainable option. What I am advocating is that we should have 1 “Team Project” per customer, and use areas to create “sub projects” within that single “Team Project”. "What you describe is what we generally do internally and what we recommend. We make very heavy use of area path to categorize the work within a larger project." - Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow & Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server   "We tend to use areas to segregate multiple projects in the same team project and it works well." - Tiago Pascoal, Visual Studio ALM MVP   "In general, I believe this approach provides consistency [to multi-product engagements] and lowers the administration and maintenance costs. All good." - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   “@MrHinsh BTW, I'm very much a fan of very large, if not huge, team projects in TFS. Just FYI :) Use Areas & Iterations.” Ed Blankenship, Visual Studio ALM MVP   This would mean that SSW would have a single Team Project called “SSW” that contains all of our internal projects and consequently all of the Areas and Iteration move down one hierarchy to accommodate this. Where we would have had “\SSW\Sprint 1” we now have “\SSW\SqlDeploy\Sprint1” with “SqlDeploy” being our internal project. At the moment SSW has over 70 internal projects and more than 170 total projects in TFS. This method has long term benefits that help to simplify the support model for companies that often have limited internal support time and many projects. But, there are implications as TFS does not provide this model “out-of-the-box”. These implications stretch across Areas, Iterations, Queries, Project Portal and Version Control. Michael made a good comment, he said: I agree with your approach, assuming that in a multi-product engagement with a client, they are happy to adopt the same process template across all products. If they are not, then it’ll either be easy to convince them or there is a valid reason for having a different template - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   At SSW we have a standard template that we use and this is applied across the board, to all of our projects. We even apply any changes to the core process template to all of our existing projects as well. If you have multiple projects for the same clients on multiple templates and you want to keep it that way, then this approach will not work for you. However, if you want to standardise as we have at SSW then this approach may benefit you as well. Implications around Areas Areas should be used for topological classification/isolation of work items. You can think of this as architecture areas, organisational areas or even the main features of your application. In our scenario there is an additional top level item that represents the Project / Product that we want to chop our Team Project into. Figure: Creating a sub area to represent a product/project is easy. <teamproject> <teamproject>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Becomes: <teamproject> <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\ <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Implications around Iterations Iterations should be used for chronological classification/isolation of work items. This could include isolated time boxes, milestones or release timelines and really depends on the logical flow of your project or projects. Due to the new level in Area we need to add the same level to Iteration. This is primarily because it is unlikely that the sprints in each of your projects/products will start and end at the same time. This is just a reality of managing multiple projects. Figure: Adding the same Area value to Iteration as the top level item adds flexibility to Iteration. <teamproject>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Implications around Queries Queries are used to filter your work items based on a specified level of granularity. There are a number of queries that are built into a project created using the MSF Agile 5.0 template, but we now have multiple projects and it would be a pain to have to edit all of the work items every time we changed project, and that would only allow one team to work on one project at a time.   Figure: The Queries that are created in a normal MSF Agile 5.0 project do not quite suit our new needs. In order for project contributors to be able to query based on their project we need a couple of things. The first thing I did was to create an “_Area Template” folder that has a copy of the project layout with all the queries setup to filter based on the “_Area Template” Area and the “_Sprint template” you can see in the Area and Iteration views. Figure: The template is currently easily drag and drop, but you then need to edit the queries to point at the right Area and Iteration. This needs a tool. I then created an “Areas” folder to hold all of the area specific queries. So, when you go to create a new TFS Sub-Project you just drag “_Area Template” while holding “Ctrl” and drop it onto “Areas”. There is a little setup here. That said I managed it in around 10 minutes which is not so bad, and I can imagine it being quite easy to build a tool to create these queries Figure: These new queries can be configured in around 10 minutes, which includes setting up the Area and Iteration as well. Version Control What about your source code? Well, that is the easiest of the lot. Just create a sub folder for each of your projects/products.   Figure: Creating sub folders in source control is easy as “Right click | Create new folder”. <teamproject>\DEV\Main\ Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\DEV\Main\ Conclusion I think it is up to each company to make a call on how you want to configure your Team Projects and it depends completely on how many projects/products you are going to have for each customer including yourself. If we decide to utilise this route it will require some configuration to get our 170+ projects into this format, and I will probably be writing some tools to help. Pros You only have one project to upgrade when a process template changes – After going through an upgrade of over 170 project prior to the changes in the RC I can tell you that that many projects is no fun. Standardises your Process Template – You will always have the same Process implementation across projects/products without exception You get tighter control over the permissions – Yes, you can do this on a standard Team Project, but it gets a lot easier with practice. You can “move” work items from one “product” to another – Have we not always wanted to do that. You can rename your projects – Wahoo: everyone wants to do this, now you can. One set of Reporting Services reports to manage – You set an area and iteration to run reports anyway, so you may as well set both. Simplified Check-In Policies– There is only one set of check-in policies per client. This simplifies administration of policies. Simplified Alerts – As alerts are applied across multiple projects this simplifies your alert rules as per client. Cons All of these cons could be mitigated by a custom tool that helps automate creation of “Sub-projects” within Team Projects. This custom tool could create areas, Iteration, permissions, SharePoint and queries. It just does not exist yet :) You need to configure the Areas and Iterations You need to configure the permissions You may need to configure sub sites for SharePoint (depends on your requirement) – If you have two projects/products in the same Team Project then you will not see the burn down for each one out-of-the-box, but rather a cumulative for the Team Project. This is not really that much of a problem as you would have to configure your burndown graphs for your current iteration anyway. note: When you create a sub site to a TFS linked portal it will inherit the settings of its parent site :) This is fantastic as it means that you can easily create sub sites and then set the Area and Iteration path in each of the reports to be the correct one. Every team wants their own customization (via Ewald Hofman) - small teams of 2 persons against teams of 30 – or even outsourcing – need their own process, you cannot allow that because everybody gets the same work item types. note: Luckily at SSW this is not a problem as our template is standardised across all projects and customers. Large list of builds (via Ewald Hofman) – As the build list in Team Explorer is just a flat list it can get very cluttered. note: I would mitigate this by removing any build that has not been run in over 30 days. The build template and workflow will still be available in version control, but it will clean the list. Feedback Now that I have explained this method, what do you think? What other pros and cons can you see? What do you think of this approach? Will you be using it? What tools would you like to support you?   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,TFS Administration,TFS,Team Foundation Server,Project Planning,TFS Customisation

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• Host AngularJS (Html5Mode) in ASP.NET vNext

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/06/10/host-angularjs-html5mode-in-asp.net-vnext.aspxMicrosoft had announced ASP.NET vNext in BUILD and TechED recently and as a developer, I found that we can add features into one ASP.NET vNext application such as MVC, WebAPI, SignalR, etc.. Also it's cross platform which means I can host ASP.NET on Windows, Linux and OS X.   If you are following my blog you should knew that I'm currently working on a project which uses ASP.NET WebAPI, SignalR and AngularJS. Currently the AngularJS part is hosted by Express in Node.js while WebAPI and SignalR are hosted in ASP.NET. I was looking for a solution to host all of them in one platform so that my SignalR can utilize WebSocket. Currently AngularJS and SignalR are hosted in the same domain but different port so it has to use ServerSendEvent. It can be upgraded to WebSocket if I host both of them in the same port.   Host AngularJS in ASP.NET vNext Static File Middleware ASP.NET vNext utilizes middleware pattern to register feature it uses, which is very similar as Express in Node.js. Since AngularJS is a pure client side framework in theory what I need to do is to use ASP.NET vNext as a static file server. This is very easy as there's a build-in middleware shipped alone with ASP.NET vNext. Assuming I have "index.html" as below. 1: <html data-ng-app="demo"> 2: <head> 3: <script type="text/javascript" src="angular.js" /> 4: <script type="text/javascript" src="angular-ui-router.js" /> 5: <script type="text/javascript" src="app.js" /> 6: </head> 7: <body> 8: <h1>ASP.NET vNext with AngularJS</h1> 9: <div> 10: <a href="javascript:void(0)" data-ui-sref="view1">View 1</a> | 11: <a href="javascript:void(0)" data-ui-sref="view2">View 2</a> 12: </div> 13: <div data-ui-view></div> 14: </body> 15: </html> And the AngularJS JavaScript file as below. Notices that I have two views which only contains one line literal indicates the view name. 1: 'use strict'; 2:  3: var app = angular.module('demo', ['ui.router']); 4:  5: app.config(['$stateProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($stateProvider, $locationProvider) { 6: $stateProvider.state('view1', { 7: url: '/view1', 8: templateUrl: 'view1.html', 9: controller: 'View1Ctrl' }); 10:  11: $stateProvider.state('view2', { 12: url: '/view2', 13: templateUrl: 'view2.html', 14: controller: 'View2Ctrl' }); 15: }]); 16:  17: app.controller('View1Ctrl', function ($scope) { 18: }); 19:  20: app.controller('View2Ctrl', function ($scope) { 21: }); All AngularJS files are located in "app" folder and my ASP.NET vNext files are besides it. The "project.json" contains all dependencies I need to host static file server. 1: { 2: "dependencies": { 3: "Helios" : "0.1-alpha-*", 4: "Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems": "0.1-alpha-*", 5: "Microsoft.AspNet.Http": "0.1-alpha-*", 6: "Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles": "0.1-alpha-*", 7: "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting": "0.1-alpha-*", 8: "Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener": "0.1-alpha-*" 9: }, 10: "commands": { 11: "web": "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting server=Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener server.urls=http://localhost:22222" 12: }, 13: "configurations" : { 14: "net45" : { 15: }, 16: "k10" : { 17: "System.Diagnostics.Contracts": "4.0.0.0", 18: "System.Security.Claims" : "0.1-alpha-*" 19: } 20: } 21: } Below is "Startup.cs" which is the entry file of my ASP.NET vNext. What I need to do is to let my application use FileServerMiddleware. 1: using System; 2: using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder; 3: using Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems; 4: using Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles; 5:  6: namespace Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer.Demo 7: { 8: public class Startup 9: { 10: public void Configure(IBuilder app) 11: { 12: app.UseFileServer(new FileServerOptions() { 13: EnableDirectoryBrowsing = true, 14: FileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(System.IO.Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "app")) 15: }); 16: } 17: } 18: } Next, I need to create "NuGet.Config" file in the PARENT folder so that when I run "kpm restore" command later it can find ASP.NET vNext NuGet package successfully. 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <packageSources> 4: <add key="AspNetVNext" value="https://www.myget.org/F/aspnetvnext/api/v2" /> 5: <add key="NuGet.org" value="https://nuget.org/api/v2/" /> 6: </packageSources> 7: <packageSourceCredentials> 8: <AspNetVNext> 9: <add key="Username" value="aspnetreadonly" /> 10: <add key="ClearTextPassword" value="4d8a2d9c-7b80-4162-9978-47e918c9658c" /> 11: </AspNetVNext> 12: </packageSourceCredentials> 13: </configuration> Now I need to run "kpm restore" to resolve all dependencies of my application. Finally, use "k web" to start the application which will be a static file server on "app" sub folder in the local 22222 port.   Support AngularJS Html5Mode AngularJS works well in previous demo. But you will note that there is a "#" in the browser address. This is because by default AngularJS adds "#" next to its entry page so ensure all request will be handled by this entry page. For example, in this case my entry page is "index.html", so when I clicked "View 1" in the page the address will be changed to "/#/view1" which means it still tell the web server I'm still looking for "index.html". This works, but makes the address looks ugly. Hence AngularJS introduces a feature called Html5Mode, which will get rid off the annoying "#" from the address bar. Below is the "app.js" with Html5Mode enabled, just one line of code. 1: 'use strict'; 2:  3: var app = angular.module('demo', ['ui.router']); 4:  5: app.config(['$stateProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($stateProvider, $locationProvider) { 6: $stateProvider.state('view1', { 7: url: '/view1', 8: templateUrl: 'view1.html', 9: controller: 'View1Ctrl' }); 10:  11: $stateProvider.state('view2', { 12: url: '/view2', 13: templateUrl: 'view2.html', 14: controller: 'View2Ctrl' }); 15:  16: // enable html5mode 17: $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); 18: }]); 19:  20: app.controller('View1Ctrl', function ($scope) { 21: }); 22:  23: app.controller('View2Ctrl', function ($scope) { 24: }); Then let's went to the root path of our website and click "View 1" you will see there's no "#" in the address. But the problem is, if we hit F5 the browser will be turn to blank. This is because in this mode the browser told the web server I want static file named "view1" but there's no file on the server. So underlying our web server, which is built by ASP.NET vNext, responded 404. To fix this problem we need to create our own ASP.NET vNext middleware. What it needs to do is firstly try to respond the static file request with the default StaticFileMiddleware. If the response status code was 404 then change the request path value to the entry page and try again. 1: public class AngularServerMiddleware 2: { 3: private readonly AngularServerOptions _options; 4: private readonly RequestDelegate _next; 5: private readonly StaticFileMiddleware _innerMiddleware; 6:  7: public AngularServerMiddleware(RequestDelegate next, AngularServerOptions options) 8: { 9: _next = next; 10: _options = options; 11:  12: _innerMiddleware = new StaticFileMiddleware(next, options.FileServerOptions.StaticFileOptions); 13: } 14:  15: public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context) 16: { 17: // try to resolve the request with default static file middleware 18: await _innerMiddleware.Invoke(context); 19: Console.WriteLine(context.Request.Path + ": " + context.Response.StatusCode); 20: // route to root path if the status code is 404 21: // and need support angular html5mode 22: if (context.Response.StatusCode == 404 && _options.Html5Mode) 23: { 24: context.Request.Path = _options.EntryPath; 25: await _innerMiddleware.Invoke(context); 26: Console.WriteLine(">> " + context.Request.Path + ": " + context.Response.StatusCode); 27: } 28: } 29: } We need an option class where user can specify the host root path and the entry page path. 1: public class AngularServerOptions 2: { 3: public FileServerOptions FileServerOptions { get; set; } 4:  5: public PathString EntryPath { get; set; } 6:  7: public bool Html5Mode 8: { 9: get 10: { 11: return EntryPath.HasValue; 12: } 13: } 14:  15: public AngularServerOptions() 16: { 17: FileServerOptions = new FileServerOptions(); 18: EntryPath = PathString.Empty; 19: } 20: } We also need an extension method so that user can append this feature in "Startup.cs" easily. 1: public static class AngularServerExtension 2: { 3: public static IBuilder UseAngularServer(this IBuilder builder, string rootPath, string entryPath) 4: { 5: var options = new AngularServerOptions() 6: { 7: FileServerOptions = new FileServerOptions() 8: { 9: EnableDirectoryBrowsing = false, 10: FileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(System.IO.Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, rootPath)) 11: }, 12: EntryPath = new PathString(entryPath) 13: }; 14:  15: builder.UseDefaultFiles(options.FileServerOptions.DefaultFilesOptions); 16:  17: return builder.Use(next => new AngularServerMiddleware(next, options).Invoke); 18: } 19: } Now with these classes ready we will change our "Startup.cs", use this middleware replace the default one, tell the server try to load "index.html" file if it cannot find resource. The code below is just for demo purpose. I just tried to load "index.html" in all cases once the StaticFileMiddleware returned 404. In fact we need to validation to make sure this is an AngularJS route request instead of a normal static file request. 1: using System; 2: using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder; 3: using Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems; 4: using Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles; 5: using Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer; 6:  7: namespace Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer.Demo 8: { 9: public class Startup 10: { 11: public void Configure(IBuilder app) 12: { 13: app.UseAngularServer("app", "/index.html"); 14: } 15: } 16: } Now let's run "k web" again and try to refresh our browser and we can see the page loaded successfully. In the console window we can find the original request got 404 and we try to find "index.html" and return the correct result.   Summary In this post I introduced how to use ASP.NET vNext to host AngularJS application as a static file server. I also demonstrated how to extend ASP.NET vNext, so that it supports AngularJS Html5Mode. You can download the source code here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 05, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 05, 2010New Projects.svn Folders Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup is a tool that allows you to remove the .svn folders . Just click, browse, say abracadabra ...and the magic is done. Have fun with...Accord: The Accord framework creates an easy we to integrate any Dependency Injection framework into your project, while abstracting the details of your im...Asp.net MVC Lab: Try asp.net mvc outASP.NET Themes management with Webforms: The provided source is an example for how to use themes in ASP.NET Webforms. this source is the "up to date" support for the article I wroteB&W Port Scanner: B&W Port Scanner (formerly Net Inspector) is a fast TCP Port scan utility. The main idea is support of customizable operations to be performed f...BizTalk SWAT - Simple Web Activity Tracker: This is a web based version of BizTalk HAT. The concept is designed to be able to share and enable sharing of orchestration info easily. Some of th...C# Linear Hash Table: A C# dictionary-like implementation of a linear hash table. It is more memory efficiant than the .NET dictionary, and also almost as fast. NOTE: On...DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF Import Export Wizard is a tool for anyone needing to import DBF files into SQL Server or to export SQL Server tables to a DBF file. This proje...Domain as XML - Driven Development: Visual Studio Code Samples: Domain as XML - Driven Development: Visual Studio Code SamplesEasyDownload: This application allows to manage downloads handling an stack of files and several useful configurationsEos2: .FlightTickets: This application allows to buy flight ticketsFotofly PhotoViewer: A Silverlight control that uses the Fotofly metadata library to show the people in a photo (using Windows Live Photo Gallery People metadata) and a...Fujiy source code: Source code examplesGameSet: This application allows to play games with distributed users.Injectivity (Dependency Injection): Injectivity is a dependency injection framework (written in C#) with a strong focus on the ease of configuration and performance. Having been writt...Inventory: Keep track of inputs, materias and salesLoanTin.Com Source Code: LoanTin.Com - a Social Networking Website as same as Tumblr.com, based on source code of Loantiner Project, allow anyone can share anything to anyo...mysln: my solutions.NumTextBox: TextBox控件重写 之NumTextBox，主要实现的功能是，只允许输入数字，或String,Numeric,Currency,Decimal,Float,Double,Short,Int,Long 修改自：http://www.codeproject.com/KB/edit/num...Quick Performance Monitor: This small utility helps to monitor performance counters without using the full blown perfmon tool from Windows. It supports a number of command li...Runo: Runo ResearchSales: This application allows to manage a hardware storeScrewWiki Form Auth Provider: Enables your ASP.NET site to use Forms Authentication to integrate with your ScrewWiki. User management is performed on a parent site, and cookie i...SDS: Scientific DataSet library and tools: The SDS library makes it easy for .Net developers to read, write and share scalars, vectors, matrices and multidimensional grids which are very com...ShapeSweeper: Minesweeper-like game for the Zune HD. Each hidden object has three properties to discover--location, color, and shape--and all three must be corre...SilverlightExcel: an Excel file viewer in Silverlight 4: SilverlightExcel is a Silverlight application allowing you to open and view Excel files and also create graphs.sPWadmin: pwAdmin is an Web Interface based on JSP that uses the PW-Java API to control an PW-Server.Video Player control in Silverlight: A control for playing video in Silverlight 4 with chapters on timeline control. This player will be easily skinnable and customizable. More Featur...XNA Light Pre Pass Renderer: A demo/sample that shows how to write a light pre pass renderer in XNA.Zimms: Collaboration Site for friends, a code depot, and scratch padNew Releases.svn Folders Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup Tool executableAccord: Alpha: Initial build of the Accord framework.AcPrac: AcPrac Ver 0.1: The first version of AcPrac. It is not fully functional, but rather a version to get the bugs out. Please report all bugs.ASP.NET: ASP.NET Browser Definition Files: This download contains: ASP.NET 4 Browser Definition Files -- You can use the new ASP.NET 4 browser definition files with earlier versions of ASP....B&W Port Scanner: Black`n`White Port Scanner 1.0: B&W Port Scanner 1.0 Final Release Date: 03.03.2010 Black`n`WhiteBizTalk SWAT - Simple Web Activity Tracker: BizTalk SWAT: This is a web based version of BizTalk HAT. The concept is designed to be able to share and enable sharing of orchestration info easily. It uses th...BTP Tools: CSB+CUV+HCSB dict files 2010-03-04: 5. is now missing a space between the Strong’s number and the Count: >CSB Translation: 圣所 7, 至圣所G39+G394 it should be: CSB Translation: 圣所 7, 至圣所G...C# Linear Hash Table: Linear Hash Table: First working version of the Linear Hash Table.Cassiopeia: WinTools 1.0 beta: First ReleaseComposure: Caliburn-44007-trunk-vs2010.net40: This is a very simple conversion of the Caliburn trunk (rev 44007) for use in Visual Studio 2010 RC1 built against .NET40. Because the conversion w...Cover Creator: CoverCreator 1.3.0: English and Polish version. Functionality to add image to the front page. Load / save covers.DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF Import Export Wizard Source Code: Version 0.1.0.3DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF_Import_Export_Wizard Setup 0.1.0.3: Zip file contains Setup.exeESB Toolkit Extensions: Tellago BizTalk ESB 2.0 Toolkit Extensions v0.2: Windows Installer file that installs Library on a BizTalk ESB 2.0 system. This Install automatically configures the esb.config to use the new compo...Fotofly PhotoViewer: Fotofly Photoview v0.1: The first public release. Based on a Silverlight application I have been using for over a year at www.tassography.com. This version uses Fotofly v0...HPC with GPUs applied to CG: Cuda Soft Bodies simulation: Cuda src for soft bodiesHPC with GPUs applied to CG: Full Soft Bodies src: full src code for soft bodies simulationInjectivity (Dependency Injection): 2.8.166.2135: Release 2.8.166.2135 of the Injectivity dependency injection framework.Line Counter: 1.5 (Code Outline Preview): This version contains preview of the code outline feature, you can now view C# code outline within Line Counter. Note that the code outline now onl...Micajah Mindtouch Deki Wiki Copier: MicajahWikiCopier: You should use the following line arguments: WikiCopier.exe "http://oldwikiwithdata.wik.is/@api/deki" "login" "password" "http://newwiki.somename.l...ncontrols: Alpha 0.4.0.1: Added some example on the Console Project.NumTextBox: NumTextBox初始版本: TextBox控件重写 之NumTextBox，主要实现的功能是，只允许输入数字，或String,Numeric,Currency,Decimal,Float,Double,Short,Int,Long 此为初始版本PSCodeplex: PS CodePlex 0.2: PS CodePlex 0.2 has some breaking changes to the parameters. A few of the parameters are renamed and a few are made as switch parameters. Add-Rele...Quick Performance Monitor: QPerfMon First release - Version 1.0.0: The first release of the utility.RapidWebDev - .NET Enterprise Software Development Infrastructure: ProductManagement Quick Sample 0.2: This is a sample product management application to demonstrate how to develop enterprise software in RapidWebDev. The glossary of the system are ro...ScrewWiki Form Auth Provider: ScrewWiki Forms Authentication: Initial ReleaseSee.Sharper: See.Sharper.Docs-1.10.3.4: HTML documentation (including Doxygen project)See.Sharper: See.Sharper-1.10.3.4: Solution (Source files, debug and release binaries)Solar.Generic: Solar.Generic 0.8.0.0 Beta (Revised, Renamed): Solar.Generic 0.8.0.0 (Revised & Renamed) Renamed project from Solar.Commons to Solar.Generic. Project solution file is now in format of Visual ...Solar.Security: Solar.Security 1.1.0.0: Performed several major refactorings of code base. Stripped In-Memory implementation of IConfiguration interface of transactional behavior due to...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.7: -Star System Simulator: Star System Simulator 2.3: Changes in this release: Fixed several localisation issues. Features in this release: Model star systems in 3D. Euler-Cromer method. Improved...SysI: sysi, stable and ready: This time for sure.TheWhiteAmbit: TheWhiteAmbit - Demo: Two little demos demonstrating: - fast realtime raytracing - generating bent normals for shading (CUDA capable GPU needed = nVidia GeForce >8x00)VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 22 Beta: Build 22 (beta) New: Visual Studio 2010 RC support (VsTortoise for Visual Studio 2010 RC screenshots) New: VsTortoise integrates in to Solution E...WinMergeFS: WinMergeFS 0.1.42128alpha: WinMergeFS provides AuFS functionality for windows. With WinMergeFS users can mount multiple directories into a virtual drive. Plugin based root se...WSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.0.2: - Bugs fixed - Code refactored - Added support for custom typesXNA Light Pre Pass Renderer: LightPrePassRendererXNA: Zipped source code for the light pre pass renderer made with XNA.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)LiveUpload to FacebookASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrBlogEngine.NETSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsMapWindow GISpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterMDT Web FrontEndDiffPlex - a .NET Diff Generator

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• MVP Summit 2011 summary and thoughts: The &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t cross a line and lose my MVP status&rdquo; post

  - by George Clingerman

  I've been wanting to write this post summarizing my thoughts about the MVP summit but have been dragging my feet since it's a very difficult one to write. However seeing Andy (http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx) and Catalin (http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/) and Chris (http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx) post about it has encouraged me to finally take the plunge. I'm going to have to write carefully though because I'm going to be dancing around a ton of NDA mine fields as well as having to walk the tight-rope of not sending the wrong message or having people read too much into what I'm saying. I want to note that most of what I'm about to say is just based on my observations, they're not thoughts that Microsoft has asked me to pass along and they're not things I heard Microsoft say. It's just me sharing what I think after going to the MVP summit. Let's start off with a short imaginary question and answer session.     Has the App Hub forums and XBLIG management been rather poor by Microsoft? Yes.     Do I think we're going to see changes to that overnight? No.     Will it continue to look bad from the outside? Somewhat. Confusing right? Well that's kind of how things are right now. Lots of confusion. XNA is doing AWESOME. Like, really, really awesome. As a result of that awesomeness, XNA is on three major platforms: Xbox 360, WP7 and PC. This means that internally Microsoft is really excited and invested in the technology. That's fantastic for XNA and really should show you the future the framework has. It's here to stay. So why are Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers feeling so much pain? The ironic thing is that pain is being caused by the success of XNA. When XNA was just a small thing, there was more freedom and more focus. It was just us and them. We were an only child. Now our family has grown and everyone has and wants some time with XNA. This gets XNA pulled in all directions and as it moves onto new platforms, it plays catch up trying to get those platforms up to speed to where Xbox LIVE Indie Games has grown. Forums, documentation, educational content. They all need to be there because Xbox LIVE Indie Games has all of that and more. Along with the catch up in features/documentation/awesomeness there's the catch up that the people on the team have to play. New platforms and new areas of development mean new players and those new guys don't have the history of being around from the beginning. This leads to a lack of understanding at times just how important some things are because they seem so small and insignificant (Rich Text defaulting for new forum profiles would be one things that jumps to mind). If you're not aware that the forums have become more than just a basic Q&A, if you're not aware that they're a central hub to a very active community, then you don't understand why that small change should be prioritized over something else. New people have to get caught up and figure out how to make a framework and central forum site work for everyone it's now serving. So yeah, a lot of our pain this last year has been simply that XNA is doing well and XBLIG is doing well so the focus was shifted to catch other things up. It hurts when a parent seems to not have any time for you and they're spending some much time with your new baby brother. Growing pains. All families and in our case our product family experience it to some degree. I think as WP7 matures we'll see the team figuring out how to give everyone the right amount of attention. While we're talking about some of our growing pains, it is also important to note (although not really an excuse) that the Xbox LIVE Arcade developers complain about many of the same things that we do. If you paid attention to talks and information coming out of GDC 2011, most of the the XBLA guys were saying things that sounded eerily similar to what the XBLIG developers are saying (Scott Nichols from GayGamer.net noticed http://twitter.com/#!/NaviFairyGG/status/43540379206811650). Does this mean we should just accept the status quo since we're being treated exactly the same? No way. However it DOES show that the way we're being treated is no indication of the stability and future of the platform, it's just Microsoft dropping the communication ball on two playing fields. We're not alone and we're not even being treated worse. Not great, but also in a weird way a very good sign. Now on to a few tidbits I think I CAN share from the summit (I'm really crossing my fingers I'm not stepping over some NDA line I shouldn't be). First, I discovered that the XBLIG user base is bigger than I personally had originally estimated. I won't give the exact numbers (although we did beg Microsoft to release some of these numbers so maybe someday?) but it was much larger than my original guestimates and I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe some of you guys had the right number when you were guessing, but I know that mine was much too low. And even MORE importantly the number of users/shoppers is growing at a steady pace as well. Our market is growing! That was fantastic news and really something that I had to share. On to the community manager discussion. It was mentioned. I was mentioned. I blushed. Nothing more to report there than the blush in my cheeks was a light crimson color. If I ever see a job description posted for that position I have a resume waiting in the wings. I can't deny that I think that would be my dream job... ...so after I finished blushing, the MVPs did make it very, very clear that the communication has to improve. Community manager or not the single biggest pain point with the Xbox LIVE Indie Game community has been a lack of communication. I have seen dramatic improvement in the team responding to MVPs and I'm even seeing more communication from them on the forums so I'm hoping that's a long term change. I really think they understood the issue, the problem remains how to open that communication channel in a way that was sustainable. I think they'll get it figured out and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. During the summit, you may have seen me tweeting about how I was "that guy" (http://twitter.com/#!/clingermangw/status/42740432471470081). You also may have noticed that Andy and Catalin both mentioned me in their summit write ups. I may have come on a bit strong while I was there...went a little out of character for myself. I've been agitated for a while with the way things have been and I've been listening to you guys and hearing you guys be agitated. I'm also watching some really awesome indie game developers looking elsewhere and leaving the platform. Some of them we might not have been able to keep even with changes, but others are only leaving because of perceptions and lack of communication from Microsoft. And that pisses me off. And I let Microsoft know that I was pissed off. You made your list and I took that list and verbalized it. I verbalized the hell out of it. [It was actually mentioned that I'm a lot nicer on the forums and in email than I am in person...I felt bad about that, but I couldn't stay silent]. Hopefully it did something guys, I really did try hard to get the message across. Along with my agitation, I also brought some pride. I mentioned several things in person to the team that I was particularly proud of. From people in the community that are doing an awesome job, to the re-launch of XboxIndies that was going on that week and even gamers like Steven Hurdle (http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/) who have purchased one XBLIG every day for over 100 days now. The community is freaking rocking it and I made sure to highlight that. So in conclusion, I'd just like to say hang in there (you know, like that picture of the cat). If you've been worried about investing in Xbox LIVE Indie Games because you think it's on shaky ground. It's not. Dream Build Play being about the Xbox 360 should have helped a little to point that out. The team is really scrambling around trying to figure things out and make improvements all around. There’s quite a few new gals and guys and it's going to take them time to catch up and there are a lot of constantly shifting priorities. We all have one toy, one team and we're fighting for time with it. It's also time for the community to continue spreading our wings and going out on our own more often. The Indie Game Winter Uprising was a fantastic example of that. We took things into our own hands and it got noticed and Microsoft got behind it. They do every time we stand up and do something (look at how many Microsoft employees tweeted, wrote about the re-launch of XboxIndies.com or the support I've gotten from them for my weekly XNA Notes). XNA is here to stay, it's time for us to stop being scared of that and figure out how to make our own games the successes they should be. There's definitely a list of things that need to be fixed, things that should be improved and I think we should definitely keep vocal about that with Microsoft. Keep it short, focused and prioritized. There's also a lot of things we can do ourselves while we're waiting on them to fix and change things. Lots of ways we can compensate for particular weaknesses in the channel. The kind of stuff that we can step up and do ourselves. Do it on our own, you know, the way Indies always do. And I'm really looking forward to watching us do just that.

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• Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms - Client IDs (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  - by ScottGu

  This is the sixteenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. Today’s post is the first of a few blog posts I’ll be doing that talk about some of the important changes we’ve made to make Web Forms in ASP.NET 4 generate clean, standards-compliant, CSS-friendly markup.  Today I’ll cover the work we are doing to provide better control over the “ID” attributes rendered by server controls to the client. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Clean, Standards-Based, CSS-Friendly Markup One of the common complaints developers have often had with ASP.NET Web Forms is that when using server controls they don’t have the ability to easily generate clean, CSS-friendly output and markup.  Some of the specific complaints with previous ASP.NET releases include: Auto-generated ID attributes within HTML make it hard to write JavaScript and style with CSS Use of tables instead of semantic markup for certain controls (in particular the asp:menu control) make styling ugly Some controls render inline style properties even if no style property on the control has been set ViewState can often be bigger than ideal ASP.NET 4 provides better support for building standards-compliant pages out of the box.  The built-in <asp:> server controls with ASP.NET 4 now generate cleaner markup and support CSS styling – and help address all of the above issues.  Markup Compatibility When Upgrading Existing ASP.NET Web Forms Applications A common question people often ask when hearing about the cleaner markup coming with ASP.NET 4 is “Great - but what about my existing applications?  Will these changes/improvements break things when I upgrade?” To help ensure that we don’t break assumptions around markup and styling with existing ASP.NET Web Forms applications, we’ve enabled a configuration flag – controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion – within web.config that let’s you decide if you want to use the new cleaner markup approach that is the default with new ASP.NET 4 applications, or for compatibility reasons render the same markup that previous versions of ASP.NET used:   When the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag is set to “3.5” your application and server controls will by default render output using the same markup generation used with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5.  When the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag is set to “4.0” your application and server controls will strictly adhere to the XHTML 1.1 specification, have cleaner client IDs, render with semantic correctness in mind, and have extraneous inline styles removed. This flag defaults to 4.0 for all new ASP.NET Web Forms applications built using ASP.NET 4. Any previous application that is upgraded using VS 2010 will have the controlRenderingCompatbilityVersion flag automatically set to 3.5 by the upgrade wizard to ensure backwards compatibility.  You can then optionally change it (either at the application level, or scope it within the web.config file to be on a per page or directory level) if you move your pages to use CSS and take advantage of the new markup rendering. Today’s Cleaner Markup Topic: Client IDs The ability to have clean, predictable, ID attributes on rendered HTML elements is something developers have long asked for with Web Forms (ID values like “ctl00_ContentPlaceholder1_ListView1_ctrl0_Label1” are not very popular).  Having control over the ID values rendered helps make it much easier to write client-side JavaScript against the output, makes it easier to style elements using CSS, and on large pages can help reduce the overall size of the markup generated. New ClientIDMode Property on Controls ASP.NET 4 supports a new ClientIDMode property on the Control base class.  The ClientIDMode property indicates how controls should generate client ID values when they render.  The ClientIDMode property supports four possible values: AutoID—Renders the output as in .NET 3.5 (auto-generated IDs which will still render prefixes like ctrl00 for compatibility) Predictable (Default)— Trims any “ctl00” ID string and if a list/container control concatenates child ids (example: id=”ParentControl_ChildControl”) Static—Hands over full ID naming control to the developer – whatever they set as the ID of the control is what is rendered (example: id=”JustMyId”) Inherit—Tells the control to defer to the naming behavior mode of the parent container control The ClientIDMode property can be set directly on individual controls (or within container controls – in which case the controls within them will by default inherit the setting): Or it can be specified at a page or usercontrol level (using the <%@ Page %> or <%@ Control %> directives) – in which case controls within the pages/usercontrols inherit the setting (and can optionally override it): Or it can be set within the web.config file of an application – in which case pages within the application inherit the setting (and can optionally override it): This gives you the flexibility to customize/override the naming behavior however you want. Example: Using the ClientIDMode property to control the IDs of Non-List Controls Let’s take a look at how we can use the new ClientIDMode property to control the rendering of “ID” elements within a page.  To help illustrate this we can create a simple page called “SingleControlExample.aspx” that is based on a master-page called “Site.Master”, and which has a single <asp:label> control with an ID of “Message” that is contained with an <asp:content> container control called “MainContent”: Within our code-behind we’ll then add some simple code like below to dynamically populate the Label’s Text property at runtime:   If we were running this application using ASP.NET 3.5 (or had our ASP.NET 4 application configured to run using 3.5 rendering or ClientIDMode=AutoID), then the generated markup sent down to the client would look like below: This ID is unique (which is good) – but rather ugly because of the “ct100” prefix (which is bad). Markup Rendering when using ASP.NET 4 and the ClientIDMode is set to “Predictable” With ASP.NET 4, server controls by default now render their ID’s using ClientIDMode=”Predictable”.  This helps ensure that ID values are still unique and don’t conflict on a page, but at the same time it makes the IDs less verbose and more predictable.  This means that the generated markup of our <asp:label> control above will by default now look like below with ASP.NET 4: Notice that the “ct100” prefix is gone. Because the “Message” control is embedded within a “MainContent” container control, by default it’s ID will be prefixed “MainContent_Message” to avoid potential collisions with other controls elsewhere within the page. Markup Rendering when using ASP.NET 4 and the ClientIDMode is set to “Static” Sometimes you don’t want your ID values to be nested hierarchically, though, and instead just want the ID rendered to be whatever value you set it as.  To enable this you can now use ClientIDMode=static, in which case the ID rendered will be exactly the same as what you set it on the server-side on your control.  This will cause the below markup to be rendered with ASP.NET 4: This option now gives you the ability to completely control the client ID values sent down by controls. Example: Using the ClientIDMode property to control the IDs of Data-Bound List Controls Data-bound list/grid controls have historically been the hardest to use/style when it comes to working with Web Form’s automatically generated IDs.  Let’s now take a look at a scenario where we’ll customize the ID’s rendered using a ListView control with ASP.NET 4. The code snippet below is an example of a ListView control that displays the contents of a data-bound collection — in this case, airports: We can then write code like below within our code-behind to dynamically databind a list of airports to the ListView above: At runtime this will then by default generate a <ul> list of airports like below.  Note that because the <ul> and <li> elements in the ListView’s template are not server controls, no IDs are rendered in our markup: Adding Client ID’s to Each Row Item Now, let’s say that we wanted to add client-ID’s to the output so that we can programmatically access each <li> via JavaScript.  We want these ID’s to be unique, predictable, and identifiable. A first approach would be to mark each <li> element within the template as being a server control (by giving it a runat=server attribute) and by giving each one an id of “airport”: By default ASP.NET 4 will now render clean IDs like below (no ctl001-like ids are rendered):   Using the ClientIDRowSuffix Property Our template above now generates unique ID’s for each <li> element – but if we are going to access them programmatically on the client using JavaScript we might want to instead have the ID’s contain the airport code within them to make them easier to reference.  The good news is that we can easily do this by taking advantage of the new ClientIDRowSuffix property on databound controls in ASP.NET 4 to better control the ID’s of our individual row elements. To do this, we’ll set the ClientIDRowSuffix property to “Code” on our ListView control.  This tells the ListView to use the databound “Code” property from our Airport class when generating the ID: And now instead of having row suffixes like “1”, “2”, and “3”, we’ll instead have the Airport.Code value embedded within the IDs (e.g: _CLE, _CAK, _PDX, etc): You can use this ClientIDRowSuffix approach with other databound controls like the GridView as well. It is useful anytime you want to program row elements on the client – and use clean/identified IDs to easily reference them from JavaScript code. Summary ASP.NET 4 enables you to generate much cleaner HTML markup from server controls and from within your Web Forms applications.  In today’s post I covered how you can now easily control the client ID values that are rendered by server controls.  In upcoming posts I’ll cover some of the other markup improvements that are also coming with the ASP.NET 4 release. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Coding With Windows Azure IaaS

  - by Hisham El-bereky

  This post will focus on some advanced programming topics concerned with IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) which provided as windows azure virtual machine (with its related resources like virtual disk and virtual network), you know that windows azure started as PaaS cloud platform but regarding to some business cases which need to have full control over their virtual machine, so windows azure directed toward providing IaaS. Sometimes you will need to manage your cloud IaaS through code may be for these reasons: Working on hyper-cloud system by providing bursting connector to windows azure virtual machines Providing multi-tenant system which consume windows azure virtual machine Automated process on your on-premises or cloud service which need to utilize some virtual resources We are going to implement the following basic operation using C# code: List images Create virtual machine List virtual machines Restart virtual machine Delete virtual machine Before going to implement the above operations we need to prepare client side and windows azure subscription to communicate correctly by providing management certificate (x.509 v3 certificates) which permit client access to resources in your Windows Azure subscription, whilst requests made using the Windows Azure Service Management REST API require authentication against a certificate that you provide to Windows Azure More info about setting management certificate located here. And to install .cer on other client machine you will need the .pfx file, or if not exist by exporting .cer as .pfx Note: You will need to install .net 4.5 on your machine to try the code So let start This post built on the post sent by Michael Washam "Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code", so I'm here to declare some points and to add new operation which is not exist in Michael's demo The basic C# class object used here as client to azure REST API for IaaS service is HttpClient (Provides a base class for sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses from a resource identified by a URI) this object must be initialized with the required data like certificate, headers and content if required. Also I'd like to refer here that the code is based on using Asynchronous programming with calls to azure which enhance the performance and gives us the ability to work with complex calls which depends on more than one sub-call to achieve some operation The following code explain how to get certificate and initializing HttpClient object with required data like headers and content HttpClient GetHttpClient() { X509Store certificateStore = null; X509Certificate2 certificate = null; try { certificateStore = new X509Store(StoreName.My, StoreLocation.CurrentUser); certificateStore.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly); string thumbprint = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CertThumbprint"]; var certificates = certificateStore.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindByThumbprint, thumbprint, false); if (certificates.Count > 0) { certificate = certificates[0]; } } finally { if (certificateStore != null) certificateStore.Close(); }   WebRequestHandler handler = new WebRequestHandler(); if (certificate!= null) { handler.ClientCertificates.Add(certificate); HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(handler); //And to set required headers lik x-ms-version httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("x-ms-version", "2012-03-01"); httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/xml")); return httpClient; } return null; }  Let us keep the object httpClient as reference object used to call windows azure REST API IaaS service. For each request operation we need to define: Request URI HTTP Method Headers Content body (1) List images The List OS Images operation retrieves a list of the OS images from the image repository Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/images] Replace <subscription-id> with your windows Id HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None.  C# Code List<String> imageList = new List<String>(); //replace _subscriptionid with your WA subscription String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/images", _subscriptionid);  HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);  if (responseStream != null) {      XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream);      var images = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "OSImage").Where(i => i.Element(ns + "OS").Value == "Windows");      foreach (var image in images)      {      string img = image.Element(ns + "Name").Value;      imageList.Add(img);      } } More information about the REST call (Request/Response) located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157191.aspx (2) Create Virtual Machine Creating virtual machine required service and deployment to be created first, so creating VM should be done through three steps incase hosted service and deployment is not created yet Create hosted service, a container for service deployments in Windows Azure. A subscription may have zero or more hosted services Create deployment, a service that is running on Windows Azure. A deployment may be running in either the staging or production deployment environment. It may be managed either by referencing its deployment ID, or by referencing the deployment environment in which it's running. Create virtual machine, the previous two steps info required here in this step I suggest here to use the same name for service, deployment and service to make it easy to manage virtual machines Note: A name for the hosted service that is unique within Windows Azure. This name is the DNS prefix name and can be used to access the hosted service. For example: http://ServiceName.cloudapp.net// 2.1 Create service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg441304.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service async public Task<String> NewAzureCloudService(String ServiceName, String Location, String AffinityGroup, String subscriptionid) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices", subscriptionid); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   System.Text.ASCIIEncoding ae = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); byte[] svcNameBytes = ae.GetBytes(ServiceName);   String locationEl = String.Empty; String locationVal = String.Empty;   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(Location) == false) { locationEl = "Location"; locationVal = Location; } else { locationEl = "AffinityGroup"; locationVal = AffinityGroup; }   XElement srcTree = new XElement("CreateHostedService", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName), new XElement("Label", Convert.ToBase64String(svcNameBytes)), new XElement(locationEl, locationVal) ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } 2.2 Create Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deploymentslots/<deployment-slot-name> <deployment-slot-name> with staging or production, depending on where you wish to deploy your service package <service-name> provided as input from the previous step HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460813.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service deployment async public Task<String> NewAzureVMDeployment(String ServiceName, String VMName, String VNETName, XDocument VMXML, XDocument DNSXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;     String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments", _subscriptionid, ServiceName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); XElement srcTree = new XElement("Deployment", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("Name", ServiceName), new XElement("DeploymentSlot", "Production"), new XElement("Label", ServiceName), new XElement("RoleList", null) );   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(VNETName) == false) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("VirtualNetworkName", VNETName)); }   if(DNSXML != null) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("DNS", new XElement("DNSServers", DNSXML))); }   XDocument deploymentXML = new XDocument(srcTree); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   deploymentXML.Descendants(ns + "RoleList").FirstOrDefault().Add(VMXML.Root);     String fixedXML = deploymentXML.ToString().Replace(" xmlns=\"\"", ""); HttpContent content = new StringContent(fixedXML); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); }   return requestID; } 2.3 Create Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<cloudservice-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles <cloudservice-name> and <deployment-name> are provided as input from the previous steps Http Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157186.aspx C# code async public Task<String> NewAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, XDocument VMXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName);   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpContent content = new StringContent(VMXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml"); HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } (3) List Virtual Machines To list virtual machine hosted on windows azure subscription we have to loop over all hosted services to get its hosted virtual machines To do that we need to execute the following operations: listing hosted services listing hosted service Virtual machine 3.1 Listing Hosted Services Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460781.aspx C# Code async private Task<List<XDocument>> GetAzureServices(String subscriptionid) { String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices ", subscriptionid); List<XDocument> services = new List<XDocument>();   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var svcs = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "HostedService"); foreach (XElement r in svcs) { XDocument vm = new XDocument(r); services.Add(vm); } }   return services; }  3.2 Listing Hosted Service Virtual Machines Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name> HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157193.aspx C# Code async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, String subscriptionid) { String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); XDocument vmXML = new XDocument();   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles/{3}", subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, VMName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri); if (responseStream != null) { vmXML = XDocument.Load(responseStream); }   return vmXML; }  So the final method which can be used to list all virtual machines is: async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVMs() { List<XDocument> services = await GetAzureServices(); XDocument vms = new XDocument(); vms.Add(new XElement("VirtualMachines")); ApplyNamespace(vms.Root, ns); foreach (var svc in services) { string ServiceName = svc.Root.Element(ns + "ServiceName").Value;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deploymentslots/{2}", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, "Production");   try { HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var roles = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "RoleInstance"); foreach (XElement r in roles) { XElement svcnameel = new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName); ApplyNamespace(svcnameel, ns); r.Add(svcnameel); // not part of the roleinstance vms.Root.Add(r); } } } catch (HttpRequestException http) { // no vms with cloud service } } return vms; }  (4) Restart Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name>/Operations HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body <RestartRoleOperation xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <OperationType>RestartRoleOperation</OperationType> </RestartRoleOperation>  More details about this http request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157197.aspx  C# Code async public Task<String> RebootVM(String ServiceName, String RoleName) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roleInstances/{3}/Operations", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, RoleName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   XElement srcTree = new XElement("RestartRoleOperation", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("OperationType", "RestartRoleOperation") ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; }  (5) Delete Virtual Machine You can delete your hosted virtual machine by deleting its deployment, but I prefer to delete its hosted service also, so you can easily manage your virtual machines from code 5.1 Delete Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/< subscription-id >/services/hostedservices/< service-name >/deployments/<Deployment-Name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteDeployment( string deploymentName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}", _subscriptionid, deploymentName, deploymentName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  5.2 Delete Hosted Service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteService(string serviceName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}", _subscriptionid, serviceName); Log.Info("Windows Azure URI (http DELETE verb): " + uri, typeof(VMManager)); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  And the following is the method which can used to delete both of deployment and service async public Task<string> DeleteVM(string vmName) { string responseString = string.Empty;   // as a convention here in this post, a unified name used for service, deployment and VM instance to make it easy to manage VMs HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await DeleteDeployment(vmName);   if (responseMessage != null) {   string requestID = responseMessage.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); OperationResult result = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); if (result.Status == OperationStatus.Succeeded) { responseString = result.Message; HttpResponseMessage sResponseMessage = await DeleteService(vmName); if (sResponseMessage != null) { OperationResult sResult = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); responseString += sResult.Message; } } else { responseString = result.Message; } } return responseString; }  Note: This article is subject to be updated Hisham  References Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code Windows Azure Service Management REST API Reference Introduction to the Azure Platform Representational state transfer Asynchronous Programming with Async and Await (C# and Visual Basic) HttpClient Class

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 3.5.0: Modules (mod, xm, it, etc..) supportcallisto: callisto 2.0.19: BUG FIX: Autorun.load() function in scripting now has sandboxed path (Thanks Mikey!) BUG FIX: UserObject.Name property now allows full 20 byte string replacements. FEATURE REQUEST: File.* script functions now allow file extensions.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guidance: v1 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization preview. As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has not been rev...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodeVidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader: Google Books Downloader 1.8ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...New ProjectsAres Backup: Ares Backup is a Backup software which can save bytediffs and provides several storage plugins.BackItUp: Backup-Tool für Visual Studio Projektebinbin domain: binbin domain Blexus Service Plattform: Some cool stuff about Wcf Services. - can communicate files - can communicate xaml objects (generate dynamically Gui) CardPlay - a Solitaire Framework for .Net: CardPlay is a C# framework for developing Solitaire card games. The solution includes a sample WPF client along with over 100 games.Cloud Files Upload: Windows application to script cloud file uploads.Code First API Library, Scaffolding & Guidance for Coded UI Tests: Code first Coded UI Tests for web apps. Library, Scaffolding and Guidance.CPEBook by FMUG & TPAY: CPEBook by MUG & TPAY Projet dot NET CPEBookDot Net Application String Resources Viewer: Dot Net Application String Resources ViewerFilter for SharePoint Web Settings Page: This solution show a simple way to integrate a filter box by using jquery, a global farm feature and a simple delegate control for AdditionalPageHead.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.GUIToolkit: C++ Windowless GUI，DirectUIHarvest Sports: Harvest SportsInfoPath Analyzer: InfoPath Analyzer makes InfoPath form development and troubleshooting much easier. You're easy to find the relationship between controls and data fields, search data fields or controls by name, edit InfoPath inner html directly.Kinectsignlanguage project: This project will help kinect be used for sign language to speech so that sign language people can be understood while talking to important people. LotteryVote: ????manager123: Trying out CodePlexMcRegister: McRegister is an asp.net mvc 3 razor website that enables you to register users on your minecraft server it works in conjunction with a minecraft mod called EasyAuth.MetroTipi: HelloTipi Sous l'interface Metro de Windows 8Microsoft AppFactory: AppFactory is a powerful data-driven build system for Windows Phone (and soon Windows 8) projects. Its purpose is to help developers start with template projects and turn them into suites of applications.MiniStock: MiniStock is an experimental reference architecture for scalable cloud-based architectures. Implemented in .net.online book shopping: online book shoppingScopa: Carousel Team Scopa per WP7 XNA testtom03092012tfs01: testtom03092012tfs01UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WHMCS Library: WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful business automation tool that puts you firmly in control. The WHMCS Library is a .NET wrapper for the WHMCS API. Written entirely in C# but really easy to port over to VB.NET. Coming from a VB.NET background we tried hard to make sure porting would be simple for VB.NET community members. ZoneEditService: Windows service to update ZoneEdit for dynamic dns.

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• Entity Framework version 1- Brief Synopsis and Tips &ndash; Part 1

  - by Rohit Gupta

  To Do Eager loading use Projections (for e.g. from c in context.Contacts select c, c.Addresses)  or use Include Query Builder Methods (Include(“Addresses”)) If there is multi-level hierarchical Data then to eager load all the relationships use Include Query Builder methods like customers.Include("Order.OrderDetail") to include Order and OrderDetail collections or use customers.Include("Order.OrderDetail.Location") to include all Order, OrderDetail and location collections with a single include statement =========================================================================== If the query uses Joins then Include() Query Builder method will be ignored, use Nested Queries instead If the query does projections then Include() Query Builder method will be ignored Use Address.ContactReference.Load() OR Contact.Addresses.Load() if you need to Deferred Load Specific Entity – This will result in extra round trips to the database ObjectQuery<> cannot return anonymous types... it will return a ObjectQuery<DBDataRecord> Only Include method can be added to Linq Query Methods Any Linq Query method can be added to Query Builder methods. If you need to append a Query Builder Method (other than Include) after a LINQ method  then cast the IQueryable<Contact> to ObjectQuery<Contact> and then append the Query Builder method to it =========================================================================== Query Builder methods are Select, Where, Include Methods which use Entity SQL as parameters e.g. "it.StartDate, it.EndDate" When Query Builder methods do projection then they return ObjectQuery<DBDataRecord>, thus to iterate over this collection use contact.Item[“Name”].ToString() When Linq To Entities methods do projection, they return collection of anonymous types --- thus the collection is strongly typed and supports Intellisense EF Object Context can track changes only on Entities, not on Anonymous types. If you use a Defining Query for a EntitySet then the EntitySet becomes readonly since a Defining Query is the same as a View (which is treated as a ReadOnly by default). However if you want to use this EntitySet for insert/update/deletes then we need to map stored procs (as created in the DB) to the insert/update/delete functions of the Entity in the Designer You can use either Execute method or ToList() method to bind data to datasources/bindingsources If you use the Execute Method then remember that you can traverse through the ObjectResult<> collection (returned by Execute) only ONCE. In WPF use ObservableCollection to bind to data sources , for keeping track of changes and letting EF send updates to the DB automatically. Use Extension Methods to add logic to Entities. For e.g. create extension methods for the EntityObject class. Create a method in ObjectContext Partial class and pass the entity as a parameter, then call this method as desired from within each entity. ================================================================ DefiningQueries and Stored Procedures: For Custom Entities, one can use DefiningQuery or Stored Procedures. Thus the Custom Entity Collection will be populated using the DefiningQuery (of the EntitySet) or the Sproc. If you use Sproc to populate the EntityCollection then the query execution is immediate and this execution happens on the Server side and any filters applied will be applied in the Client App. If we use a DefiningQuery then these queries are composable, meaning the filters (if applied to the entityset) will all be sent together as a single query to the DB, returning only filtered results. If the sproc returns results that cannot be mapped to existing entity, then we first create the Entity/EntitySet in the CSDL using Designer, then create a dummy Entity/EntitySet using XML in the SSDL. When creating a EntitySet in the SSDL for this dummy entity, use a TSQL that does not return any results, but does return the relevant columns e.g. select ContactID, FirstName, LastName from dbo.Contact where 1=2 Also insure that the Entity created in the SSDL uses the SQL DataTypes and not .NET DataTypes. If you are unable to open the EDMX file in the designer then note the Errors ... they will give precise info on what is wrong. The Thrid option is to simply create a Native Query in the SSDL using <Function Name="PaymentsforContact" IsComposable="false">   <CommandText>SELECT ActivityId, Activity AS ActivityName, ImagePath, Category FROM dbo.Activities </CommandText></FuncTion> Then map this Function to a existing Entity. This is a quick way to get a custom Entity which is regular Entity with renamed columns or additional columns (which are computed columns). The disadvantage to using this is that It will return all the rows from the Defining query and any filter (if defined) will be applied only at the Client side (after getting all the rows from DB). If you you DefiningQuery instead then we can use that as a Composable Query. The Fourth option (for mapping a READ stored proc results to a non-existent Entity) is to create a View in the Database which returns all the fields that the sproc also returns, then update the Model so that the model contains this View as a Entity. Then map the Read Sproc to this View Entity. The other option would be to simply create the View and remove the sproc altogether. ================================================================ To Execute a SProc that does not return a entity, use a EntityCommand to execute that proc. You cannot call a sproc FunctionImport that does not return Entities From Code, the only way is to use SSDL function calls using EntityCommand.  This changes with EntityFramework Version 4 where you can return Scalar Types, Complex Types, Entities or NonQuery ================================================================ UDF when created as a Function in SSDL, we need to set the Name & IsComposable properties for the Function element. IsComposable is always false for Sprocs, for UDF's set this to true. You cannot call UDF "Function" from within code since you cannot import a UDF Function into the CSDL Model (with Version 1 of EF). only stored procedures can be imported and then mapped to a entity ================================================================ Entity Framework requires properties that are involved in association mappings to be mapped in all of the function mappings for the entity (Insert, Update and Delete). Because Payment has an association to Reservation... hence we need to pass both the paymentId and reservationId to the Delete sproc even though just the paymentId is the PK on the Payment Table. ================================================================ When mapping insert, update and delete procs to a Entity, insure that all the three or none are mapped. Further if you have a base class and derived class in the CSDL, then you must map (ins, upd, del) sprocs to all parent and child entities in the inheritance relationship. Note that this limitation that base and derived entity methods must all must be mapped does not apply when you are mapping Read Stored Procedures.... ================================================================ You can write stored procedures SQL directly into the SSDL by creating a Function element in the SSDL and then once created, you can map this Function to a CSDL Entity directly in the designer during Function Import ================================================================ You can do Entity Splitting such that One Entity maps to multiple tables in the DB. For e.g. the Customer Entity currently derives from Contact Entity...in addition it also references the ContactPersonalInfo Entity. One can copy all properties from the ContactPersonalInfo Entity into the Customer Entity and then Delete the CustomerPersonalInfo entity, finall one needs to map the copied properties to the ContactPersonalInfo Table in Table Mapping (by adding another table (ContactPersonalInfo) to the Table Mapping... this is called Entity Splitting. Thus now when you insert a Customer record, it will automatically create SQL to insert records into the Contact, Customers and ContactPersonalInfo tables even though you have a Single Entity called Customer in the CSDL =================================================================== There is Table by Type Inheritance where another EDM Entity can derive from another EDM entity and absorb the inherted entities properties, for example in the Break Away Geek Adventures EDM, the Customer entity derives (inherits) from the Contact Entity and absorbs all the properties of Contact entity. Thus when you create a Customer Entity in Code and then call context.SaveChanges the Object Context will first create the TSQL to insert into the Contact Table followed by a TSQL to insert into the Customer table =================================================================== Then there is the Table per Hierarchy Inheritance..... where different types are created based on a condition (similar applying a condition to filter a Entity to contain filtered records)... the diference being that the filter condition populates a new Entity Type (derived from the base Entity). In the BreakAway sample the example is Lodging Entity which is a Abstract Entity and Then Resort and NonResort Entities which derive from Lodging Entity and records are filtered based on the value of the Resort Boolean field =================================================================== Then there is Table per Concrete Type Hierarchy where we create a concrete Entity for each table in the database. In the BreakAway sample there is a entity for the Reservation table and another Entity for the OldReservation table even though both the table contain the same number of fields. The OldReservation Entity can then inherit from the Reservation Entity and configure the OldReservation Entity to remove all Scalar Properties from the Entity (since it inherits the properties from Reservation and filters based on ReservationDate field) =================================================================== Complex Types (Complex Properties) Entities in EF can also contain Complex Properties (in addition to Scalar Properties) and these Complex Properties reference a ComplexType (not a EntityType) DropdownList, ListBox, RadioButtonList, CheckboxList, Bulletedlist are examples of List server controls (not data bound controls) these controls cannot use Complex properties during databinding, they need Scalar Properties. So if a Entity contains Complex properties and you need to bind those to list server controls then use projections to return Scalar properties and bind them to the control (the disadvantage is that projected collections are not tracked by the Object Context and hence cannot persist changes to the projected collections bound to controls) ObjectDataSource and EntityDataSource do account for Complex properties and one can bind entities with Complex Properties to Data Source controls and they will be tracked for changes... with no additional plumbing needed to persist changes to these collections bound to controls So DataBound controls like GridView, FormView need to use EntityDataSource or ObjectDataSource as a datasource for entities that contain Complex properties so that changes to the datasource done using the GridView can be persisted to the DB (enabling the controls for updates)....if you cannot use the EntityDataSource you need to flatten the ComplexType Properties using projections With EF Version 4 ComplexTypes are supported by the Designer and can add/remove/compose Complex Types directly using the Designer =================================================================== Conditional Mapping ... is like Table per Hierarchy Inheritance where Entities inherit from a base class and then used conditions to populate the EntitySet (called conditional Mapping). Conditional Mapping has limitations since you can only use =, is null and IS NOT NULL Conditions to do conditional mapping. If you need more operators for filtering/mapping conditionally then use QueryView(or possibly Defining Query) to create a readonly entity. QueryView are readonly by default... the EntitySet created by the QueryView is enabled for change tracking by the ObjectContext, however the ObjectContext cannot create insert/update/delete TSQL statements for these Entities when SaveChanges is called since it is QueryView. One way to get around this limitation is to map stored procedures for the insert/update/delete operations in the Designer. =================================================================== Difference between QueryView and Defining Query : QueryView is defined in the (MSL) Mapping File/section of the EDM XML, whereas the DefiningQuery is defined in the store schema (SSDL). QueryView is written using Entity SQL and is this database agnostic and can be used against any database/Data Layer. DefiningQuery is written using Database Lanaguage i.e. TSQL or PSQL thus you have more control =================================================================== Performance: Lazy loading is deferred loading done automatically. lazy loading is supported with EF version4 and is on by default. If you need to turn it off then use context.ContextOptions.lazyLoadingEnabled = false To improve Performance consider PreCompiling the ObjectQuery using the CompiledQuery.Compile method

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• Back to Basics: When does a .NET Assembly Dependency get loaded

  - by Rick Strahl

  When we work on typical day to day applications, it's easy to forget some of the core features of the .NET framework. For me personally it's been a long time since I've learned about some of the underlying CLR system level services even though I rely on them on a daily basis. I often think only about high level application constructs and/or high level framework functionality, but the low level stuff is often just taken for granted. Over the last week at DevConnections I had all sorts of low level discussions with other developers about the inner workings of this or that technology (especially in light of my Low Level ASP.NET Architecture talk and the Razor Hosting talk). One topic that came up a couple of times and ended up a point of confusion even amongst some seasoned developers (including some folks from Microsoft <snicker>) is when assemblies actually load into a .NET process. There are a number of different ways that assemblies are loaded in .NET. When you create a typical project assemblies usually come from: The Assembly reference list of the top level 'executable' project The Assembly references of referenced projects Dynamically loaded at runtime via AppDomain/Reflection loading In addition .NET automatically loads mscorlib (most of the System namespace) the boot process that hosts the .NET runtime in EXE apps, or some other kind of runtime hosting environment (runtime hosting in servers like IIS, SQL Server or COM Interop). In hosting environments the runtime host may also pre-load a bunch of assemblies on its own (for example the ASP.NET host requires all sorts of assemblies just to run itself, before ever routing into your user specific code). Assembly Loading The most obvious source of loaded assemblies is the top level application's assembly reference list. You can add assembly references to a top level application and those assembly references are then available to the application. In a nutshell, referenced assemblies are not immediately loaded - they are loaded on the fly as needed. So regardless of whether you have an assembly reference in a top level project, or a dependent assembly assemblies typically load on an as needed basis, unless explicitly loaded by user code. The same is true of dependent assemblies. To check this out I ran a simple test: I have a utility assembly Westwind.Utilities which is a general purpose library that can work in any type of project. Due to a couple of small requirements for encoding and a logging piece that allows logging Web content (dependency on HttpContext.Current) this utility library has a dependency on System.Web. Now System.Web is a pretty large assembly and generally you'd want to avoid adding it to a non-Web project if it can be helped. So I created a Console Application that loads my utility library: You can see that the top level Console app a reference to Westwind.Utilities and System.Data (beyond the core .NET libs). The Westwind.Utilities project on the other hand has quite a few dependencies including System.Web. I then add a main program that accesses only a simple utillity method in the Westwind.Utilities library that doesn't require any of the classes that access System.Web: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); } StringUtils.NewStringId() calls into Westwind.Utilities, but it doesn't rely on System.Web. Any guesses what the assembly list looks like when I stop the code on the ReadLine() command? I'll wait here while you think about it… … … So, when I stop on ReadLine() and then fire up Process Explorer and check the assembly list I get: We can see here that .NET has not actually loaded any of the dependencies of the Westwind.Utilities assembly. Also not loaded is the top level System.Data reference even though it's in the dependent assembly list of the top level project. Since this particular function I called only uses core System functionality (contained in mscorlib) there's in fact nothing else loaded beyond the main application and my Westwind.Utilities assembly that contains the method accessed. None of the dependencies of Westwind.Utilities loaded. If you were to open the assembly in a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy, you would however see all the compiled in dependencies. The referenced assemblies are in the dependency list and they are loadable, but they are not immediately loaded by the application. In other words the C# compiler and .NET linker are smart enough to figure out the dependencies based on the code that actually is referenced from your application and any dependencies cascading down into the dependencies from your top level application into the referenced assemblies. In the example above the usage requirement is pretty obvious since I'm only calling a single static method and then exiting the app, but in more complex applications these dependency relationships become very complicated - however it's all taken care of by the compiler and linker figuring out what types and members are actually referenced and including only those assemblies that are in fact referenced in your code or required by any of your dependencies. The good news here is: That if you are referencing an assembly that has a dependency on something like System.Web in a few places that are not actually accessed by any of your code or any dependent assembly code that you are calling, that assembly is never loaded into memory! Some Hosting Environments pre-load Assemblies The load behavior can vary however. In Console and desktop applications we have full control over assembly loading so we see the core CLR behavior. However other environments like ASP.NET for example will preload referenced assemblies explicitly as part of the startup process - primarily to minimize load conflicts. Specifically ASP.NET pre-loads all assemblies referenced in the assembly list and the /bin folder. So in Web applications it definitely pays to minimize your top level assemblies if they are not used. Understanding when Assemblies Load To clarify and see it actually happen what I described in the first example , let's look at a couple of other scenarios. To see assemblies loading at runtime in real time lets create a utility function to print out loaded assemblies to the console: public static void PrintAssemblies() { var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); foreach (var assembly in assemblies) { Console.WriteLine(assembly.GetName()); } } Now let's look at the first scenario where I have class method that references internally uses System.Web. In the first scenario lets add a method to my main program like this: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); PrintAssemblies(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } UpdateFromWebRequest() internally accesses HttpContext.Current to read some information of the ASP.NET Request object so it clearly needs a reference System.Web to work. In this first example, the method that holds the calling code is never called, but exists as a static method that can potentially be called externally at some point. What do you think will happen here with the assembly loading? Will System.Web load in this example? No - it doesn't. Because the WebLogEntry() method is never called by the mainline application (or anywhere else) System.Web is not loaded. .NET dynamically loads assemblies as code that needs it is called. No code references the WebLogEntry() method and so System.Web is never loaded. Next, let's add the call to this method, which should trigger System.Web to be loaded because a dependency exists. Let's change the code to: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.WriteLine("--- Before:"); PrintAssemblies(); WebLogEntry(); Console.WriteLine("--- After:"); PrintAssemblies(); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } Looking at the code now, when do you think System.Web will be loaded? Will the before list include it? Yup System.Web gets loaded, but only after it's actually referenced. In fact, just until before the call to UpdateFromRequest() System.Web is not loaded - it only loads when the method is actually called and requires the reference in the executing code. Moral of the Story So what have we learned - or maybe remembered again? Dependent Assembly References are not pre-loaded when an application starts (by default) Dependent Assemblies that are not referenced by executing code are never loaded Dependent Assemblies are just in time loaded when first referenced in code All of this is nothing new - .NET has always worked like this. But it's good to have a refresher now and then and go through the exercise of seeing it work in action. It's not one of those things we think about everyday, and as I found out last week, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked since it's been so long since I've learned about this. And apparently I'm not the only one as several other people I had discussions with in relation to loaded assemblies also didn't recall exactly what should happen or assumed incorrectly that just having a reference automatically loads the assembly. The moral of the story for me is: Trying at all costs to eliminate an assembly reference from a component is not quite as important as it's often made out to be. For example, the Westwind.Utilities module described above has a logging component, including a Web specific logging entry that supports pulling information from the active HTTP Context. Adding that feature requires a reference to System.Web. Should I worry about this in the scope of this library? Probably not, because if I don't use that one class of nearly a hundred, System.Web never gets pulled into the parent process. IOW, System.Web only loads when I use that specific feature and if I am, well I clearly have to be running in a Web environment anyway to use it realistically. The alternative would be considerably uglier: Pulling out the WebLogEntry class and sticking it into another assembly and breaking up the logging code. In this case - definitely not worth it. So, .NET definitely goes through some pretty nifty optimizations to ensure that it loads only what it needs and in most cases you can just rely on .NET to do the right thing. Sometimes though assembly loading can go wrong (especially when signed and versioned local assemblies are involved), but that's subject for a whole other post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Enterprise Process Maps: A Process Picture worth a Million Words

  - by raul.goycoolea

  p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }h1 { margin-top: 0.33in; margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(54, 95, 145); page-break-inside: avoid; }h1.western { font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14pt; }h1.cjk { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 14pt; }h1.ctl { font-size: 14pt; } Getting Started with Business Transformations A well-known proverb states that "A picture is worth a thousand words." In relation to Business Process Management (BPM), a credible analyst might have a few questions. What if the picture was taken from some particular angle, like directly overhead? What if it was taken from only an inch away or a mile away? What if the photographer did not focus the camera correctly? Does the value of the picture depend on who is looking at it? Enterprise Process Maps are analogous in this sense of relative value. Every BPM project (holistic BPM kick-off, enterprise system implementation, Service-oriented Architecture, business process transformation, corporate performance management, etc.) should be begin with a clear understanding of the business environment, from the biggest picture representations down to the lowest level required or desired for the particular project type, scope and objectives. The Enterprise Process Map serves as an entry point for the process architecture and is defined: the single highest level of process mapping for an organization. It is constructed and evaluated during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. (see Figure 1) Fig. 1: Business Process Management Lifecycle Many organizations view such maps as visual abstractions, constructed for the single purpose of process categorization. This, in turn, results in a lesser focus on the inherent intricacies of the Enterprise Process view, which are explored in the course of this paper. With the main focus of a large scale process documentation effort usually underlying an ERP or other system implementation, it is common for the work to be driven by the desire to "get to the details," and to the type of modeling that will derive near-term tangible results. For instance, a project in American Pharmaceutical Company X is driven by the Director of IT. With 120+ systems in place, and a lack of standardized processes across the United States, he and the VP of IT have decided to embark on a long-term ERP implementation. At the forethought of both are questions, such as: How does my application architecture map to the business? What are each application's functionalities, and where do the business processes utilize them? Where can we retire legacy systems? Well-developed BPM methodologies prescribe numerous model types to capture such information and allow for thorough analysis in these areas. Process to application maps, Event Driven Process Chains, etc. provide this level of detail and facilitate the completion of such project-specific questions. These models and such analysis are appropriately carried out at a relatively low level of process detail. (see figure 2) Fig. 2: The Level Concept, Generic Process HierarchySome of the questions remaining are ones of documentation longevity, the continuation of BPM practice in the organization, process governance and ownership, process transparency and clarity in business process objectives and strategy. The Level Concept in Brief Figure 2 shows a generic, four-level process hierarchy depicting the breakdown of a "Process Area" into progressively more detailed process classifications. The number of levels and the names of these levels are flexible, and can be fit to the standards of the organization's chosen terminology or any other chosen reference model that makes logical sense for both short and long term process description. It is at Level 1 (in this case the Process Area level), that the Enterprise Process Map is created. This map and its contained objects become the foundation for a top-down approach to subsequent mapping, object relationship development, and analysis of the organization's processes and its supporting infrastructure. Additionally, this picture serves as a communication device, at an executive level, describing the design of the business in its service to a customer. It seems, then, imperative that the process development effort, and this map, start off on the right foot. Figuring out just what that right foot is, however, is critical and trend-setting in an evolving organization. Key Considerations Enterprise Process Maps are usually not as living and breathing as other process maps. Just as it would be an extremely difficult task to change the foundation of the Sears Tower or a city plan for the entire city of Chicago, the Enterprise Process view of an organization usually remains unchanged once developed (unless, of course, an organization is at a stage where it is capable of true, high-level process innovation). Regardless, the Enterprise Process map is a key first step, and one that must be taken in a precise way. What makes this groundwork solid depends on not only the materials used to construct it (process areas), but also the layout plan and knowledge base of what will be built (the entire process architecture). It seems reasonable that care and consideration are required to create this critical high level map... but what are the important factors? Does the process modeler need to worry about how many process areas there are? About who is looking at it? Should he only use the color pink because it's his boss' favorite color? Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, these are all valid considerations that may just require a bit of structure. Below are Three Key Factors to consider when building an Enterprise Process Map: Company Strategic Focus Process Categorization: Customer is Core End-to-end versus Functional Processes Company Strategic Focus As mentioned above, the Enterprise Process Map is created during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. From Oracle Business Process Management methodology for business transformation, it is apparent that business processes exist for the purpose of achieving the strategic objectives of an organization. In a prescribed, top-down approach to process development, it must be ensured that each process fulfills its objectives, and in an aggregated manner, drives fulfillment of the strategic objectives of the company, whether for particular business segments or in a broader sense. This is a crucial point, as the strategic messages of the company must therefore resound in its process maps, in particular one that spans the processes of the complete business: the Enterprise Process Map. One simple example from Company X is shown below (see figure 3). Fig. 3: Company X Enterprise Process Map In reviewing Company X's Enterprise Process Map, one can immediately begin to understand the general strategic mindset of the organization. It shows that Company X is focused on its customers, defining 10 of its process areas belonging to customer-focused categories. Additionally, the organization views these end-customer-oriented process areas as part of customer-fulfilling value chains, while support process areas do not provide as much contiguous value. However, by including both support and strategic process categorizations, it becomes apparent that all processes are considered vital to the success of the customer-oriented focus processes. Below is an example from Company Y (see figure 4). Fig. 4: Company Y Enterprise Process Map Company Y, although also a customer-oriented company, sends a differently focused message with its depiction of the Enterprise Process Map. Along the top of the map is the company's product tree, overarching the process areas, which when executed deliver the products themselves. This indicates one strategic objective of excellence in product quality. Additionally, the view represents a less linear value chain, with strong overlaps of the various process areas. Marketing and quality management are seen as a key support processes, as they span the process lifecycle. Often, companies may incorporate graphics, logos and symbols representing customers and suppliers, and other objects to truly send the strategic message to the business. Other times, Enterprise Process Maps may show high level of responsibility to organizational units, or the application types that support the process areas. It is possible that hundreds of formats and focuses can be applied to an Enterprise Process Map. What is of vital importance, however, is which formats and focuses are chosen to truly represent the direction of the company, and serve as a driver for focusing the business on the strategic objectives set forth in that right. Process Categorization: Customer is Core In the previous two examples, processes were grouped using differing categories and techniques. Company X showed one support and three customer process categorizations using encompassing chevron objects; Customer Y achieved a less distinct categorization using a gradual color scheme. Either way, and in general, modeling of the process areas becomes even more valuable and easily understood within the context of business categorization, be it strategic or otherwise. But how one categorizes their processes is typically more complex than simply choosing object shapes and colors. Previously, it was stated that the ideal is a prescribed top-down approach to developing processes, to make certain linkages all the way back up to corporate strategy. But what about external influences? What forces push and pull corporate strategy? Industry maturity, product lifecycle, market profitability, competition, etc. can all drive the critical success factors of a particular business segment, or the company as a whole, in addition to previous corporate strategy. This may seem to be turning into a discussion of theory, but that is far from the case. In fact, in years of recent study and evolution of the way businesses operate, cross-industry and across the globe, one invariable has surfaced with such strength to make it undeniable in the game plan of any strategy fit for survival. That constant is the customer. Many of a company's critical success factors, in any business segment, relate to the customer: customer retention, satisfaction, loyalty, etc. Businesses serve customers, and so do a business's processes, mapped or unmapped. The most effective way to categorize processes is in a manner that visualizes convergence to what is core for a company. It is the value chain, beginning with the customer in mind, and ending with the fulfillment of that customer, that becomes the core or the centerpiece of the Enterprise Process Map. (See figure 5) Fig. 5: Company Z Enterprise Process Map Company Z has what may be viewed as several different perspectives or "cuts" baked into their Enterprise Process Map. It has divided its processes into three main categories (top, middle, and bottom) of Management Processes, the Core Value Chain and Supporting Processes. The Core category begins with Corporate Marketing (which contains the activities of beginning to engage customers) and ends with Customer Service Management. Within the value chain, this company has divided into the focus areas of their two primary business lines, Foods and Beverages. Does this mean that areas, such as Strategy, Information Management or Project Management are not as important as those in the Core category? No! In some cases, though, depending on the organization's understanding of high-level BPM concepts, use of category names, such as "Core," "Management" or "Support," can be a touchy subject. What is important to understand, is that no matter the nomenclature chosen, the Core processes are those that drive directly to customer value, Support processes are those which make the Core processes possible to execute, and Management Processes are those which steer and influence the Core. Some common terms for these three basic categorizations are Core, Customer Fulfillment, Customer Relationship Management, Governing, Controlling, Enabling, Support, etc. End-to-end versus Functional Processes Every high and low level of process: function, task, activity, process/work step (whatever an organization calls it), should add value to the flow of business in an organization. Suppose that within the process "Deliver package," there is a documented task titled "Stop for ice cream." It doesn't take a process expert to deduce the room for improvement. Though stopping for ice cream may create gain for the one person performing it, it likely benefits neither the organization nor, more importantly, the customer. In most cases, "Stop for ice cream" wouldn't make it past the first pass of To-Be process development. What would make the cut, however, would be a flow of tasks that, each having their own value add, build up to greater and greater levels of process objective. In this case, those tasks would combine to achieve a status of "package delivered." Figure 3 shows a simple example: Just as the package can only be delivered (outcome of the process) without first being retrieved, loaded, and the travel destination reached (outcomes of the process steps), some higher level of process "Play Practical Joke" (e.g., main process or process area) cannot be completed until a package is delivered. It seems that isolated or functionally separated processes, such as "Deliver Package" (shown in Figure 6), are necessary, but are always part of a bigger value chain. Each of these individual processes must be analyzed within the context of that value chain in order to ensure successful end-to-end process performance. For example, this company's "Create Joke Package" process could be operating flawlessly and efficiently, but if a joke is never developed, it cannot be created, so the end-to-end process breaks. Fig. 6: End to End Process Construction That being recognized, it is clear that processes must be viewed as end-to-end, customer-to-customer, and in the context of company strategy. But as can also be seen from the previous example, these vital end-to-end processes cannot be built without the functionally oriented building blocks. Without one, the other cannot be had, or at least not in a complete and organized fashion. As it turns out, but not discussed in depth here, the process modeling effort, BPM organizational development, and comprehensive coverage cannot be fully realized without a semi-functional, process-oriented approach. Then, an Enterprise Process Map should be concerned with both views, the building blocks, and access points to the business-critical end-to-end processes, which they construct. Without the functional building blocks, all streams of work needed for any business transformation would be lost mess of process disorganization. End-to-end views are essential for utilization in optimization in context, understanding customer impacts, base-lining all project phases and aligning objectives. Including both views on an Enterprise Process Map allows management to understand the functional orientation of the company's processes, while still providing access to end-to-end processes, which are most valuable to them. (See figures 7 and 8). Fig. 7: Simplified Enterprise Process Map with end-to-end Access Point The above examples show two unique ways to achieve a successful Enterprise Process Map. The first example is a simple map that shows a high level set of process areas and a separate section with the end-to-end processes of concern for the organization. This particular map is filtered to show just one vital end-to-end process for a project-specific focus. Fig. 8: Detailed Enterprise Process Map showing connected Functional Processes The second example shows a more complex arrangement and categorization of functional processes (the names of each process area has been removed). The end-to-end perspective is achieved at this level through the connections (interfaces at lower levels) between these functional process areas. An important point to note is that the organization of these two views of the Enterprise Process Map is dependent, in large part, on the orientation of its audience, and the complexity of the landscape at the highest level. If both are not apparent, the Enterprise Process Map is missing an opportunity to serve as a holistic, high-level view. Conclusion In the world of BPM, and specifically regarding Enterprise Process Maps, a picture can be worth as many words as the thought and effort that is put into it. Enterprise Process Maps alone cannot change an organization, but they serve more purposes than initially meet the eye, and therefore must be designed in a way that enables a BPM mindset, business process understanding and business transformation efforts. Every Enterprise Process Map will and should be different when looking across organizations. Its design will be driven by company strategy, a level of customer focus, and functional versus end-to-end orientations. This high-level description of the considerations of the Enterprise Process Maps is not a prescriptive "how to" guide. However, a company attempting to create one may not have the practical BPM experience to truly explore its options or impacts to the coming work of business process transformation. The biggest takeaway is that process modeling, at all levels, is a science and an art, and art is open to interpretation. It is critical that the modeler of the highest level of process mapping be a cognoscente of the message he is delivering and the factors at hand. Without sufficient focus on the design of the Enterprise Process Map, an entire BPM effort may suffer. For additional information please check: Oracle Business Process Management.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 30, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 30, 2010New ProjectsCloudMail: Want to send email from Azure? Cloud Mail is designed to provide a small, effective and reliable solution for sending email from the Azure platfor...CommunityServer Extensions: Here you can find some CommunityServer extensions and bug fixes. The main goal is to provide you with the ability to correct some common problems...ContactSync: ContactSync is a set of .NET libraries, UI controls and applications for managing and synchronizing contact information. It includes managed wrapp...Dng portal: DNG Portal base on asp.net MVCDotNetNuke Referral Tracker: The Referral Tracker module allows you to save URL variables, the referring page, and the previous page into a session variable or cookie. Then, th...Foursquare for Windows Phone 7: Foursquare for Windows Phone 7.GEGetDocConfig: SharePoint utility to list information concerning document libraries in one or more sites. Displays Size, Validity, Folder, Parent, Author, Minor a...Google Maps API for .NET: Fast and lightweight client libraries for Google Maps API.kbcchina: kbc chinaLoad Test User Mock Toolkits: 用途 This project is a framework mocking the user actvities with VSTS Load Test tool to faster the test script development. 此项目包括一套模拟用户行为的通用框架，可以简化...Resonance: Resonance is a system to train neural networks, it allows to automate the train of a neural network, distributing the calculation on multiple machi...SharePoint Company Directory / Active Directory Self Service System: This is a very simple system which was designed for a Bank to allow users to update their contact information within SharePoint . Then this info ca...SmartShelf: Manage files and folders on Windows and Windows Live.sysFix: sysFix is a tool for system administrators to easily manage and fix common system errors.xnaWebcam: Webcam usage in XNA GameStudio 3.1New ReleasesAll-In-One Code Framework: All-In-One Code Framework 2010-03-29: Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date list, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. Samples for Azure Name Des...ARSoft.Tools.Net - C# DNS and SPF Library: 1.3.0: Added support for creating own dns server implementations. Added full IPv6 support to dns client Some performance optimizations to dns clientArtefact Animator: Artefact Animator - Silverlight 3 and WPF .Net 3.5: Artefact Animator Version 2.0.4.1 Silverlight 3 ArtefactSL.dll for both Debug and Release. WPF 3.5 Artefact.dll for both Debug and Release.BatterySaver: Version 0.4: Added support for a system tray icon for controlling the application and switching profiles (Issue)BizTalk Server 2006 Orchestration Profiler: Profiler v1.2: This is a point release of the profiler and has been updatd to work on 64 bit systems. No other new functionality is available. To use this ensure...CloudMail: CloudMail_0.5_beta: Initial public release. For documentation see http://cloudmail.codeplex.com/documentation.CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.44: See Source Code tab for recent change history.Dawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 2: Fix little bugs and improve usablity by changing the way it finds the good audio.DotNetNuke Referral Tracker: 2.0.1: First releaseFoursquare for Windows Phone 7: Foursquare 2010.03.29.02: Foursquare 2010.03.29.02GEGetDocConfig: GEGETDOCCONFIG.ZIP: Installation: Simply download the zip file and extract the executable into its own directory on the SharePoint front end server Note: There will b...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.2 Beta: Added: Binary search Unmanaged wrappers, interop and pinvoke functions and structures Windows service wrapper Video mode helpers and more.....Google Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9 alpha release: First version, contains Core library featuring: Geocoding API Elevation API Static Maps APIGoogle Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9.1 alpha release: Fixed dependencies issues; added NUnit binaries and updated Newtonsoft Json library.Google Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9.2a alpha release: Recommended update.Code clean-up; did refactoring and major interface changes in Static Maps because it wasn't aligned to the 'simplest and least r...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.0.0: v3.2.0.0 Release Change Log: More AJAX to reduce page refreshes (Deleting, New Folder, Rename moved from browser popups) Only 3 Browser Popups (1...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 1.1: The dll library to include in your project. The dll is signed for GAC support. Compiled with .Net 3.5, Dependencies on System.Drawing.dll and Docu...Latent Semantic Analysis: Latest sources: Just the latest sources. Just click the changeset. Please note that in order to compile this code you need to download some additional code. You ...Load Test User Mock Toolkits: Load Test User Mock Toolkits Help Doc: Samples and The framework introduction. 包括框架介绍和典型示例Load Test User Mock Toolkits: Open.LoadTest.User.Mock.Toolkits 1.0 alpha: 此版本为非正式版本，未对性能方面进行优化。而且框架正在重构调整中。Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor: Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor 1.2.4: This edition supports: Newer and older editions of Birdstep Technology's EasyConnect HUAWEI Mobile Partner MWConn User defined location for s...Nito.KitchenSink: Version 3: Added Encoding.GetString(Stream, bool) for converting an entire stream into a string. Changed Stream.CopyTo to allow the stream to be closed/abor...Numina Application Framework: Numina.Framework Core 49088: Fixed Bug with Headers introduced in rev. 48249 with change to HttpUtil class. admin/User_Pending.aspx page users weren't able to be deleted Do...OAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.6.4.0): Fix for 6390 Make it possible to configure time out value.Quack Quack Says the Duck: Quack Quack Says The Duck 1.1.0.0: This new release pushes some work onto a background thread clearing issues with multiple screen clicks while the UI was blocking.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: RED v0.8.4: - Added Edit feature - Moved season & episode int to string into a separate function - Fixed some more minor issues - Added 'Previous' feature - F...RoTwee: RoTwee (8.1.3.0): Update OAuthLib to 1.6.4.0SharePoint Company Directory / Active Directory Self Service System: SharePoint Company Directory with AD Import: This is a very simple system which was designed for a Bank to allow users to update their contact information within SharePoint . Then this info ca...Simply Classified: v1.00.12: Comsite Simply Classified v1.00.12 - STABLE - Tested against DotNetNuke v4.9.5 and v5.2.x Bug Fixes/Enhancements: BUGFIX: Resolved issues with 1...sPATCH: sPatch v0.9: Completely Recoded with wxWidgetsFollowing Content is different to .NET Patcher no requirement for .NET Framework Manual patch was removed to av...SSAS Profiler Trace Scheduler: SSAS Profiler Trace Scheduler: AS Profiler Scheduler is a tool that will enable Scheduling of SQL AS Tracing using predefined Profiler Templates. For tracking different issues th...sysFix: sysfix build v5: A stable beta release, please refer to home page for further details.VOB2MKV: vob2mkv-1.0.4: This is a feature update of the VOB2MKV utility. The command-line parsing in the VOB2MKV application has been greatly improved. You can now get f...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.1: xnaWebcam 0.1 Program Version 0.1: -Show Webcam Device -Draw.String WebcamTexture.VideoDevice.Name.ToString() Instructions: 1. Plug-in your Webca...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.2: xnaWebcam 0.2 Version 0.2: -setResolution -Keys.Escape: this.Exit() << Exit the Game/Application. --- Version 0.1: -Show Webcam Device -Draw.Strin...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.21: xnaWebcam 0.2 Version 0.21: -Fix: Don't quit game/application after closing mainGameWindow -Fix: Text Position; Window.X, Window.Y --- Version 0.2...Xploit Game Engine: Xploit_1_1 Release: Added Features Multiple Mesh instancing.Xploit Game Engine: Xploit_1_1 Source Code: Updates Create multiple instances of the same Meshe using XModelMesh and XSkinnedMesh.Yakiimo3D: DX11 DirectCompute Buddhabrot Source and Binary: DX11 DirectCompute Buddhabrot/Nebulabrot source and binary.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)LiveUpload to FacebookASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkMicrosoft Biology FoundationFarseer Physics EngineN2 CMSNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise Library

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• Revisiting ANTS Performance Profiler 7.4

  - by James Michael Hare

  Last year, I did a small review on the ANTS Performance Profiler 6.3, now that it’s a year later and a major version number higher, I thought I’d revisit the review and revise my last post. This post will take the same examples as the original post and update them to show what’s new in version 7.4 of the profiler. Background A performance profiler’s main job is to keep track of how much time is typically spent in each unit of code. This helps when we have a program that is not running at the performance we expect, and we want to know where the program is experiencing issues. There are many profilers out there of varying capabilities. Red Gate’s typically seem to be the very easy to “jump in” and get started with very little training required. So let’s dig into the Performance Profiler. I’ve constructed a very crude program with some obvious inefficiencies. It’s a simple program that generates random order numbers (or really could be any unique identifier), adds it to a list, sorts the list, then finds the max and min number in the list. Ignore the fact it’s very contrived and obviously inefficient, we just want to use it as an example to show off the tool: 1: // our test program 2: public static class Program 3: { 4: // the number of iterations to perform 5: private static int _iterations = 1000000; 6: 7: // The main method that controls it all 8: public static void Main() 9: { 10: var list = new List<string>(); 11: 12: for (int i = 0; i < _iterations; i++) 13: { 14: var x = GetNextId(); 15: 16: AddToList(list, x); 17: 18: var highLow = GetHighLow(list); 19: 20: if ((i % 1000) == 0) 21: { 22: Console.WriteLine("{0} - High: {1}, Low: {2}", i, highLow.Item1, highLow.Item2); 23: Console.Out.Flush(); 24: } 25: } 26: } 27: 28: // gets the next order id to process (random for us) 29: public static string GetNextId() 30: { 31: var random = new Random(); 32: var num = random.Next(1000000, 9999999); 33: return num.ToString(); 34: } 35: 36: // add it to our list - very inefficiently! 37: public static void AddToList(List<string> list, string item) 38: { 39: list.Add(item); 40: list.Sort(); 41: } 42: 43: // get high and low of order id range - very inefficiently! 44: public static Tuple<int,int> GetHighLow(List<string> list) 45: { 46: return Tuple.Create(list.Max(s => Convert.ToInt32(s)), list.Min(s => Convert.ToInt32(s))); 47: } 48: } So let’s run it through the profiler and see what happens! Visual Studio Integration First, let’s look at how the ANTS profilers integrate with Visual Studio’s menu system. Once you install the ANTS profilers, you will get an ANTS menu item with several options: Notice that you can either Profile Performance or Launch ANTS Performance Profiler. These sound similar but achieve two slightly different actions: Profile Performance: this immediately launches the profiler with all defaults selected to profile the active project in Visual Studio. Launch ANTS Performance Profiler: this launches the profiler much the same way as starting it from the Start Menu. The profiler will pre-populate the application and path information, but allow you to change the settings before beginning the profile run. So really, the main difference is that Profile Performance immediately begins profiling with the default selections, where Launch ANTS Performance Profiler allows you to change the defaults and attach to an already-running application. Let’s Fire it Up! So when you fire up ANTS either via Start Menu or Launch ANTS Performance Profiler menu in Visual Studio, you are presented with a very simple dialog to get you started: Notice you can choose from many different options for application type. You can profile executables, services, web applications, or just attach to a running process. In fact, in version 7.4 we see two new options added: ASP.NET Web Application (IIS Express) SharePoint web application (IIS) So this gives us an additional way to profile ASP.NET applications and the ability to profile SharePoint applications as well. You can also choose your level of detail in the Profiling Mode drop down. If you choose Line-Level and method-level timings detail, you will get a lot more detail on the method durations, but this will also slow down profiling somewhat. If you really need the profiler to be as unintrusive as possible, you can change it to Sample method-level timings. This is performing very light profiling, where basically the profiler collects timings of a method by examining the call-stack at given intervals. Which method you choose depends a lot on how much detail you need to find the issue and how sensitive your program issues are to timing. So for our example, let’s just go with the line and method timing detail. So, we check that all the options are correct (if you launch from VS2010, the executable and path are filled in already), and fire it up by clicking the [Start Profiling] button. Profiling the Application Once you start profiling the application, you will see a real-time graph of CPU usage that will indicate how much your application is using the CPU(s) on your system. During this time, you can select segments of the graph and bookmark them, giving them mnemonic names. This can be useful if you want to compare performance in one part of the run to another part of the run. Notice that once you select a block, it will give you the call tree breakdown for that selection only, and the relative performance of those calls. Once you feel you have collected enough information, you can click [Stop Profiling] to stop the application run and information collection and begin a more thorough analysis. Analyzing Method Timings So now that we’ve halted the run, we can look around the GUI and see what we can see. By default, the times are shown in terms of percentage of time of the total run of the application, though you can change it in the View menu item to milliseconds, ticks, or seconds as well. This won’t affect the percentages of methods, it only affects what units the times are shown. Notice also that the major hotspot seems to be in a method without source, ANTS Profiler will filter these out by default, but you can right-click on the line and remove the filter to see more detail. This proves especially handy when a bottleneck is due to a method in the BCL. So now that we’ve removed the filter, we see a bit more detail: In addition, ANTS Performance Profiler gives you the ability to decompile the methods without source so that you can dive even deeper, though typically this isn’t necessary for our purposes. When looking at timings, there are generally two types of timings for each method call: Time: This is the time spent ONLY in this method, not including calls this method makes to other methods. Time With Children: This is the total of time spent in both this method AND including calls this method makes to other methods. In other words, the Time tells you how much work is being done exclusively in this method, and the Time With Children tells you how much work is being done inclusively in this method and everything it calls. You can also choose to display the methods in a tree or in a grid. The tree view is the default and it shows the method calls arranged in terms of the tree representing all method calls and the parent method that called them, etc. This is useful for when you find a hot-spot method, you can see who is calling it to determine if the problem is the method itself, or if it is being called too many times. The grid method represents each method only once with its totals and is useful for quickly seeing what method is the trouble spot. In addition, you can choose to display Methods with source which are generally the methods you wrote (as opposed to native or BCL code), or Any Method which shows not only your methods, but also native calls, JIT overhead, synchronization waits, etc. So these are just two ways of viewing the same data, and you’re free to choose the organization that best suits what information you are after. Analyzing Method Source If we look at the timings above, we see that our AddToList() method (and in particular, it’s call to the List<T>.Sort() method in the BCL) is the hot-spot in this analysis. If ANTS sees a method that is consuming the most time, it will flag it as a hot-spot to help call out potential areas of concern. This doesn’t mean the other statistics aren’t meaningful, but that the hot-spot is most likely going to be your biggest bang-for-the-buck to concentrate on. So let’s select the AddToList() method, and see what it shows in the source window below: Notice the source breakout in the bottom pane when you select a method (from either tree or grid view). This shows you the timings in this method per line of code. This gives you a major indicator of where the trouble-spot in this method is. So in this case, we see that performing a Sort() on the List<T> after every Add() is killing our performance! Of course, this was a very contrived, duh moment, but you’d be surprised how many performance issues become duh moments. Note that this one line is taking up 86% of the execution time of this application! If we eliminate this bottleneck, we should see drastic improvement in the performance. So to fix this, if we still wanted to maintain the List<T> we’d have many options, including: delay Sort() until after all Add() methods, using a SortedSet, SortedList, or SortedDictionary depending on which is most appropriate, or forgoing the sorting all together and using a Dictionary. Rinse, Repeat! So let’s just change all instances of List<string> to SortedSet<string> and run this again through the profiler: Now we see the AddToList() method is no longer our hot-spot, but now the Max() and Min() calls are! This is good because we’ve eliminated one hot-spot and now we can try to correct this one as well. As before, we can then optimize this part of the code (possibly by taking advantage of the fact the list is now sorted and returning the first and last elements). We can then rinse and repeat this process until we have eliminated as many bottlenecks as possible. Calls by Web Request Another feature that was added recently is the ability to view .NET methods grouped by the HTTP requests that caused them to run. This can be helpful in determining which pages, web services, etc. are causing hot spots in your web applications. Summary If you like the other ANTS tools, you’ll like the ANTS Performance Profiler as well. It is extremely easy to use with very little product knowledge required to get up and running. There are profilers built into the higher product lines of Visual Studio, of course, which are also powerful and easy to use. But for quickly jumping in and finding hot spots rapidly, Red Gate’s Performance Profiler 7.4 is an excellent choice. 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• Entity Framework v1 &hellip; Brief Synopsis and Tips &ndash; Part 2

  - by Rohit Gupta

  Using Entity Framework with ASMX Web sErvices and WCF Web Service: If you use ASMX WebService to expose Entity objects from Entity Framework... then the ASMX Webservice does not  include object graphs, one work around is to use Facade pattern or to use WCF Service. The other important aspect of using ASMX Web Services along with Entity Framework is that the ASMX Client is not aware of the existence of EF v1 since the client solely deals with C# objects (not EntityObjects or ObjectContext). Since the client is not aware of the ObjectContext hence the client cannot participate in change tracking since the client only receives the Current Values and not the Orginal values when the service sends the the Entity objects to the client. Thus there are 2 drawbacks to using EntityFramework with ASMX Web Service: 1. Object state is not maintained... so to overcome this limitation we need insert/update single entity at a time and retrieve the original values for the entity being updated on the server/service end before calling Save Changes. 2. ASMX does not maintain object graphs... i.e. Customer.Reservations or Customer.Reservations.Trip relationships are not maintained. Thus you need to send these relationships separately from service to client. WCF Web Service overcomes the object graph limitation of ASMX Web Service, but we need to insure that we are populating all the non-null scalar properties of all the objects in the object graph before calling Update. WCF Web service still cannot overcome the second limitation of tracking changes to entities at the client end. Also note that the "Customer" class in the Client is very different from the "Customer" class in the Entity Framework Model Entities. They are incompatible with each other hence we cannot cast one to the other. However the .NET Framework translates the client "Customer" Entity to the EFv1 Model "customer" Entity once the entity is serialzed back on the ASMX server end. If you need change tracking enabled on the client then we need to use WCF Data Services which is available with VS 2010. ====================================================================================================== In WCF when adding an object that has relationships, the framework assumes that every object in the object graph needs to be added to store. for e.g. in a Customer.Reservations.Trip object graph, when a Customer Entity is added to the store, the EFv1 assumes that it needs to a add a Reservations collection and also Trips for each Reservation. Thus if we need to use existing Trips for reservations then we need to insure that we null out the Trip object reference from Reservations and set the TripReference to the EntityKey of the desired Trip instead. ====================================================================================================== Understanding Relationships and Associations in EFv1 The Golden Rule of EF is that it does not load entities/relationships unless you ask it to explicitly do so. However there is 1 exception to this rule. This exception happens when you attach/detach entities from the ObjectContext. If you detach an Entity in a ObjectGraph from the ObjectContext, then the ObjectContext removes the ObjectStateEntry for this Entity and all the relationship Objects associated with this Entity. For e.g. in a Customer.Order.OrderDetails if the Customer Entity is detached from the ObjectContext then you cannot traverse to the Order and OrderDetails Entities (that still exist in the ObjectContext) from the Customer Entity(which does not exist in the Object Context) Conversely, if you JOIN a entity that is not in the ObjectContext with a Entity that is in the ObjContext then the First Entity will automatically be added to the ObjContext since relationships for the 2 Entities need to exist in the ObjContext. ========================================================= You cannot attach an EntityCollection to an entity through its navigation property for e.g. you cannot code myContact.Addresses = myAddressEntityCollection ========================================================== Cascade Deletes in EDM: The Designer does not support specifying cascase deletes for a Entity. To enable cascasde deletes on a Entity in EDM use the Association definition in CSDL for the Entity. for e.g. SalesOrderDetail (SOD) has a Foreign Key relationship with SalesOrderHeader (SalesOrderHeader 1 : SalesOrderDetail *) if you specify a cascade Delete on SalesOrderHeader Entity then calling deleteObject on SalesOrderHeader (SOH) Entity will send delete commands for SOH record and all the SOD records that reference the SOH record. ========================================================== As a good design practise, if you use Cascade Deletes insure that Cascade delete facet is used both in the EDM as well as in the database. Even though it is not absolutely mandatory to have Cascade deletes on both Database and EDM (since you can see that just the Cascade delete spec on the SOH Entity in EDM will insure that SOH record and all related SOD records will be deleted from the database ... even though you dont have cascade delete configured in the database in the SOD table) ============================================================== Maintaining relationships in Code When Setting a Navigation property of a Entity (for e.g. setting the Contact Navigation property of Address Entity) the following rules apply : If both objects are detached, no relationship object will be created. You are simply setting a property the CLR way. If both objects are attached, a relationship object will be created. If only one of the objects is attached, the other will become attached and a relationship object will be created. If that detached object is new, when it is attached to the context its EntityState will be Added. One important rule to remember regarding synchronizing the EntityReference.Value and EntityReference.EntityKey properties is that when attaching an Entity which has a EntityReference (e.g. Address Entity with ContactReference) the Value property will take precedence and if the Value and EntityKey are out of sync, the EntityKey will be updated to match the Value. ====================================================== If you call .Load() method on a detached Entity then the .Load() operation will throw an exception. There is one exception to this rule. If you load entities using MergeOption.NoTracking, you will be able to call .Load() on such entities since these Entities are accessible by the ObjectContext. So the bottomline is that we need Objectontext to be able to call .Load() method to do deffered loading on EntityReference or EntityCollection. Another rule to remember is that you cannot call .Load() on entities that have a EntityState.Added State since the ObjectContext uses the EntityKey of the Primary (Parent) Entity when loading the related (Child) Entity (and not the EntityKey of the child (even if the EntityKey of the child is present before calling .Load()) ====================================================== You can use ObjContext.Add() to add a entity to the ObjContext and set the EntityState of the new Entity to EntityState.Added. here no relationships are added/updated. You can also use EntityCollection.Add() method to add an entity to another entity's related EntityCollection for e.g. contact has a Addresses EntityCollection so to add a new address use contact.Addresses.Add(newAddress) to add a new address to the Addresses EntityCollection. Note that if the entity does not already exist in the ObjectContext then calling contact.Addresses.Add(myAddress) will cause a new Address Entity to be added to the ObjContext with EntityState.Added and it will also add a RelationshipEntry (a relationship object) with EntityState.Added which connects the Contact (contact) with the new address newAddress. Note that if the entity already exists in the Objectcontext (being part theOtherContact.Addresses Collection), then calling contact.Addresses.Add(existingAddress) will add 2 RelationshipEntry objects to the ObjectStateEntry Collection, one with EntityState.Deleted and the other with EntityState.Added. This implies that the existingAddress Entity is removed from the theOtherContact.Addresses Collection and Added to the contact.Addresses Collection..effectively reassigning the address entity from the theOtherContact to "contact". This is called moving an existing entity to a new object graph. ====================================================== You usually use ObjectContext.Attach() and EntityCollection.Attach() methods usually when you need to reconstruct the ObjectGraph after deserializing the objects as received from a ASMX Web Service Client. Attach is usually used to connect existing Entities in the ObjectContext. When EntityCollection.Attach() is called the EntityState of the RelationshipEntry (the relationship object) remains as EntityState.unchanged whereas when EntityCollection.Add() method is called the EntityState of the relationship object changes to EntityState.Added or EntityState.Deleted as the situation demands. ========================================================= LINQ To Entities Tips: Select Many does Inner Join by default.   for e.g. from c in Contact from a in c.Address select c ... this will do a Inner Join between the Contacts and Addresses Table and return only those Contacts that have a Address. ======================================================== Group Joins Do LEFT Join by default. e.g. from a in Address join c in Contact ON a.Contact.ContactID == c.ContactID Into g WHERE a.CountryRegion == "US" select g; This query will do a left join on the Contact table and return contacts that have a address in "US" region The following query : from c in Contact join a in Address.Where(a1 => a1.CountryRegion == "US") on c.ContactID  equals a.Contact.ContactID into addresses select new {c, addresses} will do a left join on the Address table and return All Contacts. In these Contacts only those will have its Address EntityCollection Populated which have a Address in the "US" region, the other contacts will have 0 Addresses in the Address collection (even if addresses for those contacts exist in the database but are in a different region) ======================================================== Linq to Entities does not support DefaultIfEmpty().... instead use .Include("Address") Query Builder method to do a Left JOIN or use Group Joins if you need more control like Filtering on the Address EntityCollection of Contact Entity =================================================================== Use CreateSourceQuery() on the EntityReference or EntityCollection if you need to add filters during deferred loading of Entities (Deferred loading in EFv1 happens when you call Load() method on the EntityReference or EntityCollection. for e.g. var cust=context.Contacts.OfType<Customer>().First(); var sq = cust.Reservations.CreateSourceQuery().Where(r => r.ReservationDate > new DateTime(2008,1,1)); cust.Reservations.Attach(sq); This populates only those reservations that are older than Jan 1 2008. This is the only way (in EFv1) to Attach a Range of Entities to a EntityCollection using the Attach() method ================================================================== If you need to get the Foreign Key value for a entity e.g. to get the ContactID value from a Address Entity use this :                                address.ContactReference.EntityKey.EntityKeyValues.Where(k=> k.Key == "ContactID")

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• Building services with .Net Part 1

  - by Allan Rwakatungu

  On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this   Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ?   They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services.  Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include  https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework      If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services?   1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding   There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You  can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service   As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney {   [OperationContract]    Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money {   [DataMember]   public string Currency { get; set; }   [DataMember]   public Decimal Amount { get; set; }   public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions:  You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication  as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service.               Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ]] /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Oracle WebCenter Partner Program

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  In competitive marketplaces, your company needs to quickly respond to changes and new trends, in order to open opportunities and build long-term growth. Oracle has a variety of next-generation services, solutions and resources that will leverage the differentiators in your offerings. Name your partnering needs: Oracle has the answer. This week we’d like to focus on Partners and the value your organization can gain from working with the Oracle PartnerNetwork. The Oracle PartnerNetwork will empower your company with exceptional resources to distinguish your offerings from the competition, seize opportunities, and increase your sales. We’re happy to welcome Christine Kungl, and Brian Buzzell, from Oracle’s World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C) WebCenter Partner Enablement team, as today’s guests on the Oracle WebCenter blog. Q: What is the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)?A: Christine: Oracle’s PartnerNetwork (OPN) is a collaborative partnership which allows registered companies specific added value resources to help differentiate themselves from their competition. Through OPN programs it provides companies the ability to seize and target opportunities, educate and train their teams, and leverage unparalleled opportunity given Oracle’s large market footprint. OPN’s multi-level programs are targeted at different levels allowing companies to grow and evolve with Oracle based on their business needs.  As part of their OPN memberships partners are encouraged to become OPN Specialized allowing those partners additional differentiation in Oracle’s Partner Network Community.  Q: What is an OPN Specialization and what resources are available for Specialized Partners?A: Brian: Oracle wanted a better way for our partners to differentiate their special skills and expertise, as well a more effective way to communicate that difference to customers.  Oracle’s expanding product portfolio demanded that we be able to identify partners with significant product knowledge—those who had made an investment in Oracle and a continuing commitment to deliver Oracle solutions. And with more than 30,000 Oracle partners around the world, Oracle needed a way for our customers to choose the right partner for their business. So how did Oracle meet this need? With the new partner program:  Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized. In this new program, Oracle partners are: Specialized :  Differentiating themselves from the competition with expertise that set them apart Recognized:  Being acknowledged for investing in becoming Oracle experts in specialized areas. Preferred :  Connecting with potential customers who are seeking  value-added solutions for their business OPN Specialized provides all partners with educational opportunities, training, and tools specially designed to build competency and grow business.  Partners can serve their customers better through key resources:OPN Specialized Knowledge Zones – Located on the updated and enhanced OPN portal— provide a single point of entry for all education and training information for Oracle partners. Enablement 2.0 Resources —Enablement 2.0 helps Oracle partners build their competencies and skills through a variety of educational opportunities and expanded training choices. These resources include: Enablement 2.0 “Boot camps” provide three-tiered learning levels that help jump-start partner training The role-based training covers Oracle’s application and technology products and offers a combination of classroom lectures, hands-on lab exercises, and case studies. Enablement 2.0 Interactive guided learning paths (GLPs) with recommendations on how to achieve specialization Upgraded partner solution kits Enhanced, specialized business centers available 24/7 around the globe on the OPN portal OPN Competency Center—Tracking ProgressThe OPN Competency Center keeps track as a partner applies for and achieves specialization in selected areas. You start with an assessment that compares your organization’s current skills and experience with the requirements for specialization in the area you have chosen. The OPN Competency Center then provides a roadmap that itemizes the skills and the knowledge you need to earn specialized status. In summary, OPN Specialization not only includes key training resources but a way to track and show progression for your partner organization. Q: What is are the OPN Membership Levels and what are the benefits?A:  Christine: The base OPN membership levels are: Remarketer: At the Remarketer level, retailers can choose to resell select Oracle products with the backing of authorized, regionally located, value-added distributors (VADs). The Remarketer level has no fees and no partner agreement with Oracle, but does offer online training and sales tools through the OPN portal.Program Details: RemarketerSilver Level: The Silver level is for Oracle partners who are focused on reselling and developing business with products ordered through the Oracle 1-Click Ordering Program. The Silver level provides a cost-effective, yet scalable way for partners to start an OPN Specialized membership and offers a substantial set of benefits that lets partners increase their competitive positioning. Program Details: SilverGold Level: Gold-level partners have the ability to specialize, helping them grow their business and create differentiation in the marketplace. Oracle partners at the Gold level can develop, sell, or implement the full stack of Oracle solutions and can apply to resell Oracle Applications.Program Details: GoldPlatinum Level: The Platinum level is for Oracle partners who want the highest level of benefits and are committed to reaching a minimum of five specializations. Platinum partners are recognized for their expertise in a broad range of products and technology, and receive dedicated support from Oracle.Program Details: PlatinumIn addition we recently introduced a new level:Diamond Level: This level is the most prestigious level of OPN Specialized. It allows companies to differentiate further because of their focused depth and breadth of their expertise. Program Details: DiamondSo as you can see there are various levels cost effective ways that Partners can get assistance, differentiation through OPN membership. Q: What role does the Oracle's World Wide Alliances & Channels (WWA&C), Partner Enablement teams and the WebCenter Community play?  A: Brian: Oracle’s WWA&C teams are responsible for manage relationships, educating their teams, creating go-to-market solutions and fostering communities for Oracle partners worldwide.  The WebCenter Partner Enablement Middleware Team is tasked to create, manage and distribute Specialization resources for the WebCenter Partner community. Q: What WebCenter Specializations are currently available?A: Christine:  As of now here are the following WebCenter Specializations and their availability: Oracle WebCenter Portal Specialization (Oracle WebCenter Portal): Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Specialization provides insight into the following products: WebCenter Services, WebCenter Spaces, and WebLogic Portal.Oracle WebCenter Specialized Partners can efficiently use Oracle WebCenter products to create social applications, enterprise portals, communities, composite applications, and Internet or intranet Web sites on a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The suite combines the development of rich internet applications; a multi-channel portal framework; and a suite of horizontal WebCenter applications, which provide content, presence, and social networking capabilities to create a highly interactive user experience. Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization: Available NowThe Oracle WebCenter Content Specialization provides insight into the following products; Universal Content Management, WebCenter Records Management, WebCenter Imaging, WebCenter Distributed Capture, and WebCenter Capture.Oracle WebCenter Content Specialized Partners can efficiently build content-rich business applications, reuse content, and integrate hundreds of content services with other business applications. This allows our customers to decrease costs, automate processes, reduce resource bottlenecks, share content effectively, minimize the number of lost documents, and better manage risk. Oracle WebCenter Sites Specialization: Available Q1 2012Oracle WebCenter Sites is part of the broader Oracle WebCenter platform that provides organizations with a complete customer experience management solution.  Partners that align with the new Oracle WebCenter Sites platform allow their customers organizations to: Leverage customer information from all channels and systems Manage interactions across all channels Unify commerce, merchandising, marketing, and service across all channels Provide personalized, choreographed consumer journeys across all channels Integrate order orchestration, supply chain management and order fulfillment Q: What criteria does the Partner organization need to achieve Specialization? What about individual Sales, PreSales & Implementation Specialist/Technical consultants?A: Brian: Each Oracle WebCenter Specialization has unique Business Criteria that must be met in order to achieve that Specialization.  This includes a unique number of transactions (co-sell, re-sell, and referral), customer references and then unique number of specialists as part of a partner team (Sales, Pre-Sales, Implementation, and Support).   Each WebCenter Specialization provides training resources (GLPs, BootCamps, Assessments and Exams for individuals on a partner’s staff to fulfill those requirements.  That criterion can be found for each Specialization on the Specialize tab for each WebCenter Knowledge Zone.  Here are the sample criteria, recommended courses, exams for the WebCenter Portal Specialization: WebCenter Portal Specialization Criteria Q: Do you have any suggestions on the best way for partners to get started if they would like to know more?A: Christine:   The best way to start is for partners is look at their business and core Oracle team focus and then look to become specialized in one or more areas.  Once you have selected the Specializations that are right for your business, you need to follow the first 3 key steps described below. The fourth step outlines the additional process to follow if you meet the criteria to be Advanced Specialized. Note that Step 4 may not be done without first following Steps 1-3.1. Join the Knowledge Zone(s) where you want to achieve Specialized status Go to the Knowledge Zone lick on the "Why Partner" tab Click on the "Join Knowledge Zone" link 2. Meet the Specialization criteria - Define and implement plans in your organization to achieve the competency and business criteria targets of the Specialization. (Note: Worldwide OPN members at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level and their Associates at the Gold, Platinum, or Diamond level may count their collective resources to meet the business and competency criteria required for specialization in this area.) 3. Apply for Specialization – when you have met the business and competency criteria required, inform Oracle by completing the following steps: Click on the "Specialize" tab in the Knowledge Zone Click on the "Apply Now" button Complete the online application form Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Specialized status. Need more information? Access our Step by Step Guide (PDF) 4. Apply for Advanced Specialization (Optional) – If your company has on staff 50 unique Certified Implementation Specialists in your company's approved Specialization's product set, let Oracle know by following these steps: Ensure that you have 50 or more unique individuals that are Certified Implementation Specialists in the specific Specialization awarded to your company If you are pooling resources from another Associate or Worldwide entity, ensure you know that company’s name and country Have your Oracle PRM Administrator complete the online Advanced Specialization Application Oracle will validate the information provided, and once approved, you will receive notification from Oracle of your awarded Advanced Specialized status. There are additional resources on OPN as well as the broader WebCenter Community: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

  - by smisner

  "Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack. Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while. Self-Service BI Self-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI. This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me: PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.) Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.) One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.) Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.) Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.) This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users. It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations. Collaborative BI I have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time. Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people." The Microsoft BI Stack in General A question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years. Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?" Expo Hall I had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here. Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions. Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind! Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Migrating from SQL Trace to Extended Events

  - by extended_events

  In SQL Server codenamed “Denali” we are moving our diagnostic tracing capabilities forward by building a system on top of Extended Events. With every new system you face the specter of migration which is always a bit of a hassle. I’m obviously motivated to see everyone move their diagnostic tracing systems over to the new extended events based system, so I wanted to make sure we lowered the bar for the migration process to help ease your trials. In my initial post on Denali CTP 1 I described a couple tables that we created that will help map the existing SQL Trace Event Classes to the equivalent Extended Events events. In this post I’ll describe the tables in a bit more details, explain the relationship between the SQL Trace objects (Event Class & Column) and Extended Event objects (Events & Actions) and at the end provide some sample code for a managed stored procedure that will take an existing SQL Trace session (eg. a trace that you can see in sys.Traces) and converts it into event session DDL. Can you relate? In some ways, SQL Trace and Extended Events is kind of like the Standard and Metric measuring systems in the United States. If you spend too much time trying to figure out how to convert between the two it will probably make your head hurt. It’s often better to just use the new system without trying to translate between the two. That said, people like to relate new things to the things they’re comfortable with, so, with some trepidation, I will now explain how these two systems are related to each other. First, some terms… SQL Trace is made up of Event Classes and Columns. The Event Class occurs as the result of some activity in the database engine, for example, SQL:Batch Completed fires when a batch has completed executing on the server. Each Event Class can have any number of Columns associated with it and those Columns contain the data that is interesting about the Event Class, such as the duration or database name. In Extended Events we have objects named Events, EventData field and Actions. The Event (some people call this an xEvent but I’ll stick with Event) is equivalent to the Event Class in SQL Trace since it is the thing that occurs as the result of some activity taking place in the server. An  EventData field (from now on I’ll just refer to these as fields) is a piece of information that is highly correlated with the event and is always included as part of the schema of an Event. An Action is something that can be associated with any Event and it will cause some additional “action” to occur when ever the parent Event occurs. Actions can do a number of different things for example, there are Actions that collect additional data and, take memory dumps. When mapping SQL Trace onto Extended Events, Columns are covered by a combination of both fields and Actions. Knowing exactly where a Column is covered by a field and where it is covered by an Action is a bit of an art, so we created the mapping tables to make you an Artist without the years of practice. Let me draw you a map. Event Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_event_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_event_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_event_name nvarchar By joining this table sys.trace_events using trace_event_id and to the sys.dm_xe_objects using xe_event_name you can get a fair amount of information about how Event Classes are related to Events. The most basic query this lends itself to is to match an Event Class with the corresponding Event. SELECT     t.trace_event_id,     t.name [event_class],     e.package_name,     e.xe_event_name FROM sys.trace_events t INNER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map e     ON t.trace_event_id = e.trace_event_id There are a couple things you’ll notice as you peruse the output of this query: For the most part, the names of Events are fairly close to the original Event Class; eg. SP:CacheMiss == sp_cache_miss, and so on. We’ve mostly stuck to a one to one mapping between Event Classes and Events, but there are a few cases where we have combined when it made sense. For example, Data File Auto Grow, Log File Auto Grow, Data File Auto Shrink & Log File Auto Shrink are now all covered by a single event named database_file_size_change. This just seemed like a “smarter” implementation for this type of event, you can get all the same information from this single event (grow/shrink, Data/Log, Auto/Manual growth) without having multiple different events. You can use Predicates if you want to limit the output to just one of the original Event Class measures. There are some Event Classes that did not make the cut and were not migrated. These fall into two categories; there were a few Event Classes that had been deprecated, or that just did not make sense, so we didn’t migrate them. (You won’t find an Event related to mounting a tape – sorry.) The second class is bigger; with rare exception, we did not migrate any of the Event Classes that were related to Security Auditing using SQL Trace. We introduced the SQL Audit feature in SQL Server 2008 and that will be the compliance and auditing feature going forward. Doing this is a very deliberate decision to support separation of duties for DBAs. There are separate permissions required for SQL Audit and Extended Events tracing so you can assign these tasks to different people if you choose. (If you’re wondering, the permission for Extended Events is ALTER ANY EVENT SESSION, which is covered by CONTROL SERVER.) Action Mapping The table dbo.trace_xe_action_map exists in the master database with the following structure: Column_name Type trace_column_id smallint package_name nvarchar xe_action_name nvarchar You can find more details by joining this to sys.trace_columns on the trace_column_id field. SELECT     c.trace_column_id,     c.name [column_name],     a.package_name,     a.xe_action_name FROM sys.trace_columns c INNER JOIN    dbo.trace_xe_action_map a     ON c.trace_column_id = a.trace_column_id If you examine this list, you’ll notice that there are relatively few Actions that map to SQL Trace Columns given the number of Columns that exist. This is not because we forgot to migrate all the Columns, but because much of the data for individual Event Classes is included as part of the EventData fields of the equivalent Events so there is no need to specify them as Actions. Putting it all together If you’ve spent a bunch of time figuring out the inner workings of SQL Trace, and who hasn’t, then you probably know that the typically set of Columns you find associated with any given Event Class in SQL Profiler is not fix, but is determine by the contents of the table sys.trace_event_bindings. We’ve used this table along with the mapping tables to produce a list of Event + Action combinations that duplicate the SQL Profiler Event Class definitions using the following query, which you can also find in the Books Online topic How To: View the Extended Events Equivalents to SQL Trace Event Classes. USE MASTER; GO SELECT DISTINCT    tb.trace_event_id,    te.name AS 'Event Class',    em.package_name AS 'Package',    em.xe_event_name AS 'XEvent Name',    tb.trace_column_id,    tc.name AS 'SQL Trace Column',    am.xe_action_name as 'Extended Events action' FROM (sys.trace_events te LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map em    ON te.trace_event_id = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_event_bindings tb    ON em.trace_event_id = tb.trace_event_id LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.trace_columns tc    ON tb.trace_column_id = tc.trace_column_id LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map am    ON tc.trace_column_id = am.trace_column_id ORDER BY te.name, tc.name As you might imagine, it’s also possible to map an existing trace definition to the equivalent event session by judicious use of fn_trace_geteventinfo joined with the two mapping tables. This query extracts the list of Events and Actions equivalent to the trace with ID = 1, which is most likely the Default Trace. You can find this query, along with a set of other queries and steps required to migrate your existing traces over to Extended Events in the Books Online topic How to: Convert an Existing SQL Trace Script to an Extended Events Session. USE MASTER; GO DECLARE @trace_id int SET @trace_id = 1 SELECT DISTINCT el.eventid, em.package_name, em.xe_event_name AS 'event'    , el.columnid, ec.xe_action_name AS 'action' FROM (sys.fn_trace_geteventinfo(@trace_id) AS el    LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_event_map AS em       ON el.eventid = em.trace_event_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.trace_xe_action_map AS ec    ON el.columnid = ec.trace_column_id WHERE em.xe_event_name IS NOT NULL AND ec.xe_action_name IS NOT NULL You’ll notice in the output that the list doesn’t include any of the security audit Event Classes, as I wrote earlier, those were not migrated. But wait…there’s more! If this were an infomercial there’d by some obnoxious guy next to me blogging “Well Mike…that’s pretty neat, but I’m sure you can do more. Can’t you make it even easier to migrate from SQL Trace?”  Needless to say, I’d blog back, in an overly excited way, “You bet I can' obnoxious blogger side-kick!” What I’ve got for you here is a Extended Events Team Blog only special – this tool will not be sold in any store; it’s a special offer for those of you reading the blog. I’ve wrapped all the logic of pulling the configuration information out of an existing trace and and building the Extended Events DDL statement into a handy, dandy CLR stored procedure. Once you load the assembly and register the procedure you just supply the trace id (from sys.traces) and provide a name for the event session. Run the procedure and out pops the DDL required to create an equivalent session. Any aspects of the trace that could not be duplicated are included in comments within the DDL output. This procedure does not actually create the event session – you need to copy the DDL out of the message tab and put it into a new query window to do that. It also requires an existing trace (but it doesn’t have to be running) to evaluate; there is no functionality to parse t-sql scripts. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time explaining the code here – the code is pretty well commented and hopefully easy to follow. If not, you can always post comments or hit the feedback button to send us some mail. Sample code: TraceToExtendedEventDDL   Installing the procedure Just in case you’re not familiar with installing CLR procedures…once you’ve compile the assembly you can load it using a script like this: -- Context to master USE master GO -- Create the assembly from a shared location. CREATE ASSEMBLY TraceToXESessionConverter FROM 'C:\Temp\TraceToXEventSessionConverter.dll' WITH PERMISSION_SET = SAFE GO -- Create a stored procedure from the assembly. CREATE PROCEDURE CreateEventSessionFromTrace @trace_id int, @session_name nvarchar(max) AS EXTERNAL NAME TraceToXESessionConverter.StoredProcedures.ConvertTraceToExtendedEvent GO Enjoy! -Mike

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• Creating a JSONP Formatter for ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  Out of the box ASP.NET WebAPI does not include a JSONP formatter, but it's actually very easy to create a custom formatter that implements this functionality. JSONP is one way to allow Browser based JavaScript client applications to bypass cross-site scripting limitations and serve data from the non-current Web server. AJAX in Web Applications uses the XmlHttp object which by default doesn't allow access to remote domains. There are number of ways around this limitation <script> tag loading and JSONP is one of the easiest and semi-official ways that you can do this. JSONP works by combining JSON data and wrapping it into a function call that is executed when the JSONP data is returned. If you use a tool like jQUery it's extremely easy to access JSONP content. Imagine that you have a URL like this: http://RemoteDomain/aspnetWebApi/albums which on an HTTP GET serves some data - in this case an array of record albums. This URL is always directly accessible from an AJAX request if the URL is on the same domain as the parent request. However, if that URL lives on a separate server it won't be easily accessible to an AJAX request. Now, if  the server can serve up JSONP this data can be accessed cross domain from a browser client. Using jQuery it's really easy to retrieve the same data with JSONP:function getAlbums() { $.getJSON("http://remotedomain/aspnetWebApi/albums?callback=?",null, function (albums) { alert(albums.length); }); } The resulting callback the same as if the call was to a local server when the data is returned. jQuery deserializes the data and feeds it into the method. Here the array is received and I simply echo back the number of items returned. From here your app is ready to use the data as needed. This all works fine - as long as the server can serve the data with JSONP. What does JSONP look like? JSONP is a pretty simple 'protocol'. All it does is wrap a JSON response with a JavaScript function call. The above result from the JSONP call looks like this:Query17103401925975181569_1333408916499( [{"Id":"34043957","AlbumName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap",…},{…}] ) The way JSONP works is that the client (jQuery in this case) sends of the request, receives the response and evals it. The eval basically executes the function and deserializes the JSON inside of the function. It's actually a little more complex for the framework that does this, but that's the gist of what happens. JSONP works by executing the code that gets returned from the JSONP call. JSONP and ASP.NET Web API As mentioned previously, JSONP support is not natively in the box with ASP.NET Web API. But it's pretty easy to create and plug-in a custom formatter that provides this functionality. The following code is based on Christian Weyers example but has been updated to the latest Web API CodePlex bits, which changes the implementation a bit due to the way dependent objects are exposed differently in the latest builds. Here's the code:  using System; using System.IO; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Net.Http.Headers; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web; using System.Net.Http; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { /// <summary> /// Handles JsonP requests when requests are fired with /// text/javascript or application/json and contain /// a callback= (configurable) query string parameter /// /// Based on Christian Weyers implementation /// https://github.com/thinktecture/Thinktecture.Web.Http/blob/master/Thinktecture.Web.Http/Formatters/JsonpFormatter.cs /// </summary> public class JsonpFormatter : JsonMediaTypeFormatter { public JsonpFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/javascript")); //MediaTypeMappings.Add(new UriPathExtensionMapping("jsonp", "application/json")); JsonpParameterName = "callback"; } /// <summary> /// Name of the query string parameter to look for /// the jsonp function name /// </summary> public string JsonpParameterName {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Captured name of the Jsonp function that the JSON call /// is wrapped in. Set in GetPerRequestFormatter Instance /// </summary> private string JsonpCallbackFunction; public override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { return true; } /// <summary> /// Override this method to capture the Request object /// and look for the query string parameter and /// create a new instance of this formatter. /// /// This is the only place in a formatter where the /// Request object is available. /// </summary> /// <param name="type"></param> /// <param name="request"></param> /// <param name="mediaType"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override MediaTypeFormatter GetPerRequestFormatterInstance(Type type, HttpRequestMessage request, MediaTypeHeaderValue mediaType) { var formatter = new JsonpFormatter() { JsonpCallbackFunction = GetJsonCallbackFunction(request) }; return formatter; } /// <summary> /// Override to wrap existing JSON result with the /// JSONP function call /// </summary> /// <param name="type"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <param name="stream"></param> /// <param name="contentHeaders"></param> /// <param name="transportContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override Task WriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, Stream stream, HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, TransportContext transportContext) { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(JsonpCallbackFunction)) { return Task.Factory.StartNew(() => { var writer = new StreamWriter(stream); writer.Write( JsonpCallbackFunction + "("); writer.Flush(); base.WriteToStreamAsync(type, value, stream, contentHeaders, transportContext).Wait(); writer.Write(")"); writer.Flush(); }); } else { return base.WriteToStreamAsync(type, value, stream, contentHeaders, transportContext); } } /// <summary> /// Retrieves the Jsonp Callback function /// from the query string /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> private string GetJsonCallbackFunction(HttpRequestMessage request) { if (request.Method != HttpMethod.Get) return null; var query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(request.RequestUri.Query); var queryVal = query[this.JsonpParameterName]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(queryVal)) return null; return queryVal; } } } Note again that this code will not work with the Beta bits of Web API - it works only with post beta bits from CodePlex and hopefully this will continue to work until RTM :-) This code is a bit different from Christians original code as the API has changed. The biggest change is that the Read/Write functions no longer receive a global context object that gives access to the Request and Response objects as the older bits did. Instead you now have to override the GetPerRequestFormatterInstance() method, which receives the Request as a parameter. You can capture the Request there, or use the request to pick up the values you need and store them on the formatter. Note that I also have to create a new instance of the formatter since I'm storing request specific state on the instance (information whether the callback= querystring is present) so I return a new instance of this formatter. Other than that the code should be straight forward: The code basically writes out the function pre- and post-amble and the defers to the base stream to retrieve the JSON to wrap the function call into. The code uses the Async APIs to write this data out (this will take some getting used to seeing all over the place for me). Hooking up the JsonpFormatter Once you've created a formatter, it has to be added to the request processing sequence by adding it to the formatter collection. Web API is configured via the static GlobalConfiguration object.  protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Verb Routing RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumsVerbs", routeTemplate: "albums/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi" } ); GlobalConfiguration .Configuration .Formatters .Insert(0, new Westwind.Web.WebApi.JsonpFormatter()); }   That's all it takes. Note that I added the formatter at the top of the list of formatters, rather than adding it to the end which is required. The JSONP formatter needs to fire before any other JSON formatter since it relies on the JSON formatter to encode the actual JSON data. If you reverse the order the JSONP output never shows up. So, in general when adding new formatters also try to be aware of the order of the formatters as they are added. Resources JsonpFormatter Code on GitHub© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 19, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 19, 2013Popular ReleasesuComponents: uComponents v5.5.0: Following on from our 101355 release, we bring you... v5.5.0! Resolved issues The following issues have been resolved in 5.5.0: 14634 14848 DataType Grid 14840 14842 14845 UpgradingThe best way to upgrade uComponents is to re-install via Umbraco's back-office package installer, (either from the package repository or a local package upload). Do not uninstall an existing uComponents package, as this may lead to data loss! Umbraco compatibilityThis release is compatible with Umbraco 4...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. Provider.cs -> GetDeviceInfoByID to address a problem w...SalarDbCodeGenerator: SalarDbCodeGenerator v2.1.2013.0719: Version 2.1.2013.0719 2013/7/19 Pattern Changes: * DapperContext pattern is added. * All patterns are updated to work with one-to-one relations. Changes: * One-to-one relation is supported. * Minor bug fixes.Scryber PDF Generation: Scryber.Installer.v0.8.3: This one has tables! A significant update to the scryber library, with the inclusion of tables. There is no column span, or row span, and nested tables are not fully supported. But - they overflow nicely and are well styled. And they can be data bound. Other updates The Link element has inner components directly as a child, rather than in a Content element. The existing files will still continue to work, but are invalid wrt the schema. Databinding is now supported at the document level, r...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.2.0 ???: *???????，??????????????，?????????????? ????????* ????????(Beta) Beta????：https://goagent.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic ??????：uygw@outlook.com ????：https://goagent.codeplex.com/documentation ?????????????????。Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Beta 2: New in this release: Show grid in editor Cut/copy/paste support Bug fixesAscend 3D: Ascend (2013-07-17): Ascend 2.1 Animation bugfixes and speed/robustness improvements Added compatibility for multiple top-level bones on armatures Ascend Blender Exporter 2.1 Removed need to create parent-child relationship between armature and skinning mesh Added support for exporting multiple top-level bones on armatures AscendViewer 1.0.4 Updated to use latest version of Ascend libraryCommunity TFS Build Extensions: July 2013: The July 2013 release contains VS2010 Activities(target .NET 4.0) VS2012 Activities (target .NET 4.5) VS2013 Activities (target .NET 4.5.1) Community TFS Build Manager VS2012 The Community TFS Build Manager can also be found in the Visual Studio Gallery here where updates will first become available. A version supporting VS2010 is also available in the Gallery here.smoketestgit1: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingsmoketesthg: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingsmoketesttfs: new release: Wiki Markup Guide bold italics underline Heading 1 Heading 2 Bullet List Bullet List 2 Number List Number List 2 http://www.example.com Do not apply formattingdatajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.1.1: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.7 RC: Planning releasedTerminals: Version 3.1 - Release: Changes since version 3.0:15992 Unified usage of icons in user interface Added context menu in Organize favorites grid Fixed:34219 34210 34223 33981 34209 Install notes:No changes in database (use database from release 3.0) No upgrade of configuration, passwords, credentials or favorites See also upgrade notes for release 3.0Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.573b: XBMC Link - Let MC update your XBMC Library Fixes in place, Enjoy the XBMC Link function Well, Phil's been busy in the background, and come up with a Great new feature for Media Companion. Currently only implemented for movies. Once we're happy that's working with no issues, we'll extend the functionality to include TV shows. All the help for this is build into the application. Go to General Preferences - XBMC Link for details. Help us make it better* Currently only tested on local and ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.2.1307.15: Fix a bug where WPP crash if 'ShowPendingUpdates' is start with wrong credentials. Fix a bug where WPP crash if ArrivalDateAfter and ArrivalDateBefore is equal in the ComputerView. Add a filter in the ComputerView. (Thanks to NorbertFe for this feature request) Add an option, when right-clicking on a computer, you can ask for display the current logon user of the remote computer. Add an option in settings to choose if WPP ping remote computers using IPv4, IPv6 or IPv6 and, if fail, IP...Lab Of Things: vBeta1: Initial release of LoTVidCoder: 1.4.23: New in 1.4.23 Added French translation. Fixed non-x264 video encoders not sticking in video tab. New in 1.4 Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.9 Blu-ray subtitle (PGS) support Additional framerates: 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Additional sample rates: 8, 11.025, 12 and 16 kHz Additional higher bitrates for audio Same as Source Constant Framerate 24-bit FLAC encoding Added Windows Phone 8 and Apple TV 3 presets Introduced process isolation for encodes. Now if HandBrake crashes, VidCoder will ...New Projects[C#]A Complete MySQL Manager Project: An open-source MySQL database manager oriented to multi-threading environments, supporting to create an entire database from scratch and edit it.bCal Javascript Calendar Generator: Using this simple javascript library, you can create simple navigable calendars in your website with just one line of user code.Better Network: Tools to delete network profile and network lists in Windows 8.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: 'CS-Script Intellisense' is a real C# intellisense solution based on CS-Script and ICSharpCode.NRefactory/Mono.Cecil.DARF: Dynamic Application Runtime Framework: A set of tools and libraries which help software developers create fully distributed and component-based applications. FeiXinV5: Just TestFollower Catcher: Game made for the 2012 Windows 8 Megathon. Second place in Madrid's local competition.MeeOS .NET: El primer sistema operativo GNU GPL en español.Music Vault: Music Vault is program to store your favorite music in one place, you can in any time move all your music library by moving only one file.MVC uTorrent: This is an ASP.NET MVC uTorrent front end, that utilises the uTorrent API. The main features: - Single page application - Can be hosted in IISMyTaskManager: This project Related to distribute the task to log in users OO2RDF: OO2RDF is a framework for data triplification. P(y)rotein Subcellular Location Image Database: A library that allows communication with an OMERO database, an open-source software for storage and manipulation of biological images.PE Toolbox: PE Toolbox ? ????? ?? ???????????, ????? ??????? ??? ??????????? ?? ?????. ???? ????? ??????????? ???????: - PE IFE (Importing from Excel) PeGscan: *PeGscan*ScriptZilla: ScriptZilla is an Free Editor for Windows with more Than 23 Languages.Sharepoint : Reconciliate SSRS Reports and Datasets with datasources Powershell: Powershell to link datasources to SSRS reports and datasetsSync-Moped: The idea behind the "Sync-Moped" is to synchronize two directories with backup functionality.System.Time: System.Time provides a type for .NET that allows the managing of a time in System.String, System.DateTime and System.TimeSpan form at the same time.Text Analytics: Project summary will be added later.Tibia Universal MC .NET: This tool was written as an attempt to port the [url:http://code.google.com/p/xenomc/] to the .NET Framework.VRFramework: VR Framework is a system for creating a virtual reality games using your PC, and Android smart phone, and Unity 3D.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 27, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 27, 2011Popular ReleasesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.6: ?? ● AcDown??????????、??????，??????????????????????，???????Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、???、Tucao.cc、SF???、?????80????，???????????、?????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ?? v3.6?? ??“????”...Facebook C# SDK: 5.3.1: This is a BETA release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added new CS-WinForms-AsyncAwait.sln sample demonstrating the use of async/await, upload progress report using IProgress<T> and cancellation support Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead...SQL Backup Helper: SQL Backup Helper v1.0: Version 1.0 Changes Description added to settings table Automatic LOG files truncation added to BACKUP stored procedure Only database in status ONLINE will be backed upFlowton: Release 0.2: This release is the first official release of Flowton along with Source. Printpreview/Print is enabled with minor bug fixes from 0.1 alpha release locally.MySemanticSearch Sample: MySemanticSearch Installer (CTP3): Note: This release of the MySemanticSearch Sample works with SQL Server 2012 CTP3. Installation InstructionsDownload this self-extracting archive to your computer Execute the self-extracting archive Accept the licensing agreement Choose a target directory on your computer and extract the files Open Windows PowerShell command prompt with elevated priveleges Execute the following command: Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Close the Windows PowerShell command prompt Run C:\MySema...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.33: Add JSParser.ParseExpression method to parse JavaScript expressions rather than source-elements. Add -strict switch (CodeSettings.StrictMode) to force input code to ECMA5 Strict-mode (extra error-checking, "use strict" at top). Fixed bug when MinifyCode setting was set to false but RemoveUnneededCode was left it's default value of true.Path Copy Copy: 8.0: New version that mostly adds lots of requested features: 11340 11339 11338 11337 This version also features a more elaborate Settings UI that has several tabs. I tried to add some notes to better explain the use and purpose of the various options. The Path Copy Copy documentation is also on the way, both to explain how to develop custom plugins and to explain how to pre-configure options if you're a network admin. Stay tuned.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.0: Added: The new Client Blocks feaure of Views A new "move" js method for the TreeViews The NewHtmlCreated js event to the DataGrid Improved the ChoiceList structure that now allows also the selection list of a dropdown to be chosen with a lambda expression Fixed: Issue with partial thrust Client handling of conditional attributes Bug in TreeView node moves that sometimes were not reflected on the server An issue in the Mvc3 Nuget package that wasn't able to uninstall properly ...Free SharePoint Master Pages: Buried Alive (Halloween) Theme: Release Notes *Created for Halloween, you will find theme file, custom css file and images. *Created by Al Roome @AlstarRoome Features: Custom styling for web part Custom background *Screenshot https://s3.amazonaws.com/kkhipple/post/sharepoint-showcase-halloween.pngDevForce Application Framework: DevForce AF 2.0.3 RTW: PrerequisitesWPF 4.0 Silverlight 4.0 DevForce 2010 6.1.3.1 Download ContentsDebug and Release Assemblies API Documentation Source code License.txt Requirements.txt Release HighlightsNew: EventAggregator event forwarding New: EntityManagerInterceptor<T> to intercept EntityManger events New: IHarnessAware to allow for ViewModel setup when executed inside of the Development Harness New: Improved design time stability New: Support for add-in development New: CoroutineFns.To...NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.5: Minor change to accept special DTS stereo modes (LtRt, AB,...)Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.4.4 (dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 6.0 RTM, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release addresses the following issues:Support for dotCover code coverage 4132 Note that this build work against ALL VERSIONS of xunit. The files are compiled against xunit.dll 1.8 - DO NOT REPLACE THIS FILE. Thanks to xunit's version independent runner system, this package can r...BookShop: BookShop: BookShop WP7 clientRibbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Editor (0.1.2122.266): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New icon Bug fix: can't connect to an IFD deployment when the discovery service url has been customizedSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNet.Framework.Common 4.0: ??????????，????????????XML Explorer: XML Explorer 4.0.5: Changes in 4.0.5: Added 'Copy Attribute XPath to Address Bar' feature. Added methods for decoding node text and value from Base64 encoded strings, and copying them to the clipboard. Added 'ChildNodeDefinitions' to the options, which allows for easier navigation of parent-child and ID-IDREF relationships. Discovery happens on-demand, as nodes are expanded and child nodes are added. Nodes can now have 'virtual' child nodes, defined by an xpath to select an identifier (usually relative to ...CODE Framework: 4.0.11021.0: This build adds a lot of our WPF components, including our MVVC and MVC components as well as a "Metro" and "Battleship" style.WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 Beta: First beta release of WiX v3.6. The primary focus is on Burn but there are also many small bug fixes to the core toolset. For more information see: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2011/10/24/WiX-v3.6-Beta-releasedNew Projects5by5by4 Tic Tac Toe Project: 5by5by4 Tic Tac Toe project for CS 3420.ASP.Net Membership provider for MongoDb: A role and membership provider for ASP.Net with MongoDb as the database. Makes use of the Norm Linq provider for MongoDb.Bazookabird TFS Dashboard: Just a simple TFS dashboard. Show build results, tfs queries of your choice and display availability of build machines. Only a feature-lacking proof of concept yet, will hopefully be useful in the end. BestWebApp: Web service and web application.Code Made Simple: A group of projects to make coding life simple.DefenseXna: ??xna??Digibib.NET: Digibib.NET ist eine Portierung der Lesesoftware Digibux für die Digitale Bibliothek der Directmedia Publishing.FaceComparerDistributed: project of face compare distributed versionFMSSolution: FMSISO Analyzer: ISO Analyzer is a tool that makes it easier to analyze ISO 8583 financial transactions and also provides a platform to create a host simulator, capable of receiving requests and sending back the responses. It’s a WinForms application and it’s developed using C#.ITU Project: ITU Projekt - Víc než len klávesové skratky (navigace mezi bežicími aplikacemi)Maintenance Province Data: Help people find your project. Write a concise, reader-focused summary. Example: <project name> makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in <programming language>.m?ng chia s? công vi?c: m?ng chia s? công vi?cMetroTask: MetroTask, An example Metro based application using C#MyHomeFinance: Helps to add and keep a record of financeMySemanticSearch Sample: MySemanticSearch is a sample content management application that demonstrates semantic search capabilities introduced in SQL Server 2012. MySemanticSearch allows you to visualize tag clouds for content stored in FileTables and find similar content using semantic search.NetBlocks: This project is an implementation of the Unit-of-Work and Repository patterns using Entity Framework 4.1 and Unity. The project also includes code that can be used to initialize an application’s run-time environment from a set of components. The project includes example components for typed configuration settings, caching and a factory component based on Unity. Also included is an example of how to represent a database command with a C# class that transforms the results to typed objects.Online shopping website in ASP.NET- Open Source Project: asp.net,C#,shopping cart,college project,visual studio 2010,visual web developer 2010Pak Master: Pak Explorer for the fourth coming four.Pizza Service: A mvc3 project which aims to host both a backend webservice and a frontend page for ordering pizza and managing orders, customers and provide a drivermapScadaEveryWhere: ScadaEveryWhereSilverTwitterSearch: SilverTwitterSearch is a Siliverlight library for the Twitter Search API.Snst Salix: Salix is codename for custom solution of time management and task assignment software.SolutionManagementKit: SolutionManagementKit This product will try to combine several monitoring / support tools available right now. the primary focus will be on (T) SQL / MDX parsing for SQL 2008 R2 SSAS 2008 R2 as well as cube maintance Development in C# / VB .NETTarget: Blank Orchard Module: If enabled, outgoing links open in new window (just like with the deprecated target="_blank" attribute)WPPersonality: Psychological tests for windows phoneXrmLibrary: A base library to be used for rapid integration with one or more Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 environments. The XrmLibrary contains thread-safe singleton implementations of both the CRM IOrganizationService (1 or many instances) and a tracer/logger that utilizes Apache's log4net.

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• NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

  - by Rose Spicer-Oracle

  0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season.  Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit.      Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years.      How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience.       Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!)       Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to…       The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king.      Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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• Create nice animation on your ASP.NET Menu control using jQuery

  - by hajan

  In this blog post, I will show how you can apply some nice animation effects on your ASP.NET Menu control. ASP.NET Menu control offers many possibilities, but together with jQuery, you can make very rich, interactive menu accompanied with animations and effects. Lets start with an example: - Create new ASP.NET Web Application and give it a name - Open your Default.aspx page (or any other .aspx page where you will create the menu) - Our page ASPX code is: <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div id="menu">     <asp:Menu ID="Menu1" runat="server" Orientation="Horizontal" RenderingMode="List">                     <Items>             <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Default.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Home.png" Text="Home" Value="Home"  />             <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/About.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Friends.png" Text="About Us" Value="AboutUs" />             <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Products.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Box.png" Text="Products" Value="Products" />             <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Contact.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Chat.png" Text="Contact Us" Value="ContactUs" />         </Items>     </asp:Menu> </div> </form> As you can see, we have ASP.NET Menu with Horizontal orientation and RenderMode=”List”. It has four Menu Items where for each I have specified NavigateUrl, ImageUrl, Text and Value properties. All images are in Images folder in the root directory of this web application. The images I’m using for this demo are from Free Web Icons. - Next, lets create CSS for the LI and A tags (place this code inside head tag) <style type="text/css">     li     {         border:1px solid black;         padding:20px 20px 20px 20px;         width:110px;         background-color:Gray;         color:White;         cursor:pointer;     }     a { color:White; font-family:Tahoma; } </style> This is nothing very important and you can change the style as you want. - Now, lets reference the jQuery core library directly from Microsoft CDN. <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script> - And we get to the most interesting part, applying the animations with jQuery Before we move on writing jQuery code, lets see what is the HTML code that our ASP.NET Menu control generates in the client browser.   <ul class="level1">     <li><a class="level1" href="Default.aspx"><img src="Images/Home.png" alt="" title="" class="icon" />Home</a></li>     <li><a class="level1" href="About.aspx"><img src="Images/Friends.png" alt="" title="" class="icon" />About Us</a></li>     <li><a class="level1" href="Products.aspx"><img src="Images/Box.png" alt="" title="" class="icon" />Products</a></li>     <li><a class="level1" href="Contact.aspx"><img src="Images/Chat.png" alt="" title="" class="icon" />Contact Us</a></li> </ul>   So, it generates unordered list which has class level1 and for each item creates li element with an anchor with image + menu text inside it. If we want to access the list element only from our menu (not other list element sin the page), we need to use the following jQuery selector: “ul.level1 li”, which will find all li elements which have parent element ul with class level1. Hence, the jQuery code is:   <script type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $("ul.level1 li").hover(function () {             $(this).stop().animate({ opacity: 0.7, width: "170px" }, "slow");         }, function () {             $(this).stop().animate({ opacity: 1, width: "110px" }, "slow");         });     }); </script>   I’m using hover, so that the animation will occur once we go over the menu item. The two different functions are one for the over, the other for the out effect. The following line $(this).stop().animate({ opacity: 0.7, width: "170px" }, "slow");     does the real job. So, this will first stop any previous animations (if any) that are in progress and will animate the menu item by giving to it opacity of 0.7 and changing the width to 170px (the default width is 110px as in the defined CSS style for li tag). This happens on mouse over. The second function on mouse out reverts the opacity and width properties to the default ones. The last parameter “slow” is the speed of the animation. The end result is:   The complete ASPX code: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server">     <title>ASP.NET Menu + jQuery</title>     <style type="text/css">         li         {             border:1px solid black;             padding:20px 20px 20px 20px;             width:110px;             background-color:Gray;             color:White;             cursor:pointer;         }         a { color:White; font-family:Tahoma; }     </style>     <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"></script>     <script type="text/javascript">         $(function () {             $("ul.level1 li").hover(function () {                 $(this).stop().animate({ opacity: 0.7, width: "170px" }, "slow");             }, function () {                 $(this).stop().animate({ opacity: 1, width: "110px" }, "slow");             });         });     </script> </head> <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div id="menu">         <asp:Menu ID="Menu1" runat="server" Orientation="Horizontal" RenderingMode="List">                         <Items>                 <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Default.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Home.png" Text="Home" Value="Home"  />                 <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/About.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Friends.png" Text="About Us" Value="AboutUs" />                 <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Products.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Box.png" Text="Products" Value="Products" />                 <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Contact.aspx" ImageUrl="~/Images/Chat.png" Text="Contact Us" Value="ContactUs" />             </Items>         </asp:Menu>     </div>     </form> </body> </html> Hope this was useful. Regards, Hajan

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010New ProjectsArgument Handler: This project aims to help the handling of arguments in command line programs.Bing for BlackBerry: Bing for BlackBerry is a SDK that allows intergration and searching Bing in there applications.C4F - GeoWallpaper: This is an extension for my MEF Utility Runner to change desktop wallpaper based on Flickr images geotagged with your current location. Uses Windo...CRM 4.0 Contract Utilities: List of Contract Utilities (i.e. custom workflow actions) 1. Change contract status from Active to Draft 2. Copy Contract (with custom start/end da...ELIS: Multimedia player based on WPFEnterprise Administration with Powershell: The EnterpriseShell aims to produce a powershell code library that will enable Enterprise Administrators to quickly reconfigure their IT infrastruc...ExposedObject: ExposedObject uses dynamic typing in C# to provide convenient access to private fields and methods from code outside of the class – for testing, ex...F# Project Extender: Installing F# Project Extender provides tools to better organize files in F# projects by allowing project subdirectories and separating file manage...Hack Framework: Code bundle with the internets brains connected into one piece of .Net frameworkKrypton XNA: Krypton allows users of the XNA framework to easily add 2D lighting to their games. Krypton is fast, as it utilizes the GPU and uses a vertex shade...Net Darts: Provides an easy way to calculate the score left to throw. Users can easily click on the score.PlayerSharp: PlayerSharp is a library written entirely in C# that allows you to communicate your C# programs with the Player Server by Brian Gerkey et al (http:...Ratpoid: RatpoidRedeemer Tower Defense: 2d tower defense game. It is developed with XNA technology, using .Net Visual Studio 2008 or .Net Visual Studio 2010SelfService: Simple self service projectSharePoint Exchange Calendar: a jQuery based calendar web part for displaying Exchange calendars within SharePoint.SharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: AIM on: Object easy storeage, Create,Retrieve,Update,Delete User .NET Attribute marking or Xml Standalone Mapping eg. public class Somethin...Silverlight Calculator: Silverlight Calculator makes it easier for people to do simple math calculations. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2. Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar makes it easier for people to view a calendar in silverlight way. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2.SPSocialUtil for SharePoint 2010: SPSocialUtil makes it easier for delevoper to use Social Tag, Tag Cloud, BookMark, Colleague in SharePoint 2010. It's developed in C# with Visual S...Sublight: Sublight open source project is a simple metadata utility for view models in ASP.NET MVC 2Veda Auto Dealer Report: Create work item tasks for the Veda Auto Dealer ReportWPF Meta-Effects: WPF Meta-Effects makes it easier for shader effect developpers to develop and maintain shader code. You'll no longer have to write any HLSL, instea...New ReleasesBing for BlackBerry: Bing SDK for BlackBerry: There are four downloadable components: The library, in source code format, in its latest stable release. A "getting started" doc that will gui...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.34: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - Fixed a bug related to encryption cookie when DNN is used in Medium Trust environment. New Features:...Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6.4: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes, with general improvements and bug fixes for 'Batch Encryption'. It has an installer that will create...EPiServer CMS Page Type Builder: Page Type Builder 1.2 Beta 2: For more information about this release check out this blog post.ExposedObject: ExposedObject 0.1: This is an initial release of the ExposedObject library that lets you conveniently call private methods and access private fields of a class.Extended SSIS Package Execute: Ver 0.01: Version 0.01 - 2008 Compatible OnlyF# Project Extender: V0.9.0.0 (VS2008): F# project extender for Visual Studio 2008. Initial ReleaseFileExplorer.NET: FileExplorer.NET 1.0: This is the first release of this project. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please report any bugs that you may en...Fluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): FluentViewModel Alpha3: Overhaul of the configuration system Separation of the configuratior and service locator Added support for general services - using Castle Wind...Home Access Plus+: v4.1: v4.1 Change Log: booking system fixes/additions Uploader fixes Added excluded extensions in my computer Updated Config Tool Fixed an issue ...ILMerge-GUI, merge .NET assemblies: 1.9.0 BETA: Compatible with .NET 4.0 This is the first version of ILMerge-GUI working with .NET 4.0. The final version will be 2.0.0, to be released by mid May...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3769 Beta 3c: Given the high download rate and awesome feedback for Beta 3b, I decided to release this interim build with the following enhancements: Added new h...Jet Login Tool (JetLoginTool): In then Out - 1.5.3770.18310: Fixed: Will only attempt to logout if currently logged in Fixed: UI no longer blocks while waiting for log outKooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.1.0: New features Add new API RssUrl to generate RSS link, this is an extension to UrlHelper. Add possibility to index and search attachment content ...Krypton XNA: Krypton v1.0: First release of Krypton. I've tried to throw together a small testbed, but just getting tortoisehq to work the first time around was a huge pain. ...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.5: Added missing files to installer packageNito.KitchenSink: Version 7: New features (since Version 5) Fixed null reference bug in ExceptionExtensions. Added DynamicStaticTypeMembers and RefOutArg for dynamically (lat...Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 51341: Added multiple methods to API and classic ASP libraryOpenIdPortableArea: 0.1.0.3 OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea.Release: DotNetOpenAuth.dll DotNetOpenAuth.xml MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.xml OpenIdPortableArea.dll OpenIdPortableAre...Play-kanaler (Windows Media Center Plug-in): Playkanaler 1.0.5 Alpha: Playkanaler version 1.0.5 Alpha Skärmsläckar-fix. helt otestad!PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v0.81 Library with ServerWatch Sample: Release Notes Functionality improved. Possible bugs fixed. Realtime server time sample addedSharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: Vbyte.SharpOrm 1.0.2010.427: Vbyte.SharpOrm for Access & SQLServer.7z 1.0 alpha release for Access oledb provider and Sql Server 2000+.Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: - Markup items can now be added seperately using the AddItem method. Alternatingly all items can be placed inside a listbox which can then be added...Silverlight Calculator: SilverCalculator: SilverCalculator version 1.0 Live demoSilverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar version 1.0 Live demoSpeakup Desktop Frontend: Speakup Desktop Frontend v0.2a: This is new version of Speakup Desktop Frontend. It requires .net 4.0 to be installed before using it. In this release next changes were done: - ...TwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: Twitter-2.5: Adds xAuth support and increases TwitterLocation information (html help file is not up to date, will correct in a later version.)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30427.5: Automatic drop of latest buildXP-More: 1.1: Added a parent VHD edit feature. Moved VM settings from double-click to a button, and rearranged the buttons' layout.Yasbg: It's Static 1.0: Many changes have been made from the previous release. Read the README! This release adds settings tab and fixes bugs. To run, first unzip, then...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS Managerpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterParticle Plot PivotFarseer Physics EngineBlogEngine.NETDotNetZip LibrarySqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data Sources

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• In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

  - by Andy Little

  It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework.  It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies.  To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file.  But, where's the adventure in that?   With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog.  If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998.  Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology.  I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud!  Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid!  This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A.  Exciting times.  So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet.  With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few.  I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post.  Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress.  By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker.  Wait -- you didn't find it?  Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task.  It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times.  Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions.  Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms.  One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning.  I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way.  Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you!  You’ll find it by default in  ~/docupresentment/docserv.  Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options.  By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation).  But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes.  I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file.  Open it in your favorite XML editor.  I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin.  Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file.  Just take a moment and let that sink in.  Ok – moving on.  If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings.  Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss.  First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment.  Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable.  A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment.  More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started.  By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions.  You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances.  An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment.  The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes.  Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others.  In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running.  Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation!  Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes.  You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>.  By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds.  You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling  the check altogether by setting the value to 0.  This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes.  Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment.  Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>.  You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system.  What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up.  There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files.  When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache.  This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment.  Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator.  However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time.  You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache.  Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set.  Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing.  Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>.  The default is “filecache.properties”.  This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously.  Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting.  If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2.  Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment.  If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback.  If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know.  You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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• This is the End of Business as Usual...

  - by Michael Snow

  This week, we'll be hosting our last Social Business Thought Leader Series Webcast for 2012. Our featured guest this week will be Brian Solis of Altimeter Group. As we've been going through the preparations for Brian's webcast, it became very clear that an hour's time is barely scraping the surface of the depth of Brian's insights and analysis. Accordingly, in the spirit of sharing Brian's perspective for all of our readers, we'll be featuring guest posts all this week pulled from Brian's larger collection of blog postings on his own website. If you like what you've read here this week, we highly recommend digging deeper into his tome of wisdom. Guest Post by Brian Solis, Analyst, Altimeter Group as originally featured on his site with the minor change of the video addition at the beginning of the post. This is the End of Business as Usual and the Beginning of a New Era of Relevance - Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group The Times They Are A-Changin’ Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. - Bob Dylan I’m sure you are wondering why I chose lyrics to open this article. If you skimmed through them, stop here for a moment. Go back through the Dylan’s words and take your time. Carefully read, and feel, what it is he’s saying and savor the moment to connect the meaning of his words to the challenges you face today. His message is as important and true today as it was when they were first written in 1964. The tide is indeed once again turning. And even though the 60s now live in the history books, right here, right now, Dylan is telling us once again that this is our time to not only sink or swim, but to do something amazing. This is your time. This is our time. But, these times are different and what comes next is difficult to grasp. How people communicate. How people learn and share. How people make decisions. Everything is different now. Think about this…you’re reading this article because it was sent to you via email. Yet more people spend their online time in social networks than they do in email. Duh. According to Nielsen, of the total time spent online 22.5% are connecting and communicating in social networks. To put that in perspective, the time spent in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube is greater than online gaming at 9.8%, email at 7.6% and search at 4%. Imagine for a moment if you and I were connected to one another in Facebook, which just so happens to be the largest social network in the world. How big? Well, Facebook is the size today of the entire Internet in 2004. There are over 1 billion people friending, Liking, commenting, sharing, and engaging in Facebook…that’s roughly 12% of the world’s population. Twitter has over 200 million users. Ever hear of tumblr? More time is spent on this popular microblogging community than Twitter. The point is that the landscape for communication and all that’s affected by human interaction is profoundly different than how you and I learned, shared or talked to one another yesterday. This transformation is only becoming more pervasive and, it’s not going back. Survival of the Fitting But social media is just one of the channels we can use to reach people. I must be honest. I’m as much a part of tomorrow as I am of yesteryear. It’s why I spend all of my time researching the evolution of media and its impact on business and culture. Because of you, I share everything I learn in newsletters, emails, blogs, Youtube videos, and also traditional books. I’m dedicated to helping everyone not only understand, but grasp the change that’s before you. Technologies such as social, mobile, virtual, augmented, et al compel us adapt our story and value proposition and extend our reach to be part of communities we don’t realize exist. The people who will keep you in business or running tomorrow are the very people you’re not reaching today. Before you continue to read on, allow me to clarify my point of view. My inspiration for writing this is to help you augment, not necessarily replace, the programs you’re running today. We must still reach those whom matter to us in the ways they prefer to be engaged. To reach what I call the connected consumer of Geneeration-C we must too reach them in the ways they wish to be engaged. And in all of my work, how they connect, talk to one another, influence others, and make decisions are not at all like the traditional consumers of the past. Nor are they merely the kids…the Millennial. Connected consumers are representative across every age group and demographic. As you can see, use of social networks, media sharing sites, microblogs, blogs, etc. equally span across Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. The DNA of connected customers is indiscriminant of age or any other demographic for that matter. This is more about psychographics, the linkage of people through common interests (than it is their age, gender, education, nationality or level of income. Once someone is introduced to the marvels of connectedness, the sensation becomes a contagion. It touches and affects everyone. And, that’s why this isn’t going anywhere but normalcy. Social networking isn’t just about telling people what you’re doing. Nor is it just about generic, meaningless conversation. Today’s connected consumer is incredibly influential. They’re connected to hundreds and even thousands of other like-minded people. What they experiences, what they support, it’s shared throughout these networks and as information travels, it shapes and steers impressions, decisions, and experiences of others. For example, if we revisit the Nielsen research, we get an idea of just how big this is becoming. 75% spend heavily on music. How does that translate to the arts? I’d imagine the number is equally impressive. If 53% follow their favorite brand or organization, imagine what’s possible. Just like this email list that connects us, connections in social networks are powerful. The difference is however, that people spend more time in social networks than they do in email. Everything begins with an understanding of the “5 W’s and H.E.” – Who, What, When, Where, How, and to What Extent? The data that comes back tells you which networks are important to the people you’re trying to reach, how they connect, what they share, what they value, and how to connect with them. From there, your next steps are to create a community strategy that extends your mission, vision, and value and it align it with the interests, behavior, and values of those you wish to reach and galvanize. To help, I’ve prepared an action list for you, otherwise known as the 10 Steps Toward New Relevance: 1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you 2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation 3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship 4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benching marking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities 5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive board, make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together) 6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights 7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention 8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask 9. Invest in the development of content, engagement 10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity! The reality is that we live and compete in a perpetual era of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt. This is why it’s our time to alter our course. We must connect with those who are defining the future of engagement, commerce, business, and how the arts are appreciated and supported. Even though it is the end of business as usual, it is the beginning of a new age of opportunity. The consumer revolution is already underway, and the question is: How do you better understand the role you play in this production as a connected or social consumer as well as business professional? Again, this is your time to define a new era of engagement and relevance. Originally written for The National Arts Marketing Project Connect with Brian via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ --- Note from Michael: If you really like this post above - check out Brian's TEDTalk and his thought process for preparing it in this post: 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} http://www.briansolis.com/2012/10/tedtalk-reinventing-consumer-capitalism-screw-business-as-usual/

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