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  • tech-ed 2012

    - by foxjazz
    So, am not going to tech-ed this year.I didn't get much benefit from going last year, but I did meet a lot of nice folks.I am working on my first official Silverlight project, and it's going ok.I having a few issues which I may resolve with WCF services.I am still green around the edges with this technology, but I am getting the hang of it slowly.Learning a lot about IQueryable and how to handle databases.Depending on what I am looking todo, I may use some messaging services within the app.It has been a hard study the last month. Learning SL, JQuery, More CSS and website work, code-first.Node.js, SingalRThere seems to be a lot to do to keep up with the technology.Hope to post more often, but am hammering on something new, most of the time.

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  • Visual Studio 10 crashed when tried to open one of solutions

    - by Michael Freidgeim
    Visual Studio 10 crashed when I tried to open  one of my solutions. Closing Visual Studio and rebooting the machine didn’t help.The error message that was logged(see below), didn’t give any useful ideas.Finally It was fixed after I’ve deleted MySolution.suo file, which was quite big, and also Resharper folders.Log Name:      ApplicationSource:        Application ErrorEvent ID:      1000Task Category: (100)Level:         ErrorKeywords:      ClassicUser:          N/ADescription:Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 10.0.40219.1, time stamp: 0x4d5f2a73Faulting module name: msenv.dll, version: 10.0.40219.1, time stamp: 0x4d5f2d48Exception code: 0xc0000005Fault offset: 0x00355770Faulting process id: 0x1dc0Faulting application start time: 0x01cd1836888599f4Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exeFaulting module path: c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\msenv.dllReport Id: 9924b2f9-844e-11e1-bc19-782bcba513eaEvent Xml:<Event >  <System>    <Provider Name="Application Error" />    <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>    <Level>2</Level>    <Task>100</Task>    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-04-12T03:21:31.000000000Z" />    <EventRecordID>401998</EventRecordID>    <Channel>Application</Channel>    <Security />  </System>  <EventData>    <Data>devenv.exe</Data>    <Data>10.0.40219.1</Data>    <Data>4d5f2a73</Data>    <Data>msenv.dll</Data>    <Data>10.0.40219.1</Data>    <Data>4d5f2d48</Data>    <Data>c0000005</Data>    <Data>00355770</Data>    <Data>1dc0</Data>    <Data>01cd1836888599f4</Data>    <Data>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe</Data>    <Data>c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\msenv.dll</Data>    <Data>9924b2f9-844e-11e1-bc19-782bcba513ea</Data>  </EventData></Event>v

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  • Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks-Part 2: Key Shortcuts

    - by ToStringTheory
    Ask anyone that knows me, and they will confirm that I hate the mouse.  This isn’t because I deny affection to objects that don’t look like their mammalian-named self, but rather for a much more simple and not-insane reason: I have terrible eyesight.  Introduction Thanks to a degenerative eye disease known as Choroideremia, I have learned to rely more on the keyboard which I can feel digital/static positions of keys relative to my fingers, than the much more analog/random position of the mouse.  Now, I would like to share some of the keyboard shortcuts with you now, as I believe that they not only increase my productivity, but yours as well once you know them (if you don’t already of course)...  I share one of my biggest tips for productivity in the conclusion at the end. Visual Studio Key Shortcuts Global Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + X Cut This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is cut from the editor. Ctrl + C Copy This shortcut works without a selection. If nothing is selected, the entire line that the caret is on is copied from the editor. Ctrl + V Paste If you copied an entire line by the method above, the data is pasted in the line above the current caret line. Ctrl + Shift + V Next Clipboard Element Cut/Copy multiple things, and then hit this combo repeatedly to switch to the next clipboard item when pasting. Ctrl + Backspace Delete Previous Will delete the previous word from the editor directly before the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + Del Delete Next Word Will delete the next word/space from the editor directly after the caret. If anything is selected, will just delete that. Shift + Del Delete Focused Line Will delete the line from the editor that the caret is on. If something is selected, will just delete that. Ctrl + ? or Ctrl + ? Left/Right by Word This will move the caret left or right by word or special character boundary. Holding Shift will also select the word. Ctrl + F Quick Find Either the Quick Find panel, or the search bar if you have the Productivity Power Tools installed. Ctrl + Shift + F Find in Solution Opens up the 'Find in Files' window, allowing you to search your solution, as well as using regex for pattern matching. F2 Rename File... While not debugging, selecting a file in the solution explorer\navigator and pressing F2 allows you to rename the selected file. Global Application Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are available from almost any application running in Windows, however are many times forgotten... Again... Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + N New File dialog Opens up the 'New File' dialog to add a new file to the current directory in the Solution\Project. Ctrl + O Open File dialog Opens up the 'Open File' dialog to open a file in the editor, not necessarily in the solution. Ctrl + S Save File dialog Saves the currently focused editor tab back to your HDD/SSD. Ctrl + Shift + S Save All... Quickly save all open/edited documents back to your disk. Ctrl + Tab Switch Panel\Tab Tapping this combo switches between tabs quickly. Holding down Ctrl when hitting tab will bring up a chooser window. Building Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are focused on building and running a solution. These are not usable when the IDE is in Debug mode, as the shortcut changes by context. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + Shift + B Build Solution Starts a build process on the solution according to the current build configuration manager settings. Ctrl + Break Cancel a Building Solution Will cancel a build operation currently in progress. Good for long running builds when you think of one last change. F5 Start Debugging Will build the solution if needed and launch debugging according to the current configuration manager settings. Ctrl + F5 Start Without Debugger Will build the solution if needed and launch the startup project without attaching a debugger. Debugging Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used when debugging a solution. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F5 Continue Execution Continues execution of code until the next breakpoint. Ctrl + Alt + Break Pause Execution Pauses the program execution. Shift + F5 Stop Debugging Stops the current debugging session. NOTE: Web apps will still continue processing after stopping the debugger. Keep this in mind if working on code such as credit card processing. Ctrl + Shift + F5 Restart Debugging Stops the current debugging session and restarts the debugging session from the beginning. F9 Place Breakpoint Toggles/Places a breakpoint in the editor on the current line. Set a breakpoint in condensed code by highlighting the statement first. F10 Step Over Statement When debugging, executes all code in methods/properties on the current line until the next line. F11 Step Into Statement When debugging, steps into a method call so you can walk through the code executed there (if available). Ctrl + Alt + I Immediate Window Open the Immediate Window to execute commands when execution is paused. Navigation Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for navigating in the IDE or editor panel. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality F4 Properties Panel Opens the properties panel for the selected item in the editor/designer/solution navigator (context driven). F12 Go to Definition Press F12 with the caret on a member to navigate to its declaration. With the Productivity tools, Ctrl + Click works too. Ctrl + K Ctrl + T View Call Hierarchy View the call hierarchy of the member the caret is on. Great for going through n-tier solutions and interface implementations! Ctrl + Alt + B Breakpoint Window View the breakpoint window to manage breakpoints and their advanced options. Allows easy toggling of breakpoints. Ctrl + Alt + L Solution Navigator Open the solution explorer panel. Ctrl + Alt + O Output Window View the output window to see build\general output from Visual Studio. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Live Web Preview Only available with the Web Essential plugin. Launches the auto-updating Preview panel. Testing Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for running tests in the IDE. Please note, Visual Studio 2010 is all about context. If your caret is within a test method when you use one of these combinations, the combination will apply to that test. If your caret is within a test class, it will apply to that class. If the caret is outside of a test class, it will apply to all tests. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Ctrl + R T Run Test(s) Run all tests in the current context without a debugger attached. Breakpoints will not be stopped on. Ctrl + R Ctrl + T Run Test(s) (Debug) Run all tests in the current context with a debugger attached. This allows you to use breakpoints. Substitute A for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL tests in the current context. Substitute Y for T from the preceding combos to run/debug ALL impacted/covering tests for a method in the current context. Advanced Editor Shortcuts These are shortcuts that are used for more advanced editing in the editor window. Shortcut Action Visual Studio 2010 Functionality Shift + Alt + ? Shift + Alt + ? Multiline caret up/down Use this combo to edit multiple lines at once. Not too many uses for it, but once in a blue moon one comes along. Ctrl + Alt + Enter Insert Line Above Inserts a blank line above the line the caret is currently on. No need to be at end or start of line, so no cutting off words/code. Ctrl + K Ctrl + C Comment Selection Comments the current selection out of compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + U Uncomment Selection Uncomments the current selection into compilation. Ctrl + K Ctrl + D Format Document Automatically formats the document into a structured layout. Lines up nodes or code into columns intelligently. Alt + ? Alt + ? Code line up/down *Use this combo to move a line of code up or down quickly. Great for small rearrangements of code. *Requires the Productivity Power pack from Microsoft. Conclusion This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive, but these are the shortcuts I use regularly every hour/minute of the day. There are still 100s more in Visual Studio that you can discover through the configuration window, or by tooltips. Something that I started doing months ago seems to have interest in my office.. In my last post, I talked about how I hated a cluttered UI. One of the ways that I aimed to resolve that was by systematically cleaning up the toolbars week by week. First day, I removed ALL icons that I already knew shortcuts to, or would never use them (Undo in a toolbar?!). Then, every week from that point on, I make it a point to remove an icon/two from the toolbar and make an effort to remember its key combination. I gain extra space in the toolbar area, AND become more productive at the same time! I hope that you found this article interesting or at least somewhat informative.. Maybe a shortcut or two you didn't know. I know some of them seem trivial, but I often see people going to the edit menu for Copy/Paste... Thought a refresher might be helpful!

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  • Liskov Substitution Principle and the Oft Forgot Third Wheel

    - by Stacy Vicknair
    Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) is a principle of object oriented programming that many might be familiar with from the SOLID principles mnemonic from Uncle Bob Martin. The principle highlights the relationship between a type and its subtypes, and, according to Wikipedia, is defined by Barbara Liskov and Jeanette Wing as the following principle:   Let be a property provable about objects of type . Then should be provable for objects of type where is a subtype of .   Rectangles gonna rectangulate The iconic example of this principle is illustrated with the relationship between a rectangle and a square. Let’s say we have a class named Rectangle that had a property to set width and a property to set its height. 1: Public Class Rectangle 2: Overridable Property Width As Integer 3: Overridable Property Height As Integer 4: End Class   We all at some point here that inheritance mocks an “IS A” relationship, and by gosh we all know square IS A rectangle. So let’s make a square class that inherits from rectangle. However, squares do maintain the same length on every side, so let’s override and add that behavior. 1: Public Class Square 2: Inherits Rectangle 3:  4: Private _sideLength As Integer 5:  6: Public Overrides Property Width As Integer 7: Get 8: Return _sideLength 9: End Get 10: Set(value As Integer) 11: _sideLength = value 12: End Set 13: End Property 14:  15: Public Overrides Property Height As Integer 16: Get 17: Return _sideLength 18: End Get 19: Set(value As Integer) 20: _sideLength = value 21: End Set 22: End Property 23: End Class   Now, say we had the following test: 1: Public Sub SetHeight_DoesNotAffectWidth(rectangle As Rectangle) 2: 'arrange 3: Dim expectedWidth = 4 4: rectangle.Width = 4 5:  6: 'act 7: rectangle.Height = 7 8:  9: 'assert 10: Assert.AreEqual(expectedWidth, rectangle.Width) 11: End Sub   If we pass in a rectangle, this test passes just fine. What if we pass in a square?   This is where we see the violation of Liskov’s Principle! A square might "IS A” to a rectangle, but we have differing expectations on how a rectangle should function than how a square should! Great expectations Here’s where we pat ourselves on the back and take a victory lap around the office and tell everyone about how we understand LSP like a boss. And all is good… until we start trying to apply it to our work. If I can’t even change functionality on a simple setter without breaking the expectations on a parent class, what can I do with subtyping? Did Liskov just tell me to never touch subtyping again? The short answer: NO, SHE DIDN’T. When I first learned LSP, and from those I’ve talked with as well, I overlooked a very important but not appropriately stressed quality of the principle: our expectations. Our inclination is to want a logical catch-all, where we can easily apply this principle and wipe our hands, drop the mic and exit stage left. That’s not the case because in every different programming scenario, our expectations of the parent class or type will be different. We have to set reasonable expectations on the behaviors that we expect out of the parent, then make sure that those expectations are met by the child. Any expectations not explicitly expected of the parent aren’t expected of the child either, and don’t register as a violation of LSP that prevents implementation. You can see the flexibility mentioned in the Wikipedia article itself: A typical example that violates LSP is a Square class that derives from a Rectangle class, assuming getter and setter methods exist for both width and height. The Square class always assumes that the width is equal with the height. If a Square object is used in a context where a Rectangle is expected, unexpected behavior may occur because the dimensions of a Square cannot (or rather should not) be modified independently. This problem cannot be easily fixed: if we can modify the setter methods in the Square class so that they preserve the Square invariant (i.e., keep the dimensions equal), then these methods will weaken (violate) the postconditions for the Rectangle setters, which state that dimensions can be modified independently. Violations of LSP, like this one, may or may not be a problem in practice, depending on the postconditions or invariants that are actually expected by the code that uses classes violating LSP. Mutability is a key issue here. If Square and Rectangle had only getter methods (i.e., they were immutable objects), then no violation of LSP could occur. What this means is that the above situation with a rectangle and a square can be acceptable if we do not have the expectation for width to leave height unaffected, or vice-versa, in our application. Conclusion – the oft forgot third wheel Liskov Substitution Principle is meant to act as a guidance and warn us against unexpected behaviors. Objects can be stateful and as a result we can end up with unexpected situations if we don’t code carefully. Specifically when subclassing, make sure that the subclass meets the expectations held to its parent. Don’t let LSP think you cannot deviate from the behaviors of the parent, but understand that LSP is meant to highlight the importance of not only the parent and the child class, but also of the expectations WE set for the parent class and the necessity of meeting those expectations in order to help prevent sticky situations.   Code examples, in both VB and C# Technorati Tags: LSV,Liskov Substitution Principle,Uncle Bob,Robert Martin,Barbara Liskov,Liskov

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  • Getting to grips with the stack in nasm

    - by MarkPearl
    Today I spent a good part of my day getting to grips with the stack and nasm. After looking at my notes on nasm I think this is one area for the course I am doing they could focus more on… So here are some snippets I have put together that have helped me understand a little bit about the stack… Simplest example of the stack You will probably see examples like the following in circulation… these demonstrate the simplest use of the stack… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main main: push 42h push 43h push 44h mov ah,2h ;set to display characters pop dx    ;get the first value int 21h   ;and display it pop dx    ;get 2nd value int 21h   ;and display it pop dx    ;get 3rd value int 21h   ;and display it int 20h The output from above code would be… DCB Decoupling code using “call” and “ret” This is great, but it oversimplifies what I want to use the stack for… I do not know if this goes against the grain of assembly programmers or not, but I want to write loosely coupled assembly code – and I want to use the stack as a mechanism for passing values into my decoupled code. In nasm we have the call and return instructions, which provides a mechanism for decoupling code, for example the following could be done… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov ah,2h mov dx,41h int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: call displayChar int 20h   This would output the following to the console A So, it would seem that call and ret allow us to jump to segments of our code and then return back to the calling position – a form of segmenting the code into what we would called in higher order languages “functions” or “methods”. The only issue is, in higher order languages there is a way to pass parameters into the functions and return results. Because of the primitive nature of the call and ret instructions, this does not seem to be obvious. We could of course use the registers to pass values into the subroutine and set values coming out, but the problem with this is we… Have a limited number of registers Are threading our code with tight coupling (it would be hard to migrate methods outside of their intended use in a particular program to another one) With that in mind, I turn to the stack to provide a loosely coupled way of calling subroutines… First attempt with the Stack Initially I thought this would be simple… we could use code that looks as follows to achieve what I want… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov ah,2h pop dx int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h call displayChar int 20h   However running this application does not give the desired result, I want an ‘A’ to be returned, and I am getting something totally different (you will to). Reading up on the call and ret instructions a discovery is made… they are pushing and popping things onto and off the stack as well… When the call instruction is executed, the current value of IP (the address of the instruction to follow) is pushed onto the stack, when ret is called, the last value on the stack is popped off into the IP register. In effect what the above code is doing is as follows with the stack… push 41h push current value of ip pop current value of ip to dx pop 41h to ip This is not what I want, I need to access the 41h that I pushed onto the stack, but the call value (which is necessary) is putting something in my way. So, what to do? Remember we have other registers we can use as well as a thing called indirect addressing… So, after some reading around, I came up with the following approach using indirect addressing… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov bp,sp mov ah,2h mov dx,[bp+2] int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h call displayChar int 20h In essence, what I have done here is used a trick with the stack pointer… it goes as follows… Push 41 onto the stack Make the call to the function, which will push the IP register onto the stack and then jump to the displayChar label Move the value in the stack point to the bp register (sp currently points at IP register) Move the at the location of bp minus 2 bytes to dx (this is now the value 41h) display it, execute the ret instruction, which pops the ip value off the stack and goes back to the calling point This approach is still very raw, some further reading around shows that I should be pushing the value of bp onto the stack before replacing it with sp, but it is the starting thread to getting loosely coupled subroutines. Let’s see if you get what the following output would be? org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov bp,sp mov ah,2h mov dx,[bp+4] int 21h mov dx,[bp+2] int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h push 42h call displayChar int 20h The output is… AB Where to from here? If by any luck some assembly programmer comes along and see this code and notices that I have made some fundamental flaw in my logic… I would like to know, so please leave a comment… appreciate any feedback!

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 09, 2011 -- #1057

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Dennis Doomen, Peter Kuhn, Michael Crump, Joe McBride, Martin Krüger, Jeremy Likness, Manas Patnaik, Jesse Liberty(-2-), WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A highlighting AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight" Peter Kuhn WP7: "WP7 WatermarkedTextBox custom control" WindowsPhoneGeek Training: "" Shoutouts: Karl Shifflett announced that he and Josh Smith have heard the developers and released a demo: Mole 2010 Demo Released This is a somewhat older post, but the material is good and I was reminded of it while talking to Josh Smith at the MVP summit last week: Advanced MVVM ... money well-spent From SilverlightCream.com: Introducing the Silverlight Cookbook Dennis Doomen unveils a Codeplex site "containing a Silverlight 4 app that includes most of the complexities you might run into" ... I'm tagging this in my WynApse outlookbar... great stuff, Dennis! A highlighting AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight Peter Kuhn took on a task in response to a forum query and created a highlighting AutoCompleteBox, and is giving it to us... this really looks cool, Peter, and great explanation. Taking a look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7. Michael Crump takes a good look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7... and if you read closely you might still be able to get a free license! Windows Phone – “Can’t connect to your phone. Disconnect it, Restart it, then try connecting again.” Joe McBride explains a way out of an issue that many should be seeing as we repave or replace machines... how to get our device recognized on the updated machine... without giving cryptic messages. How to: only with the full visibility of an application in the browser window start an action Martin Krüger continues his journey in starting storyboards and tackles the condition that the application is completely in the browser window prior to the storyboard starting. A Numeric Input Control for Windows Phone 7 Jeremy Likness came up with a great idea for numeric input for WP7 ... you'll smile when you see it, but what a great idea... and a NumericTextBox to go along with it. Performing CRUD on Relational Data (Multiple table) using RIA in SL4 Manas Patnaik has a post up that breaks the normal blog post or demo mold by having two tables with a relational constraint and doing CRUD operations on them. Plenty of diagrams and good information. Select Many: Reactive Extensions’ Mother Of All Operators [Chaining] Jesse Liberty has part 9 in his Rx series up, and is looking at SelectMany this time, and chaining calls. He's using WPF for the sample, but the goodness is all there for us Silverlight guys too. The Full Stack 8–Adding Search to the Phone Client Jesse Liberty and Jon Galloway have part 8 of their Full Stack series up ... this is the MVC3, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WP7 app development series... this time out they're putting Search in the Phone client. All about ResourceDictionary in WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek is discussing ResourceDictionaries in this post... beginning with What is a ResourceDictionary and continuing out through creating and using one, plus a good comment on merging. WP7 WatermarkedTextBox custom control In his next post, WindowsPhoneGeek walks us through the creation of a WatermarkedTextBox for WP7 right from the derivation from TextBox... very nice tutorial and lots of code/examples. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • BizTalk - Removing BAM Activities and Views using bm.exe

    - by Stuart Brierley
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/StuartBrierley/archive/2013/10/16/biztalk---removing-bam-activities-and-views-using-bm.exe.aspxOn the project I am currently working on, we are making quite extensive use of BAM within our growing number of BizTalk applications, all of which are being deployed and undeployed using the excellent Deployment Framework for BizTalk 5.0.Recently I had an issue where problems on the build server had left the target development servers in a state where the BAM activities and views for a particular application were not being removed by the undeploy process and unfortunately the definition in the solution had changed meaning that I could not easily recreate the file from source control.  To get around this I used the bm.exe application from the command line to manually remove the problem BAM artifacts - bm.exe can be found at the following path:C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\TrackingC:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\TrackingStep1 :Get the BAM Definition FileRun the following command to get the BAm definition file, containing the details of all the activities, views and alerts:bm.exe get-defxml -FileName:{Path and File Name Here}.xmlStep 2: Remove the BAM ArtifactsAt this stage I chose to manually remove each of my problem BAM activities and views using seperate command line calls.  By looking in the definition file I could see the names of the activities and views that I wanted to remove and then use the following commands to remove first the views and then the activities:bm.exe remove-view -name:{viewname}bm.exe remove-activity -name:{activityname}

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  • Monitoring almost anything with BizTalk 360

    - by Michael Stephenson
    When you work in an integration environment it is common that you will find yourself in a situation where you integrate with some unusual applications or have some unusual dependencies. That is the nature of integration. When you work with BizTalk one of the common problems is that BizTalk often is the place where problems with applications you integrate with are highlighted and these external applications may have poor monitoring solutions. Fortunately if you are a working with a customer who uses BizTalk 360 then it contains a feature called the "Web Endpoint Manager". Typically the web endpoint manager is used to monitor web services that you integrate with and will ping them at appropriate times to make sure they return the expected HTTP status code. When you have an usual situation where you want to monitor something which is key to the success to your solution but you find yourself having to consider a significant custom solution to monitor the external dependency then the Web Endpoint Manager could be your friend. The endpoint manager monitors a url and checks for a certain status code. This means that you can create your own aspx web page and then make BizTalk 360 monitor this web page. Behind the web page you could write any code you wished. An example of this is architecture is shown in the below diagram.     In the custom web page you would implement some custom code to do whatever it is that you want to monitor. In the below code snippet you can see how the Page_Load default method is doing some kind of check then depending on the result of the check it returns a certain HTTP code. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { var result = CheckSomething();   if (result == "Success") Response.StatusCode = 202; else if (result == "DatabaseError") Response.StatusCode = 510; else if (result == "SystemError") Response.StatusCode = 512; else Response.StatusCode = 513;   }   In BizTalk 360 you would go into the Monitor and Notify tab and then to BizTalk Environment which gives you access to the Web Endpoint Manager. You need an alarm setup which configures how the endpoint will be checked. I'm not going to go through the details of creating the alarm as this is already documented in the BizTalk 360 documentation. One point to note is that in the example I am using I setup a threshold alarm which means that the url is checked about every minute and if there is an error that persists for a period of time then the alarm will raise the alert notification. In my example I configured the alarm to fire if the error persisted for 3 minutes. The below picture shows accessing the endpoint manager.   In the web endpoint manager you would then configure your endpoint to monitor and the HTTP response code which indicates all is working fine. The below picture shows this. I now have my endpoint monitoring setup and BizTalk 360 should be checking my custom endpoint to see that it is available. If I wanted to manually sanity check that the endpoints I have registered are working fine then clicking the Refresh button will show if they are all good or not. If my custom ASP.net page which is checking my dependency gets a problem you will see in the endpoint manager that the status code does not match the expected return code and your endpoints will display in red and you can see the problem. The below picture shows this. If I use specific HTTP response codes for the errors the custom ASP.net page might encounter I can easily interpret these to know what the problem is. Using the alarms and notifications with BizTalk 360 it means when your endpoint goes into an error state you can easily configure email or SMS notifications from BizTalk 360 to tell you that your endpoint is having problems and you can use BizTalk 360 to help correlate what the problem is to allow you to investigate further. Below you can see the email which tells me my endpoint is not working.   When everything returns to normal you will see the status is now fixed and you will see a situation like below where you can see the WebEndpoints are now green and the return code matches what is expected.   Conclusion As you can see it is really easy to plug your own custom ASP.net page into the BizTalk 360 web endpoint monitoring feature. This extension then gives you the power to really extend the monitoring to almost anything you want as long as you can write some .net code to check that the dependency is available and working. It would be interesting to hear of any ideas people have around things they would monitor with this extension. More details on the end point monitor can be found on the following link: http://www.biztalk360.com/tour/monitoring_notifications

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  • Type of Blobs

    - by kaleidoscope
    With the release of Windows Azure November 2009 CTP, now we have two types of blobs. Block Blob - This blob type is in place since PDC 2008 and is optimized for streaming workloads. [Max Size allowed : 200GB] Page Blob - With November 2009 CTP release, a new blob type is added which is optimized for random read / writes called Page Blob. [Max Size allowed : 1TB] More details can be found at: http://geekswithblogs.net/IUnknown/archive/2009/11/16/azure-november-ctp-announced.aspx Amit, S

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  • Chuck Norris Be Thy Name

    - by Robz / Fervent Coder
    Chuck Norris doesn’t program with a keyboard. He stares the computer down until it does what he wants. All things need a name. We’ve tossed around a bunch of names for the framework of tools we’ve been working on, but one we kept coming back to was Chuck Norris. Why did we choose Chuck Norris? Well Chuck Norris sort of chose us. Everything we talked about, the name kept drawing us closer to it. We couldn’t escape Chuck Norris, no matter how hard we tried. So we gave in. Chuck Norris can divide by zero. What is the Chuck Norris Framework? @drusellers and I have been working on a variety of tools: WarmuP - http://github.com/chucknorris/warmup (Template your entire project/solution and create projects ready to code - From Zero to a Solution with everything in seconds. Your templates, your choices.) UppercuT - http://projectuppercut.org (Build with Conventions - Professional Builds in Moments, Not Days!) | Code also at http://github.com/chucknorris/uppercut DropkicK - http://github.com/chucknorris/dropkick (Deploy Fluently) RoundhousE - http://projectroundhouse.org (Professional Database Management with Versioning) | Code also at http://github.com/chucknorris/roundhouse SidePOP - http://sidepop.googlecode.com (Does your application need to check email?) HeadlocK - http://github.com/chucknorris/headlock (Hash a directory so you can later know if anything has changed) Others – still in concept or vaporware People ask why we choose such violent names for each tool of our framework? At first it was about whipping your code into shape, but after awhile the naming became, “How can we relate this to Chuck Norris?” People also ask why we uppercase the last letter of each name. Well, that’s more about making you ask questions…but there are a few reasons for it. Project managers never ask Chuck Norris for estimations…ever. The class object inherits from Chuck Norris Chuck Norris doesn’t need garbage collection because he doesn’t call .Dispose(), he calls .DropKick() So what are you waiting for? Join the Google group today, download and play with the tools. And lastly, welcome to Chuck Norris. Or should I say Chuck Norris welcomes you…

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 14, 2011 -- #1047

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mohamed Mosallem, Tony Champion, Gill Cleeren, Laurent Bugnion, Deborah Kurata, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Tim Heuer, Mike Taulty, John Papa, Martin Krüger, and Jeremy Likness. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Binding to a ComboBox in Silverlight : A Gotcha" Tony Champion WP7: "An Ultra Light Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework" Jeremy Likness Shoutouts: Steve Wortham has a post up discussing Silverlight 5, HTML5, and what the future may bring From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4.0 Tutorial (12 of N): Collecting Attendees Feedback using Windows Phone 7 Mohamed Mosallem is up to number 12 in his Silverlight tutorial series. He's continuing his RegistrationBooth app, but this time, he's building a WP7 app to give attendee feedback. Binding to a ComboBox in Silverlight : A Gotcha If you've tried to bind to a combobox in Silverlight, you've probably either accomplished this as I have (with help) by having it right once, and continuing, but Tony Champion takes the voodoo out of getting it all working. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 5) Gill Cleeren has Part 5 of his exam preparation post up on SilverlightShow. As with the others, he provides many external links to good information. Referencing a picture in another DLL in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Laurent Bugnion explains the pitfalls and correct way to reference an image from a dll... good info for loading images such as icons for Silverlight in general and WP7 also. Silverlight MVVM Commanding II Deborah Kurata has a part 2 up on MVVM Commanding. The first part covered the built-in commanding for controls that inherit from ButtonBase... this post goes beyond that into other Silverlight controls. Reactive Drag and Drop Part 1 This Drag and Drop with Rx post by Jesse Liberty is the 4th in his Rx series. He begins with a video from the Rx team and applies reactive programming to mouse movements. Yet Another Podcast #24–Reactive Extensions On the heels of his previous post on Rx, in his latest 'Yet Another Podcast', Jesse Liberty chats with Matthew Podwysocki and Bart De Smet about Reactive Extensions. Silverlight 4 February 2011 Update Released Today Tim Heuer announced the release of the February 2011 Silverlight 4 release. Check out Tim's post for information about what's contained in this release. Blend Bits 25–Templating Part 3 In his 3rd Templating tutorial in BlendBits, Mike Taulty demonstrates the 'Make into Control' option rather than the other way around. Silverlight TV 61: Expert Chat on Deep Zoom, Touch, and Windows Phone John Papa interviews David Kelley in the latest Silverlight TV... David is discussing touch in Silverlight and for WP7 and his WP7 apps in the marketplace. Simple Hyperlinkbutton style Martin Krüger has a cool Hyperlink style available at the Expression Gallery. Interesting visual for entertaining your users. An Ultra Light Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework Jeremy Likness takes his knowledge of MVVM (Jounce), and WP7 and takes a better look at what he'd really like to have for a WP7 framework. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 13, 2011 -- #1046

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Loek van den Ouweland, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Joost van Schaik, Mike Taulty(-2-, -3-), Deborah Kurata, David Kelley, Peter Foot, Samuel Jack(-2-), and WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Simple MVVM Commanding" Deborah Kurata WP7: "WP7 CustomInputPrompt control with Cancel button" WindowsPhoneGeek Expression Blend: "Silverlight Templated Image Button with two images" Loek van den Ouweland Shoutouts: Dave Campbell posted a write-up about the project he's on and the use of Sterling: Sterling Object-Oriented Database for ISO 1.0 Released!... Also see Jeremy Likness' post on the 1.0 release: Sterling Object-Oriented Database 1.0 RTM Not necessarily Silverlight, but darn cool, a great control by Sasha Barber: WPF : A Weird 3d based control snoutholder announced new content: Windows Phone 7 QuickStarts Live! From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Templated Image Button with two images Loek van den Ouweland has a video tutorial up for creating an ImageButton with a hover state... Expression Blend coolness, and check out the external links he has to their training site. Windows Phone 7 Performance Measurements – Emulator vs. Hardware Colin Eberhardt's latest is a popular post comparing performance metrics between the WP7 emulator and a real device. Mileage may vary, but I'm pretty sure the overall results are conculsive, and should help the way you view your app as you're building in the emulator. WP7: WebClient vs HttpWebRequest Rudi Grobler's latest is a discussion of WebClient and HttpWebRequest, gives coding examples of each plus discussion of why you may choose one over the other... and pay attention to his comment about mobile providers. A Blendable Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight clipping behavior Joost van Schaik posted this WP7/Silverlight clipping behavior he developed because all the other solutions were not blendable. Another really useful piece of code from Joost! Blend Bits 22–Being Stylish Mike Taulty has 3 more episodes in his Blend Bits series... first up is on one Styles... explicit, implicit, inheriting... you name it, he's covering it! Blend Bits 23–Templating Part 1 MIke Taulty then has the beginning of a series within his Blend Bits series on Templating. This is something you just have to either bite the bullet and go with Blend to do, or consume someone else's work. Mike shows us how to do it ourself by tweaking the visual aspects of a checkbox Blend Bits 24–Templating Part 2 In part 2 of the Templating series, Mike Taulty digs deeper into Blend and cracks open the Listbox control to take a bunch of the inner elements out for a spin... fun stuff and great tutorial, Mike! Silverlight Simple MVVM Commanding Deborah Kurata has another great MVVM post up... if you don't have your head wrapped around commanding yet, this is a good place to start that process... VB and C# as always. App Development for Windows Phone 7 101 David Kelley goes through the basics of producing a WP7 app both from the Silverlight and XNA side... good info and good external links to get you going. Copyable TextBlock for Windows Phone Peter Foot takes a look at the Copy/Paste functionality in WP7 and how to apply it to a TextBlock... which is NOT an out-of-the-box solution. How to deploy to, and debug, multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator Samuel Jack has a couple posts up this week... first is this clever one on running multiple copies of the emulator at once... too cool for debugging a multi-player game! Multi-player enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 3 – The Server Side Samuel Jack's latest is a detailed look at his day 3 adventure of taking his multi-player game to WP7... lots of information and external links... what do you say, give him another day? :) WP7 CustomInputPrompt control with Cancel button WindowsPhoneGeek has a couple more posts up... first is this "CustomInputPrompt" control based off the InputPrompt from Coding4Fun. Implementing Windows Phone 7 DataTemplateSelector and CustomDataTemplateSelector In his latest post, WindowsPhoneGeek writes a DataTemplateSelector to allow different data templates for different list elements based on the type of the element. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • PlanetQuest and the start of a new project!

    - by TATWORTH
    At the Planet Quest http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/ web site there is an interesting page on the number of planets detected around other stars. There is a link to a page at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/widget.cfm for an applet to poll for this information. I downloaded the applet but had no wish to install it. Instead I viewed it in Notepad++ and found that it contacted http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/xml/planetstats.cfm to get data on the latest discovery. I have amedned the CommonData project and have wrote a class in that to poll for the information. I have amended the CommonData project and have wrote a class in that to poll for the information.  That class and its unit test will form the basis for a new project.

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  • Silverlight Cream for April 24, 2010 -- #846

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Timmy Kokke, Pete Brown, Paul Yanez, Emil Stoychev, Jeremy Likness, and Pavan Podila. Shoutouts: If you've got some time to spend, the User Experience Kit is packed with info: User Experience Kit, and just plain fun to navigate ... thanks Scott Barnes for reminding me about it! Jesse Liberty is looking for some help organizing and cataloging posts for a new project he's got going: Help Wanted Emil Stoychev posted Slides and demos from my talk on Silverlight 4 From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File Manager Michael Washington has a post up about a Silverlight Drag and Drop File Manager in MVVM, but a secondary important point about the post is that he and Alan Beasley followed strict Designer/Developer rules on this... you recognized Alan's ListBox didn't you? Changing CSS with jQuery syntax in Silverlight using jLight Timmy Kokke is using jLight as introduced in a prior post to interact with the DOM from Silverlight. Essential Silverlight and WPF Skills: The UI Thread, Dispatchers, Background Workers and Async Network Programming Pete Brown has a great backrounder up for WPF and Silverlight devs on threading and networking, good comments too so far. Fluid layout and Fullscreen in Silverlight Paul Yanez has a quick post and demo up on forcing full-screen with a fluid layout, all code included -- and it doesn't take much Data Binding in Silverlight Emil Stoychev has a great long tutorial up on DataBinding in Silverlight ... he hits all the major points with text, samples, and code... definitely one to read! Yet Another MVVM Locator Pattern Another not-necessarily Silverlight post from Jeremy Likness -- but definitely a good one on MVVM and locator patterns. The SpiderWebControl for Silverlight Pavan Podila has a 'SpiderWebControl' for Silverlight 4 up... this is a great network graph control with any sort of feature I can think of... check out the demo, then grab the code... or the other way around, your choice :) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • TechEd 2012: Office, SharePoint And More Office

    - by Tim Murphy
    I haven’t spent any time looking at Office 365 up to this point.  I met Donovan Follette on the flight down from Chicago.  I also got to spend some time discussing the product offerings with him at the TechExpo and that sealed my decision to attend this session. The main actor of his presentation is the BCS – Business Connectivity Services. He explained that while this feature has existed in on-site SharePoint it is a valuable new addition to Office 365 SharePoint Online.  If you aren’t familiar with the BCS, it allows you to leverage non-SharePoint enterprise data source from SharePoint.  The greatest benefactor is the end users who can leverage the data using a variety of Office products and more.  The one thing I haven’t shaken my skepticism of is the use of SharePoint Designer which Donovan used to create a WCF service.  It is mostly my tendency to try to create solutions that can be managed through the whole application life cycle.  It the past migrating through test environments has been near impossible with anything other than content created by SharePiont Designer. There is a lot of end user power here.  The biggest consideration I think you need to examine when reaching from you enterprise LOB data stores out to an online service and back is that you are going to take a performance hit.  This means that you have to be very aware of how you configure these integrated self serve solutions.  As a rule make sure you are using the right tool for the right situation. I appreciated that he showed both no code and code solutions for the consumer of the LOB data.  I came out of this session much better informed about the possibilities around this product. del.icio.us Tags: Office 365,SharePoint Online,TechEd,TechEd 2012

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  • Ranking Part III

    - by PointsToShare
    © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved   Ranking Part III In a previous blogs “Ranking an Introduction” and  “Ranking Part II” , you have already praised me in “Rank the Author” and learned how to create a new element on a page and how to place it where you need it. For this installment, I just added code to keep the number of votes (you vote by clicking one of the stars) and the total vote. Using these two, we can compute the average rating. It’s a small step, but its purpose is to show that we do not need a detailed history in order to compute the average. A running total is sufficient. Please note that once you close the game, you will lose your previous total. In real life, we persist the totals in the list itself. We also keep a list of actual votes, but its purpose is to prevent double votes. If a person has already voted, his user id is already on the list and our program will check for it and bar the person from voting again. This is coded in an event receiver, which is a SharePoint server piece of code. I will show you how to do this part in a subsequent blog. Again, go to the page and look at the code. The gist of it is here. avg, votes, and stars are global variables that I defined before. function sendRate(sel){//I hate long line so I created pieces of the message in their own vars            var s1 = "Your Rating Was: ";            var s2 = ".. ";            var s3 = "\nVotes = ";            var s4 = "\nTotal Stars = ";            var s5 = "\nAverage = ";            var s;            s = parseInt(sel.id.replace("_", '')); // Get the selected star number            votes = parseInt(votes) + 1;            stars = parseInt(stars) + s;            avg = parseFloat(stars) / parseFloat(votes);            alert(s1 + sel.id + s2 +sel.title + s3 + votes + s4 + stars + s5 + avg);} Click on the link to play and examine “Ranking with Stats” That’s all folks!

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  • Virtual Brown Bag: Ruby Newbies, Mockups, There *is* an I in SOLID, fuv

    - by Brian Schroer
    At this week's Virtual Brown Bag meeting: Claudio pointed us to Try Ruby! and Rails For Zombies, two sites to educate Ruby newbies We looked at the free version of Balsamiq, and other online mockup sites George walked us through a refactoring to isolate roles and adhere to the Interface Segregation Principle (the "I" in SOLID) We laughed at fuv, the code editor for "real programmers" For detailed notes, links, and the video recording, go to the VBB wiki page: https://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/main_page/2011-02-10

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  • Azure Storage Explorer

    - by kaleidoscope
    Azure Storage Explorer –  an another way to Deploy the services on Cloud Azure Storage Explorer is a useful GUI tool for inspecting and altering the data in your Azure cloud storage projects including the logs of your cloud-hosted applications. All three types of cloud storage can be viewed: blobs, queues, and tables. You can also create or delete blob/queue/table containers and items. Text blobs can be edited and all data types can be imported/exported between the cloud and local files. Table records can be imported/exported between the cloud and spreadsheet CSV files. Why Azure Storage Explorer Azure Storage Explorer is a licensed CodePlex project provided by Neudesic – a Microsoft partner.  It is a simple UI that requires you to input your blob storage name, access key and endpoints in the Storage Settings dialog. For more details please refer to the link: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=35189   Anish, S

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  • How Microsoft listens

    - by Stacy Vicknair
    This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit. My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?” There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on. MVPs MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx Evangelists Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx Microsoft Connect This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same. https://connect.microsoft.com   Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP,Feedback,Connect

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  • AJI Report with Nat Ryan&ndash;Discussion about Game Development with Corona Labs SDK

    - by Jeff Julian
    We sat down with Nat Ryan of Fully Croisened to talk about Game Development and the Corona Labs framework. The Corona SDK is a platform that allows you to write mobile games or applications using the Lua language and deploy to the iOS and Android platforms. One of the great features of Corona is the compilation output is a native application and not a hybrid application. Corona is very centered around their developer community and there are quite a few local meetups focused on the helping other developers use the platform. The community and Corona site offers a great number of resources and samples that will help you get started in a matter of a few days. If you are into Game Development and want to move towards mobile, or a business developer looking to turn your craft back into a hobby, check out this recording and Corona Labs to get started.   Download the Podcast   Site: AJI Report – @AJISoftware Site: Fully Croisened Twitter: @FullyCroisened Site: Corona Labs

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  • Where did my form go in SharePoint 2010!?

    - by MOSSLover
    So I was working on an intro to development demo for the Central NJ .Net User Group and I found a few kinks.  I opened up a form to custom in InfoPath and Quick Published it wouldn’t work.  I imed my InfoPath guru friend, Lori Gowin, she said try to run a regular publish.  The form was still not showing up in SharePoint.  I could open it and it knew my changes, but it would just not render in a browser.  So I decided to create a form from scratch without using the button customize form in the list.  That did not work, so it was google time.  Finally I found this blog post: http://qwertconsulting.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/list-form-from-infopath-2010-is-blank/.  Once I went into the configuration wizard and turned on the State Service everything worked perfectly fine.  It was great.  See I normally don’t run through the wizard and check the box to turn all the services on in SharePoint.  I usually like a leaner environment plus I want to learn how everything works.  So I guess most people had no idea what was going on in the background.  To get InfoPath to work you need the session state.  It’s doing some type of caching in the browser.  Very neat stuff.  I hope this helps one of you out there some day. Technorati Tags: InfoPath 2010,SharePoint 2010,State Service

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  • ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM Available

    - by Shaun
    Shiju Varghese posted an article on his(her) blog and said that the RTM of the ASP.NET MVC 2 had been released and available to download. You can get the installation packeage and the release note here. And based on the release note there’s no breaking changes from RC2 to RTM. Let’s play with the new ASP.NET MVC and look forward the Visual Studio 2010 RTM.

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  • Click Once Deployment Process and Issue Resolution

    - by Geordie
    Introduction We are adopting Click Once as a deployment standard for Thick .Net application clients.  The latest version of this tool has matured it to a point where it can be used in an enterprise environment.  This guide will identify how to use Click Once deployment and promote code trough the dev, test and production environments. Why Use Click Once over SCCM If we already use SCCM why add Click Once to the deployment options.  The advantages of Click Once are their ability to update the code in a single location and have the update flow automatically down to the user community.  There have been challenges in the past with getting configuration updates to download but these can now be achieved.  With SCCM you can do the same thing but it then needs to be packages and pushed out to users.  Each time a new user is added to an application, time needs to be spent by an administrator, to push out any required application packages.  With Click Once the user would go to a web link and the application and pre requisites will automatically get installed. New Deployment Steps Overview The deployment in an enterprise environment includes several steps as the solution moves through the development life cycle before being released into production.  To make mitigate risk during the release phase, it is important to ensure the solution is not deployed directly into production from the development tools.  Although this is the easiest path, it can introduce untested code into production and result in unexpected results. 1. Deploy the client application to a development web server using Visual Studio 2008 Click Once deployment tools.  Once potential production versions of the solution are being generated, ensure the production install URL is specified when deploying code from Visual Studio.  (For details see ‘Deploying Click Once Code from Visual Studio’) 2. xCopy the code to the test server.  Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the test server. (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) 3. xCopy the code to the production server.  Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the production server. The certificate used to sign the code should be provided by a certificate authority that will be trusted by the client machines.  Finally make sure the setup.exe contains the production install URL.  If not redeploy the solution from Visual Studio to the dev environment specifying the production install URL.  Then xcopy the install.exe file from dev to production.  (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) Detailed Deployment Steps Deploying Click Once Code From Visual Studio Open Visual Studio and create a new WinForms or WPF project.   In the solution explorer right click on the project and select ‘Publish’ in the context menu.   The ‘Publish Wizard’ will start.  Enter the development deployment path.  This could be a local directory or web site.  When first publishing the solution set this to a development web site and Visual basic will create a site with an install.htm page.  Click Next.  Select weather the application will be available both online and offline. Then click Finish. Once the initial deployment is completed, republish the solution this time mapping to the directory that holds the code that was just published.  This time the Publish Wizard contains and additional option.   The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it.  It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use.  At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production.  Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder.  This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production.  During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application. Visual studio will publish the application to the desired location in the process it will create an anonymous ‘pfx’ certificate to sign the deployment configuration files.  A production certificate should be acquired in preparation for deployment to production.   Directory structure created by Visual Studio     Application files created by Visual Studio   Development web site (install.htm) created by Visual Studio Migrating Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio To migrate the Click Once application code to a new server, a tool called MageUI is needed to modify the .application and .manifest files.  The MageUI tool is usually located – ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin’ folder or can be downloaded from the web. When deploying to a new environment copy all files in the project folder to the new server.  In this case the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder and contents.  The old application versions can be deleted, in this case ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_0’ and ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_1’.  Open IIS Manager and create a virtual directory that points to the project folder.  Also make the publish.htm the default web page.   Run the ManeUI tool and then open the .application file in the root project folder (in this case in the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder). Click on the Deployment Options in the left hand list and update the URL to the new server URL and save the changes.   When MageUI tries to save the file it will prompt for the file to be signed.   This step cannot be bypassed if you want the Click Once deployment to work from a web site.  The easiest solution to this for test is to use the auto generated certificate that Visual Studio created for the project.  This certificate can be found with the project source code.   To save time go to File>Preferences and configure the ‘Use default signing certificate’ fields.   Future deployments will only require application files to be transferred to the new server.  The only difference is then updating the .application file the ‘Version’ must be updated to match the new version and the ‘Application Reference’ has to be update to point to the new .manifest file.     Updating the Configuration File of a Click Once Deployment Package without using Visual Studio When an update to the configuration file is required, modifying the ClickOnceSample.exe.config.deploy file will not result in current users getting the new configurations.  We do not want to go back to Visual Studio and generate a new version as this might introduce unexpected code changes.  A new version of the application can be created by copying the folder (in this case ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_2) and pasting it into the application Files directory.  Rename the directory ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3’.  In the new folder open the configuration file in notepad and make the configuration changes. Run MageUI and open the manifest file in the newly copied directory (ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3).   Edit the manifest version to reflect the newly copied files (in this case 1.0.0.3).  Then save the file.  Open the .application file in the root folder.  Again update the version to 1.0.0.3.  Since the file has not changed the Deployment Options/Start Location URL should still be correct.  The application Reference needs to be updated to point to the new versions .manifest file.  Save the file. Next time a user runs the application the new version of the configuration file will be down loaded.  It is worth noting that there are 2 different types of configuration parameter; application and user.  With Click Once deployment the difference is significant.  When an application is downloaded the configuration file is also brought down to the client machine.  The developer may have written code to update the user parameters in the application.  As a result each time a new version of the application is down loaded the user parameters are at risk of being overwritten.  With Click Once deployment the system knows if the user parameters are still the default values.  If they are they will be overwritten with the new default values in the configuration file.  If they have been updated by the user, they will not be overwritten. Settings configuration view in Visual Studio Production Deployment When deploying the code to production it is prudent to disable the development and test deployment sites.  This will allow errors such as incorrect URL to be quickly identified in the initial testing after deployment.  If the sites are active there is no way to know if the application was downloaded from the production deployment and not redirected to test or dev.   Troubleshooting Clicking the install button on the install.htm page fails. Error: URLDownloadToCacheFile failed with HRESULT '-2146697210' Error: An error occurred trying to download <file>   This is due to the setup.exe file pointing to the wrong location. ‘The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it.  It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use.  At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production.  Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder.  This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production.  During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application.’

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  • Windows Embedded Forums

    - by Luca Calligaris
    Here are the forums about Windows Embedded: Windows Embedded Standard Windows Embedded Compact Platform Development Windows Embedded Compact Managed Application Development Windows Embedded Compact Native Application Development The first forum has been online for some time while those about Windows Embedded Compact have been welcomed by Olivier Bloch a couple of hours ago. As I discuss in the previous post the public MS newsgroups will close between June 1, 2010 and October 1, 2010, starting from those with less traffic. The embedded NG's will be probably close at the beginning of the period since, for some reasons I do not understand, they're not so popular as those devoted to, let's say, Office. The forums will substitute the newsgroups so prepare to switch over soon!

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