geeks - Page 46 - Developer IT

VS 2010: SP1

- by xamlnotes

I posted this yesterday but had the wrong link at the bottom. SP1 for VS 2010 just hit the web today. Check it out at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983509/en-usHTH This should fix lots of big and little things such as startup time, bugs and more. Plus there are tons of features in there too for web, xaml, and other application types. I am really excited about the unit testing and load testing features that were added. Theres also an update for .Net 4 framework. And check out the new Silverlight performance wizard. Lots of really cool stuff. Get it today! For now I looks like only MSDN subscribers can download it. Download it from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/default

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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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Bind a Wijmo Grid to Salesforce.com Through the Salesforce OData Connector

- by dataintegration

This article will explain how to connect to any RSSBus OData Connector with Wijmo's data grid using JSONP. While the example will use the Salesforce Connector, the same process can be followed for any of the RSSBus OData Connectors. Step 1: Download and install both the Salesforce Connector from RSSBus and the Wijmo javascript library. Step 2: Next you will want to configure the Salesforce Connector to connect with your Salesforce account. If you browse to the Help tab in the Salesforce Connector application, there is a link to the Getting Started Guide which will walk you through setting up the Salesforce Connector. Step 3: Once you have successfully configured the Salesforce Connector application, you will want to open a Wijmo sample grid file to edit. This example will use the overview.html grid found in the Samples folder. Step 4: First, we will wrap the jQuery document ready function in a callback function for the JSONP service. In this example, we will wrap this in function called fnCallback which will take a single object args. <script id="scriptInit" type="text/javascript"> function fnCallback(args) { $(document).ready(function () { $("#demo").wijgrid({ ... }); }); }; </script> Step 5: Next, we need to format the columns object in a format that Wijmo's data grid expects. This is done by adding the headerText: element for each column. <script id="scriptInit" type="text/javascript"> function fnCallback(args) { var columns = []; for (var i = 0; i < args.columnnames.length; i++){ var col = { headerText: args.columnnames[i]}; columns.push(col); } $(document).ready(function () { $("#demo").wijgrid({ ... }); }); }; </script> Step 6: Now the wijgrid parameters are ready to be set. In this example, we will set the data input parameter to the args.data object and the columns input parameter to our newly created columns object. The resulting javascript function should look like this: <script id="scriptInit" type="text/javascript"> function fnCallback(args) { var columns = []; for (var i = 0; i < args.columnnames.length; i++){ var col = { headerText: args.columnnames[i]}; columns.push(col); } $(document).ready(function () { $("#demo").wijgrid({ allowSorting: true, allowPaging: true, pageSize: 10, data: args.data, columns: columns }); }); }; </script> Step 7: Finally, we need to add the JSONP reference to our Salesforce Connector's data table. You can find this by clicking on the Settings tab of the Salesforce Connector. Once you have found the JSONP URL, you will need to supply a valid table name that you want to connect with Wijmo. In this example, we will connect to the Lead table. You will also need to add authentication options in this step. In the example we will append the authtoken of the user who has access to the Salesforce Connector using the @authtoken query string parameter. IMPORTANT: This is not secure and will expose the authtoken of the user whose authtoken you supply in this step. There are other ways to secure the user's authtoken, but this example uses a query string parameter for simplicity. <script src="http://localhost:8181/sfconnector/data/conn/Lead.rsd?@jsonp=fnCallback&sql:query=SELECT%20*%20FROM%20Lead&@authtoken=<myAuthToken>" type="text/javascript"></script> Step 8: Now, we are done. If you point your browser to the URL of the sample, you should see your Salesforce.com leads in a Wijmo data grid.

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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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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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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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AJI Report with Nat Ryan–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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Sign of a Good Game

- by Matt Christian

(Warning: This post contains spoilers about SILENT HILL 2. If you haven't played this game, you are dumb) What is one sign of a great game? One of the signs I realized recently is when a game continues to stun and surprise you years and years after you've played and beaten it. As a major Silent Hill fan, I recently was reminded of Silent Hill 2 and even though see it as one of my favorite Silent Hill games, there are still things I'm learning about it that are neat little additions that add to the atmosphere (atmosphere also makes a great game!). For instance, when you start the game you are given a letter by your wife who has been deceased for years and years. You are directed to Silent Hill and start treking through hell all by your lonesome (with the exception of a few psychos). As you continue through the game, pieces of the letter begin to fade and disappear until eventually it is completely non-existent, thus implying the letter was never real and the letter was a delusion you created. Another example is the game's use of imagery the player knows about but might not notice at first. For me, the most apparent of these was the dress you find near the start when you find the flashlight, which is the same dress you see Mary (your wife) wearing in the flashback sequences. However, one thing I didn't know was that several deceased bodies you encounter laying around Silent Hill are actually the body of the main character (James) which invokes an idea you've seen that body before but can't pinpoint where... It's amazing to see a game go to such unique lengths to provide a psychological horror game. Sure, all the dead bodies could be randomly modelled and the dress could be any ol' dress, but just the idea of your brain knowing something deep down but you can't pinpoint it is a really unique idea. In my opinion, it ties less into subconscious and more into natural tendencies, it taps into the fear hidden inside us all.

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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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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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SilverlightShow for Jan 17-23, 2011

- by Dave Campbell

Check out the Top Five most popular news at SilverlightShow for Jan 17-23, 2011. Jesse Liberty's list of a dozen of absolutely essential utilities for programmers grabbed the first place in last week's SilverlightShow top news. Among the most visited news is also the collection of top picks from the "Above the Fold" list on SilverlightCream. Here's SilverlightShow top 5 news for last week: 12 Essential Utilities For Programmers 10 things that can be improved in Silverlight A Silverlight Sample Built with Self-Tracking Entities and WCF Services Exploring Ribbon Control for Silverlight (Part - 2) SilverlightCream top picks for January 10-16, 2011 Visit and bookmark SilverlightShow. Stay in the 'Light

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Making a Case For The Command Line

- by Jesse Taber

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty. In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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Salt and hash a password in .NET

- by Jon Canning

I endeavoured to follow the CrackStation rules: Salted Password Hashing - Doing it Right public class SaltedHash { public string Hash { get; private set; } public string Salt { get; private set; } public SaltedHash(string password) { var saltBytes = new byte[32]; new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetNonZeroBytes(saltBytes); Salt = ConvertToBase64String(saltBytes); var passwordAndSaltBytes = Concat(password, saltBytes); Hash = ComputeHash(passwordAndSaltBytes); } static string ConvertToBase64String(byte[] bytes) { return Convert.ToBase64String(bytes); } static string ComputeHash(byte[] bytes) { return ConvertToBase64String(SHA256.Create().ComputeHash(bytes)); } static byte[] Concat(string password, byte[] saltBytes) { var passwordBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(password); return passwordBytes.Concat(saltBytes).ToArray(); } public static bool Verify(string salt, string hash, string password) { var saltBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(salt); var passwordAndSaltBytes = Concat(password, saltBytes); var hashAttempt = ComputeHash(passwordAndSaltBytes); return hash == hashAttempt; } }

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UppercuT – Custom Extensions Now With PowerShell and Ruby

- by Robz / Fervent Coder

Arguably, one of the most powerful features of UppercuT (UC) is the ability to extend any step of the build process with a pre, post, or replace hook. This customization is done in a separate location from the build so you can upgrade without wondering if you broke the build. There is a hook before each step of the build has run. There is a hook after. And back to power again, there is a replacement hook. If you don’t like what the step is doing and/or you want to replace it’s entire functionality, you just drop a custom replacement extension and UppercuT will perform the custom step instead. Up until recently all custom hooks had to be written in NAnt. Now they are a little sweeter because you no longer need to use NAnt to extend UC if you don’t want to. You can use PowerShell. Or Ruby. Let that sink in for a moment. You don’t have to even need to interact with NAnt at all now. Extension Points On the wiki, all of the extension points are shown. The basic idea is that you would put whatever customization you are doing in a separate folder named build.custom. Each step Let’s take a look at all we can customize: The start point is default.build. It calls build.custom/default.pre.build if it exists, then it runs build/default.build (normal tasks) OR build.custom/default.replace.build if it exists, and finally build.custom/default.post.build if it exists. Every step below runs with the same extension points but changes on the file name it is looking for. NOTE: If you include default.replace.build, nothing else will run because everything is called from default.build. * policyChecks.step * versionBuilder.step NOTE: If you include build.custom/versionBuilder.replace.step, the items below will not run. - svn.step, tfs.step, or git.step (the custom tasks for these need to go in build.custom/versioners) * generateBuildInfo.step * compile.step * environmentBuilder.step * analyze.step NOTE: If you include build.custom/analyze.replace.step, the items below will not run. - test.step (the custom tasks for this need to go in build.custom/analyzers) NOTE: If you include build.custom/analyzers/test.replace.step, the items below will not run. + mbunit2.step, gallio.step, or nunit.step (the custom tasks for these need to go in build.custom/analyzers) - ncover.step (the custom tasks for this need to go in build.custom/analyzers) - ndepend.step (the custom tasks for this need to go in build.custom/analyzers) - moma.step (the custom tasks for this need to go in build.custom/analyzers) * package.step NOTE: If you include build.custom/package.replace.step, the items below will not run. - deploymentBuilder.step Customize UppercuT Builds With PowerShell UppercuT can now be extended with PowerShell (PS). To customize any extension point with PS, just add .ps1 to the end of the file name and write your custom tasks in PowerShell. If you are not signing your scripts you will need to change a setting in the UppercuT.config file. This does impose a security risk, because this allows PS to now run any PS script. This setting stays that way on ANY machine that runs the build until manually changed by someone. I’m not responsible if you mess up your machine or anyone else’s by doing this. You’ve been warned. Now that you are fully aware of any security holes you may open and are okay with that, let’s move on. Let’s create a file called default.replace.build.ps1 in the build.custom folder. Open that file in notepad and let’s add this to it: write-host "hello - I'm a custom task written in Powershell!" Now, let’s run build.bat. You could get some PSake action going here. I won’t dive into that in this post though. Customize UppercuT Builds With Ruby If you want to customize any extension point with Ruby, just add .rb to the end of the file name and write your custom tasks in Ruby. Let’s write a custom ruby task for UC. If you were thinking it would be the same as the one we just wrote for PS, you’d be right! In the build.custom folder, lets create a file called default.replace.build.rb. Open that file in notepad and let’s put this in there: puts "I'm a custom ruby task!" Now, let’s run build.bat again. That’s chunky bacon. UppercuT and Albacore.NET Just for fun, I wanted to see if I could replace the compile.step with a Rake task. Not just any rake task, Albacore’s msbuild task. Albacore is a suite of rake tasks brought about by Derick Bailey to make building .NET with Rake easier. It has quite a bit of support with developers that are using Rake to build code. In my build.custom folder, I drop a compile.replace.step.rb. I also put in a separate file that will contain my Albacore rake task and I call that compile.rb. What are the contents of compile.replace.step.rb? rake = 'rake' arguments= '-f ' + Dir.pwd + '/../build.custom/compile.rb' #puts "Calling #{rake} " + arguments system("#{rake} " + arguments) Since the custom extensions call ruby, we have to shell back out and call rake. That’s what we are doing here. We also realize that ruby is called from the build folder, so we need to back out and dive into the build.custom folder to find the file that is technically next to us. What are the contents of compile.rb? require 'rubygems' require 'fileutils' require 'albacore' task :default => [:compile] puts "Using Ruby to compile UppercuT with Albacore Tasks" desc 'Compile the source' msbuild :compile do |msb| msb.properties = { :configuration => :Release, :outputpath => '../../build_output/UppercuT' } msb.targets [:clean, :build] msb.verbosity = "quiet" msb.path_to_command = 'c:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v3.5/MSBuild.exe' msb.solution = '../uppercut.sln' end We are using the msbuild task here. We change the output path to the build_output/UppercuT folder. The output path has “../../” because this is based on every project. We could grab the current directory and then point the task specifically to a folder if we have projects that are at different levels. We want the verbosity to be quiet so we set that as well. So what kind of output do you get for this? Let’s run build.bat custom_tasks_replace: [echo] Running custom tasks instead of normal tasks if C:\code\uppercut\build\..\build.custom\compile.replace.step exists. [exec] (in C:/code/uppercut/build) [exec] Using Ruby to compile UppercuT with Albacore Tasks [exec] Microsoft (R) Build Engine Version 3.5.30729.4926 [exec] [Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 2.0.50727.4927] [exec] Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2007. All rights reserved. If you think this is awesome, you’d be right! With this knowledge you shall build.

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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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TFS Shipping Cadence

- by Tarun Arora

Brian Harry has formally announced a change to the TFS shipping cadence from the traditional 2-3 years to production cycle to a more agile and refreshing minimum once in a 3 weeks cycle! The change didn’t happen over night, it was a gradual process which was greatly influenced by moving TFS to the cloud. The thinking started with trying to figure out what the team wanted. Like people often do, the team started with what they knew and tried to evolve from there. The team spent a few months thinking through “What if we do major releases every year and minor releases every 6 months?”, “Major releases every 6 months, patches once a month?”, “What if we do quarterly releases – can we get the release cycle going that fast?”, etc. The team also spent time debating what constitutes a major release VS a minor release. How much churn are customers willing to tolerate? The team finally concluded… “When a change this big is necessary – forget where you are and just ask where you want to be and then ask what it would take to get there.” Going forward you will see, Team Foundation Service updates every 3 weeks Visual Studio Client updates quarterly (Limited to VS 2012 for now) Team Foundation Server updates more frequent than every 2 years but details still being worked out. The team will definitely deliver one this fall. Refer to the complete blog post from Brian Harry here.

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Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3.5: Node.js relay

- by Elton Stoneman

This is an extension to Part 3 in the IPASBR series, see also: Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 2: Anonymous full-trust .NET consumer Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3: Anonymous partial-trust consumer In Part 3 I said “there isn't actually a .NET requirement here”, and this post just follows up on that statement. In Part 3 we had an ASP.NET MVC Website making a REST call to an Azure Service Bus service; to show that the REST stuff is really interoperable, in this version we use Node.js to make the secure service call. The code is on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 3.5. The sample code is simpler than Part 3 - rather than code up a UI in Node.js, the sample just relays the REST service call out to Azure. The steps are the same as Part 3: REST call to ACS with the service identity credentials, which returns an SWT; REST call to Azure Service Bus Relay, presenting the SWT; request gets relayed to the on-premise service. In Node.js the authentication step looks like this: var options = { host: acs.namespace() + '-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net', path: '/WRAPv0.9/', method: 'POST' }; var values = { wrap_name: acs.issuerName(), wrap_password: acs.issuerSecret(), wrap_scope: 'http://' + acs.namespace() + '.servicebus.windows.net/' }; var req = https.request(options, function (res) { console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode); console.log("headers: ", res.headers); res.on('data', function (d) { var token = qs.parse(d.toString('utf8')); callback(token.wrap_access_token); }); }); req.write(qs.stringify(values)); req.end(); Once we have the token, we can wrap it up into an Authorization header and pass it to the Service Bus call: token = 'WRAP access_token=\"' + swt + '\"'; //... var reqHeaders = { Authorization: token }; var options = { host: acs.namespace() + '.servicebus.windows.net', path: '/rest/reverse?string=' + requestUrl.query.string, headers: reqHeaders }; var req = https.request(options, function (res) { console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode); console.log("headers: ", res.headers); response.writeHead(res.statusCode, res.headers); res.on('data', function (d) { var reversed = d.toString('utf8') console.log('svc returned: ' + d.toString('utf8')); response.end(reversed); }); }); req.end(); Running the sample Usual routine to add your own Azure details into Solution Items\AzureConnectionDetails.xml and “Run Custom Tool” on the .tt files. Build and you should be able to navigate to the on-premise service at http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/reverse?string=abc123 and get a string response, going to the service direct. Install Node.js (v0.8.14 at time of writing), run FormatServiceRelay.cmd, navigate to http://localhost:8013/reverse?string=abc123, and you should get exactly the same response but through Node.js, via Azure Service Bus Relay to your on-premise service. The console logs the WRAP token returned from ACS and the response from Azure Service Bus Relay which it forwards:

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Html.RenderAction Failed when Validation Failed

- by Shaun

RenderAction method had been introduced when ASP.NET MVC 1.0 released in its MvcFuture assembly and then final announced along with the ASP.NET MVC 2.0. Similar as RenderPartial, the RenderAction can display some HTML markups which defined in a partial view in any parent views. But the RenderAction gives us the ability to populate the data from an action which may different from the action which populating the main view. For example, in Home/Index.aspx we can invoke the Html.RenderPartial(“MyPartialView”) but the data of MyPartialView must be populated by the Index action of the Home controller. If we need the MyPartialView to be shown in Product/Create.aspx we have to copy (or invoke) the relevant code from the Index action in Home controller to the Create action in the Product controller which is painful. But if we are using Html.RenderAction we can tell the ASP.NET MVC from which action/controller the data should be populated. in that way in the Home/Index.aspx and Product/Create.aspx views we just need to call Html.RenderAction(“CreateMyPartialView”, “MyPartialView”) so it will invoke the CreateMyPartialView action in MyPartialView controller regardless from which main view. But in my current project we found a bug when I implement a RenderAction method in the master page to show something that need to connect to the backend data center when the validation logic was failed on some pages. I created a sample application below. Demo application I created an ASP.NET MVC 2 application and here I need to display the current date and time on the master page. I created an action in the Home controller named TimeSlot and stored the current date into ViewDate. This method was marked as HttpGet as it just retrieves some data instead of changing anything. 1: [HttpGet] 2: public ActionResult TimeSlot() 3: { 4: ViewData["timeslot"] = DateTime.Now; 5: return View("TimeSlot"); 6: } Next, I created a partial view under the Shared folder to display the date and time string. 1: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<dynamic>" %> 2: 3: <span>Now: <% 1: : ViewData["timeslot"].ToString() %></span> Then at the master page I used Html.RenderAction to display it in front of the logon link. 1: <div id="logindisplay"> 2: <% 1: Html.RenderAction("TimeSlot", "Home"); %> 3: 4: <% 1: Html.RenderPartial("LogOnUserControl"); %> 5: </div> It’s fairly simple and works well when I navigated to any pages. But when I moved to the logon page and click the LogOn button without input anything in username and password the validation failed and my website crashed with the beautiful yellow page. (I really like its color style and fonts…) How ASP.NET MVC executes Html.RenderAction In this example all other pages were rendered successful which means the ASP.NET MVC found the TimeSolt action under the Home controller except this situation. The only different is that when I clicked the LogOn button the browser send an HttpPost request to the server. Is that the reason of this bug? I created another action in Home controller with the same action name but for HttpPost. 1: [HttpPost] 2: [ActionName("TimeSlot")] 3: public ActionResult TimeSlot(object dummy) 4: { 5: return TimeSlot(); 6: } Or, I can use the AcceptVerbsAttribute on the TimeSlot action to let it allow both HttpGet and HttpPost. 1: [AcceptVerbs("GET", "POST")] 2: public ActionResult TimeSlot() 3: { 4: ViewData["timeslot"] = DateTime.Now; 5: return View("TimeSlot"); 6: } And then repeat what I did before and this time it worked well. Why we need the action for HttpPost here as it’s just data retrieving? That is because of how ASP.NET MVC executes the RenderAction method. In the source code of ASP.NET MVC we can see when proforming the RenderAction ASP.NET MVC creates a RequestContext instance from the current RequestContext and created a ChildActionMvcHandler instance which inherits from MvcHandler class. Then the ASP.NET MVC processes the handler through the HttpContext.Server.Execute method. That means it performs the action as a stand-alone request asynchronously and flush the result into the TextWriter which is being used to render the current page. Since when I clicked the LogOn the request was in HttpPost so when ASP.NET MVC processed the ChildActionMvcHandler it would find the action which allow the current request method, which is HttpPost. Then our TimeSlot method in HttpGet would not be matched. Summary In this post I introduced a bug in my currently developing project regards the new Html.RenderAction method provided within ASP.NET MVC 2 when processing a HttpPost request. In ASP.NET MVC world the underlying Http information became more important than in ASP.NET WebForm world. We need to pay more attention on which kind of request it currently created and how ASP.NET MVC processes. 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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CLR via C# 3rd Edition is out

- by Abhijeet Patel

Time for some book news update. CLR via C#, 3rd Edition seems to have been out for a little while now. The book was released in early Feb this year, and needless to say my copy is on it’s way. I can barely wait to dig in and chew on the goodies that one of the best technical authors and software professionals I respect has in store. The 2nd edition of the book was an absolute treat and this edition promises to be no less. Here is a brief description of what’s new and updated from the 2nd edition. Part I – CLR Basics Chapter 1-The CLR’s Execution Model Added about discussion about C#’s /optimize and /debug switches and how they relate to each other. Chapter 2-Building, Packaging, Deploying, and Administering Applications and Types Improved discussion about Win32 manifest information and version resource information. Chapter 3-Shared Assemblies and Strongly Named Assemblies Added discussion of TypeForwardedToAttribute and TypeForwardedFromAttribute. Part II – Designing Types Chapter 4-Type Fundamentals No new topics. Chapter 5-Primitive, Reference, and Value Types Enhanced discussion of checked and unchecked code and added discussion of new BigInteger type. Also added discussion of C# 4.0’s dynamic primitive type. Chapter 6-Type and Member Basics No new topics. Chapter 7-Constants and Fields No new topics. Chapter 8-Methods Added discussion of extension methods and partial methods. Chapter 9-Parameters Added discussion of optional/named parameters and implicitly-typed local variables. Chapter 10-Properties Added discussion of automatically-implemented properties, properties and the Visual Studio debugger, object and collection initializers, anonymous types, the System.Tuple type and the ExpandoObject type. Chapter 11-Events Added discussion of events and thread-safety as well as showing a cool extension method to simplify the raising of an event. Chapter 12-Generics Added discussion of delegate and interface generic type argument variance. Chapter 13-Interfaces No new topics. Part III – Essential Types Chapter 14-Chars, Strings, and Working with Text No new topics. Chapter 15-Enums Added coverage of new Enum and Type methods to access enumerated type instances. Chapter 16-Arrays Added new section on initializing array elements. Chapter 17-Delegates Added discussion of using generic delegates to avoid defining new delegate types. Also added discussion of lambda expressions. Chapter 18-Attributes No new topics. Chapter 19-Nullable Value Types Added discussion on performance. Part IV – CLR Facilities Chapter 20-Exception Handling and State Management This chapter has been completely rewritten. It is now about exception handling and state management. It includes discussions of code contracts and constrained execution regions (CERs). It also includes a new section on trade-offs between writing productive code and reliable code. Chapter 21-Automatic Memory Management Added discussion of C#’s fixed state and how it works to pin objects in the heap. Rewrote the code for weak delegates so you can use them with any class that exposes an event (the class doesn’t have to support weak delegates itself). Added discussion on the new ConditionalWeakTable class, GC Collection modes, Full GC notifications, garbage collection modes and latency modes. I also include a new sample showing how your application can receive notifications whenever Generation 0 or 2 collections occur. Chapter 22-CLR Hosting and AppDomains Added discussion of side-by-side support allowing multiple CLRs to be loaded in a single process. Added section on the performance of using MarshalByRefObject-derived types. Substantially rewrote the section on cross-AppDomain communication. Added section on AppDomain Monitoring and first chance exception notifications. Updated the section on the AppDomainManager class. Chapter 23-Assembly Loading and Reflection Added section on how to deploy a single file with dependent assemblies embedded inside it. Added section comparing reflection invoke vs bind/invoke vs bind/create delegate/invoke vs C#’s dynamic type. Chapter 24-Runtime Serialization This is a whole new chapter that was not in the 2nd Edition. Part V – Threading Chapter 25-Threading Basics Whole new chapter motivating why Windows supports threads, thread overhead, CPU trends, NUMA Architectures, the relationship between CLR threads and Windows threads, the Thread class, reasons to use threads, thread scheduling and priorities, foreground thread vs background threads. Chapter 26-Performing Compute-Bound Asynchronous Operations Whole new chapter explaining the CLR’s thread pool. This chapter covers all the new .NET 4.0 constructs including cooperative cancelation, Tasks, the aralle class, parallel language integrated query, timers, how the thread pool manages its threads, cache lines and false sharing. Chapter 27-Performing I/O-Bound Asynchronous Operations Whole new chapter explaining how Windows performs synchronous and asynchronous I/O operations. Then, I go into the CLR’s Asynchronous Programming Model, my AsyncEnumerator class, the APM and exceptions, Applications and their threading models, implementing a service asynchronously, the APM and Compute-bound operations, APM considerations, I/O request priorities, converting the APM to a Task, the event-based Asynchronous Pattern, programming model soup. Chapter 28-Primitive Thread Synchronization Constructs Whole new chapter discusses class libraries and thread safety, primitive user-mode, kernel-mode constructs, and data alignment. Chapter 29-Hybrid Thread Synchronization Constructs Whole new chapter discussion various hybrid constructs such as ManualResetEventSlim, SemaphoreSlim, CountdownEvent, Barrier, ReaderWriterLock(Slim), OneManyResourceLock, Monitor, 3 ways to solve the double-check locking technique, .NET 4.0’s Lazy and LazyInitializer classes, the condition variable pattern, .NET 4.0’s concurrent collection classes, the ReaderWriterGate and SyncGate classes.

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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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CoffeeScript Test Framework

- by Liam McLennan

Tonight the Brisbane Alt.NET group is doing a coding dojo. I am hoping to talk someone into pairing with me to solve the kata in CoffeeScript. CoffeeScript is an awesome language, half javascript, half ruby, that compiles to javascript. To assist with tonight’s dojo I wrote the following micro test framework for CoffeeScript: <html> <body> <div> <h2>Test Results:</h2> <p class='results' /> </div> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/coffeescript"> # super simple test framework test: { write: (s) -> $('.results').append(s + '<br/>') assert: (b, message...) -> test.write(if b then "pass" else "fail: " + message) tests: [] exec: () -> for t in test.tests test.write("<br/><b>$t.name</b>") t.func() } # add some tests test.tests.push { name: "First Test" func: () -> test.assert(true) } test.tests.push { name: "Another Test" func: () -> test.assert(false, "You loose") } # run them test.exec(test.tests) </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="coffee-script.js"></script> </body> </html> It’s not the prettiest, but as far as I know it is the only CoffeeScript test framework in existence. Of course, I could just use one of the javascript test frameworks but that would be no fun. To get this example to run you need the coffeescript compiler in the same directory as the page.

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XNA Notes 005

- by George Clingerman

Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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Conversion of BizTalk Projects to Use the New WCF-SAP Adaptor

- by Geordie

We are in the process of upgrading our BizTalk Environment from BizTalk 2006 R2 to BizTalk 2010. The SAP adaptor in BizTalk 2010 is an all new and more powerful WCF-SAP adaptor. When my colleagues tested out the new adaptor they discovered that the format of the data extracted from SAP was not identical to the old adaptor. This is not a big deal if the structure of the messages from SAP is simple. In this case we were receiving the delivery and invoice iDocs. Both these structures are complex especially the delivery document. Over the past few years I have tweaked the delivery mapping to remove bugs from original mapping. The idea of redoing these maps did not appeal and due to the current work load was not even an option. I opted for a rather crude alternative of pulling in the iDoc in the new typed format and then adding a static map at the start of the orchestration to convert the data to the old schema. Note WCF-SAP data formats (on the binding tab of the configuration dialog box is the ‘RecieiveIdocFormat’ field): Typed: Returns a XML document with the hierarchy represented in XML and all fields being represented by XML tags. RFC: Returns an XML document with the hierarchy represented in XML but the iDoc lines in flat file format. String: This returns the iDoc in a format that is closest to the original flat file format but is still wrapped with some top level XML tags. The files also contained some strange characters at the end of each line. I started with the invoice document and it was quite straight forward to add the mapping but this is where my problems started. The orchestrations for these documents are dynamic and so require the identity of the partner to be able to correctly configure the orchestration. The partner identity is in the EDI_DC40 segment of the iDoc. In the old project the RECPRN node of the segment was promoted. The code to set a variable to the partner ID was now failing. After lot of head scratching I discovered the problem was due to the addition of Namespaces to the fields in the EDI_DC40 segment. To overcome this I needed to use an xPath query with a Namespace Manager. This had to be done in custom code. I now tried to repeat the process with the delivery document. Unfortunately when we tried to get sample typed data from SAP an exception was thrown. The adapter "WCF-SAP" raised an error message. Details "Microsoft.ServiceModel.Channels.Common.XmlReaderGenerationException: The segment or group definition E2EDKA1001 was not found in the IDoc metadata. The UniqueId of the IDoc type is: IDOCTYP/3/DESADV01/ZASNEXT1/640. For Receive operations, the SAP adapter does not support unreleased segments. Our guess is that when the WCF-SAP adaptor tries to down load the data it retrieves a data schema from SAP. For some reason the schema does not match the data. This may be due to the version of SAP we are running or due to a customization. Either way resolving this problem did not look easy. When doing some research on this problem I found an article showing me how to get the data from SAP using the WCF-SAP adaptor without any XML tags. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adapters/archive/2007/10/05/receiving-idocs-getting-the-raw-idoc-data.aspx Reproduction of Mustansir blog: Since the WCF based SAP Adapter is ... well, WCF based, all data flowing in and out of the adapter is encapsulated within a SOAP message. Which means there are those pesky xml tags all over the place. If you want to receive an Idoc from SAP, you can receive it in "Typed" format (in which case each column in each segment of the idoc appears within its own xml tag), or you can receive it in "String" format (in which case there are just 2 xml tags at the top, the raw xml data in string/flat file format, and the 2 closing xml tags). In "String" format, an incoming idoc (for ORDERS05, containing 5 data records) would look like: <ReceiveIdoc ><idocData>EDI_DC40 8000000000001064985620 E2EDK01005 800000000000106498500000100000001 E2EDK14 8000000000001064985000002000000020111000 E2EDK14 8000000000001064985000003000000020081000 E2EDK14 80000000000010649850000040000000200710 E2EDK14 80000000000010649850000050000000200600</idocData></ReceiveIdoc> (I have trimmed part of the control record so that it fits cleanly here on one line). Now, you're only interested in the IDOC data, and don't care much for the XML tags. It isn't that difficult to write your own pipeline component, or even some logic in the orchestration to remove the tags, right? Well, you don't need to write any extra code at all - the WCF Adapter can help you here! During the configuration of your one-way Receive Location using WCF-Custom, navigate to the Messages tab. Under the section "Inbound BizTalk Messge Body", select the "Path" radio button, and: (a) Enter the body path expression as: /*[local-name()='ReceiveIdoc']/*[local-name()='idocData'] (b) Choose "String" for the Node Encoding. What we've done is, used an XPATH to pull out the value of the "idocData" node from the XML. Your Receive Location will now emit text containing only the idoc data. You can at this point, for example, put the Flat File Pipeline component to convert the flat text into a different xml format based on some other schema you already have, and receive your version of the xml formatted message in your orchestration. This was potentially a much easier solution than adding the static maps to the orchestrations and overcame the issue with ‘Typed’ delivery documents. Not quite so fast… Note: When I followed Mustansir’s blog the characters at the end of each line disappeared. After configuring the adaptor and passing the iDoc data into the original flat file receive pipelines I was receiving exceptions. There was a failure executing the receive pipeline: "PAPINETPipelines.DeliveryFlatFileReceive, CustomerIntegration2.PAPINET.Pipelines, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4ca3635fbf092bbb" Source: "Pipeline " Receive Port: "recSAP_Delivery" URI: "D:\CustomerIntegration2\SAP\Delivery\*.xml" Reason: An error occurred when parsing the incoming document: "Unexpected data found while looking for: 'Z2EDPZ7' The current definition being parsed is E2EDP07GRP. The stream offset where the error occured is 8859. The line number where the error occured is 23. The column where the error occured is 0.". Although the new flat file looked the same as the old one there was a differences. In the original file all lines in the document were exactly 1064 character long. In the new file all lines were truncated to the last alphanumeric character. The final piece of the puzzle was to add a custom pipeline component to pad all the lines to 1064 characters. This component was added to the decode node of the custom delivery and invoice flat file disassembler pipelines. Execute method of the custom pipeline component: public IBaseMessage Execute(IPipelineContext pc, IBaseMessage inmsg) { //Convert Stream to a string Stream s = null; IBaseMessagePart bodyPart = inmsg.BodyPart; // NOTE inmsg.BodyPart.Data is implemented only as a setter in the http adapter API and a //getter and setter for the file adapter. Use GetOriginalDataStream to get data instead. if (bodyPart != null) s = bodyPart.GetOriginalDataStream(); string newMsg = string.Empty; string strLine; try { StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(s); strLine = sr.ReadLine(); while (strLine != null) { //Execute padding code if (strLine != null) strLine = strLine.PadRight(1064, ' ') + "\r\n"; newMsg += strLine; strLine = sr.ReadLine(); } sr.Close(); } catch (IOException ex) { throw new Exception("Error occured trying to pad the message to 1064 charactors"); } //Convert back to stream and set to Data property inmsg.BodyPart.Data = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(newMsg)); ; //reset the position of the stream to zero inmsg.BodyPart.Data.Position = 0; return inmsg; }

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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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