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• Test All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you developer or just excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7, and want to try it out now?  Thanks to free developer tools from Microsoft and a new unlocked emulator rom, you can try out most of the exciting features today from your PC. Last week we showed you how to try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC and get started developing for the upcoming new devices.  We noticed, however, that the emulator only contains Internet Explorer Mobile and some settings.  This is still interesting to play around with, but it wasn’t the full Windows Phone 7 experience. Some enterprising tweakers discovered that more applications were actually included in the emulator, but were simply hidden from users.  Developer Dan Ardelean then figured out how to re-enable these features, and released a tweaked emulator rom so everyone can try out all of the Windows Phone 7 features for themselves.  Here we’ll look at how you can run this new emulator image on your PC, and then look at some interesting features in Windows Phone 7. Editor Note: This modified emulator image is not official, and isn’t sanctioned by Microsoft. Use your own judgment when choosing to download and use the emulator. Setting Up Emulator Rom To test-drive Windows Phone 7 on your PC, you must first download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (link below).  Follow the steps we showed you last week at: Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC today.  Once it’s installed, go ahead and run the default emulator as we showed to make sure everything works ok. Once the Windows Phone Developer Tools are installed and running, download the new emulator rom from XDA Forums (link below).  This will be a zip file, so extract it first. Note where you save the file, as you will need the address in the next step. Now, to run our new emulator image, we need to open the emulator in command line and point to the new rom image.  To do this, browse to the correct directory, depending on whether you’re running the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows: 32 bit: C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ 64 bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ Hold your Shift key down and right-click in the folder.  Choose Open Command Window here. At the command prompt, enter XDE.exe followed by the location of your new rom image.  Here, we downloaded the rom to our download folder, so at the command prompt we entered: XDE.exe C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin The emulator loads … with the full Windows Phone 7 experience! To make it easier, let’s make a shortcut on our desktop to load the emulator with the new rom directly.  Right-click on your desktop (or any folder you want to create the shortcut in), select New, and then Shortcut. Now, in the box, we need to enter the path for the emulator followed by the location of our rom.  Both items must be in quotes.  So, in our test, we entered the following: 32 bit: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” 64 bit: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” Make sure to enter the correct location of the new emulator rom for your computer, and keep both items in separate quotes.  Click next when you’ve entered the location. Name the shortcut; we named it Windows Phone 7, but simply enter whatever you’d like.  Click Finish when you’re done. You should now have a nice Windows Phone icon and your fully functional shortcut!  Double-click it to run the Windows Phone 7 emulator as above. Features in the Unlocked Windows Phone 7 Emulator So let’s look at what you can do with this new emulator.  Almost everything you’ve seen in demos from the Mobile World Conference and Mix’10 are right here for you to play with.  Here’s the application menu, which you can access by clicking on the arrow on the top of the home screen, which shows how much stuff they’ve got in this!   And, of course, even the home screen itself shows much more activity than it did in the original emulator. Let’s check out some of these sections.  Here’s Zune running on Windows Phone 7, and the Zune Marketplace.  The animations are beautiful, so be sure to check this out yourself. The new picture hub is much nicer than any picture viewer included with Windows Mobile in the past…   Stay productive, and on schedule with the new Calendar. The XBOX hub gives us only a hint of things to come, and the links to games now are simply placeholders. Here’s a look at the Office hub.  This doesn’t show up on the homescreen right now, but you can access it in the applications menu.  Office obviously still has a lot of work left on it, but even at a glance here it looks like it includes a lot more functionality than Office Mobile in Windows Mobile 6. Here’s a look at each of the three apps: Word, Excel, and OneNote, and the formatting pallet in Office apps.   This emulator also includes a lot more settings than the default one, including settings for individual applications. You can even activate the screen lock, and try out the lift-to-peek-or-unlock feature… Finally, this version of Windows Phone 7 includes a very nice SystemInfo app with an advanced task manager.  We hope this is still available when the actual phones are released. Conclusion If you’re excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series, or simply want to learn more about what’s coming, this is a great way to test it out.  With these exciting new hubs and applications, there’s something here for everyone.  Let us know what you like most about Windows Phone 7 and what your favorite app or hub is. Links Please note: These roms are not officially supported by Microsoft, and could be taken down. Download the unlocked Windows Phone 7 emulator from XDA Forums – click the link in this post to download How the unlocked emulator image was created Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayGet stats on your Ruby on Rails codeDisable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning FeaturesWeek in Geek – The Slick Windows 7 File Copy Animation EditionGeek Fun: Virtualized Old School Windows – Windows 95 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10

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• Reporting Services - It's a Wrap!

  - by smisner

  If you have any experience at all with Reporting Services, you have probably developed a report using the matrix data region. It's handy when you want to generate columns dynamically based on data. If users view a matrix report online, they can scroll horizontally to view all columns and all is well. But if they want to print the report, the experience is completely different and you'll have to decide how you want to handle dynamic columns. By default, when a user prints a matrix report for which the number of columns exceeds the width of the page, Reporting Services determines how many columns can fit on the page and renders one or more separate pages for the additional columns. In this post, I'll explain two techniques for managing dynamic columns. First, I'll show how to use the RepeatRowHeaders property to make it easier to read a report when columns span multiple pages, and then I'll show you how to "wrap" columns so that you can avoid the horizontal page break. Included with this post are the sample RDLs for download. First, let's look at the default behavior of a matrix. A matrix that has too many columns for one printed page (or output to page-based renderer like PDF or Word) will be rendered such that the first page with the row group headers and the inital set of columns, as shown in Figure 1. The second page continues by rendering the next set of columns that can fit on the page, as shown in Figure 2.This pattern continues until all columns are rendered. The problem with the default behavior is that you've lost the context of employee and sales order - the row headers - on the second page. That makes it hard for users to read this report because the layout requires them to flip back and forth between the current page and the first page of the report. You can fix this behavior by finding the RepeatRowHeaders of the tablix report item and changing its value to True. The second (and subsequent pages) of the matrix now look like the image shown in Figure 3. The problem with this approach is that the number of printed pages to flip through is unpredictable when you have a large number of potential columns. What if you want to include all columns on the same page? You can take advantage of the repeating behavior of a tablix and get repeating columns by embedding one tablix inside of another. For this example, I'm using SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services. You can get similar results with SQL Server 2008. (In fact, you could probably do something similar in SQL Server 2005, but I haven't tested it. The steps would be slightly different because you would be working with the old-style matrix as compared to the new-style tablix discussed in this post.) I created a dataset that queries AdventureWorksDW2008 tables: SELECT TOP (100) e.LastName + ', ' + e.FirstName AS EmployeeName, d.FullDateAlternateKey, f.SalesOrderNumber, p.EnglishProductName, sum(SalesAmount) as SalesAmount FROM FactResellerSales AS f INNER JOIN DimProduct AS p ON p.ProductKey = f.ProductKey INNER JOIN DimDate AS d ON d.DateKey = f.OrderDateKey INNER JOIN DimEmployee AS e ON e.EmployeeKey = f.EmployeeKey GROUP BY p.EnglishProductName, d.FullDateAlternateKey, e.LastName + ', ' + e.FirstName, f.SalesOrderNumber ORDER BY EmployeeName, f.SalesOrderNumber, p.EnglishProductName To start the report: Add a matrix to the report body and drag Employee Name to the row header, which also creates a group. Next drag SalesOrderNumber below Employee Name in the Row Groups panel, which creates a second group and a second column in the row header section of the matrix, as shown in Figure 4. Now for some trickiness. Add another column to the row headers. This new column will be associated with the existing EmployeeName group rather than causing BIDS to create a new group. To do this, right-click on the EmployeeName textbox in the bottom row, point to Insert Column, and then click Inside Group-Right. Then add the SalesOrderNumber field to this new column. By doing this, you're creating a report that repeats a set of columns for each EmployeeName/SalesOrderNumber combination that appears in the data. Next, modify the first row group's expression to group on both EmployeeName and SalesOrderNumber. In the Row Groups section, right-click EmployeeName, click Group Properties, click the Add button, and select [SalesOrderNumber]. Now you need to configure the columns to repeat. Rather than use the Columns group of the matrix like you might expect, you're going to use the textbox that belongs to the second group of the tablix as a location for embedding other report items. First, clear out the text that's currently in the third column - SalesOrderNumber - because it's already added as a separate textbox in this report design. Then drag and drop a matrix into that textbox, as shown in Figure 5. Again, you need to do some tricks here to get the appearance and behavior right. We don't really want repeating rows in the embedded matrix, so follow these steps: Click on the Rows label which then displays RowGroup in the Row Groups pane below the report body. Right-click on RowGroup,click Delete Group, and select the option to delete associated rows and columns. As a result, you get a modified matrix which has only a ColumnGroup in it, with a row above a double-dashed line for the column group and a row below the line for the aggregated data. Let's continue: Drag EnglishProductName to the data textbox (below the line). Add a second data row by right-clicking EnglishProductName, pointing to Insert Row, and clicking Below. Add the SalesAmount field to the new data textbox. Now eliminate the column group row without eliminating the group. To do this, right-click the row above the double-dashed line, click Delete Rows, and then select Delete Rows Only in the message box. Now you're ready for the fit and finish phase: Resize the column containing the embedded matrix so that it fits completely. Also, the final column in the matrix is for the column group. You can't delete this column, but you can make it as small as possible. Just click on the matrix to display the row and column handles, and then drag the right edge of the rightmost column to the left to make the column virtually disappear. Next, configure the groups so that the columns of the embedded matrix will wrap. In the Column Groups pane, right-click ColumnGroup1 and click on the expression button (labeled fx) to the right of Group On [EnglishProductName]. Replace the expression with the following: =RowNumber("SalesOrderNumber" ). We use SalesOrderNumber here because that is the name of the group that "contains" the embedded matrix. The next step is to configure the number of columns to display before wrapping. Click any cell in the matrix that is not inside the embedded matrix, and then double-click the second group in the Row Groups pane - SalesOrderNumber. Change the group expression to the following expression: =Ceiling(RowNumber("EmployeeName")/3) The last step is to apply formatting. In my example, I set the SalesAmount textbox's Format property to C2 and also right-aligned the text in both the EnglishProductName and the SalesAmount textboxes. And voila - Figure 6 shows a matrix report with wrapping columns. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 20, 2010New ProjectsBerkeliumDotNet: BerkeliumDotNet is a .NET wrapper for the Berkelium library written in C++/CLI. Berkelium provides off-screen browser rendering via Google's Chromi...BoxBinary Descriptive WebCacheManager Framework: Allows you to take a simple, different, and more effective method of caching items in ASP.NET. The developer defines descriptive categories to deco...CHS Extranet: CHS Extranet Project, working with the RM Community to build the new RM Easylink type applicationDbModeller: Generates one class having properties with the basic C# types aimed to serve as a business object by using reflection from the passed objects insta...Dice.NET: Dice.NET is a simple dice roller for those cases where you just kinda forgot your real dices. It's very simple in setup/use.EBI App with the SQL Server CE and websync: EBI App with the SQL Server CE and SQL Server DEV with Merge Replication(Web Synchronization) ere we are trying to develop an application which yo...Family Tree Analyzer: This project with be a c# project which aims to allow users to import their GEDCOM files and produce various data analysis reports such as a list o...Go! Embedded Device Builder: Go! is a complete software engineering environment for the creation of embedded Linux devices. It enables you to engineer, design, develop, build, ...HiddenWordsReadingPlan: HiddenWordsReadingPlanHtml to OpenXml: A library to convert simple or advanced html to plain OpenXml document.Jeffrey Palermo's shared source: This project contains multiple samples with various snippets and projects from blog posts, user group talks, and conference sessions.Krypton Palette Selectors: A small C# control library that allows for simplified palette selection and management. It makes use of and relies on Component Factory's excellen...OCInject: A DI container on a diet. This is a basic DI container that lives in your project not an external assembly with support for auto generated delegat...Photo Organiser: A small utility to sort photos into a new file structure based on date held in their XMP or EXIF tags (YYYY/MM/DD/hhmmss.jpg). Developed in C# / WPF.QPAPrintLib: Print every document by its recommended programmReusable Library: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Runtime Intelligence Data Visualizer: WPF application used to visualize Runtime Intelligence data using the Data Query Service from the Runtime Intelligence Endpoint Starter Kit.ScreenRec: ScreenRec is program for record your desktop and save to images or save one picture.Silverlight Internet Desktop Application Guidance: SLIDA (Silverlight Internet Desktop Applications) provides process guidance for developers creating Silverlight applications that run exclusively o...WSUS Web Administration: Web Application to remotely manage WSUSNew Releases7zbackup - PowerShell Script to Backup Files with 7zip: 7zBackup v. 1.7.0 Stable: Bug Solved : Test-Path-Writable fails on root of system drive on Windows 7. Therefore the function now accepts an optional parameter to specify if ...aqq: sec 1.02: Projeto SEC - Sistema economico Comercial - em Visual FoxPro 9.0 OpenSource ou seja gratis e com fontes, licença GNU/GPL para maiores informações e...ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route Mapper: Attribute Based Routes v0.2: ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route MapperBoxBinary Descriptive WebCacheManager Framework: Initial release: Initial assembly release for anyone wanting the files referenced in my talk at Umbraco's 5th Birthday London meetup 16/Feb/2010 The code is fairly...Build Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.2 Beta: 2.2.10050.1548Added support for custom increment schemes via pluginsBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: BuildVersionIncrement v2.1: 2.1.10050.1458Fix: Localization issues Feature: Unmanaged C support Feature: Multi-Monitor support Feature: Global/Default settings Fix: De...CHS Extranet: Beta 2.3: Beta 2.3 Release Change Log: Fixed the update my details not updating the department/form Tried to fix the issue when the ampersand (&) is in t...Cover Creator: CoverCreator 1.2.2: Resolved BUG: If there is only one CD entry in freedb.org application do nothing. Instalation instructions Just unzip CoverCreator and run CoverCr...Employee Scheduler: Employee Scheduler 2.3: Extract the files to a directory and run Lab Hours.exe. Add an employee. Double click an employee to modify their times. Please contact me through ...EnOceanNet: EnOceanNet v1.11: Recompiled for .NET Framework 4 RCFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.3 beta 4 Released: Hi, This release contains fix for the following bugs: * DataBinding was not working as expected with RIA services. * DataSeries visual wa...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 0.1 Beta: This is a beta version for testing purpose.Jeffrey Palermo's shared source: Web Forms front controller: This code goes along with my blog post about adding code that executes before your web form http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/add-post-backs-to-mvc-nd...Krypton Palette Selectors: Initial Release: The initial release. Contains only the KryptonPaletteDropButton control.LaunchMeNot: LaunchMeNot 1.10: Lots has been added in this release. Feel free, however, to suggest features you'd like on the forums. Changes in LaunchMeNot 1.10 (19th February ...Magellan: Magellan 1.1.36820.4796 Stable: This is a stable release. It contains a fix for a bug whereby the content of zones in a shared layout couldn't use element bindings (due to name sc...Magellan: Magellan 1.1.36883.4800 Stable: This release includes a couple of major changes: A new Forms object model. See this page for details. Magellan objects are now part of the defau...MAISGestão: LayerDiagram: LayerDiagramMatrix3DEx: Matrix3DEx 1.0.2.0: Fixes the SwapHandedness method. This release includes factory methods for all common transformation matrices like rotation, scaling, translation, ...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.1.55880: Fixed bugs.NewLineReplacer: QPANewLineReplacer 1.1: Replace letter fast and easy in great textfilesOAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.5.0.1): Difference between 1.5.0.0 is just version number.OCInject: First Release: First ReleasePhoto Organiser: Installer alpha release: First release - contains known bugs, but works for the most part.Pinger: Pinger-1.0.0.0 Source: The Latest and First Source CodePinger: Pinger-1.0.0.2 Binary: Hi, This version can! work on Older versions of windows than 7 but i haven't test it! tnxPinger: Pinger-1.0.0.2 Source: Hi, It's the raw source!Reusable Library: v1.0: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.ScreenRec: Version 1: One version of this programSense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0 Beta 5: Sense/Net 6.0 Beta 5 Release Notes We are proud to finally present you Sense/Net 6.0 Beta 5, a major feature overhaul over beta43, and hopefully th...Silverlight Internet Desktop Application Guidance: v1: Project templates for Silverlight IDA and Silverlight Navigation IDA.SLAM! SharePoint List Association Manager: SLAM v1.3: The SharePoint List Association Manager is a platform for managing lists in SharePoint in a relational manner. The SLAM Hierarchy Extension works ...SQL Server PowerShell Extensions: 2.0.2 Production: Release 2.0.1 re-implements SQLPSX as PowersShell version 2.0 modules. SQLPSX consists of 8 modules with 133 advanced functions, 2 cmdlets and 7 sc...StoryQ: StoryQ 2.0.2 Library and Converter UI: Fixes: 16086 This release includes the following files: StoryQ.dll - the actual StoryQ library for you to reference StoryQ.xml - the xmldoc for ...Text to HTML: 0.4.0 beta: Cambios de la versión:Inclusión de los idiomas castellano, inglés y francés. Adición de una ventana de configuración. Carga dinámica de variabl...thor: Version 1.1: What's New in Version 1.1Specify whether or not to display the subject of appointments on a calendar Specify whether or not to use a booking agen...TweeVo: Tweet What Your TiVo Is Recording: TweeVo v1.0: TweeVo v1.0VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30219.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPnfe: Arquivo xml gerado manualmente: Segue um aquivo que gera o xml para NF-e de forma manual, estou trabalhando na versão 1.1 deste projeto, aguarde, enquanto isso baixe outro projeto...Windows Double Explorer: WDE v0.3.7: -optimization -locked tabs can be reset to locked directory (single & multi) -folder drag drop to tabcontrol creates new tab -splash screen -direcl...WPF ShaderEffect Generator: WPF ShaderEffect Generator 1.5: Visual Studio 2008 and RC 2010 are now supported. Different profiles can now be used to compile the shader with. ChangesVisual Studio RC 2010 is ...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrSharpyBlogEngine.NETSharePoint ContribjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Using CMS for App Configuration - Part 1, Deploying Umbraco

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2014/06/04/using-cms-for-app-configurationndashpart-1-deploy-umbraco.aspxSince my last post on using CMS for semi-static API content, How about a new platform for your next API… a CMS?, I’ve been using the idea for centralized app configuration, and this post is the first in a series that will walk through how to do that, step-by-step. The approach gives you a platform-independent, easily configurable way to specify your application configuration for different environments, with a built-in approval workflow, change auditing and the ability to easily rollback to previous settings. It’s like Azure Web and Worker Roles where you can specify settings that change at runtime, but it's not specific to Azure - you can use it for any app that needs changeable config, provided it can access the Internet. The series breaks down into four posts: Deploying Umbraco – the CMS that will store your configurable settings and the current values; Publishing your config – create a document type that encapsulates your settings and a template to expose them as JSON; Consuming your config – in .NET, a simple client that uses dynamic objects to access settings; Config lifecycle management – how to publish, audit, and rollback settings. Let’s get started. Deploying Umbraco There’s an Umbraco package on Azure Websites, so deploying your own instance is easy – but there are a couple of things to watch out for, so this step-by-step will put you in a good place. Create From Gallery The easiest way to get started is with an Azure subscription, navigate to add a new Website and then Create From Gallery. Under CMS, you’ll see an Umbraco package (currently at version 7.1.3): Configure Your App For high availability and scale, you’ll want your CMS on separate kit from anything else you have in Azure, so in the configuration of Umbraco I’d create a new SQL Azure database – which Umbraco will use to store all its content: You can use the free 20mb database option if you don’t have demanding NFRs, or if you’re just experimenting. You’ll need to specify a password for a SQL Server account which the Umbraco service will use, and changing from the default username umbracouser is probably wise. Specify Database Settings You can create a new database on an existing server if you have one, or create new. If you create a new server *do not* use the same username for the database server login as you used for the Umbraco account. If you do, the deployment will fail later. Think of this as the SQL Admin account that you can use for managing the db, the previous account was the service account Umbraco uses to connect. Make Tea If you have a fast kettle. It takes about two minutes for Azure to create and provision the website and the database. Install Umbraco So far we’ve deployed an empty instance of Umbraco using the Azure package, and now we need to browse to the site and complete installation. My Website was called my-app-config, so to complete installation I browse to http://my-app-config.azurewebsites.net:   Enter the credentials you want to use to login – this account will have full admin rights to the Umbraco instance. Note that between deploying your new Umbraco instance and completing installation in this step, anyone can browse to your website and complete the installation themselves with their own credentials, if they know the URL. Remote possibility, but it’s there. From this page *do not* click the big green Install button. If you do, Umbraco will configure itself with a local SQL Server CE database (.sdf file on the Web server), and ignore the SQL Azure database you’ve carefully provisioned and may be paying for. Instead, click on the Customize link and: Configure Your Database You need to enter your SQL Azure database details here, so you’ll have to get the server name from the Azure Management Console. You don’t need to explicitly grant access to your Umbraco website for the database though. Click Continue and you’ll be offered a “starter” website to install: If you don’t know Umbraco at all (but you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC) then a starter website is worthwhile to see how it all hangs together. But after a while you’ll have a bunch of artifacts in your CMS that you don’t want and you’ll have to work out which you can safely delete. So I’d click “No thanks, I do not want to install a starter website” and give yourself a clean Umbraco install. When it completes, the installation will log you in to the welcome screen for managing Umbraco – which you can access from http://my-app-config.azurewebsites.net/umbraco: That’s It Easy. Umbraco is installed, using a dedicated SQL Azure instance that you can separately scale, sync and backup, and ready for your content. In the next post, we’ll define what our app config looks like, and publish some settings for the dev environment.

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 4: Windows Firewall: Your System’s Best Defense

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  If you have your computer connected to a network, or directly to your Internet connection, then having a firewall is an absolute necessity. In this lesson we will discuss the Windows Firewall – one of the best security features available in Windows! The Windows Firewall made its debut in Windows XP. Prior to that, Windows system needed to rely on third-party solutions or dedicated hardware to protect them from network-based attacks. Over the years, Microsoft has done a great job with it and it is one of the best firewalls you will ever find for Windows operating systems. Seriously, it is so good that some commercial vendors have decided to piggyback on it! Let’s talk about what you will learn in this lesson. First, you will learn about what the Windows Firewall is, what it does, and how it works. Afterward, you will start to get your hands dirty and edit the list of apps, programs, and features that are allowed to communicate through the Windows Firewall depending on the type of network you are connected to. Moving on from there, you will learn how to add new apps or programs to the list of allowed items and how to remove the apps and programs that you want to block. Last but not least, you will learn how to enable or disable the Windows Firewall, for only one type of networks or for all network connections. By the end of this lesson, you should know enough about the Windows Firewall to use and manage it effectively. What is the Windows Firewall? Windows Firewall is an important security application that’s built into Windows. One of its roles is to block unauthorized access to your computer. The second role is to permit authorized data communications to and from your computer. Windows Firewall does these things with the help of rules and exceptions that are applied both to inbound and outbound traffic. They are applied depending on the type of network you are connected to and the location you have set for it in Windows, when connecting to the network. Based on your choice, the Windows Firewall automatically adjusts the rules and exceptions applied to that network. This makes the Windows Firewall a product that’s silent and easy to use. It bothers you only when it doesn’t have any rules and exceptions for what you are trying to do or what the programs running on your computer are trying to do. If you need a refresher on the concept of network locations, we recommend you to read our How-To Geek School class on Windows Networking. Another benefit of the Windows Firewall is that it is so tightly and nicely integrated into Windows and all its networking features, that some commercial vendors decided to piggyback onto it and use it in their security products. For example, products from companies like Trend Micro or F-Secure no longer provide their proprietary firewall modules but use the Windows Firewall instead. Except for a few wording differences, the Windows Firewall works the same in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. The only notable difference is that in Windows 8.x you will see the word “app” being used instead of “program”. Where to Find the Windows Firewall By default, the Windows Firewall is turned on and you don’t need to do anything special in order for it work. You will see it displaying some prompts once in a while but they show up so rarely that you might forget that is even working. If you want to access it and configure the way it works, go to the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Windows Firewall”. Now you will see the Windows Firewall window where you can get a quick glimpse on whether it is turned on and the type of network you are connected to: private networks or public network. For the network type that you are connected to, you will see additional information like: The state of the Windows Firewall How the Windows Firewall deals with incoming connections The active network When the Windows Firewall will notify you You can easily expand the other section and view the default settings that apply when connecting to networks of that type. If you have installed a third-party security application that also includes a firewall module, chances are that the Windows Firewall has been disabled, in order to avoid performance issues and conflicts between the two security products. If that is the case for your computer or device, you won’t be able to view any information in the Windows Firewall window and you won’t be able to configure the way it works. Instead, you will see a warning that says: “These settings are being managed by vendor application – Application Name”. In the screenshot below you can see an example of how this looks. How to Allow Desktop Applications Through the Windows Firewall Windows Firewall has a very comprehensive set of rules and most Windows programs that you install add their own exceptions to the Windows Firewall so that they receive network and Internet access. This means that you will see prompts from the Windows Firewall on occasion, generally when you install programs that do not add their own exceptions to the Windows Firewall’s list. In a Windows Firewall prompt, you are asked to select the network locations to which you allow access for that program: private networks or public networks. By default, Windows Firewall selects the checkbox that’s appropriate for the network you are currently using. You can decide to allow access for both types of network locations or just to one of them. To apply your setting press “Allow access”. If you want to block network access for that program, press “Cancel” and the program will be set as blocked for both network locations. At this step you should note that only administrators can set exceptions in the Windows Firewall. If you are using a standard account without administrator permissions, the programs that do not comply with the Windows Firewall rules and exceptions are automatically blocked, without any prompts being shown. You should note that in Windows 8.x you will never see any Windows Firewall prompts related to apps from the Windows Store. They are automatically given access to the network and the Internet based on the assumption that you are aware of the permissions they require based on the information displayed by the Windows Store. Windows Firewall rules and exceptions are automatically created for each app that you install from the Windows Store. However, you can easily block access to the network and the Internet for any app, using the instructions in the next section. How to Customize the Rules for Allowed Apps Windows Firewall allows any user with an administrator account to change the list of rules and exceptions applied for apps and desktop programs. In order to do this, first start the Windows Firewall. On the column on the left, click or tap “Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall” (in Windows 8.x) or “Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall” (in Windows 7). Now you see the list of apps and programs that are allowed to communicate through the Windows Firewall. At this point, the list is grayed out and you can only view which apps, features, and programs have rules that are enabled in the Windows Firewall.

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• ASP.NET Web Forms Extensibility: Providers

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction This will be the first of a number of posts on ASP.NET extensibility. At this moment I don’t know exactly how many will be and I only know a couple of subjects that I want to talk about, so more will come in the next days. I have the sensation that the providers offered by ASP.NET are not widely know, although everyone uses, for example, sessions, they may not be aware of the extensibility points that Microsoft included. This post won’t go into details of how to configure and extend each of the providers, but will hopefully give some pointers on that direction. Canonical These are the most widely known and used providers, coming from ASP.NET 1, chances are, you have used them already. Good support for invoking client side, either from a .NET application or from JavaScript. Lots of server-side controls use them, such as the Login control for example. Membership The Membership provider is responsible for managing registered users, including creating new ones, authenticating them, changing passwords, etc. ASP.NET comes with two implementations, one that uses a SQL Server database and another that uses the Active Directory. The base class is Membership and new providers are registered on the membership section on the Web.config file, as well as parameters for specifying minimum password lengths, complexities, maximum age, etc. One reason for creating a custom provider would be, for example, storing membership information in a different database engine. 1: <membership defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </membership> Role The Role provider assigns roles to authenticated users. The base class is Role and there are three out of the box implementations: XML-based, SQL Server and Windows-based. Also registered on Web.config through the roleManager section, where you can also say if your roles should be cached on a cookie. If you want your roles to come from a different place, implement a custom provider. 1: <roleManager defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 4: </providers> 5: </roleManager> Profile The Profile provider allows defining a set of properties that will be tied and made available to authenticated or even anonymous ones, which must be tracked by using anonymous authentication. The base class is Profile and the only included implementation stores these settings in a SQL Server database. Configured through profile section, where you also specify the properties to make available, a custom provider would allow storing these properties in different locations. 1: <profile defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </profile> Basic OK, I didn’t know what to call these, so Basic is probably as good as a name as anything else. Not supported client-side (doesn’t even make sense). Session The Session provider allows storing data tied to the current “session”, which is normally created when a user first accesses the site, even when it is not yet authenticated, and remains all the way. The base class and only included implementation is SessionStateStoreProviderBase and it is capable of storing data in one of three locations: In the process memory (default, not suitable for web farms or increased reliability); A SQL Server database (best for reliability and clustering); The ASP.NET State Service, which is a Windows Service that is installed with the .NET Framework (ok for clustering). The configuration is made through the sessionState section. By adding a custom Session provider, you can store the data in different locations – think for example of a distributed cache. 1: <sessionState customProvider=”MyProvider”> 2: <providers> 3: <add name=”MyProvider” type=”MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 4: </providers> 5: </sessionState> Resource A not so known provider, allows you to change the origin of localized resource elements. By default, these come from RESX files and are used whenever you use the Resources expression builder or the GetGlobalResourceObject and GetLocalResourceObject methods, but if you implement a custom provider, you can have these elements come from some place else, such as a database. The base class is ResourceProviderFactory and there’s only one internal implementation which uses these RESX files. Configuration is through the globalization section. 1: <globalization resourceProviderFactoryType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Health Monitoring Health Monitoring is also probably not so well known, and actually not a good name for it. First, in order to understand what it does, you have to know that ASP.NET fires “events” at specific times and when specific things happen, such as when logging in, an exception is raised. These are not user interface events and you can create your own and fire them, nothing will happen, but the Health Monitoring provider will detect it. You can configure it to do things when certain conditions are met, such as a number of events being fired in a certain amount of time. You define these rules and route them to a specific provider, which must inherit from WebEventProvider. Out of the box implementations include sending mails, logging to a SQL Server database, writing to the Windows Event Log, Windows Management Instrumentation, the IIS 7 Trace infrastructure or the debugger Trace. Its configuration is achieved by the healthMonitoring section and a reason for implementing a custom provider would be, for example, locking down a web application in the event of a significant number of failed login attempts occurring in a small period of time. 1: <healthMonitoring> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </healthMonitoring> Sitemap The Sitemap provider allows defining the site’s navigation structure and associated required permissions for each node, in a tree-like fashion. Usually this is statically defined, and the included provider allows it, by supplying this structure in a Web.sitemap XML file. The base class is SiteMapProvider and you can extend it in order to supply you own source for the site’s structure, which may even be dynamic. Its configuration must be done through the siteMap section. 1: <siteMap defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers><add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 3: </providers> 4: </siteMap> Web Part Personalization Web Parts are better known by SharePoint users, but since ASP.NET 2.0 they are included in the core Framework. Web Parts are server-side controls that offer certain possibilities of configuration by clients visiting the page where they are located. The infrastructure handles this configuration per user or globally for all users and this provider is responsible for just that. The base class is PersonalizationProvider and the only included implementation stores settings on SQL Server. Add new providers through the personalization section. 1: <webParts> 2: <personalization defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </personalization> 7: </webParts> Build The Build provider is responsible for compiling whatever files are present on your web folder. There’s a base class, BuildProvider, and, as can be expected, internal implementations for building pages (ASPX), master pages (Master), user web controls (ASCX), handlers (ASHX), themes (Skin), XML Schemas (XSD), web services (ASMX, SVC), resources (RESX), browser capabilities files (Browser) and so on. You would write a build provider if you wanted to generate code from any kind of non-code file so that you have strong typing at development time. Configuration goes on the buildProviders section and it is per extension. 1: <buildProviders> 2: <add extension=".ext" type="MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 3: </buildProviders> New in ASP.NET 4 Not exactly new since they exist since 2010, but in ASP.NET terms, still new. Output Cache The Output Cache for ASPX pages and ASCX user controls is now extensible, through the Output Cache provider, which means you can implement a custom mechanism for storing and retrieving cached data, for example, in a distributed fashion. The base class is OutputCacheProvider and the only implementation is private. Configuration goes on the outputCache section and on each page and web user control you can choose the provider you want to use. 1: <caching> 2: <outputCache defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </outputCache> 7: </caching> Request Validation A big change introduced in ASP.NET 4 (and refined in 4.5, by the way) is the introduction of extensible request validation, by means of a Request Validation provider. This means we are not limited to either enabling or disabling event validation for all pages or for a specific page, but we now have fine control over each of the elements of the request, including cookies, headers, query string and form values. The base provider class is RequestValidator and the configuration goes on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime requestValidationType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Browser Capabilities The Browser Capabilities provider is new in ASP.NET 4, although the concept exists from ASP.NET 2. The idea is to map a browser brand and version to its supported capabilities, such as JavaScript version, Flash support, ActiveX support, and so on. Previously, this was all hardcoded in .Browser files located in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework(64)\vXXXXX\Config\Browsers, but now you can have a class inherit from HttpCapabilitiesProvider and implement your own mechanism. Register in on the browserCaps section. 1: <browserCaps provider="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Encoder The Encoder provider is responsible for encoding every string that is sent to the browser on a page or header. This includes for example converting special characters for their standard codes and is implemented by the base class HttpEncoder. Another implementation takes care of Anti Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Build your own by inheriting from one of these classes if you want to add some additional processing to these strings. The configuration will go on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime encoderType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Conclusion That’s about it for ASP.NET providers. It was by no means a thorough description, but I hope I managed to raise your interest on this subject. There are lots of pointers on the Internet, so I only included direct references to the Framework classes and configuration sections. Stay tuned for more extensibility!

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• Entity Framework v1 &hellip; Brief Synopsis and Tips &ndash; Part 2

  - by Rohit Gupta

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

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• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• WebSocket and Java EE 7 - Getting Ready for JSR 356 (TOTD #181)

  - by arungupta

  WebSocket is developed as part of HTML 5 specification and provides a bi-directional, full-duplex communication channel over a single TCP socket. It provides dramatic improvement over the traditional approaches of Polling, Long-Polling, and Streaming for two-way communication. There is no latency from establishing new TCP connections for each HTTP message. There is a WebSocket API and the WebSocket Protocol. The Protocol defines "handshake" and "framing". The handshake defines how a normal HTTP connection can be upgraded to a WebSocket connection. The framing defines wire format of the message. The design philosophy is to keep the framing minimum to avoid the overhead. Both text and binary data can be sent using the API. WebSocket may look like a competing technology to Server-Sent Events (SSE), but they are not. Here are the key differences: WebSocket can send and receive data from a client. A typical example of WebSocket is a two-player game or a chat application. Server-Sent Events can only push data data to the client. A typical example of SSE is stock ticker or news feed. With SSE, XMLHttpRequest can be used to send data to the server. For server-only updates, WebSockets has an extra overhead and programming can be unecessarily complex. SSE provides a simple and easy-to-use model that is much better suited. SSEs are sent over traditional HTTP and so no modification is required on the server-side. WebSocket require servers that understand the protocol. SSE have several features that are missing from WebSocket such as automatic reconnection, event IDs, and the ability to send arbitrary events. The client automatically tries to reconnect if the connection is closed. The default wait before trying to reconnect is 3 seconds and can be configured by including "retry: XXXX\n" header where XXXX is the milliseconds to wait before trying to reconnect. Event stream can include a unique event identifier. This allows the server to determine which events need to be fired to each client in case the connection is dropped in between. The data can span multiple lines and can be of any text format as long as EventSource message handler can process it. WebSockets provide true real-time updates, SSE can be configured to provide close to real-time by setting appropriate timeouts. OK, so all excited about WebSocket ? Want to convert your POJOs into WebSockets endpoint ? websocket-sdk and GlassFish 4.0 is here to help! The complete source code shown in this project can be downloaded here. On the server-side, the WebSocket SDK converts a POJO into a WebSocket endpoint using simple annotations. Here is how a WebSocket endpoint will look like: @WebSocket(path="/echo")public class EchoBean { @WebSocketMessage public String echo(String message) { return message + " (from your server)"; }} In this code "@WebSocket" is a class-level annotation that declares a POJO to accept WebSocket messages. The path at which the messages are accepted is specified in this annotation. "@WebSocketMessage" indicates the Java method that is invoked when the endpoint receives a message. This method implementation echoes the received message concatenated with an additional string. The client-side HTML page looks like <div style="text-align: center;"> <form action=""> <input onclick="send_echo()" value="Press me" type="button"> <input id="textID" name="message" value="Hello WebSocket!" type="text"><br> </form></div><div id="output"></div> WebSocket allows a full-duplex communication. So the client, a browser in this case, can send a message to a server, a WebSocket endpoint in this case. And the server can send a message to the client at the same time. This is unlike HTTP which follows a "request" followed by a "response". In this code, the "send_echo" method in the JavaScript is invoked on the button click. There is also a <div> placeholder to display the response from the WebSocket endpoint. The JavaScript looks like: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> var wsUri = "ws://localhost:8080/websockets/echo"; var websocket = new WebSocket(wsUri); websocket.onopen = function(evt) { onOpen(evt) }; websocket.onmessage = function(evt) { onMessage(evt) }; websocket.onerror = function(evt) { onError(evt) }; function init() { output = document.getElementById("output"); } function send_echo() { websocket.send(textID.value); writeToScreen("SENT: " + textID.value); } function onOpen(evt) { writeToScreen("CONNECTED"); } function onMessage(evt) { writeToScreen("RECEIVED: " + evt.data); } function onError(evt) { writeToScreen('<span style="color: red;">ERROR:</span> ' + evt.data); } function writeToScreen(message) { var pre = document.createElement("p"); pre.style.wordWrap = "break-word"; pre.innerHTML = message; output.appendChild(pre); } window.addEventListener("load", init, false);</script> In this code The URI to connect to on the server side is of the format ws://<HOST>:<PORT>/websockets/<PATH> "ws" is a new URI scheme introduced by the WebSocket protocol. <PATH> is the path on the endpoint where the WebSocket messages are accepted. In our case, it is ws://localhost:8080/websockets/echo WEBSOCKET_SDK-1 will ensure that context root is included in the URI as well. WebSocket is created as a global object so that the connection is created only once. This object establishes a connection with the given host, port and the path at which the endpoint is listening. The WebSocket API defines several callbacks that can be registered on specific events. The "onopen", "onmessage", and "onerror" callbacks are registered in this case. The callbacks print a message on the browser indicating which one is called and additionally also prints the data sent/received. On the button click, the WebSocket object is used to transmit text data to the endpoint. Binary data can be sent as one blob or using buffering. The HTTP request headers sent for the WebSocket call are: GET ws://localhost:8080/websockets/echo HTTP/1.1Origin: http://localhost:8080Connection: UpgradeSec-WebSocket-Extensions: x-webkit-deflate-frameHost: localhost:8080Sec-WebSocket-Key: mDbnYkAUi0b5Rnal9/cMvQ==Upgrade: websocketSec-WebSocket-Version: 13 And the response headers received are Connection:UpgradeSec-WebSocket-Accept:q4nmgFl/lEtU2ocyKZ64dtQvx10=Upgrade:websocket(Challenge Response):00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00 The headers are shown in Chrome as shown below: The complete source code shown in this project can be downloaded here. The builds from websocket-sdk are integrated in GlassFish 4.0 builds. Would you like to live on the bleeding edge ? Then follow the instructions below to check out the workspace and install the latest SDK: Check out the source code svn checkout https://svn.java.net/svn/websocket-sdk~source-code-repository Build and install the trunk in your local repository as: mvn install Copy "./bundles/websocket-osgi/target/websocket-osgi-0.3-SNAPSHOT.jar" to "glassfish3/glassfish/modules/websocket-osgi.jar" in your GlassFish 4 latest promoted build. Notice, you need to overwrite the JAR file. Anybody interested in building a cool application using WebSocket and get it running on GlassFish ? :-) This work will also feed into JSR 356 - Java API for WebSocket. On a lighter side, there seems to be less agreement on the name. Here are some of the options that are prevalent: WebSocket (W3C API, the URL is www.w3.org/TR/websockets though) Web Socket (HTML5 Demos - html5demos.com/web-socket) Websocket (Jenkins Plugin - wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Websocket%2BPlugin) WebSockets (Used by Mozilla - developer.mozilla.org/en/WebSockets, but use WebSocket as well) Web sockets (HTML5 Working Group - www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/network.html) Web Sockets (Chrome Blog - blog.chromium.org/2009/12/web-sockets-now-available-in-google.html) I prefer "WebSocket" as that seems to be most common usage and used by the W3C API as well. What do you use ?

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• Handy ASP.NET MVC 2 Extension Methods &ndash; Where am I?

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Have you ever needed to detect what part of the application is currently being viewed?  This might be a bigger issue if you write a lot of shared/partial views or custom display or editor templates.  Another scenario, which is the one I encountered when I first started down this path, is when you have some type of menu and you’d like to be able to determine which item represents the current page so you can highlight it in some way.  A simple example is the menu that is created as part of the default ASP.NET MVC 2 Application template.   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home") %></li>         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home") %></li>     </ul>   </div>   The part that got me at first, however, was the following entry in the default style sheet (Site.css):   ul#menu li.selected a {     background-color: #fff;     color: #000; }   I assumed that the .selected class would automatically get applied to the active menu item.  After trying a few different things, including the MvcContrib MenuBuilder, I decided to write my own extension methods so I would have more control over the output.  First, I needed a way to determine what view the user has navigated to based on the requested URL and route configuration.  Now, I am sure there are many ways to do this, but this is what I came up with:   public static class RequestExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrentRoute(this RequestContext context, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         var routeData = context.RouteData;         var routeArea = routeData.DataTokens["area"] as String;         var current = false;           if ( ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(routeArea) && String.IsNullOrEmpty(areaName)) ||               (routeArea == areaName)) &&              ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(controllerName)) ||               (routeData.GetRequiredString("controller") == controllerName)) &&              ((actionNames == null) ||                actionNames.Contains(routeData.GetRequiredString("action"))) )         {             current = true;         }           return current;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   With that in place, I was able to write several UrlHelper methods that check if the supplied values map to the current view.   public static class UrlExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.RequestContext.IsCurrentRoute(areaName, controllerName, actionNames);     }       public static string Selected(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.IsCurrent(areaName, controllerName, actionNames)             ? "selected" : String.Empty;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   Now I can re-work the original menu to utilize these new methods.  Note: be sure to import the proper namespace so the extension methods become available inside your views!   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "Index") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%></li>           <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "About") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li>     </ul>   </div>   If we take it one step further, we can clean up the markup even more.  Check out the Html.ActionMenuItem() extension method and the refined menu:   public static class HtmlExtensions {     public static MvcHtmlString ActionMenuItem(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, String linkText,         String actionName, String controllerName)     {         var html = new StringBuilder("<li");           if ( htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext                 .IsCurrentRoute(null, controllerName, actionName) )         {             html.Append(" class=\"selected\"");         }           html.Append(">")             .Append(htmlHelper.ActionLink(linkText, actionName, controllerName))             .Append("</li>");           return MvcHtmlString.Create(html.ToString());     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("Home", "Index", "Home") %>         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("About", "About", "Home") %>     </ul>   </div>   Which generates the following HTML:   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="selected"><a href="/">Home</a></li>         <li><a href="/Home/About">About</a></li>     </ul>   </div>     I have created a codepaste of these extension methods if you are interested in using them in your own projects.  Enjoy!

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• What is SharePoint Out of the Box?

  - by Bil Simser

  It’s always fun in the blog-o-sphere and SharePoint bloggers always keep the pot boiling. Bjorn Furuknap recently posted a blog entry titled Why Out-of-the-Box Makes No Sense in SharePoint, quickly followed up by a rebuttal by Marc Anderson on his blog. Okay, now that we have all the players and the stage what’s the big deal? Bjorn started his post saying that you don’t use “out-of-the-box” (OOTB) SharePoint because it makes no sense. I have to disagree with his premise because what he calls OOTB is basically installing SharePoint and admiring it, but not using it. In his post he lays claim that modifying say the OOTB contacts list by removing (or I suppose adding) a column, now puts you in a situation where you’re no longer using the OOTB functionality. Really? Side note. Dear Internet, please stop comparing building software to building houses. Or comparing software architecture to building architecture. Or comparing web sites to making dinner. Are you trying to dumb down something so the general masses understand it? Comparing a technical skill to a construction operation isn’t the way to do this. Last time I checked, most people don’t know how to build houses and last time I checked people reading technical SharePoint blogs are generally technical people that understand the terms you use. Putting metaphors around software development to make it easy to understand is detrimental to the goal. </rant> Okay, where were we? Right, adding columns to lists means you are no longer using the OOTB functionality. Yeah, I still don’t get it. Another statement Bjorn makes is that using the OOTB functionality kills the flexibility SharePoint has in creating exactly what you want. IMHO this really flies in the absolute face of *where* SharePoint *really* shines. For the past year or so I’ve been leaning more and more towards OOTB solutions over custom development for the simple reason that its expensive to maintain systems and code and assets. SharePoint has enabled me to do this simply by providing the tools where I can give users what they need without cracking open up Visual Studio. This might be the fact that my day job is with a regulated company and there’s more scrutiny with spending money on anything new, but frankly that should be the position of any responsible developer, architect, manager, or PM. Do you really want to throw money away because some developer tells you that you need a custom web part when perhaps with some creative thinking or expectation setting with customers you can meet the need with what you already have. The way I read Bjorn’s terminology of “out-of-the-box” is install the software and tell people to go to a website and admire the OOTB system, but don’t change it! For those that know things like WordPress, DotNetNuke, SubText, Drupal or any of those content management/blogging systems, its akin to installing the software and setting up the “Hello World” blog post or page, then staring at it like it’s useful. “Yes, we are using WordPress!”. Then not adding a new post, creating a new category, or adding an About page. Perhaps I’m wrong in my interpretation. This leads us to what is OOTB SharePoint? To many people I’ve talked to the last few hours on twitter, email, etc. it is *not* just installing software but actually using it as it was fit for purpose. What’s the purpose of SharePoint then? It has many purposes, but using the OOTB templates Microsoft has given you the ability to collaborate on projects, author/share/publish documents, create pages, track items/contacts/tasks/etc. in a multi-user web based interface, and so on. Microsoft has pretty clear definitions of these different levels of SharePoint we’re talking about and I think it’s important for everyone to know what they are and what they mean. Personalization and Administration To me, this is the OOTB experience. You install the product and then are able to do things like create new lists, sites, edit and personalize pages, create new views, etc. Basically use the platform services available to you with Windows SharePoint Services (or SharePoint Foundation in 2010) to your full advantage. No code, no special tools needed, and very little user training required. Could you take someone who has never done anything in a website or piece of software and unleash them onto a site? Probably not. However I would argue that anyone who’s configured the Outlook reading layout or applied styles to a Word document probably won’t have too much difficulty in using SharePoint OUT OF THE BOX. Customization Here’s where things might get a bit murky but to me this is where you start looking at HTML/ASPX page code through SharePoint Designer, using jQuery scripts and plugging them into Web Part Pages via a Content Editor Web Part, and generally enhancing the site. The JavaScript debate might kick in here claiming it’s no different than C#, and frankly you can totally screw a site up with jQuery on a CEWP just as easily as you can with a C# delegate control deployed to the server file system. However (again, my blog, my opinion) the customization label comes in when I need to access the server (for example creating a custom theme) or have some kind of net-new element I add to the system that wasn’t there OOTB. It’s not content (like a new list or site), it’s code and does something functional. Development Here’s were the propeller hats come on and we’re talking algorithms and unit tests and compilers oh my. Software is deployed to the server, people are writing solutions after some kind of training (perhaps), there might be some specialized tools they use to craft and deploy the solutions, there’s the possibility of exceptions being thrown, etc. There are a lot of definitions here and just like customization it might get murky (do you let non-developers build solutions using development, i.e. jQuery/C#?). In my experience, it’s much more cost effective keeping solutions under the first two umbrellas than leaping into the third one. Arguably you could say that you can’t build useful solutions without *some* kind of code (even just some simple jQuery). I think you can get a *lot* of value just from using the OOTB experience and I don’t think you’re constraining your users that much. I’m not saying Marc or Bjorn are wrong. Like Obi-Wan stated, they’re both correct “from a certain point of view”. To me, SharePoint Out of the Box makes total sense and should not be dismissed. I just don’t agree with the premise that Bjorn is basing his statements on but that’s just my opinion and his is different and never the twain shall meet.

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• Big Data&rsquo;s Killer App&hellip;

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  Recently Keith spent  some time talking about the cloud on this blog and I will spare you my thoughts on the whole thing. What I do want to write down is something about the Big Data movement and what I think is the killer app for Big Data... Where is this coming from, ok, I confess... I spent 3 days in cloud land at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara and it was quite a lot of fun. One of the nice things at Cloud Connect was that there was a track dedicated to Big Data, which prompted me to some extend to write this post. What is Big Data anyways? The most valuable point made in the Big Data track was that Big Data in itself is not very cool. Doing something with Big Data is what makes all of this cool and interesting to a business user! The other good insight I got was that a lot of people think Big Data means a single gigantic monolithic system holding gazillions of bytes or documents or log files. Well turns out that most people in the Big Data track are talking about a lot of collections of smaller data sets. So rather than thinking "big = monolithic" you should be thinking "big = many data sets". This is more than just theoretical, it is actually relevant when thinking about big data and how to process it. It is important because it means that the platform that stores data will most likely consist out of multiple solutions. You may be storing logs on something like HDFS, you may store your customer information in Oracle and you may store distilled clickstream information in some distilled form in MySQL. The big question you will need to solve is not what lives where, but how to get it all together and get some value out of all that data. NoSQL and MapReduce Nope, sorry, this is not the killer app... and no I'm not saying this because my business card says Oracle and I'm therefore biased. I think language is important, but as with storage I think pragmatic is better. In other words, some questions can be answered with SQL very efficiently, others can be answered with PERL or TCL others with MR. History should teach us that anyone trying to solve a problem will use any and all tools around. For example, most data warehouses (Big Data 1.0?) get a lot of data in flat files. Everyone then runs a bunch of shell scripts to massage or verify those files and then shoves those files into the database. We've even built shell script support into external tables to allow for this. I think the Big Data projects will do the same. Some people will use MapReduce, although I would argue that things like Cascading are more interesting, some people will use Java. Some data is stored on HDFS making Cascading the way to go, some data is stored in Oracle and SQL does do a good job there. As with storage and with history, be pragmatic and use what fits and neither NoSQL nor MR will be the one and only. Also, a language, while important, does in itself not deliver business value. So while cool it is not a killer app... Vertical Behavioral Analytics This is the killer app! And you are now thinking: "what does that mean?" Let's decompose that heading. First of all, analytics. I would think you had guessed by now that this is really what I'm after, and of course you are right. But not just analytics, which has a very large scope and means many things to many people. I'm not just after Business Intelligence (analytics 1.0?) or data mining (analytics 2.0?) but I'm after something more interesting that you can only do after collecting large volumes of specific data. That all important data is about behavior. What do my customers do? More importantly why do they behave like that? If you can figure that out, you can tailor web sites, stores, products etc. to that behavior and figure out how to be successful. Today's behavior that is somewhat easily tracked is web site clicks, search patterns and all of those things that a web site or web server tracks. that is where the Big Data lives and where these patters are now emerging. Other examples however are emerging, and one of the examples used at the conference was about prediction churn for a telco based on the social network its members are a part of. That social network is not about LinkedIn or Facebook, but about who calls whom. I call you a lot, you switch provider, and I might/will switch too. And that just naturally brings me to the next word, vertical. Vertical in this context means per industry, e.g. communications or retail or government or any other vertical. The reason for being more specific than just behavioral analytics is that each industry has its own data sources, has its own quirky logic and has its own demands and priorities. Of course, the methods and some of the software will be common and some will have both retail and service industry analytics in place (your corner coffee store for example). But the gist of it all is that analytics that can predict customer behavior for a specific focused group of people in a specific industry is what makes Big Data interesting. Building a Vertical Behavioral Analysis System Well, that is going to be interesting. I have not seen much going on in that space and if I had to have some criticism on the cloud connect conference it would be the lack of concrete user cases on big data. The telco example, while a step into the vertical behavioral part is not really on big data. It used a sample of data from the customers' data warehouse. One thing I do think, and this is where I think parts of the NoSQL stuff come from, is that we will be doing this analysis where the data is. Over the past 10 years we at Oracle have called this in-database analytics. I guess we were (too) early? Now the entire market is going there including companies like SAS. In-place btw does not mean "no data movement at all", what it means that you will do this on data's permanent home. For SAS that is kind of the current problem. Most of the inputs live in a data warehouse. So why move it into SAS and back? That all worked with 1 TB data warehouses, but when we are looking at 100TB to 500 TB of distilled data... Comments? As it is still early days with these systems, I'm very interested in seeing reactions and thoughts to some of these thoughts...

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• The Low Down Dirty Azure Blues

  - by SGWellens

  Remember the SETI screen savers that used to be on everyone's computer? As far I as know, it was the first bona-fide use of "Cloud" computing…albeit an ad hoc cloud. I still think it was a brilliant leveraging of computing power. My interest in clouds was re-piqued when I went to a technical seminar at the local .Net User Group. The speaker was Mike Benkovitch and he expounded magnificently on the virtues of the Azure platform. Mike always does a good job. One killer reason he gave for cloud computing is instant scalability. Not applicable for most applications, but it is there if needed. I have a bunch of files stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive platform which is cloud storage. It is painfully slow. Accessing a file means going through layers and layers of software, redirections and security. Am I complaining? Hell no! It's free! So my opinions of Cloud Computing are both skeptical and appreciative. What intrigued me at the seminar, in addition to its other features, is that Azure can serve as a web hosting platform. I have a client with an Asp.Net web site I developed who is not happy with the performance of their current hosting service. I checked the cost of Azure and since the site has low bandwidth/space requirements the cost would be competitive with the existing host provider: Azure Pricing Calculator. And, Azure has a three month free trial. Perfect! I could try moving the website and see how it works for free. I went through the signup process. Everything was proceeding fine until I went to the MS SQL database management screen. A popup window informed me that I needed to install Silverlight on my machine. Silverlight? No thanks. Buh-Bye. I half-heartedly found the Azure support button and logged a ticket telling them I didn't want Silverlight on my machine. Within 4 to 6 hours (and a myriad (5) of automated support emails) they sent me a link to a database management page that did not require Silverlight. Thanks! I was able to create a database immediately. One really nice feature was that after creating the database, I was given a list of connection strings. I went to the current host provider, made a backup of the database and saved it to my machine. I attached to the remote database using SQL Server Studio 2012 and looked for the Restore menu item. It was missing. So I tried using the SQL command: RESTORE DATABASE MyDatabase FROM DISK ='C:\temp\MyBackup.bak' Msg 40510, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Statement 'RESTORE DATABASE' is not supported in this version of SQL Server. Are you kidding me? Why on earth…? This can't be happening! I opened both the source database and destination database in SQL Management Studio. I right clicked the source database, selected "Tasks" and noticed a menu selection called "Deploy Database to SQL Azure" Are you kidding me? Could it be? Oh yes, it be! There was a small problem because the database already existed on the Azure machine, I deployed to a new name, deleted the existing database and renamed the deployed database to what I needed. It was ridiculously easy. Being able to attach SQL Management Studio to remote databases is an awesome but scary feature. You can limit the IP addresses that can access the database which enhances security but when you give people, any people, me included, that much power, one errant mouse click could bring a live system down. My Advice: Tread softly and carry a large backup thumb-drive. Then I created a web site, the URL it returned look something like this: http://MyWebSite.azurewebsites.net/ Azure supports FTP, but I couldn't figure out the settings until I downloaded the publishing profile. It was an XML file that contained the needed information. I still couldn't connect with my FTP client (FileZilla). After about an hour of messing around, I deleted the port number from the FileZilla setup page….and voila, I was in like Flynn.   There are other options of deploying directly from Visual Studio, TFS, etc. but I do not like integrated tools that do things without my asking: It's usually hard to figure out what they did and how to undo it. I uploaded the aspx , cs , webconfig, etc. files. Bu it didn't run. The site I ported was in .NET 3.5. The Azure website configuration page gave me a choice between .NET 2.0 and 4.0. So, I switched to Visual Studio 2010, chose .NET 4.0 and upgraded the site. Of course I have the original version completely backed up and stored in a granite cave beneath the Nevada desert. And I have a backup CD under my pillow. The site uses ReportViewer to generate PDF documents. Of course it was the wrong version. I removed the old references to version 9 and added new references to version 10 (*see note below). Since the DLLs were not on the Azure Server, I uploaded them to the bin directory, crossed my fingers, burned some incense and gave it a try. After some fiddling around it ran. I don't know if I did anything particular to make it work or it just needed time to sort things out. However, one critical feature didn't work: ReportViewer could not programmatically generate PDF documents. I was getting this exception: "An error occurred during local report processing. Parameter is not valid." Rats. I did some searching and found other people were having the same problem, so I added a post saying I was having the same problem: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurewebsitespreview/thread/b4a6eb43-0013-435f-9d11-00ee26a8d017 Currently they are looking into this problem and I am waiting for the results. Hence I had the time to write this BLOG entry. How lucky you are. This was the last message I got from the Microsoft person: Hi Steve, Windows Azure Web Sites is a multi-tenant environment. For security issue, we limited some API calls. Unfortunately, some GDI APIS required by the PDF converting function are in this list. We have noticed this issue, and still investigation the best way to go. At this moment, there is no news to share. Sorry about this. Will keep you posted. If I had to guess, I would say they are concerned with people uploading images and doing intensive graphics programming which would hog CPU time.  But that is just a guess. Another problem. While trying to resolve the ReportViewer problem, I tried to write a file to the PDF directory to see if there was a permissions problem with some test code: String MyPath = MapPath(@"~\PDFs\Test.txt"); File.WriteAllText(MyPath, "Hello Azure");     I got this message: Access to the path <my path> is denied. After some research, I understood that since Azure is a cloud based platform, it can't allow web applications to save files to local directories. The application could be moved or replicated as scaling occurs and trying to manage local files would be problematic to say the least. There are other options: Use the Azure APIs to get a path. That way the location of the storage is separated from the application. However, the web site is then tied Azure and can't be moved to another hosting platform. Use the ApplicationData folder (not recommended). Write to BLOB storage. Or, I could try and stream the PDF output directly to the email and not save a file. I'm not going to work on a final solution until the ReportViewer is fixed. I am just sharing some of the things you need to be aware of if you decide to use Azure. I got this information from here. (Note the author of the BLOG added a comment saying he has updated his entry). Is my memory faulty? While getting this BLOG ready, I tried to write the test file again. And it worked. My memory is incorrect, or much more likely, something changed on the server…perhaps while they are trying to get ReportViewer to work. (Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). *Note: Since Visual Studio 2010 Express doesn't include a Report Editor, I downloaded and installed SQL Server Report Builder 2.0. It is a standalone Report Editor to replace the one not in Visual Studio 2010 Express. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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• Big Data – Is Big Data Relevant to me? – Big Data Questionnaires – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

  - by Pinal Dave

  This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions of SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I think the series from Pinal is a good one for anyone planning to start on Big Data journey from the basics. In my daily customer interactions this buzz of “Big Data” always comes up, I react generally saying – “Sir, do you really have a ‘Big Data’ problem or do you have a big Data problem?” Generally, there is a silence in the air when I ask this question. Data is everywhere in organizations – be it big data, small data, all data and for few it is bad data which is same as no data :). Wow, don’t discount me as someone who opposes “Big Data”, I am a big supporter as much as I am a critic of the abuse of this term by the people. In this post, I wanted to let my mind flow so that you can also think in the direction I want you to see these concepts. In any case, this is not an exhaustive dump of what is in my mind – but you will surely get the drift how I am going to question Big Data terms from customers!!! Is Big Data Relevant to me? Many of my customers talk to me like blank whiteboard with no idea – “why Big Data”. They want to jump into the bandwagon of technology and they want to decipher insights from their unexplored data a.k.a. unstructured data with structured data. So what are these industry scenario’s that come to mind? Here are some of them: Financials Fraud detection: Banks and Credit cards are monitoring your spending habits on real-time basis. Customer Segmentation: applies in every industry from Banking to Retail to Aviation to Utility and others where they deal with end customer who consume their products and services. Customer Sentiment Analysis: Responding to negative brand perception on social or amplify the positive perception. Sales and Marketing Campaign: Understand the impact and get closer to customer delight. Call Center Analysis: attempt to take unstructured voice recordings and analyze them for content and sentiment. Medical Reduce Re-admissions: How to build a proactive follow-up engagements with patients. Patient Monitoring: How to track Inpatient, Out-Patient, Emergency Visits, Intensive Care Units etc. Preventive Care: Disease identification and Risk stratification is a very crucial business function for medical. Claims fraud detection: There is no precise dollars that one can put here, but this is a big thing for the medical field. Retail Customer Sentiment Analysis, Customer Care Centers, Campaign Management. Supply Chain Analysis: Every sensors and RFID data can be tracked for warehouse space optimization. Location based marketing: Based on where a check-in happens retail stores can be optimize their marketing. Telecom Price optimization and Plans, Finding Customer churn, Customer loyalty programs Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis, Network optimizations, User Location analysis Customer Behavior Analysis Insurance Fraud Detection & Analysis, Pricing based on customer Sentiment Analysis, Loyalty Management Agents Analysis, Customer Value Management This list can go on to other areas like Utility, Manufacturing, Travel, ITES etc. So as you can see, there are obviously interesting use cases for each of these industry verticals. These are just representative list. Where to start? A lot of times I try to quiz customers on a number of dimensions before starting a Big Data conversation. Are you getting the data you need the way you want it and in a timely manner? Can you get in and analyze the data you need? How quickly is IT to respond to your BI Requests? How easily can you get at the data that you need to run your business/department/project? How are you currently measuring your business? Can you get the data you need to react WITHIN THE QUARTER to impact behaviors to meet your numbers or is it always “rear-view mirror?” How are you measuring: The Brand Customer Sentiment Your Competition Your Pricing Your performance Supply Chain Efficiencies Predictive product / service positioning What are your key challenges of driving collaboration across your global business?  What the challenges in innovation? What challenges are you facing in getting more information out of your data? Note: Garbage-in is Garbage-out. Hold good for all reporting / analytics requirements Big Data POCs? A number of customers get into the realm of setting a small team to work on Big Data – well it is a great start from an understanding point of view, but I tend to ask a number of other questions to such customers. Some of these common questions are: To what degree is your advanced analytics (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and classification) paired with your Big Data’s efforts? Do you have dedicated resources exploring the possibilities of advanced analytics in Big Data for your business line? Do you plan to employ machine learning technology while doing Advanced Analytics? How is Social Media being monitored in your organization? What is your ability to scale in terms of storage and processing power? Do you have a system in place to sort incoming data in near real time by potential value, data quality, and use frequency? Do you use event-driven architecture to manage incoming data? Do you have specialized data services that can accommodate different formats, security, and the management requirements of multiple data sources? Is your organization currently using or considering in-memory analytics? To what degree are you able to correlate data from your Big Data infrastructure with that from your enterprise data warehouse? Have you extended the role of Data Stewards to include ownership of big data components? Do you prioritize data quality based on the source system (that is Facebook/Twitter data has lower quality thresholds than radio frequency identification (RFID) for a tracking system)? Do your retention policies consider the different legal responsibilities for storing Big Data for a specific amount of time? Do Data Scientists work in close collaboration with Data Stewards to ensure data quality? How is access to attributes of Big Data being given out in the organization? Are roles related to Big Data (Advanced Analyst, Data Scientist) clearly defined? How involved is risk management in the Big Data governance process? Is there a set of documented policies regarding Big Data governance? Is there an enforcement mechanism or approach to ensure that policies are followed? Who is the key sponsor for your Big Data governance program? (The CIO is best) Do you have defined policies surrounding the use of social media data for potential employees and customers, as well as the use of customer Geo-location data? How accessible are complex analytic routines to your user base? What is the level of involvement with outside vendors and third parties in regard to the planning and execution of Big Data projects? What programming technologies are utilized by your data warehouse/BI staff when working with Big Data? These are some of the important questions I ask each customer who is actively evaluating Big Data trends for their organizations. These questions give you a sense of direction where to start, what to use, how to secure, how to analyze and more. Sign off Any Big data is analysis is incomplete without a compelling story. The best way to understand this is to watch Hans Rosling – Gapminder (2:17 to 6:06) videos about the third world myths. Don’t get overwhelmed with the Big Data buzz word, the destination to what your data speaks is important. In this blog post, we did not particularly look at any Big Data technologies. This is a set of questionnaire one needs to keep in mind as they embark their journey of Big Data. I did write some of the basics in my blog: Big Data – Big Hype yet Big Opportunity. Do let me know if these questions make sense?  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Rendering ASP.NET MVC Razor Views outside of MVC revisited

  - by Rick Strahl

  Last year I posted a detailed article on how to render Razor Views to string both inside of ASP.NET MVC and outside of it. In that article I showed several different approaches to capture the rendering output. The first and easiest is to use an existing MVC Controller Context to render a view by simply passing the controller context which is fairly trivial and I demonstrated a simple ViewRenderer class that simplified the process down to a couple lines of code. However, if no Controller Context is available the process is not quite as straight forward and I referenced an old, much more complex example that uses my RazorHosting library, which is a custom self-contained implementation of the Razor templating engine that can be hosted completely outside of ASP.NET. While it works inside of ASP.NET, it’s an awkward solution when running inside of ASP.NET, because it requires a bit of setup to run efficiently.Well, it turns out that I missed something in the original article, namely that it is possible to create a ControllerContext, if you have a controller instance, even if MVC didn’t create that instance. Creating a Controller Instance outside of MVCThe trick to make this work is to create an MVC Controller instance – any Controller instance – and then configure a ControllerContext through that instance. As long as an HttpContext.Current is available it’s possible to create a fully functional controller context as Razor can get all the necessary context information from the HttpContextWrapper().The key to make this work is the following method:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of an MVC controller from scratch /// when no existing ControllerContext is present /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T">Type of the controller to create</typeparam> /// <returns>Controller Context for T</returns> /// <exception cref="InvalidOperationException">thrown if HttpContext not available</exception> public static T CreateController<T>(RouteData routeData = null) where T : Controller, new() { // create a disconnected controller instance T controller = new T(); // get context wrapper from HttpContext if available HttpContextBase wrapper = null; if (HttpContext.Current != null) wrapper = new HttpContextWrapper(System.Web.HttpContext.Current); else throw new InvalidOperationException( "Can't create Controller Context if no active HttpContext instance is available."); if (routeData == null) routeData = new RouteData(); // add the controller routing if not existing if (!routeData.Values.ContainsKey("controller") && !routeData.Values.ContainsKey("Controller")) routeData.Values.Add("controller", controller.GetType().Name .ToLower() .Replace("controller", "")); controller.ControllerContext = new ControllerContext(wrapper, routeData, controller); return controller; }This method creates an instance of a Controller class from an existing HttpContext which means this code should work from anywhere within ASP.NET to create a controller instance that’s ready to be rendered. This means you can use this from within an Application_Error handler as I needed to or even from within a WebAPI controller as long as it’s running inside of ASP.NET (ie. not self-hosted). Nice.So using the ViewRenderer class from the previous article I can now very easily render an MVC view outside of the context of MVC. Here’s what I ended up in my Application’s custom error HttpModule: protected override void OnDisplayError(WebErrorHandler errorHandler, ErrorViewModel model) { var Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; Response.ContentType = "text/html"; Response.StatusCode = errorHandler.OriginalHttpStatusCode; var context = ViewRenderer.CreateController<ErrorController>().ControllerContext; var renderer = new ViewRenderer(context); string html = renderer.RenderView("~/Views/Shared/GenericError.cshtml", model); Response.Write(html); }That’s pretty sweet, because it’s now possible to use ViewRenderer just about anywhere in any ASP.NET application, not only inside of controller code. This also allows the constructor for the ViewRenderer from the last article to work without a controller context parameter, using a generic view as a base for the controller context when not passed:public ViewRenderer(ControllerContext controllerContext = null) { // Create a known controller from HttpContext if no context is passed if (controllerContext == null) { if (HttpContext.Current != null) controllerContext = CreateController<ErrorController>().ControllerContext; else throw new InvalidOperationException( "ViewRenderer must run in the context of an ASP.NET " + "Application and requires HttpContext.Current to be present."); } Context = controllerContext; }In this case I use the ErrorController class which is a generic controller instance that exists in the same assembly as my ViewRenderer class and that works just fine since ‘generically’ rendered views tend to not rely on anything from the controller other than the model which is explicitly passed.While these days most of my apps use MVC I do still have a number of generic pieces in most of these applications where Razor comes in handy. This includes modules like the above, which when they error often need to display error output. In other cases I need to generate string template output for emailing or logging data to disk. Being able to render simply render an arbitrary View to and pass in a model makes this super nice and easy at least within the context of an ASP.NET application!You can check out the updated ViewRenderer class below to render your ‘generic views’ from anywhere within your ASP.NET applications. Hope some of you find this useful.ResourcesViewRenderer Class in Westwind.Web.Mvc Library (Github)Original ViewRenderer ArticleRazor Hosting Library (GitHub)Original Razor Hosting Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions

  - by DigiMortal

  After hard week in work I got some free time to play with Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools. Although my first test application is still unfinished I think it is good moment to share my first experiences to you. In this posting I will give you quick overview of Windows Phone 7 developer tools from developer perspective. If you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will feel comfortable because Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools base on Visual Studio 2010 Express. Project templates There are five project templates available. Three of them are based on Silverlight and two on XNA Game Studio: Windows Phone Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone List Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone Class Library (Silverlight) Windows Phone Game (XNA Game Studio) Windows Phone Game Library (XNA Game Studio) Currently I am writing to test applications. One of them is based on Windows Phone Application and the other on Windows Phone List Application project template. After creating these projects you see the following views in Visual Studio. Windows Phone Application. Click on image to enlarge. Windows Phone List Application. Click on image to enlarge.  I suggest you to use some of these templates to get started more easily. Windows Phone 7 emulator You can run your Windows Phone 7 applications on Windows Phone 7 emulator that comes with developer tools CTP. If you run your application then emulator is started automatically and you can try out how your application works in phone-like emulator. You can see screenshot of emulator on right. Currently there is opened Windows Phone List Application as it is created by default. Click on image to enlarge it. Emulator is a little bit slow and uncomfortable but it works pretty well. This far I have caused only couple of crashes during my experiments. In these cases emulator works but Visual Studio gets stuck because it cannot communicate with emulator. One important note. Emulator is based on virtual machine although you can see only phone screen and options toolbar. If you want to run emulator you must close all virtual machines running on your machine and run Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. Once you run emulator you can keep it open because you can stop your application in Visual Studio, modify, compile and re-deploy it without restarting emulator. Designing user interfaces You can design user interface of your application in Visual Studio. When you open XAML-files it is displayed in window with two panels. Left panel shows you device screen and works as visual design environment while right panel shows you XAML mark-up and let’s you modify XML if you need it. As it is one of my very first Silverlight applications I felt more comfortable with XAML editor because property names in property boxes of visual designer confused me a little bit. Designer panel is not very good because it is visually hard to follow. It has black background that makes dark borders of controls very hard to see. If you have monitor with very high contrast then it is may be not a real problem. I have usual monitor and I have problem. :) Putting controls on design surface, dragging and resizing them is also pretty painful. Some controls are drawn correctly but for some controls you have to set width and height in XML so they can be resized. After some practicing it is not so annoying anymore. On the right you can see toolbox with some controllers. This is all you get out of the box. But it is sufficient to get started. After getting some experiences you can create your own controls or use existing ones from other vendors or developers. If it is your first time to do stuff with Silverlight then keep Google open – you need it hard. After getting over the first shock you get the point very quickly and start developing at normal speed. :) Writing source code Writing source code is the most familiar part of this action. Good old Visual Studio code editor with all nice features it has. But here you get also some surprises: The anatomy of Silverlight controls is a little bit different than the one of user controls in web and forms projects. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t run on full version of Windows (I bet it is some version of Windows CE or something like this) then there is less system classes you can use. Some familiar classes have less methods that in full version of .NET Framework and in these cases you have to write all the code by yourself or find libraries or source code from somewhere. These problems are really not so much problems than limitations and you get easily over them. Conclusion Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools help you do a lot of things on Windows Phone 7. Although I expected better performance from tools I think that current performance is not a problem. This far my first test project is going very well and Google has answer for almost every question. Windows Phone 7 is mobile device and therefore it has less hardware resources than desktop computers. This is why toolset is so limited. The more you need memory the more slower is device and as you may guess it needs the more battery. If you are writing apps for mobile devices then make your best to get your application use as few resources as possible and act as fast as possible.

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: ASP.NET MVC 3 First Look

  - by mbridge

  MVC 3 View Enhancements MVC 3 introduces two improvements to the MVC view engine: - Ability to select the view engine to use. MVC 3 allows you to select from any of your  installed view engines from Visual Studio by selecting Add > View (including the newly introduced ASP.NET “Razor” engine”): - Support for the next ASP.NET “Razor” syntax. The newly previewed Razor syntax is a concise lightweight syntax. MVC 3 Control Enhancements - Global Filters: ASP.NET MVC 3  allows you to specify that a filter which applies globally to all Controllers within an app by adding it to the GlobalFilters collection.  The RegisterGlobalFilters() method is now included in the default Global.asax class template and so provides a convenient place to do this since is will then be called by the Application_Start() method: void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters) { filters.Add(new HandleLoggingAttribute()); filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute()); } void Application_Start() { RegisterGlobalFilters (GlobalFilters.Filters); } - Dynamic ViewModel Property : MVC 3 augments the ViewData API with a new “ViewModel” property on Controller which is of type “dynamic” – and therefore enables you to use the new dynamic language support in C# and VB pass ViewData items using a cleaner syntax than the current dictionary API. Public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = "Hello World"; return View(); } - New ActionResult Types : MVC 3 includes three new ActionResult types and helper methods: 1. HttpNotFoundResult – indicates that a resource which was requested by the current URL was not found. HttpNotFoundResult will return a 404 HTTP status code to the calling client. 2. PermanentRedirects – The HttpRedirectResult class contains a new Boolean “Permanent” property which is used to indicate that a permanent redirect should be done. Permanent redirects use a HTTP 301 status code.  The Controller class  includes three new methods for performing these permanent redirects: RedirectPermanent(), RedirectToRoutePermanent(), andRedirectToActionPermanent(). All  of these methods will return an instance of the HttpRedirectResult object with the Permanent property set to true. 3. HttpStatusCodeResult – used for setting an explicit response status code and its associated description. MVC 3 AJAX and JavaScript Enhancements MVC 3 ships with built-in JSON binding support which enables action methods to receive JSON-encoded data and then model-bind it to action method parameters. For example a jQuery client-side JavaScript could define a “save” event handler which will be invoked when the save button is clicked on the client. The code in the event handler then constructs a client-side JavaScript “product” object with 3 fields with their values retrieved from HTML input elements. Finally, it uses jQuery’s .ajax() method to POST a JSON based request which contains the product to a /theStore/UpdateProduct URL on the server: $('#save').click(function () { var product = { ProdName: $('#Name').val() Price: $('#Price').val(), } $.ajax({ url: '/theStore/UpdateProduct', type: "POST"; data: JSON.stringify(widget), datatype: "json", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", success: function () { $('#message').html('Saved').fadeIn(), }, error: function () { $('#message').html('Error').fadeIn(), } }); return false; }); MVC will allow you to implement the /theStore/UpdateProduct URL on the server by using an action method as below. The UpdateProduct() action method will accept a strongly-typed Product object for a parameter. MVC 3 can now automatically bind an incoming JSON post value to the .NET Product type on the server without having to write any custom binding. [HttpPost] public ActionResult UpdateProduct(Product product) { // save logic here return null } MVC 3 Model Validation Enhancements MVC 3 builds on the MVC 2 model validation improvements by adding   support for several of the new validation features within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace in .NET 4.0: - Support for the new DataAnnotations metadata attributes like DisplayAttribute. - Support for the improvements made to the ValidationAttribute class which now supports a new IsValid overload that provides more info on  the current validation context, like what object is being validated. - Support for the new IValidatableObject interface which enables you to perform model-level validation and also provide validation error messages which are specific to the state of the overall model. MVC 3 Dependency Injection Enhancements MVC 3 includes better support for applying Dependency Injection (DI) and also integrating with Dependency Injection/IOC containers. Currently MVC 3 Preview 1 has support for DI in the below places: - Controllers (registering & injecting controller factories and injecting controllers) - Views (registering & injecting view engines, also for injecting dependencies into view pages) - Action Filters (locating and  injecting filters) And this is another important blog about Microsoft .NET and technology: - Windows 2008 Blog - SharePoint 2010 Blog - .NET 4 Blog And you can visit here if you're looking for ASP.NET MVC 3 hosting

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 29, 2012Popular ReleasesSupporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Supporting Media: Welcome to the Release Candidate (RC) release of the ALM Rangers Readiness supporting edia As this is a RC release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these RC artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Practical Ruck training workshop not yet includedDesigning Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: Chapters 1 - 7 Release Preview: Source code for all examples from Chapters 1 - 7 for the Release PreviewDataBooster - Extension to ADO.NET Data Provider: DataBooster Library for Oracle + SQL Server Beta2: This is a derivative library of dbParallel project http://dbparallel.codeplex.com. All above binaries releases require .NET Framework 4.0 or later. SQL Server support is always build-in (can't be unplugged). The first download (DLL) also requires ODP.NET to connect Oracle; The second download (DLL) also requires DataDirect(3.5) to connect Oracle; The third download (DLL) doesn't support Oracle. Please download the source code if the provider need to be replaced by others. For example ODP.NE...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.57: Fix for issue #18284: evaluating literal expressions in the pattern c1 * (x / c2) where c1/c2 is an integer value (as opposed to c2/c1 being the integer) caused the expression to be destroyed.Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v2 - Visual Studio 2010 (Japanese): Rex Tang (?? ??) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2011/12/08/introducing-the-visual-studio-alm-rangers-rex-tang.aspx, Takaho Yamaguchi (?? ??), Masashi Fujiwara (?? ??), localized and reviewed the Quick Reference Guidance for the Japanese communities, based on http://vsarquickguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/52402. The Japanese guidance is available in AllGuides and Everything packages. The AllGuides package contains guidances in PDF file format, while the Everything packag...Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v1 - Visual Studio 2010 (Japanese): Rex Tang (?? ??) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2011/12/08/introducing-the-visual-studio-alm-rangers-rex-tang.aspx, Takaho Yamaguchi (?? ??), Hirokazu Higashino (?? ??), localized and reviewed the Branching Guidance for the Japanese communities, based on http://vsarbranchingguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/38849. The Japanese guidance is available in AllGuides and Everything packages. The AllGuides package contains guidances in PDF file format, while the Everything packag...SQL Server FineBuild: Version 3.1.0: Top SQL Server FineBuild Version 3.1.0This is the stable version of FineBuild for SQL Server 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005 Documentation FineBuild Wiki containing details of the FineBuild process Known Issues Limitations with this release FineBuild V3.1.0 Release Contents List of changes included in this release Please DonateFineBuild is free, but please donate what you think FineBuild is worth as everything goes to charity. Tearfund is one of the UK's leading relief and de...EasySL: RapidSL V2: Rewrite RapidSL UI Framework, Using Silverlight 5.0 EF4.1 Code First Ria Service SP2 + Lastest Silverlight Toolkit.NETDeob0: NETDeob 0.1.1: http://i.imgur.com/54C78.pngSOLID by example: All examples: All solid examplesSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.1726.406): Use of new version of connection controls for a full support of OSDP authentication mechanism for CRM Online.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.2: Development on Umbraco v5 discontinued After much discussion and consultation with leaders from the Umbraco community it was decided that work on the v5 branch would be discontinued with efforts being refocused on the stable and feature rich v4 branch. For full details as to why this decision was made please watch the CodeGarden 12 Keynote. What about all that hard work?!?? We are not binning everything and it does not mean that all work done on 5 is lost! we are taking all of the best and m...CodeGenerate: CodeGenerate Alpha: The Project can auto generate C# code. Include BLL Layer、Domain Layer、IDAL Layer、DAL Layer. Support SqlServer And Oracle This is a alpha program,but which can run and generate code. Generate database table info into MS WordXDA ROM HUB: XDA ROM HUB v0.9: Kernel listing added -- Thanks to iONEx Added scripts installer button. Added "Nandroid On The Go" -- Perform a Nandroid backup without a PC! Added official Android app!ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.8.2: +2012-06-24 v3.1.8 +????Grid???????（???????ExpandUnusedSpace????????）（??）。 -????MinColumnWidth（??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumn，???????????????（ColumnID）（?????ForceFitFirstTime??ForceFitAllTime，??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumnMax?AutoExpandColumnMin。 -????ForceFitFirstTime，????????????，??????????（????????????）。 -????ForceFitAllTime，????????????，??????????（??????????????????）。 -????VerticalScrollWidth，????????（??????????，0?????????????）。 -????grid/grid_forcefit.aspx。 -???????????En...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2012 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2012 Release Version 60623June 2012 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found here: 11121. - Pages using ...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.5: Version: 2.5.0.5 (Milestone 5): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add IsInDesignMode property to the WafConfiguration class. WAF: Introduce the IModuleController interface. WAF: Add ...Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader: Metro RSS Reader.v7: Updated for Windows 8 Release Preview Changed background and foreground colors Used VariableSizeGrid layout to wrap blog posts with images Sort items with Images first, text-only last Enabled Caching to improve navigation between framesConfuser: Confuser 1.9: Change log: * Stable output (i.e. given the same seed & input assemblies, you'll get the same output assemblies) + Generate debug symbols, now it is possible to debug the output under a debugger! (Of course without enabling anti debug) + Generating obfuscation database, most of the obfuscation data in stored in it. + Two tools utilizing the obfuscation database (Database viewer & Stack trace decoder) * Change the protection scheme -----Please read Bug Report before you report a bug-----...XDesigner.Development: First release: First releaseNew ProjectsArcGIS Server Rest Catalog: jquery widget that display all MapServer service of ESRI ArcGIS Server in accordion control. Require jQuery and JsRender. BugsBox.Lib: BugsBoxlibCodeStudy: The project includes all my code written for .NET studyCommunity Tfs Team Tools: Community TFS Team Tools is a community project based on the example code from ALM Rangers - Quick Response Sample Command line utility to manage TFS TeamsDiveBaseManager: DiveBaseManagerEclipse App: Aplicacion para android para el envio de coordenaads a un servidorJQMdotNET: JQMdotNet is an early attempt to make a series of MVC HTML helpers to quickly render JQuery Mobile pages.MathBuilderFramework: Math Builder FX is a framework for math problems. The idea of this framework is to create real exercises of mathematics throught base classes.MDS MODELING WORKBOOK: MDS Modeling Workbook is a modeling tool and a solution accelerator for Microsoft Master Data Services. Minesweeper: a clean old minesweeperMultithreaded Port Scanner Utility: Mulithreaded Port Scanner Utility is a very simple port scanner that take advantage of the new System.Threading.Task namespace in .Net 4.0Nonocast.Data: Nonocast.Data is a free, open source developer focused object persistence for small and medium software.On{X} Scripts: This project is to share scripts I create or modify from available free/opensource scripts (off-course with due mentions & links to original developer).PCS MAP: ladPowerShell Module for Mayhem: A module for Mayhem with a reaction which executes a PowerShell script.PunkBuster™ Screenshot Viewer: PunkBuster™ Screenshot Viewer shows screenshots of all games protected with PunkBuster™.Random reminder: Objective: To create a simple Windows application that can schedule and automatically reschedule a random timer that falls within a defined interval.Remembrall: Some useful stuff (at least for me) ! Javascript plugins jQuery plugins C# utilities ASP.NET MVC helper extensionsrepotfs: Repositório de exemplosSharepoint Designer: Sharepoint ExplororSPFluid: Simple modularity and data access framework.SPManager: Helper classSQL Server : xp_fixeddrives2: C++ Extended Stored Procedure Get volumes InfoSWORD Extensions for Sharepoint: Push documents in and out of Sharepoint using the SWORD protocol. ***incomplete***Test projects: My testing projecttestdd06282012git01: xzc testdd06282012git1: sadtestdd06282012tfs01: xzctestddhg06282012: xctestddtfs062820121: ,lm;.testhg06282012dd1: zxTlrk: NATotal_Mayhem: Add-on for Mayhem ( http://mayhem.codeplex.com/ ) that includes networking events, power reactions, and more.WallSwitch: An application to cycle your desktop wallpaper.??????: ????????

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• Additional options in MDL

  - by Jane Zhang

      The Metadata Loader(MDL) enables you to populate a new repository as well as transfer, update, or restore a backup of existing repository metadata. It consists of two utilities: metadata export and metadata import. The export utility extracts metadata objects from a repository and writes the information into a file. The import utility reads the metadata information from an exported file and inserts the metadata objects into a repository.      While the Design Client provides an intuitive UI that helps you perform the most commonly used export and import tasks, OMBPlus scripting enables you to specify some additional options, and manage a control file that allows you to perform more specialized export and import tasks. Is it possible to utilize these options in MDL from Design Client? This article will tell you how to achieve it.      A property file named mdl.properties is used to configure the additional options. It stores options in name/value pairs. This file can be created and placed under the directory <owb installation path>/owb/bin/admin/. Below we will introduce the options that can be specified in the mdl.properties file. 1. DEFAULTDIRECTORY     When we open a Metadata Export/Import dialog in Design Client, a default directory is provided for MDL file and log file. For MDL Export, the default directory is <owb installation path>/owb/bin/. As for MDL Import, the default directory is <owb installation path>/owb/mdl/. It may not be the one you would want to use as a default. You can specify the option DEFAULTDIRECTORY in the mdl.properties file to set your own default directory for MDL Export/Import, for example, DEFAULTDIRECOTRY=/tmp/     In this example, the default directory is set to /tmp/. Be sure the value ends with a file separator since it represents a directory. In Windows, the file separator is “\”. In linux, the file separator is “/”. 2. MDLTRACEFILE     Sometimes we would like to trace the whole process of MDL Export/Import, and get detailed information about operations to help developers or supports troubleshooting. To turn on MDL trace, set the option MDLTRACEFILE in the mdl.properties file. MDLTRACEFILE=/tmp/mdl.trc    The right side of the equals sign is to specify the name of the file for MDL trace information to be written. If no path is specified, the file will be placed under directory <owb installation path>/owb/bin/admin/. However, the trace file may be large if the MDL file contains a large number of metadata objects, so please use this option sparingly. 3. CONTROLFILE       We can use a control file to specify how objects are imported or exported. We can set an option called CONTROLFILE in the mdl.properties file, so the control file can also be utilized in Design Client, for example, CONTROLFILE=/tmp/mdl_control_file.ctl     The control file stores options in name/value pairs. When using control file, be sure the file exists, otherwise an exception java.lang.Exception: CNV0002-0031(ERROR): Cannot find specified file will be thrown out during MDL Export/Import.      Next we will introduce some options specified in control file. ZIPFILEFORMAT     By default, MDL exports objects into a zip format file. This zip file has an .mdl extension and contains two files. For example, you export the repository metadata into a file called projects.mdl. When you unzip this MDL file, you obtain two files. The file projects.mdx contains the repository objects. The file mdlcatalog.xml contains internal information about the MDL XML file. Another choice is to combine these two files into one unzip text format file when doing MDL exporting.    In OMBPlus command related to MDL, there is an option called FILE_FORMAT which is used to specify the file format for the exported file. Its acceptable values are ZIP or TEXT. When the value TEXT is selected, the exported file is in text format, for example, OMBEXPORT MDL_FILE '/tmp/options_file_format_test.mdl' FILE_FORMAT TEXT FROM PROJECT 'MY_PROJECT'    How to achieve this via Design Client when doing an MDL exporting? Here we have another option called ZIPFILEFORMAT which has the same function as the FILE_FORMAT. The difference is the acceptable values for ZIPFILEFORMAT are Y or N. When the value is set to N, the exported file is in text format, otherwise it is in zip file format. LOGMESSAGELEVEL     Whenever you export or import repository metadata, MDL writes diagnostic and statistical information to a log file. Their are 3 types of status messages: Informational, Warning and Error. By default, the log file includes all types of message. Sometimes, user may only care about one type of messages, for example, they would like only error messages written to the log file. In order to achieve this, we can set an option called LOGMESSAGELEVEL in control file. The acceptable values for LOGMESSAGELEVEL are ALL, WARNING and ERROR. ALL: If the option LOGMESSAGELEVEL is set to ALL, all types of messages (Informational, Warning and Error) will be written into the log file. WARNING: If the option LOGMESSAGELEVEL is set to WARNING, only warning messages will be written into log file. ERROR: If the option LOGMESSAGELEVEL is set to ERROR, only error messages will be written into log file. UPDATEPROJECTATTRIBUTES, UPDATEMODULEATTRIBUTES      These two options are used to decide whether updating the attributes of projects/modules. The options work when projects/modules being imported already exist in repository and we use update metadata mode or replace metadata mode to do the MDL import. The acceptable values for these two options are Y or N. If the value is set to Y, the attributes of projects/modules will be updated, otherwise not.      Next, let’s give an example to see how these options take effect in MDL. 1. First of all, create the property file mdl.properties under the directory <owb installation path>/owb/bin/admin/. 2. Specify the options in the mdl.properties file, see the following screenshot. 3. Create the control file mdl_control_file.ctl under the directory /tmp/. Set the following options in control file. 4. Log into the OWB Design Client. 5. Create an Oracle module named ORA_MOD_1 under the project MY_PROJECT, then export the project MY_PROJECT into file my_project.mdl. 6. Check the trace file mdl.trc under the directory /tmp/. In this file, we can see very detail information for the above export task. 7. Check the exported MDL file. The file my_project.mdl is in text format. Opening the file, you can see the content of the file directly. It concats the file my_project.mdx and mdlcatalog.xml. 8. Modify the project MY_PROJECT and Oracle module ORA_MOD_1, add descriptions for them separately. Delete the location created in step 5. 9. Import the MDL file my_project.mdl. From the Metadata Import dialog, we can see the default directory for MDL file and log file has been changed to /tmp/. Here we use update metadata mode, match by names to do the importing. 10. After importing, check the description of the project MY_PROJECT, we can see the description is still there. But the description of the Oracle module ORA_MOD_1 has gone. That because we set the option UPDATEPROJECTATTRIBUTES to N, and set the option UPDATEMODULEATTRIBUTES to Y. 11. Check the log file, the log file only contains warning messages and the log message level is set to WARNING.      For more details about the 3 types of status messages, see Oracle® Warehouse Builder Installation and Administration Guide11g Release 2.

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• Oracle Database 12c: Oracle Multitenant Option

  - by hamsun

  1. Why ? 2. What is it ? 3. How ? 1. Why ? The main idea of the 'grid' is to share resources, to make better use of storage, CPU and memory. If a database administrator wishes to implement this idea, he or she must consolidate many databases to one database. One of the concerns of running many applications together in one database is: ‚what will happen, if one of the applications must be restored because of a human error?‘ Tablespace point in time recovery can be used for this purpose, but there are a few prerequisites. Most importantly the tablespaces are strictly separated for each application. Another reason for creating separated databases is security: each customer has his own database. Therefore, there is often a proliferation of smaller databases. Each of them must be maintained, upgraded, each allocates virtual memory and runs background processes thereby wasting resources. Oracle 12c offers another possibility for virtualization, providing isolation at the database level: the multitenant container database holding pluggable databases. 2. What ? Pluggable databases are logical units inside a multitenant container database, which consists of one multitenant container database and up to 252 pluggable databases. The SGA is shared as are the background processes. The multitenant container database holds metadata information common for pluggable databases inside the System and the Sysaux tablespace, and there is just one Undo tablespace. The pluggable databases have smaller System and Sysaux tablespaces, containing just their 'personal' metadata. New data dictionary views will make the information available either on pdb (dba_views) or container level (cdb_views). There are local users, which are known in specific pluggable databases and common users known in all containers. Pluggable databases can be easily plugged to another multitenant container database and converted from a non-CDB. They can undergo point in time recovery. 3. How ? Creating a multitenant container database can be done using the database configuration assistant: There you find the new option: Create as Container Database. If you prefer ‚hand made‘ databases you can execute the command from a instance in nomount state: CREATE DATABASE cdb1 ENABLE PLUGGABLE DATABASE …. And of course this can also be achieved through Enterprise Manager Cloud. A freshly created multitenant container database consists of two containers: the root container as the 'rack' and a seed container, a template for future pluggable databases. There are 4 ways to create other pluggable databases: 1. Create an empty pdb from seed 2. Plug in a non-CDB 3. Move a pdb from another pdb 4. Copy a pdb from another pdb We will discuss option2: how to plug in a non_CDB into a multitenant container database. Three different methods are available : 1. Create an empty pdb and use Datapump in traditional export/import mode or with Transportable Tablespace or Database mode. This method is suitable for pre 12c databases. 2. Create an empty pdb and use GoldenGate replication. When the pdb catches up with the non-CDB, you fail over to the pdb. 3. Databases of Version 12c or higher can be plugged in with the help of the new dbms_pdb Package. This is a demonstration for method 3: Step1: Connect to the non-CDB to be plugged in and create an xml File with description of the database. The xml file is written to $ORACLE_HOME/dbs per default and contains mainly information about the datafiles. Step 2: Check if the non-CDB is pluggable in the multitenant container database: Step 3: Create the pluggable database, connected to the Multitenant container database. With nocopy option the files will be reused, but the tempfile is created anew: A service is created and registered automatically with the listener: Step 4: Delete unnecessary metadata from PDB SYSTEM tablespace: To connect to newly created pdb, edit tnsnames.ora and add entry for new pdb. Connect to plugged-in non_CDB and clean up Data Dictionary to remove entries now maintained in multitenant container database. As all kept objects have to be recompiled it will take a few minutes. Step 5: The plugged-in database will be automatically synchronised by creating common users and roles when opened the first time in read write mode. Step 6: Verify tablespaces and users: There is only one local tablespace (users) and one local user (scott) in the plugged-in non_CDB pdb_orcl. This method of creating plugged_in non_CDB from is fast and easy for 12c databases. The method for deplugging a pluggable database from a CDB is to create a new non_CDB and use the the new full transportable feature of Datapump and drop the pluggable database. About the Author: Gerlinde has been working for Oracle University Germany as one of our Principal Instructors for over 14 years. She started with Oracle 7 and became an Oracle Certified Master for Oracle 10g and 11c. She is a specialist in Database Core Technologies, with profound knowledge in Backup & Recovery, Performance Tuning for DBAs and Application Developers, Datawarehouse Administration, Data Guard and Real Application Clusters.

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• RIDC Accelerator for Portal

  - by Stefan Krantz

  What is RIDC?Remote IntraDoc Client is a Java enabled API that leverages simple transportation protocols like Socket, HTTP and JAX/WS to execute content service operations in WebCenter Content Server. Each operation by design in the Content Server will execute stateless and return a complete result of the request. Each request object simply specifies the in a Map format (key and value pairs) what service to call and what parameters settings to apply. The result responded with will be built on the same Map format (key and value pairs). The possibilities with RIDC is endless since you can consume any available service (even custom made ones), RIDC can be executed from any Java SE application that has any WebCenter Content Services needs. WebCenter Portal and the example Accelerator RIDC adapter frameworkWebCenter Portal currently integrates and leverages WebCenter Content Services to enable available use cases in the portal today, like Content Presenter and Doc Lib. However the current use cases only covers few of the scenarios that the Content Server has to offer, in addition to the existing use cases it is not rare that the customer requirements requires additional steps and functionality that is provided by WebCenter Content but not part of the use cases from the WebCenter Portal.The good news to this is RIDC, the second good news is that WebCenter Portal already leverages the RIDC and has a connection management framework in place. The million dollar question here is how can I leverage this infrastructure for my custom use cases. Oracle A-Team has during its interactions produced a accelerator adapter framework that will reuse and leverage the existing connections provisioned in the webcenter portal application (works for WebCenter Spaces as well), as well as a very comprehensive design patter to minimize the work involved when exposing functionality. Let me introduce the RIDCCommon framework for accelerating WebCenter Content consumption from WebCenter Portal including Spaces. How do I get started?Through a few easy steps you will be on your way, Extract the zip file RIDCCommon.zip to the WebCenter Portal Application file structure (PortalApp) Open you Portal Application in JDeveloper (PS4/PS5) select to open the project in your application - this will add the project as a member of the application Update the Portal project dependencies to include the new RIDCCommon project Make sure that you WebCenter Content Server connection is marked as primary (a checkbox at the top of the connection properties form) You should by this stage have a similar structure in your JDeveloper Application Project Portal Project PortalWebAssets Project RIDCCommon Since the API is coming with some example operations that has already been exposed as DataControl actions, if you open Data Controls accordion you should see following: How do I implement my own operation? Create a new Java Class in for example com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation call it (GetDocInfoOperation) Extend the abstract class com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.RIDCAbstractOperation and implement the interface com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.IRIDCOperation The only method you actually are required to implement is execute(RIDCManager, IdcClient, IdcContext) The best practice to set object references for the operation is through the Constructor, example below public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName)By leveraging the constructor you can easily force the implementing class to pass right information, you can also overload the Constructor with more or less parameters as required Implement the execute method, the work you supposed to execute here is creating a new request binder and retrieve a response binder with the information in the request binder.In this case the dDocName for which we want the DocInfo Secondly you have to process the response binder by extracting the information you need from the request and restore this information in a simple POJO Java BeanIn the example below we do this in private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) - the new SearchDataObject is a Member of the GetDocInfoOperation so we can return this from a access method. Since the RIDCCommon API leverage template pattern for the operations you are now required to add a method that will enable access to the result after the execution of the operationIn the example below we added the method public SearchDataObject getDataObject() - this method returns the pre processed SearchDataObject from the execute method  This is it, as you can see on the code below you do not need more than 32 lines of very simple code 1: public class GetDocInfoOperation extends RIDCAbstractOperation implements IRIDCOperation { 2: private static final String DOC_INFO_BY_NAME = "DOC_INFO_BY_NAME"; 3: private String dDocName = null; 4: private SearchDataObject sdo = null; 5: 6: public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName) { 7: super(); 8: this.dDocName = dDocName; 9: } 10:   11: public boolean execute(RIDCManager manager, IdcClient client, 12: IdcContext userContext) throws Exception { 13: DataBinder dataBinder = createNewRequestBinder(DOC_INFO_BY_NAME); 14: dataBinder.putLocal(DocumentAttributeDef.NAME.getName(), dDocName); 15: 16: DataBinder responseData = getResponseBinder(dataBinder); 17: processResult(responseData); 18: return true; 19: } 20: 21: private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) { 22: DataResultSet rs = responseData.getResultSet("DOC_INFO"); 23: for(DataObject dobj : rs.getRows()) { 24: this.sdo = new SearchDataObject(dobj); 25: } 26: super.setMessage(responseData.getLocal(ATTR_MESSAGE)); 27: } 28: 29: public SearchDataObject getDataObject() { 30: return this.sdo; 31: } 32: } How do I execute my operation? In the previous section we described how to create a operation, so by now you should be ready to execute the operation Step one either add a method to the class  com.oracle.ateam.portal.datacontrol.ContentServicesDC or a class of your own choiceRemember the RIDCManager is a very light object and can be created where needed Create a method signature look like this public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception In the method body - create a new instance of GetDocInfoOperation and meet the constructor requirements by passing the dDocNameGetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName) Execute the operation via the RIDCManager instance rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo) Return the result by accessing it from the executed operationreturn docInfo.getDataObject() 1: private RIDCManager rMgr = null; 2: private String lastOperationMessage = null; 3:   4: public ContentServicesDC() { 5: super(); 6: this.rMgr = new RIDCManager(); 7: } 8: .... 9: public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception { 10: GetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName); 11: boolean boolVal = rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo); 12: lastOperationMessage = docInfo.getMessage(); 13: return docInfo.getDataObject(); 14: }   Get the binaries! The enclosed code in a example that can be used as a reference on how to consume and leverage similar use cases, user has to guarantee appropriate quality and support.  Download link: https://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/RIDCCommon.zip RIDC API Referencehttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/apirefs.1111/e17274/toc.htm

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• Too Many Kittens To Juggle At Once

  - by Bil Simser

  Ahh, the Internet. That crazy, mixed up place where one tweet turns into a conversation between dozens of people and spawns a blogpost. This is the direct result of such an event this morning. It started innocently enough, with this: Then followed up by a blog post by Joel here. In the post, Joel introduces us to the term Business Solutions Architect with mad skillz like InfoPath, Access Services, Excel Services, building Workflows, and SSRS report creation, all while meeting the business needs of users in a SharePoint environment. I somewhat disagreed with Joel that this really wasn’t a new role (at least IMHO) and that a good Architect or BA should really be doing this job. As Joel pointed out when you’re building a SharePoint team this kind of role is often overlooked. Engineers might be able to build workflows but is the right workflow for the right problem? Michael Pisarek wrote about a SharePoint Business Architect a few months ago and it’s a pretty solid assessment. Again, I argue you really shouldn’t be looking for roles that don’t exist and I don’t suggest anyone create roles to hire people to fill them. That’s basically creating a solution looking for problems. Michael’s article does have some great points if you’re lost in the quagmire of SharePoint duties though (and I especially like John Ross’ quote “The coolest shit is worthless if it doesn’t meet business needs”). SharePoinTony summed it up nicely with “SharePoint Solutions knowledge is both lacking and underrated in most environments. Roles help”. Having someone on the team who can dance between a business user and a coder can be difficult. Remember the idea of telling something to someone and them passing it on to the next person. By the time the story comes round the circle it’s a shadow of it’s former self with little resemblance to the original tale. This is very much business requirements as they’re told by the user to a business analyst, written down on paper, read by an architect, tuned into a solution plan, and implemented by a developer. Transformations between what was said, what was heard, what was written down, and what was developed can be distant cousins. Not everyone has the skill of communication and even less have negotiation skills to suit the SharePoint platform. Negotiation is important because not everything can be (or should be) done in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to build it on the SharePoint platform but someone needs to know enough about the platform and what limitations it might have, then communicate that (and/or negotiate) with a customer or user so it’s not about “You can’t have this” to “Let’s try it this way”. Visualize the possible instead of denying the impossible. So what is the right SharePoint team? My cromag brain came with a fairly simpleton answer (and I’m sure people will just say this is a cop-out). The perfect SharePoint team is just enough people to do the job that know the technology and business problem they’re solving. Bridge the gap between business need and technology platform and you have an architect. Communicate the needs of the business effectively so the entire team understands it and you have a business analyst. Can you get this with full time workers? Maybe but don’t expect miracles out of the gate. Also don’t take a consultant’s word as gospel. Some consultants just don’t have the diversity of the SharePoint platform to be worth their value so be careful. You really need someone who knows enough about SharePoint to be able to validate a consultants knowledge level. This is basically try for any consultant, not just a SharePoint one. Specialization is good and needed. A good, well-balanced SharePoint team is one of people that can solve problems with work with the technology, not against it. Having a top developer is great, but don’t rely on them to solve world hunger if they can’t communicate very well with users. An expert business analyst might be great at gathering requirements so the entire team can understand them, but if it means building 100% custom solutions because they don’t fit inside the SharePoint boundaries isn’t of much value. Just repeat. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. A few people pointed out Nick Inglis’ article Excluding The Information Professional In SharePoint. It’s a good read too and hits home that maybe some developers and IT pros need some extra help in the information space. If you’re in an organization that needs labels on people, come up with something everyone understands and go with it. If that’s Business Solutions Architect, SharePoint Advisor, or Guy Who Knows A Lot About Portals, make it work for you. We all wish that one person could master all that is SharePoint but we also know that doesn’t scale very well and you quickly get into the hit-by-a-bus syndrome (with the organization coming to a full crawl when the guy or girl goes on vacation, gets sick, or pops out a baby). There are too many gaps in SharePoint knowledge to have any one person know it all and too many kittens to juggle all at once. We like to consider ourselves experts in our field, but trying to tackle too many roles at once and we end up being mediocre jack of all trades, master of none. Don't fall into this pit. It's a deep, dark hole you don't want to try to claw your way out of. Trust me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. In the end I don’t disagree with Joel. SharePoint is a beast and not something that should be taken on by newbies. If you just read “Teach Yourself SharePoint in 24 Hours” and want to go build your corporate intranet or the next killer business solution with all your new found knowledge plan to pony up consultant dollars a few months later when everything goes to Hell in a handbasket and falls over. I’m not saying don’t build solutions in SharePoint. I’m just saying that building effective ones takes skill like any craft and not something you can just cobble together with a little bit of cursory knowledge. Thanks to *everyone* who participated in this tweet rush. It was fun and educational.

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• MVC Automatic Menu

  - by Nuri Halperin

  An ex-colleague of mine used to call his SQL script generator "Super-Scriptmatic 2000". It impressed our then boss little, but was fun to say and use. We called every batch job and script "something 2000" from that day on. I'm tempted to call this one Menu-Matic 2000, except it's waaaay past 2000. Oh well. The problem: I'm developing a bunch of stuff in MVC. There's no PM to generate mounds of requirements and there's no Ux Architect to create wireframe. During development, things change. Specifically, actions get renamed, moved from controller x to y etc. Well, as the site grows, it becomes a major pain to keep a static menu up to date, because the links change. The HtmlHelper doesn't live up to it's name and provides little help. How do I keep this growing list of pesky little forgotten actions reigned in? The general plan is: Decorate every action you want as a menu item with a custom attribute Reflect out all menu items into a structure at load time Render the menu using as CSS  friendly <ul><li> HTML. The MvcMenuItemAttribute decorates an action, designating it to be included as a menu item: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = true)] public class MvcMenuItemAttribute : Attribute {   public string MenuText { get; set; }   public int Order { get; set; }   public string ParentLink { get; set; }   internal string Controller { get; set; }   internal string Action { get; set; }     #region ctor   public MvcMenuItemAttribute(string menuText) : this(menuText, 0) { } public MvcMenuItemAttribute(string menuText, int order) { MenuText = menuText; Order = order; }       internal string Link { get { return string.Format("/{0}/{1}", Controller, this.Action); } }   internal MvcMenuItemAttribute ParentItem { get; set; } #endregion } The MenuText allows overriding the text displayed on the menu. The Order allows the items to be ordered. The ParentLink allows you to make this item a child of another menu item. An example action could then be decorated thusly: [MvcMenuItem("Tracks", Order = 20, ParentLink = "/Session/Index")] . All pretty straightforward methinks. The challenge with menu hierarchy becomes fairly apparent when you try to render a menu and highlight the "current" item or render a breadcrumb control. Both encounter an  ambiguity if you allow a data source to have more than one menu item with the same URL link. The issue is that there is no great way to tell which link a person click. Using referring URL will fail if a user bookmarked the page. Using some extra query string to disambiguate duplicate URLs essentially changes the links, and also ads a chance of collision with other query parameters. Besides, that smells. The stock ASP.Net sitemap provider simply disallows duplicate URLS. I decided not to, and simply pick the first one encountered as the "current". Although it doesn't solve the issue completely – one might say they wanted the second of the 2 links to be "current"- it allows one to include a link twice (home->deals and products->deals etc), and the logic of deciding "current" is easy enough to explain to the customer. Now that we got that out of the way, let's build the menu data structure: public static List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> ListMenuItems(Assembly assembly) { var result = new List<MvcMenuItemAttribute>(); foreach (var type in assembly.GetTypes()) { if (!type.IsSubclassOf(typeof(Controller))) { continue; } foreach (var method in type.GetMethods()) { var items = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MvcMenuItemAttribute), false) as MvcMenuItemAttribute[]; if (items == null) { continue; } foreach (var item in items) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Controller)) { item.Controller = type.Name.Substring(0, type.Name.Length - "Controller".Length); } if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.Action)) { item.Action = method.Name; } result.Add(item); } } } return result.OrderBy(i => i.Order).ToList(); } Using reflection, the ListMenuItems method takes an assembly (you will hand it your MVC web assembly) and generates a list of menu items. It digs up all the types, and for each one that is an MVC Controller, digs up the methods. Methods decorated with the MvcMenuItemAttribute get plucked and added to the output list. Again, pretty simple. To make the structure hierarchical, a LINQ expression matches up all the items to their parent: public static void RegisterMenuItems(List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> items) { _MenuItems = items; _MenuItems.ForEach(i => i.ParentItem = items.FirstOrDefault(p => String.Equals(p.Link, i.ParentLink, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))); } The _MenuItems is simply an internal list to keep things around for later rendering. Finally, to package the menu building for easy consumption: public static void RegisterMenuItems(Type mvcApplicationType) { RegisterMenuItems(ListMenuItems(Assembly.GetAssembly(mvcApplicationType))); } To bring this puppy home, a call in Global.asax.cs Application_Start() registers the menu. Notice the ugliness of reflection is tucked away from the innocent developer. All they have to do is call the RegisterMenuItems() and pass in the type of the application. When you use the new project template, global.asax declares a class public class MvcApplication : HttpApplication and that is why the Register call passes in that type. protected void Application_Start() { AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);   MvcMenu.RegisterMenuItems(typeof(MvcApplication)); }   What else is left to do? Oh, right, render! public static void ShowMenu(this TextWriter output) { var writer = new HtmlTextWriter(output);   renderHierarchy(writer, _MenuItems, null); }   public static void ShowBreadCrumb(this TextWriter output, Uri currentUri) { var writer = new HtmlTextWriter(output); string currentLink = "/" + currentUri.GetComponents(UriComponents.Path, UriFormat.Unescaped);   var menuItem = _MenuItems.FirstOrDefault(m => m.Link.Equals(currentLink, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)); if (menuItem != null) { renderBreadCrumb(writer, _MenuItems, menuItem); } }   private static void renderBreadCrumb(HtmlTextWriter writer, List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> menuItems, MvcMenuItemAttribute current) { if (current == null) { return; } var parent = current.ParentItem; renderBreadCrumb(writer, menuItems, parent); writer.Write(current.MenuText); writer.Write(" / ");   }     static void renderHierarchy(HtmlTextWriter writer, List<MvcMenuItemAttribute> hierarchy, MvcMenuItemAttribute root) { if (!hierarchy.Any(i => i.ParentItem == root)) return;   writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Ul); foreach (var current in hierarchy.Where(element => element.ParentItem == root).OrderBy(i => i.Order)) { if (ItemFilter == null || ItemFilter(current)) {   writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Li); writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Href, current.Link); writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Alt, current.MenuText); writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.A); writer.WriteEncodedText(current.MenuText); writer.RenderEndTag(); // link renderHierarchy(writer, hierarchy, current); writer.RenderEndTag(); // li } } writer.RenderEndTag(); // ul } The ShowMenu method renders the menu out to the provided TextWriter. In previous posts I've discussed my partiality to using well debugged, time test HtmlTextWriter to render HTML rather than writing out angled brackets by hand. In addition, writing out using the actual writer on the actual stream rather than generating string and byte intermediaries (yes, StringBuilder being no exception) disturbs me. To carry out the rendering of an hierarchical menu, the recursive renderHierarchy() is used. You may notice that an ItemFilter is called before rendering each item. I figured that at some point one might want to exclude certain items from the menu based on security role or context or something. That delegate is the hook for such future feature. To carry out rendering of a breadcrumb recursion is used again, this time simply to unwind the parent hierarchy from the leaf node, then rendering on the return from the recursion rather than as we go along deeper. I guess I was stuck in LISP that day.. recursion is fun though.   Now all that is left is some usage! Open your Site.Master or wherever you'd like to place a menu or breadcrumb, and plant one of these calls: <% MvcMenu.ShowBreadCrumb(this.Writer, Request.Url); %> to show a breadcrumb trail (notice lack of "=" after <% and the semicolon). <% MvcMenu.ShowMenu(Writer); %> to show the menu.   As mentioned before, the HTML output is nested <UL> <LI> tags, which should make it easy to style using abundant CSS to produce anything from static horizontal or vertical to dynamic drop-downs.   This has been quite a fun little implementation and I was pleased that the code size remained low. The main crux was figuring out how to pass parent information from the attribute to the hierarchy builder because attributes have restricted parameter types. Once I settled on that implementation, the rest falls into place quite easily.

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• Blogging tips for SQL Server professionals

  - by jamiet

  For some time now I have been intending to put some material together relating my blogging experiences since I began blogging in 2004 and that led to me submitting a session for SQLBits recently where I intended to do just that. That didn’t get enough votes to allow me to present however so instead I resolved to write a blog post about it and Simon Sabin’s recent post Blogging – how do you do it? has prompted me to get around to completing it. So, here I present a compendium of tips that I’ve picked up from authoring a fair few blog posts over the past 6 years. Feedburner Feedburner.com is a service that can consume your blog’s default RSS feed and provide another, replacement, feed that has exactly the same content. You can then supply that replacement feed on your blog site for other people to consume in their RSS readers. Why would you want to do this? Well, two reasons actually: It makes your blog portable. If you ever want to move your blog to a different URL you don’t have to tell your subscribers to move to a different feed. The feedburner feed is a pointer to your blog content rather than being a copy of it. Feedburner will collect stats telling you how many people are subscribed to your feed, which RSS readers they use, stuff like that. Here’s a sample screenshot for http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/: It also tells you what your most viewed posts are: Web stats like these are notoriously inaccurate but then again the method of measurement here is not important, what IS important is that it gives you a trustworthy ranking of your blog posts and (in my opinion) knowing which are your most popular posts is more important than knowing exactly how many views each post has had. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Feedburner provides and I recommend every new blogger to try it! Monitor subscribers using Google Reader If for some reason Feedburner is not to your taste or (more likely) you already have an established RSS feed that you do not want to change then Google provide another way in which you can monitor your readership in the shape of their online RSS reader, Google Reader. It provides, for every RSS feed, a collection of stats including the number of Google Reader users that have subscribed to that RSS feed. This is really valuable information and in fact I have been recording this statistic for mine and a number of other blogs for a few years now and as such I can produce the following chart that indicates how readership is trending for those blogs over time: [Good news for my fellow SQLBlog bloggers.] As Stephen Few readily points out, its not the numbers that are important but the trend. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) SEO (or “How do I get my blog to show up in Google”) is a massive area of expertise which I don’t want (and am unable) to cover in much detail here but there are some simple rules of thumb that will help: Tags – If your blog engine offers the ability to add tags to your blog post, use them. Invariably those tags go into the meta section of the page HTML and search engines lap that stuff up. For example, from my recent post Microsoft publish Visual Studio 2010 Database Project Guidance: Title – Search engines take notice of web page titles as well so make them specific and descriptive (e.g. “Configuring dtsConfig connection strings”) rather than esoteric and meaningless in a vain attempt to be humorous (e.g. “Last night a DJ saved my ETL batch”)! Title(2) – Make your title even more search engine friendly by mentioning high level subject areas, not dissimilar to Twitter hashtags. For example, if you look at all of my posts related to SSIS you will notice that nearly all contain the word “SSIS” in the title even if I had to shoehorn it in there by putting it in square brackets or similar. Another tip, if you ARE putting words into your titles in this artificial manner then put them at the end so that they’re not that prominent in search engine results; they’re there for the search engines to consume, not for human beings. Images – Always add titles and alternate text (ALT attribute) to images in your blog post. If you use Windows 7 or Windows Vista then you can use Live Writer (which Simon recommended) makes this easy for you. Headings – If you want to highlight section headings use heading tags (e.g. <H1>, <H2>, <H3> etc…) rather than just formatting the text appropriately – again, Live makes this easy. These tags give your blog posts structure that is understood by search engines and RSS readers alike. (I believe it makes them more amenable to CSS as well – though that’s not something I know too much about). If you check the HTML source for the blog post you’re reading right now you’ll be able to scan through and see where I have used heading tags. Microsoft provide a free tool called the SEO Toolkit that will analyse your blog site (for free) and tell you what things you should change to improve SEO. Go read more and download for free at Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. Did I mention that it was free? Miscellaneous Tips If you are including code in your blog post then ensure it is formatted correctly. Use SQL Server Central’s T-SQL prettifier for formatting T-SQL code. Use images and videos. Personally speaking there’s nothing I like less when reading a blog than paragraph after paragraph of text. Images make your blog more appealing which means people are more likely to read what you have written. Be original. Don’t plagiarise other people’s content and don’t simply rewrite the contents of Books Online. Every time you publish a blog post tweet a link to it. Include hashtags in your tweet that are more likely to grab people’s attention. That’s probably enough for now - I hope this blog post proves useful to someone out there. If you would appreciate a related session at a forthcoming SQLBits conference then please let me know. This will likely be my last blog post for 2010 so I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has commented on, linked to or read any of my blog posts in that time. 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting for SQL Server observers with the impending release of SQL Server code-named Denali and I promise I’ll have lots more content on that as the year progresses. Happy New Year. @Jamiet

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• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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