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  • VB.NET Interfaces

    - by PJ
    I am not quite clear as to why or when to use Interfaces. Can someone post a complete, simple and small example of an Interface using VB.NET in a Console Application. How is it extensible?

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  • I want to make my desktop application available online - how?

    - by Ami
    I have a few years experience programming c++ and a little less then that using Qt. I built a data mining software using Qt and I want to make it available online. Unfortunately, I know close to nothing about web programming. Firstly, how easy or hard is this to do and what is the best way to go about it? Supposing I am looking to hire someone to make me a secure, long-term, extensible, website for an online software service, what skill set should I be looking for?

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  • LLBLGen Pro v3.1 released!

    - by FransBouma
    Yesterday we released LLBLGen Pro v3.1! Version 3.1 comes with new features and enhancements, which I'll describe briefly below. v3.1 is a free upgrade for v3.x licensees. What's new / changed? Designer Extensible Import system. An extensible import system has been added to the designer to import project data from external sources. Importers are plug-ins which import project meta-data (like entity definitions, mappings and relational model data) from an external source into the loaded project. In v3.1, an importer plug-in for importing project elements from existing LLBLGen Pro v3.x project files has been included. You can use this importer to create source projects from which you import parts of models to build your actual project with. Model-only relationships. In v3.1, relationships of the type 1:1, m:1 and 1:n can be marked as model-only. A model-only relationship isn't required to have a backing foreign key constraint in the relational model data. They're ideal for projects which have to work with relational databases where changes can't always be made or some relationships can't be added to (e.g. the ones which are important for the entity model, but are not allowed to be added to the relational model for some reason). Custom field ordering. Although fields in an entity definition don't really have an ordering, it can be important for some situations to have the entity fields in a given order, e.g. when you use compound primary keys. Field ordering can be defined using a pop-up dialog which can be opened through various ways, e.g. inside the project explorer, model view and entity editor. It can also be set automatically during refreshes based on new settings. Command line relational model data refresher tool, CliRefresher.exe. The command line refresh tool shipped with v2.6 is now available for v3.1 as well Navigation enhancements in various designer elements. It's now easier to find elements like entities, typed views etc. in the project explorer from editors, to navigate to related entities in the project explorer by right clicking a relationship, navigate to the super-type in the project explorer when right-clicking an entity and navigate to the sub-type in the project explorer when right-clicking a sub-type node in the project explorer. Minor visual enhancements / tweaks LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework Entity creation is now up to 30% faster and takes 5% less memory. Creating an entity object has been optimized further by tweaks inside the framework to make instantiating an entity object up to 30% faster. It now also takes up to 5% less memory than in v3.0 Prefetch Path node merging is now up to 20-25% faster. Setting entity references required the creation of a new relationship object. As this relationship object is always used internally it could be cached (as it's used for syncing only). This increases performance by 20-25% in the merging functionality. Entity fetches are now up to 20% faster. A large number of tweaks have been applied to make entity fetches up to 20% faster than in v3.0. Full WCF RIA support. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF RIA application using the VS.NET tools for WCF RIA services. WCF RIA services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 and typically used within silverlight applications. SQL Server DQE compatibility level is now per instance. (Usable in Adapter). It's now possible to set the compatibility level of the SQL Server Dynamic Query Engine (DQE) per instance of the DQE instead of the global setting it was before. The global setting is still available and is used as the default value for the compatibility level per-instance. You can use this to switch between CE Desktop and normal SQL Server compatibility per DataAccessAdapter instance. Support for COUNT_BIG aggregate function (SQL Server specific). The aggregate function COUNT_BIG has been added to the list of available aggregate functions to be used in the framework. Minor changes / tweaks I'm especially pleased with the import system, as that makes working with entity models a lot easier. The import system lets you import from another LLBLGen Pro v3 project any entity definition, mapping and / or meta-data like table definitions. This way you can build repository projects where you store model fragments, e.g. the building blocks for a customer-order system, a user credential model etc., any model you can think of. In most projects, you'll recognize that some parts of your new model look familiar. In these cases it would have been easier if you would have been able to import these parts from projects you had pre-created. With LLBLGen Pro v3.1 you can. For example, say you have an Oracle schema called CRM which contains the bread 'n' butter customer-order-product kind of model. You create an entity model from that schema and save it in a project file. Now you start working on another project for another customer and you have to use SQL Server. You also start using model-first development, so develop the entity model from scratch as there's no existing database. As this customer also requires some CRM like entity model, you import the entities from your saved Oracle project into this new SQL Server targeting project. Because you don't work with Oracle this time, you don't import the relational meta-data, just the entities, their relationships and possibly their inheritance hierarchies, if any. As they're now entities in your project you can change them a bit to match the new customer's requirements. This can save you a lot of time, because you can re-use pre-fab model fragments for new projects. In the example above there are no tables yet (as you work model first) so using the forward mapping capabilities of LLBLGen Pro v3 creates the tables, PK constraints, Unique Constraints and FK constraints for you. This way you can build a nice repository of model fragments which you can re-use in new projects.

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  • LLBLGen Pro v3.0 has been released!

    - by FransBouma
    After two years of hard work we released v3.0 of LLBLGen Pro today! V3.0 comes with a completely new designer which has been developed from the ground up for .NET 3.5 and higher. Below I'll briefly mention some highlights of this new release: Entity Framework (v1 & v4) support NHibernate support (hbm.xml mappings & FluentNHibernate mappings) Linq to SQL support Allows both Model first and Database first development, or a mixture of both .NET 4.0 support Model views Grouping of project elements Linq-based project search Value Type (DDD) support Multiple Database types in single project XML based project file Integrated template editor Relational Model Data management Flexible attribute declaration for code generation, no more buddy classes needed Fine-grained project validation Update / Create DDL SQL scripts Fast Text-DSL based Quick mode Powerful text-DSL based Quick Model functionality Per target framework extensible settings framework much much more... Of course we still support our own O/R mapper framework: LLBLGen Pro v3.0 Runtime framework as well, which was updated with some minor features and was upgraded to use the DbProviderFactory system. Please watch the videos of the designer (more to come very soon!) to see some aspects of the new designer in action. The full version comes with Algorithmia in sourcecode as well. Algorithmia is an algorithm library written for .NET 3.5 which powers the heart of the designer with a fine-grained undo/redo command framework, graph classes and much more. I'd like to thank all beta-testers, our support team and others who have helped us with this massive release. :)

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  • Introducing… SharePress!

    - by Bil Simser
    For those that follow me I’ve been away from blogging and twittering for a couple of months. This is the reason. For the last few months I’ve been working with a cross-functional team putting together a new product from the people that run WordPress, the free premiere blogging platform. The result is a new product we call SharePress, a highly extensible blogging and content management platform with the usability of WordPress and the power of SharePoint combined into a single product. SharePress gives you SharePoint sites that are SEO-friendly delivered with a Web 2.0 ease of use, leveraging all of the existing abilities of SharePoint and WordPress that we know today. The Reason Back in December I was approached by the WordPress team about building a new platform that took advantage of the power of SharePoint but the ease of WordPress. I’m no stranger to WordPress and it’s 5 minute no-holds-barred install (I’ve always wanted SharePoint to do this!) and I run my personal blog on WordPress as does my better half, Princess Jenn. There’s always been a pitch by so-called Web 2.0 applications to deliver the power of SharePoint but the ease of [insert product here] over the past year or so. I checked each and every one of them out, but they fell woefully short when it came to SharePoint’s document management, versioning, and customization. They try, but it’s never been up to par in my books. On the flipside, SharePoint has always been tops in collaboration in the Enterprise but it’s painful to develop web parts, UI customization can be tricky, and there’s just no user community for something as simple as themes and designs. The Product Enter SharePress. Is it SharePoint? Is it WordPress? It’s both, and neither. Everything you like about both products are there but this is a bold new product that is positioned to bring SharePoint to the masses while maintaining the fidelity of an Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform. SharePress delivers on all fronts including: The ability to leverage any WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/DotNetNuke themes and skins inside of SharePoint Run any WordPress/Drupal/Joomla/DotNetNuke/SharePoint plug-in/module/web part/feature works out of the box with SharePress SEO-friendly URLs and pages Permalinks for all content All the features of SharePoint Server 2010 (including InfoPath, Excel, and Access services) included in the price Small deployment footprint. You decide how much to deploy and where. Independent Database Abstraction Layer (iDal) that allows you to deploy to SQL Server 2005/2008, MySQL, and PostgreSQL Portable Rendering Engine Layer (PREL) so you host .NET or PHP on Apache or IIS (version 7 or higher). The install feature is built around WordPress and it’s famous 5-minute install (actually, it’s never taken me more than 1 minute). SharePress installs with two screens after the files are uploaded to your server (which can be done entirely using FTP): After you enter two fields of information click “Install SharePress” and you’ll be done: No mess, no fuss, no complicated dependencies, and no server access required! How simpler could this be? The Technology WordPress plug-ins and themes working with SharePoint? Of course! The answer is IronPython which has now reached a maturity level capable of doing on the fly code language conversions. SharePress is a brand new product not built on top of any previous platform but leverages all the power of each of those applications through a patent pending technique called SharePress Multi-plAtfoRm Technology (SMART). SMART will convert PHP code on the fly into Python (using SWIG as an intermediate processor) which is then compiled to MSIL and then delivered back as an ASP.NET MVC application (output is C# or VB.NET, but you can build your own SMART converter to output a different language). Sound complicated? It is, but it’s all behind the scenes and you don’t have to worry about a thing. This image illustrates the technology stack and process: So users can load up out of the box PHP themes and plug-ins from the WordPress/Joomla/Drupal community into the SMART converter and output MSIL that is used by the SharePress engine and rendered on the fly to the end user. Supported PHP versions are 4.xx and 5.xx with version 6 support to come when it’s released. Similarly you can take any .NET application, DotNetNuke Module, SharePoint Web Part or event handler and feed it into the converter to output the same. Everything is reverse compiled into MSIL so it becomes technology agnostic. No source code access is needed and the SMART converter can handle obfuscated .NET assemblies that were built with .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.5, and 4.0. With this technology you can also with the flip of a switch have the output create PHP pages for you. This allows you to run SharePress on Unix based systems running PHP and MySQL, allowing you to deliver your SharePoint like experience to your users with a $0 infrastructure footprint. Here’s SharePress with the default WordPress post imported then a stock SharePoint collaboration site was imported. The site was then applied with the default Kubrick theme from WordPress. The Features Deploy any of the freely available 100,000 WordPress/Joomla/Drupal themes instantly to your runtime SharePress environment and preview or activate them right from your browser. Built-in Web 2.0 jQuery Enabled End User and Administrator Web Interface. Never have to remote into a server again! Run any SharePoint Web Part or Event Handler directly without modification or access to source code in SharePress. Use any WordPress/Joomla/Drupal plug-in directly in SharePress, no local admin or access to server. Just upload and activate. Upload and Activate any SharePoint Solution Package to any site remotely. No rebuilding. Changes made to sites require no compiling or rebuilding and are published immediately. Password Protected Content. You can give passwords to individual posts, articles, pages, documents, forms, and list items. A powerful polymorphic Captcha system backs the security interface and vendors can easily tie into smart card readers, fingerprint readers, and retina scanners for authorization and identification. OpenID, Windows Live, and Windows Authentication are supported out of the box. Infinitely customizable and extensible. You can leverage plug-ins from the open source community to do practically anything, all configured and uploaded via the browser. Additionally the developer API (available soon) allows you to build extensions in .NET, PHP, and Python with little effort. Easy Importing. We have importers for Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and SharePoint so you can populate your site quickly and easily with full metadata modeling and creation. Banner Management. It’s easy to setup banners for your web site complete with impression numbers, special URLs, and more. Menu Manager. The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus as you want, each one can be associated to specific audiences or roles and then be styled across multiple contexts including the same menu delivered as a fly out, rollover, drop down, and just about any navigation you can think of. Collaborative ShareBook. Our exclusive book feature allows you to setup a “book” and then authorize individuals to contribute content. Permalinks. All content in SharePress has a permanent or “perma link” associated with it so people can link to it freely without fear of broken links. Apache or IIS, Unix / Linux / BSD / Solaris / Windows / Mac OS X support. Deliver SharePress the way *you* want from the platform *you* decide. Database Independence. We know people wanted to run on any database platform so SharePress is built on top of a database abstraction layer that allows you to run on SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL. Other databases can be supported by writing a supporting database script consisting of fourteen function calls. The script can be written in Perl, Python, AWK, PowerShell, Unix Shell scripts, VBA, or simple DOS batch files. The Team SharePress is the work of a lot of people in both the WordPress and SharePoint community. I worked with a lot of SharePoint MVPs to create this new product as we really wanted to deliver the most compatible and feature rich system in a product that we would be proud of. Many thanks go out to Eli Bleeker, Todd Robillard, Scot Larson, Daniel Hillier, Shane Fox, Box Peran, Amanda English, and Bill Murray for doing the heavy lifting and all of their expertise and innovative thinking to get this product out. Licensing and Pricing SharePress is still in the final stages for pricing but we’re looking at a price point somewhere between $99-$100 to make it affordable for everyone. We plan to announce final pricing sometime in the next few weeks. There are no additional charges for Enterprise versions or additional features. Everything you see is what’s available and it’s just a matter of lighting up your site with whatever feature you want to enable. The product will not be open source but source code licenses will be available to ISVs who are interested in interfacing with the API at a low level. Cost will be $25,000 USD per developer and gives you complete access to the source code to the SharePress Foundation System and the .NET 4.0 Framework source code. Conclusion We hope you enjoy the launch of SharePress as the new premium blogging and content management platform for both Intranets and the Internet. We think we’ve build the best of breed solutions here and made it easy for anyone to get started with a minimal of infrastructure but allow the scalability of SharePress to shine through in the Enterprise 2.0 world. We encourage your feedback so please leave comments as to what you’re looking for in this system as we’re always evolving it to make it a better product for everyone.

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  • Passing multiple simple POST Values to ASP.NET Web API

    - by Rick Strahl
    A few weeks backs I posted a blog post  about what does and doesn't work with ASP.NET Web API when it comes to POSTing data to a Web API controller. One of the features that doesn't work out of the box - somewhat unexpectedly -  is the ability to map POST form variables to simple parameters of a Web API method. For example imagine you have this form and you want to post this data to a Web API end point like this via AJAX: <form> Name: <input type="name" name="name" value="Rick" /> Value: <input type="value" name="value" value="12" /> Entered: <input type="entered" name="entered" value="12/01/2011" /> <input type="button" id="btnSend" value="Send" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnSend").click( function() { $.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); }); </script> or you might do this more explicitly by creating a simple client map and specifying the POST values directly by hand:$.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", { name: "Rick", value: 1, entered: "12/01/2012" }, $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); On the wire this generates a simple POST request with Url Encoded values in the content:POST /AspNetWebApi/samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1 Accept: application/json Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest Referer: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/FormPostTest.html Content-Length: 41 Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cachename=Rick&value=12&entered=12%2F10%2F2011 Seems simple enough, right? We are basically posting 3 form variables and 1 query string value to the server. Unfortunately Web API can't handle request out of the box. If I create a method like this:[HttpPost] public string PostMultipleSimpleValues(string name, int value, DateTime entered, string action = null) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, Value: {1}, Date: {2}, Action: {3}", name, value, entered, action); }You'll find that you get an HTTP 404 error and { "Message": "No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI…"} Yes, it's possible to pass multiple POST parameters of course, but Web API expects you to use Model Binding for this - mapping the post parameters to a strongly typed .NET object, not to single parameters. Alternately you can also accept a FormDataCollection parameter on your API method to get a name value collection of all POSTed values. If you're using JSON only, using the dynamic JObject/JValue objects might also work. ModelBinding is fine in many use cases, but can quickly become overkill if you only need to pass a couple of simple parameters to many methods. Especially in applications with many, many AJAX callbacks the 'parameter mapping type' per method signature can lead to serious class pollution in a project very quickly. Simple POST variables are also commonly used in AJAX applications to pass data to the server, even in many complex public APIs. So this is not an uncommon use case, and - maybe more so a behavior that I would have expected Web API to support natively. The question "Why aren't my POST parameters mapping to Web API method parameters" is already a frequent one… So this is something that I think is fairly important, but unfortunately missing in the base Web API installation. Creating a Custom Parameter Binder Luckily Web API is greatly extensible and there's a way to create a custom Parameter Binding to provide this functionality! Although this solution took me a long while to find and then only with the help of some folks Microsoft (thanks Hong Mei!!!), it's not difficult to hook up in your own projects. It requires one small class and a GlobalConfiguration hookup. Web API parameter bindings allow you to intercept processing of individual parameters - they deal with mapping parameters to the signature as well as converting the parameters to the actual values that are returned. Here's the implementation of the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding class:public class SimplePostVariableParameterBinding : HttpParameterBinding { private const string MultipleBodyParameters = "MultipleBodyParameters"; public SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) : base(descriptor) { } /// <summary> /// Check for simple binding parameters in POST data. Bind POST /// data as well as query string data /// </summary> public override Task ExecuteBindingAsync(ModelMetadataProvider metadataProvider, HttpActionContext actionContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { // Body can only be read once, so read and cache it NameValueCollection col = TryReadBody(actionContext.Request); string stringValue = null; if (col != null) stringValue = col[Descriptor.ParameterName]; // try reading query string if we have no POST/PUT match if (stringValue == null) { var query = actionContext.Request.GetQueryNameValuePairs(); if (query != null) { var matches = query.Where(kv => kv.Key.ToLower() == Descriptor.ParameterName.ToLower()); if (matches.Count() > 0) stringValue = matches.First().Value; } } object value = StringToType(stringValue); // Set the binding result here SetValue(actionContext, value); // now, we can return a completed task with no result TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid> tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid>(); tcs.SetResult(default(AsyncVoid)); return tcs.Task; } private object StringToType(string stringValue) { object value = null; if (stringValue == null) value = null; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(string)) value = stringValue; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(int)) value = int.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int32)) value = Int32.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int64)) value = Int64.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(decimal)) value = decimal.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(double)) value = double.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(DateTime)) value = DateTime.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(bool)) { value = false; if (stringValue == "true" || stringValue == "on" || stringValue == "1") value = true; } else value = stringValue; return value; } /// <summary> /// Read and cache the request body /// </summary> /// <param name="request"></param> /// <returns></returns> private NameValueCollection TryReadBody(HttpRequestMessage request) { object result = null; // try to read out of cache first if (!request.Properties.TryGetValue(MultipleBodyParameters, out result)) { // parsing the string like firstname=Hongmei&lastname=Ge result = request.Content.ReadAsFormDataAsync().Result; request.Properties.Add(MultipleBodyParameters, result); } return result as NameValueCollection; } private struct AsyncVoid { } }   The ExecuteBindingAsync method is fired for each parameter that is mapped and sent for conversion. This custom binding is fired only if the incoming parameter is a simple type (that gets defined later when I hook up the binding), so this binding never fires on complex types or if the first type is not a simple type. For the first parameter of a request the Binding first reads the request body into a NameValueCollection and caches that in the request.Properties collection. The request body can only be read once, so the first parameter request reads it and then caches it. Subsequent parameters then use the cached POST value collection. Once the form collection is available the value of the parameter is read, and the value is translated into the target type requested by the Descriptor. SetValue writes out the value to be mapped. Once you have the ParameterBinding in place, the binding has to be assigned. This is done along with all other Web API configuration tasks at application startup in global.asax's Application_Start:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.ParameterBindingRules .Insert(0, (HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) => { var supportedMethods = descriptor.ActionDescriptor.SupportedHttpMethods; // Only apply this binder on POST and PUT operations if (supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Post) || supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Put)) { var supportedTypes = new Type[] { typeof(string), typeof(int), typeof(decimal), typeof(double), typeof(bool), typeof(DateTime) }; if (supportedTypes.Where(typ => typ == descriptor.ParameterType).Count() > 0) return new SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(descriptor); } // let the default bindings do their work return null; });   The ParameterBindingRules.Insert method takes a delegate that checks which type of requests it should handle. The logic here checks whether the request is POST or PUT and whether the parameter type is a simple type that is supported. Web API calls this delegate once for each method signature it tries to map and the delegate returns null to indicate it's not handling this parameter, or it returns a new parameter binding instance - in this case the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding. Once the parameter binding and this hook up code is in place, you can now pass simple POST values to methods with simple parameters. The examples I showed above should now work in addition to the standard bindings. Summary Clearly this is not easy to discover. I spent quite a bit of time digging through the Web API source trying to figure this out on my own without much luck. It took Hong Mei at Micrsoft to provide a base example as I asked around so I can't take credit for this solution :-). But once you know where to look, Web API is brilliantly extensible to make it relatively easy to customize the parameter behavior. I'm very stoked that this got resolved  - in the last two months I've had two customers with projects that decided not to use Web API in AJAX heavy SPA applications because this POST variable mapping wasn't available. This might actually change their mind to still switch back and take advantage of the many great features in Web API. I too frequently use plain POST variables for communicating with server AJAX handlers and while I could have worked around this (with untyped JObject or the Form collection mostly), having proper POST to parameter mapping makes things much easier. I said this in my last post on POST data and say it again here: I think POST to method parameter mapping should have been shipped in the box with Web API, because without knowing about this limitation the expectation is that simple POST variables map to parameters just like query string values do. I hope Microsoft considers including this type of functionality natively in the next version of Web API natively or at least as a built-in HttpParameterBinding that can be just added. This is especially true, since this binding doesn't affect existing bindings. Resources SimplePostVariableParameterBinding Source on GitHub Global.asax hookup source Mapping URL Encoded Post Values in  ASP.NET Web API© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX   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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  • 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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  • Extending ASP.NET Output Caching

    One of the most sure-fire ways to improve a web application's performance is to employ caching. Caching takes some expensive operation and stores its results in a quickly accessible location. Since it's inception, ASP.NET has offered two flavors of caching: Output Caching - caches the entire rendered markup of an ASP.NET page or User Control for a specified duration.Data Caching - a API for caching objects. Using the data cache you can write code to add, remove, and retrieve items from the cache.Until recently, the underlying functionality of these two caching mechanisms was fixed - both cached data in the web server's memory. This has its drawbacks. In some cases, developers may want to save output cache content to disk. When using the data cache you may want to cache items to the cloud or to a distributed caching architecture like memcached. The good news is that with ASP.NET 4 and the .NET Framework 4, the output caching and data caching options are now much more extensible. Both caching features are now based upon the provider model, meaning that you can create your own output cache and data cache providers (or download and use a third-party or open source provider) and plug them into a new or existing ASP.NET 4 application. This article focuses on extending the output caching feature. We'll walk through how to create a custom output cache provider that caches a page or User Control's rendered output to disk (as opposed to memory) and then see how to plug the provider into an ASP.NET application. A complete working example, available in both VB and C#, is available for download at the end of this article. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • Extending ASP.NET Output Caching

    One of the most sure-fire ways to improve a web application's performance is to employ caching. Caching takes some expensive operation and stores its results in a quickly accessible location. Since it's inception, ASP.NET has offered two flavors of caching: Output Caching - caches the entire rendered markup of an ASP.NET page or User Control for a specified duration.Data Caching - a API for caching objects. Using the data cache you can write code to add, remove, and retrieve items from the cache.Until recently, the underlying functionality of these two caching mechanisms was fixed - both cached data in the web server's memory. This has its drawbacks. In some cases, developers may want to save output cache content to disk. When using the data cache you may want to cache items to the cloud or to a distributed caching architecture like memcached. The good news is that with ASP.NET 4 and the .NET Framework 4, the output caching and data caching options are now much more extensible. Both caching features are now based upon the provider model, meaning that you can create your own output cache and data cache providers (or download and use a third-party or open source provider) and plug them into a new or existing ASP.NET 4 application. This article focuses on extending the output caching feature. We'll walk through how to create a custom output cache provider that caches a page or User Control's rendered output to disk (as opposed to memory) and then see how to plug the provider into an ASP.NET application. A complete working example, available in both VB and C#, is available for download at the end of this article. Read on to learn more! Read More >Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

    - by Wayne Molina
    Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours.  Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums.  Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in).  This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do".  He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques.  They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario.  Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name.  Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world.  Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities.  These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with.  They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss.  Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development.  Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything.  He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him.  He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works.  He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to.  He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts.  Right?  WRONG. Who would you rather trust?  Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability?  Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama?  One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field.  Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond.  If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy.  However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job.  A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple.  Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software.  And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company.  Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy.  There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship.  In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people.  At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional.  When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity.  Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship.  The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are.  These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn.  Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value.  There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one.  An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line.  This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames.  Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more.  A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while.  To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

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  • VS 2010 IDE Features in a nutshell

    - by Rajesh Pillai
    Going through a VS 2010 IDE Features.  We will explore each feature in subsequent posts.  The post are documented as being reviewed by me.   Breakpoint Labeling Breakpoint Searching Breakpoint Import/Export Dynamic Data Tooling WPF Tree Visualizer Call Hierarchy Improved WPF Tooling Historical Debugging Mini-Dump Debugging Quick Search Better Multi-Monitor Support Highlight References Parallel Stacks Window Parallel Tasks Window Document Map Margin Generate from Usage Concurrency Profiler Inline Call Tree Extensible Test Runner MVC Tooling Web Deploy JQuery IntelliSense SharePoint Tooling HTML Snippets Web.config Transformation ClickOnce Enhancements for MS Office     VS is an editor as well as a platform for development and this is only more true with VS 2010.  As an editor there is improved forcus on writing code, understanding code, navigating and publishing code.   VS Shell has been completely rewritten using WPF extending huge benefits.  The start page has been rewritten using XAML, so it is easy to customize.   Support new support for Silverlight, MFC, F# , Azure and extended support for Office 2010, Sharepoint.   Has a good Extension Manager as well.   Enjoy Coding !!!

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  • My View on ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Introduction A lot has been said on Web Forms and MVC, but since I was recently asked about my opinion on the subject, here it is. First, I have to say that I really like both technologies and I don’t think any is going away – just remember SharePoint, which is built on top of Web Forms. I see them as complementary, targeting different needs and leveraging different skills. Let’s go through some of their differences. Rapid Application Development Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the development process by which you have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a visual design surface and a toolbox, and you drag components from the toolbox to the design surface and set their properties through a property inspector. It was introduced with some of the earliest Windows graphical IDEs such as Visual Basic and Delphi. With Web Forms you have RAD out of the box. Visual Studio offers a generally good (and extensible) designer for the layout of pages and web user controls. Designing a page may simply be about dragging controls from the toolbox, setting their properties and wiring up some events to event handlers, which are implemented in code behind .NET classes. Most people will be familiar with this kind of development and enjoy it. You can see what you are doing from the beginning. MVC also has designable pages – called views in MVC terminology – the problem is that they can be built using different technologies, some of which, at the moment (MVC 4) do not support RAD – Razor, for example. I believe it is just a matter of time for that to be implemented in Visual Studio, but it will mostly consist on HTML editing, and until that day comes, you have to live with source editing. Development Model Web Forms features the same development model that you are used to from Windows Forms and other similar technologies: events fired by controls and automatic persistence of their properties between postbacks. For that, it uses concepts such as view state, which some may love and others may hate, because it may be misused quite easily, but otherwise does its job well. Another fundamental concept is data binding, by which a collection of data can be fed to a control and have it render that data somehow – just thing of the GridView control. The focus is on the page, that’s where it all starts, and you can place everything in the same code behind class: data access, business logic, layout, etc. The controls take care of generating a great part of the HTML and JavaScript for you. With MVC there is no free lunch when it comes to data persistence between requests, you have to implement it yourself. As for event handling, that is at the core of MVC, in the form of controllers and action methods, you just don’t think of them as event handlers. In MVC you need to think more in HTTP terms, so action methods such as POST and GET are relevant to you, and may write actions to handle one or the other. Also of crucial importance is model binding: the way by which MVC converts your posted data into a .NET class. This is something that ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms has introduced as well, but it is a cornerstone in MVC. MVC also has built-in validation of these .NET classes, which out of the box uses the Data Annotations API. You have full control of the generated HTML - except for that coming from the helper methods, usually small fragments - which requires a greater familiarity with the specifications. You normally rely much more on JavaScript APIs, they are even included in the Visual Studio template, that is because much less is done for you. Reuse It is difficult to accept a professional company/project that does not employ reuse. It can save a lot of time thus cutting costs significantly. Code reused in several projects matures as time goes by and helps developers learn from past experiences. ASP.NET Web Forms was built with reuse in mind, in the form of controls. Controls encapsulate functionality and are generally portable from project to project (with the notable exception of web user controls, those with an associated .ASCX markup file). ASP.NET has dozens of controls and it is very easy to develop new ones, so I believe this is a great advantage. A control can inject JavaScript code and external references as well as generate HTML an CSS. MVC on the other hand does not use controls – it is possible to use them, with some view engines like ASPX, but it is just not advisable because it breaks the flow – where do Init, Load, PreRender, etc, fit? The most similar to controls is extension methods, or helpers. They serve the same purpose – generating HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and can be reused between different projects. What differentiates them from controls is that there is no inheritance and no context – an extension method is just a static method which doesn’t know where it is being called. You also have partial views, which you can reuse in the same project, but there is no inheritance as well. This, in my view, is a weakness of MVC. Architecture Both technologies are highly extensible. I have writtenstarted writing a series of posts on ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility and will probably write another series on MVC extensibility as well. A number of scenarios are covered in any of these models, and some extensibility points apply to both, because, of course both stand upon ASP.NET. With Web Forms, if you’re like me, you start by defining you master pages, pages and controls, with some helper classes to glue everything. You may as well throw in some JavaScript, but probably you’re main work will be with plain old .NET code. The controls you define have the chance to inject JavaScript code and references, through either the ScriptManager or the page’s ClientScript object, as well as generating HTML and CSS code. The master page and page model with code behind classes offer a number of “hooks” by which you can change the normal way of things, for example, in a page you can access any control on the master page, add script or stylesheet references to its head and even change the page’s title. Also, with Web Forms, you typically have URLs in the form “/SomePath/SomePage.aspx?SomeParameter=SomeValue”, which isn’t really SEO friendly, no to mention the HTML that some controls produce, far from standards, optimization and best practices. In MVC, you also normally start by defining the master page (or layout) and views, which are the visible parts, and then define controllers on separate files. These controllers do not know anything about the views, except the names and types of the parameters that will be passed to and from them. The controller will be responsible for the data access and business logic, eventually relying on additional classes for this purpose. On a controller you only receive parameters and return a result, which may be a request for the rendering of a view, a redirection to another URL or a JSON object, to name just a few. The controller class does not know anything about the web, so you can effectively reuse it in a non-web project. This separation and the lack of programmatic access to the UI elements, makes it very difficult to implement, for example, something like SharePoint with MVC. OK, I know about Orchard, but it isn’t really a general purpose development framework, but instead, a CMS that happens to use MVC. Not having controls render HTML for you gives you in turn much more control over it – it is your responsibility to create it, which you can either consider a blessing or a curse, in the later case, you probably shouldn’t be using MVC at all. Also MVC URLs tend to be much more SEO-oriented, if you design your controllers and actions properly. Testing In a well defined architecture, you should separate business logic, data access logic and presentation logic, because these are all different things and it might even be the need to switch one implementation for another: for example, you might design a system which includes a data access layer, a business logic layer and two presentation layers, one on top of ASP.NET and the other with WPF; and the data access layer might be implemented first using NHibernate and later on switched for Entity Framework Code First. These changes are not that rare, so care should be taken in designing the system to make them possible. Web Forms are difficult to test, because it relies on event handlers which are only fired in web contexts, when a form is submitted or a page is requested. You can call them with reflection, but you have to set up a number of mocking objects first, HttpContext.Current first coming to my mind. MVC, on the other hand, makes testing controllers a breeze, so much that it even includes a template option for generating boilerplate unit test classes up from start. A well designed – from the unit test point of view - controller will receive everything it needs to work as parameters to its action methods, so you can pass whatever values you need very easily. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everything can be tested: views, for instance, are difficult to test without actually accessing the site, but MVC offers the possibility to compile views at build time, so that, at least, you know you don’t have syntax errors beforehand. Myths Some popular but unfounded myths around MVC include: You cannot use controls in MVC: not true, actually, you can, at least with the Web Forms (ASPX) view engine; the declaration and usage is exactly the same as with Web Forms; You cannot specify a base class for a view: with the ASPX view engine you can use the Inherits Page directive, with this and all the others you can use the pageBaseType and userControlBaseType attributes of the <page> element; MVC shields you from doing “bad things” on your views: well, you can place any code on a code block, at least with the ASPX view engine (you may be starting to see a pattern here), even data access code; The model is the entity model, tied to an O/RM: the model is actually any class that you use to pass values to a view, including (but generally not recommended) an entity model; Unit tests come with no cost: unit tests generally don’t cover the UI, although there are frameworks just for that (see WatiN, for example); also, for some tests, you will have to mock or replace either the HttpContext.Current property or the HttpContextBase class yourself; Everything is testable: views aren’t, without accessing the site; MVC relies on HTML5/some_cool_new_javascript_framework: there is no relation whatsoever, MVC renders whatever you want it to render and does not require any framework to be present. The thing is, the subsequent releases of MVC happened in a time when Microsoft has become much more involved in standards, so the files and technologies included in the Visual Studio templates reflect this, and it just happens to work well with jQuery, for example. Conclusion Well, this is how I see it. Some folks may think that I am being too rude on MVC, probably because I don’t like it, but that’s not true: like I said, I do like MVC and I am starting my new projects with it. I just don’t want to go along with that those that say that MVC is much superior to Web Forms, in fact, some things you can do much more easily with Web Forms than with MVC. I will be more than happy to hear what you think on this!

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  • Windows Resource Monitoring Programs

    - by Sal
    I work at a small tech start up managing websites with our own in house server side code. (In production, we use Windows Server 2008 boxes, running Java 6. In our dev boxes, we use Windows 7 running Java 7.) Recently, we had an issue where some of our boxes in production failed, and we didn't have means of trouble shooting, since we keep little to no monitoring logs about a given box's CPU/memory/RAM usage, etc. So, I'm wondering if there is some commercial/freeware that's the standard for performance monitoring/logging. Essentially, I'm just looking for an analytics system that is similar to the Windows Task Manager or the Resource Monitor, that serializes all of its data periodically. Ideally, I'd like to find a program that's also extensible, in case I'd like to add addition monitors in the future.

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  • You Need BRM When You have EBS – and Even When You Don’t!

    - by bwalstra
    Here is a list of criteria to test your business-systems (Oracle E-Business Suite, EBS) or otherwise to support your lines of digital business - if you score low, you need Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM). Functions Scalability High Availability (99.999%) Performance Extensibility (e.g. APIs, Tools) Upgradability Maintenance Security Standards Compliance Regulatory Compliance (e.g. SOX) User Experience Implementation Complexity Features Customer Management Real-Time Service Authorization Pricing/Promotions Flexibility Subscriptions Usage Rating and Pricing Real-Time Balance Mgmt. Non-Currency Resources Billing & Invoicing A/R & G/L Payments & Collections Revenue Assurance Integration with Key Enterprise Applications Reporting Business Intelligence Order & Service Mgmt (OSM) Siebel CRM E-Business Suite On-/Off-line Mediation Payment Processing Taxation Royalties & Settlements Operations Management Disaster Recovery Overall Evaluation Implementation Configuration Extensibility Maintenance Upgradability Functional Richness Feature Richness Usability OOB Integrations Operations Management Leveraging Oracle Technology Overall Fit for Purpose You need Oracle BRM: Built for high-volume transaction processing Monetizes any service or event based on any metric Supports high-volume usage rating, pricing and promotions Provides real-time charging, service authorization and balance management Supports any account structure (e.g. corporate hierarchies etc.) Scales from low volumes to extremely high volumes of transactions (e.g. billions of trxn per hour) Exposes every single function via APIs (e.g. Java, C/C++, PERL, COM, Web Services, JCA) Immediate Business Benefits of BRM: Improved business agility and performance Supports the flexibility, innovation, and customer-centricity required for current and future business models Faster time to market for new products and services Supports 360 view of the customer in real-time – products can be launched to targeted customers at a record-breaking pace Streamlined deployment and operation Productized integrations, standards-based APIs, and OOB enablement lower deployment and maintenance costs Extensible and scalable solution Minimizes risk – initial phase deployed rapidly; solution extended and scaled seamlessly per business requirements Key Considerations Productized integration with key Oracle applications Lower integration risks and cost Efficient order-to-cash process Engineered solution – certification on Exa platform Exadata tested at PayPal in the re-platforming project Optimal performance of Oracle assets on Oracle hardware Productized solution in Rapid Offer Design and Order Delivery Fast offer design and implementation Significantly shorter order cycle time Productized integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager Visibility to system operability for optimal up time

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 01, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 01, 2012Popular ReleasesDotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.NicAudio: NicAudio 2.0.6: ac3,dts Solved some initialization issues with no-linear decode.ExpressProfiler: Initial release of ExpressProfiler v1.2: This is initial release of ExpressProfilerMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0.0901.1830 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3406 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants DateTime::modify(), DateTime::getOffset() TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode DateTime methods (WordPress posting fix) Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging ...NougakuDoCompanion: v1.1.0: Add temp folder of local resource, Resize local resource. Change launch ruby commnadline args from rack to bundle. 1.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0 cspkg.zip - cspkg and ServiceConfiguration.xml (small , medium, large, extra large vm) - include NougakudoSetupTool.exe and readme.txt 2.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0.zip - Source code. include NougakudoSetupTool.exe - include activerecord-sqlserver-adapter patch in paches folder. 3.Depends tools. - Windows Azure SDK for .NET June 2012(1.7SP1) - Windows ...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.06: Whats New Added CKEditor 3.6.4 oEmbed Plugin can now handle short urls changes The Template File can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Style Sets can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Fixed Showing wrong Pages in Child Portal in the Link Dialog Fixed Urls in dnnpages Plugin Fixed Issue #6969 WordCount Plugin Fixed Issue #6973 File-Browser: Fixed Deleting of Files File-Browser: Improved loading time File-Browser: Improved the loa...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....Facebook Web Parts for SharePoint 2010: Version 1.0.1 - WSP: SharePoint 2010 solution (WSP) Resolved a bug from Version 1.0 - WSP where user profile names would not properly update.CUDAfy.NET: CUDAfy V1.10 BETA: This beta version of CUDAfy V1.10 requires CUDA 5.0 RC when using the Maths libraries. Add: Support for CUDA 5 RC (required if using Maths libraries). Fix: Lock method when multi-threading enabled could dead-lock. Add: Architecture sm_35. Add: Support for context switching. Fix: Translation of PI and E must be done using InvariantCulture. Add: tcc driver property (HighPerformanceDriver). Add: GetDevice always sets the current context to the device context that was got. Add: D...Contactor: GSMContactorProgram V1.0 - Source Code: This is the source code for the program, For Visual Studio 2012 RCTouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.1: Version 1.1: fixed a bug with the autorun optionWinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????New Projectsberry: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxBore Holes: A C program to read data of 11 bore holes which were drilled around a site in Sarawak, Malaysia. The data is displayed graphically as well as on a console.codeSHOW: This is a Windows 8 HTML/JS project with the express goal of showing simple how-to concepts for developing in Windows 8 using JavaScript (codefoster.com)crt-upgrade: ??????C???????????????。????????，????，?????、??、??、?、???、??????。 ???????C????????????，?????C????????????。?????????????????。DnevnikEnvironment?hange: bla bla blaDotNetNuke Translator: This is a Windows Application that can be used locally to translate resources (resx files) for a DotNetNuke installation.Get Connected with twitter & Pull data from user's twitter account: This source code will be useful for ASP.Net MVC C# developers. This contains Get Connected with Twitter & Pull user's information with his permission.GuideCP: ?????????? ??????? ??????????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??????, ?????? ??????, ????????? ? ???? ?? ???????????.Heart of Iron Smart Editor: This is A Heart Of Iron 3 SaveGame editorJSMerge: JSCombine is a command-line utility that is designed to help authors of Javascript libraries combine numerous *.js files into one, comprehensive file.Open Source Compiler, Optimizer and VM for a C-Like Language: Here, you can download an open-source compiler, optimizer and multi-core code generator for a C-like language and modify it in order to meet your requirements.OpenShip .NET - multi-carrier shipping system for Fedex, UPS and USPS: This is a proposed project for a multi-carrier shipping system to create shipments, get rates and track packages for Fedex, UPS and USPS.PogoPlug.NET: Low- and high-level class libraries encapsulating the PogoPlug API.Qi: Qi breathes life into your .NET projects by providing a collection of common helper methods and extensions so that you can get on with building your applicationSalesforce SSIS Transfer: This a project that leverages Salesforce.com's API (both Bulk and standard) to incrementally download a copy of your org's SF.com database.ServiceMon - Extensible Service Monitoring Utility: Standalone service monitoring tool which uses an extensible, scriptable plugin model to define monitoring actions with built-in support for HTTP GET Seven Up Seven Down: Seven Up Seven Down Game by Aditya Gupta Readme - How to play 1. Choose a bet amount 2. Select either 7up or 7down or 7 3. For 7up and 7down if you win yoSharePoint Import Data Timer: Custom timer job for Sharepoint 2010 which imports the results from SQL queries into Sharepoint lists.Smart Rabbit: M-Rabbit is Mihmojsos platform! Whit Smart Rabbit you can boot your Mihmojsos OS without restarting your computer!Sofire Suite: Sofire Suite ?????? 2009 ? 08 ??????????。????????????，???? V ??? Sofire2011（???????????????），???? Sofire.v1.5 ???。To be decided: summary testzwparking: zwparking

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  • Munq is for web, Unity is for Enterprise

    - by oazabir
    The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection. It’s a great library for facilitating Inversion of Control and the recent version supports AOP as well. However, when it comes to performance, it’s CPU hungry. In fact it’s so CPU hungry that it makes it impossible to make it work at Internet Scale. I was investigating some CPU issue on a portal that gets around 3MM hits per day and I found unusually high CPU. Here’s why: I did some CPU profiling on my open source project Dropthings and found that the highest CPU is consumed by Unity’s Resolve<>(). There’s no funky use of Unity in the project. Straightforward Register<>() and Resolve<>(). But as you can see, Resolve<>() is consuming significantly high CPU even after the site is warm and has been running for a while. Then I tried Munq, which is a basic Dependency Injection Container. It has everything you will usually need in a regular project. It boasts to be the fastest DI out there. So, I converted all Unity code to Munq in Dropthings and did a CPU profile and Whala!   There’s no trace of any Munq calls anywhere. That proves Munq is a lot faster than Unity.

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  • Microsoft Sync Framework

    - by kaleidoscope
    Introduction It is a platform that enables collaboration and offline access for applications, services and devices. Sync framework features technologies and tools that enable roaming, data sharing and taking data offline. Moreover, developers can build synchronization ecosystems that integrate any application with data from any store, by using any protocol over any network. Highlights * Add sync support to new and existing applications, services and devices * Enable collaboration and offline capabilities for any application * Roam and share information form any data store, over any protocol and over any network configuration * Leverage sync capabilities exposed in Microsoft technologies to create sync ecosystems * Extend the architecture to support custom data types including files Benefits of using Sync Framework * An extensible model that lets you integrate multiple data sources into a synchronization ecosystems. * A managed API for all components and a native API for select components. * Conflict handling for automatic and custom resolution schemes. * Filters that let you synchronize a subset of data, such as only those files that contain images. * A compact and efficient metadata model that enables synchronization for virtually any participant, without significant changes to the data store: - Any data store     Add synchronization to a wide range of applications, services and devices. - Any data type     Introduce new data types to synchronize. - Any protocol     Use existing architectures and protocols to synchronize data. The transport – agnostic architecture allows integration of synchronization into a variety of protocols, including over-the-air and embedded devices. - Any network configuration     Enable synchronization for your applications, devices and services in true peer-to-peer or hub-and-spoke configurations. Easily recover from network interruptions. Reduce network traffic by efficiently selecting changes to synchronize. Technorati Tags: Anish Sharma,Microsoft Sync Framework

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  • A Multi-Channel Contact Center Can Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

    - by Tom Floodeen
    In order to remain competitive in today’s market, CRM customers need to provide feature-rich superior call center experience to their customers across all communication channels while improving their service agent productivity. They also require their call center to be deeply integrated with their CRM system; and they need to implement all this quickly, seamlessly, and without breaking the bank. Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the world’s leading application suite for automated customer-facing operations for Sales and Marketing and for managing all aspects of providing service to customers. Oracle’s Contact On Demand (COD) is a world-class carrier grade hosted multi-channel contact center solution that can be deployed in days without up-front capital expenditures or integration costs. Agents can work efficiently from anywhere in the world with 360-degree views into customer interactions and real-time business intelligence. Customers gain from rapid and personalized sales and service, while organizations can dramatically reduce costs and increase revenues Oracle’s latest update of Siebel CRM now comes pre-integrated with Oracle’s Contact On Demand. This solution seamlessly runs fully-functional contact center provided by a single vendor, significantly reducing your total cost of ownership. This solution supports Siebel 7.8 and higher for Voice and Siebel 8.1 and higher for Voice and Siebel CRM Chat.  The impressive feature list of Oracle’s COD solution includes full-control CTI toolbar with Voice, Chat, and Click to Dial features.  It also includes context-sensitive screens, automated desktops, built-in IVR, Multidimensional routing, Supervisor and Quality monitoring, and Instant Provisioning. The solution also ships with Extensible Web Services interface for implementing more complex business processes. Click here to learn how to reduce complexity and total cost of ownership of your contact center. Contact Ann Singh at [email protected] for additional information.

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  • Why does TDD work?

    - by CesarGon
    Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons: The "write test + refactor till pass" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The "refactor till pass" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do whatever is necessary to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good "ilities" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an "all green" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as "the system is fine", when it really means "the system is as good as our testing strategy". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you.

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  • Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Adds Global Address Verification Capabilities for Greater Accuracy and Broader Location Coverage

    - by Mala Narasimharajan
    Data quality – has many flavors to it.  Product, Customer – you name the data domain and there’s data quality associated with it.  Address verification and data quality are a little different.  in that there is a tremendous amount of variation as well as nuance attached to it.  Specifically, what makes address verification challenging is that more often than not, addresses are incomplete, riddled with misspellings, incorrect postal codes are assigned to locations or non-address items are present.  Almost all data has locations, and accurate locations power a wealth of business processes: Customer Relationship Management, data quality, delivery of materials, goods or services, fraud detection, insurance risk assessment, data analytics, store and territory planning, and much more. Oracle Address Verification Server provides location-based services as well as deeper parsing and analysis capabilities for Oracle Enterprise Data Quality.  Specifically, Pre-integrated with the EDQ platform, Oracle Address Verification Server provides robust parsing, validation, as well as specialized location information for over 240 countries – all populated countries on Earth.  Oracle Enterprise Data Quality (EDQ) is a data quality platform, dedicated to address the distinct challenges of customer and product data quality, and performs advanced data profiling to identify and measure poor quality data and identify rule requirements, as well as semantic and pattern-based recognition to accurately parse and standardize data that is poorly structured.   EDQ is integrated with Oracle Master Data Management, including Oracle Customer Hub and Oracle Product Hub, as well as Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition and Oracle CRM.  Address Verification Server provides key address verification services for Oracle CRM and Oracle Customer Hub.  In addition, Address Verification Server provides greater accuracy when handling address data due to its expanded sources and extensible knowledge repository, solid parsing across locales and countries as well as  adept handling of extraneous data in address fields.  For more information on Oracle Address Verification Server visit:  http://bit.ly/GMUE4H and http://bit.ly/GWf7U6

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  • Auto update for application hosted on multiple servers on cloud

    - by mots_g
    I'm working on an application which will run on multiple Amazon EC2 instances. I wish to incorporate auto update feature for my application. The updater should update all the Ec2 instances. Also, there is a central server which governs the creation/termination of EC2 instances as per load. The central server creates a EC2 new instance from a pre-configured custom AMI (custom image which has our application pre-installed). Also, once there is an update, the pre-configured AMI needs to be updated too else it would create new instances which are not updated. Should the central server notify all the ec2 instances for an update and then the instances update themselves?Or should the application on Ec2 instance have a check for periodically updating themselves? Also how should the Amazon custom AMI be updated? Should a new instance be created from it, updated and then a new AMI be re-created and then new images be created from this AMI? What is the best way to incorporate an auto update feature for this architecture? The central server is written in Java and the application running on the cloud is written in C++. Is there a good framework available that can be used for this architecture? Please let me know on what I could be missing in the design and how it would help me to have a nice, extensible and fail safe auto update architecture. Thanks

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  • Let's introduce the Oracle Enterprise Data Quality family!

    - by Sarah Zanchetti
    The Oracle Enterprise Data Quality family of products helps you to achieve maximum value from their business applications by delivering fit-­for-­purpose data. OEDQ is a state-of-the-art collaborative data quality profiling, analysis, parsing, standardization, matching and merging product, designed to help you understand, improve, protect and govern the quality of the information your business uses, all from a single integrated environment. Oracle Enterprise Data Quality products are: Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Profile and Audit Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Parsing and Standardization Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Match and Merge Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Address Verification Server Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Product Data Parsing and Standardization Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Product Data Match and Merge Also, the following are some of the key features of OEDQ: Integrated data profiling, auditing, cleansing and matching Browser-based client access Ability to handle all types of data – for example customer, product, asset, financial, operational Connection to any JDBC-compliant data sources and targets Multi-user project support (role-based access, issue tracking, process annotation, and version control) Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) - support for designing processes that may be exposed to external applications as a service Designed to process large data volumes A single repository to hold data along with gathered statistics and project tracking information, with shared access Intuitive graphical user interface designed to help you solve real-world information quality issues quickly Easy, data-led creation and extension of validation and transformation rules Fully extensible architecture allowing the insertion of any required custom processing  If you need to learn more about EDQ, or get assistance for any kind of issue, the Oracle Technology Network offers a huge range of resources on Oracle software. Discuss technical problems and solutions on the Discussion Forums. Get hands-on step-by-step tutorials with Oracle By Example. Download Sample Code. Get the latest news and information on any Oracle product. You can also get further help and information with Oracle software from: My Oracle Support Oracle Support Services An Information Center is available, where you can find technical information and fast solutions to the most common already solved issues: Information Center: Oracle Enterprise Data Quality [ID 1555073.2]

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  • StarterSTS 1.5

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    I have the 1.5 version of StarterSTS sitting here for quite some time now. But I was always reluctant to release it. Some of the reasons are: too many new features for a single (small) version change. to many features that are optional, like bridged authentication and thus make the code very complex. the way I implemented Azure integration adds a dependency on the Azure SDK, even for “on-premise” installations. I don’t like that. the fact I am using some WebForms bits and some WCF bits, the URL structure got messy. WebForms also don’t help a lot in testability All of the above reasons together plus the fact that I am the only architect, developer and tester on this project made me come to the conclusion that I will cancel this release. But wait… StarterSTS 1.5 is fully functional. We use both the on-premise and Azure versions internally “in production”. Cancelling means I will release the latest source code on Codeplex – but will not mark it as a “recommended release”. I also won’t produce updated screen casts and docs. Bu the setup is very similar to earlier versions. Feel free to use and customize 1.5 and give me feedback. On the good news front, I am working on a new version – welcome thinktecture IdentityServer. This version is based on MVC3 and the routing architecture, removed a lot of the clutter, has a SQL CE4 based configuration system, is more extensible – and in overall just cleaner. I will be able to upload CTPs very soon.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 10, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 10, 2012Popular ReleasesJson Services: Json Services 0.3.2: Json Services 0.3.2 released This release includes: JavaScript support Android support Flex SupportServiceMon - Extensible Real-time, Service Monitoring Utility: ServiceMon Release 0.9.0.50: Auto-uploaded from build serverSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.5): This new version includes: - Fixed the "resource limit" bug caused by Facebook - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.1: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ?...Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.2: FIXED - Minor fixes and improvements.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.3: Added The new release is compatible with Mvc4 RTM. Support for handling Time Zones in dates. Specifically added helper methods to convert to UTC or local time all DateTimes contained in a model received by a controller, and helper methods to handle date only fileds. This together with a detailed documentation on how TimeZones are handled in all situations by the Asp.net Mvc framework, will contribute to mitigate the nightmare of dates and timezones. Multiple Templates, and more options to...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 06.02.00: Maintenance Release Changes on Metro7 06.02.00 Fixed width and height on the jQuery popup for the Editor. Navigation Provider changed to DDR menu Added menu files and scripts Changed skins to Doctype HTML Changed manifest to dnn6 manifest file Changed License to HTML view Fixed issue on Metro7/PinkTitle.ascx with double registering of the Actions Changed source folder structure and start folder, so the project works with the default DNN structure on developing Added VS 20...Mishra Reader: Mishra Reader Beta 4: Additional bug fixes and logging in this release to try to find the reason some users aren't able to see the main window pop up. Also, a few UI tweaks to tighten up the feed item list. This release requires the final version of .NET 4.5. If the ClickOnce installer doesn't work for you, please try the additional setup exe.Xenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.9.0: Release Notes Imporved framework architecture Improved the framework security More import/export formats and operations New WebPortal application which includes forum, new, blog, catalog, etc. UIs Improved WebAdmin app. Reports, navigation and search Perfomance optimization Improve Xenta.Catalog domain More plugin interfaces and plugin implementations Refactoring Windows Azure support and much more... Package Guide Source Code - package contains the source code Binaries...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 9: New feature - Added JsonValueConverter New feature - Set a property's DefaultValueHandling to Ignore when EmitDefaultValue from DataMemberAttribute is false Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Ignore not igoring default values of non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Populate error with non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed error when writing JSON for a JProperty with no value Fix - Fixed error when calling ToList on empty JObjects and JArrays Fix - Fixed losing deci...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.66: Just going to bite the bullet and rip off the band-aid... SEMI-BREAKING CHANGE! Well, it's a BREAKING change to those who already adjusted their projects to use the previous breaking change's ill-conceived renamed DLLs (versions 4.61-4.65). For those who had not adapted and were still stuck in this-doesn't-work-please-fix-me mode, this is more like a fixing change. The previous breaking change just broke too many people, I'm sorry to say. Renaming the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00 CTP (Not for Production Use): NOTE: New Minimum Requirementshttp://www.dotnetnuke.com/Portals/25/Blog/Files/1/3418/Windows-Live-Writer-1426fd8a58ef_902C-MinimumVersionSupport_2.png Simplified InstallerThe first thing you will notice is that the installer has been updated. Not only have we updated the look and feel, but we also simplified the overall install process. You shouldn’t have to click through a series of screens in order to just get your website running. With the 7.0 installer we have taken an approach that a...BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.1: In addition to fixing a number of bugs that beta testers reported, this release includes the following new features for Tabular models in SQL 2012: New Features: Tabular Display Folders Tabular Translations Editor Tabular Sync Descriptions Fixed Issues: Biml issues 32849 fixing bug in Tabular Actions Editor Form where you type in an invalid action name which is a reserved word like CON or which is a duplicate name to another action 32695 - fixing bug in SSAS Sync Descriptions whe...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.02: This version was used for the 2012 exam.menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --New Projectsalimujtaba_project: bhssASP.NET Databinding Tutorial: This is a tutorial project on asp.net databinding.asp.net msaccess tutorial: This is a tutorial projectaspnet gridview: This is a tutorial projectaspnet login tutorial: this is a tutorial projectDataglot - A helper library for System.Data.Common: To support more than one database using System.Data.Common you need connection string conversion, light sql reparsing, multi-cast, trace and many more utilitiesDnsMigrate: This is a small powershell script to move a standalone Microsoft Dns Server to another machine. Also you can backup existing dns records with this script.Elements: Elements is an implementation of the Composite Application Guide for WPF. Written in C# using Visual Studio 2012.EQBAZ: EQ Baz pullFujiy Minesweeper: A MSN Messenger Minesweeper clone. You can play Minesweeper with a friend, who finds more bombs winsHobbyLister: The aim of this project is to create a organizetool for Movies, Books, Boardgame etc.hotfighter2: a gameJihanki: jihankimasterpage tutorial: This a tutorial projectMongo Explorer Tool: Mongo Explorer ToolMSMQ Managment Console: MSMQ Management Console is a command line tool that allows to run variety of commands on local and remote queues, with export and import capabilities.NTCPMSG: High performance open source TCP message send and receive component which written by C#.net.PlaySly: Aplicación para Windows 8 estilo Modern UI para usar series.ly. Está orientada al visionado online, críticas y votaciones. En proceso de construcción.RhotCMS: This is my asp.net MVC 4 CMS.SBQP: Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso de Graduação apresentado a Universidade Estácio de SáSimplyMessenger: SimplyMessenger is a light Network Messenger. It use C# and WPF.toki pona - corpus linguistic tools and various experiments: Various mini-linguistics tools targeting toki pona, a very small fake language. Of potential interest to hobby linguists and conlang enthusiasts.Turbo Server: An FTP Server for Android

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