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  • New York City!!

    - by Chris Williams
    I'm headed to NYC to speak at the NYPC VB SIG (user group: http://www.nypcvb.org) on Monday Feb 7 at 6pm. I'll actually be arriving on Saturday (2/5/11) and hanging around through the weekend until the meeting. It's my 3rd time in New York City, but the first time was 20 years ago, so I'm not sure that one counts. Aside from the usual touristy things to do, like seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building (both of which are on my list), what are some other cool things to check out? Got a favorite pizza place? A cool comic shop? Local hangout... Tell me about it!

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  • Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Deploy Web Sites (WAWS Part 3)

    - by Shaun
    This is the sixth post of my Windows Azure Evolution series. After talked a bit about the new caching preview feature in the previous one, let’s back to the Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS).   Git and GitHub Integration In the third post I introduced the overview functionality of WAWS and demonstrated how to create a WordPress blog through the build-in application gallery. And in the fourth post I covered how to use the TFS service preview to deploy an ASP.NET MVC application to the web site through the TFS integration. WAWS also have the Git integration. I’m not going to talk very detailed about the Git and GitHub integration since there are a bunch of information on the internet you can refer to. To enable the Git just go to the web site item in the developer portal and click the “Set up Git publishing”. After specified the username and password the windows azure platform will establish the Git integration and provide some basic guide. As you can see, you can download the Git binaries, commit the files and then push to the remote repository. Regarding the GitHub, since it’s built on top of Git it should work. Maarten Balliauw have a wonderful post about how to integrate GitHub to Windows Azure Web Site you can find here.   WebMatrix 2 RC WebMatrix is a lightweight web application development tool provided by Microsoft. It utilizes WebDeploy or FTP to deploy the web application to the server. And in WebMatrix 2.0 RC it added the feature to work with Windows Azure. First of all we need to download the latest WebMatrix 2 through the Web Platform Installer 4.0. Just open the WebPI and search “WebMatrix”, or go to its home page download its web installer. Once we have WebMatrix 2, we need to download the publish file of our WAWS. Let’s go to the developer portal and open the web site we want to deploy and download the publish file from the link on the right hand side. This file contains the necessary information of publishing the web site through WebDeploy and FTP, which can be used in WebMatrix, Visual Studio, etc.. Once we have the publish file we can open the WebMatrix, click the Open Site, Remote Site. Then it will bring up a dialog where we can input the information of the remote site. Since we have our publish file already, we can click the “Import publish settings” and select the publish file, then we can see the site information will be populated automatically. Click OK, the WebMatrix will connect to the remote site, which is the WAWS we had deployed already, retrieve the folders and files information. We can open files in WebMatrix and modify. But since WebMatrix is a lightweight web application tool, we cannot update the backend C# code. So in this case, we will modify the frontend home page only. After saved our modification, WebMatrix will compare the files between in local and remote and then it will only upload the modified files to Windows Azure through the connection information in the publish file. Since it only update the files which were changed, this minimized the bandwidth and deployment duration. After few seconds we back to the website and the modification had been applied.   Visual Studio and WebDeploy The publish file we had downloaded can be used not only in WebMatrix but also Visual Studio. As we know in Visual Studio we can publish a web application by clicking the “Publish” item from the project context menu in the solution explorer, and we can specify the WebDeploy, FTP or File System for the publish target. Now we can use the WAWS publish file to let Visual Studio publish the web application to WAWS. Let’s create a new ASP.NET MVC Web Application in Visual Studio 2010 and then click the “Publish” in solution explorer. Once we have the Windows Azure SDK 1.7 installed, it will update the web application publish dialog. So now we can import the publish information from the publish file. Select WebDeploy as the publish method. We can select FTP as well, which is supported by Windows Azure and the FTP information was in the same publish file. In the last step the publish wizard can check the files which will be uploaded to the remote site before the actually publishing. This gives us a chance to review and amend the files. Same as the WebMatrix, Visual Studio will compare the files between local and WAWS and determined which had been changed and need to be published. Finally Visual Studio will publish the web application to windows azure through WebDeploy protocol. Once it finished we can browse our website.   FTP Deployment The publish file we downloaded contains the connection information to our web site via both WebDeploy and FTP. When using WebMatrix and Visual Studio we can select WebDeploy or FTP. WebDeploy method can be used very easily from WebMatrix and Visual Studio, with the file compare feature. But the FTP gives more flexibility. We can use any FTP client to upload files to windows azure regardless which client and OS we are using. Open the publish file in any text editor, we can find the connection information very easily. As you can see the publish file is actually a XML file with WebDeploy and FTP information in plain text attributes. And once we have the FTP URL, username and password, when can connect to the site and upload and download files. For example I opened FileZilla and connected to my WAWS through FTP. Then I can download files I am interested in and modify them on my local disk. Then upload back to windows azure through FileZilla. Then I can see the new page.   Summary In this simple and quick post I introduced vary approaches to deploy our web application to Windows Azure Web Site. It supports TFS integration which I mentioned previously. It also supports Git and GitHub, WebDeploy and FTP as well.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • BDD using SpecFlow on ASP.NET MVC Application

    - by Rajesh Pillai
    I usually love doing TDD and am moving towards understanding BDD (Behaviour Driven Development).  My learnings are documented in the form of an article at CodeProject. The URL is http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/BddWithSpecFlow.aspx I will keep this updated as and when I learn a couple of more things. Hope you like it. Cheers !!!

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  • Better name of Social Networking ! quora.com

    - by Anirudha
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/07/23/better-name-of-social-networking--quora.com.aspxAfter writing my recent post Facebook allow you to abuse in Non-English words ? I am looking for better social networking site. I found Facebook is not more then time wasting time. People share links and posts. Nowadays Facebook is marketing tool. Twitter is not useful too when you can’t say anything in less then 140 words. Now look at quora.com it’s very good site compare to other two. You can read a lot of discussion their. Too many discussion that you want to listen about. I am happy to use Quora.com no need of Facebook and Twitter. Both are dying already

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  • Passing text message to web page from web user control

    - by Narendra Tiwari
    Here is a brief summary how we can send a text message to webpage by a web user control. Delegates is the slolution. There are many good articles on .net delegates you can refer some of them below. The scenario is we want to send a text message to the page on completion of some activity on webcontrol. 1/ Create a Base class for webcontrol (refer code below), assuming we are passing some text messages to page from web user control  - Declare a delegate  - Declare an event of type delegate using System; using System.Data; using System.Configuration; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; //Declaring delegate with message parameter public delegate void SendMessageToThePageHandler(string messageToThePage); public         } class ControlBase: System.Web.UI.UserControl { public ControlBase() { // TODO: Add constructor logic here }protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { base.OnInit(e); }private string strMessageToPass;/// <summary> /// MessageToPass - Property to pass text message to page /// </summary> public string MessageToPass { get { return strMessageToPass; } set { strMessageToPass = value; } }/// <summary> /// SendMessageToPage - Called from control to invoke the event /// </summary> /// <param name="strMessage">Message to pass</param> public void SendMessageToPage(string strMessage) {   if (this.sendMessageToThePage != null)       this.sendMessageToThePage(strMessage); } 2/ Register events on webpage on page Load eventthis.AddControlEventHandler((ControlBase)WebUserControl1); this.AddControlEventHandler((ControlBase)WebUserControl2); /// <summary> /// AddControlEventHandler- Hooking web user control event /// </summary> /// <param name="ctrl"></param> private void AddControlEventHandler(ControlBase ctrl) { ctrl.sendMessageToThePage += delegate(string strMessage) {   //display message   lblMessage.Text = strMessage; }; } References: http://www.akadia.com/services/dotnet_delegates_and_events.html     3/

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  • C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend...

    - by James Michael Hare
    I've been thinking a lot about extension methods lately, and I must admit I both love them and hate them. They are a lot like sugar, they taste so nice and sweet, but they'll rot your teeth if you eat them too much.   I can't deny that they aren't useful and very handy. One of the major components of the Shared Component library where I work is a set of useful extension methods. But, I also can't deny that they tend to be overused and abused to willy-nilly extend every living type.   So what constitutes a good extension method? Obviously, you can write an extension method for nearly anything whether it is a good idea or not. Many times, in fact, an idea seems like a good extension method but in retrospect really doesn't fit.   So what's the litmus test? To me, an extension method should be like in the movies when a person runs into their twin, separated at birth. You just know you're related. Obviously, that's hard to quantify, so let's try to put a few rules-of-thumb around them.   A good extension method should:     Apply to any possible instance of the type it extends.     Simplify logic and improve readability/maintainability.     Apply to the most specific type or interface applicable.     Be isolated in a namespace so that it does not pollute IntelliSense.     So let's look at a few examples in relation to these rules.   The first rule, to me, is the most important of all. Once again, it bears repeating, a good extension method should apply to all possible instances of the type it extends. It should feel like the long lost relative that should have been included in the original class but somehow was missing from the family tree.    Take this nifty little int extension, I saw this once in a blog and at first I really thought it was pretty cool, but then I started noticing a code smell I couldn't quite put my finger on. So let's look:       public static class IntExtensinos     {         public static int Seconds(int num)         {             return num * 1000;         }           public static int Minutes(int num)         {             return num * 60000;         }     }     This is so you could do things like:       ...     Thread.Sleep(5.Seconds());     ...     proxy.Timeout = 1.Minutes();     ...     Awww, you say, that's cute! Well, that's the problem, it's kitschy and it doesn't always apply (and incidentally you could achieve the same thing with TimeStamp.FromSeconds(5)). It's syntactical candy that looks cool, but tends to rot and pollute the code. It would allow things like:       total += numberOfTodaysOrders.Seconds();     which makes no sense and should never be allowed. The problem is you're applying an extension method to a logical domain, not a type domain. That is, the extension method Seconds() doesn't really apply to ALL ints, it applies to ints that are representative of time that you want to convert to milliseconds.    Do you see what I mean? The two problems, in a nutshell, are that a) Seconds() called off a non-time value makes no sense and b) calling Seconds() off something to pass to something that does not take milliseconds will be off by a factor of 1000 or worse.   Thus, in my mind, you should only ever have an extension method that applies to the whole domain of that type.   For example, this is one of my personal favorites:       public static bool IsBetween<T>(this T value, T low, T high)         where T : IComparable<T>     {         return value.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && value.CompareTo(high) <= 0;     }   This allows you to check if any IComparable<T> is within an upper and lower bound. Think of how many times you type something like:       if (response.Employee.Address.YearsAt >= 2         && response.Employee.Address.YearsAt <= 10)     {     ...     }     Now, you can instead type:       if(response.Employee.Address.YearsAt.IsBetween(2, 10))     {     ...     }     Note that this applies to all IComparable<T> -- that's ints, chars, strings, DateTime, etc -- and does not depend on any logical domain. In addition, it satisfies the second point and actually makes the code more readable and maintainable.   Let's look at the third point. In it we said that an extension method should fit the most specific interface or type possible. Now, I'm not saying if you have something that applies to enumerables, you create an extension for List, Array, Dictionary, etc (though you may have reasons for doing so), but that you should beware of making things TOO general.   For example, let's say we had an extension method like this:       public static T ConvertTo<T>(this object value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This lets you do more fluent conversions like:       double d = "5.0".ConvertTo<double>();     However, if you dig into Reflector (LOVE that tool) you will see that if the type you are calling on does not implement IConvertible, what you convert to MUST be the exact type or it will throw an InvalidCastException. Now this may or may not be what you want in this situation, and I leave that up to you. Things like this would fail:       object value = new Employee();     ...     // class cast exception because typeof(IEmployee) != typeof(Employee)     IEmployee emp = value.ConvertTo<IEmployee>();       Yes, that's a downfall of working with Convertible in general, but if you wanted your fluent interface to be more type-safe so that ConvertTo were only callable on IConvertibles (and let casting be a manual task), you could easily make it:         public static T ConvertTo<T>(this IConvertible value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This is what I mean by choosing the best type to extend. Consider that if we used the previous (object) version, every time we typed a dot ('.') on an instance we'd pull up ConvertTo() whether it was applicable or not. By filtering our extension method down to only valid types (those that implement IConvertible) we greatly reduce our IntelliSense pollution and apply a good level of compile-time correctness.   Now my fourth rule is just my general rule-of-thumb. Obviously, you can make extension methods as in-your-face as you want. I included all mine in my work libraries in its own sub-namespace, something akin to:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { ... }     This is in a library called Shared.Core, so just referencing the Core library doesn't pollute your IntelliSense, you have to actually do a using on Shared.Core.Extensions to bring the methods in. This is very similar to the way Microsoft puts its extension methods in System.Linq. This way, if you want 'em, you use the appropriate namespace. If you don't want 'em, they won't pollute your namespace.   To really make this work, however, that namespace should only include extension methods and subordinate types those extensions themselves may use. If you plant other useful classes in those namespaces, once a user includes it, they get all the extensions too.   Also, just as a personal preference, extension methods that aren't simply syntactical shortcuts, I like to put in a static utility class and then have extension methods for syntactical candy. For instance, I think it imaginable that any object could be converted to XML:       namespace Shared.Core     {         // A collection of XML Utility classes         public static class XmlUtility         {             ...             // Serialize an object into an xml string             public static string ToXml(object input)             {                 var xs = new XmlSerializer(input.GetType());                   // use new UTF8Encoding here, not Encoding.UTF8. The later includes                 // the BOM which screws up subsequent reads, the former does not.                 using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())                 using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, new UTF8Encoding()))                 {                     xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, input);                     return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());                 }             }             ...         }     }   I also wanted to be able to call this from an object like:       value.ToXml();     But here's the problem, if i made this an extension method from the start with that one little keyword "this", it would pop into IntelliSense for all objects which could be very polluting. Instead, I put the logic into a utility class so that users have the choice of whether or not they want to use it as just a class and not pollute IntelliSense, then in my extensions namespace, I add the syntactical candy:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions     {         public static class XmlExtensions         {             public static string ToXml(this object value)             {                 return XmlUtility.ToXml(value);             }         }     }   So now it's the best of both worlds. On one hand, they can use the utility class if they don't want to pollute IntelliSense, and on the other hand they can include the Extensions namespace and use as an extension if they want. The neat thing is it also adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle. The XmlUtility is responsible for converting objects to XML, and the XmlExtensions is responsible for extending object's interface for ToXml().

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  • VSDB to SSDT part 3 : command-line deployment with SqlPackage.exe, replacement for Vsdbcmd.exe

    - by Etienne Giust
    For our continuous integration needs, we use a powershell script to handle deployment. A simpler approach would be to have a deployment task embedded within the build process. See the solution provided here by Jakob Ehn (a most interesting read which also dives into the '”deploying from Visual Studio” specifics) : http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2012/04/25/deploying-ssdt-projects-with-tfs-build.aspx   For our needs, though, clearly separating our build phase from our deployment phase is important. It allows us to instantly deploy old versions. Also it is more convenient for continuous integration. So we stick with the powershell script approach. With VSDB projects, that script used to call the following command (the vsdbcmd executable was locally available, along with needed libraries): vsdbcmd.exe /a:Deploy /dd /cs:<CONNECTIONSTRING TO TARGET DB> /dsp:SQL /manifest:< PATH TO .deploymanifest FILE>   To be able to do the approximately same thing with a SSDT produced file (dacpac), you would call this command on a machine which has VS2012 installed (or the SSDT installed, see here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh500335%28v=vs.103%29):   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\SqlPackage.exe /Action:Publish /SourceFile:<PATH TO Database.dacpac FILE> /Profile:<PATH TO .publish.xml FILE>   And from within a powershell script :   & "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\DAC\bin\SqlPackage.exe" /Action:Publish /SourceFile:<PATH TO Database.dacpac FILE> /Profile:<PATH TO .publish.xml FILE>   The command will consume a publish.xml file where the connection string and the deployment options are specified. You must be familiar with it if you have done some deployments from visual studio. If not, please refer to the above mentioned article by Jakob Ehn.   It is also possible to pass those parameters in the command line. The complete SqlPackage.exe syntax is detailed here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh550080%28v=vs.103%29.aspx

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  • Great Silverlight User Group meeting last night - Thanks Joel!

    - by Dave Campbell
    Last night's Silverlight User Group meeting in Phoenix went really well. We had about 15 in attendance, and everyone seemed engaged with Joel Neubeck's great Windows Phone 7 presentation. When it was over, we gave away a couple copies of Windows 7 Ultimate, one copy of the Expression Suite, an Arc Mouse, a web cam, a bunch of books, other assorted software and some TShirts.  All-in-all I think it was a good time had by all. Thanks to Joel Neubeck for the time and presentation and to Joe's mom for the babysitting! See you all next month.

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  • GWB | Administrator Blog Is Back To Life

    - by Jeff Julian
    We are bringing back the administrator’s blog for Geekswithblogs.net as a place to get information for what is going on with GWB. Couple reasons we are doing this. One, I post a lot of information on my blog that is not Geekswithblogs.net related. Most the time it isn’t even developer related and I know I need to work on that too, but in an effort to keep the signal much higher than the noise, we are moving the information over there. The blog URL is http://geekswithblogs.net/administrator. The other reason we are doing it is I am not the only member of the GWB staff. So please subscribe to that blog and let us know what you think about Geekswithblogs.net and how we can make the site better.http://geekswithblogs.net/administrator

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  • Dealing With Table Borders In OOXML

    - by Tim Murphy
    Note: Cross posted from Coding The Document. Permalink Formatting tables in a document programmatically can be a very complex task.  This is the major reason which we start our document generation projects with templates instead of building components in a document by hand. Borders are on aspect of a table that you may want to fomat.  Borders are used to make certain content in a table stand out.  If you need to conditionally set and remove borders there is something that you need to be aware of.  Even in OOXML you have the concepts of styles, inheriting styles and overriding styles. When Word defines a table it will reference a global style such as “TableGrid”.  This style will include the borders for the table.  Specifically the InsideHorizontalBorder and InsideVerticalBorder define the borders for the cells.  These can be overridden by the TableCellBorders collection of a particular cell.  Adding a double right border on a cell is as easy as the couple of lines of code below. wordprocessing.TableCellBorders borders = new wordprocessing.TableCellBorders(); borders.RightBorder = new RightBorder(){Val = BorderValues.Double, Color = "000000", ThemeColor = ThemeColorValues.Text1, Size = (UInt32Value)4U, Space = (UInt32Value)0U }; cell.TableCellProperties.Append(borders); If I want to revert back to the table’s style for cell borders I simply need to remove all children from the TableCellBorders collection.  It is like removing a class identifier from a TD tag in HTML.  The style in the parent object takes back over. With the knowledge of how the borders work you can take the concept and apply it to other effects of styles. del.icio.us Tags: OOXML,Office Open XML,Microsoft Office 2007,Microsoft Word 2007,table,style,border

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  • Prologue…

    - by Chris Stewart
    Hi all,                 This is the beginning of my blog. I have been a software developer for going on 11 years using the Microsoft toolset (primarily VB 5, VB 6, VB.net and SQL Server 6, 7, 2000, 2005, 2008). My coding interests are C#, ASP.net, SQL and XNA. Here I will post my musings, things of interest, techie babble and sometimes random gibberish. My hope for this blog is to document my learning experiences with C#, help, encourage and in some way be useful to those who come after me. Thanks for reading!

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  • Performing a clean database creation using msbuild

    - by Robert May
    So I’m taking a break from writing about other Agile stuff for a post. :)  I’m still going to get back to the other subjects, but this is fun too. Something I’ve done quite a bit of is MSBuild and CI work.  I’m experimenting with ways to improve what I’ve done in the past, particularly around database CI. Today, I developed a mechanism for starting from scratch with your database.  By scratch, I mean blowing away the existing database and creating it again from a single command line call.  I’m a firm believer that developers should be able to get to a known clean state at the database level with a single command and that they should be operating off of their own isolated database to improve productivity.  These scripts will help that. Here’s how I did it.  First, we have to disconnect users.  I did so using the help of a script from sql server central.  Note that I’m using sqlcmd variable replacement. -- kills all the users in a particular database -- dlhatheway/3M, 11-Jun-2000 declare @arg_dbname sysname declare @a_spid smallint declare @msg varchar(255) declare @a_dbid int set @arg_dbname = '$(DatabaseName)' select @a_dbid = sdb.dbid from master..sysdatabases sdb where sdb.name = @arg_dbname declare db_users insensitive cursor for select sp.spid from master..sysprocesses sp where sp.dbid = @a_dbid open db_users fetch next from db_users into @a_spid while @@fetch_status = 0 begin select @msg = 'kill '+convert(char(5),@a_spid) print @msg execute (@msg) fetch next from db_users into @a_spid end close db_users deallocate db_users GO Once all users are booted from the database, we can commence with recreating the database.  I generated the script that is used to create a database from SQL Server management studio, so I’m only going to show the bits that weren’t generated that are important.  There are a bunch of Alter Database statements that aren’t shown. First, I had to find the default location of the database files in the install, since they can be in many different locations.  I used Method 1 from a technet blog and then modified it a bit to do what I needed to do.  I ended up using dynamic SQL because for the life of me, I couldn’t get the “Filename” property to not return an error when I used anything besides a string.  I’m dropping the database first, if it exists.  Here’s the code:   IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = N'$(DatabaseName)') BEGIN drop database $(DatabaseName) END; go IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath') BEGIN DROP DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath END; -- Create temp database. Because no options are given, the default data and --- log path locations are used CREATE DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath; DECLARE @Default_Data_Path VARCHAR(512), @Default_Log_Path VARCHAR(512); --Get the default data path SELECT @Default_Data_Path = ( SELECT LEFT(physical_name,LEN(physical_name)-CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(physical_name))+1) FROM sys.master_files mf INNER JOIN sys.[databases] d ON mf.[database_id] = d.[database_id] WHERE d.[name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath' AND type = 0); --Get the default Log path SELECT @Default_Log_Path = ( SELECT LEFT(physical_name,LEN(physical_name)-CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(physical_name))+1) FROM sys.master_files mf INNER JOIN sys.[databases] d ON mf.[database_id] = d.[database_id] WHERE d.[name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath' AND type = 1); --Clean up. IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath') BEGIN DROP DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath END; DECLARE @SQL nvarchar(max) SET @SQL= 'CREATE DATABASE $(DatabaseName) ON PRIMARY ( NAME = N''$(DatabaseName)'', FILENAME = N''' + @Default_Data_Path + N'$(DatabaseName)' + '.mdf' + ''', SIZE = 2048KB , FILEGROWTH = 1024KB ) LOG ON ( NAME = N''$(DatabaseName)Log'', FILENAME = N''' + @Default_Log_Path + N'$(DatabaseName)' + '.ldf' + ''', SIZE = 1024KB , FILEGROWTH = 10%) ' exec (@SQL) GO And with that, your database is created.  You can run these scripts on any server and on any database name.  To do that, I created an MSBuild script that looks like this: <Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="4.0"> <PropertyGroup> <DatabaseName>MyDatabase</DatabaseName> <Server>localhost</Server> <SqlCmd>sqlcmd -v DatabaseName=$(DatabaseName) -S $(Server) -i </SqlCmd> <ScriptDirectory>.\Scripts</ScriptDirectory> </PropertyGroup> <Target Name ="Rebuild"> <ItemGroup> <ScriptFiles Include="$(ScriptDirectory)\*.sql"/> </ItemGroup> <Exec Command="$(SqlCmd) &quot;%(ScriptFiles.Identity)&quot;" ContinueOnError="false"/> </Target> </Project> Note that the Scripts directory is underneath the directory where I’m running the msbuild command and is relative to that directory.  Note also that the target is using batching to run each script in the scripts subdirectory, one after the other.  Each script is passed to the sqlcmd command line execution using the .Identity property on the itemgroup that is created.  This target file is saved in the file “Database.target”. To make this work, you’ll need msbuild in your path, and then run the following command: msbuild database.target /target:Rebuild Once you’ve got your virgin database setup, you’d then need to use a tool like dbdeploy.net to determine that it was a virgin database, build a change script based on the change scripts, and then you’d want another sqlcmd call to update the database with the appropriate scripts.  I’m doing that next, so I’ll post a blog update when I’ve got it working. Technorati Tags: MSBuild,Agile,CI,Database

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  • SOLID Thoughts

    - by GeekAgilistMercenary
    SOLID came up again in discussion.  What is SOLID?  Well, glad you asked, because I am going to elaborate on the SOLID Principles a bit. Initial Concept S Single Responsibility Principle O Open/Closed Principle L Liskov Substitution Principle I Interface Segregation Principle D Dependency Inversion/Injection Principle The Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) is stated that every object should have a single responsibility and should be entirely encapsulated by the class.  This helps keep cohesion.  Here is a short example, starting with a basic class. public class Car { decimal Gas; int Doors; int Speed; decimal RampJumpSpeed; } Now I will refactor a little bit to make it a bit more SRP friendly. public class Car { decimal Gas; int Speed; }   public class DuneBuggy : Car { decimal RampJumpSpeed; }   public class EconomyCar : Car { int Doors; } What we end up with, instead of one class, is an abstract class and two classes that have their respective methods or properties to keep the responsibilities were they need to be. The Open Closed Principle (OCP) is one of my favorites, which states simply, that you should be able to extend a classes behavior without modifying it.  There are a couple of ways one can extend a class, by inheritance, composition, or by proxy implementation.  The Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) states that a derived class must be substitutable for their base classes. The Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) states that one should depend on abstractions and not on concrete implementations. Finally, the Interface Segregation Principle (ISP) states that fine grain interfaces should be client specific. So hope that helps with kicking off a basic understanding of SOLID Principles.  I will be following this entry up with some new bits in the near future related to good software design and practice. Original post.

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  • Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

    - by David V. Corbin
    Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points)         int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; }   Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!)  Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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  • Hyper-V for Developers - presentation from London .NET Users and VBUG Bracknell

    - by Liam Westley
    Thanks to both London .NET User group and VBUG Bracknell for allowing me to present my Hyper-V for Developers talk last week.  A weekend at DDD Scotland followed by two user group presentations means I'm a bit late getting the presentations uploaded to the blog, so many apologies if you've been waiting.   LDNUG - www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/LDNUG-HyperV4Devs.zip   VBUG - www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/VBUG-HyperV4Devs.zip Also, at VBUG Bracknell I was asked if you could configure a Hyper-V server to user wireless networking (which might be useful if you have a laptop for demonstrations).  Well here's the post from Ben Armstrong (Virtual PC Guy) which details how that can be configured,   http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/09/using-hyper-v-with-a-wireless-network-adapter.aspx ... and it's also detailed on the TechNet wiki as part of running Hyper-V on a laptop,   social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/hyper-v-how-to-run-hyper-v-on-a-laptop.aspx

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  • Creating a new project for Team Foundation Server Basic.

    - by Enrique Lima
    We have installed and configured TFS, we have connected to it using Visual Studio.  Now it is time to get a project created. From Team Explorer, we will right click on the servername\Collection item in the tree to select New Team Project. Once selected, this will open the New Team Project dialog.  Provide a name, then click Next.   The next step is to select a Project Template.  By default you will have 2 available (but there are many downloadable options).  It is important to understand what the templates bring and what options we will live with in the Lifecycle Management option we select. Once selected, click Next. Now we are at the point to specify where our code will be collected, Source Code settings part of the wizard.  Since we are starting new, we will select an empty folder. Click Next. Next we get a Summary view of the options selected. Click Finish. Once the template is downloaded, applied and our choices processed, we have completed the project creation.   This should be our final product …

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  • Who Makes a Good Product Owner

    - by Robert May
    In general, the best product owners are those that care passionately about the customer of the product.  Note that I didn’t say about the product itself.  Actually, people that only care about the product, generally do not make good product owners.  Products only matter in relationship to their customers.  If a product doesn’t provide value to the customer, then the product has no value, no matter what a person might think of the product, and no matter what cool technologies exist inside of the product. A good product owner is also a good negotiator.  They recognize that many different priorities exist inside of a corporation, but that there can be only one list that developers work from.  A good product owner recognizes that its their job to help others around them prioritize (perhaps with a Product Council), but also understand that they alone have the final say about priorities and are willing to make the tough decisions required.  Deciding the priority between two perfectly valid stories is very difficult, especially when the stories are from two different departments! A good product owner is deeply interested in helping the team be successful.  They don’t seek to control the team, but instead seek to understand what the team can do and then work with the team to get the best product possible for the Customer.  A good product owner is never denigrating to team members, ever.  They recognize that such behavior would damage the trust that needs to be present between team members and product owners and will avoid it at all costs. In general, technical people (i.e. former or current developers) make poor product owners.  In their minds, they can’t separate implementation details from user functionality, so their stories end up sounding like implementation details.  For example, “The user enters their username on the password screen” is something that a technical product owner would write.  The proper wording for that story is “A user supplies the system with their credentials.”  Because technical people think different from the rest of the population, they are generally not a good fit. A good product owner is also a good writer.  Writing good stories demands good writing.  The art of persuasion, descriptiveness and just general good grammar are all required.  A good Product Owner must also be well spoken, since most of what will be conveyed will be conveyed with the spoken word, not just written word. A good product owner is a “People Person.”  They like talking to people and are very patient.  They don’t mind having questions repeated or fielding many questions, because they want to make sure that the ideas they’re conveying are properly understood so the customer gets the best product possible.  They are happy to answer any questions a team member may have and invite feedback and criticism of designs and stories, since they want a good product.  They really have little ego that gets in the way of building a great product. All of these qualities can be hard to find, but if you look close enough, you’ll find the right person in your organization.  Product owners can be found anywhere, not just in upper management.  Some of the best product owners are those that are very close to the customer.  In fact, check your customer support staff.  I’d bet that several great product owners are lurking there. Final note about what makes a good product owner.  You’re probably NOT going to find a good product owner in a manager, especially if they consider themselves a “Manager.”  Product owners don’t manage anything but the backlog, so be especially careful if the person you’re selecting for Product Owner is a manager. Up Next, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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  • First Post

    - by Allan Ritchie
    It has been a while since I've had a blog, but I'm back into the open source dev and decided to get back into things.  I had a blog a few years back when NHibernate was infant (0.8 or something) and I was working with the Wilson ORMapper (www.ormapper.net) at the time.  Anyhow, I'm still working with NHibernate (particularily the exciting v3 alpha 1) and Castle framework. I've also written a .NET ExtDirect stack for which I'll be writing a few articles around due to its flexibility.  I decided to write yet another communication stack because all the implementations I found on the Ext forums were lacking any sort of flexibility.  So stay tuned... I'll be presenting a bunch of the extension points.

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  • Chicago Code Camp Recap

    - by Tim Murphy
    My presentation on leveraging Open XML was a great experience and the attendees were very gracious.  I was pleasantly surprised to have a full room.  There was even one person sitting on the floor.  You can check out some pictures here.  I have posted my slides and code.  If anyone has any feedback or questions feel free to contact me. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Code Camp,OOXML SDK 2.0,Office Open XML,slides,code

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  • Free E-Book - TypeScript Succinctly

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/22/free-e-book---typescript-succinctly.aspxAt http://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks/typescript, Syncfusion are a free E-book "TypeScript Succinctly""The extensive adoption of JavaScript for application development, and the ability to use HTML and JavaScript to create Windows Store apps, led Microsoft to develop TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript. Though the messiness of JavaScript causes many .NET developers to avoid the language, Microsoft's additions extend many familiar features of .NET programming to JavaScript. With TypeScript Succinctly by Steve Fenton, you will learn how TypeScript provides optional static typing and classes to JavaScript development, how to create and load modules, and how to work with existing JavaScript libraries through ambient declarations. TypeScript is even significantly integrated with Visual Studio to provide the autocompletion and type checking you are most comfortable with."

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  • Did you forget me?

    - by Ratman21
    I know it has been a long time since I last blogged. Still at it, looking for work in the “IT” field. Had another phone interview (only found out during the interview that it was for one year contract job, but I still would take it) for a Help Desk job. Didn’t get it, they thought I was not a application support person and more of a hardware support. Gee..I started out in “IT” as a programmer. Then a programmer/computer operator, then a Tandem/Lan operator and finally a Network operator. I had to deal with so many different operating systems, software and applications.   And they thought I was too hardware. Well I am working a temp day job with the U.S. Census. It gets me out of the house and out in the country. If find getting paid to check for living quarters not bad job, except for the many houses I find that are up for sale and looks like it was not the owners (former owners it seems) idea, with the kids toys still in the yards. Not good for some one with a over active imagine or for my truck. So far I have backed in to ditch (and had to be pulled out), in to power pole (no damage to pole and very little to truck) and a mail box (no damage to truck but mail box was leaning a little) in the last two weeks.   Oh an I have started reading/using “The Love Dare” book from the movie “Fireproof”. I restarted (yes I have had to go back to day one from day five) the dare this Sunday. Dare one dare/day one “Love Is Patient” and the first dare is (reading from the book is): “The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although Love is communicated in a number of ways. Our words often reflect the condition of our heart. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to sys nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It’s better to hold your tongue that to say something you’ll regret. “. This was almost too easy as I can hold back from saying anything bad to any one but, this can also be a problem in life (you hold back for so long and!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boom). Check back for dare/day two “Love Is Kind”.

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  • Cooking with Wessty: HTML 5 and Visual Studio

    - by David Wesst
    The hardest part about using a new technology, such as HTML 5, is getting to what features are available and the syntax. One way to learn how to use new technologies is to adapt your current development to help you use the technology in comfort of your own development environment. For .NET Web Developers, that environment is usually Visual Studio 2010. This technique intends on showing you how to get HTML 5 Intellisense working in your current version of Visual Studio 2008 or 2010, making it easier for you to start using HTML 5 features in your current .NET web development projects. Quick Note According to the Visual Web Developer team at Microsoft, the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 beta has support for both HTML 5 and CSS 3. If you are willing to try out the bleeding edge update from Microsoft, then you won’t need this technique. --- Ingredients Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 Your favourite HTML 5 compliant browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 9) Administrator privileges, or the ability to install Visual Studio Extensions in your development environment. Directions Download the HTML 5 Intellisense for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 extension from the Visual Studio Extension Gallery. Install it. Open Visual Studio. Open up a web file, such as an HTML or ASPX file. he HTML Source Editing toolbar should have appeared. (Optional) If it did not appear, you can activate it through the main menu by selecting View, then Toolbars, and then select HTML Source Editing if it does not have a checkbox beside it. (NOTE: If there is a checkbox, then the toolbar is enabled) In the HTML Source Editing toolbar, open up the validation schema drop box, and select HTML 5. Et voila! You now have HTML 5 intellisense enabled to help you get started in adding HTML 5 awesomeness to your web sites and web applications. Optional – Setting HTML 5 Validation Options At this point, you may want to select how Visual Studio shows validation errors. You can do that in the Options Menu. To get to the Options Menu… In the main menu select Tools, then Options. In the Options window, select and expand Text Editor, then HTML, followed by selecting Validation. Resources HTML 5 Intellisense for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 extenstion Visual Studio Extension Gallery Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 13, 2011 -- #1059

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: András Velvárt, WIndowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Victor Gaudioso, Kunal Chowdhury, Jeremy Likness, Michael Crump, and Dhananjay Kumar. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Application Library Caching in Silverlight 4" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "Handling WP7 orientation changes via Visual States" András Velvárt Shoutouts: Joe McBride gave a MEF Head User Group presentation and has posted How to Become a MEF Head – Slides & Code From SilverlightCream.com: Handling WP7 orientation changes via Visual States András Velvárt has an Expression Blend/WP7 post up discussing WP7 orientation changes and handling them via Visual States ... see an example from his SurfCube app, and a behavior to handle the control... with source. WP7 PerformanceProgressBar in depth WIndowsPhoneGeek has a post up discussing the WP7 Performance bar from the Windows Phone Toolkit. This is an update on the Toolkit based on the Feb 2011 release. Great explanation of the PerformanceProgressBar, external links, and sample code. Getting data out of WP7 WMAppManifest is easy with Coding4Fun PhoneHelper Next WindowsPhoneGeek has a post up about the PhoneHelper in the Coding4Fun TOolkit, and using it to get data out of the WMAppManifest easily. Good discussion, Links, and code as always Silverlight Unit Test For Phone In Jesse Liberty's "Windows Phone From Scratch" number 41, he's discussing Unit Testing for WP7... he gives some good external links and some good examples. Yet Another Podcast #27–Paul Betts Jesse Liberty's next post is his "Yet Another Podcast" number 27, and an interview with Paul Betts, the creator of Reactive UI... check out the podcast and also the good links listed. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to use the Fluid Move Behavior Victor Gaudioso has a new video tutorial up on using the Fluid Move Behavior... making a selected item animate from a ListBox to a Master Details Grid. Application Library Caching in Silverlight 4 Kunal Chowdhury takes a break from SilverlightZone long enough to write a post about Application Library Caching... for example on-demand loading of a 3rd-party XAP. Jounce Part 13: Navigation Parameters Jeremy Likness has his 13th post of a series in understanding his Jounce MVVM framework up. This episode surrounds a new release and what it contains, the primary focus being navigation parameters... that is you can raise a navigation event with a payload. Profiling Silverlight Applications after installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Michael Crump digs into the performance wizard for Silverlight that we get with VS2010 SP1. He shows how to get and read a profile... great intro to a new tool. Binding XML File to Data Grid in Silverlight Dhananjay Kumar demonstrates reading an XML file using LINQ to XML and binding the result to a Silverlight DataGrid Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Autoscaling in a modern world&hellip;. Part 2

    - by Steve Loethen
    When we last left off, we had a web application spinning away in the cloud, and a local console application watching it and reacting to changes in demand.  Reactions that were specified by a set of rules.  Let’s talk about those rules. Constraints.  The first set of rules this application answered to were the constraints. Here is what they looked like: <constraintRules> <rule name="default" enabled="true" rank="1" description="The default constraint rule"> <actions> <range min="1" max="4" target="AutoscalingApplicationRole"/> </actions> </rule> </constraintRules> Pretty basic.  We have one role, the “AutoscalingApplicationRole”, and we have decided to have it live within a range of 1 to 4.  This rule does not adjust, but instead, set’s limits on what other rules can do.  It has a rank, so you can have you can specify other sets of constraints, perhaps based on time or date, to allow for deviations from this set.  But for now, let’s keep it simple.  In the real world, you would probably use the minimum to set a lower end SLA.  A common value might be a 2, to prevent the reactive rules from ever taking you down to 1 role.  The maximum is often used to keep a rule from driving the cost up, setting an upper limit to prevent you waking up one morning and find a bill for hundreds of instances you didn’t expect.  So, here we have the range we want our application to live inside.  This is good for our investigation and testing.  Next, let’s take a look at the reactive rules.  These rules are what you use to react (hence reactive rules) to changing demands on your application.  The HOL has two simple rules.  One that looks at a queue depth, and one that looks at a performance counter that reports cpu utilization.  the XML in the rules file looks like this: <reactiveRules> <rule name="ScaleUp" rank="10" description="Scale Up the web role" enabled="true"> <when> <any> <greaterOrEqual operand="Length_05_holqueue" than="10"/> <greaterOrEqual operand="CPU_05_holwebrole" than="65"/> </any> </when> <actions> <scale target="AutoscalingApplicationRole" by="1"/> </actions> </rule> <rule name="ScaleDown" rank="10" description="Scale down the web role" enabled="true"> <when> <all> <less operand="Length_05_holqueue" than="5"/> <less operand="CPU_05_holwebrole" than="40"/> </all> </when> <actions> <scale target="AutoscalingApplicationRole" by="-1"/> </actions> </rule> </reactiveRules> <operands> <performanceCounter alias="CPU_05_holwebrole" performanceCounterName="\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time" source="AutoscalingApplicationRole" timespan="00:05:00" aggregate="Average" /> <queueLength alias="Length_05_holqueue" queue="hol-queue" timespan="00:05:00" aggregate="Average"/> </operands> These rules are currently contained in a file called rules.xml, that is in the root of the console application.  The console app, starts up, grabs the rules and starts watching the 2 operands.  When it detects a rule has been satisfied, it performs the desired action.  (here, scale up or down my 1). But I want to host the autoscaler  in the cloud.  For my first trick, I will move the rules (and another file called services.xml) to azure blob storage.  Look for part 3.

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