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• Visual Studio Load Testing using Windows Azure

  - by Tarun Arora

  In my opinion the biggest adoption barrier in performance testing on smaller projects is not the tooling but the high infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing. Only if a reusable solution was possible and infrastructure management wasn’t as expensive, adoption would certainly spike. It certainly is possible if you bring Visual Studio and Windows Azure into the equation. It is possible to run your test rig in the cloud without getting tangled in SCVMM or Lab Management. All you need is an active Azure subscription, Windows Azure endpoint enabled developer workstation running visual studio ultimate on premise, windows azure endpoint enabled worker roles on azure compute instances set up to run as test controllers and test agents. My test rig is running SQL server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 RC agents. The beauty is that the solution is reusable, you can open the azure project, change the subscription and certificate, click publish and *BOOM* in less than 15 minutes you could have your own test rig running in the cloud. In this blog post I intend to show you how you can use the power of Windows Azure to effectively abstract the administration cost of infrastructure management and lower the total cost of Load & Performance Testing. As a bonus, I will share a reusable solution that you can use to automate test rig creation for both VS 2010 agents as well as VS 2012 agents. Introduction The slide show below should help you under the high level details of what we are trying to achive... Leveraging Azure for Performance Testing View more PowerPoint from Avanade Scenario 1 – Running a Test Rig in Windows Azure To start off with the basics, in the first scenario I plan to discuss how to, - Automate deployment & configuration of Windows Azure Worker Roles for Test Controller and Test Agent - Automate deployment & configuration of SQL database on Test Controller on the Test Controller Worker Role - Scaling Test Agents on demand - Creating a Web Performance Test and a simple Load Test - Managing Test Controllers right from Visual Studio on Premise Developer Workstation - Viewing results of the Load Test - Cleaning up - Have the above work in the shape of a reusable solution for both VS2010 and VS2012 Test Rig Scenario 2 – The scaled out Test Rig and sharing data using SQL Azure A scaled out version of this implementation would involve running multiple test rigs running in the cloud, in this scenario I will show you how to sync the load test database from these distributed test rigs into one SQL Azure database using Azure sync. The selling point for this scenario is being able to collate the load test efforts from across the organization into one data store. - Deploy multiple test rigs using the reusable solution from scenario 1 - Set up and configure Windows Azure Sync - Test SQL Azure Load Test result database created as a result of Windows Azure Sync - Cleaning up - Have the above work in the shape of a reusable solution for both VS2010 and VS2012 Test Rig The Ingredients Though with an active MSDN ultimate subscription you would already have access to everything and more, you will essentially need the below to try out the scenarios, 1. Windows Azure Subscription 2. Windows Azure Storage – Blob Storage 3. Windows Azure Compute – Worker Role 4. SQL Azure Database 5. SQL Data Sync 6. Windows Azure Connect – End points 7. SQL 2012 Express or SQL 2008 R2 Express 8. Visual Studio All Agents 2012 or Visual Studio All Agents 2010 9. A developer workstation set up with Visual Studio 2012 – Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 – Ultimate 10. Visual Studio Load Test Unlimited Virtual User Pack. Walkthrough To set up the test rig in the cloud, the test controller, test agent and SQL express installers need to be available when the worker role set up starts, the easiest and most efficient way is to pre upload the required software into Windows Azure Blob storage. SQL express, test controller and test agent expose various switches which we can take advantage of including the quiet install switch. Once all the 3 have been installed the test controller needs to be registered with the test agents and the SQL database needs to be associated to the test controller. By enabling Windows Azure connect on the machines in the cloud and the developer workstation on premise we successfully create a virtual network amongst the machines enabling 2 way communication. All of the above can be done programmatically, let’s see step by step how… Scenario 1 Video Walkthrough–Leveraging Windows Azure for performance Testing Scenario 2 Work in progress, watch this space for more… Solution If you are still reading and are interested in the solution, drop me an email with your windows live id. I’ll add you to my TFS preview project which has a re-usable solution for both VS 2010 and VS 2012 test rigs as well as guidance and demo performance tests.   Conclusion Other posts and resources available here. Possibilities…. Endless!

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• Say goodbye to System.Reflection.Emit (any dynamic proxy generation) in WinRT

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - Forget any form of dynamic code emitting in Metro-style. It's not going to happen.Over the past week or so I've been trying to get Moq (the popular open source TDD mocking framework) to work on WinRT. Irritatingly, the day before Release Preview was released it was actually working on Consumer Preview. However in Release Preview (RP) the System.Reflection.Emit namespace is gone. Forget any form of dynamic code generation and/or MSIL injection.This kills off any project based on the popular Castle Project Dynamic Proxy component, of which Moq is one example. You can at this point in time not perform any form of mocking using dynamic injection in your Metro-style unit testing endeavours.So let me take you through my journey on this, so that other's don't have to...The headline fact is that you cannot load any assembly that you create at runtime. WinRT supports one Assembly.Load method, and that takes the name of an assembly. That has to be placed within the deployment folder of your app. You cannot give it a filename, or stream. The methods are there, but private. Try to invoke them using Reflection and you'll be met with a caspol exception.You can, in theory, use Rotor to replace SRE. It's all there, but again, you can't load anything you create.You can't write to your deployment folder from within your Metro-style app. But, can you use another service on the machine to move a file that you create into the deployment folder and load it? Not really.The networking stack in Metro-style is intentionally "damaged" to prevent socket communication from Metro-style to any end-point on the local machine. (It just times out.) This militates against an approach where your Metro-style app can signal a properly installed service on the machine to create proxies on its behalf. If you wanted to do this, you'd have to route the calls through a C&C server somewhere. The reason why Microsoft has done this is obvious - taking out SRE know means they don't have to do it in an emergency later. The collateral damage in removing SRE is that you can't do mocking in test mode, but you also can't do any form of injection in production mode. There are plenty of reasons why enterprise apps might want to do this last point particularly. At CP, the assumption was that their inspection tools would prevent SRE being used as a malware vector - it now seems they are less confident about that. (For clarity, the risk here is in allowing a nefarious program to download instructions from a C&C server and make up executable code on the fly to run, getting around the marketplace restrictions.)So, two things:- System.Reflection.Emit is gone in Metro-style/WinRT. Get over it - dynamic, on-the-fly code generation is not going to to happen.- I've more or less got a version of Moq working in Metro-style. This is based on the idea of "baking" the dynamic proxies before you use them. You can find more information here: https://github.com/mbrit/moqrt

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• Yet another blog about IValueConverter

  - by codingbloke

  After my previous blog on a Generic Boolean Value Converter I thought I might as well blog up another IValueConverter implementation that I use. The Generic Boolean Value Converter effectively converters an input which only has two possible values to one of two corresponding objects.  The next logical step would be to create a similar converter that can take an input which has multiple (but finite and discrete) values to one of multiple corresponding objects.  To put it more simply a Generic Enum Value Converter. Now we already have a tool that can help us in this area, the ResourceDictionary.  A simple IValueConverter implementation around it would create a StringToObjectConverter like so:- StringToObjectConverter using System; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Linq; using System.Windows.Markup; namespace SilverlightApplication1 {     [ContentProperty("Items")]     public class StringToObjectConverter : IValueConverter     {         public ResourceDictionary Items { get; set; }         public string DefaultKey { get; set; }                  public StringToObjectConverter()         {             DefaultKey = "__default__";         }         public virtual object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             if (value != null && Items.Contains(value.ToString()))                 return Items[value.ToString()];             else                 return Items[DefaultKey];         }         public virtual object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             return Items.FirstOrDefault(kvp => value.Equals(kvp.Value)).Key;         }     } } There are some things to note here.  The bulk of managing the relationship between an object instance and the related string key is handled by the Items property being an ResourceDictionary.  Also there is a catch all “__default__” key value which allows for only a subset of the possible input values to mapped to an object with the rest falling through to the default. We can then set one of these up in Xaml:-             <local:StringToObjectConverter x:Key="StatusToBrush">                 <ResourceDictionary>                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Red" x:Key="Overdue" />                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Orange" x:Key="Urgent" />                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Silver" x:Key="__default__" />                 </ResourceDictionary>             </local:StringToObjectConverter> You could well imagine that in the model being bound these key names would actually be members of an enum.  This still works due to the use of ToString in the Convert method.  Hence the only requirement for the incoming object is that it has a ToString implementation which generates a sensible string instead of simply the type name. I can’t imagine right now a scenario where this converter would be used in a TwoWay binding but there is no reason why it can’t.  I prefer to avoid leaving the ConvertBack throwing an exception if that can be be avoided.  Hence it just enumerates the KeyValuePair entries to find a value that matches and returns the key its mapped to. Ah but now my sense of balance is assaulted again.  Whilst StringToObjectConverter is quite happy to accept an enum type via the Convert method it returns a string from the ConvertBack method not the original input enum type that arrived in the Convert.  Now I could address this by complicating the ConvertBack method and examining the targetType parameter etc.  However I prefer to a different approach, deriving a new EnumToObjectConverter class instead. EnumToObjectConverter using System; namespace SilverlightApplication1 {     public class EnumToObjectConverter : StringToObjectConverter     {         public override object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             string key = Enum.GetName(value.GetType(), value);             return base.Convert(key, targetType, parameter, culture);         }         public override object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             string key = (string)base.ConvertBack(value, typeof(String), parameter, culture);             return Enum.Parse(targetType, key, false);         }     } }   This is a more belts and braces solution with specific use of Enum.GetName and Enum.Parse.  Whilst its more explicit in that the a developer has to  choose to use it, it is only really necessary when using TwoWay binding, in OneWay binding the base StringToObjectConverter would serve just as well. The observant might note that there is actually no “Generic” aspect to this solution in the end.  The use of a ResourceDictionary eliminates the need for that.

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• IE9, HTML5 and truck load of other stuff happening around the web

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  First of all, I haven’t been updating this blog as regularly as it used to be.  Primarily, due to the fact was I was visiting a lot of cities talking about SharePoint, Web Matrix, IE9 and few other stuff.  IE9 is my new found love and I simply think we have done great work in improving the browser and browsing experiences for our users. This post would talk about IE, general things happening around the web and few misconceptions around IE (I had earlier written about IE8 and common myths When you think about the way web has transformed, its truly amazing.  Rewind back to late 90s and early 2000s, web was a luxury.  There were lot of desktop applications running around and web applications was starting to pick up.  Primarily reason was not a lot of folks were into web development and the areas of web were confined to HTML and JavaScript.  CSS was around here and there but no one took it so seriously.  XML, XSLT was fast picking up and contributed to decent web development techniques. So as a web developer all we had to worry about was, building good looking websites which worked well with IE6 and occasionally with Safari.  Firefox was  not even in the picture then and so was Chrome.  But with the various arms of W3C consortium and other bodies working actively on stuff like CSS, SVG and XHTML, few more areas came into picture when it comes to browsers supporting standards.  IE6 for sure wasn’t up to the speed and the main issue we were tackling then was privacy and piracy.  We did invest a lot of our efforts to curb piracy and one of the steps into it was that, IE7 the next version of IE would install only on genuine windows machines.  What this means, is that, people who were running pirated windows xp knowingly/unknowingly could not install IE7 and the limitations of IE6 really hurt them.  One more thing of importance is that, if you were running pirated windows, lots of chances that you didn’t get the security updates and thereby were vulnerable to run viruses/trojans on your system. Many of them actually block using IE in the first place and make it difficult to browse.  SP2 came as a big boon but again was there only for genuine windows machines. With Firefox coming as a free install and also heavily pushed by Google then, it was natural that people would try an alternative.  By then, we had started working on IE8 supporting the best standards (note HTML5, CSS 2.1 and other specs were then work in progress.  they are still) Later, Google in their infinite wisdom realized that with Firefox they were going nowhere and they released Chrome.  Now, they heavily push Chrome even for Firefox users, which is natural since its their browser. In the meanwhile, these browsers push their updates as mandatory and therefore have a very short lifecycle to add enhancements and support for stuff like CSS etc., Meanwhile, when IE8 came out, it really was the best standards supported browser and a lot of people saw our efforts in improving our browser. HTML5 is the buzz word in the industry and there is a lot of noise being made by many browsers claiming their support for it.  IE8 doesn’t have much support for HTML5.  But, with IE9 Beta, we have great support for many of HTML5 specifications.  Note that, HTML5 is still work under progress and one of the board of members working on the spec has mentioned that these specs might change and relying on them heavily is dangerous.  But, some of the advances such as video tag, etc., are indeed supported in IE9 Beta.  IE9 Beta also has full hardware acceleration support which other browsers don’t have. IE8 had advanced security features such as smartscreen filter, in-private browsing, anti-phishing and a lot of other stuff.  IE9 builds on top of these with the best in town security standards as well as support for HTML5, CSS3, Hardware acceleration, SVG and many other advancements in browser.  Read more at http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/highlights/html5  To summarize, IE9 Beta is really innovative and you should try it to believe what it provides.  You can visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/  to install as well as read more on this. Cheers !!!

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• APress Deal of the Day 23/May/2014 - Pro WPF 4.5 in C#

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/05/23/apress-deal-of-the-day-23may2014---pro-wpf-4.5.aspxToday’s $10 Deal of the Day from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430243656 is Pro WPF 4.5 in C#. “This book shows you how Windows Presentation Foundation really works. It provides you with the no-nonsense, practical advice that you need in order to build high-quality WPF applications quickly and easily. Pro WPF 4.5 in C# provides a thorough, authoritative guide to how WPF really works. Packed with no-nonsense examples and practical advice you'll learn everything you need to know in order to use WPF in a professional setting. The book begins by building a firm foundation of elementary concepts, using your existing C# skills as a frame of reference, before moving on to discuss advanced concepts and demonstrate them in a hands-on way that emphasizes the time and effort savings that can be gained.”

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• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-After

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-after.aspxIn this post I’m going to outline a few common methods that can be used to increase the coverage of of your test suite.  This won’t be yet another post on why you should be doing testing; there are plenty of those types of posts already out there.  Assuming you know you should be testing, then comes the problem of how do I actual fit that into my day job.  When the opportunity to automate testing comes do you take it, or do you even recognize it? There are a lot of ways (workflows) to go about creating automated tests, just like there are many workflows to writing a program.  When writing a program you can do it from a top-down approach where you write the main skeleton of the algorithm and call out to dummy stub functions, or a bottom-up approach where the low level functionality is fully implement before it is quickly wired together at the end.  Both approaches are perfectly valid under certain contexts. Each approach you are skilled at applying is another tool in your tool belt.  The more vectors of attack you have on a problem – the better.  So here is a short, incomplete list of some of the workflows that can be applied to increasing the amount of automation in your testing and level of quality in general.  Think of each workflow as an opportunity that is available for you to take. Test workflows basically fall into 2 categories:  test first or test after.  Test first is the best approach.  However, this post isn’t about the one and only best approach.  I want to focus more on the lesser known, less ideal approaches that still provide an opportunity for adding tests.  In this post I’ll enumerate some test-after workflows.  In my next post I’ll cover test-first. Bug Reporting When someone calls you up or forwards you a email with a vague description of a bug its usually standard procedure to create or verify a reproduction plan for the bug via manual testing and log that in a bug tracking system.  This can be problematic.  Often reproduction plans when written down might skip a step that seemed obvious to the tester at the time or they might be missing some crucial environment setting. Instead of data entry into a bug tracking system, try opening up the test project and adding a failing unit test to prove the bug.  The test project guarantees that all aspects of the environment are setup properly and no steps are missing.  The language in the test project is much more precise than the English that goes into a bug tracking system. This workflow can easily be extended for Enhancement Requests as well as Bug Reporting. Exploratory Testing Exploratory testing comes in when you aren’t sure how the system will behave in a new scenario.  The scenario wasn’t planned for in the initial system requirements and there isn’t an existing test for it.  By definition the system behaviour is “undefined”. So write a new unit test to define that behaviour.  Add assertions to the tests to confirm your assumptions.  The new test becomes part of the living system specification that is kept up to date with the test suite. Examples This workflow is especially good when developing APIs.  When you are finally done your production API then comes the job of writing documentation on how to consume the API.  Good documentation will also include code examples.  Don’t let these code examples merely exist in some accompanying manual; implement them in a test suite. Example tests and documentation do not have to be created after the production API is complete.  It is best to write the example code (tests) as you go just before the production code. Smoke Tests Every system has a typical use case.  This represents the basic, core functionality of the system.  If this fails after an upgrade the end users will be hosed and they will be scratching their heads as to how it could be possible that an update got released with this core functionality broken. The tests for this core functionality are referred to as “smoke tests”.  It is a good idea to have them automated and run with each build in order to avoid extreme embarrassment and angry customers. Coverage Analysis Code coverage analysis is a tool that reports how much of the production code base is exercised by the test suite.  In Visual Studio this can be found under the Test main menu item. The tool will report a total number for the code coverage, which can be anywhere between 0 and 100%.  Coverage Analysis shouldn’t be used strictly for numbers reporting.  Companies shouldn’t set minimum coverage targets that mandate that all projects must have at least 80% or 100% test coverage.  These arbitrary requirements just invite gaming of the coverage analysis, which makes the numbers useless. The analysis tool will break down the coverage by the various classes and methods in projects.  Instead of focusing on the total number, drill down into this view and see which classes have high or low coverage.  It you are surprised by a low number on a class this is an opportunity to add tests. When drilling through the classes there will be generally two types of reaction to a surprising low test coverage number.  The first reaction type is a recognition that there is low hanging fruit to be picked.  There may be some classes or methods that aren’t being tested, which could easy be.  The other reaction type is “OMG”.  This were you find a critical piece of code that isn’t under test.  In both cases, go and add the missing tests. Test Refactoring The general theme of this post up to this point has been how to add more and more tests to a test suite.  I’ll step back from that a bit and remind that every line of code is a liability.  Each line of code has to be read and maintained, which costs money.  This is true regardless whether the code is production code or test code. Remember that the primary goal of the test suite is that it be easy to read so that people can easily determine the specifications of the system.  Make sure that adding more and more tests doesn’t interfere with this primary goal. Perform code reviews on the test suite as often as on production code.  Hold the test code up to the same high readability standards as the production code.  If the tests are hard to read then change them.  Look to remove duplication.  Duplicate setup code between two or more test methods that can be moved to a shared function.  Entire test methods can be removed if it is found that the scenario it tests is covered by other tests.  Its OK to delete a test that isn’t pulling its own weight anymore. Remember to only start refactoring when all the test are green.  Don’t refactor the tests and the production code at the same time.  An automated test suite can be thought of as a double entry book keeping system.  The unchanging, passing production code serves as the tests for the test suite while refactoring the tests. As with all refactoring, it is best to fit this into your regular work rather than asking for time later to get it done.  Fit this into the standard red-green-refactor cycle.  The refactor step no only applies to production code but also the tests, but not at the same time.  Perhaps the cycle should be called red-green-refactor production-refactor tests (not quite as catchy).   That about covers most of the test-after workflows I can think of.  In my next post I’ll get into test-first workflows.

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• So you want a French Site?

  - by juanlarios

  I thought I would write a quick write up of how to create a french site in SharePoint 2007. I'm not talking about a Variation but just a plain French Site from the ground up. There were some gotchas that I felt were worth blogging about. First:  go to Microsoft Telnet Article and follow the install instructions. Make sure that when you get to the download page that you select "French" as part of the drop down and you download and install the right language pack. I noticed that if you did not click the "change" button enven though I selected the 'french' language pack, it reverted back to the english language pack.   Second: You will notice a couple of things. When you go to central admin you will see the following:    Now you can pick between french site or english. You will get this if you install other language packs and they will be listed in the drop down. You will notice that you now have french headings and frech listings of sites. You see "Publishing" as a heading because I have a custom site definition that I deployed as a french site. Third: As you start navigating around and trying to create document libraries or sites you will start getting errors. Errors like the following: "Cannot make a cache safe URL for "SelectorControls.js", file not found. Please verify that the file exists under the layouts directory. " Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services. Once you resolve the issue with this "js" file, you will find that there are other js files that are missing. The only problem is that if you are not fluent in French or the language you are trying to deploy, Well, you'll have a tough time understanding error messages as they will all be in the new language you are trying to deploy. So let's just talk about what happened when you installed the language pack. In the 12 Hive:  12/Template    you will now see a 1033 folder and a 1036 folder. The 1036 folder is the folder that was created and added as part of the language pack. What the above error is saying is that now that it's looking at the 1036 folder, well, it's missing some files. The nice thing is that these files are included in the 1033 folder (which is the English Language Pack). Simply copy and paste the controls from the one folder to the other. There will be more than one conflict so you will have to move serveral controls over. Can't remember how many but simply add them as error messages come up. I had to add some navigation controls and some content selectors.   Now that's all that you need to install the Frech Language pack anc reate site collections that are entirely in a another language. Do not mistake this with Variations, where you can have multiple language sites. For those of you doing a little bit extra with this, let me share what I was doing extra and what I needed to get it working for me. I had had a custom site definition which was obviously not showing up in my selection of french sites. I was under the impression that all sites in English would show up in french and that the sites were simply routed to a new Resource file for french content. And that is the case but there is a little extra that needs to be done if you have a custom site definition deployed:  First: Under hive 12/Template/1033/XML  there is a listing of site definition files that are deployed to the English side of things. If you navigate to 12/Template/1036/XML  and open one of the site definitions you will see that they are similar and reference the existing site definitions installed on the server, except that they have some french added to descriptions and names. Simply copy the xml file of your custom template to the 1036 folder to have it show up as a selection when you select French as the dropdown entry when create a site colleciton. You can go ahead and change the description and name to suit the language it's under.    Second: As part of my site definition, I packaed up several list templates, that were saved as STP files. When you navigate to the list template listing, well, the templates are for English sites, not French so I cannot create document libraries based on the template. What now? well here comes KWIzCom to the rescue! They seem to have put out a "STP language converter" where you can take a site template or list template and convert it to any target language you are after. It's a free download, Use it and you're good to go.  One thing I will mention is that when I convereted the English documents I whent ahead and converted them to French-Canadien. And it didn't work! so I finally figured out that the French Version it was expecting in the french site was "French-France". Don't know why that is, it's just what needs to be done to get that working. When I did that, I was able to use the List templates that I created in the English site for the French Site.   Hope it helps , good luck!

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• NHibernate Error - Expression argument must be of type ICollection

  - by Liam McLennan

  The above error occurred when I executed a linq query using the following expression: (s) => s.Book.Slug.Equals(bookslug) && ids.Contains(s.Id); ids in this case is of type IEnumerable<Guid>. As indicated by the error message the fix is to change ids to ICollection<Guid>, then the query executes successfully.

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• FIX: Visual Studio Post Build Event Returns &ndash;1 when it should not.

  - by ChrisD

  I had written a Console Application that I run as part of my post build for other projects..  The Console application logs a series of messages to the console as it executes.  I use the Environment.ExitCode value to specify an error or success condition.  When the application executes without issue, the ExitCode is 0, when there is a problem its –1. As part of my logging, I log the value of the exit code right before the application terminates.  When I run this executable from the command line, it behaves as it should; error scenarios return –1 and success scenarios return 0.   When I run the same command line as part of the post-build event, Visual Studio reports the exit code as –1, even when the application reports the exit code as 0.   A snippet of the build output follows: Verbose: Exiting with ExitCode=0 C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073: The command ""MGC.exe" "-TargetPath=C:\TFS\Solutions\Research\Source\Framework\Services\Identity\STS\_STSBuilder\bin\Debug\_STSBuilder.dll" C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073:  C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets(3397,13): error MSB3073: " exited with code -1. The Application returns a 0 exit code.  But visual studio is reporting an error.  Why? The answer is in the way I format my log messages.  Apparently Visual Studio watches the messages that get streamed to the the output console.  If those messages match a pattern used by visual studio to communicate errors, Visual Studio assumes an error has occurred in the executable and returns a –1.  This post details the formats used by Visual Studio to determine error conditions. In my case, the presence of the colon was tripping up Visual studio.  I Replaced all occurrences of colon with an equal sign and Visual Studio once again respected the exit code of the application. Verbose= Exiting with ExitCode=0 ========== Build: 3 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

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• Mathemagics - 3 consecutive number

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Three Consecutive numbers When I was young and handsome (OK, OK, just young), my father used to challenge us with riddles and tricks involving Logic, Math and general knowledge. Most of the time, at least after reaching the ripe age of 10, I would see thru his tricks in no time. This one is a bit more subtle. I had to think about it for close to an hour and then when I had the ‘AHA!’ effect, I could not understand why it had taken me so long. So here it is. You select a volunteer from the audience (or a shill, but that would be cheating!) and ask him to select three consecutive numbers, all of them 1 or 2 digits. So {1, 2, 3} would be good, albeit trivial set, as would {8, 9, 10} or {97, 98, 99} but not {99, 99, 100} (why?!). Now, using a calculator – and these days almost every phone has a built in calculator – he is to perform these steps: 1.      Select a single digit 2.      Multiply it by 3 and write it down 3.      Add the 3 consecutive numbers 4.      Add the number from step 2 5.      Multiply the sum by 67 6.      Now tell me the last 2 digits of the result and also the number you wrote down in step 2 I will tell you which numbers you selected. How do I do this? I’ll give you the mechanical answer, but because I like you to have the pleasure of an ‘AHA!’ effect, I will not really explain the ‘why’. So let’s you selected 30, 31, and 32 and also that your 3 multiple was 24, so here is what you get 30 + 31 + 32 = 93 93 + 24 = 117 117 x 67 = 7839, last 2 digits are 39, so you say “the last 2 digits are 39, and the other number is 24.” Now, I divide 24 by 3 getting 8. I subtract 8 from 39 and get 31. I then subtract 1 from this getting 30, and say: “You selected 30, 31, and 32.” This is the ‘how’. I leave the ‘why’ to you! That’s all folks! PS do you really want to know why? Post a feedback below. When 11 people or more will have asked for it, I’ll add a link to the full explanation.

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• Interop effects by resolving and instantiating types with ArcObjects

  - by Marko Apfel

  Problem this code does not work Type t = typeof(ESRI.ArcGIS.Framework.AppRefClass); System.Object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(t); but yet this code Type t = Type.GetTypeFromCLSID(typeof(ESRI.ArcGIS.Framework.AppRefClass).GUID); System.Object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(t); Reason In the first variant the runtime tries to cast to AppRefClass . This is not possible. And in the second one, the runtime does not knows anything about AppRefClass. So it leave it as IUnknown.   (originally communicated by my co-worker Ralf)

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• Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

  - by Herve Roggero

  What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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• Printing problem in Silverlight 4.0 RC - loading images in code behind

  - by Jacek Ciereszko

  Few days ago I faced a problem with printing in new Silverlight 4 RC. When you try to dynamically load image (in code behind) and print it, it doesn't work. Paper sheet is blank. Problem XAML file: <Image x:Name="image" Stretch="None" /> XAML.cs: image.Source = new BitmapImage(new Uri(imageUri, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute));  Print: var pd = new PrintDocument();   pd.PrintPage += (s, args) =>     {       args.PageVisual = image;     };   pd.Print(); Result: Blank paper.   Solution What you need to do, is forced Silverlight engine to load that image before printing start. To accomplish that I proposed simply checking PixelWith value. Your code will ask about PixelWidth of image so it will have to be loaded. XAML.cs: BitmapImage bImage = new BitmapImage(new Uri(imageUri, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)); image.Source = bImage; InitControl(imageUri, movieUri, isLeft); int w = bImage.PixelWidth; int h = bImage.PixelHeight;   DONE!   Jacek Ciereszko

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• T-SQL in SQL Azure

  - by kaleidoscope

  The following table summarizes the Transact-SQL support provided by SQL Azure Database at PDC 2009: Transact-SQL Features Supported Transact-SQL Features Unsupported Constants Constraints Cursors Index management and rebuilding indexes Local temporary tables Reserved keywords Stored procedures Statistics management Transactions Triggers Tables, joins, and table variables Transact-SQL language elements such as Create/drop databases Create/alter/drop tables Create/alter/drop users and logins User-defined functions Views, including sys.synonyms view Common Language Runtime (CLR) Database file placement Database mirroring Distributed queries Distributed transactions Filegroup management Global temporary tables Spatial data and indexes SQL Server configuration options SQL Server Service Broker System tables Trace Flags   Amit, S

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• Get to Know a Candidate (15 of 25): Jerry White&ndash;Socialist Equality Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. White (born Jerome White) is an American politician and journalist, reporting for the World Socialist Web Site.  White's Presidential campaign keeps four core components: * International unity in the working class * Social equality * Opposition to imperialist militarism and assault on democratic rights * Opposition to the political subordination of the working class to the Democrats and Republicans The White-Scherrer ticket is currently undergoing a review by the Wisconsin election committee concerning the ballot listing of the party for the 2012 Presidential elections. White has visited Canada, Germany, and Sri Lanka to campaign for socialism and an international working class movement. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States, one of several Socialist Equality Parties around the world affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI publishes daily news articles, perspectives and commentaries on the World Socialist Web Site. The party held public conferences in 2009 and 2010. It led an inquiry into utility shutoffs in Detroit, Michigan earlier in 2010, after which it launched a Committee Against Utility Shutoffs. Recently it sent reporters to West Virginia to report on the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster and the way that Massey Energy has treated its workers. It also sent reporters to the Gulf Coast to report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In addition, it has participated in elections with the aim of opposing the American occupation of Iraq and building a mass socialist party with an international perspective. Despite having been active for over a decade, the Socialist Equality Party held its founding congress in 2008, where it adopted a statement of principles and a historical document. White has Ballot Access in: CO, LA, WI Learn more about Jerry White and Socialist Equality Party on Wikipedia

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• Assign multiple test categories using TestCategoryAttribute

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  I am using TestCategoryAttribute to filter which tests to run during builds and wandered, how to -how to assign multiple test categories.According to constructor documentation only single category can be specified.  However TestCategories Property (plural!)can return multiple categories.Grouping Tests into Test Categories: You can add an automated test to one or multiple test categories using a test attribute. Each test can belong to multiple test categories.The recommended approach from MSDN How to: Group and Run Automated Tests Using Test Categories is to specify multiple TestCategory attributes like the following[TestCategory("Nightly"), TestCategory("Weekly"), TestCategory("ShoppingCart"), TestMethod()]public Void DebitTest() { }Article http://toddmeinershagen.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/create-custom-test-category-attributes.htmlshows how enums can be used instead of strings.It also explains, that TestCategories Property can be used in derived custom attributes.v

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• Securing ClickOnce hosted with Amazon S3 Storage

  - by saifkhan

  Well, since my post on hosting ClickOnce with Amazon S3 Storage, I've received quite a few emails asking how to secure the deployment. At the time of this post I regret to say that there is no way to secure your ClickOnce deployment hosted with Amazon S3. The S3 storage is secured by ACL meaning that a username and password will have to be provided before access. The Amazon CloudFront, which sits on top of S3, allows you to apply security settings to your CloudFront distribution by Applying an encryption to the URL. Restricting by IP. The problem with the CloudFront is that the encryption of the URL is mandatory. ClickOnce does not provide a way to pass the "Amazon Public Key" to the CloudFront URL (you probably can if you start editing the XML and HTML files ClickOnce generate but that defeats the porpose of ClickOnce all together). What would be nice is if Amazon can allow users to restrict by IP addresses or IP Blocks. I'd sent them an email and received a response that this is something they are looking into...I won't hold my breadth though. Alternative I suggest you look at Rack Space Cloud hosting http://www.rackspacecloud.com they have very competitive pricing and recently started hosting Windows Virtual Servers. What you can do is rent a virtual server, setup IIS to host your ClickOnce applications. You can then use IIS security setting to restrict what IP/Blocks can access your ClickOnce payloads. Note: You don't really need Windows Server to host ClickOnce. Any web server can do. If you are familiar with Linux you can run that VM with rackspace for half the price of Windows. I hope you found this information helpful.

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• OData where art thou?

  - by Brian

  Douglas Purdy explains. I think the best part will be the governmental aspect. All public record should be available in a way that’s easy to query IMHO. From the article: Many of us at Microsoft believe the OData protocol can help usher in a more open and programmable Web by creating a common funnel to expose rich data, thereby creating a world of customized consumer mash-ups; a world where government data is transparent and accessible to any citizen; a world where you can ask a question and know, “There’s a feed for that.” Do check out www.odata.org, and while you’re at it, check out codename Dallas. For all those government IT workers out there, consider the savings. No need to pay someone to format the data for a specific department or constituent. Just put it online and point them there.

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• SPRoleAssignment Crazy Caviats

  - by MOSSLover

  I’m not sure if this bug exists on any other environment, but here are a few issues I ran into when trying to use SPRoleAssignment and SPGroup: When trying to use Web.Groups[“GroupName”] it basically told me the group did not exist, so I had to change the code to use Web.SiteGroups[“GroupName”]. I could not add the Role Assignment to the Web and run a Web.Update() without adding an additional Web.AllowUnsafeUpdates= true; , however on my virtual machine I could do a Web.Update() without the extra piece of code.  I kept receiving an error in my browser stating that I should hit the back button and update my permissions. So after fixing those two issues I was able to copy the permissions from a page item into a Site for my migration.  Hopefully, one of you can learn from my error messages if you have any issues in the future. Technorati Tags: SPRoleAssignment,MOSS,SPGroup

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• The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object 'bam_Metadata_GetConfigurationXml'

  - by Andy Morrison

  We were seeing this exception on two servers when we tried to access the BAM Portal... after having to reconfigure the BAM Portal and Tools for reasons unrelated to the error: --- Log Name:      Application Source:        Bam Web Service Date:          2/18/2011 10:24:07 AM Event ID:      1534 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          N/A Computer:      yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Description: Current User: yy\yyyyyyyy EXCEPTION: Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagerException: Encountered error while executing command on SQL Server "yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy". ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object 'bam_Metadata_GetConfigurationXml', database 'BAMPrimaryImport', schema 'dbo'.    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)    at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj)    at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.ConsumeMetaData()    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.get_MetaData()    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.FinishExecuteReader(SqlDataReader ds, RunBehavior runBehavior, String resetOptionsString)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReaderTds(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, Boolean async)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method, DbAsyncResult result)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior, String method)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.SqlHelper.ExecuteQuery(String cmdText, CommandType cmdType, Transaction transaction)    --- End of inner exception stack trace ---    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.SqlHelper.ExecuteQuery(String cmdText, CommandType cmdType, Transaction transaction)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamConfigurationManager.GetConfigurationXmlFromPrimaryImportDb()    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamConfigurationManager..ctor(String piServer, String piDatabase, Int32 sqlHelperCmdTimeout, Boolean validateServerNames)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager..ctor(String primaryImportServer, String primaryImportDatabase, Int32 sqlCmdTimeout, Boolean validateServerNames)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager..ctor(String primaryImportServer, String primaryImportDatabase)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.WebServices.Utilities.FetchBamManager()    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.WebServices.Management.BamManagementService.GetViewSummaryForCurrentUser() EXCEPTION: Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagerException: Encountered error while executing command on SQL Server "yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy". ---&gt; System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object 'bam_Metadata_GetConfigurationXml', database 'BAMPrimaryImport', schema 'dbo'.    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)    at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj)    at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.ConsumeMetaData()    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader.get_MetaData()    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.FinishExecuteReader(SqlDataReader ds, RunBehavior runBehavior, String resetOptionsString)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReaderTds(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, Boolean async)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method, DbAsyncResult result)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior, String method)    at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.SqlHelper.ExecuteQuery(String cmdText, CommandType cmdType, Transaction transaction)    --- End of inner exception stack trace ---    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.SqlHelper.ExecuteQuery(String cmdText, CommandType cmdType, Transaction transaction)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamConfigurationManager.GetConfigurationXmlFromPrimaryImportDb()    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamConfigurationManager..ctor(String piServer, String piDatabase, Int32 sqlHelperCmdTimeout, Boolean validateServerNames)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager..ctor(String primaryImportServer, String primaryImportDatabase, Int32 sqlCmdTimeout, Boolean validateServerNames)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager..ctor(String primaryImportServer, String primaryImportDatabase)    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.WebServices.Utilities.FetchBamManager()    at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.WebServices.Management.BamManagementService.GetViewSummaryForCurrentUser() --- We reconfigured the BAM Portal and Tools multiple times, trying to fix this issue, but kept getting the exception.  The fix was to add the BizTalk Server Administrators and BizTalk Application Users to the BAM_ManagementWS role in the BAMPrimaryImport database.  (Note that these two groups do not appear to be added to this role in a "clean" configuration. Thanks go to Ed at http://talentedmonkeys.wordpress.com/ for figuring out a solution.

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• Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

  - by mbcrump

  I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk

  - by Tim Huffam

  This error occurred on our TFS2008 build server which we had upgraded to cater for VS2010 projects (by installing VS2010 on the build server - see this article). Error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk. However - although we had installed VS2010 on the build server - we had not installed the web development components (Visual Web Developer) - this is what caused the error. To fix - simply add the web development components: Go into Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs Select Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and click on Change/Remove In the VS Maintenance Mode screens, select Add or Remove Features In the Setup - Options page make sure 'Visual Web Developer' is checked. Click on Update.   You shouldn't need to restart your build service. HTH Tim

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• MIA

  - by Robert May

  So, I’ve been missing in action on this blog for quite some time.  I need to rectify that. Part of the reason I’ve been absent is because I haven’t be able to talk about what I’m working on.  A former client watches my blog rather closely, and although we accomplished many good things together, their culture is such that they really don’t like people to freely express their thoughts (you’ll note my blog posts stopped rather abruptly).  I learned some really important lessons about Agile in the last 3 years, and I think its worthwhile to talk about them.  Sometimes things worked really well, sometimes, they failed failed.  Sometimes that failure was me, sometimes it wasn’t. I understand Agile better now, and hopefully, what I have to say will guide others through this process and help others understand Agile better. One thing that I’ve learned is that MANY companies that say they are doing Agile are NOT really doing Agile.  To often, they pick the things they like and don’t follow the process long enough to know what rules they can break, and which ones they shouldn’t.  This is probably the primary reason why Agile fails. So, expect more posts, especially as I’m flying coast to coast. :)

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• SQL Azure Service Issues &ndash; 10.27.2012 (Restored Now)

  - by ToStringTheory

  Please note that if you have a Windows Azure website, or use SQL Azure, your site may be experiencing downtime currently.  Notice I just called in regarding one of my public facing internet sites, because the site was failing to load anything but its error page, I couldn’t connect to the database to inspect application error logs, and the Windows Azure Management portal won’t load the SQL Azure extension. After speaking to the representative, he also mentioned that they were also having some problems updating the Service Dashboard which shows service up/down time, and for now, they are posting messages at http://account.windowsazure.com.  Please note that this issue may only be effecting certain regions.  Last, I may have misheard the representative, but he said that the outage was being categorized as a level 8, and if I heard correctly, I think he said that level 8 was the worst level.  I can’t say for sure on this though, because the phone connection to their support number was bad – large amounts of white noise. Good Luck! Update It appears that this outage may also be effecting the following services: SQL Database, Service Bus, Datamarket, Windows Azure Marketplace, Shared Caching, Access Control 2.0, and SQL Reporting. The note on the account page says for the South Central US region, however, I believe the representative I spoke to also mentioned North Central. As I said before though, the connection was bad. Update 2 My site regained connectivity about an hour ago, and it appears that the service dashboard is back in operation with correct status and history. It does appear that I misheard on the phone regarding multiple regions, so chances are this only effected a percentage of the platform. All in all, if this WAS their worst level of a problem, they really got it fixed and back up pretty fast. All in all, I understand that it is inherent for a complex system such as Azure to have ups and downs, but at the end of the day, I am still happy to support Azure to its fullest!

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• Crystal Report 2010 Hosting Has Been Supported by ASPHostPortal

  - by mbridge

  This is the press release from ASPHostPortal and I see that they have supported Crystal Report 2010. For the complete information, please read this press release. :-)   ASPHostPortal is a premiere web hosting company that specialized in Windows and ASP.NET-based hosting. Now, ASPHostPortal.com supports the new Crystal Report 2010 Hosting. For more information about this new product, please visit ASPHostPortal official website at http://www.asphostportal.com or http://asphostportal.com/Cheap-Crystal-Report-2010-Hosting.aspx. Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources. Several other applications, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, bundle an OEM version of Crystal Reports as a general purpose reporting tool. Crystal Reports became the de facto standard report writer when Microsoft released it with Visual Basic. "ASPHostPortal has again proved its existence in hosting industry with the launch of the new Crystal Report 2010 Hosting," said Dean Thomas, General Manager of ASPHostPortal. "Crystal Reports 2010 is a powerful, dynamic, actionable reporting solution that helps you design, explore, visualize, and deliver reports via the web or embedded in enterprise applications. It enables end users to consume reports with stunning visualizations, conduct on-report business modelling, and execute decisions instantly from the report itself—reducing dependency on IT and developers." "Get a clearer view of your business performance with our industry-leading report designer and visualization combined solution. You'll be able to create highly formatted reports with what-if scenario models, interactive dashboards and charts," said Chris Thompson, Sales Manager ASPHostPortal. "Here you can see the demonstration of Crystal Report 2010, http://crystalreportdemo.asphostportal.com."

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