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• FREE Online Azure Workshop includes a **FREE Azure Account**

  - by Jim Duffy

  My friend and all around good guy, Microsoft Developer Evangelist for the Carolinas, Brian Hitney, along with fellow Microsofties Jim O’Neil and John McClelland will be presenting a FREE Windows Azure online workshop tomorrow, Tuesday, May 4th from 7pm-9pm. What? You can’t make it Tuesday evening? Not to worry. This webcast will be repeated again a number of times over the next month or so. Taken from Brian’s blog post about it: “Elevate your skills with Windows Azure in this hands-on workshop! In this event we’ll guide you through the process of building and deploying a large scale Azure application. Forget about “hello world”! In less than two hours we’ll build and deploy a real cloud app that leverages the Azure data center and helps make a difference in the world. Yes, in addition to building an application that will leave you with a rock-solid understanding of the Azure platform, the solution you deploy will contribute back to Stanford’s Folding@home distributed computing project. There’s no cost to you to participate in this session; each attendee will receive a temporary, self-expiring, full-access account to work with Azure for a period of 2-weeks.” Did you catch that last sentence??  “each attendee will receive a temporary, self-expiring, full-access account to work with Azure for a period of 2-weeks.” A FREE, full-access, Windows Azure account to experiment and learn with? Now we’re talking. For more information check out Brian’s blog post or head here. Have a day. :-|

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• A Reusable Builder Class for Ruby Testing

  - by Liam McLennan

  My last post was about a class for building test data objects in C#. This post describes the same tool, but implemented in Ruby. The C# version was written first but I originally came up with the solution in my head using Ruby, and then I translated it to C#. The Ruby version was easier to write and is easier to use thanks to Ruby’s dynamic nature making generics unnecessary.  Here are my example domain classes: class Person attr_accessor :name, :age def initialize(name, age) @name = name @age = age end end class Property attr_accessor :street, :manager def initialize(street, manager) @street = street @manager = manager end end and the test class showing what the builder does: class Test_Builder < Test::Unit::TestCase def setup @build = Builder.new @build.configure({ Property => lambda { Property.new '127 Creek St', @build.a(Person) }, Person => lambda { Person.new 'Liam', 26 } }) end def test_create assert_not_nil @build end def test_can_get_a_person @person = @build.a(Person) assert_not_nil @person assert_equal 'Liam', @person.name assert_equal 26, @person.age end def test_can_get_a_modified_person @person = @build.a Person do |person| person.age = 999 end assert_not_nil @person assert_equal 'Liam', @person.name assert_equal 999, @person.age end def test_can_get_a_different_type_that_depends_on_a_type_that_has_not_been_configured_yet @my_place = @build.a(Property) assert_not_nil @my_place assert_equal '127 Creek St', @my_place.street assert_equal @build.a(Person).name, @my_place.manager.name end end Finally, the implementation of Builder: class Builder # defaults is a hash of Class => creation lambda def configure defaults @defaults = defaults end def a(klass) temp = @defaults[klass].call() yield temp if block_given? temp end end

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• #AJIReport 16 | Jason Bock on Windows Runtime and Metaprogramming

  - by Jeff Julian

  This episode we sit down with Jason Bock to talk about Windows Runtime and his upcoming book on Metaprogramming. Jason has been a consultant at Magenic for the past 11 years. In this show, Jason walks us through how to get started with Windows RT and talks about what the experience is like deploying to the Windows Store. We get into the new frontier of device development and the restrictions that are in place to protect the users and other applications. Towards the end of the show we start talking about Jason's book on Metaprogramming that he is co-authoring with Kevin Hazard. Listen to the Show Site: http://www.jasonbock.net/ Book: Metaprogramming in .NET Twitter: @JasonBock

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• Friend of Red Gate

  - by Nick Harrison

  Friend of Red Gate I recently joined the friend of Red Gate program.   I am very honored to be included in this group.    This program is a big part of Red Gates community outreach.   If you are not familiar with Red Gate, I urge you to check them out.    They have some wonderful tools for the SQL Server community and the DotNet community.    They are also building up some tools for Exchange and Oracle. I was invited to join this program primarliy because of my work with Simple Talk and promoting one of their newest products, Reflector. Reflector is a wonderful tool.   I doubt that anyone who has ever used it would argue that point. Red Gate did a wonderful job taking over the support of Reflector.   I know many people had their doubts.    The initial release under Red Gate should set those fears to rest.   I was very impressed with how their developers interacted with their users during the preview phase! Red Gate is also a good partner for the community.    They activly support the community, sponsoring Code Camps, sponsoring User Groups, supporting the Forums, etc. And their tools are pretty amazing as well.

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• Controlar Autentificaci&oacute;n Crystal Reports

  - by Jason Ulloa

  Para todos los que hemos trabajamos con Crystal Reports, no es un secreto que cuando tratamos de conectar nuestro reporte directamente a la base de datos, se nos viene encima el problema de autenticación. Es decir nuestro reporte al momento de iniciar la carga nos solicita autentificarnos en el servidor y sino lo hacemos, simplemente no veremos el reporte. Esto, además de ser tedioso para los usuarios se convierte en un problema de seguridad bastante grande, de ahí que en la mayoría de los casos se recomienda utilizar dataset. Sin embargo, para todos los que aún sabiendo esto no desean utilizar datasets, sino que, quieren conectar su crystal directamente veremos como implementar una pequeña clase que nos ayudará con esa tarea. Generalmente, cuando trabajamos con una aplicación web, nuestra cadena de conexión esta incluida en el web.config y también en muchas ocasiones contiene los datos como el usuario y password para acceder a la base de datos.  De esta cadena de conexión y estos datos es de los que nos ayudaremos para implementar la autentificación en el reporte. Generalmente, la cadena de conexión se vería así <connectionStrings> <remove name="LocalSqlServer"/> <add name="xxx" connectionString="Data Source=.\SqlExpress;Integrated Security=False;Initial Catalog=xxx;user id=myuser;password=mypass" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   Para nuestro ejemplo, nombraremos a nuestra clase CrystalRules (es solo algo que pensé de momento) 1. Primer Paso Creamos una variable de tipo SqlConnectionStringBuilder, a la cual le asignaremos la cadena de conexión que definimos en el web.config, y que luego utilizaremos para obtener los datos del usuario y el password para el crystal report. SqlConnectionStringBuilder builder = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["xxx"].ConnectionString); 2. Implementación de propiedad Para ser más ordenados crearemos varias propiedad de tipo Privado, que se encargarán de recibir los datos de:   La Base de datos, el password, el usuario y el servidor private string _dbName; private string _serverName; private string _userID; private string _passWord;   private string dataBase { get { return _dbName; } set { _dbName = value; } }   private string serverName { get { return _serverName; } set { _serverName = value; } }   private string userName { get { return _userID; } set { _userID = value; } }   private string dataBasePassword { get { return _passWord; } set { _passWord = value; } } 3. Creación del Método para aplicar los datos de conexión Una vez que ya tenemos las propiedades, asignaremos a las variables los valores que se han recogido en el SqlConnectionStringBuilder. Y crearemos una variable de tipo ConnectionInfo para aplicar los datos de conexión. internal void ApplyInfo(ReportDocument _oRpt) { dataBase = builder.InitialCatalog; serverName = builder.DataSource; userName = builder.UserID; dataBasePassword = builder.Password;   Database oCRDb = _oRpt.Database; Tables oCRTables = oCRDb.Tables; //Table oCRTable = default(Table); TableLogOnInfo oCRTableLogonInfo = default(TableLogOnInfo); ConnectionInfo oCRConnectionInfo = new ConnectionInfo();   oCRConnectionInfo.DatabaseName = _dbName; oCRConnectionInfo.ServerName = _serverName; oCRConnectionInfo.UserID = _userID; oCRConnectionInfo.Password = _passWord;   foreach (Table oCRTable in oCRTables) { oCRTableLogonInfo = oCRTable.LogOnInfo; oCRTableLogonInfo.ConnectionInfo = oCRConnectionInfo; oCRTable.ApplyLogOnInfo(oCRTableLogonInfo);     }   }   4. Creación del report document y aplicación de la seguridad Una vez recogidos los datos y asignados, crearemos un elemento report document al cual le asignaremos el CrystalReportViewer y le aplicaremos los datos de acceso que obtuvimos anteriormente public void loadReport(string repName, CrystalReportViewer viewer) {   // attached our report to viewer and set database login. ReportDocument report = new ReportDocument(); report.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/Reports/" + repName)); ApplyInfo(report); viewer.ReportSource = report; } Al final, nuestra clase completa ser vería así public class CrystalRules { SqlConnectionStringBuilder builder = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Fatchoy.Data.Properties.Settings.FatchoyConnectionString"].ConnectionString);   private string _dbName; private string _serverName; private string _userID; private string _passWord;   private string dataBase { get { return _dbName; } set { _dbName = value; } }   private string serverName { get { return _serverName; } set { _serverName = value; } }   private string userName { get { return _userID; } set { _userID = value; } }   private string dataBasePassword { get { return _passWord; } set { _passWord = value; } }   internal void ApplyInfo(ReportDocument _oRpt) { dataBase = builder.InitialCatalog; serverName = builder.DataSource; userName = builder.UserID; dataBasePassword = builder.Password;   Database oCRDb = _oRpt.Database; Tables oCRTables = oCRDb.Tables; //Table oCRTable = default(Table); TableLogOnInfo oCRTableLogonInfo = default(TableLogOnInfo); ConnectionInfo oCRConnectionInfo = new ConnectionInfo();   oCRConnectionInfo.DatabaseName = _dbName; oCRConnectionInfo.ServerName = _serverName; oCRConnectionInfo.UserID = _userID; oCRConnectionInfo.Password = _passWord;   foreach (Table oCRTable in oCRTables) { oCRTableLogonInfo = oCRTable.LogOnInfo; oCRTableLogonInfo.ConnectionInfo = oCRConnectionInfo; oCRTable.ApplyLogOnInfo(oCRTableLogonInfo);     }   }   public void loadReport(string repName, CrystalReportViewer viewer) {   // attached our report to viewer and set database login. ReportDocument report = new ReportDocument(); report.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/Reports/" + repName)); ApplyInfo(report); viewer.ReportSource = report; }       #region instance   private static CrystalRules m_instance;   // Properties public static CrystalRules Instance { get { if (m_instance == null) { m_instance = new CrystalRules(); } return m_instance; } }   public DataDataContext m_DataContext { get { return DataDataContext.Instance; } }     #endregion instance   }   Si bien, la solución no es robusta y no es la mas segura. En casos de uso como una intranet y cuando estamos contra tiempo, podría ser de gran ayuda.

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• Installing a VADTools design component into your 3CX Voice Application Designer toolbox

  - by ParadigmShift

  The 3CX Voice Application Designer is an innovative tool for creating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Applications, or Voice Applications.  It is a familiar drag-and-drop experience that Visual Studio developers will get the hang of pretty quick. Additionally, there are new 3rd party components released by BlueVoice, that are distributed though www.UtahVoIPStore.com I thought I’d post a quick introduction to it, by showing how to install a component into you designer tool box.  In this example I am using the CommandLine component, which lets you call the command line from your voice application. First, copy the ZIP file that came with your component to the root folder of your VAD project. Now extract the zip file into the root directory. The component will be in the root directory and the Libraries directory will have a new DLL file. Open your VAD project and right-click on the project in project explorer to add the new component to your project. Navigate to the root folder of your project and select the new component. The component is now ready for you to use in your toolbox.

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• Silverlight Cream for April 17, 2010 -- #839

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: ITLackey, SilverLaw, Max Paulousky, Alex Yakhnin, Paul Sheriff, Douglas, Jeremy Likness, Tomasz Janczuk, Anoop Madhusudanan, Adam Kinney, and Ashish Shetty. Shoutout: If you haven't already seen it, CrocusGirl did a great job of summarizing Day 2 of DevConnections with her Silverlight 4 Launch Notes From SilverlightCream.com: RIA Services - IIS6 Virtual Directory Deployment ITLackey has a post up building on his previous post on Windows Authentication with RIA Services and discusses deploying to an IIS Virtual Directory. How To: Determine ChildWindow Position At Runtime - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a post up about determining the position of a ChildWindow at run-time, for example after the user moves it. Modularity in Silverlight Applications - An Issue With ModuleInitializeException – Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his series up on Modularity in Silverlight... he discusses using XAML as a catalog and registering modules at runtime, and compares to WPF. Creating LINQ Data Provider for WP7 (Part 1) Alex Yakhnin has a first cut at a LINQ Data Provider for WP7 ... I was expecting this to hit pretty soon, because we're all going to want it... check out the code and d/l the project. Synchronize Data between a Silverlight ListBox and a User Control Paul Sheriff demonstrates databinding in XAML between local data in a ListBox and a UserControl. The beginnings of Silverlight development with Expression Blend Douglas has a good post up on beginning your Silverlight development with Expression Blend. He covers a lot of ground in this post. Converting Silverlight 3 to Silverlight 4 Jeremy Likness has a video up demonstrating converting Silverlight 3 to Silverlight 4 with download links and also using commanding on buttons. Debugging WCF RIA Services with WCF traces Tomasz Janczuk has a post up discussing the use of WCF RIA Services traces to help diagnose and debug problems in a deployed service. Bing Maps + oData + Windows Phone 7 - Nerd Dinner Client For Windows Phone 7 Check out what Anoop Madhusudanan has provided... Nerd Dinner for WP7, including OData and BingMaps... just very cool! A few cool new features added in Expression Blend 4 RC Adam Kinney announced the availability of the new Expression Blend and highlights some of the new features... like MakeLayoutPath... FTW! Of Crashing and Sometimes Burning Ashish Shetty has a discourse posted about where the causes of errors might come from, what to expect from the platform, where to find crash dumps, and links to more reading. 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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• Microsoft Townhall, An Example for Azure and MVC

  - by Shaun

  Microsoft just released an example named Microsoft Townhall which was built and deployed on Azure. It uses ASP.NET MVC as its webiste framework and the SQL Azure plus LinqToSQL as its the database and the ORM framework. You can download the source code at the MSDN Code Gallery. Basides the Azure it might be more useful to us to learn how they utilized ASP.NET MVC. Just a very quickly review I found it utilized the Enterprise Library Unity as the main IoC container for controllers, services and repositories and customized a lot of ModelBinders, Filters, etc.   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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• 10 steps to enable &lsquo;Anonymous Access&rsquo; for your SharePoint 2010 site

  - by KunaalKapoor

  What’s Anonymous Access? Anonymous access to your SharePoint site enables all visitors to view your SharePoint site anonymously without having to log in. With this blog I’d like to go through an easy step wise procedure to enable/set up anonymous access. Before you actually enable anonymous access on the site, you’ll have to change some settings at the web app level. So let’s start with that: Prerequisite(s): 1. A hosted SharePoint 2010 farm/server. 2. An existing SharePoint site. I just thought I’d mention the above pre-reqs, since the steps mentioned below would’nt be valid or a different type of a site. Step 1: In Central Administration, under Application Management, click on the Manage web applications. Step 2: Now select the site you want to enable anonymous access and click on the Authentication Providers icon. Step 3: On the modal window click on the Default zone. Step 4: Now under the Edit Authentication section, check Enable anonymous access and click Save. This is basically to make the Anonymous Access authentication mechanism available at the web app level @ IIS. Now, web application will allow anonymous access to be set. 5. Going back to Web Application Management click on the Anonymous Policy icon. Step 6: Also before we proceed any further, under the Anonymous Access Restrictions (@ web app mgmt.) select your Zone and set the Permissions to None – No policy and click Save. Step 7:  Now lets navigate to your top level site collection for the web application. Click the Site Actions > Site Settings. Under Users and Permissions click Site permissions. Step 8: Under Users and Permissions, click on Site Permissions. Step 9: Under the Edit tab, click on Anonymous Access. Step 10: Choose whether you want Anonymous users to have access to the entire Web site or to lists and libraries only, and then click on OK. You should now be able to see the view as below under your permissions Also keep in mind: If you are trying to access the site from a browser within the domain, then you’ll need to change some browser settings to see the after affects. Normally this is because the browsers (Internet Explorer) is set to log in automatically to intranet zone only , not sure if you have explicitly changed the zones and added it to trusted sites. If this is from a box within your domain please try to access the site by temporarily changing the Internet Explorer setting to Anonymous Logon on the zone that the site is added example "Intranet" and try . You will find the same settings by clicking on Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab.

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• Screen shots and documentation on the cheap

  - by Kyle Burns

  Occasionally I am surprised to open up my toolbox and find a great tool that I've had for years and never noticed.  The other day I had just such an experience with Windows Server 2008.  A co-worker of mine was squinting to read to screenshots that he had taken using the "Print Screen, paste" method in WordPad and asked me if there was a better tool available at a reasonable cost.  My first instinct was to take a look at CamStudio for him, but I also knew that he had an immediate need to take some more screenshots, so I decided to check and see if the Snipping Tool found in Windows 7 is also available in Windows Server 2008.  I clicked the Start button and typed “snip” into the search bar and while the Snipping Tool did not come up, a Control Panel item labeled “Record steps to reproduce a problem” did. The application behind the Control Panel entry was “Problem Steps Recorder” (PSR.exe) and I have confirmed that it is available in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 but have not checked other platforms.  It presents a pretty minimal and intuitive interface in providing a “Start Record”, “Stop Record”, and “Add Comment” button.  The “Start Record” button shockingly starts recording and, sure enough, the “Stop Record” button stops recording.  The “Add Comment” button prompts for a comment and for you to highlight the area of the screen to which your comment is related.  Once you’re done recording, the tool outputs an MHT file packaged in a ZIP archive.  This file contains a series of screen shots depicting the user’s interactions and giving timestamps and descriptive text (such as “User left click on “Test” in “My Page – Windows Internet Explorer”) as well as the comments they made along the way and some diagnostics about the applications captured. The Problem Steps Recorder looks like a simple solution to the most common of my needs for documentation that can turn “I can’t understand how to make it do what you’re reporting” to “Oh, I see what you’re talking about and will fix it right away”.  I you’re like me and haven’t yet discovered this tool give it a whirl and see for yourself.

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• Conditional Operator Example

  - by mbcrump

  If you haven’t taken the time to learn conditional operators, then now is the time. I’ve added a quick and dirty example for those on the forums.   Code Snippet using System; using System.Net.Mail; using System.Net; using System.Globalization; using System.Windows.Forms;   class Demo {     //Please use conditional statements in your code. See example below.       public static void Main()     {         int dollars = 10;           //Bad Coder Bad !!! Don't do this         if (dollars == 1)         {             Console.WriteLine("Please deposit {0} dollar.", dollars);         }         else         {             Console.WriteLine("Please deposit {0} dollars.", dollars);         }             //Good Coder Good !!! Do this         Console.WriteLine("Please deposit {0} dollar{1}.", dollars, dollars == 1 ? ' ' : 's');         //                                                          expression   ? true : false           Console.ReadLine();          } }

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• JavaScript Class Patterns

  - by Liam McLennan

  To write object-oriented programs we need objects, and likely lots of them. JavaScript makes it easy to create objects: var liam = { name: "Liam", age: Number.MAX_VALUE }; But JavaScript does not provide an easy way to create similar objects. Most object-oriented languages include the idea of a class, which is a template for creating objects of the same type. From one class many similar objects can be instantiated. Many patterns have been proposed to address the absence of a class concept in JavaScript. This post will compare and contrast the most significant of them. Simple Constructor Functions Classes may be missing but JavaScript does support special constructor functions. By prefixing a call to a constructor function with the ‘new’ keyword we can tell the JavaScript runtime that we want the function to behave like a constructor and instantiate a new object containing the members defined by that function. Within a constructor function the ‘this’ keyword references the new object being created -  so a basic constructor function might be: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; this.toString = function() { return this.name + " is " + age + " years old."; }; } var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that by convention the name of a constructor function is always written in Pascal Case (the first letter of each word is capital). This is to distinguish between constructor functions and other functions. It is important that constructor functions be called with the ‘new’ keyword and that not constructor functions are not. There are two problems with the pattern constructor function pattern shown above: It makes inheritance difficult The toString() function is redefined for each new object created by the Person constructor. This is sub-optimal because the function should be shared between all of the instances of the Person type. Constructor Functions with a Prototype JavaScript functions have a special property called prototype. When an object is created by calling a JavaScript constructor all of the properties of the constructor’s prototype become available to the new object. In this way many Person objects can be created that can access the same prototype. An improved version of the above example can be written: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { toString: function() { return this.name + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); In this version a single instance of the toString() function will now be shared between all Person objects. Private Members The short version is: there aren’t any. If a variable is defined, with the var keyword, within the constructor function then its scope is that function. Other functions defined within the constructor function will be able to access the private variable, but anything defined outside the constructor (such as functions on the prototype property) won’t have access to the private variable. Any variables defined on the constructor are automatically public. Some people solve this problem by prefixing properties with an underscore and then not calling those properties by convention. function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { _getName: function() { return this.name; }, toString: function() { return this._getName() + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that the _getName() function is only private by convention – it is in fact a public function. Functional Object Construction Because of the weirdness involved in using constructor functions some JavaScript developers prefer to eschew them completely. They theorize that it is better to work with JavaScript’s functional nature than to try and force it to behave like a traditional class-oriented language. When using the functional approach objects are created by returning them from a factory function. An excellent side effect of this pattern is that variables defined with the factory function are accessible to the new object (due to closure) but are inaccessible from anywhere else. The Person example implemented using the functional object construction pattern is: var personFactory = function(name, age) { var privateVar = 7; return { toString: function() { return name + " is " + age * privateVar / privateVar + " years old."; } }; }; var john2 = personFactory("John Lennon", 40); console.log(john2.toString()); Note that the ‘new’ keyword is not used for this pattern, and that the toString() function has access to the name, age and privateVar variables because of closure. This pattern can be extended to provide inheritance and, unlike the constructor function pattern, it supports private variables. However, when working with JavaScript code bases you will find that the constructor function is more common – probably because it is a better approximation of mainstream class oriented languages like C# and Java. Inheritance Both of the above patterns can support inheritance but for now, favour composition over inheritance. Summary When JavaScript code exceeds simple browser automation object orientation can provide a powerful paradigm for controlling complexity. Both of the patterns presented in this article work – the choice is a matter of style. Only one question still remains; who is John Galt?

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• JavaScript Class Patterns

  - by Liam McLennan

  To write object-oriented programs we need objects, and likely lots of them. JavaScript makes it easy to create objects: var liam = { name: "Liam", age: Number.MAX_VALUE }; But JavaScript does not provide an easy way to create similar objects. Most object-oriented languages include the idea of a class, which is a template for creating objects of the same type. From one class many similar objects can be instantiated. Many patterns have been proposed to address the absence of a class concept in JavaScript. This post will compare and contrast the most significant of them. Simple Constructor Functions Classes may be missing but JavaScript does support special constructor functions. By prefixing a call to a constructor function with the ‘new’ keyword we can tell the JavaScript runtime that we want the function to behave like a constructor and instantiate a new object containing the members defined by that function. Within a constructor function the ‘this’ keyword references the new object being created -  so a basic constructor function might be: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; this.toString = function() { return this.name + " is " + age + " years old."; }; } var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that by convention the name of a constructor function is always written in Pascal Case (the first letter of each word is capital). This is to distinguish between constructor functions and other functions. It is important that constructor functions be called with the ‘new’ keyword and that not constructor functions are not. There are two problems with the pattern constructor function pattern shown above: It makes inheritance difficult The toString() function is redefined for each new object created by the Person constructor. This is sub-optimal because the function should be shared between all of the instances of the Person type. Constructor Functions with a Prototype JavaScript functions have a special property called prototype. When an object is created by calling a JavaScript constructor all of the properties of the constructor’s prototype become available to the new object. In this way many Person objects can be created that can access the same prototype. An improved version of the above example can be written: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { toString: function() { return this.name + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); In this version a single instance of the toString() function will now be shared between all Person objects. Private Members The short version is: there aren’t any. If a variable is defined, with the var keyword, within the constructor function then its scope is that function. Other functions defined within the constructor function will be able to access the private variable, but anything defined outside the constructor (such as functions on the prototype property) won’t have access to the private variable. Any variables defined on the constructor are automatically public. Some people solve this problem by prefixing properties with an underscore and then not calling those properties by convention. function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { _getName: function() { return this.name; }, toString: function() { return this._getName() + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that the _getName() function is only private by convention – it is in fact a public function. Functional Object Construction Because of the weirdness involved in using constructor functions some JavaScript developers prefer to eschew them completely. They theorize that it is better to work with JavaScript’s functional nature than to try and force it to behave like a traditional class-oriented language. When using the functional approach objects are created by returning them from a factory function. An excellent side effect of this pattern is that variables defined with the factory function are accessible to the new object (due to closure) but are inaccessible from anywhere else. The Person example implemented using the functional object construction pattern is: var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); var personFactory = function(name, age) { var privateVar = 7; return { toString: function() { return name + " is " + age * privateVar / privateVar + " years old."; } }; }; var john2 = personFactory("John Lennon", 40); console.log(john2.toString()); Note that the ‘new’ keyword is not used for this pattern, and that the toString() function has access to the name, age and privateVar variables because of closure. This pattern can be extended to provide inheritance and, unlike the constructor function pattern, it supports private variables. However, when working with JavaScript code bases you will find that the constructor function is more common – probably because it is a better approximation of mainstream class oriented languages like C# and Java. Inheritance Both of the above patterns can support inheritance but for now, favour composition over inheritance. Summary When JavaScript code exceeds simple browser automation object orientation can provide a powerful paradigm for controlling complexity. Both of the patterns presented in this article work – the choice is a matter of style. Only one question still remains; who is John Galt?

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• Is Microsoft&rsquo;s Cloud Bet Placed on the Ground?

  - by andrewbrust

  Today at the Unversity of Washington, Steve Ballmer gave a speech on Microsoft’s cloud strategy.  Significantly, Azure was only briefly mentioned and was not shown.  Instead, Ballmer spoke about what he called the five “dimensions” of the cloud, and used that as the basis for an almost philosophical discussion.  Ballmer opined on how the cloud should be distinguished from the Internet.as well as what the cloud will and should enable.  Ballmer worked hard to portray the cloud not as a challenger to Windows and PCs (as Google would certainly suggest it is) but  really as just the latest peripheral that adds value to PCs and devices. At one point during his speech, Ballmer said “We start with Windows at Microsoft.  It’s the most popular smart device on the planet.  And our design center for the future of Windows is to make it one of those smarter devices that the cloud really wants.”  I’m not sure I agree with Ballmer’s ambition here, but I must admit he’s taken the “software + services” concept and expanded on it in more consumer-friendly fashion. There were demos too.  For example, Blaise Aguera y Arcas reprised his Bing Maps demo from the TED conference held last month.  And Simon Atwell showed how Microsoft has teamed with Sky TV in the UK to turn Xbox into something that looks uncannily like Windows Media Center.  Specifically, an Xbox console app called Sky Player provides full access to Sky’s on-demand programming but also live TV access to an array of networks carried on its home TV service, complete with an on-screen programming guide.  Windows Phone 7 Series was shown quickly and Ballmer told us that while Windows Mobile/Phone 6.5 and earlier were designed for voice and legacy functionality, Windows Phone 7 Series is designed for the cloud. Over and over during Ballmer’s talk (and those of his guest demo presenters), the message was clear: Microsoft believes that client (“smart”) devices, and not mere HTML terminals, are the technologies to best deliver on the promise of the cloud.  The message was that PCs running Windows, game consoles and smart phones  whose native interfaces are Internet-connected offer the most effective way to utilize cloud capabilities.  Even the Bing Maps demo conveyed this message, because the advanced technology shown in the demo uses Silverlight (and thus the PCs computing power), and not AJAX (which relies only upon the browser’s native scripting and rendering capabilities) to produce the impressive interface shown to the audience. Microsoft’s new slogan, with respect to the cloud, is “we’re all in.”  Just as a Texas Hold ‘em player bets his entire stash of chips when he goes all in, so too is Microsoft “betting the company” on the cloud.  But it would seem that Microsoft’s bet isn’t on the cloud in a pure sense, and is instead on the power of the cloud to fuel new growth in PCs and other client devices, Microsoft’s traditional comfort zone.  Is that a bet or a hedge?  If the latter, is Microsoft truly all in?  I don’t really know.  I think many people would say this is a sucker’s bet.  But others would say it’s suckers who bet against Microsoft.  No matter what, the burden is on Microsoft to prove this contrarian view of the cloud is a sensible one.  To do that, they’ll need to deliver on cloud-connected device innovation.  And to do that, the whole company will need to feel that victory is crucial.  Time will tell.  And I expect to present progress reports in future posts.

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• Extension Methods in Dot Net 2.0

  - by Tom Hines

  Not that anyone would still need this, but in case you have a situation where the code MUST be .NET 2.0 compliant and you want to use a cool feature like Extension methods, there is a way.  I saw this article when looking for ways to create extension methods in C++, C# and VB:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163317.aspx The author shows a simple  way to declare/define the ExtensionAttribute so it's available to 2.0 .NET code. Please read the article to learn about the when and why and use the content below to learn HOW. In the next post, I'll demonstrate cross-language calling of extension methods. Here is a version of it in C# First, here's the project showing there's no VOODOO included: using System; namespace System.Runtime.CompilerServices {    [       AttributeUsage(          AttributeTargets.Assembly          | AttributeTargets.Class          | AttributeTargets.Method,       AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = false)    ]    class ExtensionAttribute : Attribute{} } namespace TestTwoDotExtensions {    public static class Program    {       public static void DoThingCS(this string str)       {          Console.WriteLine("2.0\t{0:G}\t2.0", str);       }       static void Main(string[] args)       {          "asdf".DoThingCS();       }    } }   Here is the C++ version: // TestTwoDotExtensions_CPP.h #pragma once using namespace System; namespace System {        namespace Runtime {               namespace CompilerServices {               [                      AttributeUsage(                            AttributeTargets::Assembly                             | AttributeTargets::Class                            | AttributeTargets::Method,                      AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = false)               ]               public ref class ExtensionAttribute : Attribute{};               }        } } using namespace System::Runtime::CompilerServices; namespace TestTwoDotExtensions_CPP { public ref class CTestTwoDotExtensions_CPP {    public:            [ExtensionAttribute] // or [Extension]            static void DoThingCPP(String^ str)    {       Console::WriteLine("2.0\t{0:G}\t2.0", str);    } }; }

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• Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2010 -- #808

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, felix corke, Colin Eberhardt, Christopher Bennage, Gergely Orosz, Entity Spaces Team Blog, Mike Taulty(-2-), Jit Ghosh, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Jeremy Likness expands on the Silverlight Team's post Vancouver Olympics - How'd We Do That? Gavin Wignall has a post up Creating a 360 photograph of an object with Silverlight Photosynth From SilverlightCream.com: Transforming an Ugly Duckling into a Graceful Swan With Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part 2 Intro Animation András Velvárt has part 2 of his Transformation series up at SilverlightShow... he's taking the initro animation to a new length, allowing playback even... cool video tutorial! Free Silverlight 4 beta skin! felix corke has a Silerlight 4 theme up for us all to use. If you like a dark theme like Blend, you'll like this... I like it! Linq to Visual Tree Colin Eberhardt has a great tutorial up for using LINQ to query the WPF or Silverlight Visual Tree while retaining the tree structure. He also has links out to other techniques. XAML Attributes on Separate Lines Christopher Bennage has a post up showing how to easily get all your XAML attributes on separate lines using a VS menu option... I didn't know that! Using built-in, embedded and streamed fonts in Silverlight Gergely Orosz has a post up at ScottLogic going over Fonts in Silverlight -- built-in, embedded, or streamed, and examples with code. EntitySpaces 2010 Two Part Series on Silverlight and WCF Entity Spaces Team Blog has a pair of videos up on Entity Spaces 2010, WCF, and Silverlight. Part 1 is the intro and explanation, part 2 is a full-up app demonstrating it. MEF, Silverlight and the DeploymentCatalog In an attempt to respond fully to a query, Mike Taulty literally pushed the record button and took off on what became a tutorial video on building a real Silverlight app utilizing MEF. Silverlight 4, Experiment with Pluggable Navigation and a WCF Data Service Mike Taulty has an experiment detailed on his blog about pluggable navigation and Silverlight 4. He walks through the history of how we got to this point then takes on in an example... good external links too Enhancing Silverlight Video Experiences with Contextual Data This is a post on the MSDN Magazine site where Jit Ghosh has a great long post about not only Smooth Streaming with Silverlight, but also adding context data to your video. When Is It OK To Hack? Read what all Jesse Liberty gets involved in when he's trying to get something out the door and has to work around a problem. Just about as interesting are the comments ... check it out and leave your own! 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    MIX10

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• One Api Pilot

  - by Manish Agrawal

  Presentations made at Mobile World Congress, MWC 2010, on the Canadian OneAPI Pilot by Graham Trickey (GSMA), and Shane Logan (Telus). Thanks Alan for sharing it.

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• CQRS - Benefits

  - by Dylan Smith

  Thanks to all the comments and feedback from the last post I think I have a better understanding now of the benefits of CQRS (separate from the benefits of Event Sourcing). I’m going to try and sum it up here, and point out some areas where I could still use some advice: CQRS Benefits Sounds like the primary benefit of CQRS as an architecture is it allows you to create a simpler domain model by sucking out everything related to queries. I can definitely see the benefit to this, in general the domain logic related to commands is the high-value behavior in the software, but the logic required to service the queries would add a lot of low-value “noise” to the domain model that would dilute the high-value (command) behavior – sorting, paging, filtering, pre-fetch paths, etc. Also the most appropriate domain structure for implementing commands might not be the most optimal for implementing queries. To paraphrase Greg, this usually results in a domain model that is mediocre at both, piss-poor at one, or more likely piss-poor at both commands and queries. Not only will you be able to simplify your domain model by pulling out all the query logic, but at least a handful of commands in most systems will probably be “pass-though” type commands with little to no logic that just generate events. If these can be implemented directly in the command-handler and never touch the domain model, this allows you to slim down the domain model even more. Also, if you were to do event sourcing without CQRS, you no longer have a database containing the current state (only the domain model would) which makes it difficult (or impossible) to support ad-hoc querying and/or reporting that is common in most business software. Of course CQRS provides some great scalability benefits, not only scalability but I have to assume that it provides extremely low latency for most operations, especially if you have an asynchronous event bus. I know Greg says that you get a 3x scaling (Commands, Queries, Client) of your ability to perform parallel development, but IMHO, it seems like it only provides 1.5x scaling since even without CQRS you’re going to have your client loosely coupled to your domain - which is still a great benefit to be able to realize. Questions / Concerns If all the queries against an aggregate get pulled out to the Query layer, what if the only commands for that aggregate can be handled in a “pass-through” manner with the command handler directly generating events. Is it possible to have an aggregate that isn’t modeled in the domain model? Are there any issues or downsides to this? I know in the feedback from my previous posts it was suggested that having one domain model handling both commands and queries requires implementing a lot of traversals between objects that wouldn’t be necessary if it was only servicing commands. My question is, do you include traversals in your domain model based on the needs of the code, or based on the conceptual domain model? If none of my Commands require a Customer.Orders traversal, but the conceptual domain includes the concept of a set of orders belonging to a customer – should I model that in my domain model or not? I like the idea of using the Query side of the architecture as a place to put junior devs where the risk of them screwing something up has minimal impact. But I’m not sold on the idea that you can actually outsource it. Like I said in one of my comments on my previous post, the code to handle a query and generate DTO’s is going to be dead simple, but the code to process events and apply them to the tables on the query side is going to require a significant amount of domain knowledge to know which events to listen for to update each of the de-normalized tables (and what changes need to be made when each event is processed). I don’t know about everybody else, but having Indian/Russian/whatever outsourced developers have to do anything that requires significant domain knowledge has never been successful in my experience. And if you need to spec out for each new query which events to listen to and what to do with each one, well that’s probably going to be just as much work to document as it would be to just implement it. Greg made the point in a comment that doing an aggregate query like “Total Sales By Customer” is going to be inefficient if you use event sourcing but not CQRS. I don’t understand why that would be the case. I imagine in that case you’d simply have a method/property on the Customer object that calculated total sales for that customer by enumerating over the Orders collection. Then the application services layer would generate DTO’s off of the Customers collection that included say the CustomerID, CustomerName, TotalSales, or whatever the case may be. As long as you use a snapshotting implementation, I don’t see why that would be anymore inefficient in a DDD+Event Sourcing implementation than in a typical DDD implementation. Like I mentioned in my last post I still have some questions about query logic that haven’t been answered yet, but before I start asking those I want to make sure I have a strong grasp on what benefits CQRS provides.  My main concern with the query logic was that I know I could just toss it all into the query side, but I was concerned that I would be losing the benefits of using CQRS in the first place if I did that.  I want to elaborate more on this though with some example situations in an upcoming post.

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• TFS 2010 Server Name Change

  - by PearlFactory

  So I thought I would  change the name of my machine so that the other devs can find the TFS server easily. TFS 2005 would use the cool cmd line util tfsadminutil.....alas he is now gone HERE Are the steps to complete Edit the web.config and is usually located on default install C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config <add key="applicationDatabase" value="Data Source=JUSTIN\SQLI01;Initial Catalog=Tfs_Configuration;Integrated Security=True;" /> Next step is to edit previous Solutions/Projects 1) Open the Solution file i.e ProductApp.sln 2) Edit the SccTeamFoundationServer URL under Global section i.e Change this to new name   If you have DB server on same machine ...you will need to go in and remove existing db user account assigned to the tfs DB Remove old [%machine_name%] value i.e Tuned_Dev_PC_12\Justin user from the above DBs No add the new Justin\Justin user account associated with the new machine name to the TFS & Reporing dbs ... dbo or the TFSADMIN & TFSEXEC roles either will do in this case. (or add both ) Now either ReApply user or add New account (remove old account i.e Tuned_Dev_PC_12\justin) If DB permisions are setup correctyly you will get a screen that looks like this   If it pauses or gets stuck you need to look back at the adding correct DB Perms to the i.e JUSTIN\Justin user account Also if your project is still complaining about old TFS name 1) Team\Connect new Team Foundation Server 2) Add\Remove TFS 3) Add New TFS Name  Once you have connected to the new TFS server Reload your project from TFS..this way it removes a lot of the bugs that hang around in the local project\solution This is similar to a VSS2005 and older fix Cheers ( eta about 60-90 mins so weigh up the the need vs payoff. ) Shutdown restart

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• Designing for the future

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  User interfaces and user experience design is a fast moving field. It’s something that changes pretty quick: what feels fresh today will look outdated tomorrow. I remember the day I first got a beta version of Windows 95 and I felt swept away by the user interface of the OS. It felt so modern! If I look back now, it feels old. Well, it should: the design is 17 years old which is an eternity in our field. Of course, this is not limited to UI. Same goes for many industries. I want you to think back of the cars that amazed you when you were in your teens (if you are in your teens then this may not apply to you). Didn’t they feel like part of the future? Didn’t you think that this was the ultimate in designs? And aren’t those designs hopelessly outdated today (again, depending on your age, it may just be me)? Let’s review the Win95 design: And let’s compare that to Windows 7: There are so many differences here, I wouldn’t even know where to start explaining them. The general feeling however is one of more usability: studies have shown Windows 7 is much easier to understand for new users than the older versions of Windows did. Of course, experienced Windows users didn’t like it: people are usually afraid of changes and like to stick to what they know. But for new users this was a huge improvement. And that is what UX design is all about: make a product easier to use, with less training required and make users feel more productive. Still, there are areas where this doesn’t hold up. There are plenty examples of designs from the past that are still fresh today. But if you look closely at them, you’ll notice some subtle differences. This differences are what keep the designs fresh. A good example is the signs you’ll find on the road. They haven’t changed much over the years (otherwise people wouldn’t recognize them anymore) but they have been changing gradually to reflect changes in traffic. The same goes for computer interfaces. With each new product or version of a product, the UI and UX is changed gradually. Every now and then however, a bigger change is needed. Just think about the introduction of the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007: the whole UI was redesigned. A lot of old users (not in age, but in times of using older versions) didn’t like it a bit, but new users or casual users seem to be more efficient using the product. Which, of course, is exactly the reason behind the changes. I believe that a big engine behind the changes in User Experience design has been the web. In the old days (i.e. before the explosion of the internet) user interface design in Windows applications was limited to choosing the margins between your battleship gray buttons. When the web came along, and especially the web 2.0 where the browsers started to act more and more as application platforms, designers stepped in and made a huge impact. In the browser, they could do whatever they wanted. In the beginning this was limited to the darn blink tag but gradually people really started to think about UX. Even more so: the design of the UI and the whole experience was taken away from the developers and put into the hands of people who knew what they were doing: UX designers. This caused some problems. Everyone who has done a web project in the early 2000’s must have had the same experience: the designers give you a set of Photoshop files and tell you to translate it to HTML. Which, of course, is very hard to do. However, with new tooling and new standards this became much easier. The latest version of HTML and CSS has taken the responsibility for the design away from the developers and placed them in the capable hands of the designers. And that’s where that responsibility belongs, after all, I don’t want a designer to muck around in my c# code just as much as he or she doesn’t want me to poke in the sites style definitions. This change in responsibilities resulted in good looking but more important: better thought out user interfaces in websites. And when websites became more and more interactive, people started to expect the same sort of look and feel from their desktop applications. But that didn’t really happen. Most business applications still have that battleship gray look and feel. Ok, they may use a different color but we’re not talking colors here but usability. Now, you may not be able to read the Dutch captions, but even if you did you wouldn’t understand what was going on. At least, not when you first see it. You have to scan the screen, read all the labels, see how they are related to the other elements on the screen and then figure out what they do. If you’re an experienced user of this application however, this might be a good thing: you know what to do and you get all the information you need in one single screen. But for most applications this isn’t the case. A lot of people only use their computer for a limited time a day (a weird concept for me, but it happens) and need it to get something done and then get on with their lives. For them, a user interface experience like the above isn’t working. (disclaimer: I just picked a screenshot, I am not saying this is bad software but it is an example of about 95% of the Windows applications out there). For the knowledge worker, this isn’t a problem. They use one or two systems and they know exactly what they need to do to achieve their goal. They don’t want any clutter on their screen that distracts them from their task, they just want to be as efficient as possible. When they know the systems they are very productive. The point is, how long does it take to become productive? And: could they be even more productive if the UX was better? Are there things missing that they don’t know about? Are there better ways to achieve what they want to achieve? Also: could a system be designed in such a way that it is not only much more easy to work with but also less tiring? in the example above you need to switch between the keyboard and mouse a lot, something that we now know can be very tiring. The goal of most applications (being client apps or websites on any kind of device) is to provide information. Information is data that when given to the right people, on the right time, in the right place and when it is correct adds value for that person (please, remember that definition: I still hear the statement “the information was wrong” which doesn’t make sense: data can be wrong, information cannot be). So if a system provides data, how can we make sure the chances of becoming information is as high as possible? A good example of a well thought-out system that attempts this is the Zune client. It is a very good application, and I think the UX is much better than it’s main competitor iTunes. Have a look at both: On the left you see the iTunes screenshot, on the right the Zune. As you notice, the Zune screen has more images but less chrome (chrome being visuals not part of the data you want to show, i.e. edges around buttons). The whole thing is text oriented or image oriented, where that text or image is part of the information you need. What is important is big, what’s less important is smaller. Yet, everything you need to know at that point is present and your attention is drawn immediately to what you’re trying to achieve: information about music. You can easily switch between the content on your machine and content on your Zune player but clicking on the image of the player. But if you didn’t know that, you’d find out soon enough: the whole UX is designed in such a way that it invites you to play around. So sooner or later (probably sooner) you’d click on that image and you would see what it does. In the iTunes version it’s harder to find: the discoverability is a lot lower. For inexperienced people the Zune player feels much more natural than the iTunes player, and they get up to speed a lot faster. How does this all work? Why is this UX better? The answer lies in a project from Microsoft with the codename (it seems to be becoming the official name though) “Metro”. Metro is a design language, based on certain principles. When they thought about UX they took a good long look around them and went out in search of metaphors. And they found them. The team noticed that signage in streets, airports, roads, buildings and so on are usually very clear and very precise. These signs give you the information you need and nothing more. It’s simple, clearly understood and fast to understand. A good example are airport signs. Airports can be intimidating places, especially for the non-experienced traveler. In the early 1990’s Amsterdam Airport Schiphol decided to redesign all the signage to make the traveller feel less disoriented. They developed a set of guidelines for signs and implemented those. Soon, most airports around the world adopted these ideas and you see variations of the Dutch signs everywhere on the globe. The signs are text-oriented. Yes, there are icons explaining what it all means for the people who can’t read or don’t understand the language, but the basic sign language is text. It’s clear, it’s high-contrast and it’s easy to understand. One look at the sign and you know where to go. The only thing I don’t like is the green sign pointing to the emergency exit, but since this is the default style for emergency exits I understand why they did this. If you look at the Zune UI again, you’ll notice the similarities. Text oriented, little or no icons, clear usage of fonts and all the information you need. This design language has a set of principles: Clean, light, open and fast Content, not chrome Soulful and alive These are just a couple of the principles, you can read the whole philosophy behind Metro for Windows Phone 7 here. These ideas seem to work. I love my Windows Phone 7. It’s easy to use, it’s clear, there’s no clutter that I do not need. It works for me. And I noticed it works for a lot of other people as well, especially people who aren’t as proficient with computers as I am. You see these ideas in a lot other places. Corning, a manufacturer of glass, has made a video of possible usages of their products. It’s their glimpse into the future. You’ll notice that a lot of the UI in the screens look a lot like what Microsoft is doing with Metro (not coincidentally Corning is the supplier for the Gorilla glass display surface on the new SUR40 device (or Surface v2.0 as a lot of people call it)). The idea behind this vision is that data should be available everywhere where you it. Systems should be available at all times and data is presented in a clear and light manner so that you can turn that data into information. You don’t need a lot of fancy animations that only distract from the data. You want the data and you want it fast. Have a look at this truly inspiring video that made: This is what I believe the future will look like. Of course, not everything is possible, or even desirable. But it is a nice way to think about the future . I feel very strongly about designing applications in such a way that they add value to the user. Designing applications that turn data into information. Applications that make the user feel happy to use them. So… when are you going to drop the battleship-gray designs? Tags van Technorati: surface,design,windows phone 7,wp7,metro

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

  - by Shaun

  With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   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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• F# and ArcObjects

  - by Marko Apfel

  After having a first look on F# its time to ask: Who could i use F# with ArcObjects. So my first steps was to do something with a feature in a F# interactive session. And these are my first code lines: open ESRI.ArcGIS.esriSystem;;open ESRI.ArcGIS.DataSourcesGDB;;open ESRI.ArcGIS.Geodatabase;;let aoInitialize = new AoInitializeClass();;let status = aoInitialize.Initialize(esriLicenseProductCode.esriLicenseProductCodeArcEditor);;let workspacefactory = new SdeWorkspaceFactoryClass();;// Spatial Database Connection, property "Service": sde:sqlserver:okullet connection = "user=sfg;password=gfs;server=OKUL;database=Praxair;version=SDE.DEFAULT";;let workspace = workspacefactory.OpenFromString(connection, 0);;let featureWorkspace = (box workspace) :?> IFeatureWorkspace;;let featureClass = featureWorkspace.OpenFeatureClass("Praxair.SFG.BP_L_ROHR");;let feature = featureClass.GetFeature(100);;printfn "%A" feature.OID;;

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• After restoring a SQL Server database from another server - get login fails

  - by Renso

  Issue: After you have restored a sql server database from another server, lets say from production to a Q/A environment, you get the "Login Fails" message for your service account. Reason: User logon information is stored in the syslogins table in the master database. By changing servers, or by altering this information by rebuilding or restoring an old version of the master database, the information may be different from when the user database dump was created. If logons do not exist for the users, they will receive an error indicating "Login failed" while attempting to log on to the server. If the user logons do exist, but the SUID values (for 6.x) or SID values (for 7.0) in master..syslogins and the sysusers table in the user database differ, the users may have different permissions than expected in the user database. Solution: Links a user entry in the sys.database_principals system catalog view in the current database to a SQL Server login of the same name. If a login with the same name does not exist, one will be created. Examine the result from the Auto_Fix statement to confirm that the correct link is in fact made. Avoid using Auto_Fix in security-sensitive situations. When you use Auto_Fix, you must specify user and password if the login does not already exist, otherwise you must specify user but password will be ignored. login must be NULL. user must be a valid user in the current database. The login cannot have another user mapped to it. execute the following stored procedure, in this example the login user name is "MyUser" exec sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'MyUser'   NOTE: sp_change_users_login cannot be used with a SQL Server login created from a Windows principal or with a user created by using CREATE USER WITHOUT LOGIN.

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• Platform Builder: Removing the Version Information from the Desktop

  - by Bruce Eitman

  The question of how to remove the version information from the desktop has been around for a long time. It came up again today. The question is about the string displayed on the desktop that looks like one of these, depending on the OS verison: Windows Embedded CE v6.00 (Build xxxx on xxxx) Microsoft Windows CE v5.00 (Build xxxx on xxxx) Microsoft Windows CE .NET v4.20 (Build xxxx on xxxx) I have looked into this in the past, but never really had a definitive answer. I have an answer now. The short answer is that the version information is displayed if the code is built without SHIP_BUILD defined.  I have to be honest, I have given this answer in the newsgroups in the past, but I still had questions. My questions have come from different build machines giving different results.   I have noticed that some engineer’s workstations would have the version information displayed, while others did not. I always stopped short of spending time investigating further because our release build machines never resulted in the version information being displayed. But, we do not typically define SHIP_BUILD for our releases because our customers want or need the debug output. So today I dug further into the question. The answer is actually quite simple. Microsoft builds the retail shell libraries with SHIP_BUILD defined and releases the libraries with Platform Builder. Normally the source code does not need to be built during Sysgen, so the libraries that Microsoft delivered are linked to create the Explorer shell. So typically the Explorer shell displays the version information for debug builds, but does not for retail builds. The trouble comes when the source code is forced to be rebuilt for a retail build. This might happen if an engineer uses “Build and Sysgen” or builds the Public\Shell folder from the command line with the clean flag. I am not sure if Build and Sysgen will cause the problem or not – I have never used Build and Sysgen and I strongly advise against using it (see Platform Builder: Don’t use Build and Sysgen) Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• MSCRM Tax default to Zero

  - by MarkPearl

  I have been playing around with MSCRM4 lately. It has been interesting going. I had a problem getting the tax to reflect correctly, it was defaulting at zero. Eventually I found a solution after scouring the web for a while... see steps below…                 Add the following code to OnSave and OnLoad events of quotedetails form with (crmForm.all) { try { var dTax = (baseamount.DataValue - manualdiscountamount.DataValue) *15.5 /100;         tax.DataValue = dTax;         extendedamount.DataValue = baseamount.DataValue - manualdiscountamount.DataValue + tax.DataValue ; } catch(e) {         alert(e.message); } } // with Don’t forget to publish your changes once you are done and to test.

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