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  • handling activity destruction in multithreaded android app

    - by Jayesh
    Hi, I have a multithreded app where background threads are used to load data over network or from disk/db. Every once in a while user will perform some action e.g. fetch news over network, which will spawn a background AsyncTask, but for some reason user will quit the app (press back button so that activity gets destroyed). In most such scenarios, I make appropriate checks in the background thread after it returns from n/w i/o, so that it won't crash by accessing members of the activity that is destroyed by now. However some corner cases are left where crashes happen, because the background thread would access some member of activity that is now null. Do other Android developers have some generic/recommended framework to handle such scenarios? These are the times when I wish android would have guaranteed termination of all threads when activity destroys (in the same way that regular linux process cleans up when it's quit)... but I guess Android devs had good reasons for not exposing process lifetimes through the api.

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  • Unit testing huge applications - Proven methodologies?

    - by NLV
    Hello members I've been working in windows forms applications and ASP.Net applications for the past 10 months. I've always wondered how to perform proper unit testing on the complete application in a robust manner covering all the scenarios. I've the following questions regarding them - What are the standard mechanisms in performing unit testing and writing test cases? Does the methodologies change based on the application nature such as Windows Forms, Web applications etc? What is the best approach to make sure we cover all the scenarios? Any popular books on this? Popular tools for performing unit testing?

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  • Focus stealing is evil.

    - by lunixbochs
    A quick Google search for solutions to Focus Stealing in Windows reveals two main result categories: People suggesting incomplete solutions involving the ForegroundLockTimeout registry entry (or TweakUI, which I believe simply changes the aforementioned registry entry), which isn't very effective. Incessant hordes of Windows users complaining about it. It's particularly annoying in two common scenarios: Something triggers a program to popup a dialog window in the background while a fullscreen app is focused, causing the fullscreen app to minimize. A window steals focus while you are typing, stealing all of your keystrokes. If you happen to press Space, Enter, or trigger a keyboard shortcut (like Y for Yes), it can cause completely undesirable outcomes. What creative solutions can be applied to fix this problem for either or both of these scenarios?

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  • Castle Windsor Weak Typed Factory

    - by JeffN825
    In a very very limited number of scenarios, I need to go from an unknown Type (at compile time) to an instance of the object registered for that type. For the most part, I use typed factories and I know the type I want to resolve at compile time...so I inject a Func<IMyType> into a constructor ...but in these limited number of scenarios, in order to avoid a direct call to the container (and thus having to reference Windsor from the library, which is an anti-pattern I'd like to avoid), I need to inject a Func<Type,object>...which I want to internally container.Resolve(type) for the Type parameter of the Func. Does anyone have some suggestions on the easiest/most straightforward way of setting this up? I tried the following, but with this setup, I end up bypassing the regular TypedFactoryFacility altogether which is definitely not what I want: Kernel.Register(Component.For(typeof (Func<Type, object>)).LifeStyle.Singleton.UsingFactoryMethod( (kernel, componentModel, creationContext) => kernel.Resolve(/* not sure what to put here... */))); Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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  • How exactly can Python compliment your C# skills for windows based development?

    - by JL
    I'm looking for a fun challenge, and am thinking about learning Python. I've heard really good things about the language. My question is, how (if at all) can Python compliment the skills of a typical C# developer working mainly with MS technologies on a Windows Platform. Some examples of typical C# dev on windows would be (SOA applications, web applications, windows services, automation, xml handling) Surely there must be some scenarios where knowing Python would help you get certain tasks done quicker or more efficiently than using traditional C# / MS technologies. If you know of any specific scenarios, then please share. And lastly should this question be a community wiki?

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  • Using a service registry that doesn’t suck part I: UDDI is dead

    - by gsusx
    This is the first of a series of posts on which I am hoping to detail some of the most common SOA governance scenarios in the real world, their challenges and the approach we’ve taken to address them in SO-Aware. This series does not intend to be a marketing pitch about SO-Aware. Instead, I would like to use this to foment an honest dialog between SOA governance technologists. For the starting post I decided to focus on the aspect that was once considered the keystone of SOA governance: service discovery...(read more)

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  • AppFabric Caching Feedback

    - by Michael Stephenson
    We are running a survey to collect feedback around scenarios where people were experimenting with velocity on windows 2003 in the CTP but are now in a position where the beta requires windows 2008. We would like to understand how important this scenario is precieved to be. If you are in the Connected Systems Community and would like to provide feedback please complete the following survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N3VKZWN

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  • SQL SERVER – Introduction to Adaptive ETL Tool – How adaptive is your ETL?

    - by pinaldave
    I am often reminded by the fact that BI/data warehousing infrastructure is very brittle and not very adaptive to change. There are lots of basic use cases where data needs to be frequently loaded into SQL Server or another database. What I have found is that as long as the sources and targets stay the same, SSIS or any other ETL tool for that matter does a pretty good job handling these types of scenarios. But what happens when you are faced with more challenging scenarios, where the data formats and possibly the data types of the source data are changing from customer to customer?  Let’s examine a real life situation where a health management company receives claims data from their customers in various source formats. Even though this company supplied all their customers with the same claims forms, they ended up building one-off ETL applications to process the claims for each customer. Why, you ask? Well, it turned out that the claims data from various regional hospitals they needed to process had slightly different data formats, e.g. “integer” versus “string” data field definitions.  Moreover the data itself was represented with slight nuances, e.g. “0001124” or “1124” or “0000001124” to represent a particular account number, which forced them, as I eluded above, to build new ETL processes for each customer in order to overcome the inconsistencies in the various claims forms.  As a result, they experienced a lot of redundancy in these ETL processes and recognized quickly that their system would become more difficult to maintain over time. So imagine for a moment that you could use an ETL tool that helps you abstract the data formats so that your ETL transformation process becomes more reusable. Imagine that one claims form represents a data item as a string – acc_no(varchar) – while a second claims form represents the same data item as an integer – account_no(integer). This would break your traditional ETL process as the data mappings are hard-wired.  But in a world of abstracted definitions, all you need to do is create parallel data mappings to a common data representation used within your ETL application; that is, map both external data fields to a common attribute whose name and type remain unchanged within the application. acc_no(varchar) is mapped to account_number(integer) expressor Studio first claim form schema mapping account_no(integer) is also mapped to account_number(integer) expressor Studio second claim form schema mapping All the data processing logic that follows manipulates the data as an integer value named account_number. Well, these are the kind of problems that that the expressor data integration solution automates for you.  I’ve been following them since last year and encourage you to check them out by downloading their free expressor Studio ETL software. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: ETL, SSIS

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  • ActAs and OnBehalfOf support in WIF

    - by cibrax
    I discussed a time ago how WIF supported a new WS-Trust 1.4 element, “ActAs”, and how that element could be used for authentication delegation.  The thing is that there is another feature in WS-Trust 1.4 that also becomes handy for this kind of scenario, and I did not mention in that last post, “OnBehalfOf”. Shiung Yong wrote an excellent summary about the difference of these two new features in this forum thread. He basically commented the following, “An ActAs RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims about two distinct entities: the requestor, and an external entity represented by the token in the ActAs element. An OnBehalfOf RST element indicates that the requestor wants a token that contains claims only about one entity: the external entity represented by the token in the OnBehalfOf element. In short, ActAs feature is typically used in scenarios that require composite delegation, where the final recipient of the issued token can inspect the entire delegation chain and see not just the client, but all intermediaries to perform access control, auditing and other related activities based on the whole identity delegation chain. The ActAs feature is commonly used in multi-tiered systems to authenticate and pass information about identities between the tiers without having to pass this information at the application/business logic layer. OnBehalfOf feature is used in scenarios where only the identity of the original client is important and is effectively the same as identity impersonation feature available in the Windows OS today. When the OnBehalfOf is used the final recipient of the issued token can only see claims about the original client, and the information about intermediaries is not preserved. One common pattern where OnBehalfOf feature is used is the proxy pattern where the client cannot access the STS directly but is instead communicating through a proxy gateway. The proxy gateway authenticates the caller and puts information about him into the OnBehalfOf element of the RST message that it then sends to the real STS for processing. The resulting token is going to contain only claims related to the client of the proxy, making the proxy completely transparent and not visible to the receiver of the issued token.” Going back to WIF, “ActAs” and “OnBehalfOf” are both supported as extensions methods in the WCF client channel. public static class ChannelFactoryOperations {   public static T CreateChannelActingAs<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken actAs);     public static T CreateChannelOnBehalfOf<T>(this ChannelFactory<T> factory,     SecurityToken onBehalfOf); } Both methods receive the security token with the identity of the original caller.

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  • links for 2010-03-23

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Edward Clay: 10 Best Practices for a Successful Customer Solution Engagement Edward Clay based this new Oracle white paper on information from ITIL, ISO, and other IT models and methodologies, and on his 17+ years in the IT industry. (tags: entarch oracle otn solutionarchitect itil iso) John Brunswick: ?Portal Content Personalization John Brunswick's very thorough post covers terminology and concepts, example scenarios and technical implementation strategies to showcase how content personalization can be achieved within a portal from a technical and strategic standpoint. (tags: otn oracle enterprise2.0 contentmanagement portal)

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  • A small, intra-app Object to String Serializer

    - by Rick Strahl
    On a few occasions I've needed a very compact serializer for small and simple, flat object serialization, typically for storage in Cookies or a FormsAuthentication ticket in ASP.NET. XML and JSON serialization are too verbose for those scenarios so a simple property serializer that strings together the values was needed. Originally I did this by hand, but here is a class that automates the process.

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  • SAP va étendre le champ d'application de sa technologie « In-Memory » et réduire la complexité des environnements IT

    SAP va étendre le champ d'application de sa technologie « In-Memory » Et réduire la complexité des environnements IT Le « In-Memory » consiste à mettre en cache les données traitées par les applications plutôt que, par exemple, de faire des appels à un serveur. Chez SAP, la technologie est baptisée HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance). Elle peut, d'après les benchmarks de l'éditeur Allemand, aller jusqu'à diviser par 1200 le temps de traitement de certains scénarios. SAP a intégré HANA à la dernière version de

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  • Integrating BizTalk Server and StreamInsight paper

    - by gsusx
    With all the holidays madness I didn't realized that my "Integrating BizTalk Server and StreamInsight" paper is now available on MSDN . This paper was originally an idea of the BizTalk product team and intends to present some fundamental scenarios that can be enabled by the combination of BizTalk Server and StreamInsight. Thanks to everybody who, directly or indirectly, provided feedback about this paper: Syed Rasheed, Mark Simms , Richard Seroter , Roman Schindlauer and Torsten Grabs from the StreamInsight...(read more)

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  • SBUG Session: The Enterprise Cache

    - by EltonStoneman
    [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] I did a session on "The Enterprise Cache" at the UK SOA/BPM User Group yesterday which generated some useful discussion. The proposal was for a dedicated caching layer which all app servers and service providers can hook into, sharing resources and common data. The architecture might end up like this: I'll update this post with a link to the slide deck once it's available. The next session will have Udi Dahan walking through nServiceBus, register on EventBrite if you want to come along. Synopsis Looked at the benefits and drawbacks of app-centric isolated caches, compared to an enterprise-wide shared cache running on dedicated nodes; Suggested issues and risks around caching including staleness of data, resource usage, performance and testing; Walked through a generic service cache implemented as a WCF behaviour – suitable for IIS- or BizTalk-hosted services - which I'll be releasing on CodePlex shortly; Listed common options for cache providers and their offerings. Discussion Cache usage. Different value propositions for utilising the cache: improved performance, isolation from underlying systems (e.g. service output caching can have a TTL large enough to cover downtime), reduced resource impact – CPU, memory, SQL and cost (e.g. caching results of paid-for services). Dedicated cache nodes. Preferred over in-host caching provided latency is acceptable. Depending on cache provider, can offer easy scalability and global replication so cache clients always use local nodes. Restriction of AppFabric Caching to Windows Server 2008 not viewed as a concern. Security. Limited security model in most cache providers. Options for securing cache content suggested as custom implementations. Obfuscating keys and serialized values may mean additional security is not needed. Depending on security requirements and architecture, can ensure cache servers only accessible to cache clients via IPsec. Staleness. Generally thought to be an overrated problem. Thinking in line with eventual consistency, that serving up stale data may not be a significant issue. Good technical arguments support this, although I suspect business users will be harder to persuade. Providers. Positive feedback for AppFabric Caching – speed, configurability and richness of the distributed model making it a good enterprise choice. .NET port of memcached well thought of for performance but lack of replication makes it less suitable for these shared scenarios. Replicated fork – repcached – untried and less active than memcached. NCache also well thought of, but Express version too limited for enterprise scenarios, and commercial versions look costly compared to AppFabric.

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  • WCF and Service Registry

    - by TK Lee
    I am about to build some WCF Services. Those services need to communicate to each others too, in some scenarios. I've done some "Google-ing" about Service Registry but can't figure out how to implement service registry with WCF; is there any other alternate? Is there any Microsoft technology available for Service Registry? I'm new to SOA and I will really appreciate any help or guidance (what and where should I exactly look for registry services).

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  • SharePoint 2010 Workflow for Multiple Items (Architecture)

    - by erobillard
    I had the question today of whether SharePoint 2010 supports workflow on multiple items, since Groove's workflow apparently supported multiple items and that model disappeared when Groove Workspaces were amalgamated into SharePoint Sites and SharePoint Workspace (the client utility). It's a great question, the short answer is that yes, it's possible. You could brute-force it in 2007 and that strategy should still carry over to 2010, and 3 new features (that I can think of) support multi-item scenarios...(read more)

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  • New Pluralsight Course: HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals

    - by dwahlin
      I just finished up a new course for Pluralsight titled HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals that I had a blast putting together. It’s all about the client and involves a lot of pixel manipulation and graphics creation which is challenging and fun at the same time. The goal of the course is to walk you through the fundamentals, start a gradual jog into the API functions, and then start sprinting as you learn how to build a business chart canvas application from scratch that uses many of the available APIs . It’s fun stuff and very useful in a variety of scenarios including Web (desktop or mobile) and even Windows 8 Metro applications. Here’s a sample video from the course that talks about building a simple bar chart using the HTML5 Canvas:   Additional details about the course are shown next.   HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals The HTML5 Canvas provides a powerful way to render graphics, charts, and other types of visual data without relying on plugins such as Flash or Silverlight. In this course you’ll be introduced to key features available in the canvas API and see how they can be used to render shapes, text, video, images, and more. You’ll also learn how to work with gradients, perform animations, transform shapes, and build a custom charting application from scratch. If you’re looking to learn more about using the HTML5 Canvas in your Web applications then this course will break down the learning curve and give you a great start!    Getting Started with the HTML5 Canvas Introduction HTML5 Canvas Usage Scenarios Demo: Game Demos Demo: Engaging Applications Demo: Charting HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals Hello World Demo Overview of the Canvas API Demo: Canvas API Documentation Summary    Drawing with the HTML5 Canvas Introduction Drawing Rectangles and Ellipses Demo: Simple Bar Chart Demo: Simple Bar Chart with Transforms Demo: Drawing Circles Demo: Using arcTo() Drawing Lines and Paths Demo: Drawing Lines Demo: Simple Line Chart Demo: Using bezierCurveTo() Demo: Using quadraticCurveTo() Drawing Text Demo: Filling, Stroking, and Measuring Text Demo: Using Canvas Transforms with Text Drawing Images Demo: Using Image Functions Drawing Videos Demo: Syncing Video with a Canvas Summary    Manipulating Pixels  Introduction Rendering Gradients Demo: Creating Linear Gradients Demo: Creating Radial Gradients Using Transforms Demo: Getting Started with Transform Functions Demo: Using transform() and and setTransform() Accessing Pixels Demo: Creating Pixels Dynamically Demo: Grayscale Pixels Animation Fundamentals Demo: Getting Started with Animation Demo: Using Gradients, Transforms, and Animations Summary    Building a Custom Data Chart Introduction Creating the CanvasChart Object Creating the CanvasChart Shell Code Rendering Text and Gradients Rendering Data Points Text and Guide Lines Connecting Data Point Lines Rendering Data Points Adding Animation Adding Overlays and Interactivity Summary     Related Courses:  

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  • Stuck with A* implementation

    - by Syed
    I have implemented some A* code in C# using this JavaScript code. My C# implementation is the same as the above javascript code. But I'm unable to get it to work properly, e.g pathfinder blocks itself when the same number of walls are placed in front of it and some other scenarios as well like blocking it one way completely, I am assuming that code is standalone (not having other functionality included in other scripts). Can anyone tell me if the above code is missing any A star functionality?

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  • TFS and Project Integration

    - by Enrique Lima
    Recently there have been more and more requests on how to have TFS 2010 and Project 2010 together. Most of the requests have been around working with Agile and Scrum projects and templates. There are some guidance documents that have become available and also labs and Virtual Machine configurations to work with the different scenarios. TechNet Virtual Lab: Microsoft Enterprise Project Management - Project and Portfolio Management with Project 2010 Announcing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack Beta http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum

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  • Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

    - by Rick Strahl
    originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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