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  • Latest evoluations in web content display

    - by srinannapa
    I Would like to know about the latest techiniques ,how the content is managed in web-pages ( I use Java technology). Probably i'm expecting like an RSS feed ,is one among them i can implement in my webpages. I need some more latest technologies of this kind to implement in web pages. Srinivas

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  • Map external directory to web.xml

    - by prometheus
    Is there an easy way to map a directory in the web.xml or other deployment descriptor (jetty.xml, etc) files? For example, if I have a directory /opt/files/ is there a way that I can access its files and sub-directories by visiting http://localhost/some-mapping/? It strikes me that there should be some simple way of doing this, but I haven't been able to find out how (via google, stackoverflow, etc). All I've found are servlets that mimic fileservers, which is not what I would like. For reference I am using jetty on an AIX box.

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  • Inexpensive CDN with Origin/Pull services?

    - by ChanceH
    Does anyone know of an inexpensive CDN which offers origin/pull services? I've looked into Cachefly, they look great but don't provide this service for less than $1k unfornuately. If you know of an inexpensive CDN which provides these services and are reliable, that would be great.

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  • WCF/ADO.NET Data Services - Could not load type 'System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdatePr

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When you try accessing ListData.svc, do you get the following error? Could not load type 'System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdateProvider' from assembly 'System.Data.Services, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'. Well, if you followed the instructions in Chapter 1 of my book to build your VM, you wouldn’t run into the above issue. But if you do, you need to install  -   For Windows Vista and Windows 2008 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4B710B89-8576-46CF-A4BF-331A9306D555&displaylang=en For Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=79d7f6f8-d6e9-4b8c-8640-17f89452148e&displaylang=en Remember to: a) Install the x64 version, and b) Do an IISReset before trying again. Comment on the article ....

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  • How one does qualify as a Web UI Developer?

    - by Duralumin
    I have about 20 years of experience with programming, most of that on the job, and right now, I define myself as a Web Developer, because I think about half my expertise lies in the all too extended "web" field, both server side and client side, and because in the last years I'm mostly doing web development. I know my javascript, jQuery, jQueryUI, HTML4-5, css2-3 and some frameworks like backbone.js and angularJS Since university I've always been interested in Man-Machine Interaction, UI and UX. Recently, I saw the label "Web UI Developer" tossed around, and I thought that would be something I would like to qualify for. And I'd really like to qualify with confidence. I didn't find any certificate or similar, and I don't think there are any. Is the only way to qualify as a Web UI Developer having a job as one? What are the skills I need to have, and the resources I can use to acquire them?

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  • Web publishing system with code highlighting

    - by Dragos Toader
    I'd like to publish some of the many programs I've written on the web. Is there a syntax highlighting Linux web publishing application (CMS/Blog/RoR app) that displays syntax for C++, Python, Bash scripts, SQL, VBA, awk, Erlang, java, makefiles, Ruby, Pascal and other languages? The more syntax settings configuration files, the better. The extensions I have in Textpad (for which I have syntax highlighting -- syn files) are .as, .asm, .asp, .awk, .bas, .bat, .c, .conf, .cpp, .cs, .ctl, .dfm, .dsc, .erl, .fnc, .h, .hpp, .inf, .ini, .jav, .java, .mak, .nsh, .nsi, .ora, .pas, .pkb, .pks, .pl, .prc, .py, .reg, .rsp, .sh, .sql, .syn, .tcl, .trg, .vw, .xml, .xsl, .xslfo

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  • Ajax, Lizard Brain Web Design, JSF, Struts, JavaScript, Mobile Web, Flash, jQuery, GWT, Harmony at I

    - by Kim Won
    Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 – India's Biggest Polyglot Conference and Workshops for IT Software Professionals Bangalore, April 9, 2010: The GIDS.Web Conference and Workshops has announced the complete program of over 30 sessions on how browser and rich web technologies such as AJAX, DHTML, Mashups, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and Rich UI technologies are making money and gaining market-share for some of the leading businesses in the world. The GIDS.Web track at Great Indian Developer Summit takes place 21 and 23 April 2010, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.Web at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. During 21 and 23 April 2010, GIDS.Web offers a multi-track conference, workshops, expo show floor, and networking opportunities. The first keynote at GIDS.Web is led by the leading Java EE and Ajax developer, speaker, and author Marty Hall. The best of India's Java and RIA programmers have learnt the subject from Marty's seminal books Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (first and second editions), More Servlets and JavaServer Pages, and Core Web Programming (first and second editions) from Prentice Hall and Sun Microsystems Press. Marty's keynote address is a comparison of approaches to building rich Internet applications with Ajax. Marty says Ajax development is difficult, and there are several fundamentally different strategies to building Ajaxified Web applications. The keynote address will survey the three most important of these approaches: using an Ajax-enabled JavaScript library such as jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Dojo, or Ext/JS; using a Web framework such as JSF 2.0 or Struts 2 that has integrated Ajax support; using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build "pure Java" Ajax applications. The talk will compare and contrast these three approaches, discussing the types of applications that fit best for each option. Over the course of the summit Marty will conduct several more sessions on "Choosing an Ajax/JavaScript Toolkit: A Comparison of the Most Popular JavaScript Libraries", "Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0", "Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0" and "Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library". The second keynote by the head of Adobe's Flash initiative in India, Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan, explores the state of art in web application development and identify trends that could transform the way we create and use web applications. The talk explains how the Adobe Flash Platform has fuelled this revolution with an integrated set of technologies for delivering the most compelling applications, content and video to the widest possible audience. The Director of Forum Nokia will explain how cloud computing coupled with mobile applications enable consumers to have access to powerful services and improved user experiences never before thought possible. IEEE's 2010 President-Elect Sorel Reisman's afternoon address steps to improve the IT profession in India. Featured talks at GID.Web also include: Web 2.0 Checklist - Deconstructing Modern Websites, Scott Davis Choosing an Ajax/JavaScript Toolkit: Comparison of Popular JavaScript Libraries, Marty Hall Lizard Brain Web Design, Scott Davis Effective Design Processes and Resources for Mobile Web Development, Arabella David NoSQL: The Shift to a Non-relational World, Nosh Petigara Open Source Web Debugging Tools, Matthew McCullough Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 4.0, Stephen Forte Hadoop - Divide and Conquer, Matthew McCullough Adobe Flash Catalyst for Agile Interaction Design, Harish Sivaramakrishnan Using jQuery and AJAX to Build Front-ends for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC, Pandurang Nayak First Steps to IT Heaven Through the Cloud. Part II: .WEB, Simone Brunozzi Building Rich Internet Applications with SL RIA Web Services, Pandurang Nayak Enriching Cloud Applications with Adobe Flash Platform, Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan Payments for the Web.future, Khurram Khan and Praveen Alavilli Longevity of Scalable Systems, Nishad Kamat Transform yourself into a Mobile App Developer Using Web Run Time, Balagopal K S Developing Multi Screen Applications on Adobe Flash Platform, Hemanth Sharma Why Harmony and For Whom?, Himanshu Goyal IIS Hosting Solution for ASP.net and PHP Web Sites, Nahas Mohammed Building Pluggable Web applications using Django, Lakshman Prasad Workshop: The 180-min AJAX and JSON Spike Class, Scott Davis Workshop: Essence of Functional Programming, Venkat Subramaniam Workshop: Agile Development, Tools, and Teams and Scrum Certification, Stephen Forte Workshop: PHP + Adobe Flex = Killer RIA, Shyamprasad P Workshop: Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine, Matthew McCullough Workshop: Building Data Centric Applications using Adobe Flex and Java, Prashant Singh Workshop: Building Your First Amazon App, Simone Brunozzi Workshop: Windows Azure Deep Dive, Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu Workshop: Monetizing your Apps with PayPal X Payments Platform, Khurram Khan, Praveen Alavilli Workshop: User Expereince Evaluation Model Walkthrough, Sanna Häiväläinen Sponsors of Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 include: Platinum sponsors Microsoft, Oracle Forum Nokia and Adobe; Gold sponsors Intel and SAP; Silver sponsors Quest Software, PayPal, Telerik and AMT. About Great Indian Developer Summit Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore. At GIDS you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world. For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/ A Saltmarch Media Press Release E: [email protected] Ph: +91 80 4005 1000

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  • No specific goal for building web applications but could be in the next few months! so, which web server side language is better for me? [closed]

    - by Goma
    I didn't put a specific goal for building websites and web applications yet, but I will may know where I am going exactly in the next few months. Generally I am looking for good web development language that I don't need to change at least in the next 5 years. I want it to serve me in dfferent categories, for building small websites, medium websites and it could help me in finding a good job or working as a freelancer. Any suggestions?

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  • As a web designer, which language should I learn first for my feature career? (PHP or JavaScript) [closed]

    - by kdevs3
    Possible Duplicates: Best Programming Language for Web Development How can I choose a web development language? What language will you choose if you are going to build something big? What is the right option of programming languages and tools for building our website? What is the easiest web programing language at....? Well, I'm more of a basic web designer. I know the easy stuff pretty well. (Ya know, html, css) But I've been trying to take it to the next step and I'm contemplating about what I should learn that will help me out the most in my future web design/programming career, should it be JavaScript or maybe I should try to learn a back end programming language such as PHP. Lately, I have been hearing about a lot how JavaScript is so great and useful now, because of libraries such as jQuery and what possibility's it can bring by using Node.js and other frameworks. I've only learned the most basic of JavaScript and used some jQuery (mostly plugins) so i wouldn't know at all of what it can actually do. Would JS being so popular as it is now and useful, be a reason to stick with JavaScript and only learn it that for now? Or as a web designer, how important would it be to learn how to make a web application/website operate and functional, and know how to work with servers, etc? (Such as getting forms to work and sending data to the server and back) I've took a look at frameworks such as Code Igniter before, and looks really simple to get started with if I try to learn PHP, But I'm not sure how important it is for my career and what I would gain out of it. I'm asking because I can't decide what I should learn first. When I select it, I really want to take my time and learn the language. I don't want to spend time on learning multiple languages at the same time, so I need to pick wisely. I'm trying to turn the right direction so my career can hopefully be successful in the feature. (If money/gaining a job asked if its important, then its a yeah, it is a bit) I'm hoping I can get opinions and suggestions on this question, thanks for giving me your thoughts also.

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  • Analysis Services Tabular books #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Many people are looking for books about Analysis Services Tabular. Today there are two books available and they complement each other: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling by Teo Lachev The book I wrote with Alberto and Chris is a complete guide to create tabular models and has a good coverage about DAX, including how to use it for enriching a semantic model with calculated columns and measures and how to use it for querying a Tabular model. In my experience, DAX as a query language is a very interesting option for custom analytical applications that requires a fast calculation engine, or simply for standard reports running in Reporting Services and accessing a Tabular model. You can freely preview the table of content and read some excerpts from the book on Safari Books Online. The book is in printing and should be shipped within mid-July, so finally it will be very soon on the shelf of all the people already preordered it! The Teo Lachev’s book, covers the full spectrum of Tabular models provided by Microsoft: starting with self-service BI, you have users creating a model with PowerPivot for Excel, publishing it to PowerPivot for SharePoint and exploring data by using Power View; then, the PowerPivot for Excel model can be imported in a Tabular model and published in Analysis Services, adding more control on the model through row-level security and partitioning, for example. Teo’s book follows a step-by-step approach describing each feature that is very good for a beginner that is new to PowerPivot and/or to BISM Tabular. If you need to get the big picture and to start using the products that are part of the new Microsoft wave of BI products, the Teo’s book is for you. After you read the book from Teo, or if you already have a certain confidence with PowerPivot or BISM Tabular and you want to go deeper about internals, best practices, design patterns in just BISM Tabular, then our book is a suggested read: it contains several chapters about DAX, includes discussions about new opportunities in data model design offered by Tabular models, and also provides examples of optimizations you can obtain in DAX and best practices in data modeling and queries. It might seem strange that an author write a review of a book that might seem to compete with his one, but in reality these two books complement each other and are not alternatives. If you have any doubt, buy both: you will be not disappointed! Moreover, Amazon usually offers you a deal to buy three books, including the Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, another good choice for getting all the details about Power View.

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  • How one decision can turn web services to hell

    - by DigiMortal
    In this posting I will show you how one stupid decision may turn developers life to hell. There is a project where bunch of complex applications exchange data frequently and it is very hard to change something without additional expenses. Well, one analyst thought that string is silver bullet of web services. Read what happened. Bad bad mistake In the early stages of integration project there was analyst who also established architecture and technical design for web services. There was one very bad mistake this analyst made: All data must be converted to strings before exchange! Yes, that’s correct, this was the requirement. All integers, decimals and dates are coming in and going out as strings. There was also explanation for this requirement: This way we can avoid data type conversion errors! Well, this guy works somewhere else already and I hope he works in some burger restaurant – far away from computers. Consequences If you first look at this requirement it may seem like little annoying piece of crap you can easily survive. But let’s see the real consequences one stupid decision can cause: hell load of data conversions are done by receiving applications and SSIS packages, SSIS packages are not error prone and they depend heavily on strings they get from different services, there are more than one format per type that is used in different services, for larger amounts of data all these conversion tasks slow down the work of integration packages, practically all developers have been in hurry with some SSIS import tasks and some fields that are not used in different calculations in SSAS cube are imported without data conversions (by example, some prices are strings in format “1.021 $”). The most painful problem for developers is the part of data conversions because they don’t expect that there is such a stupid requirement stated and therefore they are not able to estimate the time their tasks take on these web services. Also developers must be prepared for cases when suddenly some service sends data that is not in acceptable format and they must solve the problems ASAP. This puts unexpected load on developers and they are not very happy with it because they can’t understand why they have to live with this horror if it is possible to fix. What to do if you see something like this? Well, explain the problem to customer and demand special tasks to project schedule to get this mess solved before going on with new developments. It is cheaper to solve the problems now that later.

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  • What services exist for finding someone specific to then run your own peer to peer software with?

    - by psr
    If you give people peer to peer software (such as a web sockets application if the peer to peer part gets implemented, but could be anything) the first step for some kinds of applications is to find a specific person and try to connect with them. If neither of you has a URI (and knows what it is) you need a third party to handle finding each other and verifying your identities. After that the third party isn't needed because you go peer to peer. I could of course write that third party software and put it up on a website, but then I would have to write that third party software and put it up on a website (or a server that isn't a website if that's how I want to do it). Does anyone offer this service? Ideally as a website and of course ideally free.

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  • Silverlight/.Net RIA Services - Authorization Working Sample!??!

    - by Goober
    Hello! I have followed numerous tutorials and walkthroughs/blogs about the capabilities that Ria Services brings to the table when using Silverlight with ASP.Net. Essentially I am looking for a live working example of the authorization functionality that Ria Services can apparently take hold of from ASP.Net. (Even better if it works with ASP.NET MVC too) Example of failed to work Ria Services authorization implementation Navigate to the live demo link on this page....fails This one may work however I couldn't get it to work on my office computer(strange setup that seems to break code for no reason)

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  • Accessing SQL Data Services via ADO.NET Data Service Client Library

    - by Mehmet Aras
    Is this possible? Basically I would like to use SQL Data Services REST interface and let the ADO.NET Data Service Client library handle communication details and generate the entities that I can use. I looked at the samples in February release of Azure services kit but the samples in there are using HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse to consume SQL Data Services RESTfully. I was hoping to use ADO.NET Data Service Client library to abstract low-level details away.

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  • April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

    - by ScottGu
    Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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  • White Paper on Analysis Services Tabular Large-scale Solution #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Since the first beta of Analysis Services 2012, I worked with many companies designing and implementing solutions based on Analysis Services Tabular. I am glad that Microsoft published a white paper about a case-study using one of these scenarios: An Analysis Services Case Study: Using Tabular Models in a Large-scale Commercial Solution. Alberto Ferrari is the author of the white paper and many people contributed to it. The final result is a very technical document based on a case study, which provides a level of detail that I don’t see often in other case studies (which are usually more marketing-oriented). This white paper has the following structure: Requirements (data model, capacity planning, client tool) Options considered (SQL Server Columnstore Indexes, SSAS Multidimensional, SSAS Tabular) Data Model optimizations (memory compression, query performance, scalability) Partitioning and Processing strategy for near real-time latency Hardware selection (NUMA analysis, Azure VM tests) Scalability tests (estimation of maximum users per node) If you are in charge of evaluating Tabular as analytical engine, or if you have to design your solution based on Tabular, this white paper is a must read. But if you just want to increase your knowledge of Analysis Services, you will find a lot of useful technical information. That said, my favorite quote of the document is the following one, funny but true: […] After several trials, the clear winner was a video gaming machine that one guy on the team used at home. That computer outperformed any available server, running twice as fast as the server-class machines we had in house. At that point, it was clear that the criteria for choosing the server would have to be expanded a bit, simply because it would have been impossible to convince the boss to build a cluster of gaming machines and trust it to serve our customers.  But, honestly, if a business has the flexibility to buy gaming machines (assuming the machines can handle capacity) – do this. Owen Graupman, inContact I want to write a longer discussion about how companies are adopting Tabular in scenarios where it is the hidden engine of a more complex solution (and not the classical “BI system”), because it is more frequent than you might expect (and has several advantages over many alternative approaches).

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  • Cloud MBaaS : The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility

    - by shiju
    In this blog post, I will take a look at Cloud Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) and how we can leverage Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service for building enterprise mobile apps. Today, mobile apps are incredibly significant in both consumer and enterprise space and the demand for the mobile apps is unbelievably increasing in day to day business. An enterprise can’t survive in business without a proper mobility strategy. A better mobility strategy and faster delivery of your mobile apps will give you an extra mileage for your business and IT strategy. So organizations and mobile developers are looking for different strategy for meeting this demand and adopting different development strategy for their mobile apps. Some developers are adopting hybrid mobile app development platforms, for delivering their products for multiple platforms, for fast time-to-market. Others are adopting a Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) such as Kony for their enterprise mobile apps for fast time-to-market and better business integration. The Challenges of Enterprise Mobility The real challenge of enterprise mobile apps, is not about creating the front-end environment or developing front-end for multiple platforms. The most important thing of enterprise mobile apps is to expose your enterprise data to mobile devices where the real pain is your business data might be residing in lot of different systems including legacy systems, ERP systems etc., and these systems will be deployed with lot of security restrictions. Exposing your data from the on-premises servers, is not a easy thing for most of the business organizations. Many organizations are spending too much time for their front-end development strategy, but they are really lacking for building a strategy on their back-end for exposing the business data to mobile apps. So building a REST services layer and mobile back-end services, on the top of legacy systems and existing middleware systems, is the key part of most of the enterprise mobile apps, where multiple mobile platforms can easily consume these REST services and other mobile back-end services for building mobile apps. For some mobile apps, we can’t predict its user base, especially for products where customers can gradually increase at any time. And for today’s mobile apps, faster time-to-market is very critical so that spending too much time for mobile app’s scalability, will not be worth. The real power of Cloud is the agility and on-demand scalability, where we can scale-up and scale-down our applications very easily. It would be great if we could use the power of Cloud to mobile apps. So using Cloud for mobile apps is a natural fit, where we can use Cloud as the storage for mobile apps and hosting mechanism for mobile back-end services, where we can enjoy the full power of Cloud with greater level of on-demand scalability and operational agility. So Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service is great choice for building enterprise mobile apps, where enterprises can enjoy the massive scalability power of their mobile apps, provided by public cloud vendors such as Microsoft Windows Azure. Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) We have discussed the key challenges of enterprise mobile apps and how we can leverage Cloud for hosting mobile backend services. MBaaS is a set of cloud-based, server-side mobile services for multiple mobile platforms and HTML5 platform, which can be used as a backend for your mobile apps with the scalability power of Cloud. The information below provides the key features of a typical MBaaS platform: Cloud based storage for your application data. Automatic REST API services on the application data, for CRUD operations. Native push notification services with massive scalability power. User management services for authenticate users. User authentication via Social accounts such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. Scheduler services for periodically sending data to mobile devices. Native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms such as Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android, Apple iOS, and HTML5, for easily accessing the mobile services from mobile apps, with better security.  Typically, a MBaaS platform will provide native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms so that we can easily consume the server-side mobile services. MBaaS based REST APIs can use for integrating to enterprise backend systems. We can use the same mobile services for multiple platform so hat we can reuse the application logic to multiple mobile platforms. Public cloud vendors are building the mobile services on the top of their PaaS offerings. Windows Azure Mobile Services is a great platform for a MBaaS offering that is leveraging Windows Azure Cloud platform’s PaaS capabilities. Hybrid mobile development platform Titanium provides their own MBaaS services. LoopBack is a new MBaaS service provided by Node.js consulting firm StrongLoop, which can be hosted on multiple cloud platforms and also for on-premises servers. The Challenges of MBaaS Solutions If you are building your mobile apps with a new data storage, it will be very easy, since there is not any integration challenges you have to face. But most of the use cases, you have to extract your application data in which stored in on-premises servers which might be under VPNs and firewalls. So exposing these data to your MBaaS solution with a proper security would be a big challenge. The capability of your MBaaS vendor is very important as you have to interact with your legacy systems for many enterprise mobile apps. So you should be very careful about choosing for MBaaS vendor. At the same time, you should have a proper strategy for mobilizing your application data which stored in on-premises legacy systems, where your solution architecture and strategy is more important than platforms and tools.  Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services is an MBaaS offerings from Windows Azure cloud platform. IMHO, Microsoft Windows Azure is the best PaaS platform in the Cloud space. Windows Azure Mobile Services extends the PaaS capabilities of Windows Azure, to mobile devices, which can be used as a cloud backend for your mobile apps, which will provide global availability and reach for your mobile apps. Windows Azure Mobile Services provides storage services, user management with social network integration, push notification services and scheduler services and provides native SDKs for all major mobile platforms and HTML5. In Windows Azure Mobile Services, you can write server-side scripts in Node.js where you can enjoy the full power of Node.js including the use of NPM modules for your server-side scripts. In the previous section, we had discussed some challenges of MBaaS solutions. You can leverage Windows Azure Cloud platform for solving many challenges regarding with enterprise mobility. The entire Windows Azure platform can play a key role for working as the backend for your mobile apps where you can leverage the entire Windows Azure platform for your mobile apps. With Windows Azure, you can easily connect to your on-premises systems which is a key thing for mobile backend solutions. Another key point is that Windows Azure provides better integration with services like Active Directory, which makes Windows Azure as the de facto platform for enterprise mobility, for enterprises, who have been leveraging Microsoft ecosystem for their application and IT infrastructure. Windows Azure Mobile Services  is going to next evolution where you can expect some exciting features in near future. One area, where Windows Azure Mobile Services should definitely need an improvement, is about the default storage mechanism in which currently it is depends on SQL Server. IMHO, developers should be able to choose multiple default storage option when creating a new mobile service instance. Let’s say, there should be a different storage providers such as SQL Server storage provider and Table storage provider where developers should be able to choose their choice of storage provider when creating a new mobile services project. I have been used Windows Azure and Windows Azure Mobile Services as the backend for production apps for mobile, where it performed very well. MBaaS Over MEAP Recently, many larger enterprises has been adopted Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) for their mobile apps. I haven’t worked on any production MEAP solution, but I heard that developers are really struggling with MEAP in different way. The learning curve for a proprietary MEAP platform is very high. I am completely against for using larger proprietary ecosystem for mobile apps. For enterprise mobile apps, I highly recommend to use native iOS/Android/Windows Phone or HTML5  for front-end with a cloud hosted MBaaS solution as the middleware. A MBaaS service can be consumed from multiple mobile apps where REST APIs are using to integrating with enterprise backend systems. Enterprise mobility should start with exposing REST APIs on the enterprise backend systems and these REST APIs can host on Cloud where we can enjoy the power of Cloud for our services. If you are having REST APIs for your enterprise data, then you can easily build mobile frontends for multiple platforms.   You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

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  • Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API

    - by Rick Strahl
    If there's one thing that's a bit unexpected in ASP.NET Web API, it's the limited support for mapping url encoded POST data values to simple parameters of ApiController methods. When I first looked at this I thought I was doing something wrong, because it seems mighty odd that you can bind query string values to parameters by name, but can't bind POST values to parameters in the same way. To demonstrate here's a simple example. If you have a Web API method like this:[HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(string username, string password) { …} and then hit with a URL like this: http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate?Username=ricks&Password=sekrit it works just fine. The query string values are mapped to the username and password parameters of our API method. But if you now change the method to work with [HttpPost] instead like this:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(string username, string password) { …} and hit it with a POST HTTP Request like this: POST http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:88 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Content-Length: 30 Username=ricks&Password=sekrit you'll find that while the request works, it doesn't actually receive the two string parameters. The username and password parameters are null and so the method is definitely going to fail. When I mentioned this over Twitter a few days ago I got a lot of responses back of why I'd want to do this in the first place - after all HTML Form submissions are the domain of MVC and not WebAPI which is a valid point. However, the more common use case is using POST Variables with AJAX calls. The following is quite common for passing simple values:$.post(url,{ Username: "Rick", Password: "sekrit" },function(result) {…}); but alas that doesn't work. How ASP.NET Web API handles Content Bodies Web API supports parsing content data in a variety of ways, but it does not deal with multiple posted content values. In effect you can only post a single content value to a Web API Action method. That one parameter can be very complex and you can bind it in a variety of ways, but ultimately you're tied to a single POST content value in your parameter definition. While it's possible to support multiple parameters on a POST/PUT operation, only one parameter can be mapped to the actual content - the rest have to be mapped to route values or the query string. Web API treats the whole request body as one big chunk of data that is sent to a Media Type Formatter that's responsible for de-serializing the content into whatever value the method requires. The restriction comes from async nature of Web API where the request data is read only once inside of the formatter that retrieves and deserializes it. Because it's read once, checking for content (like individual POST variables) first is not possible. However, Web API does provide a couple of ways to access the form POST data: Model Binding - object property mapping to bind POST values FormDataCollection - collection of POST keys/values ModelBinding POST Values - Binding POST data to Object Properties The recommended way to handle POST values in Web API is to use Model Binding, which maps individual urlencoded POST values to properties of a model object provided as the parameter. Model binding requires a single object as input to be bound to the POST data, with each POST key that matches a property name (including nested properties like Address.Street) being mapped and updated including automatic type conversion of simple types. This is a very nice feature - and a familiar one from MVC - that makes it very easy to have model objects mapped directly from inbound data. The obvious drawback with Model Binding is that you need a model for it to work: You have to provide a strongly typed object that can receive the data and this object has to map the inbound data. To rewrite the example above to use ModelBinding I have to create a class maps the properties that I need as parameters:public class LoginData { public string Username { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } } and then accept the data like this in the API method:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(LoginData login) { string username = login.Username; string password = login.Password; … } This works fine mapping the POST values to the properties of the login object. As a side benefit of this method definition, the method now also allows posting of JSON or XML to the same endpoint. If I change my request to send JSON like this: POST http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:88 Accept: application/jsonContent-type: application/json Content-Length: 40 {"Username":"ricks","Password":"sekrit"} it works as well and transparently, courtesy of the nice Content Negotiation features of Web API. There's nothing wrong with using Model binding and in fact it's a common practice to use (view) model object for inputs coming back from the client and mapping them into these models. But it can be  kind of a hassle if you have AJAX applications with a ton of backend hits, especially if many methods are very atomic and focused and don't effectively require a model or view. Not always do you have to pass structured data, but sometimes there are just a couple of simple response values that need to be sent back. If all you need is to pass a couple operational parameters, creating a view model object just for parameter purposes seems like overkill. Maybe you can use the query string instead (if that makes sense), but if you can't then you can often end up with a plethora of 'message objects' that serve no further  purpose than to make Model Binding work. Note that you can accept multiple parameters with ModelBinding so the following would still work:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(LoginData login, string loginDomain) but only the object will be bound to POST data. As long as loginDomain comes from the querystring or route data this will work. Collecting POST values with FormDataCollection Another more dynamic approach to handle POST values is to collect POST data into a FormDataCollection. FormDataCollection is a very basic key/value collection (like FormCollection in MVC and Request.Form in ASP.NET in general) and then read the values out individually by querying each. [HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(FormDataCollection form) { var username = form.Get("Username"); var password = form.Get("Password"); …} The downside to this approach is that it's not strongly typed, you have to handle type conversions on non-string parameters, and it gets a bit more complicated to test such as setup as you have to seed a FormDataCollection with data. On the other hand it's flexible and easy to use and especially with string parameters is easy to deal with. It's also dynamic, so if the client sends you a variety of combinations of values on which you make operating decisions, this is much easier to work with than a strongly typed object that would have to account for all possible values up front. The downside is that the code looks old school and isn't as self-documenting as a parameter list or object parameter would be. Nevertheless it's totally functionality and a viable choice for collecting POST values. What about [FromBody]? Web API also has a [FromBody] attribute that can be assigned to parameters. If you have multiple parameters on a Web API method signature you can use [FromBody] to specify which one will be parsed from the POST content. Unfortunately it's not terribly useful as it only returns content in raw format and requires a totally non-standard format ("=content") to specify your content. For more info in how FromBody works and several related issues to how POST data is mapped, you can check out Mike Stalls post: How WebAPI does Parameter Binding Not really sure where the Web API team thought [FromBody] would really be a good fit other than a down and dirty way to send a full string buffer. Extending Web API to make multiple POST Vars work? Don't think so Clearly there's no native support for multiple POST variables being mapped to parameters, which is a bit of a bummer. I know in my own work on one project my customer actually found this to be a real sticking point in their AJAX backend work, and we ended up not using Web API and using MVC JSON features instead. That's kind of sad because Web API is supposed to be the proper solution for AJAX backends. With all of ASP.NET Web API's extensibility you'd think there would be some way to build this functionality on our own, but after spending a bit of time digging and asking some of the experts from the team and Web API community I didn't hear anything that even suggests that this is possible. From what I could find I'd say it's not possible primarily because Web API's Routing engine does not account for the POST variable mapping. This means [HttpPost] methods with url encoded POST buffers are not mapped to the parameters of the endpoint, and so the routes would never even trigger a request that could be intercepted. Once the routing doesn't work there's not much that can be done. If somebody has an idea how this could be accomplished I would love to hear about it. Do we really need multi-value POST mapping? I think that that POST value mapping is a feature that one would expect of any API tool to have. If you look at common APIs out there like Flicker and Google Maps etc. they all work with POST data. POST data is very prominent much more so than JSON inputs and so supporting as many options that enable would seem to be crucial. All that aside, Web API does provide very nice features with Model Binding that allows you to capture many POST variables easily enough, and logistically this will let you build whatever you need with POST data of all shapes as long as you map objects. But having to have an object for every operation that receives a data input is going to take its toll in heavy AJAX applications, with a lot of types created that do nothing more than act as parameter containers. I also think that POST variable mapping is an expected behavior and Web APIs non-support will likely result in many, many questions like this one: How do I bind a simple POST value in ASP.NET WebAPI RC? with no clear answer to this question. I hope for V.next of WebAPI Microsoft will consider this a feature that's worth adding. Related Articles Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods Mike Stall's post: How Web API does Parameter Binding Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Deploy ASP.NET Web Applications with Web Deployment Projects

    - by Ben Griswold
    One may quickly build and deploy an ASP.NET web application via the Publish option in Visual Studio.  This option works great for most simple deployment scenarios but it won’t always cut it.  Let’s say you need to automate your deployments. Or you have environment-specific configuration settings. Or you need to execute pre/post build operations when you do your builds.  If so, you should consider using Web Deployment Projects. The Web Deployment Project type doesn’t come out-of-the-box with Visual Studio 2008.  You’ll need to Download Visual Studio® 2008 Web Deployment Projects – RTW and install if you want to follow along with this tutorial. I’ve created a shiny new ASP.NET MVC project.  Web Deployment Projects work with websites, web applications and MVC projects so feel free to go with any web project type you’d like.  Once your web application is in place, it’s time to add the Web Deployment project.  You can hunt and peck around the File > New > New Project… dialogue as long as you’d like, but you aren’t going to find what you need.  Instead, select the web project and then choose the “Add Web Deployment Project…” hiding behind the Build menu option. I prefer to name my projects based on the environment in which I plan to deploy.  In this case, I’ll be rolling to the QA machine. Don’t expect too much to happen at this point.  A seemingly empty project with a funny icon will be added to your solution.  That’s it. I want to take a minute and talk about configuration settings before we continue.  Some of the common settings which might change from environment to environment are appSettings, connectionStrings and mailSettings.  Here’s a look at my updated web.config: <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://localhost:50596/" />     </appSettings> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp from="[email protected]">         <network host="server.com" userName="username" password="password" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/>     </smtp>   </mailSettings> </system.net> I want to update these values prior to deploying to the QA environment.  There are variations to this approach, but I like to maintain environment-specific settings for each of the web.config sections in the Config/[Environment] project folders.  I’ve provided a screenshot of the QA environment settings below. It may be obvious what one should include in each of the three files.  Basically, it is a copy of the associated web.config section with updated setting values.  For example, the AppSettings.config file may include a reference to the QA web url, the DB.config would include the QA database server and login information and the StmpSettings.config would include a QA Stmp server and user information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://qa.MvcApplicatinon293.com/" /> </appSettings> AppSettings.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="server=QAServer;integrated security=SSPI;database=MvcApplication293"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>   </connectionStrings> Db.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <smtp from="[email protected]">     <network host="qaserver.com" userName="qausername" password="qapassword" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/> </smtp> SmtpSettings.config  I think our web project is ready to deploy.  Now, it’s time to concentrate on the Web Deployment Project itself.  Right-click on the project file and open the Property Pages. The first thing to call out is the Configuration dropdown.  I only deploy a project which is built in Release Mode so I only setup the Web Deployment Project for this mode.  (This is when you change the Configuration selection to “Release.”)  I typically keep the Output Folder default value – .\Release\.  When the application is built, all artifacts will be dropped in the .\Release\ folder relative to the Web Deployment Project root.  The final option may be up for some debate.  I like to roll out updatable websites so I select the “Allow this precompiled site to be updatable” option.  I really do like to follow standard SDLC processes when I release my software but there are those times when you just have to make a hotfix to production and I like to keep this option open if need be.  If you are strongly opposed to this idea, please, by all means, don’t check the box. The next tab is boring.  I don’t like to deploy a crazy number of DLLs so I merge all outputs to a single assembly.  Again, you may have another option and feel free to change this selection if you so wish. If you follow my lead, take care when choosing a single assembly name.  The Assembly Name can not be the same as the website or any other project in your solution otherwise you’ll receive a circular reference build error.  In other words, I can’t name the assembly MvcApplication293 or my output window would start yelling at me. Remember when we called out our QA configuration files?  Click on the Deployment tab and you’ll see how where going to use them.  Notice the Web.config file section replacements value.  All this does is swap called out web.config sections with the content of the Config\QA\* files.  You can reduce or extend this list as you deem fit.  Did you see the “Use external configuration source file” option?  You know how you can point any of your web.config sections to an external file via the configSource attribute?  This option allows you to leverage that technique and instead of replacing the content of the sections, you will replace the configSource attribute value instead. <appSettings configSource="Config\QA\AppSettings.config" /> Go ahead and Apply your changes.  I’d like to take a look at the project file we just updated.  Right-click on the Web Deployment Project and select “Open Project File.” One of the first configuration blocks reflects core Release build settings.  There are a couple of points I’d like to call out here: DebugSymbols=false ensures the compilation debug attribute in your web.config is flipped to false as part of build process.  There’s some crumby (more likely old) documentation which implies you need a ToggleDebugCompilation task to make this happen.  Nope. Just make sure the DebugSymbols is set to false.  EnableUpdateable implies a single dll for the web application rather than a dll for each object and and empty view file. I think updatable applications are cleaner and include the benefit (or risk based on your perspective) that portions of the application can be updated directly on the server.  I called this out earlier but I wanted to reiterate. <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">     <DebugSymbols>false</DebugSymbols>     <OutputPath>.\Release</OutputPath>     <EnableUpdateable>true</EnableUpdateable>     <UseMerge>true</UseMerge>     <SingleAssemblyName>MvcApplication293</SingleAssemblyName>     <DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>true</DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>     <UseWebConfigReplacement>true</UseWebConfigReplacement>     <ValidateWebConfigReplacement>true</ValidateWebConfigReplacement>     <DeleteAppDataFolder>true</DeleteAppDataFolder>   </PropertyGroup> The next section is self-explanatory.  The content merely reflects the replacement value you provided via the Property Pages. <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>   </ItemGroup> You’ll want to extend the ItemGroup section to include the files you wish to exclude from the build.  The sample ExcludeFromBuild nodes exclude all obj, svn, csproj, user, pdb artifacts from the build. Enough though they files aren’t included in your web project, you’ll need to exclude them or they’ll show up along with required deployment artifacts.  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\obj\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.csproj" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.user" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\bin\*.pdb" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Notes.txt" />   </ItemGroup> Pre/post build and Pre/post merge tasks are added to the final code block.  By default, your project file should look like the following – a completely commented out section. <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.   <Target Name="BeforeBuild">   </Target>   <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">   </Target>   –> Update the section to remove all temporary Config folders and files after the build.  <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.     <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>     <Target Name="BeforeBuild">      </Target>       –>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">     <!– WebConfigReplacement requires the Config files. Remove after build. –>     <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\Config" />   </Target> That’s it for setup.  Save the project file, flip the solution to Release Mode and build.  If there’s an issue, consult the Output window for details.  If all went well, you will find your deployment artifacts in your Web Deployment Project folder like so. Both the code source and published application will be there. Inside the Release folder you will find your “published files” and you’ll notice the Config folder is no where to be found.  In the Source folder, all project files are found with the exception of the items which were excluded from the build. I’ll wrap up this tutorial by calling out a little Web Deployment pet peeve of mine: there doesn’t appear to be a way to add an existing web deployment project to a solution.  The best I can come up with is create a new web deployment project and then copy and paste the contents of the existing project file into the new project file.  It’s not a big deal but it bugs me. Download the Solution

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  • Print Any Document Type with AutoVue Document Print Services

    - by [email protected]
    The newly released AutoVue Document Print Services allow development organizations to automate and process high volume printing operations, of both business and technical document types, within their broader enterprise applications. For many organizations, their printing processes are challenged by the fact that they can only print a small subset of the documents required by their enterprise users. By integrating AutoVue Document Print Services, and deploying them in conjunction with their existing print server solutions, organizations can address that challenge and automate the printing of virtually any document type required in any business process, greatly extending the value of their print server solutions, and improving business processes and workforce productivity. For further details, check out the AutoVue Document Print Services datasheet.

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  • Replication Services in a BI environment

    - by jorg
    In this blog post I will explain the principles of SQL Server Replication Services without too much detail and I will take a look on the BI capabilities that Replication Services could offer in my opinion. SQL Server Replication Services provides tools to copy and distribute database objects from one database system to another and maintain consistency afterwards. These tools basically copy or synchronize data with little or no transformations, they do not offer capabilities to transform data or apply business rules, like ETL tools do. The only “transformations” Replication Services offers is to filter records or columns out of your data set. You can achieve this by selecting the desired columns of a table and/or by using WHERE statements like this: SELECT <published_columns> FROM [Table] WHERE [DateTime] >= getdate() - 60 There are three types of replication: Transactional Replication This type replicates data on a transactional level. The Log Reader Agent reads directly on the transaction log of the source database (Publisher) and clones the transactions to the Distribution Database (Distributor), this database acts as a queue for the destination database (Subscriber). Next, the Distribution Agent moves the cloned transactions that are stored in the Distribution Database to the Subscriber. The Distribution Agent can either run at scheduled intervals or continuously which offers near real-time replication of data! So for example when a user executes an UPDATE statement on one or multiple records in the publisher database, this transaction (not the data itself) is copied to the distribution database and is then also executed on the subscriber. When the Distribution Agent is set to run continuously this process runs all the time and transactions on the publisher are replicated in small batches (near real-time), when it runs on scheduled intervals it executes larger batches of transactions, but the idea is the same. Snapshot Replication This type of replication makes an initial copy of database objects that need to be replicated, this includes the schemas and the data itself. All types of replication must start with a snapshot of the database objects from the Publisher to initialize the Subscriber. Transactional replication need an initial snapshot of the replicated publisher tables/objects to run its cloned transactions on and maintain consistency. The Snapshot Agent copies the schemas of the tables that will be replicated to files that will be stored in the Snapshot Folder which is a normal folder on the file system. When all the schemas are ready, the data itself will be copied from the Publisher to the snapshot folder. The snapshot is generated as a set of bulk copy program (BCP) files. Next, the Distribution Agent moves the snapshot to the Subscriber, if necessary it applies schema changes first and copies the data itself afterwards. The application of schema changes to the Subscriber is a nice feature, when you change the schema of the Publisher with, for example, an ALTER TABLE statement, that change is propagated by default to the Subscriber(s). Merge Replication Merge replication is typically used in server-to-client environments, for example when subscribers need to receive data, make changes offline, and later synchronize changes with the Publisher and other Subscribers, like with mobile devices that need to synchronize one in a while. Because I don’t really see BI capabilities here, I will not explain this type of replication any further. Replication Services in a BI environment Transactional Replication can be very useful in BI environments. In my opinion you never want to see users to run custom (SSRS) reports or PowerPivot solutions directly on your production database, it can slow down the system and can cause deadlocks in the database which can cause errors. Transactional Replication can offer a read-only, near real-time database for reporting purposes with minimal overhead on the source system. Snapshot Replication can also be useful in BI environments, if you don’t need a near real-time copy of the database, you can choose to use this form of replication. Next to an alternative for Transactional Replication it can be used to stage data so it can be transformed and moved into the data warehousing environment afterwards. In many solutions I have seen developers create multiple SSIS packages that simply copies data from one or more source systems to a staging database that figures as source for the ETL process. The creation of these packages takes a lot of (boring) time, while Replication Services can do the same in minutes. It is possible to filter out columns and/or records and it can even apply schema changes automatically so I think it offers enough features here. I don’t know how the performance will be and if it really works as good for this purpose as I expect, but I want to try this out soon!

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