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• VS 11 Beta merge tool is awesome, except for resovling conflicts

  - by deadlydog

  If you've downloaded the new VS 11 Beta and done any merging, then you've probably seen the new diff and merge tools built into VS 11.  They are awesome, and by far a vast improvement over the ones included in VS 2010.  There is one problem with the merge tool though, and in my opinion it is huge.Basically the problem with the new VS 11 Beta merge tool is that when you are resolving conflicts after performing a merge, you cannot tell what changes were made in each file where the code is conflicting.  Was the conflicting code added, deleted, or modified in the source and target branches?  I don't know (without explicitly opening up the history of both the source and target files), and the merge tool doesn't tell me.  In my opinion this is a huge fail on the part of the designers/developers of the merge tool, as it actually forces me to either spend an extra minute for every conflict to view the source and target file history, or to go back to use the merge tool in VS 2010 to properly assess which changes I should take.I submitted this as a bug to Microsoft, but they say that this is intentional by design. WHAT?! So they purposely crippled their tool in order to make it pretty and keep the look consistent with the new diff tool?  That's like purposely putting a little hole in the bottom of your cup for design reasons to make it look cool.  Sure, the cup looks cool, but I'm not going to use it if it leaks all over the place and doesn't do the job that it is intended for. Bah! but I digress.Because this bug is apparently a feature, they asked me to open up a "feature request" to have the problem fixed. Please go vote up both my bug submission and the feature request so that this tool will actually be useful by the time the final VS 11 product is released.

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• Dallas First Regionals 2012&ndash; For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

  - by T

  Wow!  That is all I have to say after the last 3 days. Three full fun filled days in a world that fed the geek, sparked the competitor, inspired the humanitarian, encouraged the inventor, and continuously warmed my heart.  As part of the Dallas First Regionals, I was awed by incredible students who teach as much as they learn, inventive and truly caring mentors that make mentoring look easy, and completely passionate and dedicated volunteers that bring meaning to giving all that you have and making events fun and safe for all.  If you have any interest in innovation, robotics, or highly motivated students, I can’t recommend anything any higher than visiting a First Robotics event. This is my third year with First and I was honored enough to serve the Dallas First Regionals as both a Web Site evaluator and as the East Field Volunteer Coordinator.  This was also the first year my daughter volunteered with me.  My daughter and I both recognize how different the First program is from other team events.  The difference with First is that everyone is a first class citizen.   It is a difference we can feel through experiencing and observing interactions between executives, respected engineers, students, and event staff.  Even with a veracious competition, you still find a lot of cooperation and we never witnessed any belittling between teams or individuals. First Robotics coined the term “Gracious Professionalism”.   It's a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community.1 I was introduced to this term as the Volunteer Coordinator when I was preparing the volunteer instructional speech.  Through the next few days, I discovered it is truly core to everything that First does.  One of the ways First accomplishes Gracious Professionalism is by utilizing another term they came up with which is “CoopertitionTM”. At FIRST, CoopertitionTM is displaying unqualified kindness and respect in the face of fierce competition.1   One of the things I never liked about sports was the need to “destroy” the other team.  First has really found a way to integrate CoopertitionTM  into the rules so teams can be competitive and part of that competition rewards cooperation. Oh and did I mention it has ROBOTS!!!  This year it had basket ball playing Kinect connected, remote controlled, robots!  There are not words for how exciting these games are.  You HAVE to check out this years game, Rebound Rumble, on youtube or you can view live action on Dallas First Video (as of this posting, the recording haven’t posted yet but should be there soon).  There are also some images below. Whatever it is, these students get it and exemplify it and these mentors ooze with it.  I am glad that First supports these events so we can all learn and be inspired by these exceptional students and mentors.  I know that no matter how much I give, it will never compare to what I gain volunteering at First.  Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you owe it to yourself to go check out one of these events.  See what the future holds, be inspired, be encouraged, take some knowledge, leave some knowledge and most of all, have FUN.  That is what First is all about and thanks to First, I get it.   First Dallas Regionals 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL 1.  USFirst http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/gracious-professionalism

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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• Merry Christmas and Happy new year everyone and bye bye we meet again soon as possible

  - by anirudha

  few days ago i plan that i enjoy this cold days with my family so i decide that i go their and enjoy Christmas even i am Hindus no problem. so those days i stop everything relate to my daily technical life routine. because on Christmas and  new year i never meet you so Merry Christmas  and Happy new year to all [ friends , relative and all guys who know me or  even not] bye bye take care i come again as soon as possible.

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• Force Blank TextBox with ASP.Net MVC Html.TextBox

  - by Doug Lampe

  I recently ran into a problem with the following scenario: I have data with a parent/child data with a one-to-many relationship from the parent to the child. I want to be able to update parent and existing child data AND add a new child record all in a single post. I don't want to create a model just to store the new values. One of the things I LOVE about MVC is how flexible it is in dealing with posted data.  If you have data that isn't in your model, you can simply use the non-strongly-typed HTML helper extensions and pass the data into your actions as parameters or use the FormCollection.  I thought this would give me the solution I was looking for.  I simply used Html.TextBox("NewChildKey") and Html.TextBox("NewChildValue") and added parameters to my action to take the new values.  So here is what my action looked like: [HttpPost] public ActionResult EditParent(int? id, string newChildKey, string newChildValue, FormCollection forms) {     Model model = ModelDataHelper.GetModel(id ?? 0);     if (model != null)     {         if (TryUpdateModel(model))         {             if (ModelState.IsValid)             {                 model = ModelDataHelper.UpdateModel(model);             }             string[] keys = forms.GetValues("ChildKey");             string[] values = forms.GetValues("ChildValue");             ModelDataHelper.UpdateChildData(id ?? 0, keys, values);             ModelDataHelper.AddChildData(id ?? 0, newChildKey, newChildValue);             model = ModelDataHelper.GetModel(id ?? 0);         }        return View(report);     }    return new EmptyResult(); } The only problem with this is that MVC is TOO smart.  Even though I am not using a model to store the new child values, MVC still passes the values back to the text boxes via the model state.  The fix for this is simple but not necessarily obvious, simply remove the data from the model state before returning the view: ModelState.Remove("NewChildKey"); ModelState.Remove("NewChildValue"); Two lines of code to save a lot of headaches.

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• BizTalk: History of one project architecture

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  "In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Then he started to integrate." At the very start was the requirement: integrate two working systems. Small digging up: It was one system. It was good but IT guys want to change it to the new one, much better, chipper, more flexible, and more progressive in technologies, more suitable for the future, for the faster world and hungry competitors. One thing. One small, little thing. We cannot turn off the old system (call it A, because it was the first), turn on the new one (call it B, because it is second but not the last one). The A has a hundreds users all across a country, they must study B. A still has a lot nice custom features, home-made features that cannot disappear. These features have to be moved to the B and it is a long process, months and months of redevelopment. So, the decision was simple. Let’s move not jump, let’s both systems working side-by-side several months. In this time we could teach the users and move all custom A’s special functionality to B. That automatically means both systems should work side-by-side all these months and use the same data. Data in A and B must be in sync. That’s how the integration projects get birth. Moreover, the specific of the user tasks requires the both systems must be in sync in real-time. Nightly synchronization is not working, absolutely.   First draft The first draft seems simple. Both systems keep data in SQL databases. When data changes, the Create, Update, Delete operations performed on the data, and the sync process could be started. The obvious decision is to use triggers on tables. When we are talking about data, we are talking about several entities. For example, Orders and Items [in Orders]. We decided to use the BizTalk Server to synchronize systems. Why it was chosen is another story. Second draft   Let’s take an example how it works in more details. 1.       User creates a new entity in the A system. This fires an insert trigger on the entity table. Trigger has to pass the message “Entity created”. This message includes all attributes of the new entity, but I focused on the Id of this entity in the A system. Notation for this message is id.A. System A sends id.A to the BizTalk Server. 2.       BizTalk transforms id.A to the format of the system B. This is easiest part and I will not focus on this kind of transformations in the following text. The message on the picture is still id.A but it is in slightly different format, that’s why it is changing in color. BizTalk sends id.A to the system B. 3.       The system B creates the entity on its side. But it uses different id-s for entities, these id-s are id.B. System B saves id.A+id.B. System B sends the message id.A+id.B back to the BizTalk. 4.       BizTalk sends the message id.A+id.B to the system A. 5.       System A saves id.A+id.B. Why both id-s should be saved on both systems? It was one of the next requirements. Users of both systems have to know the systems are in sync or not in sync. Users working with the entity on the system A can see the id.B and use it to switch to the system B and work there with the copy of the same entity. The decision was to store the pairs of entity id-s on both sides. If there is only one id, the entities are not in sync yet (for the Create operation). Third draft Next problem was the reliability of the synchronization. The synchronizing process can be interrupted on each step, when message goes through the wires. It can be communication problem, timeout, temporary shutdown one of the systems, the second system cannot be synchronized by some internal reason. There were several potential problems that prevented from enclosing the whole synchronization process in one transaction. Decision was to restart the whole sync process if it was not finished (in case of the error). For this purpose was created an additional service. Let’s call it the Resync service. We still keep the id pairs in both systems, but only for the fast access not for the synchronization process. For the synchronizing these id-s now are kept in one main place, in the Resync service database. The Resync service keeps record as: ·       Id.A ·       Id.B ·       Entity.Type ·       Operation (Create, Update, Delete) ·       IsSyncStarted (true/false) ·       IsSyncFinished (true/false0 The example now looks like: 1.       System A creates id.A. id.A is saved on the A. Id.A is sent to the BizTalk. 2.       BizTalk sends id.A to the Resync and to the B. id.A is saved on the Resync. 3.       System B creates id.B. id.A+id.B are saved on the B. id.A+id.B are sent to the BizTalk. 4.       BizTalk sends id.A+id.B to the Resync and to the A. id.A+id.B are saved on the Resync. 5.       id.A+id.B are saved on the B. Resync changes the IsSyncStarted and IsSyncFinished flags accordingly. The Resync service implements three main methods: ·       Save (id.A, Entity.Type, Operation) ·       Save (id.A, id.B, Entity.Type, Operation) ·       Resync () Two Save() are used to save id-s to the service storage. See in the above example, in 2 and 4 steps. What about the Resync()? It is the method that finishes the interrupted synchronization processes. If Save() is started by the trigger event, the Resync() is working as an independent process. It periodically scans the Resync storage to find out “unfinished” records. Then it restarts the synchronization processes. It tries to synchronize them several times then gives up.     One more thing, both systems A and B must tolerate duplicates of one synchronizing process. Say on the step 3 the system B was not able to send id.A+id.B back. The Resync service must restart the synchronization process that will send the id.A to B second time. In this case system B must just send back again also created id.A+id.B pair without errors. That means “tolerate duplicates”. Fourth draft Next draft was created only because of the aesthetics. As it always happens, aesthetics gave significant performance gain to the whole system. First was the stupid question. Why do we need this additional service with special database? Can we just master the BizTalk to do something like this Resync() does? So the Resync orchestration is doing the same thing as the Resync service. It is started by the Id.A and finished by the id.A+id.B message. The first works as a Start message, the second works as a Finish message.     Here is a diagram the whole process without errors. It is pretty straightforward. The Resync orchestration is waiting for the Finish message specific period of time then resubmits the Id.A message. It resubmits the Id.A message specific number of times then gives up and gets suspended. It can be resubmitted then it starts the whole process again: waiting [, resubmitting [, get suspended]], finishing. Tuning up The Resync orchestration resubmits the id.A message with special “Resubmitted” flag. The subscription filter on the Resync orchestration includes predicate as (Resubmit_Flag != “Resubmitted”). That means only the first Sync orchestration starts the Resync orchestration. Other Sync orchestration instantiated by the resubmitting can finish this Resync orchestration but cannot start another instance of the Resync   Here is a diagram where system B was inaccessible for some period of time. The Resync orchestration resubmitted the id.A two times. Then system B got the response the id.A+id.B and this finished the Resync service execution. What is interesting about this, there were submitted several identical id.A messages and only one id.A+id.B message. Because of this, the system B and the Resync must tolerate the duplicate messages. We also told about this requirement for the system B. Now the same requirement is for the Resunc. Let’s assume the system B was very slow in the first response and the Resync service had time to resubmit two id.A messages. System B responded not, as it was in previous case, with one id.A+id.B but with two id.A+id.B messages. First of them finished the Resync execution for the id.A. What about the second id.A+id.B? Where it goes? So, we have to add one more internal requirement. The whole solution must tolerate many identical id.A+id.B messages. It is easy task with the BizTalk. I added the “SinkExtraMessages” subscriber (orchestration with one receive shape), that just get these messages and do nothing. Real design Real architecture is much more complex and interesting. In reality each system can submit several id.A almost simultaneously and completely unordered. There are not only the “Create entity” operation but the Update and Delete operations. And these operations relate each other. Say the Update operation after Delete means not the same as Update after Create. In reality there are entities related each other. Say the Order and Order Items. Change on one of it could start the series of the operations on another. Moreover, the system internals are the “black boxes” and we cannot predict the exact content and order of the operation series. It worth to say, I had to spend a time to manage the zombie message problems. The zombies are still here, but this is not a problem now. And this is another story. What is interesting in the last design? One orchestration works to help another to be more reliable. Why two orchestration design is more reliable, isn’t it something strange? The Synch orchestration takes all the message exchange between systems, here is the area where most of the errors could happen. The Resync orchestration sends and receives messages only within the BizTalk server. Is there another design? Sure. All Resync functionality could be implemented inside the Sync orchestration. Hey guys, some other ideas?

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• ASP.NET MVC Application In Action - I (DailyJournal)

  - by Rajesh Pillai

  Its been long due I was planning to write an article on creating some useful ASP.NET MVC application. I have code named it "DailyJournal". Its a simple application which allows creation of multiple activities and assign tasks to these activities. Its' kind of "Yet another Task/Todo application". The credentials which you can use with the attached demo application is shown below.   Collapse Copy Code User Name : admin Password : admin123 Framework/Libraries Used ASP.NET MVC jQuery + jQuery UI (for ajax and UI) ELMAH for Error logging Warning Ahead This is just a rough draft and so I am putting down some of the known limitation. Some points of warning before we move further with this application. This is just an early prototype. As such many of the design principles have been ignored. But, I try to cover that up in the next update once I get my head around this. The application in its current state supports the following features Create users Assign Activities to users Assign tasks to activities Assign a status to a task The user creation/authentication is being done by the default Membership provider. Most of the activities are highly visual i.e. you can drag-drop task to different areas, in-place edition of task details and so on.   The following are the current issues with the design which I promise to refactor in the second version. No Validations Fat Controller XSS/CSS vulnerable No Service model/abstraction yet. For the demo LINQ to SQL is implemented. No separation of layers UI Design et el... This is just an extract.  For source code and more information proceed to http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/mvcinaction.aspx Hope you like this!

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• New BIDSHelper Release - 1.4.3.0

  - by Darren Gosbell

  Today we released an update for BIDSHelper which you can download from here This release addresses the following issues: For some people the BIDS Helper extensions to the Project Properties page for the SSIS Deploy plugin was not available. Copy and Paste in errors in SSIS packages Updates to Parent-Child Dim Naturalizer The following features are new in this release: Analysis Services Many-to-Many Matrix Compression Roles Report General Preferences   If you are interested to find out what else BIDSHelper can do, full documentation of all the features is available on the project website here: http://bidshelper.codeplex.com

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• #altnetseattle &ndash; MEF, What is it?

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  I dived into the MEF session with Glenn Block, Sourabh Mathur, Brian Henderson, and others.  Glenn covered the basic architectural ideas of MEF and then dived into a few examples. Is a framework around decoupling components. Built around the idea of discoverable type systems. Traditional extensibility mechanisms have a host and the respective extensions, commonly linking these two aspects with a form of registration. MEF removes the need for the registration part of the architecture and uses a contract. At some point with MEF you get down to parts, which removes even the complexity of a host or extensions, but a truly evolvable architecture based on natural growth of parts. Also referred to as the framework that removes the "new" keyword. The idea is that parts pull together other parts that they need.  Between each part is a contract. Each part has imports or exports for the parts it needs or the things it offers. If one checks out the MEF Codeplex Site you will find a host of additional information.  The framework download also has some decent examples that help one get kick started.

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• Ok it has been pointed out to me

  - by Ratman21

  That it seems my blog is more of poor me or pity me or I deserve a job blog.   Hmmm I wont say, I have not wined here as I have used this blog to vent my frustration on the whole out of work thing (lack of money, self worth, family issues and the never end bills coming my way) but, it was also me trying to reach to others in the same boat as well as advertising, hay I am out here, employers.   It was also said, that I don’t have any thing listed here on me, like a cover letter or resume. Well there is but, it was so many months and post ago. Also what I had posted is not current. So here is my most current cover and resume.   Scott L Newman 45219 Dutton Way Callahan, Fl. 32011 To Whom It May Concern: I am really interested in the IT vacancie that you have listed for your company. Maybe I don’t have all the qualifications you want (hold on don’t hit delete yet) yet! But maybe I do, as I have over 20 + years experience in "IT” RIGHT NOW.   Read the rest of my cover and my resume. You will see what my “IT” skills are and it will Show that I can to this work! I can bring to your company along with my, can do attitude, a broad range of skills, including: Certified CompTIA A+, Security+  and Network+ Technician §         2.5 years (NOC) Network experience on large Cisco based Wan – UK to Austria §         20 years experience MIS/DP – Yes I can do IBM mainframes and Tandem  non-stops too §         18 years experience as technical Help Desk support – panicking users, no problem §         18 years experience with PC/Server based system, intranet and internet systems §         10+ years experienced on: Microsoft Office, Windows XP and Data Network Fundamentals (YES I do windows) §         Strong trouble shooting skills for software, hard ware and circuit issues (and I can tell you what kind of horrors I had to face on all of them). §         Very experienced on working with customers on problems – again panicking users, no problem §         Working experience with Remote Access (VPN/SecurID) – I didn’t just study them I worked on/with them §         Skilled in getting info for and creating documentation for Operation procedures (I don’t just wait for them to give it to me I go out and get it. Waiting for info on working applications is, well dumb) Multiple software languages (Hey I have done some programming) And much more experiences in “IT” (Mortgage, stocks and financial information systems experience and have worked “IT” in a hospital) Can multitask, also have ability to adapt to change and learn quickly. (once was put in charge of a system that I had not worked with for over two years. Talk about having to relearn and adapt to changes but, I did it.) I would welcome the opportunity to further discuss this position with you. If you have questions or would like to schedule an interview, please contact me by phone at 904-879-4880 or on my cell 352-356-0945 or by e-mail at [email protected] or leave a message on my web site (http://beingscottnewman.webs.com/). I have enclosed/attached my resume for your review and I look forward to hearing from you.   Thank you for taking a moment to consider my cover letter and resume. I appreciate how busy you are. Sincerely, Scott L. Newman    Scott L. Newman 45219 Dutton Way, Callahan, FL 32011? H (904)879-4880 C (352)356-0945 ? [email protected] Web - http://beingscottnewman.webs.com/                                                       ______                                                                                       OBJECTIVE To obtain a Network Operation or Helpdesk position.     PROFILE Information Technology Professional with 20+ years of experience. Volunteer website creator and back-up sound technician at True Faith Christian Fellowship. CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ Certified.   TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS   §         Technical Support §         Frame Relay §         Microsoft Office Suite §         Inventory Management §         ISDN §         Windows NT/98/XP §         Client/Vendor Relations §         CICS §         Cisco Routers/Switches §         Networking/Administration §         RPG §         Helpdesk §         Website Design/Dev./Management §         Assembler §         Visio §         Programming §         COBOL IV §               EDUCATION ? New HorizonsComputerLearningCenter, Jacksonville, Florida – CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+ Certified.             Currently working on CCNA Certification ?MottCommunity College, Flint, Michigan – Associates Degree - Data Processing and General Education ? Currently studying Japanese     PROFESSIONAL             TrueFaithChristianFellowshipChurch – Callahan, FL, October 2009 – Present Web site Tech ·        Web site Creator/tech, back up song leader and back up sound technician. Note church web site is (http://ambassadorsforjesuschrist.webs.com/) U.S. Census (temp employee) Feb. 23 to March 8, 2010 ·        Enumerator for NassauCounty   ThomasCreekBaptistChurch – Callahan, FL,     June 2008 – September 2009 Churchsound and video technician      ·        sound and video technician           Fidelity National Information Services ? Jacksonville, FL ? February 01, 2005 to October 28, 2008 Client Server Dev/Analyst I ·        Monitored Multiple Debit Card sites, Check Authorization customers and the Card Auth system (AuthNet) for problems with the sites, connections, servers (on our LAN) and/or applications ·        Night (NOC) Network operator for a large Wide Area Network (WAN) ·        Monitored Multiple Check Authorization customers for problems with circuits, routers and applications ·        Resolved circuit and/or router issues or assist circuit carrier in resolving issue ·        Resolved application problems or assist application support in resolution ·        Liaison between customer and application support ·        Maintained and updated the NetOps Operation procedures Guide ·        Kept the listing of equipment on the raised floor updated ·        Involved in the training of all Night Check and Card server operation operators ·        FNIS acquired Certegy in 2005. Was one of 3 kept on.   Certegy ? St.Pete, FL ? August 31, 2003 to February 1, 2005 Senior NetOps Operator(FNIS acquired Certegy in 2005 all of above jobs/skills were same as listed in FNIS) ·        Converting Documentation to Adobe format ·        Sole trainer of day/night shift System Management Center operators (SMC) ·        Equifax spun off Card/Check Dept. as Certegy. Certegy terminated contract with EDS. One of six in the whole IT dept that was kept on.   EDS  (Certegy Account) ? St.Pete, FL ? July 1, 1999 to August 31, 2003 Senior NetOps Operator ·        Equifax outsourced the NetOps dept. to EDS in 1999. ·        Same job skills as listed above for FNIS.   Equifax ? St.Pete&Tampa, FL ? January 1, 1991 to July 1, 1999 NetOps/Tandem Operator ·        All of the above for FNIS, except for circuit and router issues ·        Operated, monitored and trouble shot Tandem mainframe and servers on LAN ·        Supported in the operation of the Print, Tape and Microfiche rooms ·        Equifax acquired TelaCredit in 1991.   TelaCredit ? Tampa, FL ? June 28, 1989 to January 1, 1991 Tandem Operator ·        Operated and monitored Tandem Non-stop systems for Card and Check Auths ·        Operated multiple high-speed Laser printers and Microfiche printers ·        Mounted, filed and maintained 18 reel-to-reel mainframe tape drives, cartridges tape drives and tape library.

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• WCF Operations and Multidimensional Arrays

  - by JoshReuben

  You cant pass MultiD arrays accross the wire using WCF - you need to pass jagged arrays. heres 2 extension methods that will allow you to convert prior to serialzation and convert back after deserialization:         public static T[,] ToMultiD<T>(this T[][] jArray)         {             int i = jArray.Count();             int j = jArray.Select(x => x.Count()).Aggregate(0, (current, c) => (current > c) ? current : c);                         var mArray = new T[i, j];             for (int ii = 0; ii < i; ii++)             {                 for (int jj = 0; jj < j; jj++)                 {                     mArray[ii, jj] = jArray[ii][jj];                 }             }             return mArray;         }         public static T[][] ToJagged<T>(this T[,] mArray)         {             var cols = mArray.GetLength(0);             var rows = mArray.GetLength(1);             var jArray = new T[cols][];             for (int i = 0; i < cols; i++)             {                 jArray[i] = new T[rows];                 for (int j = 0; j < rows; j++)                 {                     jArray[i][j] = mArray[i, j];                 }             }             return jArray;         } enjoy!

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• The Joy Of Hex

  - by Jim Giercyk

  While working on a mainframe integration project, it occurred to me that some basic computer concepts are slipping into obscurity. For example, just about anyone can tell you that a 64-bit processor is faster than a 32-bit processer. A grade school child could tell you that a computer “speaks” in ‘1’s and ‘0’s. Some people can even tell you that there are 8 bits in a byte. However, I have found that even the most seasoned developers often can’t explain the theory behind those statements. That is not a knock on programmers; in the age of IntelliSense, what reason do we have to work with data at the bit level? Many computer theory classes treat bit-level programming as a thing of the past, no longer necessary now that storage space is plentiful. The trouble with that mindset is that the world is full of legacy systems that run programs written in the 1970’s.  Today our jobs require us to extract data from those systems, regardless of the format, and that often involves low-level programming. Because it seems knowledge of the low-level concepts is waning in recent times, I thought a review would be in order.       CHARACTER: See Spot Run HEX: 53 65 65 20 53 70 6F 74 20 52 75 6E DECIMAL: 83 101 101 32 83 112 111 116 32 82 117 110 BINARY: 01010011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01010011 01110000 01101111 01110100 00100000 01010010 01110101 01101110 In this example, I have broken down the words “See Spot Run” to a level computers can understand – machine language.     CHARACTER:  The character level is what is rendered by the computer.  A “Character Set” or “Code Page” contains 256 characters, both printable and unprintable.  Each character represents 1 BYTE of data.  For example, the character string “See Spot Run” is 12 Bytes long, exclusive of the quotation marks.  Remember, a SPACE is an unprintable character, but it still requires a byte.  In the example I have used the default Windows character set, ASCII, which you can see here:  http://www.asciitable.com/ HEX:  Hex is short for hexadecimal, or Base 16.  Humans are comfortable thinking in base ten, perhaps because they have 10 fingers and 10 toes; fingers and toes are called digits, so it’s not much of a stretch.  Computers think in Base 16, with numeric values ranging from zero to fifteen, or 0 – F.  Each decimal place has a possible 16 values as opposed to a possible 10 values in base 10.  Therefore, the number 10 in Hex is equal to the number 16 in Decimal.  DECIMAL:  The Decimal conversion is strictly for us humans to use for calculations and conversions.  It is much easier for us humans to calculate that [30 – 10 = 20] in decimal than it is for us to calculate [1E – A = 14] in Hex.  In the old days, an error in a program could be found by determining the displacement from the entry point of a module.  Since those values were dumped from the computers head, they were in hex. A programmer needed to convert them to decimal, do the equation and convert back to hex.  This gets into relative and absolute addressing, a topic for another day.  BINARY:  Binary, or machine code, is where any value can be expressed in 1s and 0s.  It is really Base 2, because each decimal place can have a possibility of only 2 characters, a 1 or a 0.  In Binary, the number 10 is equal to the number 2 in decimal. Why only 1s and 0s?  Very simply, computers are made up of lots and lots of transistors which at any given moment can be ON ( 1 ) or OFF ( 0 ).  Each transistor is a bit, and the order that the transistors fire (or not fire) is what distinguishes one value from  another in the computers head (or CPU).  Consider 32 bit vs 64 bit processing…..a 64 bit processor has the capability to read 64 transistors at a time.  A 32 bit processor can only read half as many at a time, so in theory the 64 bit processor should be much faster.  There are many more factors involved in CPU performance, but that is the fundamental difference.    DECIMAL HEX BINARY 0 0 0000 1 1 0001 2 2 0010 3 3 0011 4 4 0100 5 5 0101 6 6 0110 7 7 0111 8 8 1000 9 9 1001 10 A 1010 11 B 1011 12 C 1100 13 D 1101 14 E 1110 15 F 1111   Remember that each character is a BYTE, there are 2 HEX characters in a byte (called nibbles) and 8 BITS in a byte.  I hope you enjoyed reading about the theory of data processing.  This is just a high-level explanation, and there is much more to be learned.  It is safe to say that, no matter how advanced our programming languages and visual studios become, they are nothing more than a way to interpret bits and bytes.  There is nothing like the joy of hex to get the mind racing.

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• App_Offline.htm, taking site down for maintenance

  - by Vipin

  There is much simpler and graceful way to shut down a site while doing upgrade to avoid the problem of people accessing site in the middle of a content update.   Basically, if you place file with name 'app_offline.htm' with below contents in the root of a web application directory, ASP.NET will shut-down the application,  and stop processing any new incoming requests for that application.  ASP.NET will also then respond to all requests for dynamic pages in the application by sending back the content of the app_offline.htm file (for example: you might want to have a “site under construction” or “down for maintenance” message).   Then after upgrade, just rename/delete app_offline.htm file…and the site would be back to normal. Just remember that the size of the file should be greater than 512 bytes, doesn't matter even if you add some comments to it to push the byte size as long as it's of the size greater than 512 - it'll work fine.     <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" ><head>    <title>Maintenance Mode - Outage Message</title></head><body>    <h1>Maintenance Mode</h1>     <p>We're currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We will come back very shortly.</p>     <p>Sorry for the inconvenience!</p>     <!--            Adding additional hidden content so that IE Friendly Errors don't prevent    this message from displaying (note: it will show a "friendly" 404    error if the content isn't of a certain size).        <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>         --></body></html>

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• Configuration Data in a Custom Timer job in Sharepoint 2010 : The Hierarchical Object Store

  - by Gino Abraham

  I was planning for a custom timer job for which i wanted to store some configuration data. Was looking for some best practices, found a useful links on The Hierarchical Object store Store http://www.chaholl.com/archive/2011/01/30/the-skinny-on-sppersistedobject-and-the-hierarchical-object-store-in.aspxInitially was planning for a custom list, but this would make us run a cross site query and the list name and the url should again be kept in some configuration which is an headache to maintain. Hierarchical object store was zeroed in and thanks to google for the same :)

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• Rawr Code Clone Analysis&ndash;Part 0

  - by Dylan Smith

  Code Clone Analysis is a cool new feature in Visual Studio 11 (vNext).  It analyzes all the code in your solution and attempts to identify blocks of code that are similar, and thus candidates for refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The power lies in the fact that the blocks of code don't need to be identical for Code Clone to identify them, it will report Exact, Strong, Medium and Weak matches indicating how similar the blocks of code in question are.   People that know me know that I'm anal enthusiastic about both writing clean code, and taking old crappy code and making it suck less. So the possibilities for this feature have me pretty excited if it works well - and thats a big if that I'm hoping to explore over the next few blog posts. I'm going to grab the Rawr source code from CodePlex (a World Of Warcraft gear calculator engine program), run Code Clone Analysis against it, then go through the results one-by-one and refactor where appropriate blogging along the way.  My goals with this blog series are twofold: Evaluate and demonstrate Code Clone Analysis Provide some concrete examples of refactoring code to eliminate duplication and improve the code-base Here are the initial results:   Code Clone Analysis has found: 129 Exact Matches 201 Strong Matches 300 Medium Matches 193 Weak Matches Also indicated is that there was a total of 45,181 potentially duplicated lines of code that could be eliminated through refactoring.  Considering the entire solution only has 109,763 lines of code, if true, the duplicates lines of code number is pretty significant. In the next post we’ll start examining some of the individual results and determine if they really do indicate a potential refactoring.

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• Speaking at SPTechCon Boston 2012

  - by Brian Jackett

  I will be speaking at SPTechCon Boston 2012.  This will be my 3rd time speaking at SPTechCon and 4th time attending.  The conference has steadily been growing over the past few years and is one of the biggest non-Microsoft run conferences for SharePoint in the US.  I’ll be presenting two topics which I have given before but this time around with some updated content.  Registration is currently open and you can save $200 (on top of the current early bird discount of $400) by using the code "JACKETT” during registration.  I highly recommend joining for valuable learning and networking.   Where: SPTechCon Boston 2012 Title: PowerShell for the SharePoint 2010 Developer Audience and Level: Developer, Intermediate Abstract: PowerShell is not just for SharePoint 2010 administrators. Developers also get access to a wide range of functionality with PowerShell. In this session we will dive into using PowerShell with the .Net framework, web services, and native SharePoint commandlets. We will also cover some of the more intermediate to advanced techniques available within PowerShell that will improve your work efficiency. Not only will you learn how to automate your work but also learn ways to prototype solutions faster. This session is targeted to developers and assumes a basic familiarity with PowerShell. Slides and Code download: coming soon   Title: Integrating Line-of-Business Applications with SharePoint 2010 Audience and Level: Developer, Intermediate Abstract: One of the biggest value-adding enhancements in SharePoint 2010 is the Business Connectivity Services (BCS). In this session, we will overview the BCS, demonstrate connecting line-of-business applications and external systems to SharePoint through external content types, and walk through surfacing that data with external lists. This session is targeted at developers. No prior experience with the BCS is required, but a basic understanding of SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint solutions is suggested. Slides and Code download: coming soon         -Frog Out

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• GuestPost: Announcing gmStudio V9.85 for VB6/ASP/COM re-engineering

  - by Eric Nelson

  Mark Juras of GreatMigrations.com kindly sent me an article on gmStudio which I have posted on my old VB focused goto100 site. gmStudio is a programmable VB6/ASP/COM re-engineering tool that enables an agile tool-assisted rewrite methodology and helps teams dramatically lower the total cost, risk, and disruption of ambitious migration projects without sacrificing quality, control, or time to market. You can find the rest of the article over on goto100. Figure 1: the gmStudio Main Form

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• difference between Casini [IIS express] and VS Development server or Expression web

  - by anirudha

  MVC3 project can be run within Expression web and Visual studio as opened like a website not a project. they work same even if you open blogengine.net project in VS they take a time when you have more theme but expression web debug them in a second. well because theme design not matter for code. Expression web is a good because they save time for compile the code. even changes we make a little in design nothing in backend code.   i found a little difference between Casini and VS development server that if image putted in wrong way like <img src=”//img.png”/> instead of <img src=”/img.png”/> the error we make // instead of / that’s not worked in Expression web or Visual studio debugging but in Cassini it’s work fine.   Well i found that debug Blogengine.net in Expression web is a great thing because in VS they take a time like a minute to debug when you trying to debug first time. Expression Web save a time when we design themes within them and that’s much good option because web is also maked for design.   Well if you want to debug application faster then use casini but Expression web debugging is a good option when they take a long time to debug in Visual studio and EW debug them in a seconds.

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• Some New .NET Downloads and Resources

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit.  It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft.  The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of.  The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today.  Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)?  Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox).   With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target.  Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks.  Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment.  This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight.  You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model.   Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here.  You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/.   This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform.  If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs.  You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others.  Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies.  By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done.  Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need.  I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities.  Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results.  First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from.  For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings.  All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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• Microsoft Codename Dallas

  - by kaleidoscope

  Dallas is Microsoft’s Information Service offering which allows developers and information workers to find, acquire and consume published datasets and web services. Users subscribe to datasets and web services of interest and can integrate the information into their own applications via a standardized set of API’s. Data can also be analyzed online using the Dallas Service Explorer or externally using the Power Pivot Add-In for Excel. We can explore all the datasets and subscribe to the catalog for using the data. Dallas Developer Portal https://www.sqlazureservices.com More information can be found at:      http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Azure/Dallas/IntroToDallas/Overview/   Lokesh, M

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• Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3: Anonymous partial-trust consumer

  - by Elton Stoneman

  This is the third in the IPASBR series, see also: Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 2: Anonymous full-trust .NET consumer As the patterns get further from the simple .NET full-trust consumer, all that changes is the communication protocol and the authentication mechanism. In Part 3 the scenario is that we still have a secure .NET environment consuming our service, so we can store shared keys securely, but the runtime environment is locked down so we can't use Microsoft.ServiceBus to get the nice WCF relay bindings. To support this we will expose a RESTful endpoint through the Azure Service Bus, and require the consumer to send a security token with each HTTP service request. Pattern applicability This is a good fit for scenarios where: the runtime environment is secure enough to keep shared secrets the consumer can execute custom code, including building HTTP requests with custom headers the consumer cannot use the Azure SDK assemblies the service may need to know who is consuming it the service does not need to know who the end-user is Note there isn't actually a .NET requirement here. By exposing the service in a REST endpoint, anything that can talk HTTP can be a consumer. We'll authenticate through ACS which also gives us REST endpoints, so the service is still accessed securely. Our real-world example would be a hosted cloud app, where we we have enough room in the app's customisation to keep the shared secret somewhere safe and to hook in some HTTP calls. We will be flowing an identity through to the on-premise service now, but it will be the service identity given to the consuming app - the end user's identity isn't flown through yet. In this post, we’ll consume the service from Part 1 in ASP.NET using the WebHttpRelayBinding. The code for Part 3 (+ Part 1) is on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 3. Authenticating and authorizing with ACS We'll follow the previous examples and add a new service identity for the namespace in ACS, so we can separate permissions for different consumers (see walkthrough in Part 1). I've named the identity partialTrustConsumer. We’ll be authenticating against ACS with an explicit HTTP call, so we need a password credential rather than a symmetric key – for a nice secure option, generate a symmetric key, copy to the clipboard, then change type to password and paste in the key: We then need to do the same as in Part 2 , add a rule to map the incoming identity claim to an outgoing authorization claim that allows the identity to send messages to Service Bus: Issuer: Access Control Service Input claim type: http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier Input claim value: partialTrustConsumer Output claim type: net.windows.servicebus.action Output claim value: Send As with Part 2, this sets up a service identity which can send messages into Service Bus, but cannot register itself as a listener, or manage the namespace. RESTfully exposing the on-premise service through Azure Service Bus Relay The part 3 sample code is ready to go, just put your Azure details into Solution Items\AzureConnectionDetails.xml and “Run Custom Tool” on the .tt files.  But to do it yourself is very simple. We already have a WebGet attribute in the service for locally making REST calls, so we are just going to add a new endpoint which uses the WebHttpRelayBinding to relay that service through Azure. It's as easy as adding this endpoint to Web.config for the service:         <endpoint address="https://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/rest"                   binding="webHttpRelayBinding"                    contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService"                   behaviorConfiguration="SharedSecret">         </endpoint> - and adding the webHttp attribute in your endpoint behavior:           <behavior name="SharedSecret">             <webHttp/>             <transportClientEndpointBehavior credentialType="SharedSecret">               <clientCredentials>                 <sharedSecret issuerName="serviceProvider"                               issuerSecret="gl0xaVmlebKKJUAnpripKhr8YnLf9Neaf6LR53N8uGs="/>               </clientCredentials>             </transportClientEndpointBehavior>           </behavior> Where's my WSDL? The metadata story for REST is a bit less automated. In our local webHttp endpoint we've enabled WCF's built-in help, so if you navigate to: http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/help - you'll see the uri format for making a GET request to the service. The format is the same over Azure, so this is where you'll be connecting: https://[your-namespace].servicebus.windows.net/rest/reverse?string=abc123 Build the service with the new endpoint, open that in a browser and you'll get an XML version of an HTTP status code - a 401 with an error message stating that you haven’t provided an authorization header: <?xml version="1.0"?><Error><Code>401</Code><Detail>MissingToken: The request contains no authorization header..TrackingId:4cb53408-646b-4163-87b9-bc2b20cdfb75_5,TimeStamp:10/3/2012 8:34:07 PM</Detail></Error> By default, the setup of your Service Bus endpoint as a relying party in ACS expects a Simple Web Token to be presented with each service request, and in the browser we're not passing one, so we can't access the service. Note that this request doesn't get anywhere near your on-premise service, Service Bus only relays requests once they've got the necessary approval from ACS. Why didn't the consumer need to get ACS authorization in Part 2? It did, but it was all done behind the scenes in the NetTcpRelayBinding. By specifying our Shared Secret credentials in the consumer, the service call is preceded by a check on ACS to see that the identity provided is a) valid, and b) allowed access to our Service Bus endpoint. By making manual HTTP requests, we need to take care of that ACS check ourselves now. We do that with a simple WebClient call to the ACS endpoint of our service; passing the shared secret credentials, we will get back an SWT: var values = new System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection(); values.Add("wrap_name", "partialTrustConsumer"); //service identity name values.Add("wrap_password", "suCei7AzdXY9toVH+S47C4TVyXO/UUFzu0zZiSCp64Y="); //service identity password values.Add("wrap_scope", "http://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/"); //this is the realm of the RP in ACS var acsClient = new WebClient(); var responseBytes = acsClient.UploadValues("https://sixeyed-ipasbr-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.9/", "POST", values); rawToken = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(responseBytes); With a little manipulation, we then attach the SWT to subsequent REST calls in the authorization header; the token contains the Send claim returned from ACS, so we will be authorized to send messages into Service Bus. Running the sample Navigate to http://localhost:2028/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.WebHttpClient/Default.cshtml, enter a string and hit Go! - your string will be reversed by your on-premise service, routed through Azure: Using shared secret client credentials in this way means ACS is the identity provider for your service, and the claim which allows Send access to Service Bus is consumed by Service Bus. None of the authentication details make it through to your service, so your service is not aware who the consumer is (MSDN calls this "anonymous authentication").

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• I&rsquo;m back, now with Windows Live Writer goodness

  - by Dave Yasko

  I’ve reimaged my home laptop.  I’m trying to populate it with as much free goodness as possible to see if the free way is as good as the old pay way.  Turns out, I’ve got access to Windows Live Writer.  I’m not sure where that came from, maybe with Vista Ultimate.  I don’t know.  Either way, it makes my blog posting a whole lot easier.  So, maybe, just maybe, it will make me more likely to post.  We’ll see. Later.

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• Creating the Business Card Request InfoPath Form

  - by JKenderdine

  Business Card Request Demo Files Back in January I spoke at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach about InfoPath forms and Web Part deployment.  Below is some of the information and details regarding the form I created for the session.  There are many blogs and Microsoft articles on how to create a basic form so I won’t repeat that information here.   This blog will just explain a few of the options I chose when creating the solutions for SPS Virginia Beach.  The above link contains the zipped package files of the two InfoPath forms(no code solution and coded solution), the list template for the Location list I used, and the PowerPoint deck.  If you plan to use these templates, you will need to update the forms to work within your own environments (change data connections, code links, etc.).  Also, you must have the SharePoint Enterprise version, with InfoPath Services configured in order to use the Web Browser enabled forms. So what are the requirements for this template? Business Card Request Form Template Design Plan: Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site Submitted directly to form library The base form was created using the blank template.  The table and rows were added using Insert tab and selecting Custom Table.  The use of tables is a great way to make sure everything lines up.  You do have to split the tables from time to time.  If you’ve ever split cells and then tried to re-align one to find that you impacted the others, you know why.  Here is what the base form looks like in InfoPath.   Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements You will notice I also used Sections within the form.  These show or hide depending on options selected or whether or not fields are blank.  This is a great way to prevent your users from feeling overwhelmed with a large form (this one wouldn’t apply).  Although not used in this one, you can also use various views with a tab interface.  I’ll show that in another post. Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Utilizing rules you can load data when the form initiates (Data tab, Form Load).  Anything you can automate is always appreciated by the user as that is data they don’t have to enter.  For example, loading their user id or other user information on load: Always keep in mind though how much data you load and the method for loading that data (through rules, code, etc.).  They have an impact on form performance.  The form will take longer to load if you bring in a ton of data from external sources.  Laura Rogers has a great blog post on using the User Information List to load user information.   If the user has logged into SharePoint, then this can be used quite effectively and without a huge performance hit.   What I have found is that using the User Profile service via code behind or the Web Service “GetUserProfileByName” (as above) can take more time to load the user data.  Just food for thought. You must add the data connection in order for the above rules to work.  You can connect to the data connection through the Data tab, Data Connections or select Manage Data Connections link which appears under the main data source.  The data connections can be SharePoint lists or libraries, SQL data tables, XML files, etc.  Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. You can also create multiple views for the users to enhance their experience.  Once they’ve entered the information and submitted their request for business cards, they don’t really need to see the main data input screen any more.  They just need to view what they entered. From the Page Design tab, select New View and give the view a name.  To review the existing views, click the down arrow under View: The ReviewView shows just what the user needs and nothing more: Once you have everything configured, the form should be tested within a Test SharePoint environment before final deployment to production.  This validates you don’t have any rules or code that could impact the server negatively. Submitted directly to form library   You will need to know the form library that you will be submitting to when publishing the template.  Configure the Submit data connection to connect to this library.  There is already one configured in the sample,  but it will need to be updated to your environment prior to publishing. The Design template is different from the Published template.  While both have the .XSN extension, the published template contains all the “package” information for the form.  The published form is what is loaded into Central Admin, not the design template. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site In Central Admin, under General Settings, select Manage Form Templates.  Upload the published form template and Activate it to a site collection. Now it is available as a content type to select in the form library.  Some documentation on publishing form templates:  Technet – Manage administrator approved form templates And that’s all our base requirements.  Hope this helps to give a good start.

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• Issues with ILMerge, Lambda Expressions and VS2010 merging?

  - by John Blumenauer

  A little Background For quite some time now, it’s been possible to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly using ILMerge in Visual Studio 2008.  This is especially helpful when writing wrapper assemblies for 3rd-party libraries where it’s desirable to minimize the number of assemblies for distribution.  During the merge process, ILMerge will take a set of assemblies and merge them into a single assembly.  The resulting assembly can be either an executable or a DLL and is identified as the primary assembly. Issue During a recent project, I discovered using ILMerge to merge assemblies containing lambda expressions in Visual Studio 2010 is resulting in invalid primary assemblies.  The code below is not where the initial issue was identified, I will merely use it to illustrate the problem at hand. In order to describe the issue, I created a console application and a class library for calculating a few math functions utilizing lambda expressions.  The code is available for download at the bottom of this blog entry. MathLib.cs using System; namespace MathLib { public static class MathHelpers { public static Func<double, double, double> Hypotenuse = (x, y) => Math.Sqrt(x * x + y * y); static readonly Func<int, int, bool> divisibleBy = (int a, int b) => a % b == 0; public static bool IsPrimeNumber(int x) { { for (int i = 2; i <= x / 2; i++) if (divisibleBy(x, i)) return false; return true; }; } } } Program.cs using System; using MathLib; namespace ILMergeLambdasConsole { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int n = 19; if (MathHelpers.IsPrimeNumber(n)) { Console.WriteLine(n + " is prime"); } else { Console.WriteLine(n + " is not prime"); } Console.ReadLine(); } } } Not surprisingly, the preceding code compiles, builds and executes without error prior to running the ILMerge tool.   ILMerge Setup In order to utilize ILMerge, the following changes were made to the project. The MathLib.dll assembly was built in release configuration and copied to the MathLib folder.  The following folder hierarchy was used for this example:   The project file for ILMergeLambdasConsole project file was edited to add the ILMerge post-build configuration.  The following lines were added near the bottom of the project file:  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'"> <Exec Command="&quot;..\..\lib\ILMerge\Ilmerge.exe&quot; /ndebug /out:@(MainAssembly) &quot;@(IntermediateAssembly)&quot; @(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'&quot;%(FullPath)&quot;', ' ')" /> <Delete Files="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths->'$(OutDir)%(DestinationSubDirectory)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" /> </Target> The ILMergeLambdasConsole project was modified to reference the MathLib.dll located in the MathLib folder above. ILMerge and ILMerge.exe.config was copied into the ILMerge folder shown above.  The contents of ILMerge.exe.config are: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <requiredRuntime safemode="true" imageVersion="v4.0.30319" version="v4.0.30319"/> </startup> </configuration> Post-ILMerge After compiling and building, the MathLib.dll assembly will be merged into the ILMergeLambdasConsole executable.  Unfortunately, executing ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe now results in a crash.  The ILMerge documentation recommends using PEVerify.exe to validate assemblies after merging.  Executing PEVerify.exe against the ILMergeLambdasConsole.exe assembly results in the following error:    Further investigation by using Reflector reveals the divisibleBy method in the MathHelpers class looks a bit questionable after the merge.     Prior to using ILMerge, the same divisibleBy method appeared as the following in Reflector: It’s pretty obvious something has gone awry during the merge process.  However, this is only occurring when building within the Visual Studio 2010 environment.  The same code and configuration built within Visual Studio 2008 executes fine.  I’m still investigating the issue.  If anyone has already experienced this situation and solved it, I would love to hear from you.  However, as of right now, it looks like something has gone terribly wrong when executing ILMerge against assemblies containing Lambdas in Visual Studio 2010. Solution Files ILMergeLambdaExpression

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• Kansas City Developer's Conference

  - by Brian Schroer

  I just found about about / registered for Saturday’s Kansas City Developer’s Conference, and am going to make the drive over from the right side of the state (Hey, no offense, KC – I’m just looking at a map, and St. Louis is on the right side, Kansas City’s on the left). (I’m sure the event’s been mentioned on geekswithblogs several times, but I’m on a “staycation” this week, getting cabin fever, and noticed @leebrandt’s tweet today.) I’m looking forward to some of the presentations in the Agile and Patterns tracks. I’m going to have to get up pretty early Saturday morning to descend from St. Louis to Kansas City (Again, no offense – St. Louis is just at a higher elevation*, that’s all), so if you see a tired-looking guy wandering around wearing a St. Louis Day of .NET shirt, please be nice. I’m not sure how much longer registration will be open, but here’s the link: http://kcdc.eventbrite.com/ *Not true – St. Louis is closer to sea level than Kansas City, but I’ll start my drive from the top of the Arch, OK?

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