geeks with blogs - Page 121

Updated the Whiteboard Demo

- by Bobby Diaz

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I have updated the Whiteboard demo application. I added a few options to make it more interesting to use! I showed it to the kids and they loved it (even though they kept asking ME to draw pictures for them)! Here is a list of available options: Color Picker for line color Slider for line thickness Save to XML file Open saved drawing Clear whiteboard Hold down ESC key to erase And here is a screenshot of my beautiful artwork! :) So what are you waiting for? Go play with the Live Demo (and be sure to share with the kids) or download the source code. Enjoy!

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C#/.NET Little Wonders: Static Char Methods

- by James Michael Hare

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Often times in our code we deal with the bigger classes and types in the BCL, and occasionally forgot that there are some nice methods on the primitive types as well. Today we will discuss some of the handy static methods that exist on the char (the C# alias of System.Char) type. The Background I was examining a piece of code this week where I saw the following: 1: // need to get the 5th (offset 4) character in upper case 2: var type = symbol.Substring(4, 1).ToUpper(); 3: 4: // test to see if the type is P 5: if (type == "P") 6: { 7: // ... do something with P type... 8: } Is there really any error in this code? No, but it still struck me wrong because it is allocating two very short-lived throw-away strings, just to store and manipulate a single char: The call to Substring() generates a new string of length 1 The call to ToUpper() generates a new upper-case version of the string from Step 1. In my mind this is similar to using ToUpper() to do a case-insensitive compare: it isn’t wrong, it’s just much heavier than it needs to be (for more info on case-insensitive compares, see #2 in 5 More Little Wonders). One of my favorite books is the C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices by Sutter and Alexandrescu. True, it’s about C++ standards, but there’s also some great general programming advice in there, including two rules I love: 8. Don’t Optimize Prematurely 9. Don’t Pessimize Prematurely We all know what #8 means: don’t optimize when there is no immediate need, especially at the expense of readability and maintainability. I firmly believe this and in the axiom: it’s easier to make correct code fast than to make fast code correct. Optimizing code to the point that it becomes difficult to maintain often gains little and often gives you little bang for the buck. But what about #9? Well, for that they state: “All other things being equal, notably code complexity and readability, certain efficient design patterns and coding idioms should just flow naturally from your fingertips and are no harder to write then the pessimized alternatives. This is not premature optimization; it is avoiding gratuitous pessimization.” Or, if I may paraphrase: “where it doesn’t increase the code complexity and readability, prefer the more efficient option”. The example code above was one of those times I feel where we are violating a tacit C# coding idiom: avoid creating unnecessary temporary strings. The code creates temporary strings to hold one char, which is just unnecessary. I think the original coder thought he had to do this because ToUpper() is an instance method on string but not on char. What he didn’t know, however, is that ToUpper() does exist on char, it’s just a static method instead (though you could write an extension method to make it look instance-ish). This leads me (in a long-winded way) to my Little Wonders for the day… Static Methods of System.Char So let’s look at some of these handy, and often overlooked, static methods on the char type: IsDigit(), IsLetter(), IsLetterOrDigit(), IsPunctuation(), IsWhiteSpace() Methods to tell you whether a char (or position in a string) belongs to a category of characters. IsLower(), IsUpper() Methods that check if a char (or position in a string) is lower or upper case ToLower(), ToUpper() Methods that convert a single char to the lower or upper equivalent. For example, if you wanted to see if a string contained any lower case characters, you could do the following: 1: if (symbol.Any(c => char.IsLower(c))) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Which, incidentally, we could use a method group to shorten the expression to: 1: if (symbol.Any(char.IsLower)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Or, if you wanted to verify that all of the characters in a string are digits: 1: if (symbol.All(char.IsDigit)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Also, for the IsXxx() methods, there are overloads that take either a char, or a string and an index, this means that these two calls are logically identical: 1: // check given a character 2: if (char.IsUpper(symbol[0])) { ... } 3: 4: // check given a string and index 5: if (char.IsUpper(symbol, 0)) { ... } Obviously, if you just have a char, then you’d just use the first form. But if you have a string you can use either form equally well. As a side note, care should be taken when examining all the available static methods on the System.Char type, as some seem to be redundant but actually have very different purposes. For example, there are IsDigit() and IsNumeric() methods, which sound the same on the surface, but give you different results. IsDigit() returns true if it is a base-10 digit character (‘0’, ‘1’, … ‘9’) where IsNumeric() returns true if it’s any numeric character including the characters for ½, ¼, etc. Summary To come full circle back to our opening example, I would have preferred the code be written like this: 1: // grab 5th char and take upper case version of it 2: var type = char.ToUpper(symbol[4]); 3: 4: if (type == 'P') 5: { 6: // ... do something with P type... 7: } Not only is it just as readable (if not more so), but it performs over 3x faster on my machine: 1,000,000 iterations of char method took: 30 ms, 0.000050 ms/item. 1,000,000 iterations of string method took: 101 ms, 0.000101 ms/item. It’s not only immediately faster because we don’t allocate temporary strings, but as an added bonus there less garbage to collect later as well. To me this qualifies as a case where we are using a common C# performance idiom (don’t create unnecessary temporary strings) to make our code better. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,char,string

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How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

- by Martin Hinshelwood

One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.) From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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Tellago releases a RESTful API for BizTalk Server business rules

- by Charles Young

Jesus Rodriguez has blogged recently on Tellago Devlabs' release of an open source RESTful API for BizTalk Server Business Rules. This is an excellent addition to the BizTalk ecosystem and I congratulate Tellago on their work. See http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2011/02/08/tellago-devlabs-a-restful-api-for-biztalk-server-business-rules.aspx The Microsoft BRE was originally designed to be used as an embedded library in .NET applications. This is reflected in the implementation of the Rules Engine Update (REU) Service which is a TCP/IP service that is hosted by a Windows service running locally on each BizTalk box. The job of the REU is to distribute rules, managed and held in a central database repository, across the various servers in a BizTalk group. The engine is therefore distributed on each box, rather than exploited behind a central rules service. This model is all very well, but proves quite restrictive in enterprise environments. The problem is that the BRE can only run legally on licensed BizTalk boxes. Increasingly we need to deliver rules capabilities across a more widely distributed environment. For example, in the project I am working on currently, we need to surface decisioning capabilities for use within WF workflow services running under AppFabric on non-BTS boxes. The BRE does not, currently, offer any centralised rule service facilities out of the box, and hence you have to roll your own (and then run your rules services on BTS boxes which has raised a few eyebrows on my current project, as all other WCF services run on a dedicated server farm ). Tellago's API addresses this by providing a RESTful API for querying the rules repository and executing rule sets against XML passed in the request payload. As Jesus points out in his post, using a RESTful approach hugely increases the reach of BRE-based decisioning, allowing simple invocation from code written in dynamic languages, mobile devices, etc. We developed our own SOAP-based general-purpose rules service to handle scenarios such as the one we face on my current project. SOAP is arguably better suited to enterprise service bus environments (please don't 'flame' me - I refuse to engage in the RESTFul vs. SOAP war). For example, on my current project we use claims based authorisation across the entire service bus and use WIF and WS-Federation for this purpose. We have extended this to the rules service. I can't release the code for commercial reasons :-( but this approach allows us to legally extend the reach of BRE far beyond the confines of the BizTalk boxes on which it runs and to provide general purpose decisioning capabilities on the bus. So, well done Tellago. I haven't had a chance to play with the API yet, but am looking forward to doing so.

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Working with packed dates in SSIS

- by Jim Giercyk

One of the challenges recently thrown my way was to read an EBCDIC flat file, decode packed dates, and insert the dates into a SQL table. For those unfamiliar with packed data, it is a way to store data at the nibble level (half a byte), and was often used by mainframe programmers to conserve storage space. In the case of my input file, the dates were 2 bytes long and represented the number of days that have past since 01/01/1950. My first thought was, in the words of Scooby, Hmmmmph? But, I love a good challenge, so I dove in. Reading in the flat file was rather simple. The only difference between reading an EBCDIC and an ASCII file is the Code Page option in the connection manager. In my case, I needed to use Code Page 1140 for EBCDIC (I could have also used Code Page 37). Once the code page is set correctly, SSIS can understand what it is reading and it will convert the output to the default code page, 1252. However, packed data is either unreadable or produces non-alphabetic characters, as we can see in the preview window. Column 1 is actually the packed date, columns 0 and 2 are the values in the rest of the file. We are only interested in Column 1, which is a 2 byte field representing a packed date. We know that 2 bytes of packed data can be stored in 1 byte of character data, so we are working with 4 packed digits in 2 character bytes. If you are confused, stay tuned….this will make sense in a minute. Right-click on your Flat File Source shape and select “Show Advanced Editor”. Here is where the magic begins. By changing the properties of the output columns, we can access the packed digits from each byte. By default, the Output Column data type is DT_STR. Since we want to look at the bytes individually and not the entire string, change the data type to DT_BYTES. Next, and most important, set UseBinaryFormat to TRUE. This will write the HEX VALUES of the output string instead of writing the character values. Now we are getting somewhere! Next, you will need to use a Data Conversion shape in your Data Flow to transform the 2 position byte stream to a 4 position Unicode string containing the packed data. You need the string to be 4 bytes long because it will contain the 4 packed digits. Here is what that should look like in the Data Conversion shape: Direct the output of your data flow to a test table or file to see the results. In my case, I created a test table. The results looked like this: Hold on a second! That doesn't look like a date at all. No, of course not. It is a hex number which represents the days which have passed between 01/01/1950 and the date. We have to convert the Hex value to a decimal value, and use the DATEADD function to get a date value. Luckily, I have created a function to convert Hex to Decimal: -- ============================================= -- Author: Jim Giercyk -- Create date: March, 2012 -- Description: Converts a Hex string to a decimal value -- ============================================= CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ftn_HexToDec] ( @hexValue NVARCHAR(6) ) RETURNS DECIMAL AS BEGIN -- Declare the return variable here DECLARE @decValue DECIMAL IF @hexValue LIKE '0x%' SET @hexValue = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,3,4) DECLARE @decTab TABLE ( decPos1 VARCHAR(2), decPos2 VARCHAR(2), decPos3 VARCHAR(2), decPos4 VARCHAR(2) ) DECLARE @pos1 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,1,1) DECLARE @pos2 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,2,1) DECLARE @pos3 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,3,1) DECLARE @pos4 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,4,1) INSERT @decTab VALUES (CASE WHEN @pos1 = 'A' THEN '10' WHEN @pos1 = 'B' THEN '11' WHEN @pos1 = 'C' THEN '12' WHEN @pos1 = 'D' THEN '13' WHEN @pos1 = 'E' THEN '14' WHEN @pos1 = 'F' THEN '15' ELSE @pos1 END, CASE WHEN @pos2 = 'A' THEN '10' WHEN @pos2 = 'B' THEN '11' WHEN @pos2 = 'C' THEN '12' WHEN @pos2 = 'D' THEN '13' WHEN @pos2 = 'E' THEN '14' WHEN @pos2 = 'F' THEN '15' ELSE @pos2 END, CASE WHEN @pos3 = 'A' THEN '10' WHEN @pos3 = 'B' THEN '11' WHEN @pos3 = 'C' THEN '12' WHEN @pos3 = 'D' THEN '13' WHEN @pos3 = 'E' THEN '14' WHEN @pos3 = 'F' THEN '15' ELSE @pos3 END, CASE WHEN @pos4 = 'A' THEN '10' WHEN @pos4 = 'B' THEN '11' WHEN @pos4 = 'C' THEN '12' WHEN @pos4 = 'D' THEN '13' WHEN @pos4 = 'E' THEN '14' WHEN @pos4 = 'F' THEN '15' ELSE @pos4 END) SET @decValue = (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos4 FROM @decTab))) + (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos3 FROM @decTab))*16) + (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos2 FROM @decTab))*(16*16)) + (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos1 FROM @decTab))*(16*16*16)) RETURN @decValue END GO Making use of the function, I found the decimal conversion, added that number of days to 01/01/1950 and FINALLY arrived at my “unpacked relative date”. Here is the query I used to retrieve the formatted date, and the result set which was returned: SELECT [packedDate] AS 'Hex Value', dbo.ftn_HexToDec([packedDate]) AS 'Decimal Value', CONVERT(DATE,DATEADD(day,dbo.ftn_HexToDec([packedDate]),'01/01/1950'),101) AS 'Relative String Date' FROM [dbo].[Output Table] This technique can be used any time you need to retrieve the hex value of a character string in SSIS. The date example may be a bit difficult to understand at first, but with SSIS becoming the preferred tool for enterprise level integration for many companies, there is no doubt that developers will encounter these types of requirements with regularity in the future. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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What is the best book on Silverlight 4?

- by mbcrump

Silverlight/Expression 4 Books! I recently stumbled upon a post asking, “What is the best book on Silverlight 4?” In the age of the internet, it can be hard for anyone searching for a good book to actually find it. I have read a few Silverlight 4/Expression books in 2010 and decided to post the “best of” collection. Instead of reading multiple books, you can cut your list down to whatever category that you fit in. With Silverlight 5 coming soon, now is the time to get up to speed with what Silverlight 4 can offer. Be sure to read the full review at the bottom of each section. For the “Beginner” Silverlight Developer: Both of these books contains very simple applications and will get you started very fast. and Book Review: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Step by Step For the guy/gal that wants to “Master” Expression Blend 4: This is a hands-on kind of book. Victor get you started early on with some sample application and quickly deep dives into Storyboard and other Animations. If you want to learn Blend 4 then this is the place to start. Book Review: Foundation Expression Blend 4 by Victor Gaudioso If you are aiming to learn more about the Business side of Silverlight then check out the following two books: and Finally, For the Silverlight 4 guy/gal that wants to “Master” Silverlight 4, it really boils down to the following two books: and Book Review: Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion Book Review: Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown I can’t describe how much that I’ve actually learned from both of these books. I would also recommend you read these books if you are preparing for your Silverlight 4 Certification. For a complete list of all Silverlight 4 books then check out http://www.silverlight.net/learn/books/ and don’t forget to subscribe to my blog. Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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Visual Studio 2010 Is Here!

- by Bill Evjen

I think back to the days of the first versions of Visual Studio (when it was called Visual Studio .NET, remember?) and I think about how far Microsoft has come with this IDE. It really is the best IDE on the market. There is so much to this IDE it is amazing. It now can really handle managing your complete software application development lifecycle. For me, it is (besides Windows 7) the best and most successful product Microsoft has developed. You can obviously get this now and it is available on MSDN and some other places: MSDN Visual Studio Trial Editions Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions (free) You will also find great info at the Visual Studio Developer Center. Some other interesting tidbits of info: JetBrain’s ReSharper 5.0 has been released for VS2010 Oracle will have the new Oracle Dev Tools for VS2010 within one month - http://bit.ly/9gC9NE Visual Studio 64-bit - Why there is no 64-bit version of VS - http://bit.ly/dhhwAj In installing this version of Visual Studio, if you have been working on the previous RC builds, then you are going to want to uninstall these previous editions of the 2010 product. You can do this through the Add Remove Programs dialog and you are going to want to select the appropriate item from the long list of Visual Studio items. You are then going to want to step through the Visual Studio dialog (it will seem as if you are installing it again) – and you will then come to a point where you can select the option to Uninstall the entire application. If you have installed the Silverlight 4 RC stuff, then you are also going to want to uninstall this and you are also going to want to uninstall the “Update for Visual Studio 2010 (KB976272)” before installing Silverlight RC2 – which you can find on www.silverlight.net. Technorati Tags: vs2010,.net,visualstudio,microsoft

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Did Microsoft designers got their butts kicked 3 years ago?

- by John Conwell

This is something I've been wondering about for about a year now. Microsoft has a history of creating very useful products, with lots of useful features. But useful does not mean usable. A lot of stuff coming out of Redmond the past 10 years don't really seem to have been well thought out from a user design point of view. Lots of extra steps, lots of popup windows...very little innovative thinking going on about the user experience of these products.But about a year ago I started seeing changes in the new products coming out of Microsoft. Windows 7 is a good example of a big change. They really got their asses handed to them on Vista, so they had to make a change. But it looks like this change in philosophy has bled over to other areas. The new Office (2010) lineup has a lot of changes in it to make it way more usable. Given that big changes like this take about 3 years to go from start to actually shipping product, I'm curious what happened internally at Microsoft that really drove this change in product design. I think that Microsoft got so focused on just adding new functionality for so long, they forgot about the little things that can really make or break a product. Office 2010 is full of these little things that make it much nicer to use. I just hope its not too late for them.

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Gmail Doesn't Like My Cron

- by Robery Stackhouse

You might wonder what *nix administration has to do with maker culture. Plenty, if *nix is your automation platform of choice. I am using Ubuntu, Exim, and Ruby as the supporting cast of characters for my reminder service. Being able to send yourself an email with some data or a link at a pre-selected time is a pretty handy thing to be able to do indeed. Works great for jogging my less-than-great memory. http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=402&page=1 http://articles.slicehost.com/2007/10/24/creating-a-reverse-dns-record http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1900 http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-test-or-check-reverse-dns/ After going on a huge round the world wild goose chase, I finally was told by someone on the exim-users list that my IP was in a range blocked by Spamhaus PBL. Google said I need an SPF record http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/8/8/email-setting-a-sender-policy-framework-spf-record http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html http://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html The version of Exim that I could get from the Ubuntu package manager didn't support DKIM. So I uninstalled Exim and installed Postfix https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuTime http://www.sendmail.org/dkim/checker

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Webcasts con TechNet Latam Windows Server y Windows 7

- by David Nudelman

La gente de Microsoft TechNet LATAM me invitó a presentar 3 webcasts sobre Windows Server 2008 R2 e implementación de Windows 7, temas que tengo bastante familiaridad. Os dejo la información y el enlace de registro. 25 de Mayo - 2:30 PM-4:00 PM (UTC-05:00) Webcast TechNet: "Una demo para conocer Windows Server 2008 R2" 26 de Mayo - 2:30 PM-4:00 PM (UTC-05:00) Webcast TechNet: "Serie Cómo hacer: Determinación de la mejor opción de implementación y herramientas que se deben utilizar con sus clientes" 1 de Junio - 1:30 PM-3:00 PM (UTC-05:00) Webcast TechNet: "Implementación rápida - Cambio de clientes de XP a Win7 fácil y rápido" Saludos, David Nudelman Technorati Tags: webcasts,server 2008 r2,windows 7,mvp

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How to clear the resent server name list in SQL Server Management Studio

- by Pavan Kumar Pabothu

If you are using SQL Server management Studio much the we can observer that the list of server names in the log in of it. As you can imagin a period of time after 6 month or 1 year you will see a long list of server names in the login dialog. How to clear this list...? I doesn't provide a mechanism to clean nor clear the list, so you'll have to do a little browsing through your file system. For SQl Server 2005 Management Studio, we should delete the below file C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\mru.dat. For SQl Server 2008 Management Studio, we should delete the below file C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\SQLStudio.bin. After deletion we can re-login the Management studio and can see the empty list.

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Open Source on .NET evening at UK Tech Days April 14th #uktechdays

- by Eric Nelson

That fine chap http://twitter.com/serialseb is pulling together an interesting evening of fun on the Wednesday in London and I for one will definitely be there. Lots of goodness to learn about. If you are a .NET developer who still isn’t looking at Open Source, then the 14th is a great opportunity to see what you are missing out on. Current program: OpenRasta - A web application framework for .net An introduction to IoC with Castle Windsor FluentValidation, doing your validation in code CouchDB, NoSQL: designing document databases Testing your asp.net applications with IronRuby Building a data-driven app in 15 minutes with FluentNHibernate Register now Related Links: FREE Windows Azure evening in London on April 15th including FREE access to Windows Azure

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sublime text 2 review !

- by Anirudha

Few months ago I am looking for a editor to doing simply edit on html,css,javascript. Before it I tried notepad++ which is quite awesome to do all works I want to get done with him. I choose 2 editor on my list. first is sublime text and second is phpstorm. both are cross-plateform. I tried both and both is working fine. I finally go with sublime text 2. Here is the reason why sublime text 2 is awesome. phpstorm and sublime text 2 both is licensed software. In sublime text 2 you can use it for unlimited time when phpstorm is available for 30 days only. Sublime text 2 is very memory efficient and lightweight software this is first thing people found best in sublime text 2. in phpstorm problem for me is sometime it’s goes unresponsive when I tried html5 boilerplate. sublime text 2 is never hang depend on memory size of project compare to phpstorm. in Sublime text 2 you can got better speed at coding after learning some shortcut and basic thing applied specially sublime text 2. Sublime text 2 come with distraction free mode when phpstorm have nothing with full-screen. Sublime text 2 support almost every language. I have seen many people in community who has move from their PHP IDE to sublime text 2. You can use LESS and coffeescript in it. There are many kind of customization out in github regarding sublime text 2. In past I also have also tried webmatrix. the latest version of webmatrix have nothing good as sublime text 2. Sublime text 2 is best fit for my requirement. So cheers, people should tried once Sublime text 2 if they are look for a solid tool for learning new things. sublime text 2 can be downloaded from http://www.sublimetext.com/. Thanks for reading my post.

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SSIS Technique to Remove/Skip Trailer and/or Bad Data Row in a Flat File

- by Compudicted

I noticed that the question on how to skip or bypass a trailer record or a badly formatted/empty row in a SSIS package keeps coming back on the MSDN SSIS Forum. I tried to figure out the reason why and after an extensive search inside the forum and outside it on the entire Web (using several search engines) I indeed found that it seems even thought there is a number of posts and articles on the topic none of them are employing the simplest and the most efficient technique. When I say efficient I mean the shortest time to solution for the fellow developers. OK, enough talk. Let’s face the problem: Typically a flat file (e.g. a comma delimited/CSV) needs to be processed (loaded into a database in most cases really). Oftentimes, such an input file is produced by some sort of an out of control, 3-rd party solution and would come in with some garbage characters and/or even malformed/miss-formatted rows. One such example could be this imaginary file: As you can see several rows have no data and there is an occasional garbage character (1, in this example on row #7). Our task is to produce a clean file that will only capture the meaningful data rows. As an aside, our output/target may be a database table, but for the purpose of this exercise we will simply re-format the source. Let’s outline our course of action to start off: Will use SSIS 2005 to create a DFT; The DFT will use a Flat File Source to our input [bad] flat file; We will use a Conditional Split to process the bad input file; and finally Dump the resulting data to a new [clean] file. Well, only four steps, let’s see if it is too much of work. 1: Start the BIDS and add a DFT to the Control Flow designer (I named it Process Dirty File DFT): 2, and 3: I had added the data viewer to just see what I am getting, alas, surprisingly the data issues were not seen it: What really is the key in the approach it is to properly set the Conditional Split Transformation. Visually it is: and specifically its SSIS Expression LEN([After CS Column 0]) > 1 The point is to employ the right Boolean expression (yes, the Conditional Split accepts only Boolean conditions). For the sake of this post I re-named the Output Name “No Empty Rows”, but by default it will be named Case 1 (remember to drag your first column into the expression area)! You can close your Conditional Split now. The next part will be crucial – consuming the output of our Conditional Split. Last step - #4: Add a Flat File Destination or any other one you need. Click on the Conditional Split and choose the green arrow to drop onto the target. When you do so make sure you choose the No Empty Rows output and NOT the Conditional Split Default Output. Make the necessary mappings. At this point your package must look like: As the last step will run our package to examine the produced output file. F5: and… it looks great!

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45minute video on introduction to Windows Azure and running Ruby on Rails in the cloud

- by Eric Nelson

Last week I presented at Cloud and Grid Exchange 2010. I did an introduction to Windows Azure and a demo of Ruby on Rails running on Azure. My slides and links can be found here – but just spotted that the excellent Skills Matter folks have already published the video. Watch the video at http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/cloud-grid/looking-at-the-clouds-through-dirty-windows P.S. I really need to shed a few pounds!

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Addicted to the MIX Buzz

- by Dave Campbell

Well it's the Friday before MIX10, and I'm officially of no use to anybody. I'll be driving up to 'Vegas Sunday ... hopefully rolling in mid-late afternoon, checking in at my $31.50/night (including WiFi) Motel, and getting registered then hanging out around registration to see who is there. First organized thing to do is 9PM, so I'm open to suggestions Sunday evening... maybe we can get a gang together for dinner ?? Monday is the Keynote ... I'm addicted to the buzz in the ballroom the first day, hope to be close to the front, trying to live blog. Then straight to Ballroom A and stake out the spot I'll be in for all 3 days, and you all know why :) I've tagged 40 sessions that I 'want' to see, and there's only 12 slots... damn... if I could, I'd try the Multiplicity thing, but I'm afraid I'd get the idiot first try -- or maybe got that one already :) ... but at least I tagged them to make it easy to find after the videos are up. Stuff going on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night. I'm staying over for an event on Thursday, and driving back on Friday. I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be doing, but I'll try to hit some 'Cream high spots. I'm sure everyone #NotAtMIX is going to be tuned into the sessions online. I'll be wearing TShirts with WynApse.com and SilverlightCream.com printed on the back... so if you see some old curmudgeon with such a shirt, IT'S ME! I look forward to seeing all the people I only see once or twice a year, and meeting ones I haven't met yet What a week... Bring It On and Stay in the 'Light! Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 4 MIX10

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PrairieDevCon – Slide Decks

- by Dylan Smith

PrairieDevCon 2010 was an awesome time. Learned a lot, and had some amazing conversations. You guys even managed to convince me that NoSQL databases might actually be useful after all. For those interested here’s my slide decks from my two sessions: Agile In Action Database Change Management With Visual Studio

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Stackify Gives Devs a Crack at the Production Server

- by Matt Watson

Originally published on SDTimes.com on 7/9/2012 by David Rubinstein.It was one of those interviews where you get finished talking about a company’s product, and you wonder aloud, “Well, THAT makes sense! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?” Matt Watson, CEO of Kansas City, Mo.-based startup Stackify, was telling me that the 10-person company is getting ready to launch its product in August (it’s in beta now) that will give developers an app-centric look into production servers so they can support and troubleshoot apps and fix bugs. Of course, this hasn’t happened in the past because of the security concerns of IT administrators, and a decided lack of expertise on the part of developers. Stackify installs on a server and acts like a proxy for developers, collecting data about the environment, discovering all the applications, scanning for config file changes, and doing server monitoring. “We become the central point that developers can see everything they need to know about their applications,” he said. “Developers can look at the files that are deployed, and query databases in a safe way.” In his words:“The big thing we’re hoping is just giving them (developers) visibility. Most companies want to hire the junior developers that they pay $50,000 a year right out of college to do application support and troubleshooting and fix bugs, but those people don’t have access to production servers to troubleshoot. It becomes very difficult for them to do their job, so they end up spending all of their day bugging the senior developers, the managers or the system administrators to track down this stuff, which creates a huge bottleneck. And so what we can do is give that visibility to those lower-level people so that they can do this work and free up the higher-level people so they can be working on the next big thing.”Stackify itself might just prove to be the next big thing.

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BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 Documentation

- by Rajesh Charagandla

Download Documentation for BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Toolkit - Beta from here

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SQL Azure Data Sync

- by kaleidoscope

The Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure contains a series of components that improve the experience of synchronizing with SQL Azure. This includes runtime components that optimize performance and simplify the process of synchronizing with the cloud. SQL Azure Data Sync allows developers and DBA's to: · Link existing on-premises data stores to SQL Azure. · Create new applications in Windows Azure without abandoning existing on-premises applications. · Extend on-premises data to remote offices, retail stores and mobile workers via the cloud. · Take Windows Azure and SQL Azure based web application offline to provide an “Outlook like” cached-mode experience. The Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure is comprised of the following: · SqlAzureSyncProvider · Sql Azure Offline Visual Studio Plug-In · SQL Azure Data Sync Tool for SQL Server · New SQL Azure Events Automated Provisioning Geeta

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Network communications mechanisms for SQL Server

- by Akshay Deep Lamba

Problem I am trying to understand how SQL Server communicates on the network, because I'm having to tell my networking team what ports to open up on the firewall for an edge web server to communicate back to the SQL Server on the inside. What do I need to know? Solution In order to understand what needs to be opened where, let's first talk briefly about the two main protocols that are in common use today: TCP - Transmission Control Protocol UDP - User Datagram Protocol Both are part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. We'll start with TCP. TCP TCP is the main protocol by which clients communicate with SQL Server. Actually, it is more correct to say that clients and SQL Server use Tabular Data Stream (TDS), but TDS actually sits on top of TCP and when we're talking about Windows and firewalls and other networking devices, that's the protocol that rules and controls are built around. So we'll just speak in terms of TCP. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol. What that means is that the two systems negotiate the connection and both agree to it. Think of it like a phone call. While one person initiates the phone call, the other person has to agree to take it and both people can end the phone call at any time. TCP is the same way. Both systems have to agree to the communications, but either side can end it at any time. In addition, there is functionality built into TCP to ensure that all communications can be disassembled and reassembled as necessary so it can pass over various network devices and be put together again properly in the right order. It also has mechanisms to handle and retransmit lost communications. Because of this functionality, TCP is the protocol used by many different network applications. The way the applications all can share is through the use of ports. When a service, like SQL Server, comes up on a system, it must listen on a port. For a default SQL Server instance, the default port is 1433. Clients connect to the port via the TCP protocol, the connection is negotiated and agreed to, and then the two sides can transfer information as needed until either side decides to end the communication. In actuality, both sides will have a port to use for the communications, but since the client's port is typically determined semi-randomly, when we're talking about firewalls and the like, typically we're interested in the port the server or service is using. UDP UDP, unlike TCP, is not connection oriented. A "client" can send a UDP communications to anyone it wants. There's nothing in place to negotiate a communications connection, there's nothing in the protocol itself to coordinate order of communications or anything like that. If that's needed, it's got to be handled by the application or by a protocol built on top of UDP being used by the application. If you think of TCP as a phone call, think of UDP as a postcard. I can put a postcard in the mail to anyone I want, and so long as it is addressed properly and has a stamp on it, the postal service will pick it up. Now, what happens it afterwards is not guaranteed. There's no mechanism for retransmission of lost communications. It's great for short communications that doesn't necessarily need an acknowledgement. Because multiple network applications could be communicating via UDP, it uses ports, just like TCP. The SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service uses UDP. Network Communications - Talking to SQL Server When an instance of SQL Server is set up, what TCP port it listens on depends. A default instance will be set up to listen on port 1433. A named instance will be set to a random port chosen during installation. In addition, a named instance will be configured to allow it to change that port dynamically. What this means is that when a named instance starts up, if it finds something already using the port it normally uses, it'll pick a new port. If you have a named instance, and you have connections coming across a firewall, you're going to want to use SQL Server Configuration Manager to set a static port. This will allow the networking and security folks to configure their devices for maximum protection. While you can change the network port for a default instance of SQL Server, most people don't. Network Communications - Finding a SQL Server When just the name is specified for a client to connect to SQL Server, for instance, MySQLServer, this is an attempt to connect to the default instance. In this case the client will automatically attempt to communicate to port 1433 on MySQLServer. If you've switched the port for the default instance, you'll need to tell the client the proper port, usually by specifying the following syntax in the connection string: <server>,<port>. For instance, if you moved SQL Server to listen on 14330, you'd use MySQLServer,14330 instead of just MySQLServer. However, because a named instance sets up its port dynamically by default, the client never knows at the outset what the port is it should talk to. That's what the SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service (SQL Server 2000) is for. In this case, the client sends a communication via the UDP protocol to port 1434. It asks, "Where is the named instance?" So if I was running a named instance called SQL2008R2, it would be asking the SQL Browser, "Hey, how do I talk to MySQLServer\SQL2008R2?" The SQL Browser would then send back a communications from UDP port 1434 back to the client telling the client how to talk to the named instance. Of course, you can skip all of this of you set that named instance's port statically. Then you can use the <server>,<port> mechanism to connect and the client won't try to talk to the SQL Browser service. It'll simply try to make the connection. So, for instance, is the SQL2008R2 instance was listening on port 20080, specifying MySQLServer,20080 would attempt a connection to the named instance. Network Communications - Named Pipes Named pipes is an older network library communications mechanism and it's generally not used any longer. It shouldn't be used across a firewall. However, if for some reason you need to connect to SQL Server with it, this protocol also sits on top of TCP. Named Pipes is actually used by the operating system and it has its own mechanism within the protocol to determine where to route communications. As far as network communications is concerned, it listens on TCP port 445. This is true whether we're talking about a default or named instance of SQL Server. The Summary Table To put all this together, here is what you need to know: Type of Communication Protocol Used Default Port Finding a SQL Server or SQL Server Named Instance UDP 1434 Communicating with a default instance of SQL Server TCP 1433 Communicating with a named instance of SQL Server TCP * Determined dynamically at start up Communicating with SQL Server via Named Pipes TCP 445

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Using HTML5 Today part 2–Fixing Semantic tags with a Shiv

- by Steve Albers

Semantic elements and the Shiv! This is the second entry in the series of demos from the “Using HTML5 Today” talk. For the definitive discussion on unknown elements and the HTML5 Shiv check out Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5 online book at http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html#unknown-elements Semantic tags increase the meaning and maintainability of your markup, help make your page more computer-readable, and can even provide opportunities for libraries that are written to automagically enhance content using standard tags like <nav>, <header>, or <footer>. Legacy IE issues However, new HTML5 tags get mangled in IE browsers prior to version 9. To see this in action, consider this bit of HTML code which includes the new <article> and <header> elements: Viewing this page using the IE9 developer tools (F12) we see that the browser correctly models the hierarchy of tags listed above: But if we switch to IE8 Browser Mode in developer tools things go bad: Did you know that a closing tag could close itself?? The browser loses the hierarchy & closes all of the new tags. The new tags become unusable and the page structure falls apart. Additionally block-level elements lose their block status, appearing as inline. The Fix (good) The block-level issue can be resolved by using CSS styling. Below we set the article, header, and footer tags as block tags. article, header, footer {display:block;} You can avoid the unknown element issue by creating a version of the element in JavaScript before the actual HTML5 tag appears on the page: <script> document.createElement("article"); document.createElement("header"); document.createElement("footer"); </script> The Fix (better) Rather than adding your own JS you can take advantage of a standard JS library such as Remy Sharp’s HTML5 Shiv at http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/. By default the Modernizr library includes HTML5 Shiv, so you don’t need to include the shiv code separately if you are using Modernizr.

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Slides and Files from Day of .Net Ann Arbor ‘10

- by Brian Jackett

This past Saturday I presented “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” at the Ann Arbor Day of .Net conference in Ann Arbor, MI. Below are my slides and PowerShell demo scripts I used during the presentation. Thanks to everyone who attended my session, as well as the sponsors, speakers, organizers and all attendees who made this event happen. Slides and demo scripts

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Multiple validation using jquery

- by Prasenjit

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Creating Item Templates as Visual Studio 2010 Extensions

- by maziar

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Extension,T4 Template,VSIX,Item Template Wizard This blog post briefly introduces creation of an item template as a Visual studio 2010 extension. Problem specification Assume you are writing a Framework for data-oriented applications and you decide to include all your application messages in a SQL server database table. After creating the table, your create a class in your framework for getting messages with a string key specified. var message = FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); Everyone would say this code is so error prone, because message keys are not strong-typed, and might create errors in application that are not caught in tests. So we think of a way to make it strong-typed, i.e. create a class to use it like this: var message = Messages.ChangesSavedSuccess; in Messages class the code looks like this: public string ChangesSavedSuccess { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } } And clearly, we are not going to create the Messages class manually; we need a class generator for it. Again assume that the application(s) that intend to use our framework, contain multiple sub-systems. So each sub-system need to have it’s own strong-typed message class that call FrameworkMessages.Get method. So we would like to make our code generator an Item Template so that each developer would easily add the item to his project and no other works would be necessary. Solution We create a T4 Text Template to generate our strong typed class from database. Then create a Visual Studio Item Template with this generator and publish it. What Are T4 Templates You might be already familiar with T4 templates. If it’s so, you can skip this section. T4 Text Template is a fine Visual Studio file type (.tt) that generates output text. This file is a mixture of text blocks and code logic (in C# or VB). For example, you can generate HTML files, C# classes, Resource files and etc with use of a T4 template. Syntax highlighting In Visual Studio 2010 a T4 Template by default will no be syntax highlighted and no auto-complete is supported for it. But there is a fine visual studio extension named ‘Visual T4’ which can be downloaded free from VisualStudioGallery. This tool offers IntelliSense, syntax coloring, validation, transformation preview and more for T4 templates. How Item Templates work in Visual Studio Visual studio extensions allow us to add some functionalities to visual studio. In our case we need to create a .vsix file that adds a template to visual studio item templates. Item templates are zip files containing the template file and a meta-data file with .vstemplate extension. This .vstemplate file is an XML file that provides some information about the template. A .vsix file also is a zip file (renamed to .vsix) that are open with visual studio extension installer. (Re-installing a vsix file requires that old one to be uninstalled from VS: Tools > Extension Manager.) Installing a vsix will need Visual Studio to be closed and re-opened to take effect. Visual studio extension installer will easily find the item template’s zip file and copy it to visual studio’s template items folder. You can find other visual studio templates in [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates] and you can edit them; but be very careful with VS default templates. How Can I Create a VSIX file 1. Visual Studio SDK depending on your Visual Studio’s version, you need to download Microsoft Visual Studio SDK. Note that if you have VS 2010 SP1, you will need to download and install VS 2010 SP1 SDK; VS 2010 SDK will not be installed (unless you change registry value that indicated your service pack number). Here is the link for VS 2010 SP1 SDK. After downloading, Run it and follow the wizard to complete the installation. 2. Create the file you want to make it an Item Template Create a project (or use an existing one) and add you file, edit it to make it work fine. Back to our own problem, we need to create a T4 (.tt) template. VS-Prok: Add > New Item > General > Text Template Type a file name, ex. Message.tt, and press Add. Create the T4 template file (in this blog I do not intend to include T4 syntaxes so I just write down the code which is clear enough for you to understand) <#@ template debug="false" hostspecific="true" language="C#" #> <#@ output extension=".cs" #> <#@ Assembly Name="System.Data" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Text" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.IO" #> <# var connectionString = "server=Maziar-PC; Database=MyDatabase; Integrated Security=True"; var systemName = "Sys1"; var builder = new StringBuilder(); using (var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString)) { connection.Open(); var command = connection.CreateCommand(); command.CommandText = string.Format("SELECT [Key] FROM [Message] WHERE System = '{0}'", systemName); var reader = command.ExecuteReader(); while (reader.Read()) { builder.AppendFormat(" public static string {0} {{ get {{ return FrameworkMessages.Get(\"{0}\"); }} }}\r\n", reader[0]); } } #> namespace <#= System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.CallContext.LogicalGetData("NamespaceHint") #> { public static class <#= Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(Host.TemplateFile) #> { <#= builder.ToString() #> } } As you can see the T4 template connects to a database, reads message keys and generates a class. Here is the output: namespace MyProject.MyFolder { public static class Messages { public static string ChangesSavedSuccess { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } } public static string ErrorSavingChanges { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ErrorSavingChanges"); } } } } The output looks fine but there is one problem. The connectionString and systemName are hard coded. so how can I create an flexible item template? One of features of item templates in visual studio is that you can create a designer wizard for your item template, so I can get connection information and system name there. now lets go on creating the vsix file. 3. Create Template In visual studio click on File > Export Template a wizard will show up. if first step click on Item Template on in the combo box select the project that contains Messages.tt. click next. Select Messages.tt from list in second step. click next. In the third step, you should choose References. For this template, System and System.Data are needed so choose them. click next. write down template name, description, if you like add a .ico file as the icon file and also preview image. Uncheck automatically add the templare … . Copy the output location in clip board. click finish. 4. Create VSIX Project In VS, Click File > New > Project > Extensibility > VSIX Project Type a name, ex. FrameworkMessages, Location, etc. The project will include a .vsixmanifest file. Fill in fields like Author, Product Name, Description, etc. In Content section, click on Add Content. choose content type as Item Template. choose source as file. remember you have the template file address in clipboard? now paste it in front of file. click OK. 5. Build VSIX Project That’s it, build the project and go to output directory. You see a .vsix file. you can run it now. After restarting VS, if you click on a project > Add > New Item, you will see your item in list and you can add it. When you add this item to a project, if it has not references to System and System.Data they will be added. but the problem mentioned in step 2 is seen now. 6. Create Design Wizard for your Item Template Create a project i.e. Windows Application named ‘Framework.Messages.Design’, but better change its output type to Class Library. Add References to Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface and envdte Add a class Named MessagesDesigner in your project and Implement IWizard interface in it. This is what you should write: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizard; using EnvDTE; namespace Framework.Messages.Design { class MessageDesigner : IWizard { private bool CanAddProjectItem; public void RunStarted(object automationObject, Dictionary<string, string> replacementsDictionary, WizardRunKind runKind, object[] customParams) { // Prompt user for Connection String and System Name in a Windows form (ShowDialog) here // (try to provide good interface) // if user clicks on cancel of your windows form return; string connectionString = "connection;string"; // Set value from the form string systemName = "system;name"; // Set value from the form CanAddProjectItem = true; replacementsDictionary.Add("$connectionString$", connectionString); replacementsDictionary.Add("$systemName$", systemName); } public bool ShouldAddProjectItem(string filePath) { return CanAddProjectItem; } public void BeforeOpeningFile(ProjectItem projectItem) { } public void ProjectFinishedGenerating(Project project) { } public void ProjectItemFinishedGenerating(ProjectItem projectItem) { } public void RunFinished() { } } } before your code runs replacementsDictionary contains list of default template parameters. After that, two other parameters are added. Now build this project and copy the output assembly to [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE] folder. your designer is ready. The template that you had created is now added to your VSIX project. In windows explorer open your template zip file (extract it somewhere). open the .vstemplate file. first of all remove <ProjectItem SubType="Code" TargetFileName="$fileinputname$.cs" ReplaceParameters="true">Messages.cs</ProjectItem> because the .cs file is not to be intended to be a part of template and it will be generated. change value of ReplaceParameters for your .tt file to true to enable parameter replacement in this file. now right after </TemplateContent> end element, write this: <WizardExtension> <Assembly>Framework.Messages.Design</Assembly> <FullClassName>Framework.Messages.Design.MessageDesigner</FullClassName> </WizardExtension> one other thing that you should do is to edit your .tt file and remove your .cs file. Lines 8 and 9 of your .tt file should be: var connectionString = "$connectionString$"; var systemName = "$systemName$"; this parameters will be replaced when the item is added to a project. Save the contents to a zip file with same file name and replace the original file. now again build your VSIX project, uninstall your extension. close VS. now run .vsix file. open vs, add an item of type messages to your project, bingo, your wizard form will show up. fill the fields and click ok, values are replaced in .tt file added. that’s it. tried so hard to make this post brief, hope it was not so long… Cheers Maziar

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