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• Q1 2010 New Feature: Paging with RadGridView for Silverlight and WPF

  We are glad to announce that the Q1 2010 Release has added another weapon to RadGridViews growing arsenal of features. This is the brand new RadDataPager control which provides the user interface for paging through a collection of data. The good news is that RadDataPager can be used to page any collection. It does not depend on RadGridView in any way, so you will be free to use it with the rest of your ItemsControls if you chose to do so. Before you read on, you might want to download the samples solution that I have attached. It contains a sample project for every scenario that I will discuss later on. Looking at the code while reading will make things much easier for you. There is something for everyone among the 10 Visual Studio projects that are included in the solution. So go and grab it. I. Paging essentials The single most important piece of software concerning paging in Silverlight is the System.ComponentModel.IPagedCollectionView interface. Those of you who are on the WPF front need not worry though. As you might already know, Teleriks Silverlight and WPF controls is share the same code-base. Since WPF does not contain a similar interface, Telerik has provided its own Telerik.Windows.Data.IPagedCollectionView. The IPagedCollectionView interface contains several important members which are used by RadGridView to perform the actual paging. Silverlight provides a default implementation of this interface which, naturally, is called PagedCollectionView. You should definitely take a look at its source code in case you are interested in what is going on under the hood. But this is not a prerequisite for our discussion. The WPF default implementation of the interface is Teleriks QueryableCollectionView which, among many other interfaces, implements IPagedCollectionView. II. No Paging In order to gradually build up my case, I will start with a very simple example that lacks paging whatsoever. It might sound stupid, but this will help us build on top of this paging-devoid example. Let us imagine that we have the simplest possible scenario. That is a simple IEnumerable and an ItemsControl that shows its contents. This will look like this: No Paging IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = itemsSource; XAML <Border Grid.Row="0" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <TextBlock Text="No Paging"/> </Border> Nothing special for now. Just some data displayed in a ListBox. The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: NoPaging_WPF NoPaging_SL3 With every next sample those two project will evolve in some way or another. III. Paging simple collections The single most important property of RadDataPager is its Source property. This is where you pass in your collection of data for paging. More often than not your collection will not be an IPagedCollectionView. It will either be a simple List<T>, or an ObservableCollection<T>, or anything that is simply IEnumerable. Unless you had paging in mind when you designed your project, it is almost certain that your data source will not be pageable out of the box. So what are the options? III. 1. Wrapping the simple collection in an IPagedCollectionView If you look at the constructors of PagedCollectionView and QueryableCollectionView you will notice that you can pass in a simple IEnumerable as a parameter. Those two classes will wrap it and provide paging capabilities over your original data. In fact, this is what RadGridView does internally. It wraps your original collection in an QueryableCollectionView in order to easily perform many useful tasks such as filtering, sorting, and others, but in our case the most important one is paging. So let us start our series of examples with the most simplistic one. Imagine that you have a simple IEnumerable which is the source for an ItemsControl. Here is how to wrap it in order to enable paging: Silverlight IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); var pagedSource = new PagedCollectionView(itemsSource); this.radDataPager.Source = pagedSource; this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = pagedSource; WPF IEnumerable itemsSource = Enumerable.Range(0, 1000); var pagedSource = new QueryableCollectionView(itemsSource); this.radDataPager.Source = pagedSource; this.itemsControl.ItemsSource = pagedSource; XAML <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> This will do the trick. It is quite simple, isnt it? The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingSimpleCollectionWithWrapping_WPF PagingSimpleCollectionWithWrapping_SL3 III. 2. Binding to RadDataPager.PagedSource In case you do not like this approach there is a better one. When you assign an IEnumerable as the Source of a RadDataPager it will automatically wrap it in a QueryableCollectionView and expose it through its PagedSource property. From then on, you can attach any number of ItemsControls to the PagedSource and they will be automatically paged. Here is how to do this entirely in XAML: Using RadDataPager.PagedSource <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"              ItemsSource="{Binding PagedSource, ElementName=radDataPager}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding ItemsSource}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingSimpleCollectionWithPagedSource_WPF PagingSimpleCollectionWithPagedSource_SL3 IV. Paging collections implementing IPagedCollectionView Those of you who are using WCF RIA Services should feel very lucky. After a quick look with Reflector or the debugger we can see that the DomainDataSource.Data property is in fact an instance of the DomainDataSourceView class. This class implements a handful of useful interfaces: ICollectionView IEnumerable INotifyCollectionChanged IEditableCollectionView IPagedCollectionView INotifyPropertyChanged Luckily, IPagedCollectionView is among them which lets you do the whole paging in the server. So lets do this. We will add a DomainDataSource control to our page/window and connect the items control and the pager to it. Here is how to do this: MainPage <riaControls:DomainDataSource x:Name="invoicesDataSource"                               AutoLoad="True"                               QueryName="GetInvoicesQuery">     <riaControls:DomainDataSource.DomainContext>         <services:ChinookDomainContext/>     </riaControls:DomainDataSource.DomainContext> </riaControls:DomainDataSource> <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <ListBox Name="itemsControl"              ItemsSource="{Binding Data, ElementName=invoicesDataSource}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding Data, ElementName=invoicesDataSource}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> By the way, you can replace the ListBox from the above code snippet with any other ItemsControl. It can be RadGridView, it can be the MS DataGrid, you name it. Essentially, RadDataPager is sending paging commands to the the DomainDataSource.Data. It does not care who, what, or how many different controls are bound to this same Data property of the DomainDataSource control. So if you would like to experiment with this, you can throw in any number of other ItemsControls next to the ListBox, bind them in the same manner, and all of them will be paged by our single RadDataPager. Furthermore, you can throw in any number of RadDataPagers and bind them to the same property. Then when you page with any one of them will automatically update all of the rest. The whole picture is simply beautiful and we can do all of this thanks to WCF RIA Services. The two sample projects (Silverlight only) in the solution that I have attached are: PagingIPagedCollectionView PagingIPagedCollectionView.Web IV. Paging RadGridView While you can replace the ListBox in any of the above examples with a RadGridView, RadGridView offers something extra. Similar to the DomainDataSource.Data property, the RadGridView.Items collection implements the IPagedCollectionView interface. So you are already thinking: Then why not bind the Source property of RadDataPager to RadGridView.Items? Well thats exactly what you can do and you will start paging RadGridView out-of-the-box. It is as simple as that, no code-behind is involved: MainPage <Border Grid.Row="0"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1" Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadGridView Name="radGridView"                              ItemsSource="{Binding ItemsSource}"/> </Border> <Border Grid.Row="1"         BorderBrush="Black"         BorderThickness="1"         Margin="5">     <telerikGrid:RadDataPager Name="radDataPager"                               Source="{Binding Items, ElementName=radGridView}"                              PageSize="10"                              IsTotalItemCountFixed="True"                              DisplayMode="All"/> The two sample projects in the solution that I have attached are: PagingRadGridView_SL3 PagingRadGridView_WPF With this last example I think I have covered every possible paging combination. In case you would like to see an example of something that I have not covered, please let me know. Also, make sure you check out those great online examples: WCF RIA Services with DomainDataSource Paging Configurator Endless Paging Paging Any Collection Paging RadGridView Happy Paging! Download Full Source Code Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• OIM 11g notification framework

  - by Rajesh G Kumar

  OIM 11g has introduced an improved and template based Notifications framework. New release has removed the limitation of sending text based emails (out-of-the-box emails) and enhanced to support html features. New release provides in-built out-of-the-box templates for events like 'Reset Password', 'Create User Self Service' , ‘User Deleted' etc. Also provides new APIs to support custom templates to send notifications out of OIM. OIM notification framework supports notification mechanism based on events, notification templates and template resolver. They are defined as follows: Ø Events are defined as XML file and imported as part of MDS database in order to make notification event available for use. Ø Notification templates are created using OIM advance administration console. The template contains the text and the substitution 'variables' which will be replaced with the data provided by the template resolver. Templates support internationalization and can be defined as HTML or in form of simple text. Ø Template resolver is a Java class that is responsible to provide attributes and data to be used at runtime and design time. It must be deployed following the OIM plug-in framework. Resolver data provided at design time is to be used by end user to design notification template with available entity variables and it also provides data at runtime to replace the designed variable with value to be displayed to recipients. Steps to define custom notifications in OIM 11g are: Steps# Steps 1. Define the Notification Event 2. Create the Custom Template Resolver class 3. Create Template with notification contents to be sent to recipients 4. Create Event triggering spots in OIM 1. Notification Event metadata The Notification Event is defined as XML file which need to be imported into MDS database. An event file must be compliant with the schema defined by the notification engine, which is NotificationEvent.xsd. The event file contains basic information about the event.XSD location in MDS database: “/metadata/iam-features-notification/NotificationEvent.xsd”Schema file can be viewed by exporting file from MDS using weblogicExportMetadata.sh script.Sample Notification event metadata definition: 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2: <Events xmlns:xsi=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../metadata/NotificationEvent.xsd"> 3: <EventType name="Sample Notification"> 4: <StaticData> 5: <Attribute DataType="X2-Entity" EntityName="User" Name="Granted User"/> 6: </StaticData> 7: <Resolver class="com.iam.oim.demo.notification.DemoNotificationResolver"> 8: <Param DataType="91-Entity" EntityName="Resource" Name="ResourceInfo"/> 9: </Resolver> 10: </EventType> 11: </Events> Line# Description 1. XML file notation tag 2. Events is root tag 3. EventType tag is to declare a unique event name which will be available for template designing 4. The StaticData element lists a set of parameters which allow user to add parameters that are not data dependent. In other words, this element defines the static data to be displayed when notification is to be configured. An example of static data is the User entity, which is not dependent on any other data and has the same set of attributes for all event instances and notification templates. Available attributes are used to be defined as substitution tokens in the template. 5. Attribute tag is child tag for StaticData to declare the entity and its data type with unique reference name. User entity is most commonly used Entity as StaticData. 6. StaticData closing tag 7. Resolver tag defines the resolver class. The Resolver class must be defined for each notification. It defines what parameters are available in the notification creation screen and how those parameters are replaced when the notification is to be sent. Resolver class resolves the data dynamically at run time and displays the attributes in the UI. 8. The Param DataType element lists a set of parameters which allow user to add parameters that are data dependent. An example of the data dependent or a dynamic entity is a resource object which user can select at run time. A notification template is to be configured for the resource object. Corresponding to the resource object field, a lookup is displayed on the UI. When a user selects the event the call goes to the Resolver class provided to fetch the fields that are displayed in the Available Data list, from which user can select the attribute to be used on the template. Param tag is child tag to declare the entity and its data type with unique reference name. 9. Resolver closing tag 10 EventType closing tag 11. Events closing tag Note: - DataType needs to be declared as “X2-Entity” for User entity and “91-Entity” for Resource or Organization entities. The dynamic entities supported for lookup are user, resource, and organization. Once notification event metadata is defined, need to be imported into MDS database. Fully qualified resolver class name need to be define for XML but do not need to load the class in OIM yet (it can be loaded later). 2. Coding the notification resolver All event owners have to provide a resolver class which would resolve the data dynamically at run time. Custom resolver class must implement the interface oracle.iam.notification.impl.NotificationEventResolver and override the implemented methods with actual implementation. It has 2 methods: S# Methods Descriptions 1. public List<NotificationAttribute> getAvailableData(String eventType, Map<String, Object> params); This API will return the list of available data variables. These variables will be available on the UI while creating/modifying the Templates and would let user select the variables so that they can be embedded as a token as part of the Messages on the template. These tokens are replaced by the value passed by the resolver class at run time. Available data is displayed in a list. The parameter "eventType" specifies the event Name for which template is to be read.The parameter "params" is the map which has the entity name and the corresponding value for which available data is to be fetched. Sample code snippet: List<NotificationAttribute> list = new ArrayList<NotificationAttribute>(); long objKey = (Long) params.get("resource"); //Form Field details based on Resource object key HashMap<String, Object> formFieldDetail = getObjectFormName(objKey); for (Iterator<?> itrd = formFieldDetail.entrySet().iterator(); itrd.hasNext(); ) { NotificationAttribute availableData = new NotificationAttribute(); Map.Entry formDetailEntrySet = (Entry<?, ?>)itrd.next(); String fieldLabel = (String)formDetailEntrySet.getValue(); availableData.setName(fieldLabel); list.add(availableData); } return list; 2. Public HashMap<String, Object> getReplacedData(String eventType, Map<String, Object> params); This API would return the resolved value of the variables present on the template at the runtime when notification is being sent. The parameter "eventType" specifies the event Name for which template is to be read.The parameter "params" is the map which has the base values such as usr_key, obj_key etc required by the resolver implementation to resolve the rest of the variables in the template. Sample code snippet: HashMap<String, Object> resolvedData = new HashMap<String, Object>();String firstName = getUserFirstname(params.get("usr_key"));resolvedData.put("fname", firstName); String lastName = getUserLastName(params.get("usr_key"));resolvedData.put("lname", lastname);resolvedData.put("count", "1 million");return resolvedData; This code must be deployed as per OIM 11g plug-in framework. The XML file defining the plug-in is as below: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <oimplugins xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <plugins pluginpoint="oracle.iam.notification.impl.NotificationEventResolver"> <plugin pluginclass= " com.iam.oim.demo.notification.DemoNotificationResolver" version="1.0" name="Sample Notification Resolver"/> </plugins> </oimplugins> 3. Defining the template To create a notification template: Log in to the Oracle Identity Administration Click the System Management tab and then click the Notification tab From the Actions list on the left pane, select Create On the Create page, enter values for the following fields under the Template Information section: Template Name: Demo template Description Text: Demo template Under the Event Details section, perform the following: From the Available Event list, select the event for which the notification template is to be created from a list of available events. Depending on your selection, other fields are displayed in the Event Details section. Note that the template Sample Notification Event created in the previous step being used as the notification event. The contents of the Available Data drop down are based on the event XML StaticData tag, the drop down basically lists all the attributes of the entities defined in that tag. Once you select an element in the drop down, it will show up in the Selected Data text field and then you can just copy it and paste it into either the message subject or the message body fields prefixing $ symbol. Example if list has attribute like First_Name then message body will contains this as $First_Name which resolver will parse and replace it with actual value at runtime. In the Resource field, select a resource from the lookup. This is the dynamic data defined by the Param DataType element in the XML definition. Based on selected resource getAvailableData method of resolver will be called to fetch the resource object attribute detail, if method is overridden with required implementation. For current scenario, Map<String, Object> params will get populated with object key as value and key as “resource” in the map. This is the only input will be provided to resolver at design time. You need to implement the further logic to fetch the object attributes detail to populate the available Data list. List string should not have space in between, if object attributes has space for attribute name then implement logic to replace the space with ‘_’ before populating the list. Example if attribute name is “First Name” then make it “First_Name” and populate the list. Space is not supported while you try to parse and replace the token at run time with real value. Make a note that the Available Data and Selected Data are used in the substitution tokens definition only, they do not define the final data that will be sent in the notification. OIM will invoke the resolver class to get the data and make the substitutions. Under the Locale Information section, enter values in the following fields: To specify a form of encoding, select either UTF-8 or ASCII. In the Message Subject field, enter a subject for the notification. From the Type options, select the data type in which you want to send the message. You can choose between HTML and Text/Plain. In the Short Message field, enter a gist of the message in very few words. In the Long Message field, enter the message that will be sent as the notification with Available data token which need to be replaced by resolver at runtime. After you have entered the required values in all the fields, click Save. A message is displayed confirming the creation of the notification template. Click OK 4. Triggering the event A notification event can be triggered from different places in OIM. The logic behind the triggering must be coded and plugged into OIM. Examples of triggering points for notifications: Event handlers: post process notifications for specific data updates in OIM users Process tasks: to notify the users that a provisioning task was executed by OIM Scheduled tasks: to notify something related to the task The scheduled job has two parameters: Template Name: defines the notification template to be sent User Login: defines the user record that will provide the data to be sent in the notification Sample Code Snippet: public void execute(String templateName , String userId) { try { NotificationService notService = Platform.getService(NotificationService.class); NotificationEvent eventToSend=this.createNotificationEvent(templateName,userId); notService.notify(eventToSend); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } private NotificationEvent createNotificationEvent(String poTemplateName, String poUserId) { NotificationEvent event = new NotificationEvent(); String[] receiverUserIds= { poUserId }; event.setUserIds(receiverUserIds); event.setTemplateName(poTemplateName); event.setSender(null); HashMap<String, Object> templateParams = new HashMap<String, Object>(); templateParams.put("USER_LOGIN",poUserId); event.setParams(templateParams); return event; } public HashMap getAttributes() { return null; } public void setAttributes() {} }

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• Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

  - by Rick Strahl

  Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a  bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• URL Rewrite – Multiple domains under one site. Part II

  - by OWScott

  I believe I have it … I’ve been meaning to put together the ultimate outgoing rule for hosting multiple domains under one site.  I finally sat down this week and setup a few test cases, and created one rule to rule them all.  In Part I of this two part series, I covered the incoming rule necessary to host a site in a subfolder of a website, while making it appear as if it’s in the root of the site.  Part II won’t work without applying Part I first, so if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to read it now. However, the incoming rule by itself doesn’t address everything.  Here’s the problem … Let’s say that we host www.site2.com in a subfolder called site2, off of masterdomain.com.  This is the same example I used in Part I.   Using an incoming rewrite rule, we are able to make a request to www.site2.com even though the site is really in the /site2 folder.  The gotcha comes with any type of path that ASP.NET generates (I’m sure other scripting technologies could do the same too).  ASP.NET thinks that the path to the root of the site is /site2, but the URL is /.  See the issue?  If ASP.NET generates a path or a redirect for us, it will always add /site2 to the URL.  That results in a path that looks something like www.site2.com/site2.  In Part I, I mentioned that you should add a condition where “{PATH_INFO} ‘does not match’ /site2”.  That allows www.site2.com/site2 and www.site2.com to both function the same.  This allows the site to always work, but if you want to hide /site2 in the URL, you need to take it one step further. One way to address this is in your code.  Ultimately this is the best bet.  Ruslan Yakushev has a great article on a few considerations that you can address in code.  I recommend giving that serious consideration.  Additionally, if you have upgraded to ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 or greater, it takes care of some of the references automatically for you. However, what if you inherit an existing application?  Or you can’t easily go through your existing site and make the code changes?  If this applies to you, read on. That’s where URL Rewrite 2.0 comes in.  With URL Rewrite 2.0, you can create an outgoing rule that will remove the /site2 before the page is sent back to the user.  This means that you can take an existing application, host it in a subfolder of your site, and ensure that the URL never reveals that it’s in a subfolder. Performance Considerations Performance overhead is something to be mindful of.  These outbound rules aren’t simply changing the server variables.  The first rule I’ll cover below needs to parse the HTML body and pull out the path (i.e. /site2) on the way through.  This will add overhead, possibly significant if you have large pages and a busy site.  In other words, your mileage may vary and you may need to test to see the impact that these rules have.  Don’t worry too much though.  For many sites, the performance impact is negligible. So, how do we do it? Creating the Outgoing Rule There are really two things to keep in mind.  First, ASP.NET applications frequently generate a URL that adds the /site2 back into the URL.  In addition to URLs, they can be in form elements, img elements and the like.  The goal is to find all of those situations and rewrite it on the way out.  Let’s call this the ‘URL problem’. Second, and similarly, ASP.NET can send a LOCATION redirect that causes a redirect back to another page.  Again, ASP.NET isn’t aware of the different URL and it will add the /site2 to the redirect.  Form Authentication is a good example on when this occurs.  Try to password protect a site running from a subfolder using forms auth and you’ll quickly find that the URL becomes www.site2.com/site2 again.  Let’s term this the ‘redirect problem’. Solving the URL Problem – Outgoing Rule #1 Let’s create a rule that removes the /site2 from any URL.  We want to remove it from relative URLs like /site2/something, or absolute URLs like http://www.site2.com/site2/something.  Most URLs that ASP.NET creates will be relative URLs, but I figure that there may be some applications that piece together a full URL, so we might as well expect that situation. Let’s get started.  First, create a new outbound rule.  You can create the rule within the /site2 folder which will reduce the performance impact of the rule.  Just a reminder that incoming rules for this situation won’t work in a subfolder … but outgoing rules will. Give it a name that makes sense to you, for example “Outgoing – URL paths”. Precondition.  If you place the rule in the subfolder, it will only run for that site and folder, so there isn’t need for a precondition.  Run it for all requests.  If you place it in the root of the site, you may want to create a precondition for HTTP_HOST = ^(www\.)?site2\.com$. For the Match section, there are a few things to consider.  For performance reasons, it’s best to match the least amount of elements that you need to accomplish the task.  For my test cases, I just needed to rewrite the <a /> tag, but you may need to rewrite any number of HTML elements.  Note that as long as you have the exclude /site2 rule in your incoming rule as I described in Part I, some elements that don’t show their URL—like your images—will work without removing the /site2 from them.  That reduces the processing needed for this rule. Leave the “matching scope” at “Response” and choose the elements that you want to change. Set the pattern to “^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)”.  Make sure to replace ‘site2’ with your subfolder name in both places.  Yes, I realize this is a pretty messy looking rule, but it handles a few situations.  This rule will handle the following situations correctly: Original Rewritten using {R:1}{R:2} http://www.site2.com/site2/default.aspx http://www.site2.com/default.aspx http://www.site2.com/folder1/site2/default.aspx Won’t rewrite since it’s a sub-sub folder /site2/default.aspx /default.aspx site2/default.aspx /default.aspx /folder1/site2/default.aspx Won’t rewrite since it’s a sub-sub folder. For the conditions section, you can leave that be. Finally, for the rule, set the Action Type to “Rewrite” and set the Value to “{R:1}{R:2}”.  The {R:1} and {R:2} are back references to the sections within parentheses.  In other words, in http://domain.com/site2/something, {R:1} will be http://domain.com and {R:2} will be /something. If you view your rule from your web.config file (or applicationHost.config if it’s a global rule), it should look like this: <rule name="Outgoing - URL paths" enabled="true"> <match filterByTags="A" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> Solving the Redirect Problem Outgoing Rule #2 The second issue that we can run into is with a client-side redirect.  This is triggered by a LOCATION response header that is sent to the client.  Forms authentication is a common example.  To reproduce this, password protect your subfolder and watch how it redirects and adds the subfolder path back in. Notice in my test case the extra paths: http://site2.com/site2/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fsite2%2fdefault.aspx I want to remove /site2 from both the URL and the ReturnUrl querystring value.  For semi-readability, let’s do this in 2 separate rules, one for the URL and one for the querystring. Create a second rule.  As with the previous rule, it can be created in the /site2 subfolder.  In the URL Rewrite wizard, select Outbound rules –> “Blank Rule”. Fill in the following information: Name response_location URL Precondition Don’t set Match: Matching Scope Server Variable Match: Variable Name RESPONSE_LOCATION Match: Pattern ^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*) Conditions Don’t set Action Type Rewrite Action Properties {R:1}{R:2} It should end up like so: <rule name="response_location URL"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> Outgoing Rule #3 Outgoing Rule #2 only takes care of the URL path, and not the querystring path.  Let’s create one final rule to take care of the path in the querystring to ensure that ReturnUrl=%2fsite2%2fdefault.aspx gets rewritten to ReturnUrl=%2fdefault.aspx. The %2f is the HTML encoding for forward slash (/). Create a rule like the previous one, but with the following settings: Name response_location querystring Precondition Don’t set Match: Matching Scope Server Variable Match: Variable Name RESPONSE_LOCATION Match: Pattern (.*)%2fsite2(.*) Conditions Don’t set Action Type Rewrite Action Properties {R:1}{R:2} The config should look like this: <rule name="response_location querystring"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="(.*)%2fsite2(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> It’s possible to squeeze the last two rules into one, but it gets kind of confusing so I felt that it’s better to show it as two separate rules. Summary With the rules covered in these two parts, we’re able to have a site in a subfolder and make it appear as if it’s in the root of the site.  Not only that, we can overcome automatic redirecting that is caused by ASP.NET, other scripting technologies, and especially existing applications. Following is an example of the incoming and outgoing rules necessary for a site called www.site2.com hosted in a subfolder called /site2.  Remember that the outgoing rules can be placed in the /site2 folder instead of the in the root of the site. <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="site2.com in a subfolder" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true"> <match url=".*" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^(www\.)?site2\.com$" /> <add input="{PATH_INFO}" pattern="^/site2($|/)" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="/site2/{R:0}" /> </rule> </rules> <outboundRules> <rule name="Outgoing - URL paths" enabled="true"> <match filterByTags="A" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> <rule name="response_location URL"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> <rule name="response_location querystring"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="(.*)%2fsite2(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> </outboundRules> </rewrite> If you run into any situations that aren’t caught by these rules, please let me know so I can update this to be as complete as possible. Happy URL Rewriting!

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• Adding Unobtrusive Validation To MVCContrib Fluent Html

  - by srkirkland

  ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a new unobtrusive validation strategy that utilizes HTML5 data-* attributes to decorate form elements.  Using a combination of jQuery validation and an unobtrusive validation adapter script that comes with MVC 3, those attributes are then turned into client side validation rules. A Quick Introduction to Unobtrusive Validation To quickly show how this works in practice, assume you have the following Order.cs class (think Northwind) [If you are familiar with unobtrusive validation in MVC 3 you can skip to the next section]: public class Order : DomainObject { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }   [Required] [StringLength(12)] public virtual string ShipAddress { get; set; }   [Required] public virtual Customer OrderedBy { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes, which provide the validation and metadata information used by ASP.NET MVC 3 to determine how to render out these properties.  Now let’s assume we have a form which can edit this Order class, specifically let’s look at the ShipAddress property: @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now the Html.EditorFor() method is smart enough to look at the ShipAddress attributes and write out the necessary unobtrusive validation html attributes.  Note we could have used Html.TextBoxFor() or even Html.TextBox() and still retained the same results. If we view source on the input box generated by the Html.EditorFor() call, we get the following: <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="text-box single-line input-validation-error"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } As you can see, we have data-val-* attributes for both required and length, along with the proper error messages and additional data as necessary (in this case, we have the length-max=”12”). And of course, if we try to submit the form with an invalid value, we get an error on the client: Working with MvcContrib’s Fluent Html The MvcContrib project offers a fluent interface for creating Html elements which I find very expressive and useful, especially when it comes to creating select lists.  Let’s look at a few quick examples: @this.TextBox(x => x.FirstName).Class("required").Label("First Name:") @this.MultiSelect(x => x.UserId).Options(ViewModel.Users) @this.CheckBox("enabled").LabelAfter("Enabled").Title("Click to enable.").Styles(vertical_align => "middle")   @(this.Select("Order.OrderedBy").Options(Model.Customers, x => x.Id, x => x.CompanyName) .Selected(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null ? Model.Order.OrderedBy.Id : "") .FirstOption(null, "--Select A Company--") .HideFirstOptionWhen(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null) .Label("Ordered By:")) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } These fluent html helpers create the normal html you would expect, and I think they make life a lot easier and more readable when dealing with complex markup or select list data models (look ma: no anonymous objects for creating class names!). Of course, the problem we have now is that MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers don’t know about ASP.NET MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation attributes and thus don’t take part in client validation on your page.  This is not ideal, so I wrote a quick helper method to extend fluent html with the knowledge of what unobtrusive validation attributes to include when they are rendered. Extending MvcContrib’s Fluent Html Before posting the code, there are just a few things you need to know.  The first is that all Fluent Html elements implement the IElement interface (MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement), and the second is that the base System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper has been extended with a method called GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes which we can use to determine the necessary attributes to include.  With this knowledge we can make quick work of extending fluent html: public static class FluentHtmlExtensions { public static T IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes<T>(this T element, HtmlHelper htmlHelper) where T : MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement { IDictionary<string, object> validationAttributes = htmlHelper .GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(element.GetAttr("name"));   foreach (var validationAttribute in validationAttributes) { element.SetAttr(validationAttribute.Key, validationAttribute.Value); }   return element; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The code is pretty straight forward – basically we use a passed HtmlHelper to get a list of validation attributes for the current element and then add each of the returned attributes to the element to be rendered. The Extension In Action Now let’s get back to the earlier ShipAddress example and see what we’ve accomplished.  First we will use a fluent html helper to render out the ship address text input (this is the ‘before’ case): @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:").Class("class-name") .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" class="class-name"> Now let’s do the same thing except here we’ll use the newly written extension method: @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:") .Class("class-name").IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(Html) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="class-name"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Excellent!  Now we can continue to use unobtrusive validation and have the flexibility to use ASP.NET MVC’s Html helpers or MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers interchangeably, and every element will participate in client side validation. Wrap Up Overall I’m happy with this solution, although in the best case scenario MvcContrib would know about unobtrusive validation attributes and include them automatically (of course if it is enabled in the web.config file).  I know that MvcContrib allows you to author global behaviors, but that requires changing the base class of your views, which I am not willing to do. Enjoy!

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• Using an alternate search platform in Commerce Server 2009

  - by Lewis Benge

  Although Microsoft Commerce Server 2009's architecture is built upon Microsoft SQL Server, and has the full power of the SQL Full Text Indexing Search Platform, there are time however when you may require a richer or alternate search platform. One of these scenarios if when you want to implement a faceted (refinement) search into your site, which provides dynamic refinements based on the search results dataset. Faceted search is becoming popular in most online retail environments as a way of providing an enhanced user experience when browsing a larger catalogue. This is powerful for two reasons, firstly with a traditional search it is down to a user to think of a search term suitable for the product they are trying to find. This typically will not return similar products or help in any way to refine a larger dataset. Faceted searches on the other hand provide a comprehensive list of product properties, grouped together by similarity to help the user narrow down the results returned, as the user progressively restricts the search criteria by selecting additional criteria to search again, these facets needs to continually refresh. The whole experience allows users to explore alternate brands, price-ranges, or find products they hadn't initially thought of or where looking for in a bid to enhance cross sell in the retail environment. The second advantage of this type of search from a business perspective is also to harvest the search result to start to profile your user. Even though anonymous users may routinely visit your site, and will not necessarily register or complete a transaction to build up marketing data- profiling, you can still achieve the same result by recording search facets used within the search sequence. Below is a faceted search scenario generated from eBay using the search term "server". By creating a search profile of clicking through Computer & Networking -> Servers -> Dell - > New and recording this information against my user profile you can start to predict with a lot more certainty what types of products I am interested in. This will allow you to apply shopping-cart analysis against your search data and provide great cross-sale or advertising opportunity, or personalise the user experience based on your prediction of what the user may be interested in. This type of search is extremely beneficial in e-Commerce environments but achieving it out of the box with Commerce Server and SQL Full Text indexing can be challenging. In many deployments it is often easier to use an alternate search platform such as Microsoft's FAST, Apache SOLR, or Endecca, however you still want these products to integrate natively into Commerce Server to ensure that up-to-date inventory information is presented, profile information is generated, and you provide a consistant API. To do so we make the most of the Commerce Server extensibilty points called operation sequence components. In this example I will be talking about Apache Solr hosted on Apache Tomcat, in this specific example I have used the SolrNet C# library to interface to the Java platform. Also I am not going to talk about Solr configuration of indexing – but in a production envionrment this would typically happen by using Powershell to call the Commerce Server management webservice to export your catalog as XML, apply an XSLT transform to the file to make it conform to SOLR and use a simple HTTP Post to send it to the search enginge for indexing. Essentially a sequance component is a step in a serial workflow used to call a data repository (which in most cases is usually the Commerce Server pipelines or databases) and map to and from a Commerce Entity object whilst enforcing any business rules. So the first step in the process is to add a new class library to your existing Commerce Server site. You will need to use a new library as Sequence Components will need to be strongly named to be deployed. Once you are inside of your new project, add a new class file and add a reference to the Microsoft.Commerce.Providers, Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts and the Microsoft.Commerce.Broker assemblies. Now make your new class derive from the base object Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequanceComponent and overide the ExecuteQueryMethod. Your screen will then look something similar ot this: As all we are doing on this component is conducting a search we are only interested in the ExecuteQuery method. This method accepts three arguments, queryOperation, operationCache, and response. The queryOperation will be the object in which we receive our search parameters, the cache allows access to the Commerce Server cache allowing us to store regulary accessed information, and the response object is the object which we will return the result of our search upon. Inside this method is simply where we are going to inject our logic for our third party search platform. As I am not going to explain the inner-workings of actually making a SOLR call, I'll simply provide the sample code here. I would highly recommend however looking at the SolrNet wiki as they have some great explinations of how the API works. What you will find however is that there are some further extensions required when attempting to integrate a custom search provider. Firstly you out of the box the CommerceQueryOperation you will receive into the method when conducting a search against a catalog is specifically geared towards a SQL Full Text Search with properties such as a Where clause. To make the operation you receive more relevant you will need to create another class, this time derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Contract.Messages.CommerceSearchCriteria and within this you need to detail the properties you will require to allow you to submit as parameters to the SOLR search API. My exmaple looks like this: [DataContract(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/microsoft-multi-channel-commerce-foundation/types/2008/03")] public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearch : CommerceSearchCriteria { private Dictionary<string, string> _facetQueries;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch() { _facetQueries = new Dictionary<String, String>();   }     public Dictionary<String, String> FacetQueries { get { return _facetQueries; } set { _facetQueries = value; } }   public String SearchPhrase{ get; set; } public int PageIndex { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } public IEnumerable<String> Facets { get; set; }   public string Sort { get; set; }   public new int FirstItemIndex { get { return (PageIndex-1)*PageSize; } }   public int LastItemIndex { get { return FirstItemIndex + PageSize; } } }  To allow you to construct a CommerceQueryOperation call within the API you will also need to construct another class to derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Common.MessageBuilders.CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder and is simply used to construct an instance of the CommerceQueryOperation you have just created and expose the properties you want set. My Message builder looks like this: public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder : CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder { private CommerceCatalogSolrSearch _solrSearch;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder() { _solrSearch = new CommerceCatalogSolrSearch(); }   public String SearchPhrase { get { return _solrSearch.SearchPhrase; } set { _solrSearch.SearchPhrase = value; } }   public int PageIndex { get { return _solrSearch.PageIndex; } set { _solrSearch.PageIndex = value; } }   public int PageSize { get { return _solrSearch.PageSize; } set { _solrSearch.PageSize = value; } }   public Dictionary<String,String> FacetQueries { get { return _solrSearch.FacetQueries; } set { _solrSearch.FacetQueries = value; } }   public String[] Facets { get { return _solrSearch.Facets.ToArray(); } set { _solrSearch.Facets = value; } } public override CommerceSearchCriteria ToSearchCriteria() { return _solrSearch; } }  Once you have these two classes in place you can now safely cast the CommerceOperation you receive as an argument of the overidden ExecuteQuery method in the SequenceComponent to the CommerceCatalogSolrSearch operation you have just created, e.g. public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch TryGetSearchCriteria(CommerceOperation operation) { var searchCriteria = operation as CommerceQueryOperation; if (searchCriteria == null) throw new Exception("No search criteria present");   var local = (CommerceCatalogSolrSearch) searchCriteria.SearchCriteria; if (local == null) throw new Exception("Unexpected Search Criteria in Operation");   return local; }  Now you have all of your search parameters present, you can go off an call the external search platform API. You will of-course get proprietry objects returned, so the next step in the process is to convert the results being returned back into CommerceEntities. You do this via another extensibility point within the Commerce Server API called translatators. Translators are another separate class, this time derived inheriting the interface Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Translators.IToCommerceEntityTranslator . As you can imaginge this interface is specific for the conversion of the object TO a CommerceEntity, you will need to implement a separate interface if you also need to go in the opposite direction. If you implement the required method for the interace you will get a single translate method which has a source onkect, destination CommerceEntity, and a collection of properties as arguments. For simplicity sake in this example I have hard-coded the mappings, however best practice would dictate you map the objects using your metadatadefintions.xml file . Once complete your translator would look something like the following: public class SolrEntityTranslator : IToCommerceEntityTranslator { #region IToCommerceEntityTranslator Members   public void Translate(object source, CommerceEntity destinationCommerceEntity, CommercePropertyCollection propertiesToReturn) { if (source.GetType().Equals(typeof (SearchProduct))) { var searchResult = (SearchProduct) source;   destinationCommerceEntity.Id = searchResult.ProductId; destinationCommerceEntity.SetPropertyValue("DisplayName", searchResult.Title); destinationCommerceEntity.ModelName = "Product";   } }  Once you have a translator in place you can then safely map the results of your search platform into Commerce Entities and attach them on to the CommerceResponse object in a fashion similar to this: foreach (SearchProduct result in matchingProducts) { var destinationEntity = new CommerceEntity(_returnModelName);   Translator.ToCommerceEntity(result, destinationEntity, _queryOperation.Model.Properties); response.CommerceEntities.Add(destinationEntity); }  In SOLR I actually have two objects being returned – a product, and a collection of facets so I have an additional translator for facet (which maps to a custom facet CommerceEntity) and my facet response from SOLR is passed into the Translator helper class seperatley. When all of this is pieced together you have sucessfully completed the extensiblity point coding. You would have created a new OperationSequanceComponent, a custom SearchCritiera object and message builder class, and translators to convert the objects into Commerce Entities. Now you simply need to configure them, and can start calling them in your code. Make sure you sign you assembly, compile it and identiy its signature. Next you need to put this a reference of your new assembly into the Channel.Config configuration file replacing that of the existing SQL Full Text component: You will also need to add your translators to the Translators node of your Channel.Config too: Lastly add any custom CommerceEntities you have developed to your MetaDataDefintions.xml file. Your configuration is now complete, and you should now be able to happily make a call to the Commerce Foundation API, which will act as a proxy to your third party search platform and return back CommerceEntities of your search results. If you require data to be enriched, or logged, or any other logic applied then simply add further sequence components into the OperationSequence (obviously keeping the search response first) to the node of your Channel.Config file. Now to call your code you simply request it as per any other CommerceQuery operation, but taking into account you may be receiving multiple types of CommerceEntity returned: public KeyValuePair<FacetCollection ,List<Product>> DoFacetedProductQuerySearch(string searchPhrase, string orderKey, string sortOrder, int recordIndex, int recordsPerPage, Dictionary<string, string> facetQueries, out int totalItemCount) { var products = new List<Product>(); var query = new CommerceQuery<CatalogEntity, CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder>();   query.SearchCriteria.PageIndex = recordIndex; query.SearchCriteria.PageSize = recordsPerPage; query.SearchCriteria.SearchPhrase = searchPhrase; query.SearchCriteria.FacetQueries = facetQueries;     totalItemCount = 0; CommerceResponse response = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(query.ToRequest()); var queryResponse = response.OperationResponses[0] as CommerceQueryOperationResponse;   // No results. Return the empty list if (queryResponse != null && queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Count == 0) return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>();   totalItemCount = (int)queryResponse.TotalItemCount;   // Prepare a multi-operation to retrieve the product variants var multiOperation = new CommerceMultiOperation();     //Add products to results foreach (Product product in queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "Product")) { var productQuery = new CommerceQuery<Product>(Product.ModelNameDefinition); productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.Id = product.Id; productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.CatalogId = product.CatalogId;   var variantQuery = new CommerceQueryRelatedItem<Variant>(Product.RelationshipName.Variants);   productQuery.RelatedOperations.Add(variantQuery);   multiOperation.Add(productQuery); }   CommerceResponse variantsResponse = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(multiOperation.ToRequest()); foreach (CommerceQueryOperationResponse queryOpResponse in variantsResponse.OperationResponses) { if (queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities.Count() > 0) products.Add(queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities[0]); }   //Get facet collection FacetCollection facetCollection = queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "FacetCollection").FirstOrDefault();     return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(facetCollection, products); }    ..And that is it – simply a few classes and some configuration will allow you to extend the Commerce Server query operations to call a third party search platform, whilst still maintaing a unifed API in the remainder of your code. This logic stands for any extensibility within CommerceServer, which requires excution in a serial fashioon such as call to LOB systems or web service to validate or enrich data. Feel free to use this example on other applications, and if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail and I'll help out where I can!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011Popular ReleasesAdvanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedTV4Home - The all-in-one TV solution!: 0.1.0.0 Preview: This is the beta preview release of the TV4Home software.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.2: Fixes a few minor issues with 1.1 including the broken per-desktop backgrounds Further improves the speed of switching desktops A few UI performance improvements Added donations linksNuGet: NuGet 1.1: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669 To see the list of issues fixed in this release, visit this our issues list A...New ProjectsComplexityEvolution: Research projectCRM 2011 Metadata Browser: The CRM 2011 Metadata Browser is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM Solution. This tool allows you to view metadata including Entities, Attributes and Relationships. The 2011 SOAP endpoint is used to connect to CRM using the Organization.svc/web serviceEFCFvsNH3: A sample project that shows the main differences between Entity Framework Code First and Nhibernate 3: -Mapping -Configuration -DB Initialization -Query API -Session & Transaction -ValidationE-Teacher for IELTS preparation: E-teacher helps IELTS students prepare for the IELTS Academic and General Training test. Qualified English Teachers can register to the e-community and helps candidates to understand what they really need to improve for the IELTS exam and how to reach for the maximum band score.FIM CM Extensions: Extensions for Forefront Identity Manager 2010 to enable integration between the FIM Service workflow and the FIM Certificate Management workflow. Game Files Open - Map Editor: This is a map editor for the metin2 clients, it's very simple edit or create a map with this tool.Garbage Collection Sample Code: Garbage collection sample code demonstrates the differences between the large and small object heaps. This code supports the blog post at http://www.deepcode.co.ukGardenersWorld: The aim of gardenersWorld community website is to provide a platform for budding gardenening enthusiasts, hobbyists and professionals to share information. Harvester - Debug Monitor for Log4Net and NLog: Harvester enables you to monitor all Win32 debug output from all applications running on your machine. Watch real time Log4Net and NLog output across multiple applications at the same time. Trace a call from client to server and back without having to look at multiple log files.Hjelp! Jeg skal ha farmakokinetikk-eksamen!: Sliter du med å pugge formler til farmakokinetikk-eksamenen? Da er redningen din her! :DMercury Business Framework: Mercury Business Framework is a project set up to define basic objects used by the vast majority of business and non business software. The idea is to define the low level objects required by most applications on the web and desktop.MyDistrictBuilder: MyDistrictBuilder allows anybody to build legislative districts and submit to the Florida House of Rep. It is built on Bing Maps, Silverlight and AZURE. Written in C#. It is written to allow anyone to adapt for any states census geography. www.floridaredistricting.cloudapp.netMySchoolApp: MySchoolApp is a customizable application written in Visual Basic and C# for the Windows Mobile Phone 7 platform using Visual Studio Professional 2010. The application combines links to RSS and Web sites about a school, and displays a map and local weather. Osm Parser Community Edition: Osm Parser parse highways in open street maps to generate routable roads network in spatialite.PRBox Cloud Website: This is the website base for PRBox.com SEO Reporter : open source search engine optimization software: SEO Reporter is an open source search engine optimization application for detecting HTML related SEO violations, gathering data about a Web page and analyzing its keywords strategy. It's a Windows navigation application developed in F#. Setting timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part: This web part overwrites 5sec hard-coded timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part.SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Automatic Resources Link Generator: This feature will automatically generate the resources links list (Quick Links) in your SharePoint 2010 Central Administration site making it easier for SharePoint Admins to navigate through the common Central Administration activities without populating it themselves - VS2010/c#SharePoint Holiday Loader: SharePoint Holiday Loader allows you to quickly import public holidays into a SharePoint calendar from the standard .HOL format.Sohu?????: ?????????WPF?????????????，????????????（??、??、???），??、??、???????，????????????，??????????????。 ??V1????????，V2?????????????????。SP2010 Form Manipulator: This project will hopefully make it easier to manipulate the list form in SharePoint 2010.SPRotator: A jQuery powered web part for SharePoint that cycles through any type of list.SQL Script to Create a Website Directory: Here you can download sql script to create a website directory using SQL Server. * This is only the easy directory sql script to develop your website. Directory software may publish in future.Sri Hits Zone: This is an online repository which used to share Sri Lankan music. This is to provide Sri Lankans who living abroad to being touches with Sri Lankan artist and their music. testz: testzTime domain dissipative acoustic problem: tddapWindows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager: Windows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager is a Windows Service that can manage the number of hosted services running in Azure by either a time based schedule or by CPU load. This allows your service to scale for either dynamic load or a known schedule. Z80TR: Z80TR

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• Metro, Authentication, and the ASP.NET Web API

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Imagine that you want to create a Metro style app written with JavaScript and you want to communicate with a remote web service. For example, you are creating a movie app which retrieves a list of movies from a movies service. In this situation, how do you authenticate your Metro app and the Metro user so not just anyone can call the movies service? How can you identify the user making the request so you can return user specific data from the service? The Windows Live SDK supports a feature named Single Sign-On. When a user logs into a Windows 8 machine using their Live ID, you can authenticate the user’s identity automatically. Even better, when the Metro app performs a call to a remote web service, you can pass an authentication token to the remote service and prevent unauthorized access to the service. The documentation for Single Sign-On is located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826544.aspx In this blog entry, I describe the steps that you need to follow to use Single Sign-On with a (very) simple movie app. We build a Metro app which communicates with a web service created using the ASP.NET Web API. Creating the Visual Studio Solution Let’s start by creating a Visual Studio solution which contains two projects: a Windows Metro style Blank App project and an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application project. Name the Metro app MovieApp and the ASP.NET MVC application MovieApp.Services. When you create the ASP.NET MVC application, select the Web API template: After you create the two projects, your Visual Studio Solution Explorer window should look like this: Configuring the Live SDK You need to get your hands on the Live SDK and register your Metro app. You can download the latest version of the SDK (version 5.2) from the following address: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29938 After you download the Live SDK, you need to visit the following website to register your Metro app: https://manage.dev.live.com/build Don’t let the title of the website — Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect – confuse you, this is the right place. Follow the instructions at the website to register your Metro app. Don’t forget to follow the instructions in Step 3 for updating the information in your Metro app’s manifest. After you register, your client secret is displayed. Record this client secret because you will need it later (we use it with the web service): You need to configure one more thing. You must enter your Redirect Domain by visiting the following website: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index Click on your application name, click Edit Settings, click the API Settings tab, and enter a value for the Redirect Domain field. You can enter any domain that you please just as long as the domain has not already been taken: For the Redirect Domain, I entered http://superexpertmovieapp.com. Create the Metro MovieApp Next, we need to create the MovieApp. The MovieApp will: 1. Use Single Sign-On to log the current user into Live 2. Call the MoviesService web service 3. Display the results in a ListView control Because we use the Live SDK in the MovieApp, we need to add a reference to it. Right-click your References folder in the Solution Explorer window and add the reference: Here’s the HTML page for the Metro App: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>MovieApp</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.1.0.RC/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Live SDK --> <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script> <!-- WebServices references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <div id="tmplMovie" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="movieItem"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> <br /><span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span> </div> </div> <div id="lvMovies" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemTemplate: select('#tmplMovie') }"> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains a Template and ListView control. These controls are used to display the movies when the movies are returned from the movies service. Notice that the page includes a reference to the Live script that we registered earlier: <!-- Live SDK --> <script type="text/javascript" src="/LiveSDKHTML/js/wl.js"></script> The JavaScript code looks like this: (function () { "use strict"; var REDIRECT_DOMAIN = "http://superexpertmovieapp.com"; var WEBSERVICE_URL = "http://localhost:49743/api/movies"; function init() { WinJS.UI.processAll().done(function () { // Get element and control references var lvMovies = document.getElementById("lvMovies").winControl; // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then( function(response) { // Get the authentication token var authenticationToken = response.session.authentication_token; // Call the web service var options = { url: WEBSERVICE_URL, headers: { authenticationToken: authenticationToken } }; WinJS.xhr(options).done( function (xhr) { var movies = JSON.parse(xhr.response); var listMovies = new WinJS.Binding.List(movies); lvMovies.itemDataSource = listMovies.dataSource; }, function (xhr) { console.log(xhr.statusText); } ); }, function(response) { throw WinJS.ErrorFromName("Failed to login!"); } ); }); } document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", init); })(); There are two constants which you need to set to get the code above to work: REDIRECT_DOMAIN and WEBSERVICE_URL. The REDIRECT_DOMAIN is the domain that you entered when registering your app with Live. The WEBSERVICE_URL is the path to your web service. You can get the correct value for WEBSERVICE_URL by opening the Project Properties for the MovieApp.Services project, clicking the Web tab, and getting the correct URL. The port number is randomly generated. In my code, I used the URL  “http://localhost:49743/api/movies”. Assuming that the user is logged into Windows 8 with a Live account, when the user runs the MovieApp, the user is logged into Live automatically. The user is logged in with the following code: // Login to Windows Live var scopes = ["wl.signin"]; WL.init({ scope: scopes, redirect_uri: REDIRECT_DOMAIN }); WL.login().then(function(response) { // Do something }); The scopes setting determines what the user has permission to do. For example, access the user’s SkyDrive or access the user’s calendar or contacts. The available scopes are listed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh243646.aspx In our case, we only need the wl.signin scope which enables Single Sign-On. After the user signs in, you can retrieve the user’s Live authentication token. The authentication token is passed to the movies service to authenticate the user. Creating the Movies Service The Movies Service is implemented as an API controller in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API project. Here’s what the MoviesController looks like: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using JWTSample; using MovieApp.Services.Models; namespace MovieApp.Services.Controllers { public class MoviesController : ApiController { const string CLIENT_SECRET = "NtxjF2wu7JeY1unvVN-lb0hoeWOMUFoR"; // GET api/values public HttpResponseMessage Get() { // Authenticate // Get authenticationToken var authenticationToken = Request.Headers.GetValues("authenticationToken").FirstOrDefault(); if (authenticationToken == null) { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Validate token var d = new Dictionary<int, string>(); d.Add(0, CLIENT_SECRET); try { var myJWT = new JsonWebToken(authenticationToken, d); } catch { return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized); } // Return results return Request.CreateResponse( HttpStatusCode.OK, new List<Movie> { new Movie {Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} } ); } } } Because the Metro app performs an HTTP GET request, the MovieController Get() action is invoked. This action returns a set of three movies when, and only when, the authentication token is validated. The Movie class looks like this: using Newtonsoft.Json; namespace MovieApp.Services.Models { public class Movie { [JsonProperty(PropertyName="title")] public string Title { get; set; } [JsonProperty(PropertyName="director")] public string Director { get; set; } } } Notice that the Movie class uses the JsonProperty attribute to change Title to title and Director to director to make JavaScript developers happy. The Get() method validates the authentication token before returning the movies to the Metro app. To get authentication to work, you need to provide the client secret which you created at the Live management site. If you forgot to write down the secret, you can get it again here: https://manage.dev.live.com/Applications/Index The client secret is assigned to a constant at the top of the MoviesController class. The MoviesController class uses a helper class named JsonWebToken to validate the authentication token. This class was created by the Windows Live team. You can get the source code for the JsonWebToken class from the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK/blob/master/Samples/Asp.net/AuthenticationTokenSample/JsonWebToken.cs You need to add an additional reference to your MVC project to use the JsonWebToken class: System.Runtime.Serialization. You can use the JsonWebToken class to get a unique and validated user ID like this: var user = myJWT.Claims.UserId; If you need to store user specific information then you can use the UserId property to uniquely identify the user making the web service call. Running the MovieApp When you first run the Metro MovieApp, you get a screen which asks whether the app should have permission to use Single Sign-On. This screen never appears again after you give permission once. Actually, when I first ran the app, I get the following error: According to the error, the app is blocked because “We detected some suspicious activity with your Online Id account. To help protect you, we’ve temporarily blocked your account.” This appears to be a bug in the current preview release of the Live SDK and there is more information about this bug here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/messengerconnect/thread/866c495f-2127-429d-ab07-842ef84f16ae/ If you click continue, and continue running the app, the error message does not appear again.  Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe how you can validate Metro apps and Metro users when performing a call to a remote web service. First, I explained how you can create a Metro app which takes advantage of Single Sign-On to authenticate the current user against Live automatically. You learned how to register your Metro app with Live and how to include an authentication token in an Ajax call. Next, I explained how you can validate the authentication token – retrieved from the request header – in a web service. I discussed how you can use the JsonWebToken class to validate the authentication token and retrieve the unique user ID.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Bing Maps: Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map style, add a PushPin...Bricks' Bane: Bricks' Bane is a brick breaker game developed using XNA and published on XBox Live Indy Games. Source code includes a C# library useful for game d...cURL for dotnet: Another dotnet binding for libcurl see http://curl.haxx.se for more info about cURL/libcurlCustom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Functoid para Biztalk Server 2006 utilizando dados do SQL Server 2005FEI STU Pharmacy e-shop: Elektronicky obchod s liekmi Vytvorte jednoduchú klient-server aplikáciu, ktorá bude realizovať elektronický obchod s liekmi. Moduly: 1. e-shop f...Flavours of Wix: Investigating building DSL's to create installers based on WIXFulcrum: Fulcrum is a code generation framework built on top of the T4 technology in Visual Studio. GreviousAngel: New team projectHabanero Inferno: Habanero Inferno coming soon.Kawo Pounga !: A useless game !!!LetsXNA!!: This is a project created by members of Linked In group Lets XNA!! to build a XNA game and have fun in the process. The goal is to build a simple ...Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: <project name>Linq to Naver </project name> <programming language>C#, CSharp</programming language>LocoSync: LocoSync is a file Syncronization/Backup/Archiver program, which is easily extendable. It is easy to add new syncronization methods using C# code.Natural Language Processing: Natural Language ProcessingNop Commerce Azure: Ce projet vous permet de mettre en place rapidement et simplement votre site d'e-commerce en ligne en bénéficiant de tous les avantages de la plate...Nwinsock: Nwinsock is a component for network , Object Transfer, Pocket Compression, Support TCP,UDP Protocol, Thread Base OnTime: OnTime is a simple program from that matching game back in the day just to bring light to programming techniques. It's developed in C#.?OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for .NET Compact Framework. Developed on HTC HD 2 device but should run on any Windows Mobile device that has the correct lib...ortaknokta: bu proje: birkaç kişinin bir araya gelip, istedikleri konularda tartışma yapmalarına olanak saglamak icin hazırlanmaya çalışıl maktadır. P-Data: P-Data es una herramienta que permite obtener información procedente de archivos de datos (Data Profiling) a través de consultas SQL, automatizando...PowerAuras: Addon for World of Warcraft - Displays effects on screen at different conditionsPowerShell ToodleDo Module: PowerShell Module for interacting with toodledo.com online To-Do list site. RSS Reader for Windows Phone 7: This RSS Reader application for windows 7Streamlet Containers: This is my implement of STL-style containers, including a dynamic array, a double-linked list and an r-b-tree. Just for practice. Please feel free...Troav: Social encyclopedia built using c# and the Orchard frameworkUmbraco App_Code/Usercontrol Editor: Package for Umbraco to add App_Code and usercontrol editing to the Developer section of the Umbraco administration system. Will support GeSHi editi...Vczh Reactive Programming Library: Reactive programming library provide a stream or state machine view to use .NET eventsWhoIs XML API: The project uses the public WhoIs XML API service (http://www.whoisxmlapi.com/) to obtain detailed details. The project is written in C# and serial...WPF FlowDocument Examples for VS2008 and VS2010: WPF Text Samples (especially FlowDocument) on the various possible effects: sub- and super-script, ruby (a.k.a. furigana), and various others...You are here (for Windows Mobile): This sample shows you how to play a *.wav file on your device with Compact Framework 2.0. There is better support for playing music on Compact F...New Releases( λunula ): Lunula 0.4.0: Changelog Implemented a virtual machine. Implemented a compiler for the virtual machine. Added first-class continuations (call/cc) Removed co...Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.1: Changes Test connection - successful message Connection string timeout property added Setup Project added to project source code Possible issu...ASP.NET Bing Maps: ASP.NET Bing Maps 0.1b: Project Description Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map ...ASP.NET MVC Validation Library: ASP.NET MVC Validation Library 1.3: Changes since 1.2: - Support remote validation - Support custom server-side validation - The design of validation attribute is improved Note: test...BigDays 2010: HelfenHelfen - v1: PLEASE NOTE: This project is published under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/license IT IS A DEMO SOLUTION FOR...Caps - Manage your collection!: Caps Console 0.1.4.0 Alpha: This is preview release (Alpha quality). This release contains only limited amount of fixes and new features from user point of view. Major focus f...CSharpQuery: Version 1.0: This version is stable. Please report any possible bugs. The next release will include a sample project and index management tools. Until then pl...Custom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Custom Functoid SQL Server: Solução do Visual Studio com código fonte e script SQL do functoid em BiztalkDawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 3: Suppose if two good audio events overlap in time with a videoevent of interest. (This can only happen if PluralEyes isn't used on everything). Befo...Dirac codec user interface: Dirac User Interface (checkin 37132): Same as 36795 version, but done with the last source code.DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 3: PLEASE NOTE: You may upgrade an RC 2 install. But please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from RC 2 or 03.05.0...DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: SimpleTitle Skin Object: This is an example skin object that only renders the "page name" if used in a skin and the "module title" if used in a container. No extra spans, c...Fulcrum: Fulcrum v0.9: Initial release of FulcrumHelloTipi Photos Uploader: Version 2010.03.31: De toute petites corrections : - Correction du bouton envoyer - Impossible d'interagir avec l'application quand on uploadkdar: KDAR 0.0.18: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - dispacth table's signature bases updated ( many driver's) - scripts refactored - some bug fixedLegend: Legend Libraries: The latest release.Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: Linq to Naver: Linq to NaverLive at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web Service v. 1.0: We're happy to publish final version of Live at Education Meta Web Serivce (LAEMWS). In this release: Huge list of Windows Live ID enabled servic...Live@edu SSO WebPart for MOSS 2007: WebPart 2.0: This release is based on Live@edu Meta Web Service (laemws - http://laemws.codeplex.com). It is highly recomended to use laemws version of webpart,...LocoSync: LocoSync v0.1r2010.03.31 installer: This is the first public release. Unzip and run setup. Or if you have .net 3.5 runtime available download the exetutable and try...Natural Language Processing: test1: testNop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Full Sources with additionnals Azure Projects.Nwinsock: NWinsock: Nwinsock version 1.0 is hereOpen NFe: DANFe v1.9.8: Correção CSTOpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: v0.1 Sources: First rough release. It has a working sample application which renders a triangle with rotation. Don't expect anything great. Just a very early ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 3: Second iteration of a-Expense on Azure. This release builds on the previous one and mainly focuses on replacing SQL Azure by Table Storage. We hav...Posh4DNN: Posh4DNN Scripts 2.0: This release greatly increases the speed of installation and incorporates the use of IIS and SQL Server Snap-ins for managing those services. Inst...Process Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.1: PET Core new intermediate model with arbitrary "clean" relations among objects and several updates of the object fields (see DependencyInterfacesA...Project Tru Tiên: Elements-test V1-fix (v1): Là Elements-test V1 đã được fix các vấn đề sau: - Fix lỗi hiển thị thú cưỡi Hổ Kỳ Lân - Fix hiển thị tab tiếng trung --> sang tiếng việt - Fix hiể...Sentinel - Log Viewer: Sentinel 0.8.1 (nLog support): Build of the 0.8.1 code (svn revision 36823) which included support for both nLog and log4net that has been in SVN for a while but didn't have a bi...sgMotion Animation Library: SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1): SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1) This release includes both a Windows & Xbox sample. The sample is set to default at Forward rendering, but can e...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 44538 (Developer Alpha): + nearly all fields are viewed in this release for task verification and identifying of unknownsTest Project (ignore): asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf sadf sdf asdf a: ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ...Test Project (ignore): cdscs: csdcacacTroav: Traov20100331 Source Pre-Alpah: This is some experiements with implementing custom modules with Microsoft's Orchard frame work. This is very preliminary, and subject to change.Weather Report WebControls: WebWeatherReport: 主要文件的源代码WhoIs XML API: Initial Release: Initial ReleaseYou are here (for Windows Mobile): CAB file and Source Code: You can find more Controls and samples for Windows Mobile developers at: http://www.beemobile4.netMost Popular ProjectshmrEngineRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrGraffiti CMSBase Class LibrariesjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationN2 CMSLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkFarseer Physics Engine

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• The Art of Productivity

  - by dwahlin

  Getting things done has always been a challenge regardless of gender, age, race, skill, or job position. No matter how hard some people try, they end up procrastinating tasks until the last minute. Some people simply focus better when they know they’re out of time and can’t procrastinate any longer. How many times have you put off working on a term paper in school until the very last minute? With only a few hours left your mental energy and focus seem to kick in to high gear especially as you realize that you either get the paper done now or risk failing. It’s amazing how a little pressure can turn into a motivator and allow our minds to focus on a given task. Some people seem to specialize in procrastinating just about everything they do while others tend to be the “doers” who get a lot done and ultimately rise up the ladder at work. What’s the difference between these types of people? Is it pure laziness or are other factors at play? I think that some people are certainly more motivated than others, but I also think a lot of it is based on the process that “doers” tend to follow - whether knowingly or unknowingly. While I’ve certainly fought battles with procrastination, I’ve always had a knack for being able to get a lot done in a relatively short amount of time. I think a lot of my “get it done” attitude goes back to the the strong work ethic my parents instilled in me at a young age. I remember my dad saying, “You need to learn to work hard!” when I was around 5 years old. I remember that moment specifically because I was on a tractor with him the first time I heard it while he was trying to move some large rocks into a pile. The tractor was big but so were the rocks and my dad had to balance the tractor perfectly so that it didn’t tip forward too far. It was challenging work and somewhat tedious but my dad finished the task and taught me a few important lessons along the way including persistence, the importance of having a skill, and getting the job done right without skimping along the way. In this post I’m going to list a few of the techniques and processes I follow that I hope may be beneficial to others. I blogged about the general concept back in 2009 but thought I’d share some updated information and lessons learned since then. Most of the ideas that follow came from learning and refining my daily work process over the years. However, since most of the ideas are common sense (at least in my opinion), I suspect they can be found in other productivity processes that are out there. Let’s start off with one of the most important yet simple tips: Start Each Day with a List. Start Each Day with a List What are you planning to get done today? Do you keep track of everything in your head or rely on your calendar? While most of us think that we’re pretty good at managing “to do” lists strictly in our head you might be surprised at how affective writing out lists can be. By writing out tasks you’re forced to focus on the most important tasks to accomplish that day, commit yourself to those tasks, and have an easy way to track what was supposed to get done and what actually got done. Start every morning by making a list of specific tasks that you want to accomplish throughout the day. I’ll even go so far as to fill in times when I’d like to work on tasks if I have a lot of meetings or other events tying up my calendar on a given day. I’m not a big fan of using paper since I type a lot faster than I write (plus I write like a 3rd grader according to my wife), so I use the Sticky Notes feature available in Windows. Here’s an example of yesterday’s sticky note: What do you add to your list? That’s the subject of the next tip. Focus on Small Tasks It’s no secret that focusing on small, manageable tasks is more effective than trying to focus on large and more vague tasks. When you make your list each morning only add tasks that you can accomplish within a given time period. For example, if I only have 30 minutes blocked out to work on an article I don’t list “Write Article”. If I do that I’ll end up wasting 30 minutes stressing about how I’m going to get the article done in 30 minutes and ultimately get nothing done. Instead, I’ll list something like “Write Introductory Paragraphs for Article”. The next day I may add, “Write first section of article” or something that’s small and manageable – something I’m confident that I can get done. You’ll find that once you’ve knocked out several smaller tasks it’s easy to continue completing others since you want to keep the momentum going. In addition to keeping my tasks focused and small, I also make a conscious effort to limit my list to 4 or 5 tasks initially. I’ve found that if I list more than 5 tasks I feel a bit overwhelmed which hurts my productivity. It’s easy to add additional tasks as you complete others and you get the added benefit of that confidence boost of knowing that you’re being productive and getting things done as you remove tasks and add others. Getting Started is the Hardest (Yet Easiest) Part I’ve always found that getting started is the hardest part and one of the biggest contributors to procrastination. Getting started working on tasks is a lot like getting a large rock pushed to the bottom of a hill. It’s difficult to get the rock rolling at first, but once you manage to get it rocking some it’s really easy to get it rolling on its way to the bottom. As an example, I’ve written 100s of articles for technical magazines over the years and have really struggled with the initial introductory paragraphs. Keep in mind that these are the paragraphs that don’t really add that much value (in my opinion anyway). They introduce the reader to the subject matter and nothing more. What a waste of time for me to sit there stressing about how to start the article. On more than one occasion I’ve spent more than an hour trying to come up with 2-3 paragraphs of text.  Talk about a productivity killer! Whether you’re struggling with a writing task, some code for a project, an email, or other tasks, jumping in without thinking too much is the best way to get started I’ve found. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an overall plan when jumping into a task, but on some occasions you’ll find that if you simply jump into the task and stop worrying about doing everything perfectly that things will flow more smoothly. For my introductory paragraph problem I give myself 5 minutes to write out some general concepts about what I know the article will cover and then spend another 10-15 minutes going back and refining that information. That way I actually have some ideas to work with rather than a blank sheet of paper. If I still find myself struggling I’ll write the rest of the article first and then circle back to the introductory paragraphs once I’m done. To sum this tip up: Jump into a task without thinking too hard about it. It’s better to to get the rock at the top of the hill rocking some than doing nothing at all. You can always go back and refine your work.   Learn a Productivity Technique and Stick to It There are a lot of different productivity programs and seminars out there being sold by companies. I’ve always laughed at how much money people spend on some of these motivational programs/seminars because I think that being productive isn’t that hard if you create a re-useable set of steps and processes to follow. That’s not to say that some of these programs/seminars aren’t worth the money of course because I know they’ve definitely benefited some people that have a hard time getting things done and staying focused. One of the best productivity techniques I’ve ever learned is called the “Pomodoro Technique” and it’s completely free. This technique is an extremely simple way to manage your time without having to remember a bunch of steps, color coding mechanisms, or other processes. The technique was originally developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 80s and can be implemented with a simple timer. In a nutshell here’s how the technique works: Pick a task to work on Set the timer to 25 minutes and work on the task Once the timer rings record your time Take a 5 minute break Repeat the process Here’s why the technique works well for me: It forces me to focus on a single task for 25 minutes. In the past I had no time goal in mind and just worked aimlessly on a task until I got interrupted or bored. 25 minutes is a small enough chunk of time for me to stay focused. Any distractions that may come up have to wait until after the timer goes off. If the distraction is really important then I stop the timer and record my time up to that point. When the timer is running I act as if I only have 25 minutes total for the task (like you’re down to the last 25 minutes before turning in your term paper….frantically working to get it done) which helps me stay focused and turns into a “beat the clock” type of game. It’s actually kind of fun if you treat it that way and really helps me focus on a the task at hand. I automatically know how much time I’m spending on a given task (more on this later) by using this technique. I know that I have 5 minutes after each pomodoro (the 25 minute sprint) to waste on anything I’d like including visiting a website, stepping away from the computer, etc. which also helps me stay focused when the 25 minute timer is counting down. I use this technique so much that I decided to build a program for Windows 8 called Pomodoro Focus (I plan to blog about how it was built in a later post). It’s a Windows Store application that allows people to track tasks, productive time spent on tasks, interruption time experienced while working on a given task, and the number of pomodoros completed. If a time estimate is given when the task is initially created, Pomodoro Focus will also show the task completion percentage. I like it because it allows me to track my tasks, time spent on tasks (very useful in the consulting world), and even how much time I wasted on tasks (pressing the pause button while working on a task starts the interruption timer). I recently added a new feature that charts productive and interruption time for tasks since I wanted to see how productive I was from week to week and month to month. A few screenshots from the Pomodoro Focus app are shown next, I had a lot of fun building it and use it myself to as I work on tasks.   There are certainly many other productivity techniques and processes out there (and a slew of books describing them), but the Pomodoro Technique has been the simplest and most effective technique I’ve ever come across for staying focused and getting things done.   Persistence is Key Getting things done is great but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is that persistence is key especially when you’re trying to get something done that at times seems insurmountable. Small tasks ultimately lead to larger tasks getting accomplished, however, it’s not all roses along the way as some of the smaller tasks may come with their own share of bumps and bruises that lead to discouragement about the end goal and whether or not it is worth achieving at all. I’ve been on several long-term projects over my career as a software developer (I have one personal project going right now that fits well here) and found that repeating, “Persistence is the key!” over and over to myself really helps. Not every project turns out to be successful, but if you don’t show persistence through the hard times you’ll never know if you succeeded or not. Likewise, if you don’t persistently stick to the process of creating a daily list, follow a productivity process, etc. then the odds of consistently staying productive aren’t good.   Track Your Time How much time do you actually spend working on various tasks? If you don’t currently track time spent answering emails, on phone calls, and working on various tasks then you might be surprised to find out that a task that you thought was going to take you 30 minutes ultimately ended up taking 2 hours. If you don’t track the time you spend working on tasks how can you expect to learn from your mistakes, optimize your time better, and become more productive? That’s another reason why I like the Pomodoro Technique – it makes it easy to stay focused on tasks while also tracking how much time I’m working on a given task.   Eliminate Distractions I blogged about this final tip several years ago but wanted to bring it up again. If you want to be productive (and ultimately successful at whatever you’re doing) then you can’t waste a lot of time playing games or on Twitter, Facebook, or other time sucking websites. If you see an article you’re interested in that has no relation at all to the tasks you’re trying to accomplish then bookmark it and read it when you have some spare time (such as during a pomodoro break). Fighting the temptation to check your friends’ status updates on Facebook? Resist the urge and realize how much those types of activities are hurting your productivity and taking away from your focus. I’ll admit that eliminating distractions is still tough for me personally and something I have to constantly battle. But, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut back on my visits and updates to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other sites. Sure, my Klout score has suffered as a result lately, but does anyone actually care about those types of scores aside from your online “friends” (few of whom you’ve actually met in person)? :-) Ultimately it comes down to self-discipline and how badly you want to be productive and successful in your career, life goals, hobbies, or whatever you’re working on. Rather than having your homepage take you to a time wasting news site, game site, social site, picture site, or others, how about adding something like the following as your homepage? Every time your browser opens you’ll see a personal message which helps keep you on the right track. You can download my ubber-sophisticated homepage here if interested. Summary Is there a single set of steps that if followed can ultimately lead to productivity? I don’t think so since one size has never fit all. Every person is different, works in their own unique way, and has their own set of motivators, distractions, and more. While I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on the subject of productivity, I do think that if you learn what steps work best for you and gradually refine them over time that you can come up with a personal productivity process that can serve you well. Productivity is definitely an “art” that anyone can learn with a little practice and persistence. You’ve seen some of the steps that I personally like to follow and I hope you find some of them useful in boosting your productivity. If you have others you use please leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve.

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• Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

  - by smisner

  "Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack. Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while. Self-Service BI Self-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI. This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me: PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.) Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.) One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.) Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.) Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.) This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users. It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations. Collaborative BI I have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time. Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people." The Microsoft BI Stack in General A question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years. Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?" Expo Hall I had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here. Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions. Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind! Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• The Product Owner

  - by Robert May

  In a previous post, I outlined the rules of Scrum.  This post details one of those rules. Picking a most important part of Scrum is difficult.  All of the rules are required, but if there were one rule that is “more” required that every other rule, its having a good Product Owner.  Simply put, the Product Owner can make or break the project. Duties of the Product Owner A Product Owner has many duties and responsibilities.  I’ll talk about each of these duties in detail below. A Product Owner: Discovers and records stories for the backlog. Prioritizes stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog. Determines Release dates and Iteration Dates. Develops story details and helps the team understand those details. Helps QA to develop acceptance tests. Interact with the Customer to make sure that the product is meeting the customer’s needs. Discovers and Records Stories for the Backlog When I do Scrum, I always use User Stories as the means for capturing functionality that’s required in the system.  Some people will use Use Cases, but the same rule applies.  The Product Owner has the ultimate responsibility for figuring out what functionality will be in the system.  Many different mechanisms for capturing this input can be used.  User interviews are great, but all sources should be considered, including talking with Customer Support types.  Often, they hear what users are struggling with the most and are a great source for stories that can make the application easier to use. Care should be taken when soliciting user stories from technical types such as programmers and the people that manage them.  They will almost always give stories that are very technical in nature and may not have a direct benefit for the end user.  Stories are about adding value to the company.  If the stories don’t have direct benefit to the end user, the Product Owner should question whether or not the story should be implemented.  In general, technical stories should be included as tasks in User Stories.  Technical stories are often needed, but the ultimate value to the user is in user based functionality, so technical stories should be considered nothing more than overhead in providing that user functionality. Until the iteration prior to development, stories should be nothing more than short, one line placeholders. An exercise called Story Planning can be used to brainstorm and come up with stories.  I’ll save the description of this activity for another blog post. For more information on User Stories, please read the book User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn. Prioritizes Stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog Prioritization of stories is one of the most difficult tasks that a Product Owner must do.  A key concept of Scrum done right is the need to have the team working from a single set of prioritized stories.  If the team does not have a single set of prioritized stories, Scrum will likely fail at your organization.  The Product Owner is the ONLY person who has the responsibility to prioritize that list.  The Product Owner must be very diplomatic and sincerely listen to the people around him so that he can get the priorities correct. Just listening will still not yield the proper priorities.  Care must also be taken to ensure that Return on Investment is also considered.  Ultimately, determining which stories give the most value to the company for the least cost is the most important factor in determining priorities.  Product Owners should be willing to look at cold, hard numbers to determine the order for stories.  Even when many people want a feature, if that features is costly to develop, it may not have as high of a return on investment as features that are cheaper, but not as popular. The act of prioritization often causes conflict in an environment.  Customer Service thinks that feature X is the most important, because it will stop people from calling.  Operations thinks that feature Y is the most important, because it will stop servers from crashing.  Developers think that feature Z is most important because it will make writing software much easier for them.  All of these are useful goals, but the team can have only one list of items, and each item must have a priority that is different from all other stories.  The Product Owner will determine which feature gives the best return on investment and the other features will have to wait their turn, which means that someone will not have their top priority feature implemented first. A weak Product Owner will refuse to do prioritization.  I’ve heard from multiple Product Owners the following phrase, “Well, it’s all got to be done, so what does it matter what order we do it in?”  If your product owner is using this phrase, you need a new Product Owner.  Order is VERY important.  In Scrum, every release is potentially shippable.  If the wrong priority items are developed, then the value added in each release isn’t what it should be.  Additionally, the Product Owner with this mindset doesn’t understand Agile.  A product is NEVER finished, until the company has decided that it is no longer a going concern and they are no longer going to sell the product.  Therefore, prioritization isn’t an event, its something that continues every day.  The logical extension of the phrase “It’s all got to be done” is that you will never ship your product, since a product is never “done.”  Once stories have been prioritized, assigning them to the Release Backlog and the Iteration Backlog becomes relatively simple.  The top priority items are copied into the respective backlogs in order and the task is complete.  The team does have the right to shuffle things around a little in the iteration backlog.  For example, they may determine that working on story C with story A is appropriate because they’re related, even though story B is technically a higher priority than story C.  Or they may decide that story B is too big to complete in the time available after Story A has tasks created, so they’ll work on Story C since it’s smaller.  They can’t, however, go deep into the backlog to pick stories to implement.  The team and the Product Owner should work together to determine what’s best for the company. Prioritization is time consuming, but its one of the most important things a Product Owner does. Determines Release Dates and Iteration Dates Product owners are responsible for determining release dates for a product.  A common misconception that Product Owners have is that every “release” needs to correspond with an actual release to customers.  This is not the case.  In general, releases should be no more than 3 months long.  You  may decide to release the product to the customers, and many companies do release the product to customers, but it may also be an internal release. If a release date is too far away, developers will fall into the trap of not feeling a sense of urgency.  The date is far enough away that they don’t need to give the release their full attention.  Additionally, important tasks, such as performance tuning, regression testing, user documentation, and release preparation, will not happen regularly, making them much more difficult and time consuming to do.  The more frequently you do these tasks, the easier they are to accomplish. The Product Owner will be a key participant in determining whether or not a release should be sent out to the customers.  The determination should be made on whether or not the features contained in the release are valuable enough  and complete enough that the customers will see real value in the release.  Often, some features will take more than three months to get them to a state where they qualify for a release or need additional supporting features to be released.  The product owner has the right to make this determination. In addition to release dates, the Product Owner also will help determine iteration dates.  In general, an iteration length should be chosen and the team should follow that iteration length for an extended period of time.  If the iteration length is changed every iteration, you’re not doing Scrum.  Iteration lengths help the team and company get into a rhythm of developing quality software.  Iterations should be somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks in length.  Any shorter, and significant software will likely not be developed.  Any longer, and the team won’t feel urgency and planning will become very difficult. Iterations may not be extended during the iteration.  Companies where Scrum isn’t really followed will often use this as a strategy to complete all stories.  They don’t want to face the harsh reality of what their true performance is, and looking good is more important than seeking visibility and improving the process and team.  Companies like this typically don’t allow failure.  This is unhealthy.  Failure is part of life and unless we learn from it, we can’t improve.  I would much rather see a team push out stories to the next iteration and then have healthy discussions about why they failed rather than extend the iteration and not deal with the core problems. If iteration length varies, retrospectives become more difficult.  For example, evaluating the performance of the team’s estimation efforts becomes much more difficult if the iteration length varies.  Also, the team must have a velocity measurement.  If the iteration length varies, measuring velocity becomes impossible and upper management no longer will have the ability to evaluate the teams performance.  People external to the team will no longer have the ability to determine when key features are likely to be developed.  Variable iterations cause the entire company to fail and likely cause Scrum to fail at an organization. Develops Story Details and Helps the Team Understand Those Details A key concept in Scrum is that the stories are nothing more than a placeholder for a conversation.  Stories should be nothing more than short, one line statements about the functionality.  The team will then converse with the Product Owner about the details about that story.  The product owner needs to have a very good idea about what the details of the story are and needs to be able to help the team understand those details. Too often, we see this requirement as being translated into the need for comprehensive documentation about the story, including old fashioned requirements documentation.  The team should only develop the documentation that is required and should not develop documentation that is only created because their is a process to do so. In general, what we see that works best is the iteration before a team starts development work on a story, the Product Owner, with other appropriate business analysts, will develop the details of that story.  They’ll figure out what business rules are required, potentially make paper prototypes or other light weight mock-ups, and they seek to understand the story and what is implied.  Note that the time allowed for this task is deliberately short.  The Product Owner only has a single iteration to develop all of the stories for the next iteration. If more than one iteration is used, I’ve found that teams will end up with Big Design Up Front and traditional requirements documents.  This is a waste of time, since the team will need to then have discussions with the Product Owner to figure out what the requirements document says.  Instead of this, skip making the pretty pictures and detailing the nuances of the requirements and build only what is minimally needed by the team to do development.  If something comes up during development, you can address it at that time and figure out what you want to do.  The goal is to keep things as light weight as possible so that everyone can move as quickly as possible. Helps QA to Develop Acceptance Tests In Scrum, no story can be counted until it is accepted by QA.  Because of this, acceptance tests are very important to the team.  In general, acceptance tests need to be developed prior to the iteration or at the very beginning of the iteration so that the team can make sure that the tasks that they develop will fulfill the acceptance criteria. The Product Owner will help the team, including QA, understand what will make the story acceptable.  Note that the Product Owner needs to be careful about specifying that the feature will work “Perfectly” at the end of the iteration.  In general, features are developed a little bit at a time, so only the bit that is being developed should be considered as necessary for acceptance. A weak Product Owner will make statements like “Do it right the first time.”  Not only are these statements damaging to the team (like they would try to do it WRONG the first time . . .), they’re also ignoring the iterative nature of Scrum.  Additionally, a weak product owner will seek to add scope in the acceptance testing.  For example, they will refuse to determine acceptance at the beginning of the iteration, and then, after the team has planned and committed to the iteration, they will expand scope by defining acceptance.  This often causes the team to miss the iteration because scope that wasn’t planned on is included.  There are ways that the team can mitigate this problem.  For example, include extra “Product Owner” time to deal with the uncertainty that you know will be introduced by the Product Owner.  This will slow the perceived velocity of the team and is not ideal, since they’ll be doing more work than they get credit for. Interact with the Customer to Make Sure that the Product is Meeting the Customer’s Needs Once development is complete, what the team has worked on should be put in front of real live people to see if it meets the needs of the customer.  One of the great things about Agile is that if something doesn’t work, we can revisit it in a future iteration!  This frees up the team to make the best decision now and know that if that decision proves to be incorrect, the team can revisit it and change that decision. Features are about adding value to the customer, so if the customer doesn’t find them useful, then having the team make tweaks is valuable.  In general, most software will be 80 to 90 percent “right” after the initial round and only minor tweaks are required.  If proper coding standards are followed, these tweaks are usually minor and easy to accomplish.  Product Owners that are doing a good job will encourage real users to see and use the software, since they know that they are trying to add value to the customer. Poor product owners will think that they know the answers already, that their customers are silly and do stupid things and that they don’t need customer input.  If you have a product owner that is afraid to show the team’s work to real customers, you probably need a different product owner. Up Next, “Who Makes a Good Product Owner.” Followed by, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• Auto blocking attacking IP address

  - by dong

  This is to share my PowerShell code online. I original asked this question on MSDN forum (or TechNet?) here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserversecurity/thread/f950686e-e3f8-4cf2-b8ec-2685c1ed7a77 In short, this is trying to find attacking IP address then add it into Firewall block rule. So I suppose: 1, You are running a Windows Server 2008 facing the Internet. 2, You need to have some port open for service, e.g. TCP 21 for FTP; TCP 3389 for Remote Desktop. You can see in my code I’m only dealing with these two since that’s what I opened. You can add further port number if you like, but the way to process might be different with these two. 3, I strongly suggest you use STRONG password and follow all security best practices, this ps1 code is NOT for adding security to your server, but reduce the nuisance from brute force attack, and make sys admin’s life easier: i.e. your FTP log won’t hold megabytes of nonsense, your Windows system log will not roll back and only can tell you what happened last month. 4, You are comfortable with setting up Windows Firewall rules, in my code, my rule has a name of “MY BLACKLIST”, you need to setup a similar one, and set it to BLOCK everything. 5, My rule is dangerous because it has the risk to block myself out as well. I do have a backup plan i.e. the DELL DRAC5 so that if that happens, I still can remote console to my server and reset the firewall. 6, By no means the code is perfect, the coding style, the use of PowerShell skills, the hard coded part, all can be improved, it’s just that it’s good enough for me already. It has been running on my server for more than 7 MONTHS. 7, Current code still has problem, I didn’t solve it yet, further on this point after the code. :)    #Dong Xie, March 2012  #my simple code to monitor attack and deal with it  #Windows Server 2008 Logon Type  #8: NetworkCleartext, i.e. FTP  #10: RemoteInteractive, i.e. RDP    $tick = 0;  "Start to run at: " + (get-date);    $regex1 = [regex] "192\.168\.100\.(?:101|102):3389\s+(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)";  $regex2 = [regex] "Source Network Address:\t(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)";    while($True) {   $blacklist = @();     "Running... (tick:" + $tick + ")"; $tick+=1;    #Port 3389  $a = @()  netstat -no | Select-String ":3389" | ? { $m = $regex1.Match($_); `    $ip = $m.Groups[1].Value; if ($m.Success -and $ip -ne "10.0.0.1") {$a = $a + $ip;} }  if ($a.count -gt 0) {    $ips = get-eventlog Security -Newest 1000 | Where-Object {$_.EventID -eq 4625 -and $_.Message -match "Logon Type:\s+10"} | foreach { `      $m = $regex2.Match($_.Message); $ip = $m.Groups[1].Value; $ip; } | Sort-Object | Tee-Object -Variable list | Get-Unique    foreach ($ip in $a) { if ($ips -contains $ip) {      if (-not ($blacklist -contains $ip)) {        $attack_count = ($list | Select-String $ip -SimpleMatch | Measure-Object).count;        "Found attacking IP on 3389: " + $ip + ", with count: " + $attack_count;        if ($attack_count -ge 20) {$blacklist = $blacklist + $ip;}      }      }    }  }      #FTP  $now = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-5); #check only last 5 mins.     #Get-EventLog has built-in switch for EventID, Message, Time, etc. but using any of these it will be VERY slow.  $count = (Get-EventLog Security -Newest 1000 | Where-Object {$_.EventID -eq 4625 -and $_.Message -match "Logon Type:\s+8" -and `              $_.TimeGenerated.CompareTo($now) -gt 0} | Measure-Object).count;  if ($count -gt 50) #threshold  {     $ips = @();     $ips1 = dir "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC2" | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending `       | select -First 1 | gc | select -Last 200 | where {$_ -match "An\+error\+occured\+during\+the\+authentication\+process."} `        | Select-String -Pattern "(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)" | select -ExpandProperty Matches | select -ExpandProperty value | Group-Object `        | where {$_.Count -ge 10} | select -ExpandProperty Name;       $ips2 = dir "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FTPSVC3" | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending `       | select -First 1 | gc | select -Last 200 | where {$_ -match "An\+error\+occured\+during\+the\+authentication\+process."} `        | Select-String -Pattern "(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)" | select -ExpandProperty Matches | select -ExpandProperty value | Group-Object `        | where {$_.Count -ge 10} | select -ExpandProperty Name;     $ips += $ips1; $ips += $ips2; $ips = $ips | where {$_ -ne "10.0.0.1"} | Sort-Object | Get-Unique;         foreach ($ip in $ips) {       if (-not ($blacklist -contains $ip)) {        "Found attacking IP on FTP: " + $ip;        $blacklist = $blacklist + $ip;       }     }  }        #Firewall change <# $current = (netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name="MY BLACKLIST" | where {$_ -match "RemoteIP"}).replace("RemoteIP:", "").replace(" ","").replace("/255.255.255.255",""); #inside $current there is no \r or \n need remove. foreach ($ip in $blacklist) { if (-not ($current -match $ip) -and -not ($ip -like "10.0.0.*")) {"Adding this IP into firewall blocklist: " + $ip; $c= 'netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="MY BLACKLIST" new RemoteIP="{0},{1}"' -f $ip, $current; Invoke-Expression $c; } } #>    foreach ($ip in $blacklist) {    $fw=New-object –comObject HNetCfg.FwPolicy2; # http://blogs.technet.com/b/jamesone/archive/2009/02/18/how-to-manage-the-windows-firewall-settings-with-powershell.aspx    $myrule = $fw.Rules | where {$_.Name -eq "MY BLACKLIST"} | select -First 1; # Potential bug here?    if (-not ($myrule.RemoteAddresses -match $ip) -and -not ($ip -like "10.0.0.*"))      {"Adding this IP into firewall blocklist: " + $ip;         $myrule.RemoteAddresses+=(","+$ip);      }  }    Wait-Event -Timeout 30 #pause 30 secs    } # end of top while loop.   Further points: 1, I suppose the server is listening on port 3389 on server IP: 192.168.100.101 and 192.168.100.102, you need to replace that with your real IP. 2, I suppose you are Remote Desktop to this server from a workstation with IP: 10.0.0.1. Please replace as well. 3, The threshold for 3389 attack is 20, you don’t want to block yourself just because you typed your password wrong 3 times, you can change this threshold by your own reasoning. 4, FTP is checking the log for attack only to the last 5 mins, you can change that as well. 5, I suppose the server is serving FTP on both IP address and their LOG path are C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC2 and C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC3. Change accordingly. 6, FTP checking code is only asking for the last 200 lines of log, and the threshold is 10, change as you wish. 7, the code runs in a loop, you can set the loop time at the last line. To run this code, copy and paste to your editor, finish all the editing, get it to your server, and open an CMD window, then type powershell.exe –file your_powershell_file_name.ps1, it will start running, you can Ctrl-C to break it. This is what you see when it’s running: This is when it detected attack and adding the firewall rule: Regarding the design of the code: 1, There are many ways you can detect the attack, but to add an IP into a block rule is no small thing, you need to think hard before doing it, reason for that may include: You don’t want block yourself; and not blocking your customer/user, i.e. the good guy. 2, Thus for each service/port, I double check. For 3389, first it needs to show in netstat.exe, then the Event log; for FTP, first check the Event log, then the FTP log files. 3, At three places I need to make sure I’m not adding myself into the block rule. –ne with single IP, –like with subnet.   Now the final bit: 1, The code will stop working after a while (depends on how busy you are attacked, could be weeks, months, or days?!) It will throw Red error message in CMD, don’t Panic, it does no harm, but it also no longer blocking new attack. THE REASON is not confirmed with MS people: the COM object to manage firewall, you can only give it a list of IP addresses to the length of around 32KB I think, once it reaches the limit, you get the error message. 2, This is in fact my second solution to use the COM object, the first solution is still in the comment block for your reference, which is using netsh, that fails because being run from CMD, you can only throw it a list of IP to 8KB. 3, I haven’t worked the workaround yet, some ideas include: wrap that RemoteAddresses setting line with error checking and once it reaches the limit, use the newly detected IP to be the list, not appending to it. This basically reset your block rule to ground zero and lose the previous bad IPs. This does no harm as it sounds, because given a certain period has passed, any these bad IPs still not repent and continue the attack to you, it only got 30 seconds or 20 guesses of your password before you block it again. And there is the benefit that the bad IP may turn back to the good hands again, and you are not blocking a potential customer or your CEO’s home pc because once upon a time, it’s a zombie. Thus the ZEN of blocking: never block any IP for too long. 4, But if you insist to block the ugly forever, my other ideas include: You call MS support, ask them how can we set an arbitrary length of IP addresses in a rule; at least from my experiences at the Forum, they don’t know and they don’t care, because they think the dynamic blocking should be done by some expensive hardware. Or, from programming perspective, you can create a new rule once the old is full, then you’ll have MY BLACKLIST1, MY  BLACKLIST2, MY BLACKLIST3, … etc. Once in a while you can compile them together and start a business to sell your blacklist on the market! Enjoy the code! p.s. (PowerShell is REALLY REALLY GREAT!)

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• LLBLGen Pro feature highlights: automatic element name construction

  - by FransBouma

  (This post is part of a series of posts about features of the LLBLGen Pro system) One of the things one might take for granted but which has a huge impact on the time spent in an entity modeling environment is the way the system creates names for elements out of the information provided, in short: automatic element name construction. Element names are created in both directions of modeling: database first and model first and the more names the system can create for you without you having to rename them, the better. LLBLGen Pro has a rich, fine grained system for creating element names out of the meta-data available, which I'll describe more in detail below. First the model element related element naming features are highlighted, in the section Automatic model element naming features and after that I'll go more into detail about the relational model element naming features LLBLGen Pro has to offer in the section Automatic relational model element naming features. Automatic model element naming features When working database first, the element names in the model, e.g. entity names, entity field names and so on, are in general determined from the relational model element (e.g. table, table field) they're mapped on, as the model elements are reverse engineered from these relational model elements. It doesn't take rocket science to automatically name an entity Customer if the entity was created after reverse engineering a table named Customer. It gets a little trickier when the entity which was created by reverse engineering a table called TBL_ORDER_LINES has to be named 'OrderLine' automatically. Automatic model element naming also takes into effect with model first development, where some settings are used to provide you with a default name, e.g. in the case of navigator name creation when you create a new relationship. The features below are available to you in the Project Settings. Open Project Settings on a loaded project and navigate to Conventions -> Element Name Construction. Strippers! The above example 'TBL_ORDER_LINES' shows that some parts of the table name might not be needed for name creation, in this case the 'TBL_' prefix. Some 'brilliant' DBAs even add suffixes to table names, fragments you might not want to appear in the entity names. LLBLGen Pro offers you to define both prefix and suffix fragments to strip off of table, view, stored procedure, parameter, table field and view field names. In the example above, the fragment 'TBL_' is a good candidate for such a strip pattern. You can specify more than one pattern for e.g. the table prefix strip pattern, so even a really messy schema can still be used to produce clean names. Underscores Be Gone Another thing you might get rid of are underscores. After all, most naming schemes for entities and their classes use PasCal casing rules and don't allow for underscores to appear. LLBLGen Pro can automatically strip out underscores for you. It's an optional feature, so if you like the underscores, you're not forced to see them go: LLBLGen Pro will leave them alone when ordered to to so. PasCal everywhere... or not, your call LLBLGen Pro can automatically PasCal case names on word breaks. It determines word breaks in a couple of ways: a space marks a word break, an underscore marks a word break and a case difference marks a word break. It will remove spaces in all cases, and based on the underscore removal setting, keep or remove the underscores, and upper-case the first character of a word break fragment, and lower case the rest. Say, we keep the defaults, which is remove underscores and PasCal case always and strip the TBL_ fragment, we get with our example TBL_ORDER_LINES, after stripping TBL_ from the table name two word fragments: ORDER and LINES. The underscores are removed, the first character of each fragment is upper-cased, the rest lower-cased, so this results in OrderLines. Almost there! Pluralization and Singularization In general entity names are singular, like Customer or OrderLine so LLBLGen Pro offers a way to singularize the names. This will convert OrderLines, the result we got after the PasCal casing functionality, into OrderLine, exactly what we're after. Show me the patterns! There are other situations in which you want more flexibility. Say, you have an entity Customer and an entity Order and there's a foreign key constraint defined from the target of Order and the target of Customer. This foreign key constraint results in a 1:n relationship between the entities Customer and Order. A relationship has navigators mapped onto the relationship in both entities the relationship is between. For this particular relationship we'd like to have Customer as navigator in Order and Orders as navigator in Customer, so the relationship becomes Customer.Orders 1:n Order.Customer. To control the naming of these navigators for the various relationship types, LLBLGen Pro defines a set of patterns which allow you, using macros, to define how the auto-created navigator names will look like. For example, if you rather have Customer.OrderCollection, you can do so, by changing the pattern from {$EndEntityName$P} to {$EndEntityName}Collection. The $P directive makes sure the name is pluralized, which is not what you want if you're going for <EntityName>Collection, hence it's removed. When working model first, it's a given you'll create foreign key fields along the way when you define relationships. For example, you've defined two entities: Customer and Order, and they have their fields setup properly. Now you want to define a relationship between them. This will automatically create a foreign key field in the Order entity, which reflects the value of the PK field in Customer. (No worries if you hate the foreign key fields in your classes, on NHibernate and EF these can be hidden in the generated code if you want to). A specific pattern is available for you to direct LLBLGen Pro how to name this foreign key field. For example, if all your entities have Id as PK field, you might want to have a different name than Id as foreign key field. In our Customer - Order example, you might want to have CustomerId instead as foreign key name in Order. The pattern for foreign key fields gives you that freedom. Abbreviations... make sense of OrdNr and friends I already described word breaks in the PasCal casing paragraph, how they're used for the PasCal casing in the constructed name. Word breaks are used for another neat feature LLBLGen Pro has to offer: abbreviation support. Burt, your friendly DBA in the dungeons below the office has a hate-hate relationship with his keyboard: he can't stand it: typing is something he avoids like the plague. This has resulted in tables and fields which have names which are very short, but also very unreadable. Example: our TBL_ORDER_LINES example has a lovely field called ORD_NR. What you would like to see in your fancy new OrderLine entity mapped onto this table is a field called OrderNumber, not a field called OrdNr. What you also like is to not have to rename that field manually. There are better things to do with your time, after all. LLBLGen Pro has you covered. All it takes is to define some abbreviation - full word pairs and during reverse engineering model elements from tables/views, LLBLGen Pro will take care of the rest. For the ORD_NR field, you need two values: ORD as abbreviation and Order as full word, and NR as abbreviation and Number as full word. LLBLGen Pro will now convert every word fragment found with the word breaks which matches an abbreviation to the given full word. They're case sensitive and can be found in the Project Settings: Navigate to Conventions -> Element Name Construction -> Abbreviations. Automatic relational model element naming features Not everyone works database first: it may very well be the case you start from scratch, or have to add additional tables to an existing database. For these situations, it's key you have the flexibility that you can control the created table names and table fields without any work: let the designer create these names based on the entity model you defined and a set of rules. LLBLGen Pro offers several features in this area, which are described in more detail below. These features are found in Project Settings: navigate to Conventions -> Model First Development. Underscores, welcome back! Not every database is case insensitive, and not every organization requires PasCal cased table/field names, some demand all lower or all uppercase names with underscores at word breaks. Say you create an entity model with an entity called OrderLine. You work with Oracle and your organization requires underscores at word breaks: a table created from OrderLine should be called ORDER_LINE. LLBLGen Pro allows you to do that: with a simple checkbox you can order LLBLGen Pro to insert an underscore at each word break for the type of database you're working with: case sensitive or case insensitive. Checking the checkbox Insert underscore at word break case insensitive dbs will let LLBLGen Pro create a table from the entity called Order_Line. Half-way there, as there are still lower case characters there and you need all caps. No worries, see below Casing directives so everyone can sleep well at night For case sensitive databases and case insensitive databases there is one setting for each of them which controls the casing of the name created from a model element (e.g. a table created from an entity definition using the auto-mapping feature). The settings can have the following values: AsProjectElement, AllUpperCase or AllLowerCase. AsProjectElement is the default, and it keeps the casing as-is. In our example, we need to get all upper case characters, so we select AllUpperCase for the setting for case sensitive databases. This will produce the name ORDER_LINE. Sequence naming after a pattern Some databases support sequences, and using model-first development it's key to have sequences, when needed, to be created automatically and if possible using a name which shows where they're used. Say you have an entity Order and you want to have the PK values be created by the database using a sequence. The database you're using supports sequences (e.g. Oracle) and as you want all numeric PK fields to be sequenced, you have enabled this by the setting Auto assign sequences to integer pks. When you're using LLBLGen Pro's auto-map feature, to create new tables and constraints from the model, it will create a new table, ORDER, based on your settings I previously discussed above, with a PK field ID and it also creates a sequence, SEQ_ORDER, which is auto-assigns to the ID field mapping. The name of the sequence is created by using a pattern, defined in the Model First Development setting Sequence pattern, which uses plain text and macros like with the other patterns previously discussed. Grouping and schemas When you start from scratch, and you're working model first, the tables created by LLBLGen Pro will be in a catalog and / or schema created by LLBLGen Pro as well. If you use LLBLGen Pro's grouping feature, which allows you to group entities and other model elements into groups in the project (described in a future blog post), you might want to have that group name reflected in the schema name the targets of the model elements are in. Say you have a model with a group CRM and a group HRM, both with entities unique for these groups, e.g. Employee in HRM, Customer in CRM. When auto-mapping this model to create tables, you might want to have the table created for Employee in the HRM schema but the table created for Customer in the CRM schema. LLBLGen Pro will do just that when you check the setting Set schema name after group name to true (default). This gives you total control over where what is placed in the database from your model. But I want plural table names... and TBL_ prefixes! For now we follow best practices which suggest singular table names and no prefixes/suffixes for names. Of course that won't keep everyone happy, so we're looking into making it possible to have that in a future version. Conclusion LLBLGen Pro offers a variety of options to let the modeling system do as much work for you as possible. Hopefully you enjoyed this little highlight post and that it has given you new insights in the smaller features available to you in LLBLGen Pro, ones you might not have thought off in the first place. Enjoy!

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• You should NOT be writing jQuery in SharePoint if&hellip;

  - by Mark Rackley

  Yes… another one of these posts. What can I say? I’m a pot stirrer.. a rabble rouser *rabble rabble* jQuery in SharePoint seems to be a fairly polarizing issue with one side thinking it is the most awesome thing since Princess Leia as the slave girl in Return of the Jedi and the other half thinking it is the worst idea since Mannequin 2: On the Move. The correct answer is OF COURSE “it depends”. But what are those deciding factors that make jQuery an awesome fit or leave a bad taste in your mouth? Let’s see if I can drive the discussion here with some polarizing comments of my own… I know some of you are getting ready to leave your comments even now before reading the rest of the blog, which is great! Iron sharpens iron… These discussions hopefully open us up to understanding the entire process better and think about things in a different way. You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if you are not a developer… Let’s start off with my most polarizing and rant filled portion of the blog post. If you don’t know what you are doing or you don’t have a background that helps you understand the implications of what you are writing then you should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint! I truly believe that one of the biggest reasons for the jQuery haters is because of all the bad jQuery out there. If you don’t know what you are doing you can do some NASTY things! One of the best stories I’ve heard about this is from my good friend John Ferringer (@ferringer). John tells this story during our Mythbusters session we do together. One of his clients was undergoing a Denial of Service attack and they couldn’t figure out what was going on! After much searching they found that some genius jQuery developer wrote some code for an image rotator, but did not take into account what happens when there are no images to load! The code just kept hitting the servers over and over and over again which prevented anything else from getting done! Now, I’m NOT saying that I have not done the same sort of thing in the past or am immune from such mistakes. My point is that if you don’t know what you are doing, there are very REAL consequences that can have a major impact on your organization AND they will be hard to track down.  Think how happy your boss will be after you copy and pasted some jQuery from a blog without understanding what it does, it brings down the farm, AND it takes them 3 days to track it back to you.  :/ Good times will not be had. Like it or not JavaScript/jQuery is a programming language. While you .NET people sit on your high horses because your code is compiled and “runs faster” (also debatable), the rest of us will be actually getting work done and delivering solutions while you are trying to figure out why your widget won’t deploy. I can pick at that scab because I write .NET code too and speak from experience. I can do both, and do both well. So, I am not speaking from ignorance here. In JavaScript/jQuery you have variables, loops, conditionals, functions, arrays, events, and built in methods. If you are not a developer you just aren’t going to take advantage of all of that and use it correctly. Ahhh.. but there is hope! There is a lot of jQuery resources out there to help you learn and learn well! There are many experts on the subject that will gladly tell you when you are smoking crack. I just this minute saw a tweet from @cquick with a link to: “jQuery Fundamentals”. I just glanced through it and this may be a great primer for you aspiring jQuery devs. Take advantage of all the resources and become a developer! Hey, it will look awesome on your resume right? You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if it depends too much on client resources for a good user experience I’ve said it once and I’ll say it over and over until you understand. jQuery is executed on the client’s computer. Got it? If you are looping through hundreds of rows of data, searching through an enormous DOM, or performing many calculations it is going to take some time! AND if your user happens to be sitting on some old PC somewhere that they picked up at a garage sale their experience will be that much worse! If you can’t give the user a good experience they will not use the site. So, if jQuery is causing the user to have a bad experience, don’t use it. I sometimes go as far to say that you should NOT go to jQuery as a first option for external facing web sites because you have ZERO control over what the end user’s computer will be. You just can’t guarantee an awesome user experience all of the time. Ahhh… but you have no choice? (where have I heard that before?). Well… if you really have no choice, here are some tips to help improve the experience: Avoid screen scraping This is not 1999 and SharePoint is not an old green screen from a mainframe… so why are you treating it like it is? Screen scraping is time consuming and client intensive. Take advantage of tools like SPServices to do your data retrieval when possible. Fine tune your DOM searches A lot of time can be eaten up just searching the DOM and ignoring table rows that you don’t need. Write better jQuery to only loop through tables rows that you need, or only access specific elements you need. Take advantage of Element ID’s to return the one element you are looking for instead of looping through all the DOM over and over again. Write better jQuery Remember this is development. Think about how you can write cleaner, faster jQuery. This directly relates to the previous point of improving your DOM searches, but also when using arrays, variables and loops. Do you REALLY need to loop through that array 3 times? How can you knock it down to 2 times or even 1? When you have lots of calculations and data that you are manipulating every operation adds up. Think about how you can streamline it. Back in the old days before RAM was abundant, Cores were plentiful and dinosaurs roamed the earth, us developers had to take performance into account in everything we did. It’s a lost art that really needs to be used here. You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if you are sending a lot of data over the wire… Developer:  “Awesome… you can easily call SharePoint’s web services to retrieve and write data using SPServices!” Administrator: “Crap! you can easily call SharePoint’s web services to retrieve and write data using SPServices!” SPServices may indeed be the best thing that happened to SharePoint since the invention of SharePoint Saturdays by Godfather Lotter… BUT you HAVE to use it wisely! (I REFUSE to make the Spiderman reference). If you do not know what you are doing your code will bring back EVERY field and EVERY row from a list and push that over the internet with all that lovely XML wrapped around it. That can be a HUGE amount of data and will GREATLY impact performance! Calling several web service methods at the same time can cause the same problem and can negatively impact your SharePoint servers. These problems, thankfully, are not difficult to rectify if you are careful: Limit list data retrieved Use CAML to reduce the number of rows returned and limit the fields returned using ViewFields.  You should definitely be doing this regardless. If you aren’t I hope your admin thumps you upside the head. Batch large list updates You may or may not have noticed that if you try to do large updates (hundreds of rows) that the performance is either completely abysmal or it fails over half the time. You can greatly improve performance and avoid timeouts by breaking up your updates into several smaller updates. I don’t know if there is a magic number for best performance, it really depends on how much data you are sending back more than the number of rows. However, I have found that 200 rows generally works well.  Play around and find the right number for your situation. Delay Web Service calls when possible One of the cool things about jQuery and SPServices is that you can delay queries to the server until they are actually needed instead of doing them all at once. This can lead to performance improvements over DataViewWebParts and even .NET code in the right situations. So, don’t load the data until it’s needed. In some instances you may not need to retrieve the data at all, so why retrieve it ALL the time? You should not be writing jQuery in SharePoint if there is a better solution… jQuery is NOT the silver bullet in SharePoint, it is not the answer to every question, it is just another tool in the developers toolkit. I urge all developers to know what options exist out there and choose the right one! Sometimes it will be jQuery, sometimes it will be .NET,  sometimes it will be XSL, and sometimes it will be some other choice… So, when is there a better solution to jQuery? When you can’t get away from performance problems Sometimes jQuery will just give you horrible performance regardless of what you do because of unavoidable obstacles. In these situations you are going to have to figure out an alternative. Can I do it with a DVWP or do I have to crack open Visual Studio? When you need to do something that jQuery can’t do There are lots of things you can’t do in jQuery like elevate privileges, event handlers, workflows, or interact with back end systems that have no web service interface. It just can’t do everything. When it can be done faster and more efficiently another way Why are you spending time to write jQuery to do a DataViewWebPart that would take 5 minutes? Or why are you trying to implement complicated logic that would be simple to do in .NET? If your answer is that you don’t have the option, okay. BUT if you do have the option don’t reinvent the wheel! Take advantage of the other tools. The answer is not always jQuery… sorry… the kool-aid tastes good, but sweet tea is pretty awesome too. You should not be using jQuery in SharePoint if you are a moron… Let’s finish up the blog on a high note… Yes.. it’s true, I sometimes type things just to get a reaction… guess this section title might be a good example, but it feels good sometimes just to type the words that a lot of us think… So.. don’t be that guy! Another good buddy of mine that works for Microsoft told me. “I loved jQuery in SharePoint…. until I had to support it.”. He went on to explain that some user was making several web service calls on a page using jQuery and then was calling Microsoft and COMPLAINING because the page took so long to load… DUH! What do you expect to happen when you are pushing that much data over the wire and are making that many web service calls at once!! It’s one thing to write that kind of code and accept it’s just going to take a while, it’s COMPLETELY another issue to do that and then complain when it’s not lightning fast!  Someone’s gene pool needs some chlorine. So, I think this is a nice summary of the blog… DON’T be that guy… don’t be a moron. How can you stop yourself from being a moron? Ah.. glad you asked, here are some tips: Think Is jQuery the right solution to my problem? Is there a better approach? What are the implications and pitfalls of using jQuery in this situation? Search What are others doing? Does someone have a better solution? Is there a third party library that does the same thing I need? Plan Write good jQuery. Limit calculations and data sent over the wire and don’t reinvent the wheel when possible. Test Okay, it works well on your machine. Try it on others ESPECIALLY if this is for an external site. Test with empty data. Test with hundreds of rows of data. Test as many scenarios as possible. Monitor those server resources to see the impact there as well. Ask the experts As smart as you are, there are people smarter than you. Even the experts talk to each other to make sure they aren't doing something stupid. And for the MOST part they are pretty nice guys. Marc Anderson and Christophe Humbert are two guys who regularly keep me in line. Make sure you aren’t doing something stupid. Repeat So, when you think you have the best solution possible, repeat the steps above just to be safe.  Conclusion jQuery is an awesome tool and has come in handy on many occasions. I’m even teaching a 1/2 day SharePoint & jQuery workshop at the upcoming SPTechCon in Boston if you want to berate me in person. However, it’s only as awesome as the developer behind the keyboard. It IS development and has its pitfalls. Knowledge and experience are invaluable to giving the user the best experience possible.  Let’s face it, in the end, no matter our opinions, prejudices, or ego providing our clients, customers, and users with the best solution possible is what counts. Period… end of sentence…

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 11, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 11, 2011Popular ReleasesSnoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.6.1: This release is a bug fixing release. Most importantly, issues have been seen around WPF 4.0 applications not always showing up in the app chooser. Hopefully, they are fixed now. I thought this issue warranted a minor release since more and more people are going WPF 4.0 and I don't want anyone to have any problems. Dan Hanan also contributes again with several usability features. Thanks Dan! Happy Snooping! p.s. By request, I am also attaching a .zip file ... so that people can install it ...RIBA - Rich Internet Business Application for Silverlight: Preview of MVVM Framework Source + Tutorials: This is a first public release of the MVVM Framework which is part of the final RIBA application. The complete RIBA example LOB application has yet to be published. Further Documentation on the MVVM part can be found on the Blog, http://www.SilverlightBlog.Net and in the downloadable source ( mvvm/doc/ ). Please post all issues and suggestions in the issue tracker.SharePoint Learning Kit: 1.5: SharePoint Learning Kit 1.5 has the following new functionality: *Support for SharePoint 2010 *E-Learning Actions can be localised *Two New Document Library Edit Options *Automatically add the Assignment List Web Part to the Web Part Gallery *Various Bug Fixes for the Drop Box There are 2 downloads for this release SLK-1.5-2010.zip for SharePoint 2010 SLK-1.5-2007.zip for SharePoint 2007 (WSS3 & MOSS 2007)Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.3 (BETA): This is fourth BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. For more information about this release see the following blog posts: Facebook C# SDK - Writing your first Facebook Application Facebook C# SDK v5 Beta Internals Facebook C# SDK V5.0.0 (BETA) Released We have spend time trying ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.161: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a new Twitter List network importer, makes some minor feature improvements, and fixes a few bugs. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file...WatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.09.03: Whats NewAdded New Skin TagTastic http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/TagCloud-TagTastic-Skin.jpg Added New Skin RoundedButton http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/TagCloud-RoundedButton-Skin.jpg changes Tag Count fixed on Tag Source Referrals Fixed Tag Count when multiple Tag Sources are usedExtremeML: ExtremeML v1.0 Beta 3: VS solution source code updated for compatibility with VS2010 (accommodates VS2010 breaking changes in T4 template support).Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.1: This release adds a few more performance and graphical enhancements to 1.0. Switching desktops is now about as fast as you can blink. Desktop switching optimizations New welcome wizard for Vista/7 Fixed a few minor bugs Added a few more options to the options dialog (including ability to disable the taskbar switching)WCF Data Services Toolkit: WCF Data Services Toolkit: The source code and binary releases of the WCF Data Services Toolkit. For simplicity, the source code download doesn't include any of the MSTest files. If you want those, you can pull the code down via MercurialyoutubeFisher: youtubeFisher 3.0 [beta]: What's new: Video capturing improved Supports YouTube's new layout (january 2011) Internal refactoringNearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v5.0: Version 5.0 of the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing the following improvements: .NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3. All views migrated to Razor for cleaner markup. Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices 4 Bug Fixes since Version 4.1 Visit the project Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 28785b7248052465ea0738a7775e8e8744d84c27fuv: 1.0 release, codename Chopper Joe: features: search/replace :o to open file :s to save file :q to quitASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager html generation optimized new features for the lookup (add additional search data ) live demo went aeroEnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.6 BETA: 2.3.6 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Changes since 2.3.0 ...TestApi - a library of Test APIs: TestApi v0.6: TestApi v0.6 comes with the following changes: TestApi code development has been moved to Codeplex: Moved TestApi soluton to VS 2010; Moved all source code to Codeplex. All development work is done there now. Fault Injection API: Integrated the unmanaged FaultInjectionEngine.dll COM component in the build; Cleaned up FaultInjectionEngine.dll to build at warning level 4; Implemented “FaultScope” which allows for in-process fault injection; Added automation scripts & sample program; ...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.5: AutoChat now allows up to 6 items. Items with nr. 7-0 will be removed! News page url's are now opened in the default browser Added a context menu to the system tray icon (thanks to Alex Banagos) AutoChat now allows configuring the Chat Keys and the Modifier Key The recent files list now supports compact and full mode Fix: Swapped mouse buttons are now properly detected Fix: Sometimes the Play button was pressed while still greyed out Champion: Karma Note: You can also run the u...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.2: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.19 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...IronRuby: 1.1.2: IronRuby 1.1.2 is a servicing release that keeps on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9.2 and includes IronRuby integration to Visual Studio 2010. We decided to drop 1.8.6 compatibility mode in all post-1.0 releases. We recommend using IronRuby 1.0 if you need 1.8.6 compatibility. In this release we fixed several major issues: - problems that blocked Gem installation in certain cases - regex syntax: the parser was replaced with a new one that is much more compatible with Ruby 1.9.2 - cras...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.New ProjectsAlchemySearch: A middleware application that allows the searching of Open Text's Alchemy application from a command line or from a calling application. C# .NET 4alltuan: all tuan infoasp.net mvc 2.0 ??????: asp.net mvc 2.0 ??????Basic Text File Generator: This is an investigatory development that creates text files from a windows forms app.bisolu_luc: nothing yetCriteria Pack for EPiServer CMS: This is a collection of useful criteria for extending the personalization mechanism, Visitor Groups, in EPiServer CMS 6 R2 (or later).CTRNN.NET: CTRNN.NET is a C# implementation of Continuous Time Recurrent Neural Networks.DXperience Toolkit: Complimentary controls and libraries from DevExpress.Excel Library for Small Basic: This library extend Small Basic to allows you to read or write contents of a cell in the Excel file from Small Basic program. ???????? Small Basic ????、Small Basic ??? Excel ???????????????????。HealthVault Eventing Sample: A sample application demonstrating the new HealthVault Eventing feature.Hitcents Blog - Example Code: Contains various source code examples from articles at http://www.hitcents.com/blog. Brought to you by Hitcents.INI Modifier: A proprietary application to amend users ini files for JBAe automatically from a central control file.issueIT.net - ”I just found the last bug”: issueIT is the best open source web-based issue tracker for .NET. It’s easy to customize to suit your organization. This project is not finished yet - it is only at a very early stage Leage of Legends Masteries Tool: -Small, portable and fast tool to help you set your masteries. -No Install. -Masteries saved in the same folder: "lolMasterSet.dat" (text file) How to use: - Run and then go to masteries tab in League of Legends luncher. You should see the overlay. Memory View controls: Memory View controls are a pair of controls for real time and static viewing and editing of a memory space. MemoryHexEditor is a hex editor that supports viewing and editing memory, and MemoryHeatMap is a time-based graphical view that shows how memory is read and written to.Moq Contrib: Community contributions to Moq.Operating System Basic: Sistema operacional desenvolvido em QuickBasic, durante minha adolecência.PAiRS - A WPF Memory Card Game: PAiRS is an implementation of a card matching game in which you are given an even number of cards face down in a grid, and you try to flip over 2 cards at a time to create a match until all cards are matched. PAiRS is built using C#, .Net 3.5+ and WPF.RIBA - Rich Internet Business Application for Silverlight: RIBA is an example LOB application with many features to show how to build distributed and secure Line of Business applications based on Silverlight 4. You can find the official blog on www.silverlightblog.netSearcher: Searcher is a Windows Phone project which allows you to quickly search using multiple search engines. SharePoint Term Store Powershell Utilities: An assortment of PowerShell script-based utilities to perform actions on the SharePoint Managed Metadata Term Store. PowerShell script-based utilities have been chosen rather than cmdlets as they are more suitable for environments that have strict installation policies.SmartHotelFoundation: Smart Hotel FoundationSumer Filemanager: This project ensured fully ajax based file management.The Open Source PMU: The Open Source PMU Project provides resources that enable you to build your own SynchroPhasor sensor for use with the openPDC project, research, development, or electric grid observation.Trail Blazer: Movie Trailer Fetcher - Downloads trailers for movies in a collection and saves them in movie folder. It is being developed as a companion to Meta Data Fetchers for the Media Browser project. It is being developed as a standalone C# app but a frontend in MCML is being considered.University Project Tracker: University Project TrackerVideo Backup Fusion: The complete and simply to use backup solution for video portalsWPF ShellFactory: WPF ShellFactory is an easy-to-use application framework for WPF, using a system derived from M-V-VM for its views. It supports multiple modules, either statically or dynamically loaded (i.e. plugins). It also contains mechanisms for application-wide services.

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• The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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• Create excel files with GemBox.Spreadsheet .NET component

  - by hajan

  Generating excel files from .NET code is not always a very easy task, especially if you need to make some formatting or you want to do something very specific that requires extra coding. I’ve recently tried the GemBox Spreadsheet and I would like to share my experience with you. First of all, you can install GemBox Spreadsheet library from VS.NET 2010 Extension manager by searching in the gallery: Go in the Online Gallery tab (as in the picture bellow) and write GemBox in the Search box on top-right of the Extension Manager, so you will get the following result: Click Download on GemBox.Spreadsheet and you will be directed to product website. Click on the marked link then you will get to the following page where you have the component download link Once you download it, install the MSI file. Open the installation folder and find the Bin folder. There you have GemBox.Spreadsheet.dll in three folders each for different .NET Framework version. Now, lets move to Visual Studio.NET. 1. Create sample ASP.NET Web Application and give it a name. 2. Reference The GemBox.Spreadsheet.dll file in your project So you don’t need to search for the dll file in your disk but you can simply find it in the .NET tab in ‘Add Reference’ window and you have all three versions. I chose the version for 4.0.30319 runtime. Next, I will retrieve data from my Pubs database. I’m using Entity Framework. Here is the code (read the comments in it):             //get data from pubs database, tables: authors, titleauthor, titles             pubsEntities context = new pubsEntities();             var authorTitles = (from a in context.authors                                join tl in context.titleauthor on a.au_id equals tl.au_id                                join t in context.titles on tl.title_id equals t.title_id                                select new AuthorTitles                                {                                     Name = a.au_fname,                                     Surname = a.au_lname,                                     Title = t.title,                                     Price = t.price,                                     PubDate = t.pubdate                                }).ToList();             //using GemBox library now             ExcelFile myExcelFile = new ExcelFile();             ExcelWorksheet excWsheet = myExcelFile.Worksheets.Add("Hajan's worksheet");             excWsheet.Cells[0, 0].Value = "Pubs database Authors and Titles";             excWsheet.Cells[0, 0].Style.Borders.SetBorders(MultipleBorders.Bottom,System.Drawing.Color.Red,LineStyle.Thin);             excWsheet.Cells[0, 1].Style.Borders.SetBorders(MultipleBorders.Bottom, System.Drawing.Color.Red, LineStyle.Thin);                                      int numberOfColumns = 5; //the number of properties in the authorTitles we have             //for each column             for (int c = 0; c < numberOfColumns; c++)             {                 excWsheet.Columns[c].Width = 25 * 256; //set the width to each column                             }             //header row cells             excWsheet.Rows[2].Cells[0].Value = "Name";             excWsheet.Rows[2].Cells[1].Value = "Surname";             excWsheet.Rows[2].Cells[2].Value = "Title";             excWsheet.Rows[2].Cells[3].Value = "Price";             excWsheet.Rows[2].Cells[4].Value = "PubDate";             //bind authorTitles in the excel worksheet             int currentRow = 3;             foreach (AuthorTitles at in authorTitles)             {                 excWsheet.Rows[currentRow].Cells[0].Value = at.Name;                 excWsheet.Rows[currentRow].Cells[1].Value = at.Surname;                 excWsheet.Rows[currentRow].Cells[2].Value = at.Title;                 excWsheet.Rows[currentRow].Cells[3].Value = at.Price;                 excWsheet.Rows[currentRow].Cells[4].Value = at.PubDate;                 currentRow++;             }             //stylizing my excel file look             CellStyle style = new CellStyle(myExcelFile);             style.HorizontalAlignment = HorizontalAlignmentStyle.Left;             style.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignmentStyle.Center;             style.Font.Color = System.Drawing.Color.DarkRed;             style.WrapText = true;             style.Borders.SetBorders(MultipleBorders.Top                 | MultipleBorders.Left | MultipleBorders.Right                 | MultipleBorders.Bottom, System.Drawing.Color.Black,                 LineStyle.Thin);                                 //pay attention on this, we set created style on the given (firstRow, firstColumn, lastRow, lastColumn)             //in my example:             //firstRow = 2; firstColumn = 0; lastRow = authorTitles.Count+1; lastColumn = numberOfColumns-1; variable             excWsheet.Cells.GetSubrangeAbsolute(3, 0, authorTitles.Count+2, numberOfColumns-1).Style = style;             //save my excel file             myExcelFile.SaveXls(Server.MapPath(".") + @"/myFile.xls"); The AuthorTitles class: public class AuthorTitles {     public string Name { get; set; }     public string Surname { get; set; }     public string Title { get; set; }     public decimal? Price { get; set; }     public DateTime PubDate { get; set; } } The excel file will be generated in the root of your ASP.NET Web Application. The result is: There is a lot more you can do with this library. A set of good examples you have in the GemBox.Spreadsheet Samples Explorer application which comes together with the installation and you can find it by default in Start –> All Programs –> GemBox Software –> GemBox.Spreadsheet Samples Explorer. Hope this was useful for you. Best Regards, Hajan

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• Synchronize Data between a Silverlight ListBox and a User Control

  - by psheriff

  One of the great things about XAML is the powerful data-binding capabilities. If you load up a list box with a collection of objects, you can display detail data about each object without writing any C# or VB.NET code. Take a look at Figure 1 that shows a collection of Product objects in a list box. When you click on a list box you bind the current Product object selected in the list box to a set of controls in a user control with just a very simple Binding statement in XAML.  Figure 1: Synchronizing a ListBox to a User Control is easy with Data Binding Product and Products Classes To illustrate this data binding feature I am going to just create some local data instead of using a WCF service. The code below shows a Product class that has three properties, namely, ProductId, ProductName and Price. This class also has a constructor that takes 3 parameters and allows us to set the 3 properties in an instance of our Product class. C#public class Product{  public Product(int productId, string productName, decimal price)  {    ProductId = productId;    ProductName = productName;    Price = price;  }   public int ProductId { get; set; }  public string ProductName { get; set; }  public decimal Price { get; set; }} VBPublic Class Product  Public Sub New(ByVal _productId As Integer, _                 ByVal _productName As String, _                 ByVal _price As Decimal)    ProductId = _productId    ProductName = _productName    Price = _price  End Sub   Private mProductId As Integer  Private mProductName As String  Private mPrice As Decimal   Public Property ProductId() As Integer    Get      Return mProductId    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Integer)      mProductId = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property ProductName() As String    Get      Return mProductName    End Get    Set(ByVal value As String)      mProductName = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property Price() As Decimal    Get      Return mPrice    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Decimal)      mPrice = value    End Set  End PropertyEnd Class To fill up a list box you need a collection class of Product objects. The code below creates a generic collection class of Product objects. In the constructor of the Products class I have hard-coded five product objects and added them to the collection. In a real-world application you would get your data through a call to service to fill the list box, but for simplicity and just to illustrate the data binding, I am going to just hard code the data. C#public class Products : List<Product>{  public Products()  {    this.Add(new Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20));    this.Add(new Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20));  }} VBPublic Class Products  Inherits List(Of Product)   Public Sub New()    Me.Add(New Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20))    Me.Add(New Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20))  End SubEnd Class The Product Detail User Control Below is a user control (named ucProduct) that is used to display the product detail information seen in the bottom portion of Figure 1. This is very basic XAML that just creates a text block and a text box control for each of the three properties in the Product class. Notice the {Binding Path=[PropertyName]} on each of the text box controls. This means that if the DataContext property of this user control is set to an instance of a Product class, then the data in the properties of that Product object will be displayed in each of the text boxes. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.ucProduct"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  HorizontalAlignment="Left"  VerticalAlignment="Top">  <Grid Margin="4">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>      <ColumnDefinition MinWidth="120" />      <ColumnDefinition />    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>    <TextBlock Grid.Row="0"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Id" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="0"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductId}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="1"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Name" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="1"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductName}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="2"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Price" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="2"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=Price}" />  </Grid></UserControl> Synchronize ListBox with User Control You are now ready to fill the list box with the collection class of Product objects and then bind the SelectedItem of the list box to the Product detail user control. The XAML below is the complete code for Figure 1. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.MainPage"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS"  VerticalAlignment="Top"  HorizontalAlignment="Left">  <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources>  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"        Margin="4"        Background="White">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="*" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <ListBox x:Name="lstData"             Grid.Row="0"             BorderBrush="Black"             BorderThickness="1"             ItemsSource="{Binding                   Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"             DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" />    <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"                   Grid.Row="1"                   DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                          Path=SelectedItem}" />  </Grid></UserControl> The first step to making this happen is to reference the Silverlight project (SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS) where the Product and Products classes are located. I added this namespace and assigned it a namespace prefix of “src” as shown in the line below: xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS" Next, to use the data from an instance of the Products collection, you create a UserControl.Resources section in the XAML and add a tag that creates an instance of the Products class and assigns it a key of “productCollection”.   <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources> Next, you bind the list box to this productCollection object using the ItemsSource property. You bind the ItemsSource of the list box to the static resource named productCollection. You can then set the DisplayMemberPath attribute of the list box to any property of the Product class that you want. In the XAML below I used the ProductName property. <ListBox x:Name="lstData"         ItemsSource="{Binding             Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"         DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" /> You now need to create an instance of the ucProduct user contol below the list box. You do this by once again referencing the “src” namespace and typing in the name of the user control. You then set the DataContext property on this user control to a binding. The binding uses the ElementName attribute to bind to the list box name, in this case “lstData”. The Path of the data is SelectedItem. These two attributes together tell Silverlight to bind the DataContext to the selected item of the list box. That selected item is a Product object. So, once this is bound, the bindings on each text box in the user control are updated and display the current product information. <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"               DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                      Path=SelectedItem}" /> Summary Once you understand the basics of data binding in XAML, you eliminate a lot code that is otherwise needed to move data into controls and out of controls back into an object. Connecting two controls together is easy by just binding using the ElementName and Path properties of the Binding markup extension. Another good tip out of this blog is use user controls and set the DataContext of the user control to have all of the data on the user control update through the bindings. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "SL – Synchronize List Box Data with User Control" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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• Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

  - by sbwalker

  Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it.  This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The  “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 12, 2011Popular ReleasesEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.0: 2.4.0This release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Changes since 2.3.0 - Upd...Sterling Isolated Storage Database with LINQ for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7: Sterling OODB v1.0: Note: use this changeset to download the source example that has been extended to show database generation, backup, and restore in the desktop example. Welcome to the Sterling 1.0 RTM. This version is not backwards-compatible with previous versions of Sterling. Sterling is also available via NuGet. This product has been used and tested in many applications and contains a full suite of unit tests. You can refer to the User's Guide for complete documentation, and use the unit tests as guide...PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5.1: Changes from the previous version * Use dynamic layout to better fit text in other languages * Includes French and Spanish localizations Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0.5.1-setup.exe" (reccomended) 2. Down...Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.6.1: This release is a bug fixing release. Most importantly, issues have been seen around WPF 4.0 applications not always showing up in the app chooser. Hopefully, they are fixed now. I thought this issue warranted a minor release since more and more people are going WPF 4.0 and I don't want anyone to have any problems. Dan Hanan also contributes again with several usability features. Thanks Dan! Happy Snooping! p.s. By request, I am also attaching a .zip file ... so that people can install it ...RIBA - Rich Internet Business Application for Silverlight: Preview of MVVM Framework Source + Tutorials: This is a first public release of the MVVM Framework which is part of the final RIBA application. The complete RIBA example LOB application has yet to be published. Further Documentation on the MVVM part can be found on the Blog, http://www.SilverlightBlog.Net and in the downloadable source ( mvvm/doc/ ). Please post all issues and suggestions in the issue tracker.SharePoint Learning Kit: 1.5: SharePoint Learning Kit 1.5 has the following new functionality: *Support for SharePoint 2010 *E-Learning Actions can be localised *Two New Document Library Edit Options *Automatically add the Assignment List Web Part to the Web Part Gallery *Various Bug Fixes for the Drop Box There are 2 downloads for this release SLK-1.5-2010.zip for SharePoint 2010 SLK-1.5-2007.zip for SharePoint 2007 (WSS3 & MOSS 2007)GMare: GMare Alpha 02: Alpha version 2. With fixes detailed in the issue tracker.Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.3 (BETA): This is fourth BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. For more information about this release see the following blog posts: Facebook C# SDK - Writing your first Facebook Application Facebook C# SDK v5 Beta Internals Facebook C# SDK V5.0.0 (BETA) Released We have spend time trying ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.161: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a new Twitter List network importer, makes some minor feature improvements, and fixes a few bugs. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.1: This release adds a few more performance and graphical enhancements to 1.0. Switching desktops is now about as fast as you can blink. Desktop switching optimizations New welcome wizard for Vista/7 Fixed a few minor bugs Added a few more options to the options dialog (including ability to disable the taskbar switching)WCF Data Services Toolkit: WCF Data Services Toolkit: The source code and binary releases of the WCF Data Services Toolkit. For simplicity, the source code download doesn't include any of the MSTest files. If you want those, you can pull the code down via MercurialyoutubeFisher: youtubeFisher 3.0 [beta]: What's new: Video capturing improved Supports YouTube's new layout (january 2011) Internal refactoringNearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v5.0: Version 5.0 of the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing the following improvements: .NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3. All views migrated to Razor for cleaner markup. Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices 4 Bug Fixes since Version 4.1 Visit the project Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 28785b7248052465ea0738a7775e8e8744d84c27fuv: 1.0 release, codename Chopper Joe: features: search/replace :o to open file :s to save file :q to quitASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager html generation optimized new features for the lookup (add additional search data ) live demo went aeroAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.5: AutoChat now allows up to 6 items. Items with nr. 7-0 will be removed! News page url's are now opened in the default browser Added a context menu to the system tray icon (thanks to Alex Banagos) AutoChat now allows configuring the Chat Keys and the Modifier Key The recent files list now supports compact and full mode Fix: Swapped mouse buttons are now properly detected Fix: Sometimes the Play button was pressed while still greyed out Champion: Karma Note: You can also run the u...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.2: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.19 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...IronRuby: 1.1.2: IronRuby 1.1.2 is a servicing release that keeps on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9.2 and includes IronRuby integration to Visual Studio 2010. We decided to drop 1.8.6 compatibility mode in all post-1.0 releases. We recommend using IronRuby 1.0 if you need 1.8.6 compatibility. In this release we fixed several major issues: - problems that blocked Gem installation in certain cases - regex syntax: the parser was replaced with a new one that is much more compatible with Ruby 1.9.2 - cras...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.New Projects.net Statistics and Probability: z scores, ectAdvanced Lookup: Yet another custom lookup field. Advanced Lookup uses SharePoint 2010 dialog framework and supports Ajax autocomplete. Pop up dialog page could be any custom web part page containing AdvancedLookupDialogWebPart web part which should be connected to any other web parts on the pageBanico ERP: A Silverlight ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application.Behavior in Visual Studio 2010 WPF and Silverlight Designer- Support Tool: This tool supports to add the Behavior, Trigger / Action to the Visual Studio 2010 WPF and Silverlight designer.Branch Navigator: This component can be used for navigating to the nearest branch or station. It can be applicable for company’s websites which already have several distributed branches. It is a completely separated module which can be easily removed from or added to the already existing websites.Consejo Guild Site MVC: This is a project for a website for our WoW guild.Cronus: An application that helps keep track of your time. Setup multiple tasks as part of different projects. Includes some basic reporting (summation) functionality.Custom SharePoint List Item Attachments versions: Recently, I am working on a custom requirement to have maintaining own file versions for SPListItem Attachments with one of my engagements. This forced me to have this code published for community to share IP. DashBoardApp: AppDigibiz Advanced Media Picker: The Digibiz Advanced Media Picker (DAMP) can be used to replace the normal media picker in Umbraco because it has a lot of extra features.DnsShell: DnsShell is a Microsoft DNS administration / management module written for PowerShell 2.0. DnsShell is developed in C#.Dragger - Sokoban clone written in C#: Dragger is a sokoban clone written in WinForms C# in 2008 by CrackSoft. Now its source is availableFingering: ??????Full Thrust Logic: This project is aimed at encapsulating the “Full Thrust” (http://www.groundzerogames.net/) starship miniatures rules. This C# business logic library will enable game developers to create games based on these rules at an accelerated pace.jQuery Camera Driver: A jQuery and URL based camera driverLoggingMagic: MSBuild task for adding some logging to your application. Inject calls to Log.Trace at the beginning of each method. Integrates with nlog, log4net or your custom static logger class within your assemblyNBug: NBug is a .NET library created to automate the bug reporting process. It automatically creates and sends: * Bug reports, * Crash reports with minidump, * Error/exception reports with stack trace + ext. info. It can also be set up as a user feedback system (i.e. feature requests).NJHSpotifyEngine: NJHspotifyEngine is a c# wrapper around the Spotify Search API.PragmaSQL: T-SQL script editor with syntax highlighting and lots of other features. Princeton SharePoint User Group CodeShare: Web Parts, script, master pages, and styles used in the creation of the Princeton SharePoint User Group site, located at http://www.princetonsug.com.Reg Explore - Registry editor written in C#: RegExplore is a registry editor written by CrackSoft and released in 2008 It is now made open sourceRegEx TestBed - A regular expression testing tool written in WinForms C#: RegEx TestBed is a regular expression testing tool written in WinForms C# released in 2007 It is now made open source.Soluzione di Single Signon per BPOS: La soluzione di Comedata è in grado di interagire con Active Directory per intercettare le modifiche alla password degli utenti nel dominio locale inserendo la stessa informazione nel sistema remoto Microsoft BpoS (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite).syobon: based on opensyobon: http://sf.net/projects/opensyobonTietaaCal: TietaaCal is an opensource agenda/scheduler for Silverlight/MoonlightWCFReactiveX: WCFReactiveX is a .NET framework that provides an unified functional process to communicating with WCF clients built around IObserverable<T> and IObserver<T>

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• Designing for the future

  - by Dennis Vroegop

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

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010New ProjectsAD CMS: CMS software project still in its initial development and design stage.Animated panel: Animated Panel is a WPF control that supports animation of its content on resize. Can be used in item controls (ListBox for example) as ItemsPanelT...Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: Hi there, this is Anurag P.'s public repository which contains most of c++ language examples and many command line(only) applications. Well , plea...atfas: atfasBibleNotes: A small application that uses BibleGateway to lookup scripture and add notes to themCarRental: How to Rent A Car.Food Innovation: This is the Food Innovation project.Generic Validation.NET: Generic Validation.NET is a flexible lightweight validation library for .NET, that can be used by any .NET project: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC,...Komoi: Komoi is an app that will bring on a new form of web comic delivery.Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Entity Framework extensions to support DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) code generation by Patrick Liekhus.Marketing: Desing Automation Marketing FlowMediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET makes it easy for normal PC users to convert media files to other formats. It is developed in Visual Basic.NETMemetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: This is a library based on the NeverWinter Nights' Memetic AI Toolkit by William Bull. This is an attempt at creating a C# edition of this brillia...MeVisLab QT VR Export: -Mudbox: This project for personal test. Prog2: wi ss10 2010 PSAdmin: PSAdmin is a web based administration tool that allows the easy execution of Windows PowerShell scripts within your environment.RIA Services Essentials: The RIA Services Essentials project contains sample applications/extensions demonstrating using and extending WCF RIA Services v1.SCSM Service Request: The Service Request project defines a new work item class called 'Service Request' and the corresponding form for that work item class. It is a go...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: The Ultimate SSH Secure File Transfer (SFTP) .NET Component offers a comprehensive interface for SFTP, enabling you to quickly and easily incorpora...shitcore: Application demonstrating how to turn a crappy application into something useful. Read more about the refactoring in http://blog.gauffin.com (sear...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reporting give Microsoft System Center Operations Manager administrators an extended set of performance reports aimed towards all us...TokyoTyrantClient: makes it easier for c# developer to write code to connect the tokyo tyrant. it support: 1.utf-8 encode 2.tcpClient pool 3.rich setting about tc...Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Ultimate FTP is a 100%-managed .NET class library that adds powerful and comprehensive File Transfer capabilities to your .NET applications. WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: WCF 4 templates for Visual Studio 2010 providing a scenario-driven starting point.XCube: XCube is a basic command line interface, with support for files, user accounts(only in the GUI), and variables(only in DevMode). It is developed in...New ReleasesAdd-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServe...Add-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControl 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControls. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServ...Animated panel: AnimatedPanel v1: First version of AnimatedPanel.Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: C.L.O.S.E - V3: C.L.O.S.E - V3 Smaller than ever. More Useful than ever Run only CLOSEV3.exeAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: FLTK - 1.3.X: The Fast Lightining Tool Kit is back. This is the FLTK 1.3.X Tar ballAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: KBHIT Function Code: This is a sample to teach about kbhit()Browser Gallese: Browser 1.0.0.15: Continua l'era del browser opensource con una novità:ho impiantato il P2P online. Adesso il browser ha bisogno di Java. Se non lo avete,cliccate qu...CC.Hearts Screen Saver: CC.Hearts Screen Saver 1.0.10.607: This is the initial release of CC.Hearts Screen Saver. Marking as stable but limited testing at this point so feedback is greatly welcomed.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V32: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...DotNetNuke® Skins: Default.css (beta): About The team has put together a cleaned up and optimized default.css file as a first step in moving toward more efficient CSS usage. Ideally, th...Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Code Fix 06-07-2010: Fix for editing existing forms Add: Requiered field option Add: Requiered field validation on submitFloe IRC Client: Floe 1.0 (2010-06): NOTE: You may have to uninstall your existing version for this installer to work properly. - Added /QUOTE command - Fixed bug where new message in...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.2.1: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.2.1), with new Mini-Menu UI changes (1.3). Once you have extracted the file, do not delete any files/f...Food Innovation: Food Innovation 1.0: This is the V1.0 release.HERB.IQ: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7 (skipped uploading 6)Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Version 1.1.0: Initial project release. Ported the XAFDSL tool into the Entity Framework and made it work with the Visual Studio 2010 extensions.LogikBug's IoC Container: LogikBug's IoC Container v 1.1: In this release, I add the ability to extend the container using the LogikBug.Injection.Extensibility namespace.MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta Source Code: Source code for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta it includes everything - also the installer.Memetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: Wandering Meme Test: This was a code spike to see the first custom meme in action. The first meme chosen was the "Wander" meme. This is a Visual Studio 2010 solution. ...Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework: Silverlight Media Framework v2 (RC1): This is the first release candidate for the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework v2. Note: The IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit assem...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta: mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin dll. Place in your MapWindow or BASINS plugins directory. Presently for testing everything, though very much known issu...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta Installer: Simplistic mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin installer using Inno setup. Installs all the files you'll need for NSPECT into the C:\NSPECT folder and insta...Near forums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Release 1: First release of the SEO friendly ASP.NET MVC forum engine.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.07.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-06 22:13:02 Jarek Kowalski Added unit tests for common target behaviors. 2010-06-06 19:36:44 Jarek Kowalski c...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Dev Guide (RC): This is a Release Candidate of the Developer's Guide, C# EditionPSAdmin: 1.0.0.0: This is an alpha release of PSAdmin and should be tested before putting into a production environment. This package is pre-compiled and ready for ...Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.59 ALPHA: Still a very early version. Functional changes: Added new pre (prebuild) and fix commands (rfx help pre and rfx help fix for explanations).SCSM Service Request: Service Request Management Pack v0.1: !This is an ALPHA release. Please use for testing purposes only.! The management pack is not sealed which means that when a new version of the Se...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: SFTP WinForms Client: SFTP WinForms ClientSharePoint Feature - Version history list Export to Excel: Export Item List Version 1.1: - allows you to select columns to export - multilanguage support Czech, English - some bug fix Install: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft S...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3SharePoint PowerRSS: v1.0: Easy/Clean way to get SharePoint list data via more standard RSS feed. I found CleanRSS.aspx as part of SPRSS: Enhanced RSS Functionality for WSS ...Smith Async .NET Memcached Client: Smith.Amc 0.7.3810.36347: Smith Async Memcached client release 0.7.3810.36347 available First public release available. All memcached operations has been implemented except...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson five content: Here is Lesson five original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkge...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson six content: Here is Lesson six original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgen...Stripper: Stripper.exe version 0.1.0: Stripper Remove Diacritics and other unwanted caracters to fabric a more standardized file naming. Especially French caracter and maybe other lang...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reports V1: Reports Windows Computer General Performance When troubleshooting performance problems there are typically a set of "go to" performance counters t...TFS Buddy: TFS Buddy Beta 1.1: Minor changes +Added repeat function in action tab to simplyfy creating actions +Added app manifest to make the exe require run as Admin ~How the I...Thumbnail creator and image resizer: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1 added importing of namespaces to .vb(previously in web.config)TokyoTyrantClient: TokyoTyrantClient release: 该客户端有如下特点： 1.支持TcpClient连接池 2.支持UTF-8编码 3.支持初始化链接数，链接过期时间，最大空闲时间，最长工作时间等设置。Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Build 519: New Release Download setup package at: http://www.componentsoft.net/component/download/?name=UltimateFtp Product Home Page: http://www.componentsof...visinia: visinia_1.2: The new stable version of visinia cms is out, it is visinia 1.2. It has many new features like the admin is one more time is given a new look. the ...WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: AnonymousOverHttp: This template generates a WCF service application that exposes a BasicHttpBinding endpoint with maxed message size and reader quotas to provide an ...WhiteMoon: WhiteMoon 0.2.10 Source: The Source code of WhiteMoon 0.2 build 10Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeASP.NET MVC Time PlannerMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets)NeatUploadOutSyncViperWorks IgnitionAgUnit - Silverlight unit testing with ReSharperSmith Async .NET Memcached ClientASP.NET MVC ExtensionsAviva Solutions C# Coding GuidelinesMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSStyleCopsmark C# LibraryBlogEngine.NET

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• The Inkremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #4 - Make increments tangible

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/12/the-inkremental-architectacutes-napkin---4---make-increments-tangible.aspxThe driver of software development are increments, small increments, tiny increments. With an increment being a slice of the overall requirement scope thin enough to implement and get feedback from a product owner within 2 days max. Such an increment might concern Functionality or Quality.[1] To make such high frequency delivery of increments possible, the transition from talking to coding needs to be as easy as possible. A user story or some other documentation of what´s supposed to get implemented until tomorrow evening at latest is one side of the medal. The other is where to put the logic in all of the code base. To implement an increment, only logic statements are needed. Functionality like Quality are just about expressions and control flow statements. Think of Assembler code without the CALL/RET instructions. That´s all is needed. Forget about functions, forget about classes. To make a user happy none of that is really needed. It´s just about the right expressions and conditional executions paths plus some memory allocation. Automatic function inlining of compilers which makes it clear how unimportant functions are for delivering value to users at runtime. But why then are there functions? Because they were invented for optimization purposes. We need them for better Evolvability and Production Efficiency. Nothing more, nothing less. No software has become faster, more secure, more scalable, more functional because we gathered logic under the roof of a function or two or a thousand. Functions make logic easier to understand. Functions make us faster in producing logic. Functions make it easier to keep logic consistent. Functions help to conserve memory. That said, functions are important. They are even the pivotal element of software development. We can´t code without them - whether you write a function yourself or not. Because there´s always at least one function in play: the Entry Point of a program. In Ruby the simplest program looks like this:puts "Hello, world!" In C# more is necessary:class Program { public static void Main () { System.Console.Write("Hello, world!"); } } C# makes the Entry Point function explicit, not so Ruby. But still it´s there. So you can think of logic always running in some function. Which brings me back to increments: In order to make the transition from talking to code as easy as possible, it has to be crystal clear into which function you should put the logic. Product owners might be content once there is a sticky note a user story on the Scrum or Kanban board. But developers need an idea of what that sticky note means in term of functions. Because with a function in hand, with a signature to run tests against, they have something to focus on. All´s well once there is a function behind whose signature logic can be piled up. Then testing frameworks can be used to check if the logic is correct. Then practices like TDD can help to drive the implementation. That´s why most code katas define exactly how the API of a solution should look like. It´s a function, maybe two or three, not more. A requirement like “Write a function f which takes this as parameters and produces such and such output by doing x” makes a developer comfortable. Yes, there are all kinds of details to think about, like which algorithm or technology to use, or what kind of state and side effects to consider. Even a single function not only must deliver on Functionality, but also on Quality and Evolvability. Nevertheless, once it´s clear which function to put logic in, you have a tangible starting point. So, yes, what I´m suggesting is to find a single function to put all the logic in that´s necessary to deliver on a the requirements of an increment. Or to put it the other way around: Slice requirements in a way that each increment´s logic can be located under the roof of a single function. Entry points Of course, the logic of a software will always be spread across many, many functions. But there´s always an Entry Point. That´s the most important function for each increment, because that´s the root to put integration or even acceptance tests on. A batch program like the above hello-world application only has a single Entry Point. All logic is reached from there, regardless how deep it´s nested in classes. But a program with a user interface like this has at least two Entry Points: One is the main function called upon startup. The other is the button click event handler for “Show my score”. But maybe there are even more, like another Entry Point being a handler for the event fired when one of the choices gets selected; because then some logic could check if the button should be enabled because all questions got answered. Or another Entry Point for the logic to be executed when the program is close; because then the choices made should be persisted. You see, an Entry Point to me is a function which gets triggered by the user of a software. With batch programs that´s the main function. With GUI programs on the desktop that´s event handlers. With web programs that´s handlers for URL routes. And my basic suggestion to help you with slicing requirements for Spinning is: Slice them in a way so that each increment is related to only one Entry Point function.[2] Entry Points are the “outer functions” of a program. That´s where the environment triggers behavior. That´s where hardware meets software. Entry points always get called because something happened to hardware state, e.g. a key was pressed, a mouse button clicked, the system timer ticked, data arrived over a wire.[3] Viewed from the outside, software is just a collection of Entry Point functions made accessible via buttons to press, menu items to click, gestures, URLs to open, keys to enter. Collections of batch processors I´d thus say, we haven´t moved forward since the early days of software development. We´re still writing batch programs. Forget about “event-driven programming” with its fancy GUI applications. Software is just a collection of batch processors. Earlier it was just one per program, today it´s hundreds we bundle up into applications. Each batch processor is represented by an Entry Point as its root that works on a number of resources from which it reads data to process and to which it writes results. These resources can be the keyboard or main memory or a hard disk or a communication line or a display. Together many batch processors - large and small - form applications the user perceives as a single whole: Software development that way becomes quite simple: just implement one batch processor after another. Well, at least in principle ;-) Features Each batch processor entered through an Entry Point delivers value to the user. It´s an increment. Sometimes its logic is trivial, sometimes it´s very complex. Regardless, each Entry Point represents an increment. An Entry Point implemented thus is a step forward in terms of Agility. At the same time it´s a tangible unit for developers. Therefore, identifying the more or less numerous batch processors in a software system is a rewarding task for product owners and developers alike. That´s where user stories meet code. In this example the user story translates to the Entry Point triggered by clicking the login button on a dialog like this: The batch then retrieves what has been entered via keyboard, loads data from a user store, and finally outputs some kind of response on the screen, e.g. by displaying an error message or showing the next dialog. This is all very simple, but you see, there is not just one thing happening, but several. Get input (email address, password) Load user for email address If user not found report error Check password Hash password Compare hash to hash stored in user Show next dialog Viewed from 10,000 feet it´s all done by the Entry Point function. And of course that´s technically possible. It´s just a bunch of logic and calling a couple of API functions. However, I suggest to take these steps as distinct aspects of the overall requirement described by the user story. Such aspects of requirements I call Features. Features too are increments. Each provides some (small) value of its own to the user. Each can be checked individually by a product owner. Instead of implementing all the logic behind the Login() entry point at once you can move forward increment by increment, e.g. First implement the dialog, let the user enter any credentials, and log him/her in without any checks. Features 1 and 4. Then hard code a single user and check the email address. Features 2 and 2.1. Then check password without hashing it (or use a very simple hash like the length of the password). Features 3. and 3.2 Replace hard coded user with a persistent user directoy, but a very simple one, e.g. a CSV file. Refinement of feature 2. Calculate the real hash for the password. Feature 3.1. Switch to the final user directory technology. Each feature provides an opportunity to deliver results in a short amount of time and get feedback. If you´re in doubt whether you can implement the whole entry point function until tomorrow night, then just go for a couple of features or even just one. That´s also why I think, you should strive for wrapping feature logic into a function of its own. It´s a matter of Evolvability and Production Efficiency. A function per feature makes the code more readable, since the language of requirements analysis and design is carried over into implementation. It makes it easier to apply changes to features because it´s clear where their logic is located. And finally, of course, it lets you re-use features in different context (read: increments). Feature functions make it easier for you to think of features as Spinning increments, to implement them independently, to let the product owner check them for acceptance individually. Increments consist of features, entry point functions consist of feature functions. So you can view software as a hierarchy of requirements from broad to thin which map to a hierarchy of functions - with entry points at the top.   I like this image of software as a self-similar structure on many levels of abstraction where requirements and code match each other. That to me is true agile design: the core tenet of Agility to move forward in increments is carried over into implementation. Increments on paper are retained in code. This way developers can easily relate to product owners. Elusive and fuzzy requirements are not tangible. Software production is moving forward through requirements one increment at a time, and one function at a time. In closing Product owners and developers are different - but they need to work together towards a shared goal: working software. So their notions of software need to be made compatible, they need to be connected. The increments of the product owner - user stories and features - need to be mapped straightforwardly to something which is relevant to developers. To me that´s functions. Yes, functions, not classes nor components nor micro services. We´re talking about behavior, actions, activities, processes. Their natural representation is a function. Something has to be done. Logic has to be executed. That´s the purpose of functions. Later, classes and other containers are needed to stay on top of a growing amount of logic. But to connect developers and product owners functions are the appropriate glue. Functions which represent increments. Can there always be such a small increment be found to deliver until tomorrow evening? I boldly say yes. Yes, it´s always possible. But maybe you´ve to start thinking differently. Maybe the product owner needs to start thinking differently. Completion is not the goal anymore. Neither is checking the delivery of an increment through the user interface of a software. Product owners need to become comfortable using test beds for certain features. If it´s hard to slice requirements thin enough for Spinning the reason is too little knowledge of something. Maybe you don´t yet understand the problem domain well enough? Maybe you don´t yet feel comfortable with some tool or technology? Then it´s time to acknowledge this fact. Be honest about your not knowing. And instead of trying to deliver as a craftsman officially become a researcher. Research an check back with the product owner every day - until your understanding has grown to a level where you are able to define the next Spinning increment. ? Sometimes even thin requirement slices will cover several Entry Points, like “Add validation of email addresses to all relevant dialogs.” Validation then will it put into a dozen functons. Still, though, it´s important to determine which Entry Points exactly get affected. That´s much easier, if strive for keeping the number of Entry Points per increment to 1. ? If you like call Entry Point functions event handlers, because that´s what they are. They all handle events of some kind, whether that´s palpable in your code or note. A public void btnSave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {…} might look like an event handler to you, but public static void Main() {…} is one also - for then event “program started”. ?

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• Using the Data Form Web Part (SharePoint 2010) Site Agnostically!

  - by David Jacobus

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/djacobus/archive/2013/10/24/154465.aspxAs a Developer whom has worked closely with web designers (Power users) in a SharePoint environment, I have come across the issue of making the Data Form Web Part reusable across the site collection! In SharePoint 2007 it was very easy and this blog pointed the way to make it happen: Josh Gaffey's Blog. In SharePoint 2010 something changed! This method failed except for using a Data Form Web Part that pointed to a list in the Site Collection Root! I am making this discussion relative to a developer whom creates a solution (WSP) with all the artifacts embedded and the user shouldn’t have any involvement in the process except to activate features. The Scenario: 1. A Power User creates a Data Form Web Part using SharePoint Designer 2010! It is a great web part the uses all the power of SharePoint Designer and XSLT (Conditional formatting, etc.). 2. Other Users in the site collection want to use that specific web part in sub sites in the site collection. Pointing to a list with the same name, not at the site collection root! The Issues: 1. The Data Form Web Part Data Source uses a List ID (GUID) to point to the specific list. Which means a list in a sub site will have a list with a new GUID different than the one which was created with SharePoint Designer! Obviously, the List needs to be the same List (Fields, Content Types, etc.) with different data. 2. How can we make this web part site agnostic, and dependent only on the lists Name? I had this problem come up over and over and decided to put my solution forward! The Solution: 1. Use the XSL of the Data Form Web Part Created By the Power User in SharePoint Designer! 2. Extend the OOTB Data Form Web Part to use this XSL and Point to a List by name. The solution points to a hybrid solution that requires some coding (Developer) and the XSL (Power User) artifacts put together in a Visual Studio SharePoint Solution. Here are the solution steps in summary: 1. Create an empty SharePoint project in Visual Studio 2. Create a Module and Feature and put the XSL file created by the Power User into it a. Scope the feature to web 3. Create a Feature Receiver to Create the List. The same list from which the Data Form Web Part was created with by the Power User. a. Scope the feature to web 4. Create a Web Part extending the Data Form Web a. Point the Data Form Web Part to point to the List by Name b. Point the Data Form Web Part XSL link to the XSL added using the Module feature c. Scope The feature to Site i. This is because all web parts are in the site collection web part gallery. So in a Narrative Summary: We are creating a list in code which has the same name and (site Columns) as the list from which the Power User created the Data Form Web Part Using SharePoint Designer. We are creating a Web Part in code which extends the OOTB Data Form Web Part to point to a list by name and use the XSL created by the Power User. Okay! Here are the steps with images and code! At the end of this post I will provide a link to the code for a solution which works in any site! I want to TOOT the HORN for the power of this solution! It is the mantra a use with all my clients! What is a basic skill a SharePoint Developer: Create an application that uses the data from a SharePoint list and make that data visible to the user in a manner which meets requirements! Create an Empty SharePoint 2010 Project Here I am naming my Project DJ.DataFormWebPart Create a Code Folder Copy and paste the Extension and Utilities classes (Found in the solution provided at the end of this post) Change the Namespace to match this project The List to which the Data Form Web Part which was used to make the XSL by the Power User in SharePoint Designer is now going to be created in code! If already in code, then all the better! Here I am going to create a list in the site collection root and add some data to it! For the purpose of this discussion I will actually create this list in code before using SharePoint Designer for simplicity! So here I create the List and deploy it within this solution before I do anything else. I will use a List I created before for demo purposes. Footer List is used within the footer of my master page. Add a new Feature: Here I name the Feature FooterList and add a Feature Event Receiver: Here is the code for the Event Receiver: I have a previous blog post about adding lists in code so I will not take time to narrate this code: using System; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using System.Security.Permissions; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using DJ.DataFormWebPart.Code; namespace DJ.DataFormWebPart.Features.FooterList { /// <summary> /// This class handles events raised during feature activation, deactivation, installation, uninstallation, and upgrade. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The GUID attached to this class may be used during packaging and should not be modified. /// </remarks> [Guid("a58644fd-9209-41f4-aa16-67a53af7a9bf")] public class FooterListEventReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver { SPWeb currentWeb = null; SPSite currentSite = null; const string columnGroup = "DJ"; const string ctName = "FooterContentType"; // Uncomment the method below to handle the event raised after a feature has been activated. public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb spWeb = properties.GetWeb() as SPWeb) { using (SPSite site = new SPSite(spWeb.Site.ID)) { using (SPWeb rootWeb = site.OpenWeb(site.RootWeb.ID)) { //add the fields addFields(rootWeb); //add content type SPContentType testCT = rootWeb.ContentTypes[ctName]; // we will not create the content type if it exists if (testCT == null) { //the content type does not exist add it addContentType(rootWeb, ctName); } if ((spWeb.Lists.TryGetList("FooterList") == null)) { //create the list if it dosen't to exist CreateFooterList(spWeb, site); } } } } } #region ContentType public void addFields(SPWeb spWeb) { Utilities.addField(spWeb, "Link", SPFieldType.URL, false, columnGroup); Utilities.addField(spWeb, "Information", SPFieldType.Text, false, columnGroup); } private static void addContentType(SPWeb spWeb, string name) { SPContentType myContentType = new SPContentType(spWeb.ContentTypes["Item"], spWeb.ContentTypes, name) { Group = columnGroup }; spWeb.ContentTypes.Add(myContentType); addContentTypeLinkages(spWeb, myContentType); myContentType.Update(); } public static void addContentTypeLinkages(SPWeb spWeb, SPContentType ct) { Utilities.addContentTypeLink(spWeb, "Link", ct); Utilities.addContentTypeLink(spWeb, "Information", ct); } private void CreateFooterList(SPWeb web, SPSite site) { Guid newListGuid = web.Lists.Add("FooterList", "Footer List", SPListTemplateType.GenericList); SPList newList = web.Lists[newListGuid]; newList.ContentTypesEnabled = true; var footer = site.RootWeb.ContentTypes[ctName]; newList.ContentTypes.Add(footer); newList.ContentTypes.Delete(newList.ContentTypes["Item"].Id); newList.Update(); var view = newList.DefaultView; //add all view fields here //view.ViewFields.Add("NewsTitle"); view.ViewFields.Add("Link"); view.ViewFields.Add("Information"); view.Update(); } } } Basically created a content type with two site columns Link and Information. I had to change some code as we are working at the SPWeb level and need Content Types at the SPSite level! I’ll use a new Site Collection for this demo (Best Practice) keep old artifacts from impinging on development: Next we will add this list to the root of the site collection by deploying this solution, add some data and then use SharePoint Designer to create a Data Form Web Part. The list has been added, now let’s add some data: Okay let’s add a Data Form Web Part in SharePoint Designer. Create a new web part page in the site pages library: I will name it TestWP.aspx and edit it in advanced mode: Let’s add an empty Data Form Web Part to the web part zone: Click on the web part to add a data source: Choose FooterList in the Data Source menu: Choose appropriate fields and select insert as multiple item view: Here is what it look like after insertion: Let’s add some conditional formatting if the information filed is not blank: Choose Create (right side) apply formatting: Choose the Information Field and set the condition not null: Click Set Style: Here is the result: Okay! Not flashy but simple enough for this demo. Remember this is the job of the Power user! All we want from this web part is the XLS-Style Sheet out of SharePoint Designer. We are going to use it as the XSL for our web part which we will be creating next. Let’s add a web part to our project extending the OOTB Data Form Web Part. Add new item from the Visual Studio add menu: Choose Web Part: Change WebPart to DataFormWebPart (Oh well my namespace needs some improvement, but it will sure make it readily identifiable as an extended web part!) Below is the code for this web part: using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls; using System.Text; namespace DJ.DataFormWebPart.DataFormWebPart { [ToolboxItemAttribute(false)] public class DataFormWebPart : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { base.OnInit(e); this.ChromeType = PartChromeType.None; this.Title = "FooterListDF"; try { //SPSite site = SPContext.Current.Site; SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web; SPList list = web.Lists.TryGetList("FooterList"); if (list != null) { string queryList1 = "<Query><Where><IsNotNull><FieldRef Name='Title' /></IsNotNull></Where><OrderBy><FieldRef Name='Title' Ascending='True' /></OrderBy></Query>"; uint maximumRowList1 = 10; SPDataSource dataSourceList1 = GetDataSource(list.Title, web.Url, list, queryList1, maximumRowList1); this.DataSources.Add(dataSourceList1); this.XslLink = web.Url + "/Assests/Footer.xsl"; this.ParameterBindings = BuildDataFormParameters(); this.DataBind(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("ERROR: " + ex.Message)); } } private SPDataSource GetDataSource(string dataSourceId, string webUrl, SPList list, string query, uint maximumRow) { SPDataSource dataSource = new SPDataSource(); dataSource.UseInternalName = true; dataSource.ID = dataSourceId; dataSource.DataSourceMode = SPDataSourceMode.List; dataSource.List = list; dataSource.SelectCommand = "" + query + ""; Parameter listIdParam = new Parameter("ListID"); listIdParam.DefaultValue = list.ID.ToString( "B").ToUpper(); Parameter maximumRowsParam = new Parameter("MaximumRows"); maximumRowsParam.DefaultValue = maximumRow.ToString(); QueryStringParameter rootFolderParam = new QueryStringParameter("RootFolder", "RootFolder"); dataSource.SelectParameters.Add(listIdParam); dataSource.SelectParameters.Add(maximumRowsParam); dataSource.SelectParameters.Add(rootFolderParam); dataSource.UpdateParameters.Add(listIdParam); dataSource.DeleteParameters.Add(listIdParam); dataSource.InsertParameters.Add(listIdParam); return dataSource; } private string BuildDataFormParameters() { StringBuilder parameters = new StringBuilder("<ParameterBindings><ParameterBinding Name=\"dvt_apos\" Location=\"Postback;Connection\"/><ParameterBinding Name=\"UserID\" Location=\"CAMLVariable\" DefaultValue=\"CurrentUserName\"/><ParameterBinding Name=\"Today\" Location=\"CAMLVariable\" DefaultValue=\"CurrentDate\"/>"); parameters.Append("<ParameterBinding Name=\"dvt_firstrow\" Location=\"Postback;Connection\"/>"); parameters.Append("<ParameterBinding Name=\"dvt_nextpagedata\" Location=\"Postback;Connection\"/>"); parameters.Append("<ParameterBinding Name=\"dvt_adhocmode\" Location=\"Postback;Connection\"/>"); parameters.Append("<ParameterBinding Name=\"dvt_adhocfiltermode\" Location=\"Postback;Connection\"/>"); parameters.Append("</ParameterBindings>"); return parameters.ToString(); } } } The OnInit method we use to set the list name and the XSL Link property of the Data Form Web Part. We do not have the link to XSL in our Solution so we will add the XSL now: Add a Module in the Visual Studio add menu: Rename Sample.txt in the module to footer.xsl and then copy the XSL from SharePoint Designer Look at elements.xml to where the footer.xsl is being provisioned to which is Assets/footer.xsl, make sure the Web parts xsl link is pointing to this url: Okay we are good to go! Let’s check our features and package: DataFormWebPart should be scoped to site and have the web part: The Footer List feature should be scoped to web and have the Assets module (Okay, I see, a spelling issue but it won’t affect this demo) If everything is correct we should be able to click a couple of sub site feature activations and have our list and web part in a sub site. (In fact this solution can be activated anywhere) Here is the list created at SubSite1 with new data It. Next let’s add the web part on a test page and see if it works as expected: It does! So we now have a repeatable way to use a WSP to move a Data Form Web Part around our sites! Here is a link to the code: DataFormWebPart Solution

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