July, 2012

Question Can I use a LINQ Query such as the following in a Workflow? private static void ShowQueryWithCode(IEnumerable< string > names) { Console.WriteLine( "Linq Query in Code - show names that start with 'R'" ); // Assuming there are no null entries in the names collection var query = from name in names where name.StartsWith( "R" ) select name; // This is the same thing as // var query = names.Where(name => name.StartsWith("R")); foreach (var name...

In a previous post I showed how easy it is to create a simple chat application using SignalR . And chatting on the internet might be popular but as it turns out there are rather a lot of applications that need to do more than just chat. As it is there are a lot more CRUD style applications, where users edit data usually stored in a database for some purpose, than chat applications. So in this blog post I am using a simple CRUD, without the delete part, application to show the power of SignalR . Traditionally...

Here is the challenge.  Create a portable library that could be used by almost anything including Console Apps, Windows Phone, ASP.NET, Xbox 360 Make it data binding friendly for targets like WPF, Silverlight and Windows 8 XAML Metro Apps by supporting property and collection changed notifications. Make it efficient so that users who don’t need data binding are not penalized with a performance hit and having to reference libraries they don’t need. Write Unit Tests to demonstrate that the solution...

One of the easy ways of speeding up a web application is by using a CDN or content delivery network. The main purpose of a CDN is serving up resources that are not specific to you site. The quintessential example of using a CDN is jQuery. There are many websites using jQuery, according to some statistics some 50% of all websites. And if each site hosts its own copy of jQuery everyone has to download it multiple times. How often depends but assuming everyone does a perfect job of adding cache settings...

In deze podcast spreekt Hassan Fadili met Peter Provost over unit testen. Peter Provost is een senior program manager voor Microsoft Visual Studio waar hij aan de agile tools werkt. Tijdens Tech-Ed Europe was hij in Amsterdam voor diverse sessies over TDD en Agile development. Links: Blog: http://www.peterprovost.org/ Tech-Ed sessies: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012?s=peter%2Bprovost Team Test Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vstsqualitytools/ What's new for MSTest Unit Tests...

I have just published a Nuget package which adds property promotion features to Service Bus WCF programing model. Once you added the package to your project you can use the PromotedProperty attribute to mark your properties as promoted. The package supports promotion from both complex & primitive arguments. In addition to PromotedPropertyAttribute you also need [...] Blog Post by: zamd

Today I installed Service Bus Server Beta release and the overall install experience was fairly smooth until I reached the New-SBFarm step of the ‘Getting started’ tutorial. The cmdlet just seems to hang for few minutes and failed ultimately – I tried on another machine & got same results. After lot of head–scratching I narrowed [...] Blog Post by: zamd

There are a few development tools that I just can’t live without. ReSharper A few years ago I was sitting in Glenn Block’s office when I noticed some strange additions to Visual Studio.  When I asked him about it he said “That’s ReSharper” and I was hooked.  I had to have it. ReSharper helps me to write better code faster period.  This is my #1 must have tool. NCrunch This is my most recent addition to the list.  I’m a big believer in unit testing and understanding your code coverage...

Nearly every day I get email from someone asking for help.  I wish I had time to answer every question.  I used to answer more of them but recently I was diagnosed with Adiposis Dolorosa. Adiposis dolorosa , or Dercum disease, is a rare condition that is characterized by multiple, painful fatty lipomas (benign, fatty tumors) that occur most often in middle aged, post-menopausal, obese women. Although it is 20 times more common in women, 16 percent of the reported cases are males and it...

In a previous blog post I mentioned how exited I was about WebSockets and the future with real time duplex communication over the Internet. Unfortunately the current support for WebSockets, both on the client and on the server, is still somewhat limited making this a thing of the future. Does that mean we can do this yet? Not quite.   SignalR to the resque Even if a pure Web Socket solution isn’t possible yet there are perfectly good alternatives. And the one I really like is SignalR as it allows...

In deze podcast spreekt Maurice de Beijer met Wouter van Vugt over hoe hij SharePoint inzet bij grote projecten. Wouter verteld hou hij SharePoint niet alleen voor de interne automatisering inzet maar ook voor de publieke pagina’s en de gepersonaliseerde pagina’s waar klanten op inloggen. Hij verteld ook over zijn ervaring met het integreren met DigiD.   Luister of download de podcast hier .   Met dank aan onze sponsor RedGate .   Enjoy! Blog Post by: Maurice

This is easy to do, IF you have the right pieces. For the connection string, you can use the JDBC connection string presented in the portal (see below). For the JDBC driver, you need to be using Version 4. The reason is that earlier versions had problems with wildcard SSL certificates. You can download the driver at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11774 We tested this using with Cold Fusion 10 installed in an Azure Virtual Machine. Blog Post by: Brian Loesgen

Developers often say that there is a steep learning curve with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4).  I won’t deny that… instead, allow me to share three simple rules that will help you to get over that curve sooner and to make them easy to remember, they all begin with “U” which is appropriate because they do all begin with you. Use Tracking Unit Tests Use Timeouts Download Sample Code Use Tracking Tracking is the single best way to understand what your workflow is doing.  There is just one...

One of the most exiting new things in HTML5 is the ability to start pushing data from the server to the client. Traditionally web applications have depended on clients requesting data from the server. And this is fine in most applications. However there are lots of cases when you might want to push events to the client as soon as they happen and not wait for a client to query for them. For example a stock broker application requires traders to know about stock price changes as soon as they happen...