From the Blogosphere

Re-Fact-orings of Life

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

When I first accepted the assignment to write a tutorial about refactoring code, I was sure that refactoring was something that developers did when ‘extreme' requirements hit their application. Like when, management wanted to move the entire app to the web or extract the business logic out of the application for use in other applications. After all, the focus of the assignment was migration to PB 12. I perceived refactoring as a bitter pill (radical procedure) that a team had to swallow (perform) when code got too old to stay in its existing form and needed a lobotomy to survive.

Microsoft's Ray Ozzie on Mobile Applications and the iPhone

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, recently commented in an interview with CNET, "Yes, iPhone has a lot of momentum, unquestionably. But I think the phenomenon we're in right now is the app phone. And if you look at the depth of apps that are on these phones, they're not very deep. It's not like Office or AutoCAD, where there are just thousands of man years that have gone into developing these apps. They're relatively thin apps that are companions to some service."

Microsoft vs Salesforce: Rivalry in the Clouds

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:45:00 EST

With deep pockets Microsoft is able to fight it out on multiple fronts. With Azure, in the coming months, it will take on SalesForce.com as a formidable cloud platform provider. It's no more just software as service; it will be framework as a service at the finishing line. Read up this article to get a picture of what is brewing.

Here is Microsoft market place positioned to start any time soon:

Here is the opponent with a big repertoire:

Business Apps with Silverlight 4, RIA Services & Visual Studio 2010

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

I had a great time at PDC2009 talk, but I was disappointed that I could not demo in both C# and VB… So here is the next best thing: A full play-by-play of the demo, but all in VB! Enjoy. I am starting off with the new Business Application Template that gets installed with RIA Services. For this demo, I am going to used a customized version of the template.

Using SQL Server Integration Services

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:45:00 EST

Integrating data into applications or reports is one of the most important, expensive and exacting activities in building enterprise data warehousing and reporting applications. SQL Server Integration Services which first appeared in MS SQL Server 2005 and continued into MS SQL Server 2008 provides a one-stop solution to the ETL Process. The ETL Process consists of extracting data from a data source, transforming the data so that it can get in cleanly into the destination followed by loading the transformed data to the destination. Enterprise data can be of very different kinds ranging from flat files to data stored in relational databases. Recently storing and exchanging data in XML has become common as exchanging data in XML format has many advantages.

This article describes how you may extract data in XML from your database using a stored procedure and persist it to the file system in either XML or text formats using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services.

Writing XML data to the File System with SSIS

You may also want to read these recent articles on SSIS:

MySQL Data Transfer using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Ground to SQL Azure migration using MS SQL Server Integration Services

Read my book and get a handle on many other package tasks:

SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov CTP Installs Easily on Windows 7

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:45:00 EST

I had problems installing on Windows XP SP3 but it was very easy on Windows 7 Ultimate Evaluation copy (build 7100). If you have Visual Studio 2008 you may need to apply SP1 before you complete installation on Windows 7. I installed a named instance Hodentek\KUMORI (ver 10.50.1352) which is a minor upgrade to SQL Server 2008 RTM. If you want to work with a database in the cloud (SQL Azure) you need SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP.

Copy Source as HTML in Visual Studio 2010

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:45:00 EST

I was working on my first SharePoint 2010 post today since I actually installed some bits and quickly discovered that I did not have Copy Source As Html working with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. If you’re a blogger like me, you will find that you are quite addicted to this useful tool as it makes pasting good looking code segments quite easy. Unfortunately, they haven’t released an installer that works with Visual Studio 2010 yet, so I decided to see if I could figure out how to get it to work. Now, I’m not expert on Visual Studio Addins, so it took me some experimenting. I installed the product as normal, but when I opened Visual Studio, I did not find the addin loaded. After some investigating, I decided to copy the CopySourceAsHtml.AddIn file into my user folder. Specifically this goes in C:\Users\<UserName>\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Addins. Note: the My Documents folder is actually the Documents folder if you are looking at it directly on the file system. Also to note is that the Addins folder probably will not exist so you need to create it.

After I did this, I tried opening Visual Studio again and again did not see my addin loaded. I then decided to open the file and take a look. I quickly saw something that stood out at me.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<Extensibility xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AutomationExtensibility">
  <HostApplication>
    <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio Macros</Name>
    <Version>9.0</Version>
  </HostApplication>
  <HostApplication>
    <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
    <Version>9.0</Version>
  </HostApplication>
  <Addin>
    <FriendlyName>CopySourceAsHtml</FriendlyName>
    <Description>Adds support to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for copying source code, syntax highlighting, and line numbers as HTML.</Description>
    <Assembly>JTLeigh.Tools.Development.CopySourceAsHtml, Version=3.0.3215.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=bb2a58bdc03d2e14, processorArchitecture=MSIL</Assembly>
    <FullClassName>JTLeigh.Tools.Development.CopySourceAsHtml.Connect</FullClassName>
    <LoadBehavior>1</LoadBehavior>
    <CommandPreload>0</CommandPreload>
    <CommandLineSafe>0</CommandLineSafe>
  </Addin>
</Extensibility>

This is version 10 of Visual Studio so I decided to increment the new two version elements as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<Extensibility xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AutomationExtensibility">
  <HostApplication>
    <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio Macros</Name>
    <Version>10.0</Version>
  </HostApplication>
  <HostApplication>
    <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
    <Version>10.0</Version>
  </HostApplication>
  <Addin>
    <FriendlyName>CopySourceAsHtml</FriendlyName>
    <Description>Adds support to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for copying source code, syntax highlighting, and line numbers as HTML.</Description>
    <Assembly>JTLeigh.Tools.Development.CopySourceAsHtml, Version=3.0.3215.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=bb2a58bdc03d2e14, processorArchitecture=MSIL</Assembly>
    <FullClassName>JTLeigh.Tools.Development.CopySourceAsHtml.Connect</FullClassName>
    <LoadBehavior>1</LoadBehavior>
    <CommandPreload>0</CommandPreload>
    <CommandLineSafe>0</CommandLineSafe>
  </Addin>
</Extensibility>

After I saved the changes, I restarted Visual Studio and sure enough the addin loaded and worked correctly. In fact I pasted the above snippets using the tool in Visual Studio 2010. If you have never used Copy Source as Html before, go check it out. It’s a handy tool for pasting code snippets.

Will the Windows Store Fail?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona…and thought it might be interesting to visit the new Windows Store in Fashion Square Mall. Here’s the picture I took…with my iPhone…from the front of the store… Notice anything? I’ll bet you do! If the logo on the front was absent, you would think you were walking by an Apple Store! Sure, there are some cosmetic differences…however, it is SO blatantly derivative of the competition, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Look, I’m an Apple guy…in the interest of full disclosure…I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro from the Phoenix Airport. ...

RIA Services: A DomainService Is a WCF Service – Add Service Reference

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

I made the fairly bold statement at my PDC09 talk that a DomainService IS A WCF Service. That is, everything you know about a WCF service should be true of a DomainService. I didn’t have time to get into this in my talk, so I thought I’d hit the highlights here. And in the process show how to consume a DomainService from a WinForms. You can also see more examples at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/RiaServices

Deploying a Web Part with Code Access Security

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:30:00 EST

By now, you have heard about how the SharePoint 2010 development experience has been improved. We can easily deploy web parts and other code without having to manually manipulate any XML files. What about under partial trust though? Many of you that know me know that I have pushed using Code Access Security quite a bit through a series of blog posts and talks. So it would be irresponsible of me not to talk about how we can do that in Visual Studio 2010. The good news is that it is a lot easier.

Let’s start by creating a new SharePoint project in Visual Studio 2010 and creating a new Web Part project item. In this case we are talking about deploying a Farm Solution, not a Sandboxed Solution. Note: we are going to talk about a traditional web part today, and not a Visual Web Part. There are some issues with Visual Web Parts under CAS that I have not resolved yet. More on that later. My web part has some simple code which uses ASP.NET and also hits the SharePoint object model to display the title of the site in a label. Here is what the code looks like.

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
    Controls.Add(new Label(){Text = "<div>My Cool Web Part!</div>"});
    Controls.Add(new Label() { Text = string.Format("Site Title: {0}", SPContext.Current.Web.Title) });
 
    base.CreateChildControls();
}

When you create a new project, it deploys to the GAC by default. We start by changing this on the project properties.

This effectively changes the DeploymentTarget attribute on Assembly element in the Manifest.xml. At this point, you may be asking. “Sweet, is that it? Does it take care of the CAS policy for me?” The answer to that of course is “No.” However, it is quite easy to add it. Let’s see what happens if we try to deploy it as is. I’ll just hit F5 to start debugging. I then add my web part to any existing page, and I immediately get hit with the following in Visual Studio.

System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' failed.

Luckily we know how to fix this. Hopefully, this will also help new developers when they get this error in the future and aren’t sure what to do. We need to grant permissions to this assembly to use the object model as well as a few other things. We’ll start by using a standard set of IPermission elements that I have used in past posts. This gives me basic ASP.NET, SharePoint object model, and Security permissions.

<CodeAccessSecurity>
  <PolicyItem>
    <PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Description="Permission set for SouthwesternEnergy.Partners.Web.">
      <IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />
      <IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution,ControlPrincipal,ControlAppDomain,ControlDomainPolicy,ControlEvidence,ControlThread" />
      <IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
                   version="1" ObjectModel="True"  />
      <IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.EnvironmentPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Read="UserName" />
      <IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Read="$AppDir$" Write="$AppDir$" Append="$AppDir$" PathDiscovery="$AppDir$" />
    </PermissionSet>
    <Assemblies>
      <Assembly Name="VisualWebPartProject1"  />
    </Assemblies>
  </PolicyItem>
</CodeAccessSecurity>

You can use this in your code almost exactly but two small changes are required. First, you need to change your assembly name to whatever you have called yours. Secondly, if you look at that SharePointPermission, you’ll notice it says version 12.0.0.0. We need to change this to 14.0.0.0 since we are working with SharePoint 2010 now. Adding this to your package is quite easy. In the Solution Explorer, locate Package and then Package.package and open it. This will bring open the package designer. Click on the Manifest tab at the bottom and then expand Edit Options. The way this works is that you can paste any additional elements here and it will merge your items with the ones it automatically generates. Here is what I would paste in.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Solution xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <CodeAccessSecurity>
    <PolicyItem>
      <PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Description="Permission set for SouthwesternEnergy.Partners.Web.">
        <IPermission class="AspNetHostingPermission" version="1" Level="Minimal" />
        <IPermission class="SecurityPermission" version="1" Flags="Execution,ControlPrincipal,ControlAppDomain,ControlDomainPolicy,ControlEvidence,ControlThread" />
        <IPermission class="Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission, Microsoft.SharePoint.Security, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
                     version="1" ObjectModel="True"  />
        <IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.EnvironmentPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Read="UserName" />
        <IPermission class="System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Read="$AppDir$;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\VisualWebPartProject1" Write="$AppDir$" Append="$AppDir$" PathDiscovery="$AppDir$" />
      </PermissionSet>
      <Assemblies>
        <Assembly Name="VisualWebPartProject1"  />
      </Assemblies>
    </PolicyItem>
  </CodeAccessSecurity>
</Solution>

Here is what it would look like on the screen.

If everything is correct, you will see the merged result up top. If there is an error in your XML, you will also see it there. Now let’s deploy the solution and see if we can add the web part to an existing page.

Unfortunately, this is the error we get and it actually gives us good information. We simply forgot to add the APTCA attribute (or AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers). Just open your AssmeblyInfo.cs file and add the following line.

[assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers()]

Redeploy your solution and try to add your web part again. If all goes well, you will have a lovely web part on the screen that looks like this.

With the above set of CAS policies, you can probably get most of the code you want to do to work. I mentioned Visual Web Parts above. Here is the issue I am currently seeing. If you remember my post on the Visual Web Part, you will know that this is just a web part with a Page.LoadControl() method calling a User Control (.ascx). Page.LoadControl requires a ton of permissions and I haven’t been able to figure them out. This means, it simply will not work. I posted something to the forums about it here. Hopefully, we will get an answer soon.

This may seem like a lot of steps, but really I just posted a lot of pictures. Trust me it’s a lot fewer steps than it was before in MOSS 2007. Just look at my old post if you don’t believe me. Now, you might ask why would I do this instead of a Sandboxed solution? Sandboxed solutions are severely limited on what they can do with the SharePoint object model. By default, the CAS policy that defines them can’t even connect to a database. I can specify at a per assembly level here what each one can do. That is a big advantage.

On Installing/Upgrading SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov_CTP

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

On a Windows XP Professional with XP3 attempts to upgrade/install SQL Server 2008 failed. The correct authentication was not recognized and only a few files were created.

Conclusions:

First attempt: To upgrade an existing SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (evaluation) [Mysorian] failed in the last step of the upgrade. However the following files were added to the SQL Server folder on the machine. It appears that the upgrade process created not only Upgrade files but also install files as shown here.

Second attempt: Tried to install a new server[Ganga]: failed.

Later in the maintenance mode, the repair option to repair the failed fresh install worked but cannot connect to the named instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov CTP.

Named instance Ganga of the fresh install

Error Message:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: -1)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=MSSQ...

The splash screen of the SQL Server 2008 in Management Studio appears to belong to R2 November CTP as well as the short cut for the CTP programs. However the following files were added to the SQL Server folder [MSSQL10_50.GANGA] on the machine.

Building Amazing Business Apps with Silverlight 4, & Visual Studio 2010

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:45:00 EST

I had a great time at my talk today at PDC2009. I was able to spend much of the time in a demo… Here is a summary of that demo so you can walk through it on your own machine:

Nice Screens, Shame About the Dancing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

I have not seen the stores in person, but from a distance I really, really like what Microsoft has done with its retail presence. Sure it looks vaguely familiar to Apple's stores, but big whoop. The wall to wall screens are brilliant.

However, I am now second-guessing whether I'd actually want to step inside a store and be trampled by line-dancing geeks rocking out to Will.I.Am and Fergie. Sheesh.

I'd love to see the look on the guy who walked up to cash to buy his Windows 7 upgrade and got stuck watching this horror show. "Umm, can I, excuse me, can I pay for this ... EXCUSE ME!!!"

And check the "Oh please God don't let my buddies see this" look on the face of some of the staffers."

As spotted in Gizmodo ...

Microsoft to Open Source the .NET Micro Framework

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:45:00 EST

Today, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) here Los Angeles, Microsoft announced not only the release of version 4.0 of the.NET Micro Framework, but also that they are open sourcing the product and making it available under the Apache 2.0 license, which is already being used by the community within the embedded space. The .NET Micro Framework, [...] Related posts:

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Introducing Windows Server AppFabric

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:02:00 EST

About one year ago I was fortunate to be working on the launch of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. With the start of our new fiscal year, I was asked to take over a team which was responsible for the technical marketing for our developer platform product management team. It’s been quite a [...]

IT's Groovy Time Flashback

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

As virtualization-lite creates swarms of increasingly dense VLANs in the data center, the IT industry appears to be responding by consolidating into coalitions, including Arcadia (EMC, VMW, and CSCO); HP/COMS; and IBM/JNPR. Each coalition will likely produce its own "branded container" dedicated to the simplification and tactical orchestration of growing VLAN empires. This consolidation takes us back to the 70s when IBM and the BUNCH offered ever-shrinking choices to smocked IT decision makers. Years later the network evolved and disrupted the consolidation with new equipment categories, new solutions and emergent demands soon addressed by a mushrooming venture capital industry and hordes of tech entrepreneurs.

Microsoft to Open Source the .NET Micro Framework

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:30:00 EST

(I'm currently in Tokyo, so I'll leave my insights into this news for another time)

Today, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced the release of version 4.0 of the.NET Micro Framework, but also that they are open sourcing the product and making it available under the Apache 2.0 license, which is already being used by the community within the embedded space.

The .NET Micro Framework,a development and execution environment for resource-constrained devices, was initially developed inside the Microsoft Startup Business Accelerator, but recently moved to the Developer Division so as to be more closely aligned with the overall direction of Microsoft development efforts.

See complete blog post here >

Working with Table Storage on the Windows Azure

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

If you've been working with Azure for a while then you've probably spent some time using the StorageClient sample that came with previous versions of the SDK. With the November 2009 release of the SDK (the one they'll be using at PDC 2009), they have wrapped that sample up into the SDK and refactored it to fit more in line with the conventions and quality standards of a Microsoft API. As a result, some of your code will break (but not much). Queue storage and Blob storage (discussed in upcoming posts) actually have more breaking changes than table storage.

Table storage, under the hood, is exposed as an ADO.NET Data Service (formerly Astoria). As a result, if you've used the System.Data.Services.Client library before, you've already got a leg up in interacting with Azure Storage.

When you're working with table storage, there are a few things that you're going to need. Once you've got these, you're good to go:

References to System.Data.Services.Client and Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient (obviously you also need a reference to service runtime if you're hitting table storage from within the cloud itself... remember that you can hit table storage from the desktop too, e.g. from WPF applications).
Credentials. There have been some changes to the way storage client credentials work that are beyond the scope of this post, but you can still use the same accountname/account shared key pattern that you used in the past.
A DataServiceContext. You're going to need this to interact with the tables in table storage. As you'll see in the code below, the pattern is to create your own context that derives from the base and exposes your tables as IQueryables. If you've ever worked with ADO.NET Data Services or Entity Framework before, this pattern should also look familiar.
Entity objects. Every table that you have in table storage contains arbitrary columns. In other words, if you really wanted, you could have a different schema for every row in your table. However, to work with it using the Data Services client, each row needs to conform to a fixed schema - this fixed schema you'll represent with a regular C# class that contains the necessary partition key and row key properties. This class also needs a parameterless constructor (required by the data services client to reconstitute instances of that class from the HTTP results)
The cloud table client. This new class will let you create tables and test for the existence of tables. You do not need to use this class for querying table storage, it's more of an administrative class for dealing with table storage itself.

The first thing we're going to want to do is get the credentials. The new SDK allows us to dynamically determine if we're running in a fabric or running as a standalone app (which allows us to build apps that we can run on-premise OR in the cloud!). Here's some code I used to get the configuration settings for the account name and shared key:

string accountKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccountSharedKey"];
string tableBaseUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TableStorageEndpoint"];
if (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)
{
accountName = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("AccountName");
accountKey = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("AccountSharedKey");
}

Once you've got the account key and the account name, you can get an instance of the storage credentials and table client classes:

StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey creds =
new StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey(accountName, accountKey);
CloudTableClient tableStorage = new CloudTableClient(tableBaseUri, creds);
CustomerContext ctx = new CustomerContext(tableBaseUri, creds);

Using the table storage class, we can create a new table (if it doesn't already exist):

if (tableStorage.CreateTableIfNotExist("Customers"))
{
CustomerRow cust = new CustomerRow("AccountsReceivable", "kevin");
cust.FirstName = "Kevin";
cust.LastName = "Hoffman";
ctx.AddObject("Customers", cust);
ctx.SaveChanges();
}

Here I'm also using my customer context class and my customer row class (will show those shortly) in order to put a new customer into table storage. Note my use of an application name for the partition key and the username for the row key. Entire chapters of books can (and will) be written on strategies and patterns for using partition and row keys.

Now let's say that we're inside an MVC 2 controller and we want to make the list of customers available to the view. If we're not doing a strongly typed view (which we should be doing unless we can't help it...) then we can use code that looks like this:

CustomerRow[] customers = ctx.Customers.ToArray();
ViewData["Customers"] = customers;

Now let's look at the CustomerContext class:

public class CustomerContext : TableServiceContext
{
    public CustomerContext(string uri, StorageCredentials creds) : base(uri, creds) { }
    public IQueryable<CustomerRow> Customers
    {
        get
        {
            return this.CreateQuery<CustomerRow>("Customers");
        }
    }
}

The CustomerRow class is just a POCO class that has a default constructor and a constructor that takes a partition key and a row key, and inherits from the TableServiceEntity class.

public class CustomerRow : TableServiceEntity
{
    private string firstName;
    private string lastName;
    private string userName;
    private string applicationName;

    public CustomerRow(string applicationName, string userName)
      : base(applicationName, userName)
    {
      ApplicationName = applicationName;
      UserName = userName;
    }

public CustomerRow() : base() { }

I snipped out the rest of the class for brevity - I'm assuming we've all seen stock property accessors before. At this point you should be ready to roll using table storage. There is also one other benefit they gave us in November 2009 CTP - you no longer need to pre-rig your database schema in your SQL 2008 database!! The new development storage simulator accurately simulates the dynamic schema nature of the actual table storage in the cloud. I can't begin to describe how many headaches this alleviates.

Enjoy table storage on the new Nov 2009 CTP and I'll be posting similar blog posts about the new Queue storage and Blob storage clients shortly!

Windows Azure Platform TCO/ROI Analysis Tool

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:15:00 EST

Microsoft just released a tool to help you figure out how much money you can save by switching to Windows Azure from your on-premises solution. The tool will provide you with a customized estimate of potential cost savings you (or your company or organization) may achieve by building on the Windows Azure Platform. Upon completion of [...] Related posts:

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New Amazon AWS SDK for .NET Developers Released

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:22:00 EST

Under the pressure from Windows Azure release in a week, Amazon unveiled today a new AWS SDK for .NET Developers providing .NET developers the libraries, code samples, and documentation needed to build an AWS-powered application using any programming language capable of making .NET calls including C#, Visual Basic, Windows PowerShell, and other compliant languages. .NET [...] Related posts:

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How to Programmatically Set the Target Audience on a Web Part

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

I’ve been working with audiences again, so I recently wanted to set the target audience of a web part. Sure anyone can set it in the UI, but I want to automate my deployment, so I wanted to do it programmatically using a feature receiver. When I first started looking for more information on how to do this, I wasn’t finding exactly what I needed and I did find some conflicting information. To be clear about what I am talking about today, I am discussing how to target a web part to an audience that in MOSS that was defined and compiled in the SSP. Since I couldn’t find much info on the Internet, I posted something on twitter and I got a response from Randall Isenhour (@sharepointdev) on the SharePoint SDK team who referred me to Jim Crowley. Thanks to both of them for pointing me in the right direction.

For today’s discussion, we have two audiences: Audience 1 and Audience 2 as shown below.

You might think that you would apply an audience to a web part using the AudienceManager class but that in fact not the case. We actually do this by making use of the AuthorizationFilter property on the WebPart class. The problem is that this property takes a syntax that not too many people fully understand. Luckily, Jim pointed me to this post by Gary Lapointe where he demystifies how the string is created. The AuthorizationFilter property can be used to specify a GUID to an audience. However, it can also be used to specify an LDAP distinguished name or a SharePoint group. In this case we only care about the GUID to the audience. All three can be specified in one string and are delimited with a double semi-colon (;;). The first group is where you specify Audience Ids, the second is the distinguished name, and the last is the SharePoint group. You don’t have to specify all three though, we’ll only be specifying the audience today.

Let’s take a look at some code. For today’s example, we can assume that we are writing code inside a FeatureActivated event handling method. I’ll be getting a reference to an SPWeb object from there. I am simplifying this example some because I only have one web part on my page and so I am just referencing it with an indexer value of 0. You will want to change this to some code to find the appropriate web part on your page. You’ll also need references to Microsoft.SharePoint, Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages, and Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience.

using (SPWeb currentSite = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
{
    using (SPLimitedWebPartManager webPartManager 
        = currentSite.GetLimitedWebPartManager("default.aspx", PersonalizationScope.Shared))
    {
        AudienceManager audienceManager = new AudienceManager(ServerContext.Current);
 
        webPartManager.WebParts[0].AuthorizationFilter 
            = string.Format("{0};;;;", audienceManager.GetAudience("Audience 1").AudienceID);
 
        webPartManager.SaveChanges(webPartManager.WebParts[0]);
    }
}

I then use the SPLimitedWebPartManager against the page I am working with (in my case default.aspx). The AuthorizationFilter takes a GUID, so I need to look up the GUID for my audience using the AudienceManager. It has a GetAudience method which takes a parameter which is the name of the audience (Audience 1). I can then use the AudienceID property to write the GUID into the AuthorizationFilter property followed by “;;;;". We have to specify the four semi-colons since other types of filters can be applied here in this case. My AuthorizationFilter string would look something like this.

D2E05D3D-633F-4f0b-BA47-64E0F6A40A74;;;;

The last thing, you have to do is call SaveChanges on the SPLimitedWebPartManager object and pass a reference to your web part. I’ll go ahead and point out now that, there is no error checking in the code above. If you are to do this, you would want to add checks to verify that the page, web part, and audience exist to say the least. If all goes well, when you view your page, you should be able to verify that the target audience is set like below.

Now, I’m sure you know that you can target more than one audience on a web part, right? It would be bad form for me not to show you how to do that, so here is what that looks like. The key is using a comma to delimit each audience. Here is what that code would look like.

webPartManager.WebParts[0].AuthorizationFilter = string.Format("{0},{1};;;;",
    audienceManager.GetAudience("Audience 1").AudienceID,
    audienceManager.GetAudience("Audience 2").AudienceID);

The result would then look like this. SharePoint shows them delimited with a semi-colon when viewing them in the UI.

As you can see, setting a target audience is actually quite easy once you know the syntax of the AuthorizationFilter string. I have also found that sometime when messing with audiences, that the Target Audiences property will completely disappear from the UI. Although, I’m not sure what the cause of this is, I have found that you can bring it back by rebooting. I have also found that you can restart the Windows SharePoint Services Administration service followed by an iisreset and it will come back as well.

SQL Server Management Studio Support for SQL Azure

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST

The long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with support for SQL Azure is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be generally available for the rest of the world as of tomorrow. The download page can be found here. This support is included as part of the November CTP release of SQL Server 2008 R2. This release not only includes SQL Azure support from within SSMS but a wealth of other SQL Server 2008 specific features. Check out this blog entry for more.

Commercial and OpenSource OCR Softwares

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:30:00 EST

SimpleOCR is the popular freeware OCR software with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. SimpleOCR is also a royalty-free OCR SDK for developers to use in their custom applications. If you have a scanner and want to avoid retyping your documents, SimpleOCR is the fast, free way to do it. The SimpleOCR freeware is 100% free and not limited in any way. Anyone can use SimpleOCR for free–home users, educational institutions, even corporate users. Our own freeware OCR application provides acceptable accuracy for those who just need to convert a few pages and can’t justify the cost of commercial OCR software. Developers can use the command-line and SDK versions to integrate SimpleOCR with their custom applications.

Windows 7 Networking Controls Video Screencast

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST

This week I begin a new series of video screencasts for Dell’s IT Expert Voice Web site. The site has all sorts of useful information for corporate IT folks that are interested in migrating and using Windows 7, and my humble part will be to produce a regular series of videos similar to what I have been doing on my own over at WebInformant.tv. Do check out this video which talks about the differences between Windows 7 and earlier versions when it comes to networking controls.

Where’s My SSP!? Introducing the SharePoint Services Architecture

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:45:00 EST

Shared Services Provider. Gone!

The concept of the SSP is no more. It has been replaced with a new concept called the Services Architecture. Your SharePoint installation will not have a separate SSP site like you had in the past. You now manage all of your familiar services like Search, the BDC, Excel Services directly through Central Administration on the new Manage Service Application page. This is where you will go to find familiar screens like Search Administration, User Profiles, and the Business Data Catalog (now BCS). The trick to getting to them, click on the item in the list and then use the Manage button on the toolbar.

I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of how it all works (because honestly I don’t understand it all), but I’ll give you a quick run down. Before we start, the term Service is highly overused. In this case it does not refer to a WCF, Web, or Windows service. In this case, Service refers to the actual program be it Search or something that you write yourself. A Service Application is an the configuration of your service on the farm. The provider of the Service will provide you the developer with a Service Application Proxy. This is basically some type of assembly that interacts with the service via WCF. If the Service Application is installed on multiple servers in the farm, a built-in load balancing scheme will be used to distribute request among servers. From my understanding, all of the existing API calls for things like search have been updated to fit into this model.

Effectively the Services Architecture is a new pluggable architecture which makes it possible for third parties to create their own services. I’ll also point out that you can now publish specific services and consume specific servers from remote farms which gives you quite a bit more flexibility. As opposed to the all or nothing we had with sharing SSP services between farms in MOSS 2007. Andrew Connell has a post that goes into more detail on why they shifted to this new architecture. It’s definitely worth the read.

Since the SSP is gone, you may be wondering what’s going to happen with all my code that references the SSP. If you using something like the UserProfile object and using the ServerContext object to reference the SSP, it may or may not work. ServerContext has been marked as deprecated. If you do try to use ServerContext, Visual Studio will tell you to use ServiceContext instead. If you do have SSP specific code, be sure and test it specifically during your upgrade process.

BTW, the start of this post was an obscure reference to another presentation on a completely unrelated topic. I’ll be truly impressed if anyone gets it. :)

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Regarding IE 8.0 and jQuery

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

Microsoft has chosen jQuery from among the different javascript libraries and has been giving increasing attention to it in its programming software regardless of this IE 8.0 still does not render all of jQueries selectors.

I read on the internet about other IE 8 problems vis-a-vis jQuery. The following figures show how different IE 8.0 renders the same content (I threw in a lot of selectors) when compared to other browsers. It appears that IE 8 can render the ID tag selector well but none of the others. I tried it out in the latest issue of Microsoft Blend Super Preview but it appears that rendering (interpretation) has remained the same from IE 6.0 to IE 8.0.

This is in IE 8.0

This one in Firefox

This one in Opera

This one in the latest issue of Super Preview. The left one is IE 6.0 and the right one is IE 8. I am not sure if the Super View is supposed to render css styles.

Windows Azure Platform Launch Update

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:43:00 EST

PDC 2009 is an exciting event the Windows Azure community. Concurrent with the conference Microsoft will begin the Windows Azure platform transition from a CTP to business. For your planning purposes, this post maps out the key stages of that transition that you should be aware of. At PDC 2009, on November 17th, 2009, a number of [...] Related posts:

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SPC 2009 Wrap-Up

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:15:00 EDT

The last day of the SPC had some tech-laden sessions hosted by Andrew Connell. The first was about migrating from 2007 to 2010, and how you can add the nice 2010 development features (like the ribbon and the developer dashboard) back into your 2007 master pages when you migrate them. The theme seems to be that you invested in branding and customizing 2007, and Microsoft is making it straightforward to move that content to 2010. The idea is to not have to stop doing work in your 2007 instance waiting for 2010 to release. All in all, it looks like going from 2007 to 2010 should be much easier than 2003 to 2007.

Installing Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Was a Breeze

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EDT

VS2010 comes in three flavors with increasing capabilities, Professional, Premium and Ultimate. Ultimate can do everything the others can and much more.

With the gathering of stuff in the clouds VS 2010 is built-in with capabilities to master the clouds by supporting Windows Azure.

It's only a short hop from now to launch time (March 2010) but it is worth trying it out.

Although it was a marathon installation experience (some 4 hours are so with two or three boots), it went on well on my Windows XP with Sp3 without a hitch except for the fact that Silverlight 3(one of the many programs in the installation package) failed to install. Yes, there was one more thing. The last message screen had a button which would take me to some documentation that failed as well. Anyway this time around the experience may be even termed pleasurable.

Here is a screen shot of the latest of the Visual Studio products.

Download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional here.

Download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium Beta 2 – Web Bootstrapper here

Download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 Web Bootstrapper here

Creating and Manipulating Your SQL Azure Database

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:45:00 EDT

So after the long and torturous wait, you're now in the SQL Azure CTP and you are ready to get the ball rolling with your fabulous, shiny new cloud-based SQL database server. Now what? Well, the first thing you're going to need to do is create a database.

To do that, you'll go to sql.azure.com and follow the directions to sign in - if you haven't already supplied the invite key you'll need to supply it after you sign in the first time. Select your project and click on it. At this point you'll see a pretty sparse management screen with two tabs: databases and firewall settings. On the database tab, create a new database (its up to you whether you create a 1GB or a 10GB max database). After you've created it, you'll be able to click the Connection Strings button to get an ADO.NET connection string for the database as well as an ODBC connection string.

That's great, but how do you manage the schema? Can you just fire up SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and right-click on the "Tables" node and create new tables the old fashioned way? Unfortunately, no. You cannot connect to SQL Azure directly with SSMS the way you can to a regular SQL Server instance.

To connect to SQL Azure with SSMS:

Open SSMS (this part should be pretty obvious)
When you are prompted to connect to a database, cancel that dialog.
You should be left with an empty management console. Click New Query.
For the server name, take the fully qualified host name from your SQL Azure connection string. It should look something like (blah).database.windows.net.
Choose SQL Server Authentication. Supply the username and password that you used for your database. Parts of this information should also be visible on your connection string.
Click on the Options button on the bottom right of the dialog box
Set the database name, manually, to the name of your database. It will not show up in the drop-down list.
Force the network protocol to be TCP/IP (this step may not be necessary, but I do it out of habit)
Make sure Server type is set to Database engine (this is the default, but might not be if you use SSMS for more than your average bear)
Now you can click Connect.

At this point, if everything worked well, you should FAIL to connect to SQL Azure :) You should get some horrid message about a connection from your public IP address not being allowed. This is because this version of SQL Azure has a built-in firewall and, by default, it doesn't allow anything through.

Go back to the sql.azure.com portal and click on the Firewall Settings tab. Check the Allow Microsoft Services to Access this server box. Click the button to add a new record. At this point it will conveniently show you what it thinks your public IP is so you can create a new rule to allow your IP through. Keep in mind this is only required to allow your home computer to access your SQL Azure server. If you have checked the Allow Microsoft Services... checkbox, then connections from within the Azure fabric (like an ADO.NET call from inside an ASP.NET app in an Azure Web Role) will pass through the firewall unhindered. This firewall is specifically to keep the communication safe and give you a "DMZ-like" experience where only the people (IPs) you trust will be able to hit that server from outside the Azure cloud fabric.

Now, after adding the firewall rule, you will need to wait up to 15 minutes or more. When I did it, it took over 20 minutes. The reason is that the portal where you hit the submit button is not the same physical machine as your SQL Azure server. It takes a few minutes for your new firewall rule to make it over to the actual data center where your SQL Azure server has been provisioned (at least that's my best guess to explain this delay). So don't be alarmed if 10 seconds after you add the firewall rule you still can't get into your database.

Now you are free to write T-SQL until you are blue in the face. What's that, you don't love hand-writing T-SQL schema change scripts without any assistance from an IDE? Neither do I. This is why I created a Visual Studio 2008 "Database Project" that references a local database with the same schema as the one I want to have in the cloud. This is useful for multiple reasons. The biggest of which is that with a "Database project" I can version control my scripts. Secondly, I automatically gain the benefit of a local development copy of my database. Finally, this allows me to, from within VS, right-click any schema element and script it into the project. I can then open that script, do some cleaning up, and then execute that script in the aforementioned SSMS query window. The cleaning up I'm referring to means stripping out the plethora of extraneous options on the ends of the CREATE TABLE statements and things like that. A lot of those options aren't available in SQL Azure so just strip them out after you script the table, proc, view, whatever. It's a pain in the butt, but it's certainly better than having to hand-craft all that T-SQL if you aren't into that sort of thing. I know some developers that like to get all kinky with their T-SQL and would never let VS script it for them. Me, I like to wear protective gear when I talk to the database schema so letting VS give me a head start suggestion as to the script I should run on SQL Azure works just fine for me.

Competition in the Clouds for Microsoft - Amazon RDS

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Microsoft cannot sleep comfortably. There is assault from all flanks- be it mobile, be it OS, be it the venerable Office, almost anything one can think of. Now SQL Azure has a competitor. Amazon Web Services is out with a relational database service, the Amazon RDS. It is still in beta and seems to do everything that SQL Azure will and can do: infrastructure provisioning, software maintenance, etc. What's more MySQL 5.1 database, the darling of open source gang will get stronger as it takes up center stage for Amazon RDS.
Also it is not 1GB or 10GB database, you can start up with 20GB if you want. It's going to cost money. Looks like it can range from 11c/hr to $3.10/hour depending on the size of the database you want to take to the clouds.

Sign up here for Amazon RDS

When you sign up you will be agreeing to use the following:

Amazon RDS
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon Simple Storage Service

Even if you don't use the latter two, you may have to pay for ECC since RDS uses ECC for CloudWatch Metrics.

After this you will be allowed to explore Amazon RDS

What about the tool to use to work with Amazon RDS?

You can use the MySQL tools to work with the RDS. For monitoring the usage, you use CloudWatch.

Business Service Management: Aligning Business & IT

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:45:00 EDT

The result is BSMReview.com, a site which seeks to analyze the best and next practices in business service management from a third-party point of view. The experts that Bill has brought to the site are literally a who's who of the best and most trusted people in the field: Peter Armstrong, Tom Bishop, Malcolm Fry, Israel Gat, Peter McGarahan, Richard Ptak, and Ken Turbitt. And that's just for the launch. Bill is recruiting more experts even as I write this. I'd like to get David Williams from Gartner and Jean-Pierre Garbani from Forrester involved as well, but they're behind the iron walls of the analyst-dom.

Amartya Sen: The Idea of Justice

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

His latest book, The Idea of Justice, is a serious re-examination of the foundations of justice from a global perspective. He speaks of the two definitions of justice in Sanskrit - niti (institutional justice) and nyaya (realized justice) - and how we are too often misled by the utopian vision of ideal justice, only to allow societal injustice all around us in our everyday lives. For Sen, justice must alleviate suffering.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Install Fails In Boot Camp

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:15:00 EDT

I ran into an interesting bug this past week when trying to install the beta 2 build of Visual Studio 2010. I tried both the web bootstrap install and the full ISO download. I also tried the Ultimate version as well as Professional. Nothing seemed to be working. It turns out that my machine configuration was [...]

Consuming Services with WCF

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is an effective framework for implementing services as well as service consumers. Whenever you deal with WCF communication objects you need to pay attention to the disposal of the resources that these objects hold. However, these disposal mechanisms are not that straightforward and are very much related to how resources need to be cleaned up. The how and why of cleaning up service resources is the topic of this article. Although the samples herein are focused on consuming services using synchronous communication, they are equally relevant for asynchronous communications...

Solving the Good Will Hunting Problem

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:15:00 EDT

I've seen the movie Good Will Hunting from 1997, starring Matt Damon in the role as a mathematical gifted janitor, twice. The first time I hadn’t taken a course in graph theory, the second time I had. Regarding the mathematical aspect of the movie, it makes all the difference. The second time I could actually understand the problem the professor posed when he threw down the gauntlet. In the movie the MIT professor stated a, supposedly, very tough problem that they had worked on intensely for almost two years before they were able to solve it. It reads:

Microsoft "Opens" Outlook Personal Folders Format (.pst)

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:03:00 EDT

Big news from Microsoft today. In a blog post to the interoperability @ Microsoft blog, Paul Lorimer, Group Manager, Microsoft Office Interoperability announced they will be "opening" the Outlook Personal Folders format also called a .pst file.

Lorimer said that "In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties"

He also admitted that that the documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. Going on to say "We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way."

This initiative is part of Microsoft's Interoperability Principles, which they announced in early 2008. As part of this initiative Microsoft has committed product features, documented formats, and implementation of standards that allow interoperability. The move to open up the portability of data in .pst files is another step in putting these principles in action.

Lorimer also said that "Over the past year, Microsoft Office has taken several steps toward increasing openness and documenting interoperability guidelines, offering customers a choice of file formats and embracing a comprehensive approach that includes transparency into our engineering methods, collaboration with industry stakeholders, and shared stewardship of industry standards"

This is a great move by Microsoft!

Binary Serialization and Azure Web Applications

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:15:00 EDT

You might be thinking, pfft, I'm never going to need to use Binary Serialization...that's old school. And you might be right, but think about this: Azure Storage charges you by how much you're storing and some aspects of Azure also charge you based on the bandwidth consumed. Do you want to store/transmit a big-ass bloated pile of XML or do you want to store/transmit a condensed binary serialization of your object graph?

The Origin of Stupidity

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EDT

So apparently Kirk Cameron and a buddy of his are continuing their campaign of lies and outright stupidity because things like common sense, science, and cold hard fact threaten their fragile hold on sanity. Ordinarily I might on on a huge rant about this but everything I could say, the woman in this video says much more eloquently than I could. This is a must-watch.

New CTP for SQL Azure

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:04:00 EDT

The SQL Azure October CTP 2 was released. This CTP represents the complete feature set that will be available in the SQL Azure at PDC. The October CTP has been deployed to one of Microsoft’s go-live production clusters. This production cluster is significantly larger and more powerful than the machine cluster that is supporting the August CTP but is a completely separate machine cluster serviced by a dedicated developer portal (https://sql.azure.com). Accounts for all existing users of the current CTP (August CTP) have been automatically provisioned for access to the new October CTP and environment. Simply go to the developer portal (https://sql.azure.com) to activate your account and create servers on the new environment. Servers you create on this new environment will be reachable through a new address(.database.windows.net).