In the October edition of MSDN Magazine, there’s a great article that does a quick rundown of building a component that can be surfaced as a Web Part via the Gallery and placed in Web Part zones on pages. The article by Steve Fox is here: Steve Fox - Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint Development – MSDN Magazine October 2009 There’s a couple very important aspect that might not be 100% clear from the title – 1st, you’re really visually designing a User Control (ASCX). So, this is really just...
What is MockingBird? MockingBird is a tool-set for mocking web services. The core engine is essentially a configurable message interceptor that can act as a stand in for any web service. The two primary usage scenarios for MockingBird are Contract First development Isolation of build & dev servers from external dependencies MockingBird - Home Technorati Tags: MockingBird,tool,services,engine,message,usage,Contract,development,Isolation,Home,scenarios,dependencies Windows Live Tags: MockingBird,tool,services,engine,message,usage,Contract,development,Isolation,Home,scenarios,dependencies...
So...there isn't really any denying that there is a lot to learn. New releases from MS, new tools from third-party provides, new libraries..whatever it may be. It's pretty unrealistic, at least with my current brain, to be able to learn all of that stuff while still having any kind of a life. Sure, I squeeze in a book on the subway, and my idea of goofing-off at work is going to DotNetKicks.com and checking out what's late and great in .NET today. That all said, I suspect it may be at least as important...
This set of posts is about a "Mini URL" service that I created initially to help provide a means to automate shortening of URL's for sending in emails to users in SharePoint. If you've used SharePoint and at times you need to send a link to a List or Document item one way is to "right-click" the item (whether it's a folder, list item, or document) then if it's IE choose "Copy Shortcut". You can then just past that into an email and send over to your recipient. Recently, I also noticed that even the...
Definition Aggregator Provider Pattern is an extension of Provider Pattern, which enables us to create and utilize multiple instance of the class having the same provider interface. In this pattern, there is an Aggregator class which implements the provider interface and contains a collection of instances of classes having the same provider interface. The underlying caller class of this aggregator is simply unaware of how many provider instances do the caller Provider Aggregator contains, but all...
Does your software or database run like a dog? Running out of space? Or doesn't recover well in a disaster? ... then your storage configuration may be one of the reasons. This is a short little post just to give you a heads-up on the basics. You may know bits of it already, hence why I have broken it up into a Q&A format so you can skip what you already now. The Hard-Disk Well we've all seen a hard-disk but the likelihood is that it was in a desktop and you're the only person that uses it at...
Hardware and Software are very much the modern day Yin and Yang, one serves little purpose without the other. I have noticed that on the whole many developers know little about the environments that the software they are writing is going to work in falsely believing they are truly abstracted from it . Come 'Go Live' there are blank faces when for some 'inexplicably reason' the software doesn't work and the remark, 'it worked fine in test' is often heard. Another common frustration is software that...
So we're having a terminology discussion with co-workers of mine. The word, "Screen" comes up, and one of my co-workers says, "It's not a screen! That's the thing you look at. It's a form!" Instant response from another co-worker, who has a gift for this kinda thing: "You're using a program called Windows and you can't see through it, so what the hell!" Technorati Tags: Humor,Development...
Understanding the architecture and code in software application plays as major factors while building good software products. Having an easy to understand visual notation, not only helps architects to model the system efficiently, but also helps developers to quickly implement that, as well as it helps the re-engineering process to easily adopt the architectural model with respect to new requirement. A new visual modeling technique, termed as “nAML” (.NET Application Modeling Language) is being introduced...
VMLogix LabManager is in same space as VMware Lab Manager what I reviewed recently. However, its key differentiators is around automation – enabling developers, testers and IT Pro staff to entirely automate the process of setting up synchronized multi-machine deployment (including the software stacks in the virtual machines) no matter what virtualisation technology. Yes, VMLogix LabManager is virtualisation platform agnostic! So if you decided on VMware, Hyper-V or Citrix you will still be able to...
Vmware currently is going through the wars. A change of CEO, a plunging share-price and a competitor getting alot of attention with their new product, that being Microsoft with Hyper-V. However, I just don't get it!? ESX Enterprise is still out in front in terms of features and pricing is very competitive. Any organisation performing their own unbiased product comparison evaluations is going to be hard pushed to discount Vmware's flagship product. The killer feature for many is ofcourse Vmotion that...
In my last post, titled "10 Tools Which I Left After Using VSTS 2008", I have included a list of 10 tools which I am not using currently, as I have the corresponding features available in Visual Studio Team System 2008. However, on the other hand, I am still using few tools even I have VSTS 2008! Here are 10 of among them.. 1. Code Smith: An excellent template based code generator. 2. Crystal FTP: Excellent FTP client tool. 3. Total Validator: One of the most powerful tool that I ever seen, which...
I have started using Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2008, recently. Previously I worked with Visual Studio 2005. As a matter of fact I had to use lots of external tools to perform and speedup my development process. However, while working with VSTS 2008, it's very exciting for me that, I found replacements for most of the external tools there. Here are 10 tools which I left after using VSTS 2008: 1. Database Schema Compare External tool: Redgate SQL Compare VSTS 2008 tool: Menu -> Data ->...
I want to apologize to anyone reading my feeds lately or reading my blog entries. I am trying import 5 entries a day to the new blog, so you are going to see a bunch of entries from the old blog posted to FeedBurner again. I am really sorry and this mess should be cleaned up, hopefully, within the next few months. Maybe some of the new people reading the blog missed some of the entries, so it might be nice to re-visit some old entries. Maybe you will also notice a gap in some topics related to SharePoint...
Ok, so it isn't necessarily the most efficient way to spend your time. It is usually better to buy your tools whenever possible, but it is a great way to learn. Of course I am not talking about recreating Nant or CruiseControl. What I am suggesting would be more in the nature of a test harness for integration testing purposes. These are strategic tools that will pay for themselves as you move from development into production support. One area where these harnesses come in handy are integration points...
I stumbled upon an excellent utility for WCF Testing that comes with Visual Studio 2008 - WCFTestClient. The tool is an simple way to test WCF clients HTTP and TCP bindings. Some things are not supported, however, for basic WCF Testing, this definitely beats the old ASMX test page. Note: Also check out the WCFSvcHost utility from Visual Studio to host an arbitrary WCF Service. Technorati Tags: Debugging, Development, Microsoft Office, Tips, Tools, WCF, Visual Studio Cross Posted from http://blog.tfanshteyn.com/2008/01/wcftestclient-testing-utility-from.html...
File this under "take you lessons from all parts of life". Recently there has been a lot of buzz about a picture of "Bigfoot" on Mars taken by the Spirit rover. As an amateur astronomer and a skeptic this has been humorous and disturbing to watch. You have to wonder how people could actually believe that this might be a life form. We are talking about a planet with very little atmosphere and no magnetic field to protect it from cosmic radiation. If you take a look at Emily Lakdawalla's blog post...
One of the requests that I've received from other developers is the ability to use SCSF for developing a module without including the shell in the solution. We develop a large number of modules independently in different groups and having the shell be a part of every module was getting to be a problem. The only issue that I was getting with getting this to work was that SCSF guidance package would fail in ViewTemplateCS when I would right click on a folder and tried to add a new view to the project....
I've encountered a problem trying fix the WCF / WPF Visual Studio 2005 Integration components after I've installed Visual Studio 2008. Installing a VS 2008 will install .NET 3.0 SP1 and remove the installation of .NET 3.0. When trying to install the WCF / WPF Extension, installation display's a message Setup has detected that a prerequisite is missing. To use Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP you must have the .NET Framework 3.0 runtime installed....
I had to write a custom download component to download modules for a ClickOnce deployed application. The actual downloading is simple, the tricky part was creating the manifest and make sure that I only download files that are required. I am using an GeneraApplicationManifest MSBuild task to generate an application manifest. The documentation is very easy to follow. The generated manifest will include a Hash value. It is fairly simple to compute the same hash value manually and be able to validate...
I am using a great source control product Subversion. More information is available on http://subversion.tigris.org A great future of subversion is an ability to run a server script before the check-in is committed . The script has the ability to rollback the check-in. We are using this functionality to enforce comments for every check-in. To create a script, place any executable file into a hooks folder in the repository. You can start with a ... Read full article Technorati Tags: Development,Subversion,Tips,Tools...
I've been pondering about the lack of a more efficent process for developing MOSS/WSS Solutions (I mean a solution to a business probelm and not a wsp) lately, because believe it or not, when your MOSS Solution contains more than just one component, e.g. WebParts, Features, ASPX pages, Workflows etc, there is no Solution template in Visual Studio where you can add all these project types and have them compile to a single wsp. Its kind of a pain to develop without this functionality. Serge pointed...
Googling for some insight on the SPDataSource I came across the blog by the guys at SharePoint Solutions. Its a very usefull programming reference blog. If you are a SharePoint developer check out their blog, because they have some good tips to share, and while the posts may not be many, the content so far is good. Link: http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/ tags: SharePoint, Development, Visual Studio 2005, WSS Cross-posted from tariqayad.com...
I ran in to a problem with ASP.NET 2.0 where postbacks werent working over the weekend. The problem as it seemed was that there was a corrupt copy of the webresource.axd file in my local cache. Cleaning the list of cache files that were associated with the target site and reloading the page solved the issue. Just a friendly tip for anyone having this problem Technorati : ASP.NET 2.0, Caching, Development, Postback...
A reader recently (well, recently when I first starting writing this!) asked me to expound upon how I use Virtual PC for development, and I'm more than happy to do so. I made the switch to Virtual PC for development early last year, so I've worked through quite a few of the issues I ran into, and I'll talk about those, as well as highlight some of the issues that I'm still struggling with, and how I've been able to work around them so far.The first thing I did was build a base image that had everything...