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.Net has several methods of serialization and sometimes it causes a lot of confusion even for experienced programmers. I believe the best article to describe the different methods is Aaron Skonnard’s Serialization in Windows Communication Foundation(MSDN Magazine > Issues > 2006 > August) (by some reason it’s not highly rated by Google and other articles are coming first for Serialization related requests) There is also a brief comparison table in StackOverflow What are the differences between ...

As I write this post, Microsoft’s Windows 8-focused //build/ conference has just ended. The apprehension so many developers had around the show is now dissipated, the developer platform and tools have been detailed, and we have all been able to work with the operating system, and develop apps for it, on a touch device, for about 72 hours now. Most people, myself included, like what they saw. The OS is touch-friendly without being an iOS copycat; our developer skill set investments are nicely protected; ...

I have been part of the Azure TFS Technical Access Preview (TAP) since March 2011. TFS Azure has been previewed and officially announced as TFS Service in the 2011 Build Conference, California. The Non-Disclosure Agreement has been lifted from the participants of the TAP program. The below excerpt from bharrys blog encourages early adopters to provide feedback. "We’ve been running the service for months now and it’s been working reliably. I suspect now that they can talk about it, you’ll be able ...

Programming for Metro Metro is the future http://zd.net/rnT9VZ .NET is for old apps. WinRT replaces WPF & WCF. XAML is big. There were no Silverlight sessions. HTML 5 and Javascript ( Blend for HTML) are back in fashion – I wont dwell on this because web apps are (inconsistently) simplistic in concept and over-complex in development. Yes, all those XAML skills are portable, Silverlight (RIP) apps can run as Metro apps with a bit of fidgeting with namespaces – you just need to know what controls ...

Introduction The conference sessions are starting to appear on the Channel 9 RSS feeds right now. If you are like me then you probably want to download all of them and watch them later. Here is the method that I use to grab all the videos and thought that it would help others. Note: You can use either Juice or PowerShell (which is located at the bottom of this post). Let’s do this with Juice Navigate over to http://channel9.msdn.com/Ev... and select the option to Subscribe to this ...

Step by Step Installation Guide to Install Windows 8 Developer Preview on Virtual Box Microsoft revealed Developer Preview of Windows 8 on 13th September 2011. Windows 8 is adhering Metro Design Gudielines. Without going much into deep technical discussions on features of Windows 8 , in this post I have targeted to show you installation steps of Windows 8 on virtual box. So to start with go and dowanlaod Windows 8 developer preview from below link. Choose appropirate link as for your system (32 bit ...

This new book targets embedded developers that want to use the latest release of the Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact OS family. It has been written by Samuel Phung (that wrote also the excellent “Professional Windows CE 6.0”), Thierry Joubert and David Jones (that released many very useful tools for Windows Embedded in the past). They are great developers and also very good trainers and writers, and I’m pretty sure that they will provide a great amount of knowledge to people wanting to discover ...

In the BUILD event, Microsoft had just announced the latest Windows Azure SDK 1.5, Visual Studio Tool for Windows Azure SDK 1.5, and the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK 1.5. You can find them simply from the Web Platform Installer. One thing I found for now is that, the database had been changed for the local storage emulator in this version. That means you need to recreate the storage database by running the DSInit command from the folder (let’s say you installed the SDK in driver C) C:\Program Files\Windows ...

There are two ways that I found to this but I found the second one better for readability. 1. Test Run Configuration file 2. DeploymentItemAttribute I am interesting in the “DeploymentItemAttribute” because its more readable gives flexibility to add either on the Test Class level so that more than 1 test can get the files or at Test Method level. I have a solution contains multiple project one of the project requires xsds to be there with the assembly. So 1. select the all the files scattered in ...

This week I’m at the Microsoft Build/Windows conference. Now I’ve been to many conferences throughout the years and this is the first conference where I literally knew nothing about including the agenda. When I signed up for my badge on arrival we got a conference guide with all the hours of the session but no sessions. Very secret, very cloak and dagger. This created a huge buzz but also upped the expectation quite a bit… So with the tabled laid out and the expectation high I sat down and waited ...

I’ve been installing both the Windows 8 Developer Preview and the Visual Studio Ultimate 11 Developer Preview. Go check out my posts for screenshots! Windows 8 Developer Preview Installation Screenshots Visual Studio Ultimate 11 Developer Preview Installation Screenshots ...

I've just installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview. These are some first impressions: Installation of the preview was quite smooth and didn't take too long. It took a few minutes to extract the files onto a virtual image, but feature installation then seemed to happen almost instantaneously (according to the feedback on the screen). The installation routine then went into a preparation cycle that took two or three minutes. Then the virtual machine rebooted and after a couple of minutes more preparation, ...

I am like everyone else when it comes to Preview OS Software. I don’t want it on installed on my primary machine and I don’t want to lug around another laptop to try stuff. I am not a fan of booting of VHD (which I will explain in a second). Scott Hanselman made a great post on how to do this if you are interested however. The main issue that I see with this approach is that the bootloader on my MAIN MACHINE is replaced with the Windows 8 Preview one. Yikes! I don’t want any preview software with ...

So we’re into Day 2 of Build, and the keynote this morning is talking about server and cloud aspects of Windows 8. I’m looking forward to the sessions this afternoon to get some deeper dives. But let’s reflect over yesterday first – Build Day 1. Yes, there was a tablet given away. But those focusing on the “new toy” are missing the bigger message, the larger paradigm shift, the impact on the future of what we’re seeing. I sound melodramatic saying that, but its true – the way development for the ...

Just finished downloading the Windows 8 and tried installing it on the Virtual PC and there I land into trouble..

Phew my first windows 8 error - HAL_INITIALIAZATION_FAILED

No clue what so ever what the issue

 

At the Build conference this month Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, their next operating system. Windows 8 is a huge paradigm shift from previous versions of Windows and with that comes changes to the developer story. Join us for this special Winnipeg .NET User Group event where D'Arcy Lussier, Microsoft Practice Lead at Online Business Systems, shows you what the future of Windows application development looks like for the client, the server, and the cloud! We'll be giving away a free conference pass ...

So I’ve played with the developer preview of windows 8 today. I’m trying to like Metro. But, at least on the desktop, it feels wrong. In fact, its not really windows anymore. In the sense “windows” are less in favour compared to full screen apps. It really should be called Boxes 1.0 I played around a bit with the new visual studio with metro templates….. great tools as usual. But…designing metro apps feels like a subset. The variety of apps in the windows world would find it hard to translate into ...

I kept getting this error whenever I try and do a Windows Update. This used to happen, particularly if I haven’t done a WU for a very long time. The usual suspects are anti-virus, firewall and sometimes, pending windows updates which would get resolved when I do a restart of the machine. I am running a Windows 7 SP1 64 Bit OS. This time, I connected a machine after almost 6 months and had a truck load of windows updates to be done. I tried restarting multiple times but every time, I run the WU wizard, ...

Finally a follow-up to my original post! With more detailed instructions! I would like to note that a lot of the functionality of a Virtual Machine is not currently working, at least I have not figured it out... however it is functional! What doesn't work: Seamless Mouse Integration Video Drivers - Still can get video just is not detecting my Wide Screen How To: 1. Download Windows 8 from the Windows Dev Center http://dev.windows.com (Download Page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... ...

Tonight Windows 8 was released (LEGALLY) at least the Developer Preview edition was! You are able to get your own copy at http://dev.windows.com/. I have an interest in programming but an even greater interest in learning some of the new administrative tools available and things I can dig into a bit more and learn about Windows 8. I decided I was going to install it as a Virtual Machine. When I mounted the ISO it crashes upon startup, so I knew there had to be a setting somewhere I could tweak and ...

Fantastic afternoon session by Jensen Harris on how to create a successful metro app. One of the big pushes will be the Windows 8 marketplace. Part of having a successful app is ensuring it adheres to best practices on design and usability to ensure a fantastic user experience. Because Windows 8 will have such a different approach to UX, including touch-first, its important that considerations are made up front. Here are my notes. Metro Style Design Use the Templates and Guidelines Templates will ...

On August 31st I was pleasantly surprised by Microsoft when they notified me of receiving the Community Contributor Award. Here is an excerpt of the email: “Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that your contributions to Microsoft online technical communities have been recognized with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award. The Microsoft Community Contributor Award is reserved for participants who have made notable contributions in Microsoft online community forums such as TechNet, MSDN ...

As an MCT it is always exciting when I travel to conferences because it becomes a reunion. Well, one more chance this year to make it so, but this time (unlike the last MCT Summit) I am also presenting. Thanks to Chris Harrison (@GeekTrainer) for the gentle nudge! Follow @MCTSummitNA too! The topics I will be presenting are (at least the ones I got confirmation on): Requirements Management: From Vision to Mission to Success Session Level: 300 Team Foundation Server and SharePoint Technologies have ...

I usually do a bullet points from major conference events like this one from Mix11. The purpose of this post is to get you up to speed quickly with news and links you may enjoy. Build – Day 1 Keynote Windows 8 takes about half the amount of RAM to run compared to Windows 7. Windows 7 usage by consumers is now greater than Windows XP. Like the Metro Interface? Well, you better as the interface is similar to the Windows Phone 7. You can unlock your touch-enabled PC by tapping certain spots on a picture. ...

I'm sure that over time you've run into the dreaded "File transport does not have read/write privileges for receive location "C:\Flatfile\SAPTestIn\".". Usually you simply go to the folder and either give the BizTalk account full permission (bad) or Everyone full permission (really bad). So for a production environment, what is the absolute minimum permissions required? For the Receive File Adapter the explicit permission are: NTFS Attribute Property Name DELETE Delete Files FILE_READ_DATA List Folder ...

Demostration of Windows 8 Lots of great stuff going on with Windows 7 installs Touch First, Mouse Second – Wow, that is going to be interesting Demo of a netbook from two years ago running Windows 8 using only 380mb of RAM, nice. Steven even said it was his daily use machine for a year, Microsoft needs to buy him a nicer machine. Windows 8 Start still feels like Windows Mobile and Windows Media Center had a child We decided every time they said “SUPER”, we are drinking They are very nervous and the ...

As usual when I attend a conference, I like to take quick notes to remember what it was all about and take some time later to analyze it. Since Windows 8 is going to be the next big things, let me share my notes with you! Today is a launch Start by talking about Win7 450000000 copies of win7 sold Win7 usage is finally greater than XP usage 520’000’000 people using Windows Live services World of computing is changing especially since 1995, last big Windows overhaul Touch is very important in Win8 ...

Its coming. Brand new OS for those of us Microsoft fans and also the masses. Check out this post for the news from Build: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/... Its going to have a new OS and also support new processers. Its really a great leap for the Windows OS and about time too. And the touch experience should be awesome, building on lessons learned ...

Our engine is written in almost pure C++ with some part in C# that run on Mono. The code base is huge which mans that we’re primarily looking for platforms that support C++ development. Looking at the current set of platforms on the market this is really not a big issue with Windows Phone being the only platform that does currently not support native development. Sadly this means that we’re currently not planning a Windows Phone release in the near future. Looking at other platforms, about a year ...

What's a Windows Phone Camp? A free, full day event chock-full of everything you need to know to develop a Windows Phone application. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or just getting started with .NET development this full-day event is for you. Interested in profit? We'll also lead discussions on how to monetize your applications and generate profits with your apps. Don't miss the new Windows Phone 7.5 (codename "Mango") features as well - with detailed sessions in the afternoon around Fast Application ...

We're 10 minutes away from the Build keynote, and I'm going to be live blogging the event. Now, to be clear, you shouldn't just read this - I mean, the keynotes are streaming live online. But I want to capture my thoughts on the announcements as they happen. So without further ado, let's start!And we're done! Great keynote, lots of content! However, we still don't have our schedule! LOL...off for lunch.11:16 - The path to RTM: Beta, RC, RTM, GA - Driven by quality and not a date, I'm ok with that.11:11 ...

Today was Day 0 of the Microsoft Build conference here in Anaheim - a day for attendees to travel, get their registration done early, and set up their session schedule for the remainder of the week.But this conference is quite different. Microsoft is holding its cards very tightly around Windows 8, and no information will really be available until after the initial keynote tomorrow. Normally when you register for a conference you already have access to the sessions - not so here. In fact the Build ...

The world of Bash is new to me so for those going through the same experience I thought I would list a few things to save time. Some of these are specific to me, while others may have general use. Useful Commands Open root folder - This opens up windows explorer at the root location. explorer . Create a folder mkdir foldername Get a directory listing ls Execute a script without specifying the .sh file extension Once you have written your script files it can get annoying to have to keep specifying ...

Download Demo - LINQpad Query In this blog post I’ll be showing you how to query TFS using LINQpad. 1. Download LINQpad Those who are familiar with LINQpad know its benefits and ease of use, i would urge others to try it. You can download LINQpad and read more about it from here => http://www.linqpad.net/ 2. Download TFS SDK I have a blog post on where and how to download the TFS SDK from => here 3. Querying TFS using LINQpad Open LINQpad Select Query Properties by selecting Query from menu ...

In the world of custom web application development a critical component of our success is the hosting environment and services. We can choose to deploy our web applications using 3rd party hosting providers such as GoDaddy.com, Rackspace, DiscountASP.NET, or another provider, or we can choose to deploy to on premise servers either virtual or physical. In either case the web application must be serviced up to consumers by a web server software such as Internet Information Service (IIS), which is included ...

//BUILD - 2 Well... here I am in Anaheim, on 9/11, a day early for the Billy Hollis PreCon tomorrow. Sitting here wondering what this week is going to bring. I believe there are a few people I count as friends that know the information already, but I'm not one, and there are darned few. The people with Blue Badges have kept their word and kept very quiet. About the only thing I can say for sure is that most of the main players changed their signature blocks about the time that the whole "wait until ...

On the 9th Sep, the SQL Azure team announced that the new version of SQL Azure had just been release. In this version not only the SQL Azure engine had been upgraded, the SQL Azure Management Portal had been upgraded massively. Below are the features and improvements available in this release: Foundational updates for scalability and performance. Co-administrator support, which enables customers to specify multiple database administrators. Increased capability for using spatial data types, which ...

Although Android tablets have been gaining increasing market share, they are still not as popular as the iPad, could Microsoft challenge the tablet market with their new OS Windows 8? It certainly looks very likely, Microsoft have always had success with successive operating systems after a major revamp, take Windows Vista and Windows 7 as an example, the latter builds on the success or rather the failure of the previous OS. Windows 8 looks to establish itself as the OS of choice for tablets by building ...

We have a webscraper ASP.Net application, that worked fine on developers and test environments, but didn’t work on some machines with more strict security settings. HttpWebRequest failed with System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server It start working when my colleague added the site that application tried to access to his “Trusted Sites” zone using Internet Explorer. What we couldn’t understand, how it affected an application that ran under DIFFERENT account. I didn’t find any ...

In this Issue: Kunal Chowdhury, David Anson, Cheryl Simmons, Ryan Alford, Peter Kuhn, Ollie Riches, Mike Hole, Allen Lee, WindowsPhoneGeek, Mike Taulty, Sumit Dutta, Asim Sajjad, Dhananjay Kumar, and Vikram Pendse. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight 5 PInvoke fun - System Font Dialog" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Adding a map image to a secondary live tile" Mike Hole Expression Blend: "Silverlight 4 – Custom Busy Indicator Using PathListBox" Ryan Alford Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain ...

Most of our computers have sophisticated desktop locking tricks. Even in the older style Windows 98 we did have 'Password protected screensavers'. Why were they for? When we step away of computers there is a dire need to protect the data and the programs that are running in our computers from unauthorized access and prying eyes. Windows provide a quick shortcut Windows + L to lock the workstation. So you save a few milli-seconds from using CTRL+ALT+DELETE and choosing Lock Workstation/Lock Computer ...

Come on, who doesn’t love a good cheeseburger? Ok, I’ll rephrase that. Other than the Chik-fil-a cows and vegetarians, who doesn’t like a good cheeseburger? Check out this episode of the Grapevine TV’s Developer’s Kitchen and watch me demonstrate how to prepare and grill up my Duffy’s Paradise Cheeseburgers! mmmm tasty! Looking for additional recipes from your favorite .NET personalities? Check out the .NET Guru’s Can Cook cookbook for a wide variety of tempting appetizers, dishes, sweets and drinks. ...

Today, We deployed the “David Blaine” version of the TB Module for our EMR solution here at IDI (http://idi.mak.ac.ug). This was mainly for bug fixes and usability improvements based on the feedback that we received from users in the past few weeks. Some of the improvements were related to performance. We had to fine-tune some of our Linq statements in some places to enable better queries to be generated by our ORM. We also added some lookup dialogs that present certain information that would be ...

2011 has been a very exciting year for me so far. I was awarded the Microsoft Silverlight MVP. I was renewed as the DZone MVB. I was awarded as a GeeksWithBlog Influencer. I won the CodeProject Windows Phone 7 Competition. I’ve been invited to speak about Silverlight at UserGroups as well as several major conferences such as SSWUG, CodeStock and devLINK. My first e-Book on Producing and Consuming Silverlight in an OData application was published. I’ve been asked to be a technical editor for two Silverlight ...

Introduction You might have noticed that the Silverlight 5 (Release Candidate) is out. One of the new features included in the RC is the ability to call P/Invoke. In this short demo, we will write a Silverlight 5 application that uses the feature. Tools needed: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1 is required to develop a Silverlight 5 RC Application. After you have installed VS2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1, then you will need to download and install ...

In this Issue: Ollie Riches, Tony Champion, Kunal Chowdhury, WindowsPhoneGeek, Jeremy Likness, Mike Taulty, Jesse Liberty, Sumit Dutta, Asim Sajjad, Justin Angel, and Shawn Wildermuth(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Creating a Multi-Click Event in Silverlight 5" Tony Champion WP7: "Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Statistics" Justin Angel Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has posted their top 5 for last week: SilverlightShow for August 29 - Sept 04, 2011 Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers ...

Check out the Top Five most popular news at SilverlightShow for SilverlightShow Top 5 News for August 29 - Sept 04, 2011. Here are the top 5 news on SilverlightShow for last week: Windows Phone 7 MVVM ViewModel ideas Silverlight 5 Release Candidate Available 29 ways to make your WP7 app killer and make money Top 5 Most Read SilverlightShow Ebooks for August, 2011 Installing Mango on Samsung Omnia 7 Visit and bookmark SilverlightShow. Stay in the 'Light ...

Well, quite a lot actually. The fact that the official agenda is completely empty (they're not even telling us who is doing the keynote ontheir website) leaves us with wondering what will happen. Of course, this means that people are getting more and more anxious to see what is going on and the blogosphere is filled with rumors. Which ones will be true is something we'll learn next week. I expect we'll get a lot of information about Jupiter. The new development platform is something that interests ...

DECLARE @RegLoc VARCHAR(100) select @RegLoc='SOFTWARE\Microsoft... NT\CurrentVersion' EXEC [master].[dbo].[xp_regread] @rootkey='HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', @key=@RegLoc, @value_name='ProductName' The above code will return the installed version of windows on which the current instance of Sql Server is running. references: http://www.mssqlcity.com/Ar... ...