Next week in User Group Land... The Twin Cities Languages User Group presents: Comparing Objective-C to Java/.NET (Sept. 10th, 2009) Objective-C, a fossil of a language from the '80s is resurgent: the language of choice for Mac development and, currently, the only language for iPhone development. In this talk, I'll cover some of the history of Objective-C & Cocoa (the Apple standard library for Mac/iPhone), how it differs to languages like Java or C# that you may be familiar with and show you...
I was looking over the Dragon*Con website this evening to see what kind of craziness will be going on this year, and who the guests are... William Shatner... cool, Leonard Nimoy... cool, never actually seen those two in the same place at the same time. various other Star Trek, BSG and Stargate people... cool (no Robert Picardo though... bummer) Looks like most of the Firefly cast have other plans (although Shephard Book will be there) various comic book artists and writers, including Michael Golden...
Recently (1 year or so) I started applying .NET WCF into some functionalities across my servers, one thing I noticed on my learning process is the different ways we have for having both the client and the service to be aware of the contracts (both the Service and the Data contract). THE PROBLEM: In design mode we have to have a reliable way for having the same signature for the service contract definition both on the client and the service as well as the data contracts. One way to achieve this is...
This past weekend was pretty awesome; the second annual St. Louis Day of .NET conference went underway. 2 DAYS! Can you believe it? It is 2 DAYS of (almost) all-you-can-eat technical sessions; and all for a minuscule $100 (or $125 for those late registrations). First off, some disclaimer: my comment on STLDODN ‘09 will be biased. Why? Because I participated in it and I’m rather involved in it, so of course I can’t quite badmouth it :). Organizers for the St. Louis Day of .NET 2009 are: Kevin Grossnicklaus,...
In a previous post, I showed how to submit an AJAX form in MVC with the jQuery Thickbox and the built-in MVC AJAX helpers. If you read that post first, it will show the complete context for how to simply submit an AJAX form that is being rendered inside a jQuery Thickbox with built-in MVC AJAX helpers. But what if you want to stick to a pure jQuery solution? That is also simple enough to do. Instead of using the Ajax.BeginForm() method, you can use the jQuery Form Plugin. The code is almost identical...
Someone out in the ether asked a question that I have heard many times and i just shake my head. With "Dublin" on the horizon as the future distributed application server role for Windows, does it make sense for Microsoft to call this new role "Windows BizTalk Services"? my answer is ... I don't think they want to do that. Biztalk and Dublin are different products. Biztalk is an application integration messaging server. Dublin is an application server. Biztalk integrates applications. Dublin runs...
And that mind is ... well ... mine. My name is Ralph L Wheaton Jr. and I am a senior developer with 18+ years of professional experience in software architecture/development/design, working in manufacturing, IVR, banking and, most recently, healthcare. Currently, I am focused on Microsoft technologies, specializing in Biztalk and .Net development, though I have worked on various other technologies including Unix scripting, Informix, Fortran and C/C++. My software development career started when my...
WCF Proxy need to be closed explicitly and if you are using the using() statement, you have the possibility of loosing the original exception. You can find details about this issue in the following posts. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/b95b91c7-d498-446c-b38f-ef132989c154 http://geekswithblogs.net/marcel/archive/2007/05/01/112159.aspx Marc Gravell presented a great idea to have a wrapper so as to overcome this issue. http://marcgravell.blogspot.com/2008/11/dontdontuse-using.html...
The Regina Technology Community welcomes Nick Nastic! Topic: SQL Server 2008 R2 and project codename "Madison" SQL Server 2008 R2 is the next generation of the Microsoft SQL Server database platform, planned for release in the first half of 2010. SQL Server 2008 R2 expands on the value delivered in SQL Server 2008 to help organizations improve IT and developer efficiency with: new and enhanced tools for the management of applications and multiple servers master data services complex event processing...
I am happy to announce the launch of the Regina Technology Community. The Regina Technology Community has formed from a consortium of local special interest groups: • .NET User Group • IT Pro User Group • SQL Server User Group • SharePoint User Group We recognize that no technology is an island. We work in technological ecosystems that requires an understanding of many disciplines. Having one community allows us to deliver a wide spectrum of content to our members. It also provides the forum for...
Joining the let’s-find-out club When it comes to a new idea, a mentor once told me that my feelings and past experiences are lousy tools for evaluating that new idea. What he said was something to the effect of, “You need to join the let’s-find-out club. Will that idea work? I don’t know, let’s find out” At the same time, if you are using someone’s already successful system and that system has worked for others, but not for you, just maybe, you’re not really following their system. And don’t say,...
The Winnipeg SharePoint UG is back for another year of events and presentations! This Month: Enhancing Connected SharePoint Lists in Outlook 2007 Eric Legault, Microsoft Outlook MVP It's really easy to link an Events, Contacts or Tasks list in WSS to Outlook 2007. But what if you had custom list fields or list views? These elements are not supported! But by using Visual Studio Tools for Office to build an Outlook COM Add-In consuming SharePoint Web Services, you can easily design a custom Form Region...
OK, I have wound down enough to get my thoughts together. First, let me just say how utterly impressed I was with the event. I can’t think of another conference that gives you so much for so little. This conference was on par with Mix09 and it was ~$100 a person! The content was top-notch as well. Tim Barcz’s talk on mocking, Phil Japikse’s talk on Patterns, Chris Patterson’s talk on Event Driven Architecture and Clint’s talk about starting a company (what little I could see from the hall since there...
In this Issue: Rick Barraza, Colin Blair, Joe Stagner, Chris Klug, Andrea Boschin, Laurent Bugnion, and Al Pascual. Shoutout: Blendables announced a New Desklighter Build in Labs , but I can't seem to get the link to open for me... give it a shot and see how it looks :) From SilverlightCream.com: Advanced Render Techniques with WriteableBitmaps If you ever wanted to wipe that smirk off the Mona Lisa, now's your chance... I thoughtRick Barraza's last post was fun to play with but wow is this cool......
Topeka DNUG is free for anyone to attend! Mark your calendars now! SPEAKER: Rob Reynolds has been programming in .NET since the early days of 1.0. He is a .NET Developer at FHLBank Topeka, a bank where the doors are always locked and there’s no money inside. He holds a bachelor’s degree in MIS from Kansas State University (don’t hate!) and enjoys spending time with his wife and kid when his wife hasn’t locked him in the basement to work on any of the OSS projects he manages. TOPIC: Automated Builds:...
Monday night and sorry but won’t be finishing this tail up. I am sorry; I am sorry but, after waiting for an hour and half today for interview for maintence job (yes a maintence job), getting my hair cut and putting on good look out fit. I was mentally tired. And that’s not counting my normal job search computer time. Well back to the tail of my first grandson. Friday the 21st, we got up and left for the hospital around 10:00 AM, visited my daughter, No grand kid yet! As there was only allowed 3...
I am proud to announce, that I won a prize from Community-Credit in July. If you speak in the community, blog, help organize things or just attend meetings, go to their website and sign up and get your chance to win some stupid prizes. :0)...
OK. I am not a designer. However, a few years ago I was forced to get good at CSS and have gotten to the point that I feel confident I could create almost ANY look and feel using CSS and table-less design. There are some things that I do regularly to help me out. 1. Start at the top. Start with your master page and style that up really good. That will be your base. 2. Start with * { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; Margin: 0px; Padding: 0px; font-size: 1.0em; } It is at the top of almost...
Astoria team has released next CTP of ADO.NET Data Services 1.5. In comparison with previous release, CTP2 is really big work and we can observe now already that ADO.NET Data Services becomes even more powerful platform. As a whole it is visible, that development of Astoria is directed on more closer integration with Silverlight and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. What’s new in CTP2: Projection. It is new feature for Astoria which has appeared only in this CTP. This feature allows to build more difficult...
I installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on an HP Pavilion Entertainment Laptop with 6 GB RAM on an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9000 @ 2.00 GHz processor. A Little History: I have been a pro-Microsoft guy for a long, long time. However, Vista makes me sad. I have not enjoyed Vista and have resisted using it. Hearing some of the hype and learning about some of the features of W7, however, piqued my interest. So far I really enjoy it. I love the "Pin to Taskbar", "Jump List", and "Pin to Jump List" features....
OK. Now that I have time to look at it, I also added an installer (MSI format) for everyone. You can download the installer and not have to worry about the source code anymore. This will allow you to more quickly get up and running with it and use it out of the box. You can download the latest source code and installer from http://xafdsl.codeplex.com. Thanks...
So lets say you want to test early development builds in a continuously integrated system. You want to take all your developers code and execute it on a seperate box and be able to test client access to your system remotely. Yeah you could put it up in staging on Azure but maybe you dont want to do that yet. Maybe you just want some testers bangin away at it from some remote client. Well right now thats kinda hard since the development fabric carries a restriction to deny request from non-localhost...
Saas vs. S+S Saas is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can benefit from the economies of scale of the data and behavior of that architecture being built and hosted in the cloud by a third party in a multitenant fashion. Software + Services is an architectural paradigm where a solution architecture can achieve some of the same economies of scale as Saas while simultaneously benefiting from the synergies and efficiencies of the data and behavior of that architecture being partly...
What is Sharepoint? SharePoint is Microsoft's product in the Enterprise Portal, Content Management and Colloboration space. SharePoint is actually 2 products. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) - This is what is bundled into Windows Server 2003 and later versions and includes the set of standard site templates for building web sites in SharePoint. In addition WSS includes version control, alerts, RSS feeds ans task notifications. WSS is bundled into Windows Server 2003 and greater and I believe that...
I created this blog to help me keep track of (and pass on) things I learn while delving into the realms of Silverlight, WPF, C#, Expression (Blend, Web, etc). Hopefully someone may find this as useful as I will...
A relatively common scenario you might want in your application is the ability for a user to click a link that pops up a little dialog to submit some information. For example, let’s say you have this form where the user could click the “Contact this person” link: After clicking this link, it pops up the following dialog where the user can type in their message: Finally, once the user submits their message, it shows a little confirmation: This scenario can be implemented with MVC with very few lines...
Since the beginning of July, I've been working on a java project. The language is very close to C#, although it has some minor irritating differences, like the lack good generic support, extension methods and closures. The big difference however is not in the language, the tools, the libraries or the utilities. One of the big differences I've seen is the community. I've been on many projects that have worked exclusively with Microsoft tools, libraries and (god forbid) examples. When the subject is...
I found this collection of vector arrows through Robby Ingebretsen. The designer Sander Baumann created 56 different arrows in vector format (Adobe Illustrator). I converted these arrows in XAML. The arrows are available in the different formats (right click and choose “Save Target As”): DrawingBrush (WPF only): You can use the arrow icon as a brush to “paint” an element, typically a Rectangle. If the painted element is resized, the DrawingBrush will also resize seamlessly thanks to its vector nature....
The next regularly-scheduled meeting of the Phoenix Silverlight User Group is Wednesday September 2. We meet at Interface Technical Training at roughly Central and Thomas in downtown Phoenix beginning with pizza and socializing at 6PM meeting after and running until 8PM. This month Les Brown, a consultant at Sogeti, will be presenting "The differences of (WCF, ADO Data Service, and RIA) in relation to data binding and use Silverlight toolkit controls as a primer". Get another great presentation from...
wow, just wow... http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090831-disney-acquire-marvel.html Not sure how I feel about this. I don't know that it will be "the death of Marvel" as some have predicted. Everyone cried when Hasbro bought WOTC, and that seems to have turned out fine. (For the record, NOBODY cried when WOTC bought TSR, but that's another story.) Now if we could just get Quentin Tarantino to start doing DC/JLA movies... the final seal will be broken...
I am the newest member of the INETA membership team (yay!). I've worked with INETA for over 5 years as a user group leader and have met some really great people as a result. I look forward to working with them and meeting even more (I met a few new people on the very first day I was appointed). I will be focusing on the states of WV, TN and KY. Our user group in western Virginia (Roanoke Valley .NET User Group – RV.NUG) has used some of the resources that INETA provides, but certainly not all of...
When trying to edit page layout in web content mangement templates it gives error this due to incorrect URL that was set there during a patch and solution is to update this url I have found a nice tool to do that in the following blog or you can create your own. http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/08/fix-publishing-pages-page-layout-url.html...
If you are using Windows Vista or above and also Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smart Phone, you would have definitely stumbled upon Windows Mobile Device Center. It is a one stop place for synchronizing your phone data with your PC i.e. Contacts, Tasks, Emails, Calendar etc., Today, while I was setting up my new phone, I accidentally deleted the SIM contacts and worst, synchronized it with my PC using the WMDC and gosh, all the contacts from my Outlook got removed as well. It was frustrating and kept...
A nice free toolkit from MS help administrate and manage Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Windows® SharePoint® Services version 3.0. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=412A9EF1-3358-4420-B820-0CA3F4641651&displaylang=en...
Steps to make a disaster back up: Record which Web applications are associated with the SSPs · Perform a full back up of the SSPs. · Completely stop the farm by stopping the services associated with Office SharePoint Server 2007 and by stopping Internet Information Services (IIS). · Back up the following databases by using SQL Server 2005 tools: o Content databases o Central Administration content database o Configuration database o Windows SharePoint Services Help Search database o Back Up the SQL...
Although this post is called Scale Transform Behaviour you could use any transform / animation in its place. The purpose is to have a slider control in a menu be able to alter the scale of any number of controls within MVVM views. This behaviour allows you to add any Framework Elements to a list of attached controls by adding an attached property of GlobalScaleTransformBehaviour.IsScaled to your controls. Public Class GlobalScaleTransformBehaviour Private Shared sm_AttachedControls As List(Of FrameworkElement)...
The Baton Rouge Area SQL Server User Group has started up a technology live meeting during lunch time. Please see Patrick Leblanc’s blog for more details in participating both as a presenter and as a participate. This is available from anywhere and is not restricted to Louisiana. Also, even though it has “SQL” in the name the topics can veer off of SQL Server topics such as a topic on .NET development. This is a great avenue to test out your presentation skills since it is a short live meeting event....
Even though we just hosted SQL Saturday #17 in Baton Rouge recently, we are already planning for next year. If you are interested in speaking or attending, go ahead and register for SQL Saturday #28 in Baton Rouge on August 14, 2010. We have several enhancements planning for this year based on feedback and our experiences. I look forward to assisting in the planning and look forward to seeing you there! http://www.sqlsaturday.com/eventhome.aspx?eventid=33...
This past week I was reminded of the “fun” in which hosting an application within SharePoint can present. We are developing a custom application for our client in which some areas must reside within a SharePoint environment. We did quite a bit of our development in this first iteration within a web application in order to pull things together and present the client with a working end-to-end “prototype.” The architecture is composed of several layers all of which will be “in process” communications...
OK. So I finally found some time in my schedule to back to this project. I found and updated the issues with the code generation when I changed out all the namespace. Feel free to download the next version and let me know what you think. Now when you create your Object Model and save it, the code files are generated as in the demo. Let me know if it still doesn’t work for you and I will see what I can do. Thanks again...
In this Issue: CorrinaB, UXPassion, and Nikhil Kothari Shoutouts: Frank La Vigne cracked open the SketchFlow Feedback File Format using my favorite editor :) ... oh you just know we're going to see toys dealing with that! Walt Ritscher's Shazzam is getting some legs: Shazzam – as Seen in Silverlight 3 Programmers Reference ... congrats Walt! From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 3 Application Themes Unless you've not been around Silverlight, you know CorrinaB is the genius behind all the great themes,...
This is a part of EXT JS Tutorial In this part of the Ext JS tutorial I would like to show the Ext.MessageBox class. In the first part, where I showed how to add Ext library into MVC project, I have put there a Ext.Msg.alert to test the installation. Actually the Ext.Msg it is an alias for Ext.MessageBox class. Both can be used interchangeably. Ext.Msg.prompt Ok, so let’s create a first dialog to see how it’s look like. Let it be a Ext.Msg.prompt. This method displays a message box prompting to user...
I’ve added a new webcast on http://www.cloudcasts.net. This webcast shows how the WS-ReliableMessaging standard can be used in WCF to increase the reliability of message transmission across unreliable transports. The Fiddler tool will be used to examine how WCF creates a reliable session, and how messages and message acknowledgements are transmitted across the wire. The effects of blocking messages will be examined with reliable messaging turned off and on, and with the ordered delivery options enabled...
To migrate lotus notes to SharePoint here you are the steps and some useful links: Steps: Use Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino to start the process of analyzing Domino applications: a. Identify which applications are still active and which applications should be archived. b. Eliminate administration and mail applications from the migration or integration list. c. Determine which applications should be migrated and which applications should be integrated with Microsoft technologies....
Somtimes the solution status keeps as deploying, seems that it is stucked to solve that we can do the following: Run stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs on all the servers in the farm Restart the timer service...
Here you are a list of nice SharePoint resources: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/default.aspx http://www.sharepointreviews.com/ http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/default.aspx...
I recently bought a new Windows Mobile phone, Benq E72, and one reason it won over a Samsung model is the standard mini-USB connector for data and charging (hint, hint, Nokia). Why does this matter? Apart from charging off any laptop, and off an 4 x AA battery pack I already have for emergency charging, it can even charge off the weirdest devices. Here it is with a standard USB to mini USB lead charging from my Philips DVD recorder which has a USB port for displaying photos and playing MP3s. If you...
A new version of Service pack 2 is ready to be downloaded after solving the issue of expiration http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/06/25/service-pack-2-update.aspx...
Changing the passwords from time to time is a healthy thing to do. Here you are a nice link to do that in SharePoint accounts. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838...
We have faced an issue before that some users when opening a document in SharePoint document library the internet explorer crashes. After investigation I have found that this issue most pobably happens due to existance of several versions of office on the machine. To solve that check these links: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929360 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938888...
Geekswithblogs Gets a Facelift
Celebrating the five year anniversary of the first post on Geekswithblogs, the GWB team has launched a new look and functionality for the community designed to help the community continue to grow and increase interaction amongst bloggers.
The new design offers bloggers and readers the ability to quickly check recent posts, popular posts, Twitter users from the community, community news, and featured bloggers.
The redesign also makes it easier for bloggers to find tutorials on how to get the most from their blogs, support information, and a community-wide tag cloud.
We hope that you will enjoy the new features and look. Here’s to another five years and to everyone that makes up Geekswithblogs!
GWB Goes to PDC ’08 – Let Us “Tag Your Top”
Geekswithblogs is proud to be a Silver Media Sponsor for the upcoming PDC ’08! This will be a great opportunity for face-to-face interaction with the developer community.
If you happen to be going to Los Angeles for the PDC, and we highly suggest you do, make sure to swing by the Geekswithblogs booth (#100) in the Expo Hall to say hi! We will have some amazing looking Geekswithblogs stickers hot off the press ready to “tag your top” – so bring your laptop by to take it from drab to fab!
GWB Podcasting from PDC ‘08
Make sure to look for fellow Geekswithbloggers Chris Williams and D’Arcy Lussier roaming around the floor. They will be playing the part of on-site GWB ambassadors and roving reporters; stop and chat with them!
We’d like to know what you think about the upcoming podcast. We are thinking of firing PodcastStudio.net (the official podcast of GWB) back up after the event and would like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
GWB and PDC ’08 – We’ll Make You Famous!
A major part of our display at our PDC booth is going to include a video featuring none other than the Geekswithblogs community members! We’re proud to have you as contributors to a large, healthy blogging community and want to give you some additional exposure.
Here’s what to do; record yourself saying “I’m a geek with a blog, and I…”. Simply fill in the rest with something interesting about yourself. It could be anything from what technology you love, what you like to do in your spare time, where you live, etc.
Examples include:
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I rock at ASP.NET.
- I'm a geek with a blog, and I support my development community by presenting at user groups.
- I'm a geek with a blog, and I love playing guitar.
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I volunteer to help the homeless.
- I’m a geek with a blog, and I chug energy drinks.
First 30 bloggers that send in a video with at least 5 statements get a ultra-stylish Geekswithblogs t-shirt with their blog URL on the back!
Stay tuned for FTP information for uploading your files!