Amal's blog on ASP.NET, C#, Windows Mobile, Silverlight ..................

My Blog got a permanent home

2011-04-30T20:53:00.000+05:30

Finally I was able to relocate my blog from rented premises to a permanent one. From now on I will be blogging at http://blog.techrepository.in and all my previous post will also be available there.

Also along with that I have hosted a new site www.techrepository.in, which I will use to post latest happenings in the technical world, tips and tricks, tutorials, faq, online quizzes etc etc.

I has been very fortunate with the visitors my site till now and expects support for this initiative. After all what I am now is all because of all you you out there.

So till next time, happy blogging.....

My Session at Trivandrum Windows Azure Camp – Preview

2011-04-30T02:16:00.000+05:30

I will be speaking on Cloud computing and Windows Azure at the Windows Azure camp conducted by Microsoft in Trivandrum on 30th of April. For more details, please visit the K-MUG site. I am hoping to kick off the session by giving an introduction to cloud computing and then will explain the current scenarios for deploying the appliciations.

After that I will be spending the next half hour explaining the Azure architecture, its various components and its working. I am also hoping to show some demos also along with this. I will round up my talk with an indepth coverage of the management portal and the developer experience.

So see you folks at the venue and do drop in if you have any queries

Windows Azure Camp at Trivandrum on 30th April

2011-04-19T23:12:00.005+05:30

Microsoft is organizing the Windows Azure camps in various cities across India.

As part of it, K-MUG in association with Microsoft is conducting a day long event on Windows Azure at Thiruvananthapuram on April 30, 2011.

If you are interested in learning more about cloud computing and Microsoft's offerings for that environment, come and join me and my fellow speakers on 30th

Venue

Zenith Hall, UST Global, Bhavani,Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram

Agenda

Cloud Computing and Azure Overview
Azure Architecture
Azure Management Portal
Services and Tools Needed
Create and debug Azure Application
Deploy application in Azure
Lunch Break
Moving ASP.NET application to Azure
Moving SQL Express database to Azure
SQL Windows Azure App Fabric Cache

Speakers

Amal Dev works as a Senior Software Engineer with Gemini Software Solutions, Technopark. An avid techie who constantly articles in his blog, http://inquisitive-instincts.blogspot.com/ .He has been working with .NET technologies since its inception and his area of interests include C#, ASP.NET, WP7, Silverlight.

Shiju Varghese, Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET, is a Technical Architect on the Microsoft .Net technology stack with a focus on web application development and Domain-Driven Design. He has been working with .Net Technologies since beta version. Shiju focuses on C#, ASP.Net MVC, Entity Framework, Windows Azure, REST, WCF and Unity. Shiju holds number of Microsoft certifications including MCP, MCAD, MCTS, and MCPD: Web. He blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/

Yanesh Tyagi is a technical architect with Millennium Consultants. He has extensive 16 years of experience working on different technologies, specially Microsoft Technologies. He has been with .NET since it's early days. Yanesh has worked in many domains inclusing BFSI, Travel, Education, Manufacturing, eCommerce etc. Yanesh is also involved in some open source projects.

Microsoft DreamSpark Yatra coming to Kochi

2011-03-28T18:21:00.004+05:30

Student Chapter of K-MUG is conducting Dreamspark Yatra at Kochi in association with Microsoft. The focus of the event is to help students to know more about the latest technologies and which in turn helps in kick start their careers.K-MUG students chapter is lead by the Microsoft Student Partners – the student volunteers who are specially selected by Microsoft on an annual basis.

About Dreamspark Yatra

Dreamspark Yatra (DSY) is a Microsoft India initiative empowering students who are passionate about technology to get an insightful overview of the current trends in the software industry. As a part of this national campaign, we bring the brightest students and professionals of the IT world and put them right in front of you - to discuss about technology, careers in computer science, give technical presentations and some exciting demos. For more details, please visit Dreamspark Yatra and for more details about the Kochi event can be found here Dreamspark Yatra – Kochi

Venue

RAJAGIRI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY, Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi, Kerala

Agenda

09:30 - 09:45 Registration Confirmation
09:45 - 10:00 Welcome & Inauguration
10:00 - 11:00 Cloud Computing
11:00 - 12:00 Windows Programming - Some strategies to build a career
12.00 - 12:30 Microsoft Academic Programs
12.30 - 01:00 Windows Phone 7
01.00 - 01:15 Closing Ceremony

Attendee Benefits

Participation Certificate from Microsoft (Entry pass is mandatory for the certificate, please take a print out of the pass after registration)
DreamSpark Access Key to download free genuine Microsoft softwares
Microsoft goodies
Prizes and more surprises!
Opportunity to interact with professionals

Speakers

Satish Sangameswaran is Head – Student Outreach Programs, for the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft India and is based out of Bangalore. In this role, he is responsible for driving Microsoft India’s efforts to foster meaningful relationships and engagements with the student community across Science, Technology, Engineering & Design Colleges in India.

Praseed Pai is a well known software architect from Kochi,Kerala. His areas of interest include Enterprise software development (using C#/.net) ,Engineering Software development (CAD/CAM/C++), Cross Platform C++ development (Windows/Linux/Mac), Computer Graphics, Computational Finance and Domain specific programming languages. At present, he is associated with UST Global, Bangalore. His blog can be accessed here. His open source compiler SLANG4.net got many fans.

Deepthi George is a Microsoft Student Partner,currently pursuing BTech in Computer Science at Trivandrum. She is the winner of Infosys Programming Contest- 'Aspirations 2010' and an active volunteer in IEEE and Computer Society of India. She has developed apps for Windows Phone 7 and worked in azure based App development. She has conducted various technological sessions on Windows Phone App development, Microsoft Expression Blend, XNA Game Studio etc as the part of MSP program.

Prerak Agrawal is currently pursing his BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Calicut. A proud MSP from Kerala who has taken various technological sessions and has developed Windows Phone 7 apps. Winner of national level debate and exhibitions. Keenly interested in Microsoft Technology areas.

Rahul is an active member of K-MUG students chapter and currently pursing his BTech in CSE, College of Enginering Chengannur. He is also the Chairman of IEEE student Branch.

Thomas is part of K-MUG community council, and activiley involed in user group activities based in Kochi. He is a CRISC(Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control) certified Information Security Specialist. Thomas is passionate about Information Security and his areas of interest include Human Impact Management, Information Security Awareness and Training, Methodologies and Standards. Thomas holds a Master of Science in Information Technology (MSc.IT) and Master of Business Administration (MBA).He is currently pursuing his Masters in Criminology & Police Administration (M.A Crimin. & Police Admin).

Sponsors

Internet Explorer 9 Released

2011-03-15T22:48:00.002+05:30

Microsoft today released its latest version of their browser, Internet Explorer 9 to the world wide audience at the SXSW event. Its been already the most downloaded beta version of any software product released by Microsoft and already been downloaded 40 million time.The beta version and platform preview versions of it were available for the last year or so and final release doesn't have significant changes when compared the RC version

IE 9 can be downloaded from the official IE 9 site www.beautyoftheweb.com and is compatible only for Windows Vista/7 . The main features include HTML 5 compliance, fast, standards compliant, trustworthy and puts more focus on the website rather than the web browser, which helps for a better browsing experience.

For more details and review, please visit the sites given below

http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-9-rtm-now-available

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2011/03/the-most-modern-browser-there-is-internet-explorer-9-reviewed.ars

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/dpps/news/microsoft-launches-internet-explorer-9-dpgoha-20110315-fc_12327455

.NET Framework - Overview

2011-03-14T23:21:00.000+05:30

View more presentations from Amal Dev

User Group Meeting - 12th March 2011 - Kochi

2011-03-08T22:41:00.001+05:30

Venue:

Orion India Systems Pvt Ltd, 103, 2nd floor, Tejomaya, Info park SEZ, Kakkanad, Kochin-682030

Agenda

09:30 - 09:40 Community updates

09:40 - 10:30 Introduction to Windows Azure

10:30 - 11:15 Pattern Oriented Software development using .NET

11:15 - 11:30 Tea Break (15 min)

11:30 - 12:15 Developing web apps with ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First

12.15 - 01:00 Ask the experts

For registration, please visit K-MUG site @ www.k-mug.org

Speakers

Saravana Kumar is Working as a Senior Software Engineer in Orion India Systems Pvt. Ltd, cochin. He has 4 years of Experience in IT Industry, Expertise in developing applications using Microsoft Technologies and also in Interwoven. He writes programming articles in his website http://www.wcftutorial.net.

	Praseed Pai is a well known software architect from Kochi,Kerala. His areas of interest include Enterprise software development (using C#/.net) ,Engineering Software development(CAD/CAM/C++),Cross Platform C++ development (Windows/Linux/Mac), Computer Graphics, Computational Finance and Domain specific programming languages. At present, he is associated with Cabot solutions, Kochi. His blog can be accessed here. His open source compiler SLANG4.net got many fans
	Shiju Varghese, Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET, is a Technical Architect on the Microsoft .Net technology stack with a focus on web application development and Domain-Driven Design. He has been working with .Net Technologies since beta version. Shiju focuses on C#, ASP.Net MVC, Entity Framework, Windows Azure, REST, WCF and Unity. Shiju holds number of Microsoft certifications including MCP, MCAD, MCTS, and MCPD: Web. He blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/

Mobiles Mobiles Mobiles

2011-02-28T21:40:00.000+05:30

History of mobile technology and overview of platforms available for developing apps for mobiles

View more presentations from Amal Dev

Microsoft WebCamp at Kochi on Feb 18, 2011

2011-02-16T21:29:00.001+05:30

I am attending the webcamp happening at Kochi on Feb 18, 2011. If anyone is interested, please see the details below.

09:00am - 10:00am Registration
10:00am - 10:30am Opening Keynote

Nahas Mohammed,Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
10:30am - 11:30am Introduction to WebMatrix

Nahas Mohammed
11:30am - 12:30pm Forms and Data Access

                                           Nahas Mohammed
12:30pm - 01:30pm    Lunch Break
01:30pm - 02:30pm    Helpers and Publishing

Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
02:30pm - 03:30pm DotNetNuke on WebMatrix

Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
03:30pm - 04:00pm Audience Q&A and Closing Note

Nahas Mohammed,Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu

Venue Details

City        Kochin
Date       18th February, 2011
Venue   Abad Plaza
Address   M.G Road, Cochin-682 035
RSVP      080-4089 7010, +91-96636 82120

More details at http://www.microsoft.com/india/events/webcamps/day_events.aspx

My First Post Of The Year

2011-02-02T18:04:00.001+05:30

Since I was busy with work at my workplace, I was unable to spend time for updating my blogs. We are about to complete a month of the new year and I decided to post my first article of the year.

Update on IE 9

There are unconfirmed reports in the media that Microsoft is planning the public release of Internet Explorer 9 RC on February 14. The beta was made available to the public last year and its been already downloaded 10 million time, making it the most for any beta version of Internet Explorer. Its been rumoured that the final version will incorporate many changes which were not present in the beta version. With the release of IE9,Microsoft is banking on it to gain lost grounds from Chrome and Firefox.

Windows Phone 7

Microsoft released first update to the Windows Phone 7 platform this month and the features include the much needed Copy & Paste functionality, better market place search and faster application and games. The platform is slowly attaining a global reach with more and more manufacturers releasing the WP7 devices world wide. It had also run into several hiccups, the phantom data usage being the most significant one. But MS was quick to respond in resolving the matter, which was not a bug and was attributed to a third party service that caused larger than expected data usage.

Also there were news that some developers has got payments from Windows Phone Marketplace, which came to light through some posting by the developers itself. Earlier Microsoft has said that they will be depositing the money by the last week of January.

My End of Season Thoughts……

2011-01-01T00:11:00.001+05:30

Another year is going to say good bye to us and its been an eventful year for me. For me, this year started off in the worst possible manner, in the causality of a hospital. Sitting there, I thought it was not a good omen and expected lot of worst things in the days ahead. But to my surprise it turned out to be one of the most interesting time in my life. I ventured in to many new things like blogging, got involved with a technical community, delivered a presentation on WP7 and so on. My blog was up and running this and got over a thousand visitors. A big thank you to all and expects a lot in the coming years also.

Also my long cherished dream of having an SLR was finally fulfilled this year by a friend of mine who bought it from overseas. Then there were a lot of weekend getaways with my friends from college and office. This year also helped me to network with many people from Vijay Raj, an active blogger widely known as msigeek, Janakiraman from MS, Sreeju, Anoop aka AmazedSaint, Jairam, Ramprasanna, again a MS guy who is very familiar these days with this adventures in robotics, Anuraj, Shalvin, Yanesh, Saravana Kumar, Bijith, Safil, Shiju, Satheesh, Saleem and the list goes on. Thanks a lot guys, loved every second spent with you.

Speaking of technology, we experienced an eventful year. We finally the saw the uprising of tablets and smartphones which are poised to dethrone PC’s and laptops in the coming decade.Its that time of year when we take a stock of the developments happened in the past year and here from my perspective the end of the season accolades goes to……

Company of the Year – Facebook Inc

Finally Facebook is seen as a challenger to Google is now the second largest site behind Google and poised to overtake them in 2011. Recently FB announced their plans to create a new messaging platform which will finally replace email. As the year gone by, we had also seen many efforts from Google to tackle the rise of FB such as Buzz and Wave has failed miserably.

Flop of the Year – Microsoft Kin

MS released a series of phones targeting the youth this year and failed to caught the attention. After years of development at a cost of billions of dollars, Kin was released early this year and decided to discontinue by June because of poor sales.

Comeback of the Year – Windows 7

For the first time in its history, MS delivered an OS whose minimum requirements was less when compared to its predecessor, Windows Vista. After the failure of Vista, MS introduced many new features in Win 7 and instantly caught the imagination of the people. There is a perception about MS products is that their products are considered stable only after the first service pack is released. But Win 7 has changed all that and now more and more people are upgrading to Win 7 from XP without waiting for SP1.

Developer Tool of the Year – WP7 Developer Tools.

Again MS takes the plaudits in the section for creating a tool to develop, test and deploy applications for WP7. Because of its seamless integration with Visual Studio and Expression Blend reduced the time needed for acquainting with a new platform and its support for Silverlight and XNA framework helped the programmers to create applications with much ease.

Upcoming Trend – Tablets & Smartphones

Although these were available in the market for some time, introduction on iPad and popularity of iPhone and Android powered devices is slowly pushing the laptops and personal computers down the gadget stack. iPad has taken the world by storm and suddenly the sales of other tablets such as Amazon Kindle and Samsung Galaxy has shot up up. And also with more and more manufactures introducing Android based phones and MS foray into the smartphone market with WP7 has increased the sales considerably.

Hello World App in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7

2010-12-12T09:19:00.002+05:30

In this section, I will help you to write the widely used “Hello World” application for the Windows Phone. This may seem little bit silly for hard core programmers and non-programmers like. But here the situation is little bit different, we are going to create and compile app in a pc and is deploying and running it in a mobile device or at least an emulator. According to me this simple code serves two purposes, it will help to understand and how easy is to write a text on to the Windows Phone Screen and secondly, it helps us to experience the process of creating, developing, compiling and running a program without too much difficulties.

I will guide you to write the “Hello World”, in both Silverlight and XNA. In most of the cases you will be using XNA for developing games, but I wanted to show that the functionality can be achieved using both technologies.

For writing your first application you need, Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools, which includes Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone, the Windows Phone Emulator and it is a free download from the Microsoft Download Center

Writing the App in Silverlight

Power up Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone from Start Menu or from Desktop. From the File Menu select New Project -> Visual C# -> Silverlight for Windows Phone from the installed templates. Then from the middle area, choose Window Phone Application. Enter a Name for the project and also the location, if we don’t want to create a directory for the solution, you can uncheck the Create Directory for the Solution.

After clicking Ok button and project will be created with a lot files, which I will explain latter. You will be welcomed by a large screen of windows phone in portrait mode, to be more precise 480 * 800 pixels by far largest screen to this date in phone world. This is shown in the design view and one can add more controls by dragging and dropping them from the control toolbox. Instead of drag n drop we will write markup for creating the controls. For that we need to switch to markup view and this can be one by clicking any of the icons which may appear to the bottom of your screen.

In fact, the much touted three modes, Design, Markup and Split is also available for project targeting Windows Phone 7. You will see many files in the solution explorer under the project. One file of particular interest is the WMAppManifest.xml file. This file keeps all the setting, much like the web.config file in a web application. In the App tag near the Top there is title attribute, which displays the title of the application in Windows Phone.

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

2:

   3:  <Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsphone/2009/deployment"

   4:              AppPlatformVersion="7.0">

   5:      <App xmlns="" ProductID="{57c40dfe-9882-4a9e-9ee4-07986afc331f}"

   6:           Title="HelloWorld"

   7:           RuntimeType="Silverlight" Version="1.0.0.0" Genre="apps.normal"

   8:           Author="HelloWorld author" Description="Sample description"

   9:           Publisher="HelloWorld">

  10:          <IconPath IsRelative="true" IsResource="false">ApplicationIcon.png</IconPath>

  11:          <Capabilities>

  12:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_GAMERSERVICES"/>

  13:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_IDENTITY_DEVICE"/>

  14:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_IDENTITY_USER"/>

  15:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_LOCATION"/>

  16:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_MEDIALIB"/>

  17:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_MICROPHONE"/>

  18:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_NETWORKING"/>

  19:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_PHONEDIALER"/>

  20:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_PUSH_NOTIFICATION"/>

  21:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_SENSORS"/>

  22:              <Capability Name="ID_CAP_WEBBROWSERCOMPONENT"/>

  23:          </Capabilities>

  24:          <Tasks>

  25:              <DefaultTask  Name ="_default" NavigationPage="MainPage.xaml"/>

  26:          </Tasks>

  27:          <Tokens>

  28:              <PrimaryToken TokenID="HelloWorldToken" TaskName="_default">

  29:                  <TemplateType5>

  30:                      <BackgroundImageURI IsRelative="true" IsResource="false">

  31:                          Background.png</BackgroundImageURI>

  32:                      <Count>0</Count>

  33:                      <Title>HelloWorld</Title>

  34:                  </TemplateType5>

  35:              </PrimaryToken>

  36:          </Tokens>

  37:      </App>

  38:  </Deployment>

The project name will be defaulting here and we will give a friendlier name here.

   1:  <Title>Hello World</Title>

In this file we can also change application icon, which will be appearing as the icon in the installed apps in a Windows Phone.

   1:  <BackgroundImageURI IsRelative=”true” IsResource=”false”>Background.png</BackgroundImageURI>

In the standard toolbar, you will see two options. Windows Phone 7 Emulator and Windows Phone 7 Device. First one is the one installed with Windows Phone Developer tools and majority of testing the application is done using this. The second one is used to deploy the application into the real device, which will be connected to the computer via USB.

If we press F5 now, our application will compile and the home screen will show in the emulator. When you first compile an application, it may seem that it’s taking too much time coz of loading the emulator. If you leave emulator running during the edit/run/debug cycles, it won’t take much time, coz Visual Studio attaches to the already running process.

We terminate the execution either through the IDE (using the Shift + F5 or Stop Debugging from the Debug Menu) or by exiting the program using the Back or Start button in the Emulator.

Don’t quit the program using the, X button in the emulator as it will shut down the emulator completely and will cause delay in starting up the app next time when we run it from the IDE.

Now let’s go back to the editor by stopping the application. In solution explorer, you will notice four files, App.xaml and App.xaml.cs and MainPage.xaml and MainPage.xaml.cs files. The files with xaml extension are the Extensible Application Markup Language(XAML) while the files cs extension are their corresponding code behind files in C#.

Let’s look into the App.xaml.cs file in more detail.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:  using System.Linq;

   4:  using System.Net;

   5:  using System.Windows;

   6:  using System.Windows.Controls;

   7:  using System.Windows.Documents;

   8:  using System.Windows.Input;

   9:  using System.Windows.Media;

  10:  using System.Windows.Media.Animation;

  11:  using System.Windows.Navigation;

  12:  using System.Windows.Shapes;

  13:  using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;

  14:  using Microsoft.Phone.Shell;

15:

  16:  namespace HelloWorld

  17:  {

  18:      public partial class App : Application

  19:      {

  20:          /// <summary>

  21:          /// Provides easy access to the root frame of the Phone Application.

  22:          /// </summary>

  23:          /// <returns>The root frame of the Phone Application.</returns>

  24:          public PhoneApplicationFrame RootFrame { get; private set; }

25:

  26:          /// <summary>

  27:          /// Constructor for the Application object.

  28:          /// </summary>

  29:          public App()

  30:          {

  31:              // Global handler for uncaught exceptions.

  32:              UnhandledException += Application_UnhandledException;

33:

  34:              // Show graphics profiling information while debugging.

  35:              if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)

  36:              {

  37:                  // Display the current frame rate counters.

  38:                  Application.Current.Host.Settings.EnableFrameRateCounter = true;

39:

  40:                  // Show the areas of the app that are being redrawn in each frame.

  41:                  //Application.Current.Host.Settings.EnableRedrawRegions = true;

42:

  43:                  // Enable non-production analysis visualization mode,

  44:                  // which shows areas of a page that are being GPU accelerated with a colored overlay.

  45:                  //Application.Current.Host.Settings.EnableCacheVisualization = true;

  46:              }

47:

  48:              // Standard Silverlight initialization

  49:              InitializeComponent();

50:

  51:              // Phone-specific initialization

  52:              InitializePhoneApplication();

  53:          }

54:

  55:          // Code to execute when the application is launching (eg, from Start)

  56:          // This code will not execute when the application is reactivated

  57:          private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e)

  58:          {

  59:          }

60:

  61:          // Code to execute when the application is activated (brought to foreground)

  62:          // This code will not execute when the application is first launched

  63:          private void Application_Activated(object sender, ActivatedEventArgs e)

  64:          {

  65:          }

66:

  67:          // Code to execute when the application is deactivated (sent to background)

  68:          // This code will not execute when the application is closing

  69:          private void Application_Deactivated(object sender, DeactivatedEventArgs e)

  70:          {

  71:          }

72:

  73:          // Code to execute when the application is closing (eg, user hit Back)

  74:          // This code will not execute when the application is deactivated

  75:          private void Application_Closing(object sender, ClosingEventArgs e)

  76:          {

  77:          }

78:

  79:          // Code to execute if a navigation fails

  80:          private void RootFrame_NavigationFailed(object sender, NavigationFailedEventArgs e)

  81:          {

  82:              if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)

  83:              {

  84:                  // A navigation has failed; break into the debugger

  85:                  System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();

  86:              }

  87:          }

88:

  89:          // Code to execute on Unhandled Exceptions

  90:          private void Application_UnhandledException(object sender, ApplicationUnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)

  91:          {

  92:              if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)

  93:              {

  94:                  // An unhandled exception has occurred; break into the debugger

  95:                  System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();

  96:              }

  97:          }

98:

  99:          #region Phone application initialization

 100:

 101:          // Avoid double-initialization

 102:          private bool phoneApplicationInitialized = false;

 103:

 104:          // Do not add any additional code to this method

 105:          private void InitializePhoneApplication()

 106:          {

 107:              if (phoneApplicationInitialized)

 108:                  return;

 109:

 110:              // Create the frame but don't set it as RootVisual yet; this allows the splash

 111:              // screen to remain active until the application is ready to render.

 112:              RootFrame = new PhoneApplicationFrame();

 113:              RootFrame.Navigated += CompleteInitializePhoneApplication;

 114:

 115:              // Handle navigation failures

 116:              RootFrame.NavigationFailed += RootFrame_NavigationFailed;

 117:

 118:              // Ensure we don't initialize again

 119:              phoneApplicationInitialized = true;

 120:          }

 121:

 122:          // Do not add any additional code to this method

 123:          private void CompleteInitializePhoneApplication(object sender, NavigationEventArgs e)

 124:          {

 125:              // Set the root visual to allow the application to render

 126:              if (RootVisual != RootFrame)

 127:                  RootVisual = RootFrame;

 128:

 129:              // Remove this handler since it is no longer needed

 130:              RootFrame.Navigated -= CompleteInitializePhoneApplication;

 131:          }

 132:

 133:          #endregion

 134:      }

 135:  }

You will see a namespace declaration in the name of the project and a class name App that is derived from the Application class in Silverlight. As you had seen in Silverlight Applications for web, all Silverlight windows phone applications contain an App class that derives from Application, and this class is responsible for application-wide initialization, start up and shutdown chores. This class is defined as a partial class which implies that it has got additional members which will be declared somewhere else and here it’s in the App.xaml file.

The structure for an App.xaml will be like this

   1:  <Application

   2:      x:Class="HelloWorld.App"

   3:      xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   4:      xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   5:      xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"

   6:      xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone">

7:

   8:      <!--Application Resources-->

   9:      <Application.Resources>

  10:      </Application.Resources>

11:

  12:      <Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>

  13:          <!--Required object that handles lifetime events for the application-->

  14:          <shell:PhoneApplicationService

  15:              Launching="Application_Launching"

  16:              Closing="Application_Closing"

  17:              Activated="Application_Activated"

  18:              Deactivated="Application_Deactivated"/>

  19:      </Application.ApplicationLifetimeObjects>

20:

  21:  </Application>

Although its looks like XML, it’s actually XAML which is an important thing in developing Silverlight Applications. The App.xaml file Is used to store resources that are used throughout the application. These could include color schemes, gradient brushes, styles etc. The App.xaml and App.xaml.cs are the two parts of the App Class and during compilation Visual Studio parses App.xaml and generate another code file App.g.cs in which g stands for generated and it will be generated in \obj\debug directory.

Now let’s inspect the App.xaml file in detail.

Towards the top of the file you can see the following detail

1:

   2:  <Application.RootVisual>

3:

   4:      <phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationFrame x:Name="RootFrame"

   5:              Source="/MainPage.xaml"/>

6:

   7:  </Application.RootVisual>

This markup instantiates an object of the PhoneApplicationFrame class and assigns its source property reverencing the MainPage.xaml. this PhoneApplicationFrame object is then set the RootVisual property of the App object.

MainPage is another Major class in the program and the in most of the smaller programs in Silverlight, much time will be spend in this class, i.e. in MainPage.xaml and MainPage.xaml.cs. The cs page contains a lot of using directives by default, barring these the file is pretty straight forward.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:  using System.Linq;

   4:  using System.Net;

   5:  using System.Windows;

   6:  using System.Windows.Controls;

   7:  using System.Windows.Documents;

   8:  using System.Windows.Input;

   9:  using System.Windows.Media;

  10:  using System.Windows.Media.Animation;

  11:  using System.Windows.Shapes;

  12:  using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;

  13:  namespace HelloWorld

  14:  {

  15:      public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage

  16:      {

  17:          // Constructor

  18:          public MainPage()

  19:          {

  20:              InitializeComponent();

  21:          }

  22:      }

  23:  }

Again it’s a partial class and its defines a class named MainPage and it’s derived from PhoneApplicationPage class in Silverlight. Actually this is the class responsible for displaying the visual when we run the program for the first time. The other half of the main page is defined in the MainPage.xaml.

   1:  <phone:PhoneApplicationPage

   2:      x:Class="HelloWorld.MainPage"

   3:      xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   4:      xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   5:      xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"

   6:      xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"

   7:      xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"

   8:      xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

   9:      mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="768"

  10:      FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}"

  11:      FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}"

  12:      Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"

  13:      SupportedOrientations="Portrait" Orientation="Portrait"

  14:      shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True">

15:

  16:      <!--LayoutRoot is the root grid where all page content is placed-->

  17:      <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">

  18:          <Grid.RowDefinitions>

  19:              <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>

  20:              <RowDefinition Height="*"/>

  21:          </Grid.RowDefinitions>

22:

  23:          <!--TitlePanel contains the name of the application and page title-->

  24:          <StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,17,0,28">

  25:              <TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="MY APPLICATION"

  26:                         Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>

  27:              <TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="page name" Margin="9,-7,0,0"

  28:                         Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>

  29:          </StackPanel>

30:

  31:          <!--ContentPanel - place additional content here-->

  32:          <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"></Grid>

  33:      </Grid>

34:

  35:      <!--Sample code showing usage of ApplicationBar-->

  36:      <!--<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>

  37:          <shell:ApplicationBar IsVisible="True" IsMenuEnabled="True">

  38:              <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton

  39:      IconUri="/Images/appbar_button1.png"

  40:      Text="Button 1"/>

  41:              <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton

  42:      IconUri="/Images/appbar_button2.png"

  43:      Text="Button 2"/>

  44:              <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>

  45:                  <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="MenuItem 1"/>

  46:                  <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="MenuItem 2"/>

  47:              </shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>

  48:          </shell:ApplicationBar>

  49:      </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>-->

50:

  51:  </phone:PhoneApplicationPage>

The compilation process generates a file named MainPageg.cs,as in the case of App.xaml. As per theory App.g.cs and MainPage.g.cs are solely for internal use by the compiler and can be ignored by the programmer. The MainPage.xaml contains a Grid definition and couple of TextBlocks by default. This defines the visual tree of elements that we saw during the execution of the program, i.e. the “MY APPLICATION” and “page title” headings we saw in the designer and the emulator.

The Grid class derives from the Panel and is one among the many layout elements in Silverlight. Panels can be thought of as a container which can hold and organize user interface elements in the screen. The TextBlock class derives from the FrameworkElement class and is used for displaying blocks of text. Another important element that derives from the Framework Element class is Control, from which Button, Slider, ListBox and other derive. So enough with the theory and lets go ahead and create our application.

We will now place a TextBlock element inside the Grid tags to display our message “Hello World”. So let’s set the Text property with our message and since text block can display short blocks of text, we can give the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties to have a nice look and feel to the text.

   1:  <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">

   2:              <TextBlock Text="Hello World!"

   3:                         HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" >

   4:              </TextBlock>

   5:          </Grid>

Likewise we will change the title and application name so that it will match with our desired intent.

One point to note here is that, when use Silverlight to build applications for web, usually the background is White and text will be Black. But when developing for Windows Phone 7, it will be a nice idea to keep background as dark and text is lighter. For setting foreground for a root element, we can give as given below.

   1:  Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"

I will discuss about the StaticResource mechanism in the coming posts. I think it’s time to compile our HelloWorld Application. Upon running we can see that our Application Frame occupies the entire visual display and the Main Page occupies the entire area of the frame. The outermost grid occupies the entire area of the page and its split into two. A title area on top and content area under that. Our new TextBlock element appear centrally aligned in this area.

To summarize, by creating our HelloWorld application we had gone through some basic concepts including dynamic layout. We had also found out that various elements were capable of arranging themselves dynamically and also by setting HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties we can put an element in the center of another element, or in along one of the edges or in one of the corners. Also by using buttons,

we can tilt the phone sideways, and by tilting we can see the content of the page shuffles to match the new orientation automatically.

K-MUG UG Meet on Dec 11, 2010 @ Kochi

2010-12-04T20:31:00.001+05:30

This month's usergroup meeting for Central Kerala region will be on Dec 11, 2010 at Mastermind Computer Institute, 2nd Floor, New Kochappilly Building,Near Federal Bank,Civil Line Road,Chembumukku. For event details, click here, and registration for the event can be done here.

Agenda

09:30 - 09:40 Community updates

09:40 - 10:30 Introduction to WCF

10:30 - 11:15 Lambda - It's uses and abuses

11:15 - 11:30 Tea Break (15 min)

11:30 - 12:15 Introducing Razor – A new view engine for ASP.NET

12.15 - 01:00 Memory and Resource Leaks in .NET application

Speakers

Bijith K B working as a Software Architect with Affiliated Compter Services (An Xerox Company) @ Infopark. He has more than 10yrs of experience in software development and has been working with .NET technologies from its inception. He blogs at http://kbbwrite.blogspot.com/

Praseed Pai is a well known software architect from Kochi, Kerala. His areas of interest include Enterprise software development (using C#/.net) ,Engineering Software development(CAD/CAM/C++),Cross Platform C++ development (Windows/Linux/Mac), Computer Graphics, Computational Finance and Domain specific programming languages. At present, he is associated with Cabot solutions, Kochi. His blog can be accessed here. His open source compiler SLANG4.net got many fans

Saravana Kumar is Working as a Senior Software Engineer in Orion India Systems Pvt. Ltd, cochin. He has 4 years of Experience in IT Industry, Expertise in developing applications using   Microsoft Technologies and also in Interwoven. He writes programming articles in his website http://www.wcftutorial.net.

Shiju Varghese is a Microsoft MVP on ASP.NET and a Solution Architect focusing on Microsoft Web Platform stack. Shiju is passionate about using ASP.NET MVC to architecting web applications. He is specializing on C#, ASP.Net MVC, Entity Framework, Windows Azure, REST, WCF, NoSQL and Unity. His areas of interest include Agile software development, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), Cloud Computing, SaaS, Web application scalability and CQRS. Shiju holds number of Microsoft certifications including MCP, MCAD, MCTS, and MCPD: Web. He blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/

Microsoft Releases Platform Preview of IE9

2010-12-02T07:40:00.000+05:30

Microsoft released platform preview version of IE9 today and can be downloaded from here. According to Microsoft, Platform preview version is not a full browser, its intended mainly for web developers to give a sneak preview on upcoming web platform technologies coming in the next version of the browser. For more FAQ's please visit the IE9 site here.

It also supports side-by-side installation along with IE8, but nothing is mentioned about the side-by-side installation with IE9 beta. So its up to the users to decide on the installation....

Lifecycle of a Windows Phone 7 App

2010-11-28T11:28:00.003+05:30

The model for for the entire lifetime of an application, ie from the launch to the termination is called the Windows Phone Execution Model. Each Application moves through the stages of the life cycle. The events are

1) Launch/Start

2) Running

3) Pause/Deactivation

4)Resume/Reactivation

5) Close

Launch State

A Windows Phone Application is considered to be in a Launch state when it is initiated by a user, either from the list of installed applications or from the tile for the application in Start. When the application is started a Launch event is raised and it’s here we creates a new instance for the app. This event is raised before the application is visible or active. So loading data from isolated storage or performing time consuming tasks are highly discouraged coz it will increase the startup time of the app there by providing a bad user experience.

Running State

Once the app is loaded, then it will be in the running state. In this state, the app keep tracks of its state as the user goes back and forth through the application pages.

Paused State.

This is an interesting state in the lifecycle of an app. The app enters Deactivated state when it is interrupted by an incoming call or other tasks such as taking a photo or sending an email or even starting another app. Any of these interrupts will cause the Deactivated event to fire. When an app is deactivated the OS will keep a record of the application and stores the state to the isolated storage. MS guys calls this process as TombStoning.

Reactivated State.

When the user comes back to a deactivated or tombstoned app, the application is restored to the point where the user has left the app. There are chances that an user may or may not return to a tombstoned app. This can lead to drainage of the memory and storage space. Inorder to avoid this OS keeps track of long running tombstoned apps and terminates it appropriately so that the phone doesn’t run out on memory and storage.

What is Windows Phone 7

2010-11-27T08:18:00.004+05:30

Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7 to the public during the Mobile World Congress 2010 @ Barcelona. During the initial stages, MS developed this one as an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5, but the developments made by Apple and Google in the mobile arena prompted them to rejig its mobile offering. Then @ MIX 10, they revealed more features and then released the beta toolkit for developers to build applications targeting the Windows Pone platform. As of writing this post the toolkit has been put to gold and RTM version is now available for download from the Microsoft site. The home page for Windows phone is located here and it contains lots of documentation and code samples.


Snapshot of Windows Phone

The Windows Phone 7 OS exposes classes defined by the .Net Compact Framework. One can develop apps for Windows Phone using Expression Blend Visual Studio 2010 Express; both are free offerings from Microsoft. An app targeting Windows Phone must be created using Silverlight or XNA Framework. It will be nice idea to use both of them in a single app, but as of now it’s not possible. So before starting the actual work, one must decide about the technology to be used. andIdeally applications created using Silverlight can be thought of as utility programs such as Calculator or a Currency converter. XAML(Extensible Application Markup Language) is used for creating the user interface controls and panels and the code behind files can perform actions such as event handling, input/output processing etc. Microsoft is trying to promote Silverlight as the front end for their cloud services(Windows Azure) which implies that the Windows Phone OS is cloud ready. By using Silverlight we can leverage the advantages of RIA(Rich Internet Applications) in to a Windows Phone App.

XNA Framework is mainly used for creating high performance games. Initially Microsoft offered this one for developing games for their XBOX platform. With 2009 release of the Zune HD, Microsoft incorporated the support for multi touch navigation in XNA and revamped its graphics engine. Now we will be able to develop games targeting multitude of platforms such as PC, XBOX, Zune and Windows Phone.

Hardware.

Display

Windows phone supports only two phone sizes 480 * 800 pixels or 320 * 480 pixels. Since there are no other options, this plays a major part in developing apps for Windows Phone. Also the phone supports both Portrait and Landscape modes. In Landscape mode phone supports an aspect ratio of 3:2 or 1:5 for small screen and for large screen it is 5:3 or 1:66. Like many recent phones, Windows Phone is expected to use OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diode), whose power consumption is directly proportional to the light emitted from the display, which helps to sustain more battery life.

Buttons

Before you starting development, you should be familiar with the most important buttons in the windows phone.

Back Button: The apps are required to use the back button to exit from the application or for navigation between pages in the application

Start Button: This button is used to power up the phone and if the phone is running then it will take to the start screen. This button will not be accessible to the custom made apps.

Search Button: Custom apps can either completely ignore this button or can use it for any search related purposes.

Input

The primary source of input is the touch screen. The screens respond to human fingers and not to a stylus or other forms of pressure and a hardware keyboard is optional.

Other Hardware

Wi-Fi : The phone has got a Wi-Fi option for accessing internet and the device includes Internet Explorer as the browser

Camera: It’s a 5 mega pixel one with flash

Accelerometer : An accelerometer is detects acceleration, ie the movements made with the phone. One area which uses this sensor is when we change the orientation of phone it automatically switches the display from portrait to landscape mode or vice versa.

Compass : The Compass detects orientation relative to magnetic earth

Vibration : The phone can be vibrated through program control.

The Developer Tools helps developers for creating custom built apps running on a windows phone. It’s built on top of existing tools such as Visual Studio and the Expression Blend, and technologies like Silverlight and XNA Framework. Silverlight framework is used for developing event driven apps using XAML and XNA framework for developing loop based games. I will divulge more details about it in the second part of this series. Till then happy coding...

My Session on Windows Phone 7 - Powerpoint Slide

2010-11-14T22:48:00.000+05:30

Windows phone 7

View more presentations from amaldevv.

K-MUG UG Meet Nov 13 2010 - A Retro

2010-11-14T22:21:00.003+05:30

During the Community Tech Days 2010 held at Kochi, K-MUG decided to conduct monthly user group meeting for Central Kerala region at Kochi. First meeting was conducted on Nov 13, 2010 and the venue was Mastermind Institute of Engineering, Kakkanad, Kochi. I was given a chance by the K-MUG people to take a session on Windows Phone 7.

Although I had started making slides and creating some demo applications, last minutes hiccups is unavoidable. The case is no different here, I didn’t wanted any issues to surface during the presentation coz of my unstable development machine, so I decided to demo the application inside a VM. For that I created a new one with Windows 7 64-bit as OS and then went on to install the Windows Phone Developer Toolkit which is a free download from MSDN. Even though I had 3GB memory and a dual core processor, it took a pretty decent time to install. But to my horror, I found out that the application is not loading in the emulator after a successful build. So after googling for a while I was able to get the problem behind that, Windows Phone Emulator will not work properly in a VM. The time was almost midnight and I had to catch the early morning train, so I decided to show it in my machine come what may.

Next morning I got up early and reached the station in time. During the journey I decided to go through the ppts and demo applications and made sure that everyone is working fine. I reached Eranakulam around 9.30 and thanks to ever present traffic blocks in Ernakulam, I was late by half an hour in reaching the venue. When I entered the hall, Yanesh was mid-way through his presentation on Test Driven Development and I was unable to listen to his talk coz I was busy with settling down and Safil was waiting for me to have my lap to show his presentation. Although he had Praseed’s lap as a backup, I handed over mine to him to prepare for the session. By this time Yanesh wrapped his session and I was not able to pay attention. Really missed it, coz I had attended his last session on Generics at CTD Kochi and it was an excellent one. In the meantime, if someone is wondering who Yanesh is, this is for them. He is a solutions architect with Millennium Consultants who has got 16+ years of experience in designing and developing application using Microsoft Technologies. Please visit the event page to know more about Yanesh .

Next up was Safil with his presentation on Microsoft Surface. Safil's area of focus is mobile app development and is currently associated with SunnySoft Solutions Kochi. Although he is fresh out of college, he has got in depth knowledge in developing apps for iPhone and is also good on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). He started his talk by saying that he just wanted give an introduction about surface and told us to wait until his next session to explore the programming side of it. He then gave a brief history about the concept (actually a reality now). I had seen some articles about it, but When Safil said that the concept of Surface dates back to the 80’s, it was new to me coz all these year I believed it as new technology from MS. He then explained the various features, its underlying hardware, hardware and software requirements and also about its basics such as multi touch, 360 degree view, object recognition technology and its UI design principles.

After Safil session, the sponsors for the venue gave a little intro about their operations and their courses on offer. They also distributed leaflets and brochures to the attendees and it was almost time for tea break. I always loved these breaks in between coz it gives me the opportunity to link up with new people and friends.

After the tea beak, it was my turn to take the session and this was my first session in a K-MUG event. My talk centered on the new product from the Microsoft stable, the Windows Phone 7 OS. I expected some iPhone or Android developers for the event, but to my surprise there were only two or three people. So I started my session by talking about the history and features available in WP7. Then I went to on to mention about the hardware specifications and tools available for developing WP7 apps.

Frequent power disruptions caused interruptions during the session and during one we decided to hand over the certificates to students of Adoor Engineering college who had completed their academic projects under the guidance of K-MUG people. This initiative was led by Raj, who sadly left us last month and Praseed did mention about it while giving away the certificates to the student representative.

After the presentation I explained the Windows Phone emulator and then the life cycle of a WP7 app. Then I went ahead to show some demo apps which included areas such as display orientation methods, life cycle events and isolated storage. I had prepared one more app for the demo but the time constraints meant I had to wrap up the session without showing it. I will be putting it up in the blog along the with the slides I used for the presentation. So please keep on reading my blogs....

The last session of the event was Saravana Kumar, a Senior Software Engineer with Orion India, Kochi. He is into developing enterprise application using Microsoft Technologies and also writes articles on www.wcftutorial.net.

He started his session by explaining what WCF is and the new features available in WCF 4.0. He then went on to explain every features in detail and also showed us a demo for the majority of the features.

By the time Saravanan finished the demo it was almost one o clock and everyone was dying to have food. So we quickly wrapped up the things at the venue and next up on my itinerary was a quick visit to Aluva, so I decided to be the pillion rider in Safil's bike who going in that direction and the rest went on to have food in a near by hotel .......

My Session on Windows Phone 7 - Usergroup meeting @ Kochi on Nov 7, 2010

2010-11-11T23:25:00.001+05:30

I am talking about Windows Phone 7 application development at an user group meeting conducted by K-MUG at Kochi on Nov 13,2010. My intention is to give brief description about the history and time line of WP7 and will be demo demonstrating some applications built using the windows phone developer tools targeting the mobile platform. If you are really interested in it, please come and join me on 13th. There are also other sessions on Microsoft Surface, Windows Communication Foundation and Test Driven Development. For more details about the event, please visit the K-MUG events page and registrations can be done from here.

Usergroup meeting @ Kochi on Nov 7, 2010

2010-11-07T23:02:00.000+05:30

K-MUG has decided to conduct monthly user group meetings across Kerala. So on 7th of November, Kochi will be hosting the meeting for central Kerala region. And, I will be giving a session on Windows Phone 7, also there are couple more people giving sessions on very interesting topics.

Venue

Mastermind Computer Institute,

2nd Floor, New Kochappilly Building,

Near Federal Bank,

Civil Line Road,

Chembumukku,

Cochin-682030

09:15 - 09:30 Community updates
09:30 - 10:30 Test Driven Development
10:30 - 11:15 Microsoft Surface
11:15 - 11:30 Tea Break (15 min)
11:30 - 12:15 Windows Phone 7
12.15 - 01:00 Introduction to WCF 4.0

For more details and info about the speakers, please visit the event page in K-MUG site and registration can be done here.

Community Tech Days Kochi, October 23, 2010 - Part 2

2010-10-28T07:40:00.002+05:30

For first part, click here

After the session by Raj we had a small tea break, which I normalize utilize to network with similar minded ones. Here, I met a couple of guys who were working on environments as diverse as from Linux to windows to mobile devices. When we were back, Vinod was back on the dais for his presentation on T-SQL tips and tricks. I had attended his session once and his knowledge on sql has amazed me. This time he started with a simple declaration and initialization statement, a new feature in SQL 2008 and showed us the various ways to fine tune it.

Then he went on to demonstrate the common errors we may make while creating indexes, usage of ISNULL & COALESCE and also the options we may overlook while creating databases. But the one I like the most is the tip to use HIERARCHY_ID to use for sorting the a list of IP addresses. It was a wonderful session, which caused many seasoned people like us in the crowd to take extra care while playing around with databases and while writing T-SQL scripts. As always time was a constraint here, so he has to cut short his session and invited Shalvin for his session ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Shalvin, a .NET Corporate Trainer and Consultant is regular speaker a K-MUG events. His session was like an hands on session and I felt the need for a laptop, so that I can try it there itself. He started with explaining the advantages an ORM has over the relational model. Then he went to demo a small contact management application which was created using WPF and ADO.NET EF. He showed us how to create a data source, generate ORM mapping and then binding and displaying data in controls such as combo box and datagrid using LINQ.

He wrapped the session by showing how easy is to maintain a data centric application developed using ADO.NET Entity Framework as it decreases the amount of code needed for CRUD operations and also it is loosely-coupled with the underlying schema, which makes it less error prone to changes made in the database. When Shalvin wounded up the session, everyone went to have lunch, which was a buffet arranged in the back section of the auditorium and the food served matched the expectation of many.

Manu Zachariah was all geared up and raring to go, as we were taking seats after lunch. He is an security expert and also an active speaker in events all across India.

He started his presentation with showing the screenshots of attacks by Pakistani and Indian hackers during the Independence Day week. After that he explained the logon and auditing events that occurs when we logon to a machine running on Windows. He started off with NTLM and SAM concepts which were predominantly used in earlier versions of windows and also pointed out the fact that these two are now deprecated in the newer versions because it’s using older encryption algorithms. Then he explained about Kerberos authentication and its 3 step process for authentications and various event id generated during the process.

After Manu concluded his talk, Shiju an MVP in Microsoft.NET MVC came up for an interesting session on NoSQL Databases. I was actually looking forward to this session coz a lot of being said about the same with many social networking site are using it for managing their huge data. First Shiju clarified that NoSQL databases are not a replacement for its counterpart, but provide another option for storing data and also removed the doubts with its name too(NoSQL means

Not Only SQL, many of us thought that it contains No Sql). After a brief intro, he went on to speak about RavenDB, a NoSQL database completely written using .NET Framework. He also demo ed a small application which can display, add and update data in a NoSQL database and also explained to us that its retrieval operations are extremely fast and huge handle huge amounts of data (to be precise upto 16 TB of data in a single machine) and also about the various licensing options available for RavenDB.

Then we had a small tea break and after that Yanesh Tyagi, works for a consulting company and has got 16 years of experience in IT field came up for his talk on Generics – A Revisit.

He started off by going back in time to those days when there was no generics. He talked about issue that came up so often, such as type conversions errors happening because of the delayed binding and showed us how we were able to solve these issues by using Generics. Some people among audience also shared their experience with us while doing development without using Generics. We did not feel out of place coz he showed as a lot small, neatly written programs that explained the cause and also about various types Action, Predicate.

The last session of the day was by Praseed, again on .NET Serialization and XML. He opened the session by talking about various types of serialization available in .NET such as Binary Serialization and XML Serialization. He used his current working experience, that is sending data between an iPhone application and .NET server for explaining in serialization in detail and its advantages.

With this the event came to close and the K-MUG members posed for some snaps with the trophies and then had a small meeting to discuss about future activities and it was decided to conduct a monthly local usergroup meeting for Kochites starting Novemeber and then everyone started their long/short journery to their respective places….

Community Tech Days Kochi, October 23, 2010

2010-10-28T07:19:00.003+05:30

K-Mug organized the Kerala edition of the Community Tech Days at Kochi on 23^rd of October 2010. I arrived at Kochi a day before, on 22^nd and stayed at my friend’s place. I started my journey to the venue by boarding a bus bound to Kaloor from Kakkanad and the heavens opened up when I was about to get down from the bus. So I took an auto from the bus stop to the venue, which was behind the international stadium where the cricket match between India and Australia got cancelled recently and in my mind I was little bit worried about these conditions affecting the crowd participation .

I reached the venue around 8.40 AM, welcomed by Sathish, who like me landed at Kochi a day before at the registration desk. Sreeju was busy with finalizing the last minute arrangements and Vinod, Raj, Shalvin and Praseed were doing a last minute check on their presentation. So without wasting much time, I joined Sathish in the registration desk, which was getting busier by each minute. Although rain had played a spoilsport in the morning, it didn’t damaged the participants spirit as they turned up in huge numbers.

Although it was planned to start the event by 09.30 AM, but delay in completing the registrations meant that the inauguration ceremony started only by 09.45 AM. Sreeju welcomed all the speakers and participants on behalf of K-Mug and then intimated us about the sad demise of Raj, passed away on .. due to an heart attack. He was looking after the academic activities of K-Mug and ever present face in all the activities of K-Mug. So as a mark of respect Sreeju requested all to observe a minute silence in memory of fallen comrade.

After that Sreeju went on to give a brief talk about K-Mug and its activities to the audience and then called Vinod on to stage. Vinod, a developer evangelist works with Microsoft Corporation is an expert in SQL Server. He thanked all the participants for making the community a big hit and an active one, which in turn has helped K-Mug to bag the Best Community Impact Award for the year 2010. Vinod then went on to present the trophy on behalf of Microsoft to K-Mug office bearers, led by Sreejumon.

After the presentation, Praseed was on the stage to give his session in MONO, aptly titled PLUNJ into MONO. Praseed, working with Cabbot Solutions, Kochi as a practice manager for mobile applications is not a stranger to the community in Kerala. He is a regular speaker in most of technology events happening in Kerala. He gave an introduction about the MONO project and how it is trying to bring platform independence for .NET applications. This man always amuses me with his knowledge in various areas and his presentation style. He always tries to keep it as simple as possible so that even a novice can understand it and it was no different here. Although he intended to use macbook for showing the demo, insufficient battery backup caused him to change the plans and used his windows machine for the demo. He then introduced an accounting package, SPAM4.net, which he developed for educational purpose and it was written way back in .NET1.1 and has got 7000 odd lines of code. By changing the backend to SQLite and recompiling using MONO, without much difficulty he was able to run it on Windows, Linux and Mac . For the next demo he compiled his already well publicized SLANG4.NET compiler using MONO and without a single change to the code, he ran it using the MONO runtime. While summing up his presentation, he hoped that success of MONO will be a major factor in achieving platform independence for applications developed using C# and will also help to make up ground of Java.

Next up was Raj Choudhary to give his talk on productivity tools offered by Telerik. But due to the corruption of original VM, his talk was delayed coz of the time needed for the restoration of his backup VM. So in the meantime, he talked about the MONO project and its support for running applications developed in ASP.NET. He also pointed out that there is no IDE like the Visual Studio for MONO, so one will need to use third party tools or need to manually compile and run an application in MONO runtime. By this time his VM got up and running and without wasting much he started his session. I was attending a session by Raj for the first time and very much impressed by his way of doing the presentation. This guy has got a very good vocal cord, as he didn’t use the microphone for addressing 100 odd people and believe me it was very much audible for the persons sitting in the last row.

To introduce the controls, he narrated a previous experience from his earlier part of his career, a customer needed to develop an CRM like application which resembles outlook in functionality and needs it to be a web based application. With much difficulty and hard work, Raj was able to sign off the project, with the help of the controls provided by the Telerik Productivity Suite. He then showed demo for various rad tools such as Time Picker, Scheduler, Editor etc and also showed us that how easy is to implement it in our applications. He rounded of his presentation by offering a 20% discount to event participants for an outright purchase of Telerik Productivity suite.

Read Part 2 here

Community Tech Day - 23rd Oct 2010 - Kochi

2010-10-13T18:42:00.001+05:30

K-MUG,one of the most successful technical community in India, is organizing Community Tech Days(CTD) in Kochi on 23rd Oct, 2010

Where
IMA House,
J. N. International Stadium Road,
Palarivattom P.O.,
Cochin, Kerala

Agenda

08:45 - 09:15 Registration Confirmation

09:15 - 09:30 Welcome and Community update by Sreejumon & Vinod

09:30 - 10:00 Plunge into Mono by Praseed

10:00 - 11:00 Telerik Productivity Tools by Raj

11:00 - 11:15 Tea Break (15 min)

11.15 - 12:15 T-SQL Tips and Tricks with SQL Server by Vinod

12.15 - 01:00 Entity Framework 4 by Shalvin

01:00 - 01:45 Lunch Break (45 min)

01.45 - 02:45 Security Auditing and Accountability under Windows 2008 by Manu

02:45 - 03:30 NoSQL databases in .NET Apps by Shiju

03:30 - 03:45 Tea Break (15 min)

03:45 - 04:30 Generics - A Revisit by Yanesh

04:30 - 05:15 .NET Serialization And XML by Praseed

05.15 - 05:30 Closing Ceremony

For more details please visit the K-MUG events page .

For registrations, click here or

if you have a Live ID, then go to Community Tech Days Site

Internet Explorer 9 Beta - First Impressions

2010-09-20T23:11:00.002+05:30

The much anticipated release of the IE 9 beta is out and didn't waste much time in installing it. The first thing caught my attention was the interface. Less congested design with less icons and more screen real estate.

Layout & Interface

IE 9 brings significant changes to its layout, the address bar, icons and the tabs now appear in a single row which there by increases the area for the content. Also Reload, Stop, Compatibility buttons appears next to the address bar and the Home, Favorite and Settings button now appear to the right of the screen. These icons are gray in color by default and changes the color when we hover mouse over them. The status bar is turned off by default and I found it bit annoying coz most of the users want to see the progress bar during the loading of a page.

Another one catches the user attention will be the absence of the address box. This explains why they integrated Bing right into the address bar, so it works either as an address bar or a search bar and Microsoft termed it as "Private OneBox".

As you can see from the above screen shot, we can turn off the search suggestion in the drop down itself and also the various segregations can be collapsed or expanded there by decreasing the amount of scrolling. Even though Bing is the default search provider, we can add n number of search providers and can even change the default provider. Another feature is the ability to shut down individual tabs if a website hangs, rather than terminating the entire browser from the task manager.

Another first in IE 9 is the much anticipated Download manager. This is the one feature every surfer wants in a browser and after much wait MS guys incorporated it into their flagship product.

Another nifty feature is the one appears to the bottom of the screen, the notification window. In IE 9 all the notifications and warning appears in this box unlike the pop up dialog boxes in IE 8.

The most interesting innovation in IE 9 is the pinned shortcuts. We can simply drag and drop a tab in to the taskbar and it will appear as an application there. For example if open a Facebook page in a tab and then drop it on to the task bar, the icon in the taskbar will not be the much famous "e" but it will pull down the favicon from Facebook site. It looks like that the designers had paid attention to the minute details, coz we can identify a pinned site and a site opened in a normal browser window by the color of the icons.

The other significant change is that they decided to hide the Quick Tabs(Ctrl + Q). According to Microsoft, they had intentionally did this coz of the aero peek feature in Windows 7. With Aero Peek we can see the full page view of the page and it gives a much better view than the one in its predecessor. Then comes the new about:Tabs page which comes when we open a new page in IE9. It lists all the frequently visited pages in a nice layout and makes it even easier to go back.

Again you can see the attention to the detail, the color in the histogram style bars in each tab is picked from the favicon of the sites and it given them a more personalized look to it.

In a whole I was pretty much impressed with the changes they had made to layout and there are many areas needs to be explored such as the hardware acceleration for rendering, HTML 5 support, new javascript engine etc etc and I will be covering those topics very soon... Also its still in beta and the changes we see may or may not be incorporated in the final release. IE 9 works best with Windows 7 and there is no support for Windows XP. Installation is straight forward and installer can be downloaded from here. The official site for IE 9 is www.beautyoftheweb.com.

Now the all important question is it worth to download it when we have FF or Chrome installed in our PC. According to me this one has more to offer than its predecessors especially in performance and compatibility with industry standards. There is no harm in giving a try... so go on folks, download it and explore. Also please don't forget to give feedback after trying... Till next time, happy surfing....

Visual Studio LightSwitch Architecture

2010-09-01T23:02:00.001+05:30

What is Visual Studio LightSwitch ?

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new rapid application development tool from Microsoft for building business applications with less emphasis on coding. It helps to simplify development process, coz it lets you to concentrate on the business logic and does a lot of remaining work for you. LightSwitch applications can be desktop based giving them the ability to interact with hardware devices such as card readers, scanners etc or browser based applications which helps to attain a greater reach. Since LightSwitch applications are created using Silverlight and .Net based n-tier architecture, there will be little change in the look and feel and behavior of both desktop based ones and web based ones.

Visual Studio LightSwitch offers a wide range of pre-built templates and tools to build business application that target Windows Client and Windows Azure. It also helps domain experts to build applications by concentrating on developing business logic, with little focus on writing code. Every business application will have common features such as searching, sorting, rearranging grids, ability to export data etc. With applications developed using LightSwitch these kind of features are already built in. Common data operations such as adding, updating, saving, deleting are also built in and it provides basic validation logic.

Architecture Overview

Most of the business applications are based on n-tier framework and among them the 3-tier architecture is widely used. Typical 3-tier architecture will look like as given below.

The presentation layer is the top most level of the framework, interacts with the end users, ie where the information is captured. It acts as a bridge between the application and the end users. The Business Layer coordinates the application, processes commands, making logical decisions and evaluations, and performs calculations. It also moves and processes data between the two surrounding layers. The Data Layer manages the storage and retrieval of information from data sources such as database or a file system . The information is then passed to the logic tier for processing, and then eventually back to the user. Designing and developing a new 3-tier architecture from scratch is tedious and time consuming. Many factors such as communication between the layers, technology to be used, system design, security etc needs to be factored in. But LightSwitch frees developer from making these decisions by making specific technology choices for you.

In a whole , presentation layer in a LightSwitch application can be a Silverlight 4.0 application, which can run as windows as well as a web application. The data layer can be thought as a set of WCF RIA Domain services running in ASP.NET 4.0 and can be hosted locally or on an IIS Server or in a Windows Azure Web Role. The data layer uses SQL Server or SQL Azure as primary data storage and can consume data from existing SharePoint 2010 lists, databases accessible via EDM provider and custom build WCF RIA Domain Services.

With inputs from Visual Studio Light Switch Team Blog

More resources can be found @
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/08/03/announcing-visual-studio-lightswitch.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff852064.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2010/08/03/introducing-microsoft-visual-studio-lightswitch.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/archive/2010/08/03/rapid-business-application-development-with-visual-studio-lightswitch.aspx