Code Junction

C# code to download a file from a website URL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 22:30:00 +0530

Hi All,
Yesterday one of my colleagues was having issue with downloading a file from URL using c# for one of the projects. This is a general requirement for many projects and thought it would be helpful if I post here.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;

namespace FileDownloadSample

{

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://www.yoursite.com/yourfile.pdf");

request.Method = "GET";

var encoding = new UTF8Encoding();

request.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptLanguage, "en-gb,en;q=0.5");

request.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptEncoding, "gzip, deflate");

request.Accept = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8";

request.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0";

var resp = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

using (var stream = File.Create("TargetFileName.pdf"))

resp.GetResponseStream().CopyTo(stream);

}

How to Replace characters at specified position and line in UNIX

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 13:59:00 +0530

sed -n -e 24p -e 24q | cut -c27-34
sed -n '24p;24q' | cut -c27-34

The -n option means 'do not print lines by default'; the 24p means print line 24; the 24q means quit after processing line 24. You could leave that out, in which case sed would continue processing the input, effectively ignoring it.

DoEvents in WPF

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 7 Aug 2014 15:34:00 +0530

Below is the equivalent of Doevents in WPF

public static void DoEvents()

{

Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Background, new ThreadStart(delegate { }));

}

If you want to do it in a WPF UserControl Library or CustomControl Library then you can do as below:

controlname.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Background, new ThreadStart(delegate { }));

C#.Net - Handling special characters in XML strings

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 1 Jul 2014 14:55:00 +0530

Because XML syntax uses some characters for tags and attributes it is not possible to directly use those characters inside XML tags or attribute values.

To include special characters inside XML files you must use the numeric character reference instead of that character. The numeric character reference must be UTF-8 because the supported encoding for XML files is defined in the prolog as encoding="UTF-8" and should not be changed.

The numeric character reference uses the format:

&#nn; decimal form

&#xhh; hexadecimal form

We can use the SecurityElement.Escape method to replace the invalid XML characters in a string with their valid XML equivalent [1].

//Usage

srtXML = SecurityElement.Escape(strXML);

Namespace: System.Security
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

I have used the HttpUtility classes UrlEncode and UrlDecode methods to handle cross-site scripting attacks and this also helped me to get rid of the XmlException – “Data at the root level is invalid”.

The following table shows the invalid XML characters and their respective replacements.

Code	Name	Displayed as
	Horizontal tab	non-printing
	Line feed	non-printing
	Carriage Return	non-printing
	Space	non-printing
!	Exclamation mark	!
"	Quotation mark	"
#	Number sign	#
$	Dollar sign	$
%	Percent sign	%
&	Ampersand	&
'	Apostrophe	'
(	Left parenthesis	(
)	Right parenthesis	)
*	Asterisk	*
+	Plus sign	+
,	Comma	,
-	Hyphen	-
.	Period	.
/	Slash	/
:	Colon	:
;	Semi-colon	;
<	Less than	<
=	Equals sign	=
>	Greater than	>
?	Question mark	?
@	At	@
[	Left square bracket	[
\	Bbackslash	\
]	Right square bracket	]
^	Caret	^
_	Underscore	_
`	Acute accent	`
{	Left curly brace	{
\|	Vertical bar	\|
}	Right curly brace	}
~	Tilde	~

Reference:
1. MSDN

New Features in C#.Net 5.0

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:21:00 +0530

Here are some of the C#.NET 5.0 New Features -

1. Key Features Matrix: Microsoft has published a new version of C# 5.0 beta with CLR version 4.5.

C# 5.0 introduces mainly two key features: Async Programming and Caller Information.

2. Asynchronous functions (Async and Await): Using Async and Await, you can use resources in the .NET Framework, to create an asynchronous method as easily as you create a synchronous method.

Asynchronous methods are the methods that you define using async and await.

Click on this http://codejunction.blogspot.in/2014/02/new-features-added-in-c-50.html to know more about async and await.

3. Caller Information: Caller Information attributes provide the information about the caller to a method. You can obtain the file path of the source code, the line number in the source code, and the member name of the caller. Caller Information helps us in tracing, debugging, and creating diagnostic tools.

CallerFilePathAttribute - Full path of the source file that contains the caller. This is the file path used at compile time.

CallerLineNumberAttribute - Line number in the source file on which the method is called.

CallerMemberNameAttribute - Method or property name of the caller.

4. Windows Runtime Support: C# and .NET now have deep integration with the Windows Runtime. C# project can compiled into a WinMD file and then referenced from a HTML/JavaScript project. WinRT’s flavor of COM uses the same metadata format used by the Common Language Runtime. This information is stored in WINMD files that show the structure, though not the implementation, of all the public classes. Windows Runtime returns an HRESULT instead of throwing an exception. For well-known HRESULT values, the corresponding exception is thrown, otherwise a COMException is used.

Read this article for more information on C# and Visual Basic on the WinRT API.

5. Compiler APIs: This feature is supposed to come after C# 5.0 – the APIs will expose whatever knowledge the compiler has about the code to the IDE and the developers, through Syntax Tree APIs, Symbol APIs, Binding and Flow analysis APIs and Emit APIs.

References:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh156499.aspx

http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/09/net-v5.0

Entity Framework result set not correct

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:01:00 +0530

This is a common problem that most of the people run into. You create an entity model to your view or table. Create a domain service and the client side code. In the client side code you put the filter and you run expecting to get some data but you end up getting one or few rows. I ran into the same problem yesterday. When I ran the program I got just the first row of the expected result.
The problem in my case, when I created the model from my table, I made some changes to attributes, removed bunch of columns, while doing it, i removed the unique key that identified the rows. It seems that if Entity Framework can not uniquely identify the rows, it does not return all the rows. To fix it, all I had to do is, go back to the model, make the fields that uniquely identify the rows, recompile and that’s it.
So if you run into any situation where the rows are not coming properly, this may be one of the culprit.

Introduction to .NET Framework 4.5.1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 14:43:00 +0530

Introduction
This article is a brief introduction to .NET Framework 4.5.1. This framework was released with Visual Studio 2013 Preview. There are new characteristics in this framework and those are the following:

Windows Store Apps
CLR Improvements
Multi-core JIT improvements
LOH Compaction
ASP.NET Scaffolding
NuGet 2.6

Windows Store Apps
Windows Store Apps are designed for specific form factors to look better in the Windows Operating System. There is a subset available for building Windows Store apps in Visual Basic and Visual C# and that subset is called .NET for Windows Store Apps.
CLR Improvements
The following new features and improvements have been added to the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and to .NET Framework 4.5.1:

When you compile any app that targets the framework 4.5.1, binding redirects may be added in the app configuration file if your application or its components reference multiple versions of the same assembly. You can enable this feature for the apps that target the older version of .NET Framework.
Better performance of the server is always needed. So now, you have the ability to collect diagnostic information to improve the performance.
Performance is also improved in the startup of the application.
Better experience of Exception Handling for Windows Store Applications.
Now you can return a value in the debugger. When you debug the application the Auto window displays the return type and value information for methods.
Managed Profile Guided Optimization Tool for optimize Windows Store Apps and Desktop apps also.

Multi-core JIT improvements
This feature was previously launched in .Net Framework 4.5. Microsoft extended this feature to work better in ASP.NET. Multi-core JIT has been extended to support dynamically loaded assemblies that exists in Assembly.LoadFrom. Multi-core JIT is enabled automatically for ASP.NET applications. The performance of ASP.NET is improved in .NET Framework 4.5.1 Preview with the Multi-core JIT improvements.
LOH Compaction
In the .Net Framework 4.5, Large Object Heap Fragmentation is released for the better use of free blocks. LOH Fragmentation is the enhancement of Garbage Collector. With the release of .NET Framework 4.5.1 Preview, the next logical step is taken by Microsoft which is LOH Compaction. You can now instruct the Garbage Collector to compact the LOH, either as a part of natural GC or forced GC. LOH Compaction is the solution of the issue but it is expensive and should only be used after significant performance analysis. The developer can't use this in the application every 5 minutes. If an application does not have the LOH Fragmentation issue then they do not want to use the LOH Compaction. It totally depends on them.
ASP.NET Scaffolding
ASP.NET Scaffolding is a code generation framework for ASP.NET Web Applications. The Visual Studio 2013 Preview has pre-installed code generators for MVC, Web Forms and Web API Projects. Using ASP.NET Scaffolding the amount of time is reduced to develop standard data operations in the Web Development Projects. There are some following prerequisites for the ASP.NET Scaffolding:

Visual Studio 2013 Preview
Web Developer Tools
ASP.NET Web Framework and Tools

NuGet 2.6
With the release of Visual Studio 2013 Preview, NuGet released the 2.6 version. If you do not know what NuGet is then here is some information. When you use to install the NuGet package, it copies the library files and automatically updates projects that includes references, config file and so on. Microsoft also published a list for NuGet Packages that is helpful to discover the releases of NuGet packages. NuGet 2.6 released in Visual Studio 2013 Preview provides better support for the applications that directly depends on multiple versions of a single NuGet package. This support is only available for Desktop apps, not for Windows Store Apps or Windows Phone Apps.

New features in VB.NET 11 (.NET 4.5)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 14:26:00 +0530

Unlike the release of VB.NET with .NET 4.0, the next release of VB.NET doesn’t have the anything like as many new features, which is almost certainly because the language is really maturing and a lot more parity has been achieved between C# and VB.NET.

Async

The big new feature for both languages is the introduction of the await/async keywords. I won’t go into detail here because they are covered in lots of other places (including the VB.NET team blog).

Yield

One if the freebees we get because of the Async feature is the Yield keyword. This has been a feature of C# for a long time, and although not massively useful, when you do need it, it can save you a lot of time. Let look at an example.

Imagine you have a function that takes an array of integers and returns an IEnumerable(Of Integer) containing the even numbers in that array (I know – completely contrived demo). The easiest way to do it would be to build a list and then return it once it is complete, for example:

Function GetEvens(numbers As Integer()) As IEnumberable(Of Integer) Dim evenNumbers As New List(Of Integer) For Each number in numbers If number Mod 2 = 0 Then evenNumbers.Add(number) End If Next Return evenNumbers End Function

With the Yield keyword we no longer need the List to hold the results, we can return them (yield them) as we find them, making our function look like this:

Function GetEvens(numbers As Integer()) As IEnumberable(Of Integer) For Each number in numbers If number Mod 2 = 0 Then Yield number End If Next End Function

Global

The Global keyword has existed for a while to allow you to be explicit about which namespace you want. For example, assume you have this namespace in your project:

Namespace Acme.System.IO

If you have Imported the Acme namespace this line becomes ambiguous:

Dim dataFile As System.IO.File

The global keyword allows us to be explicit:

Dim dataFile As Global.System.IO.File

In the next version of VB.NET we will also be able to use the Global keyword in namespace declarations (for exactly the same purpose). Kind of minor, but useful when you need it.

Five Great .NET Framework 4.5 Features

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 7 Feb 2014 14:16:00 +0530

Hi All,

You may want to check “Five Great .Nrt Framework 4.5 Features” by Shivprasad Koirala on codeproject site.

www.codeproject.com/Articles/599756/Five-Great-NET-Framework-4-5-Features

Thoughts on Unit Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 4 Feb 2014 17:46:00 +0530

Yesterday I had a great conversation with one of my friend about few things one of them was Unit testing. He is a big proponent of Unit Testing. Good unit testing (see I did not write more unit testing) could help identify and resolve the bugs in the code very early. This also helps code maintenance. I use unit testing where ever and when ever possible. I will not sit and break my head over how will I do unit test when I develop form over data patterns. On the flip side when you develop a program that involves some kind of logic that manipulate data then for sure you need to identify the components and test it.
This was one of my friend example, why would we need unit testing, lets assume _a and _b are variable and instead of doing if (_a == _b) if you would do it, if (_a = _b) then you have problem. If you would write an unit test for it, you will catch it early enough. On the side note, this condition will not even compile in C#, because compiler will complain, it can not convert integer to bool implicitly. Anyway, you got the point.
One very import point I want to make is how many unit test you write? Write enough to do good code coverage. If you have a method which takes bunch of parameters and you are asserting against some values, in older version of NUnit, you would write individual methods for each assertion. With latest version of NUnit you can write the single test and decorate it with all the assertion saves lots of code duplication. It also make code maintenance easy. So please check out latest version of NUnit.
If you are lazy or do not want to do unit test yet you need to do please your boss, here is a short cut, use Microsoft PEX. In this, you point a method and PEX will create all the possible scenario test cases with all possible input parameters.
Now that I am doing more and more Silver Light + RIA, I need to do more reading on how I can test the code good. Any of you are using testing for these platform, drop me a mail.

Top 10 New Features in SQL 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 23:03:00 +0530

Top 10 New Features in SQL 2012

Our new SQL 2012 just released. I get asked all the time why should I upgrade to the latest. There are 100’s of reasons with this one, I tried to pick the best 10. More info here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3783.what-s-new-in-sql-server-2012.aspx

1) AlwaysOn SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances

Multi-subnet failover clusters: A SQL Server multi-subnet failover cluster is a configuration where each failover cluster node is connected to a different subnet or different set of subnets. These subnets can be in the same location or in geographically dispersed sites. Clustering across geographically dispersed sites is sometimes referred to as Stretch clusters. As there is no shared storage that all the nodes can access, data should be replicated between the data storage on the multiple subnets. With data replication, there is more than one copy of the data available. Therefore, a multi-subnet failover cluster provides a disaster recovery solution in addition to high availability. For more information, see SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering.
Flexible failover policy for cluster health detection: In a SQL Server failover cluster instance, only one node can own the cluster resource group at a given time. The client requests are served through this node for that failover cluster instance. In the case of a failure, the group ownership is moved to another node in the failover cluster. This process is called failover. The improved failure detection introduced in SQL Server 2012, and addition of failure condition level property allows you to configure a more flexible failover policy. For more information, see Failover Policy for Failover Cluster Instances.
Indirect checkpoints: The indirect checkpoints feature provides a database-specific alternative to automatic checkpoints, which are configured by a server property. Indirect checkpoints implements a new checkpointing algorithm for the Database Engine. This algorithm provides a more accurate guarantee of database recovery time in the event of a crash or a failover than is provided by automatic checkpoints. To ensure that database recovery does not exceed allowable downtime for a given database, you can specify the maximum allowable downtime for that database.

2) Windows PowerShell

Starting with SQL Server 2012, Windows PowerShell is no longer installed by SQL Server Setup. Windows PowerShell 2.0 is a pre-requisite for installing SQL Server 2012. If PowerShell 2.0 is not installed or enabled on your computer, you can enable it by following the instructions on the Windows Management Framework page. For more information about SQL Server PowerShell, see SQL Server PowerShell.

SQL Server 2012 now uses the new Windows PowerShell 2.0 feature called modules for loading the SQL Server components into a PowerShell environment. Users import the sqlps module into PowerShell, and the module then loads the SQL Server snap-ins. For more information, see Run Windows PowerShell from SQL Server Management Studio.

The sqlps Utility is no longer a PowerShell 1.0 mini-shell; it now starts PowerShell 2.0 and imports the sqlps module. This improves SQL Server interoperability by making it easier for PowerShell scripts to also load the snap-ins for other products. The sqlps utility is also added to the list of deprecated features starting in SQL Server 2012.

The SQL Server PowerShell provider includes two new cmdlets: backup-sqldatabase and restore-sqldatabase. For more information, use the get-help cmdlet after loading in the sqlps module.

3) Data-tier Applications

The data-tier application (DAC) upgrade has been changed to an in-place process that alters the existing database to match the schema defined in the new version of the DAC. This replaces the side-by-side upgrade process, which created a new database with the new schema definitions. The Upgrade a Data-Tier Application wizard has been updated to perform an in-place upgrade. The Upgrade method of the DacStore type is now deprecated, and replaced with a new IncrementalUpgrade method. Upgrades are also supported for DACs deployed to SQL Azure. For more information, see Upgrade a Data-tier Application.
In addition to just extracting a schema definition as a new DAC package file, you can now export both the schema definition and data from a database as a DAC export file. You can then import the file to create a new database with the same schema and data. For more information, see Export a Data-tier Application and Import a BACPAC File to Create a New User Database.
Data-tier applications now support many more objects than in SQL Server 2008 R2. For more information, see DAC Support For SQL Server Objects and Versions.

Technorati Tags:

4) Server Modes for Analysis Services Instances: Multidimensional, Tabular, and SharePoint

This release adds a server mode concept to an Analysis Services installation. An instance is always installed in one of three modes that determines the memory management and storage engines used to query and process data. Server modes include Multidimensional and Data Mining, SharePoint, and Tabular. For more information, see Determine the Server Mode of an Analysis Services Instance

5) Integration Services Performance

Reduced Memory Usage by the Merge and Merge Join Transformations

Microsoft has made the Integration Services Merge and Merge Join transformations more robust and reliable. This is achieved by reducing the risk that these components will consume excessive memory when the multiple inputs produce data at uneven rates. This improvement helps packages that use the Merge or Merge Join transformations to use memory more efficiently.

Microsoft has also provided new properties and methods for developers of custom data flow components to implement a similar solution in their own components. This improvement makes it more feasible to develop a robust custom data flow component that supports multiple inputs. For more information, see Developing Data Flow Components with Multiple Inputs.

6) Answering the Need with (DQS) Data Quality Services

Data quality is not defined in absolute terms. It depends upon whether data is appropriate for the purpose for which it is intended. DQS identifies potentially incorrect data, and provides you with an assessment of the likelihood that the data is in fact incorrect. DQS provides you with a semantic understanding of the data so you can decide its appropriateness. DQS enables you to resolve issues involving incompleteness, lack of conformity, inconsistency, inaccuracy, invalidity, and data duplication.

DQS provides the following features to resolve data quality issues.

Data Cleansing: the modification, removal, or enrichment of data that is incorrect or incomplete, using both computer-assisted and interactive processes. For more information, see Data Cleansing.
Matching: the identification of semantic duplicates in a rules-based process that enables you to determine what constitutes a match and perform de-duplication. For more information, see Data Matching.
Reference Data Services: verification of the quality of your data using the services of a reference data provider. You can use reference data services from Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket to easily cleanse, validate, match, and enrich data. For more information, see Reference Data Services in DQS.
Profiling: the analysis of a data source to provide insight into the quality of the data at every stage in the knowledge discovery, domain management, matching, and data cleansing processes. Profiling is a powerful tool in a DQS data quality solution. You can create a data quality solution in which profiling is just as important as knowledge management, matching, or data cleansing. For more information, see Data Profiling and Notifications in DQS.
Monitoring: the tracking and determination of the state of data quality activities. Monitoring enables you to verify that your data quality solution is doing what it was designed to do. For more information, see DQS Administration.
Knowledge Base: Data Quality Services is a knowledge-driven solution that analyzes data based upon knowledge that you build with DQS. This enables you to create data quality processes that continually enhances the knowledge about your data and in so doing, continually improves the quality of your data.

7) Replication Support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups

Replication supports the following features on Availability groups:

A publication database can be part of an availability group. The publisher instances must share a common distributor. Transaction, merge, and snapshot replication are supported.

In an AlwaysOn Availability Group an AlwaysOn secondary cannot be a publisher. Republishing is not supported when replication is combined with AlwaysOn.

Peer-To-Peer (P2P), bi-directional, reciprocal transactional publications, and Oracle Publishing are not supported.

A database that is enabled for Change Data Capture (CDC) can be part of an availability group.
A database enabled for Change Tracking (CT) can be part of an availability group.

Four new stored procedures provide replication support for AlwaysOn.

For more information about replication with AlwaysOn, see Configure Replication for AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server), Maintaining an AlwaysOn Publication Database (SQL Server), and Replication, Change Tracking, Change Data Capture, and AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).

8) Power View

Power View, a feature of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition, is an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience. It provides drag-and-drop ad hoc reporting for business users such as data analysts, business decision makers, and information workers. Power View reports are in a new file format, RDLX.

Power View expands on the self-service BI capabilities delivered with PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint by enabling customers to visualize and interact with modeled data in a meaningful way, using interactive visualizations, animations, and smart querying. It is a browser-based Silverlight application launched from within SharePoint Server 2010 that enables users to present and share insights with others in their organization through interactive presentations.

Based on Tabular Models

With Power View, customers start from an SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services (SSAS) tabular model to build their reports. Tabular models use metadata to present an underlying data source to end users, with predefined relationships and behaviors, in terms they understand. For more information about tabular models, see What's New (Analysis Services) and Tabular Modeling (SSAS Tabular).

Coexists with Report Builder

Power View does not replace Report Builder, the report authoring tool for richly designed operational reports. Power View addresses the need for Web-based, ad hoc reporting. It co-exists with the latest version of Report Builder, which also ships in SQL Server 2012.

For more information, see the following:

Use Excel to Manage Master Data

You can now manage your master data in the Master Data Services Add-in for Excel. You can use this add-in to load a filtered set of data from your Master Data Services database, work with the data in Excel, and then publish the data back to the database. If you are an administrator, you can also use the add-in to create new entities and attributes. It is easy to share shortcut query files, which contain information about the server, the model, version, entity, and any applied filters. You can send the shortcut query file to another user via Microsoft Outlook. You can refresh data in the Excel worksheet with data from the server, refreshing either the entire Excel worksheet or a contiguous selection of MDS-managed cells in the worksheet. For more information, see Master Data Services Add-in for Microsoft Excel.

Match Data before Loading

Before adding more data to MDS, you can now confirm that you are not adding duplicate records. The MDS Add-in for Excel uses SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) to compare two sources of data: the data from MDS and the data from another system or spreadsheet. DQS provides suggestions for updating your data, along with the percent of confidence that the changes are correct. For more information, see Data Quality Matching in the MDS Add-in for Excel.

Load Data into MDS Using Entity-Based Staging

Loading data into MDS has become easier. You can now load all members and attribute values for an entity at one time. Previously you had to load members and attributes in separate batches. See Importing Data (Master Data Services).

10)SQL Server Install

Server Core Installation: Starting with SQL Server 2012, we can install SQL Server on Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core SP1. For more information, see Install SQL Server 2012 on Server Core.
SQL Server Data Tools (Formerly called Business Intelligence Development Studio): Starting with SQL Server 2012, you can install SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) which provides an IDE for building solutions for the Business Intelligence components: Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services.

SSDT also includes “Database Projects”, which provides an integrated environment for database developers to carry out all their database design work for any SQL Server platform (both on and off premise) within Visual Studio. Database developers can use the enhanced Server Object Explorer in Visual Studio to easily create or edit database objects and data, or execute queries.

SQL Server multi-subnet clustering: You can now configure a SQL Server failover cluster using clustered nodes on different subnets. For more information, see SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering.
SMB file share is a supported storage option: System databases (Master, Model, MSDB, and TempDB), and Database Engine user databases can be installed on a file share on an SMB file server. This applies to both SQL Server stand-alone and SQL Server failover cluster installations. For more information, see Install SQL Server with SMB fileshare as a storage option.

New features added in C# 5.0

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 13:54:00 +0530

C# most recent version 5.0 was released on August 15, 2012 with .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012.

There are two main features in C# 5.0 - Async Programming and Caller Information. Let's understand both these features in details as given below.

Async Feature (Asynchronous Methods)

C# 5.0 Async feature introduces two keywords async and await which allows you to write asynchronous code more easily and intuitively like as synchronous code. Before C# 5.0, for writing an asynchronous code, you need to define callbacks (also known as continuations) to capture what happens after an asynchronous process finishes. This makes your code and other routine task such exception handling complicated.

Both the keywords are used in a combination of each other. Hence, an await operator is applied to a one or more than one expressions of an async method. An async method returns a Task or Task<TResult> that represents the ongoing work of the method. The task contains information that the caller of the asynchronous method can use, such as the status of the task, its unique ID, and the method's result.

public async Task<IEnumerable<Product>> GetProductList()
{
 HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
 Uri address = new Uri("http://dotnet-tricks.com/");
 client.BaseAddress = address;
 
 HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync("myservice/product/ProductList");
 
 if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
 {
 var list = await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<IEnumerable<Product>>();
 return list;
 }
 else
 {
 return null;
 }
}

Caller Information (Caller info attributes)

Caller Information can help you in tracing, debugging and creating diagnose tools. It will help you to avoid duplicate codes which are generally invoked in many methods for same purpose, such as logging and tracing.

You could get the following information of caller method:

CallerFilePathAttribute

Full path of the source file that contains the caller. This is the file path at compile time.
CallerLineNumberAttribute

Line number in the source file at which the method is called.
CallerMemberNameAttribute

Method or property name of the caller.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
class Example
{
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
 Console.WriteLine("Main method Start");
 InsertLog("Main");
 MyMethodB();
 MyMethodA();
 Console.WriteLine("Main method End!");
 Console.ReadLine(); // hold on result
 }
 
 static void MyMethodA()
 {
 InsertLog("MyMethodA");
 MyMethodB();
 }
 
 static void MyMethodB()
 {
 // some code here. 
 }
 
 static void InsertLog(string method)
 {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} called MyMethodB at {1}", method,
 DateTime.Now);
 }
}
/* Output:
 Main method Start
 Main called MyMethodB at 11/17/2013 11:12:24 PM
 MyMethodA called MyMethodB at 11/17/2013 11:12:24 PM
 Main method End!
*/

In both Main and MyMethodA, method InsertLog is invoked for logging. Now we can change the above code as follows.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
class Example
{
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
 Console.WriteLine("Main method Start");
 MyMethodB();
 MyMethodA();
 Console.WriteLine("Main method End!");
 Console.ReadLine();
 }
 
 static void MyMethodA()
 {
 MyMethodB();
 }
 
 static void MyMethodB([CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerFilePath] string sourceFilePath = "", [CallerLineNumber] int sourceLineNumber = 0)
 {
 InsertLog(memberName);
 }
 
 static void InsertLog(string method)
 {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} called MyMethodB at {1}", method, DateTime.Now);
 }
}
 
/*Output:
 Main method Start
 Main called MyMethodB at 11/17/2013 10:30:11 PM
 MyMethodA called MyMethodB at 11/17/2013 10:30:11 PM
 Main method End!
 */

Hope you like these new features of C# 5.0.

How to change the root password for MySQL in XAMPP?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:43:00 +0530

By default, when you install XAMPP in your windows machine, the root password for the MySQL is set to empty. But this is not recommended, as the MySQL database without a password will be accessible to everyone. To avoid this, a proper/secure password must be set to the user root. To do it in XAMPP, there are two ways.

Method 1: reset XAMPP MySQL root password through web interface:

After you started your XAMPP server, go to the browser and type the URL http://localhost/security/ (incase you've modified XAMPP server port, you need to include that port number also in previous URL). The security page will be shown where you can change the root password for MySQL. This will update the phpMyAdmin config also.

Method 2: reset XAMPP MySQL root password through SQL update:

Start the Apache Server and MySQL instances from the XAMPP control panel.
After the server started, open any web browser and give http://localhost:8090/phpmyadmin/ (if you are running XAMPP on 8090 port). This will open the phpMyAdmin interface. Using this interface we can manager the MySQL server from the web browser.
In the phpMyAdmin window, select SQL tab from the right panel. This will open the SQL tab where we can run the SQL queries.
Now type the following query in the textarea and click Go
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('password') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Now you will see a message saying that the query has been executed successfully.
If you refresh the page, you will be getting a error message. This is because the phpMyAdmin configuration file is not aware of our newly set root passoword. To do this we have to modify the phpMyAdmin config file.
Open the file [XAMPP Installation Path] / phpmyadmin / config.inc.php in your favorite text editor.
Search for the string $cfg\['Servers'\]\[$i\]['password'] = ''; and change it to like this, $cfg\['Servers'\]\[$i\]['password'] = 'password'; Here the 'password' is what we set to the root user using the SQL query.
Now all set to go. Save the config.inc.php file and restart the XAMPP server.

.Net c# parallel yield

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0530

yield is a very useful keyword in C# that allows you to create dynamic enumerators of stuffs without having to fill in a List<T> of things you want to return first. The generated code builds a state machine that will go forward, step by step, whenever the caller calls MoveNext on the IEnumerable it gets back (usually using foreach).

static void Main(string[] args)

{

    var input = new[] { "A", "B", "C" };

    Console.WriteLine(String.Join("\n", Process(input)));

}

static IEnumerable<string> Process(IEnumerable<string> input)

{

    if (input == null)

        throw new ArgumentNullException("input");

    foreach (var item in input)

    {

        yield return "Process " + item;

    }

}

// Output :

// Process A

// Process B

// Process C

The second really useful thing is Parallel.ForEach. Whenever you have to process loads of independent data that are CPU hungry you can launch the process in parallel and have it scheduled for you by the .NET runtime.

static void Main(string[] args)

{

    var input = new[] { "A", "B", "C" };

    Stopwatch w = new Stopwatch();

    w.Start();

    Process(input);

    w.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("{0}s ", w.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);

}

static void Process(IEnumerable<string> input)

{

    if (input == null)

        throw new ArgumentNullException("input");

    Parallel.ForEach(input, item =>

        {

            // Something long

            Thread.Sleep(1000);

        });

}

// Output :

// ~ 1s although we had 3 stuffs that each took 1s

What if we could write that?

 
static void Main(string[] args)

{

    var input = new[] { "A", "B", "C" };

    Stopwatch w = new Stopwatch();

    w.Start();

    var result = Process(input);

    w.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("{0}s ", w.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);

    Console.WriteLine(String.Join("\n", result));

}

static IEnumerable<string> Process(IEnumerable<string> input)

{

    if (input == null)

        throw new ArgumentNullException("input");

    Parallel.ForEach(input, item =>

        {

            // Something long

            Thread.Sleep(1000);

            // >>>> THE POWER !!

            yield return "Process " + item;

        });

}

But no we can’t because “The yield statement cannot be used inside an anonymous method or lambda expression“.
You obviously can’t mix those two pieces of magic together. In fact, if we could this would produce some of the weirdest bugs ever if something went wrong. But maybe we can’t build something that looks like it, for the sake of doing it?

static void Main(string[] args)

{

    var input = new[] { "A", "B", "C" };

    Stopwatch w = new Stopwatch();

    w.Start();

    var result = Process(input);

    Trace.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}s before enumerating", w.Elapsed.TotalSeconds));

    Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(String.Join("\n", result)));

    Trace.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}s after enumerating", w.Elapsed.TotalSeconds));

}

static IEnumerable<string> Process(IEnumerable<string> input)

{

    if (input == null)

        throw new ArgumentNullException("input");

    var workQueue = new ConcurrentQueue<string>();

    Exception workException = null;

    var completed = false;

    // This task will run on its side in another thread

    Task.Run(() =>

    {

        try

        {

            Parallel.ForEach(input, item =>

                {

                    // Something long

                    Thread.Sleep(1000);

                    // Push our results here

                    workQueue.Enqueue("Process " + item);

                });

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

            // We don't want a crash to be lost in another thread

            // so we have to bring it back somehow on the main thread

            workException = ex;

        }

        completed = true;

    });

    // Not the most elegant, but it's just for fun so ...

    while (!completed)

    {

        string item;

        if (workQueue.TryDequeue(out item))

            yield return item;

        else

            Thread.Sleep(1); // remember, just for fun

    }

    // We don't want to lose the last items

    string finalItem;

    while (workQueue.TryDequeue(out finalItem))

        yield return finalItem;

    // Buble the exception if there's one

    if (workException != null)

    {

        throw new Exception("Error while doing stuffs", workException);

    }

}

Output:

0.00039s before enumerating
Process B
Process A
Process C
1.0398348s after enumerating

Notice than we did have an “yield behavior” as the processing was not executed on the call to Process, and how the whole process took 1s where it has 3 items that each took 1s. We also don’t have a reliable order anymore, it could have been any combination of B, A and C.

SQL Server 2014 New Features

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:29:00 +0530

Although it doesn’t seem possible so soon, Microsoft announced SQL Server 2014 at this year’s TechEd 2013 conference in New Orleans. Quentin Clark, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for SQL Server, said that Microsoft is getting ready for the upcoming SQL Server 2014 release. Some of the most important new features in SQL Server 2014 include the following:

In-Memory OLTP Engine
The new In-Memory OLTP Engine (formerly code-named Hekaton) will provide OLTP performance improvements by moving selected tables into memory. The In-memory OTLP Engine works with commodity hardware and won’t require any application code changes. A built-in wizard will help you to choose which tables go in memory and select the stored procedures that will be compiled into machine code for high performance execution.
EdgeNet, an early adopter, saw a 7X performance increase with no code changes. Microsoft claims that some applications can achieve a 50x performance boost using the new In-Memory OTLP engine.

Backup Encryption
Encrypting backups gets simpler in SQL Server 2014. Check out a great illustration of the how you can prevent anyone from taking your backup file and restoring it to another database server with the new SQL Server 2014 encryption capabilities by reading My Favorite New Feature in SQL Server 2014 by Joey D'Antoni.

Business Intelligence
SQL Server 2014 includes business intelligence (BI) improvements to help build and support vast databases and data warehouses. Learn more about what SQL Server 2014 will do for your business Intelligence efforts in Upcoming Business Intelligence Enhancements in SQL Server 2014 by Kevin Kline.

In-Memory OLTP Engine
In-Memory OLTP significantly improves the OLTP workload and reduces the time required for processing. The performance gains depend on the hardware infrastructure you have and how you are writing your queries. Get more details from Arshad Ali in SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP Architecture and Data Storage.

Memory Optimization Advisor
The SQL Server 2014 Memory Optimization Advisor will help you quickly analyze your tables and walks you through reviewing and migrating disk-based table to In-Memory OLTP tables. Greg Larsen give you a walk-through of how to use the Memory Optimization Advisor tool to migrate a table in the AdventureWorks2012 database. See, SQL Server 2014 Memory Optimization Advisor.

Windows Azure Integration
SQL Server 2014 includes the ability to use Windows Azure for offsite backup storage and as a disaster recovery site. With SQL Server 2014 you can backup and restore your databases from copies stored in Windows Azure, which can quickly and easily provide off-site storage for all backups. More specifics are available in SQL Server 2014 CTP2 and Azure Backups by Joseph Karnes.

The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded MS Office VSTO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:49:00 +0530

I've recently encountered with an error in a VSTO development (an Excel Add-in) under Vs 2010 environment. The error message I got when compiling the solution is as follows.

"The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded from the assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask"

I have install the VS 2012 together with VS2010 recently and I did the following process to get this resolved.

1. Open "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets" File from below Location
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\OfficeTools
2. Press Ctrl+H and replace all all 10.0.0.0 text wit 11.0.0.0
3. Save the file to desktop with the same same & extension.
4. Delete the original file
5. Cut and pate the saved file to above location.
6. Close and restart VS 2010 (If Opened)

How to Easily integrate PHP Code in Blogger or blogspot

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:58:00 +0530

PHP is considered as the most powerful computer language that makes things happen with the glimpse of seconds. However, PHP is not supported by Blogger or BlogSpot running platform which makes it extremely difficult to customize and implement some new latest developments, but there are still some ways through which you can add PHP codes in your Blogger enabled Website. Though, the results are not 100%, but it is far better than not having a PHP code on your blogger site. In this article, we will show you how to add PHP codes in Blogger.

Step#1: Creating a PHP File:

Before you can add PHP Codes in blogger, you have to first create a PHP file in which you have to use all the PHP codes that you would like to use. However, make sure that the file is free from errors otherwise things would not look good. Following is the simple Hello World PHP code example, just for a basic guideline for some beginners

<?php
echo '<p>Hello World</p>';
?>

After creating the file with all your desired codes make sure you save it in .PHP extension. For example, mybloggerlab.php, you can use NotePad++ for writing codes because it is the only FREE standard developing tool.

Step#2: Hosting a PHP File:

Since, blogger does not allow you to host any kind of files like PHP, HTML or CSS. Therefore, you have to either host it on your hosting (if you have) or you can use Google Drive to host them for FREE. We have already written a detailed tutorial on It, so read it here.

You can also use Dropbox, and many other free hosting services but certainly they are not better than the features and reliability of Google Drive.

Step#3: Adding PHP Codes in Blogger

After creating and hosting the PHP file, login into your Blogger account. Once logged in, head over to the dashboard and select the blog on which you would like to add PHP Codes. Now it depends on your needs whether you want to add the PHP code in posts, pages, sidebar or footer. Just paste the following code anywhere you would like to display the PHP file.

<object width="400" height="300" type="text/html" data=" your-file.php"></object>

Don’t forget to replace your-file.php with the URL of your own PHP file that you may have got while hosting it on services like Google Drive Dropbox and etc.

Congratulations: You have successfully added PHP codes to blogger. Go and check your blog to see if things are working as planned. Let us know, if you have a better way of doing this job.

We hope this tutorial has helped you in learning how to add PHP codes in blogger. Still, this is not the most accurate way because we are just using a iFrame technique to include the codes. Blogger needs to think more on making its platform friendly for the developers so that they can bring awesomeness to their blogs and websites.

How to Press and Send Ctrl-Alt-Del in Remote Desktop Connection Window

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:05:00 +0530

Remote Desktop Connection client allows user to remotely connect and administer another Windows computer that is running Microsoft Terminal Services. As with most remote control system or even virtualization process, which effectively and virtually run two or more system on a single physical machine, user will have problem to trigger Control-Alt-Delete (Ctrl+Alt+Del) keyboard shortcut key combination.
Ctrl-Alt-Del keyboard shortcut has been commonly used since IBM PC with DOS era to perform soft reboot, and used in modern Windows system to activate Winlogon process (log on to Windows NT), open Task Manager or Windows Security dialog box that allows user to log off, lock computer, shutdown PC, run Task Manager, switch user and other functions.

However, whenever trying to trigger Ctrl-Alt-Del function on remote system connected via Remote Desktop Connection, the keyboard shortcut combination pressed will bring up the Ctrl+Alt-Del function on the local machine instead of the machine remotely logged on via RDC.

This behavior is by design though, as Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination is too important for any PC (to run especially when computer encounters halt error or hang). As such, Ctrl-Alt-Del keyboard shortcut is always reserved for local host computer.

In order to send Ctrl-Alt-Del keystrokes to remote computer connected via Remote Desktop client, just press the following workaround:

Ctrl+Alt+End

Tools To Simulate CPU / Memory / Disk Load

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:23:00 +0530

Lot of people search for tools to simulate high CPU, Memory and Disk issues. Here are the tools we can use

Simulate High CPU Usage

CPUSTRES.EXE is a tool you can use to simulate High CPU usage by an user mode process. Its available for download from the Windows Sysinternals website.

Here I have used CPUSTRES to simulate 50% CPU usage.

CPUSTRES also has options to change the priority of the threads it spawns.

Simulate High Memory Usage

To simulate high memory usage you can use the TestLimit tool from the Sysinternals website. TestLimit can be used to simulate a variety of memory leak issues. Here I am using TestLimit to reduce the Available memory on my machine.

Simulate High Disk Activity

SQLIO is a tool for benchmarking the I/O capacity of a given storage system. It can simulate sequential and random I/O and is usually used to test storage systems for SQL Server installations.

SQLIO is an useful tool that you can use to simulate high disk activity.

Simulate High Disk Usage

Another useful tool to simulate these issues is consume.exe. It ships with Windows SDK and can be used to consume resources like CPU, memory and disk. Here I am using consume.exe to simulate low disk space issues.

NOTE : Use these tools with extreme caution as they can freeze the machine you run them on and you might end up rebooting the machine.

How to Host CSS or JavaScript Files in Blogger using Google Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:02:00 +0530

Hosting CSS and JavaScript files on your Blogger blog has always been a matter of concern for a webmaster. People prefers to add their entire StyleSheet coding in one file, so they can upload it to their hosting and can easily apply it on their website. Unfortunately, blogger has quite a few limitations that stop you from hosting CSS and JavaScript files. Recently our user sent us an email asking: is there any way to host files on blogger? What are the advantages of hosting CSS (StyleSheet) files? Luckily, Google Drive provides you the opportunity to host CSS, JavaScript and HTML Files for FREE. In this article, we will show you How to Host CSS Files with Google Drive in Blogger?

Why to Host files on Google Drive?

Lots of Space: Google Drive provides you 5 GB storage to regular accounts so you can easily upload lots of documents. However, if your disk space is full, then you can upgrade your account from basic to premium.

Create & collaborate: Google Drive provides you the flexibility to create and host different kinds of spreadsheets and presentations. Make some edits in the documents and see real-time changes as they appear.

Reliable & Dependable: With 100% uptime, it provides you the freedom to host anything that you like. It has unlimited bandwidth, but you have to take care of your disk space it should not exceed 5GB mark or you can upgrade your account.

Go back and revise: Google drive tracks almost all the change that you make to your document - so whenever you will save a document, a new revision also gets save. You can take a glance back and can make revision accordingly.

Share or make files Private: You can share your files and folders with anyone. Select whether others can comment, share, view or edit your stuff. You can handle everything instantly from your dashboard.

Security at its best: Google Drive has always proven to be the most reliable free hosting service with unlimited bandwidth. Moreover, to provide full proof security Google drive has utilized HTTPS encryption to keep your documents secure.

All This For Free: All these impressive features for free.

What are the Advantages of Hosting CSS/JavaScript in one File?

Blogger doesn’t provide its users the flexibility to host CSS or JavaScript files in one separate link. They are hosted within the website’s coding through HTML Tags.

For StyleSheet, <style> tag is use to define the style information for an HTML document. Between two <style></style> tags, CSS coding is placed which specify how HTML elements should render in the web browser. Each HTML document can contain multiple <style> tags.

For JavaScript <script> tag is use to define the script, such as JavaScript. The <script> tag either contains the scripting statements or it points to an external file through src attribute. Each HTML document can contain multiple <script> tags.

Combining all StyleSheet/JavaScript coding in 1 file helps a website to load faster. Furthermore, it helps search engine to crawl your site smoothly.

How to Host CSS Files with Google Drive in Blogger:

There are several third-party apps that could help you to host files in blogger including Google Apps, Google Code, and Google App bot. At MyBloggerLab, we use App bot, but the process of hosting files on Appbot is a lot complex. Google Drive is perfect and works better than Appbot because there is no need to worry about the bandwidth.

Step#1: Copying CSS Coding From You Template:

To host your CSS file with Google Drive in Blogger, first thing you need to do is to copy your all StyleSheet coding from your template to an empty notepad. Go to Blogger » Your site » Template » Edit HTML » Proceed and search for the <b:skin><![CDATA[ tag. On finding this tag, you will see a large chunk of CSS coding, so copy all the CSS coding till the ]]></b:skin> tag. For more details see the following screenshot.

Step#2: Preparing a style.css file

After copying the CSS coding, remove it from your template and paste the coding in an empty new notepad. Now save the document and name the file to style.css (the extension of the file should be in .css so the browser can render it as StyleSheet). For more details see the following screenshot.

Step#3: Hosting your style.css file on Google Drive:

The next thing is to upload style.css file to your Google Drive account. First go to Google Drive and login into your Gmail Account. Now you have to create a new folder, so you can upload all the web hosting files at one place. Press the “Create” button and from the drop down list select “Folder”. Now name the folder to anything that you like such as webhost, web files and etc. In the end, press "Create" to conclude.

Now open the folders that you have created a few moments ago (right click on the folder name and select open). On selecting the upload icon present on the left side of your screen, a drop down list will appear which would provide you two choices i.e. File and Folder. Just select “File” and move to the next step.

Now it will request you to select the style.css documents that you created few moments a go. After selecting the file, press the open button and move to the next step.

On pressing the open button a small upload wizard would appear on the right side of your screen. It usually takes a minute or two to upload, but it entirely depends upon the size of your file and the speed of your internet connection.

Once uploading is done, press the “Share” button. Now you have to make this file available for public. Press change, and select “public on the web” so anyone on the Internet can find and access. Finally, press the Save button to conclude the wizard. For detailed instructions, check out the following screenshot.

Step#4: Getting a Proper Hosting Link

The second last step is to prepare a proper hosting link of your style.css file. Right click on the file that you uploaded few moments a go and select “Share”. Copy the whole URL present in the text area under “Link to share”. For more details see the following screenshot.

After Copying the sharing Link from google drive, it would somewhat looks like this https://docs.google.com/file/d/your-file-code/. You have to change the copied link to https://googledrive.com/host/your-file-code. Remember: Make sure “your-file-code” remains the same before and after the changes are made.

let us do a small demonstration which would help you in explaining better. For Example, if the link of my file is https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0WJjcJEFNzibXRyZWlwNktKcFk/ so I will change it to https://googledrive.com/host/0B0WJjcJEFNzibXRyZWlwNktKcFk. The only thing which remains the same is the file code.

Step#5: Adding Google Drive Hosted CSS file in Blogger

After preparing a proper hosting link of your file, once again go to Blogger » Your site » Template » Edit HTML » Proceed. Now search for the starting <head> tag and just above it paste the following code. Remember: Do not forget to replace https://googledrive.com/host/your-file-code with your Google drive hosting link, and make sure you have removed the CSS coding from the template as we have mentioned in the step#1. Once everything is done, press the “Save Template” button.

<link href='https://googledrive.com/host/your-file-code' rel='stylesheet'/>

If you are still confused about the process then check out this in-depth video tutorial

When Should I use WPF Vs Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:05:00 +0530

In my role, I work with a number of large corporations, and this is a question that they ask me regularly: What is the difference between the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight, and in what scenarios does it make sense to use each?
Microsoft feels that user experience is important, and invested in multiple technologies to promote better user experience. Both WPF and Silverlight use XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) under the covers.
Let's look at some of the different characteristics of each technology:

WPF:

Ships as part of the .NET Framework (version 3.0 and onward)
Runs as Windows application or as web "browser application" (called XBAP, for "XAML Browser Application"). Note that XBAPs run only in Internet Explorer with .NET 3.0 and in both Internet Explorer and Firefox with .NET 3.5.
Runs on Windows machines only (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008)
Richest functionality, including 3D graphics

Silverlight:

Ships independently
Runs in web browsers only (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari)
Runs on Windows or Mac operating systems (also on Linux via Moonlight, which is an open source implementation of Silverlight based on Mono)
Functionality is a subset of WPF's feature set

When should you use each? The maddening answer is (of course): it depends!
WPF is a more mature technology and was designed with a richer feature set. It also has the advantage of being able to run in a browser or as an installed Windows-Form-type app.
Silverlight has a broader reach. You can access Silverlight from many operating systems and web browsers.
The most important reason to choose one over the other should be based on the intended audience for the application. For example, if a corporation is designing an application for internal use only and every employee has Windows XP as the company standard OS, then go with WPF to leverage the richer feature set. If a corporation is designing an external-facing website, then Silverlight is the better choice because potential customers can access the website from a variety of different operating systems and browsers.

Entity Framework 4.0- Bind Stored Procedure with Result Entity class

noreply@blogger.com (Manasa) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:12:00 +0530

Microsoft Entity Framework version 4.0 is a brand new ORM(Object Relational Mapper) from Microsoft. It’s provides now some new features which are not there in the earlier version of Entity framework. Let’s walk through a simple example of a new features which will create a new Entity class based on stored procedure result. We will use same table for this example for which they have used earlier for Linq Binding with Custom Entity.
Below is the table which have simple fields like first name,last name etc.
Let’s insert some data like following.

Below is the stored procedure which I am going to use for this example which will simply fetch data from the table.

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.GetAllUsers
  
AS
 SET NOCOUNT ON
 SELECT
  UserId,
  UserName,
  FirstName,
  LastName,
  FirstName + ' ' + LastName AS [FullName]
 FROM dbo.Users

Now let’s create Entity model class just like below via Project->Add New Item->Go to Data tab and then select ADO.NET Entity Data Model.

Once you click add a dialog box will appear which will ask for Data Model Contents there are two options Generate From Database and another one is Empty Model. Generate from database will create a Entity model from the ready made database while Empty model enable us to create a model first and then it will allow us to create a database from our model. We are going to use Generate From database for this example. Select Generate From Database like following and click Next.

After click on the next it will ask for database connection string like following where you need to apply connection string for that. I am already having connection string in my web.config so i just selected like below otherwise you need to create one via clicking on new connection. Also you need to specify the connection string name in web.config so it will put a connection string in connection string section with that name.

Once you click next it will fetch the all database objects information like Tables,Views and Stored Procedure like following. Here our purpose is to work with stored procedure so I just selected the stored procedure and selected the GetAllUsers Stored Procedure.

After that it will create a Entity Model class in solution explorer.Now we want to bind the stored procedure with result class so first we need to create function which will call ‘GetAllUser’ stored procedure. To create function we just need to select Our Entity Model class and then go to Model Browser and select the Stored Procedure and right click->Add Function Import like following image.

It will start a new wizard and will go to next step like following image which will have four options 1. None 2. Scalars 3. Complex 4. Entities and there will be a button Get Column information once you click it. It will gather all the column information of stored procedure result set and then click ‘Create New Complex Type’ It will create a new complex type from the gathered column information.

You can also rename that class so I have renamed the class as ‘User Info’ like following.
Now click ok and now it will create function which call the stored procedure and will return Object Result set of Type ‘UserInfo’ which we have just created. Now let’s bind that to a simple grid view to see how its works. So Let’s take a simple grid view like below.

1 2	`<asp:GridView` `ID="grdUserList"` `runat="server">` `</asp:GridView>`

Now Let’s bind that grid view like following from the code behind file of asp.net like following.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!Page.IsPostBack)
    {
      using (BlogEntities myEntity = new BlogEntities())
      {
         grdUserList.DataSource = myEntity.GetAllUsers();
         grdUserList.DataBind();  
      }
    }
}

Just run it with Ctrl + F5 and below it the output in browser.

That’s it very easy and simple to bind complex type with stored procedure using ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0. Hope this will help you.. Happy Programming!!!

SQL Server Enable xp_cmdshell Option

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 15:29:00 +0530

Introduced in SQL Server 2005, the xp_cmdshell option is a server configuration option that enables system administrators to control whether the xp_cmdshell extended stored procedure can be executed on a system. By default, the xp_cmdshell option is disabled on new installations and can be enabled by using the Policy-Based Management or by running the sp_configure system stored procedure as shown in the following code example:

-- To allow advanced options to be changed.
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for advanced options.
RECONFIGURE
GO
-- To enable the feature.
EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for this feature.
RECONFIGURE
GO

SplineSeries for the Silverlight Toolkit - C# Code

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:39:00 +0530

While the Silverlight Toolkit has made some amazing strides in improving, it still lacks some functionality compared to other toolkit offerings. In particular, Silverlight Toolkit's charts lack splines, or smoothed lines. The idea here is that we don't want the graph to appears as though a line is moving from point to point directly -- that it moves parabolically, or softer.

A typical line series.

Now, this is all fun and games, but can we get something where transitions are more smooth? Yes, we can.

A spline series.

Notice, the spline series changes are more gradual and curved. Are they an entirely accurate representation of the in-between? No, not always -- but they're not meant to be (necessarily).

The Spline Series is literally a copy/paste of the LineSeries, with a few changes. Note that this is located under the Charting/Series folder of the DataVisualization.Toolkit project. Essentially, what we want to do is change the Polyline to a Path. The idea here is that a Polyline doesn't draw Beziers. Below is my (large) code,

SplineSeries.cs:

// (c) Copyright Microsoft Corporation.
// This source is subject to the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).
// Please see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=131993 for details.
// All other rights reserved.
 
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
 
#if !DEFINITION_SERIES_COMPATIBILITY_MODE
 
namespace System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Represents a control that contains a data series to be rendered in X/Y 
    /// line format.
    /// </summary>
    /// <QualityBand>Preview</QualityBand>
    [StyleTypedProperty(Property = DataPointStyleName, StyleTargetType = typeof(LineDataPoint))]
    [StyleTypedProperty(Property = "LegendItemStyle", StyleTargetType = typeof(LegendItem))]
    [StyleTypedProperty(Property = "PathStyle", StyleTargetType = typeof(Path))]
    [TemplatePart(Name = DataPointSeries.PlotAreaName, Type = typeof(Canvas))]
    [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Maintainability", "CA1501:AvoidExcessiveInheritance", Justification = "Depth of hierarchy is necessary to avoid code duplication.")]
    public partial class SplineSeries : LineAreaBaseSeries<LineDataPoint>
    {
        #region public PointCollection Points
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the collection of points that make up the spline.
        /// </summary>
        public PointCollection Points
        {
            get { return GetValue(PointsProperty) as PointCollection; }
            private set { SetValue(PointsProperty, value); }
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Identifies the Points dependency property.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly DependencyProperty PointsProperty =
            DependencyProperty.Register(
                "Points",
                typeof(PointCollection),
                typeof(SplineSeries),
                null);
        #endregion public PointCollection Points
 
        #region public PathGeometry SplinePoints
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the collection of points that make up the line.
        /// </summary>
        public PathGeometry SplinePoints
        {
            get { return GetValue(SplinePointsProperty) as PathGeometry; }
            private set { SetValue(SplinePointsProperty, value); }
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Identifies the SplinePoints dependency property.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly DependencyProperty SplinePointsProperty =
            DependencyProperty.Register(
                "SplinePoints",
                typeof(PathGeometry),
                typeof(SplineSeries),
                null);
        #endregion public PathGeometry SplinePoints
 
        #region public double SplineTension
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the tension in the beziers that make up the spline.
        /// </summary>
        /// <remarks>
        /// The greater the tension, the more straight/linear the spline will look.
        /// Less tension creates a more curvy spline.
        /// </remarks>
        public double SplineTension
        {
            get { return (double) GetValue(SplineTensionProperty); }
            set { SetValue(SplineTensionProperty, value); }
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Identifies the SplineTension dependency property.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly DependencyProperty SplineTensionProperty =
            DependencyProperty.Register(
                "SplineTension",
                typeof(double),
                typeof(SplineSeries),
                new PropertyMetadata(2.5));
        #endregion public double SplineTension
 
        #region public Style PathStyle
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the style of the Path object that follows the data 
        /// points.
        /// </summary>
        [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Naming", "CA1704:IdentifiersShouldBeSpelledCorrectly", MessageId = "Path", Justification = "Matches System.Windows.Shapes.Path.")]
        public Style PathStyle
        {
            get { return GetValue(PathStyleProperty) as Style; }
            set { SetValue(PathStyleProperty, value); }
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Identifies the PathStyle dependency property.
        /// </summary>
        [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Naming", "CA1704:IdentifiersShouldBeSpelledCorrectly", MessageId = "Path", Justification = "Matches System.Windows.Shapes.Path.")]
        public static readonly DependencyProperty PathStyleProperty =
            DependencyProperty.Register(
                "PathStyle",
                typeof(Style),
                typeof(SplineSeries),
                null);
        #endregion public Style PathStyle
 
#if !SILVERLIGHT
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes the static members of the LineSeries class.
        /// </summary>
        [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Performance", "CA1810:InitializeReferenceTypeStaticFieldsInline", Justification = "Dependency properties are initialized in-line.")]
        static SplineSeries()
        {
            DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(SplineSeries), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(SplineSeries)));
        }
 
#endif
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the LineSeries class.
        /// </summary>
        public SplineSeries()
        {
#if SILVERLIGHT
            this.DefaultStyleKey = typeof(SplineSeries);
#endif
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Acquire a horizontal linear axis and a vertical linear axis.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="firstDataPoint">The first data point.</param>
        protected override void GetAxes(DataPoint firstDataPoint)
        {
            GetAxes(
                firstDataPoint,
                (axis) => axis.Orientation == AxisOrientation.X,
                () =>
                {
                    IAxis axis = CreateRangeAxisFromData(firstDataPoint.IndependentValue);
                    if (axis == null)
                    {
                        axis = new CategoryAxis();
                    }
                    axis.Orientation = AxisOrientation.X;
                    return axis;
                },
                (axis) => axis.Orientation == AxisOrientation.Y && axis is IRangeAxis,
                () =>
                {
                    DisplayAxis axis = (DisplayAxis)CreateRangeAxisFromData(firstDataPoint.DependentValue);
                    if (axis == null)
                    {
                        throw new InvalidOperationException(Properties.Resources.DataPointSeriesWithAxes_NoSuitableAxisAvailableForPlottingDependentValue);
                    }
                    axis.ShowGridLines = true;
                    axis.Orientation = AxisOrientation.Y;
                    return axis;
                });
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Updates the Series shape object from a collection of Points.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="points">Collection of Points.</param>
        protected override void UpdateShapeFromPoints(IEnumerable<Point> points)
        {
            if (points.Any())
            {
                PointCollection pointCollection = new PointCollection();
                foreach (Point point in points)
                {
                    pointCollection.Add(point);
                }
 
                //At least two points are necessary to generate a proper spline
                if (pointCollection.Count >= 2)
                {
                    PathGeometry geometry = new PathGeometry();
                    PathFigure figure = new PathFigure();
 
                    PointCollection bezierPoints = GetBezierPoints(pointCollection);
 
                    figure.StartPoint = bezierPoints[0];
                    for (int i = 1; i < bezierPoints.Count; i += 3)
                    {
                        figure.Segments.Add(new BezierSegment()
                            {
                                Point1 = bezierPoints[i],
                                Point2 = bezierPoints[i + 1],
                                Point3 = bezierPoints[i + 2]
                            });
                    }
 
                    geometry.Figures.Add(figure);
                    SplinePoints = geometry;
                }
                else
                {
                    SplinePoints = null;
                }
 
                Points = pointCollection;
            }
            else
            {
                Points = null;
                SplinePoints = null;
            }
        }
 
        #region Bezier Curve Building
 
        /*
         * Formulas and code pulled from Kerem Kat's MapBezier example:
         * http://www.codeproject.com/KB/silverlight/MapBezier.aspx
         */ 
 
        private PointCollection GetBezierPoints(PointCollection pts)
        {
            PointCollection ret = new PointCollection();
 
            for (int i = 0; i < pts.Count; i++)
            {
                // for first point append as is.
                if (i == 0)
                {
                    ret.Add(pts[0]);
                    continue;
                }
 
                // for each point except first and last get B1, B2. next point. 
                // Last point do not have a next point.
                ret.Add(GetB1(pts, i - 1, SplineTension));
                ret.Add(GetB2(pts, i - 1, SplineTension));
                ret.Add(pts[i]);
            }
 
            return ret;
        }
 
        private Point GetB1(PointCollection pts, int i, double a)
        {
            Point  derivedPoint = GetDerivative(pts, i, a);
            return new Point(pts[i].X + derivedPoint.X / 3, pts[i].Y + derivedPoint.Y / 3);
        }
 
        private Point GetB2(PointCollection pts, int i, double a)
        {
            Point derivedPoint = GetDerivative(pts, i+1, a);
            return new Point(pts[i + 1].X - derivedPoint.X / 3, pts[i + 1].Y - derivedPoint.Y / 3);
        }
 
        private Point GetDerivative(PointCollection pts, int i, double a)
        {
            if (pts.Count < 2)
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("pts", "Data must contain at least two points.");
  
            if (i == 0)
            {
                // First point.
                return new Point((pts[1].X - pts[0].X) / a, (pts[1].Y - pts[0].Y) / a);
            }
            if (i == pts.Count - 1)
            {
                // Last point.
                return new Point((pts[i].X - pts[i - 1].X) / a, (pts[i].Y - pts[i - 1].Y) / a);
            }
  
            return new Point((pts[i + 1].X - pts[i - 1].X) / a, (pts[i + 1].Y - pts[i - 1].Y) / a);
        }
        #endregion
    }
}
 
#endif

Note that I borrowed my Spline/Bezier code from Kerem Kat's example: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/silverlight/MapBezier.aspx

Essentially what it does, is takes prior points to adjust such that they curve into the next. The UpdateShapeFromPoints method was changed from the standard LineSeries and uses all of the helper methods that were added to calculate a Bezier curve.

We're pretty much almost done, except for one more minor touch. We need to have the default style included, such that it complies with how Silverlight Toolkit handles it's control templating. We add the following chunk of code to Themes\generic.xaml of the same project:

    <!--  charting:SplineSeries  -->
    <Style TargetType="charting:SplineSeries">
        <Setter Property="IsTabStop" Value="False" />
        <Setter Property="PathStyle">
            <Setter.Value>
                <Style TargetType="Path">
                    <Setter Property="StrokeThickness" Value="2" />
                    <Setter Property="StrokeMiterLimit" Value="1" />
                </Style>
            </Setter.Value>
        </Setter>
        <Setter Property="Template">
            <Setter.Value>
                <ControlTemplate TargetType="charting:SplineSeries">
                    <Canvas x:Name="PlotArea">
                        <Path Data="{TemplateBinding SplinePoints}" Stroke="{TemplateBinding Background}" Style="{TemplateBinding PathStyle}"/>
                        <Polyline Points="{TemplateBinding Points}" />
                    </Canvas>
                </ControlTemplate>
            </Setter.Value>
        </Setter>
    </Style>

Now, just recompile the Toolkit and you should be good to go!

I've included a "patch" with these files and their updates -- they should be capable of being pasted over their old versions (the Themes\generic.xaml just has the SplineSeries.xaml pasted into it -- I would strongly recommend you doing this with your own source):

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B9hGvs6yJgfJNzA4YmE1OTctNzNmYy00MzMzLWJhNDQtNTc0M2FlNTA3NzFm&hl=en_US

SilverlightToolkit Development/Building Guidance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:40:00 +0530

If you're like me and want to alter some of Silverlight Toolkit's behavior (or add more functionality to it), chances are your builds will not work perfectly and you'll be in a constant state of mismatched assemblies.

I've noticed that Silverlight Toolkit has some major issues with the entire build process -- only loading different components and making references to other DLL's (which get deleted if you perform a clean build), not other projects. The second those are removed from the Binaries directory, the entire system goes to hell and back, eventually grabbing references to your DLL's in the Silverlight Toolkit install directory (somewhere in your root drive under Program Files, etc). What a pain! Then you'd have to go back and rebuild the references and re-specify their location. There has to be a better way, right?

Kind of.

What I ended up doing, and I highly recommend this for anyone working with Silverlight Toolkit on a regular basis -- is to build a new solution, rather than use the existing ones. Don't worry about including their Design or Testing projects, unless they're important to you. Then follow this process:

1. Build a new solution and include all relevant projects.

As stated before, place everything that you actually care about building. In my case, I was only concerned about the actual controls - not the testing or design. Since I'm already heavily involved with using the controls, I'll know if they're broken in test or design scenarios.

2. (Optional) Rename all projects to their full assembly name, rather than a shorthand version.

When viewing their projects, you'll notice things like Controls.Data or System.Controls, which are all very misleading. Everything falls under System.Windows.*. For sake of clarity, I found myself renaming them, so when I would eventually add references back to other projects, I could see the full name of the project/assembly built.

3. Change build path in each project, for all build-types, to a single directory.

You'd be surprised how many different places the assemblies for Silverlight Toolkit get built to. Each project seems to be written by someone else, with their own styles/paths for where assemblies that are built get stored. I simplified everything and made everything build to the Binaries folder -- always.

4. Referenced assemblies from other SDKs should be placed in a special folder under the build path.

This is a pattern we have at work -- if you build something that requires a reference to an SDK other than our own, you drop the assembly in a References project and store everything in source control for the entire team to use. You won't have to install the toolkits for other team members at this point, since they'll be in a standard location. For Design and Testing projects, SilverlightToolkit uses other SDKs, so this is vital for those of you wishing to build these.

5. Remove all references to SilverlightToolkit projects and re-add them as a reference to the projects in your solution.

As stated before, the references all get built to different places, which can cause for some crazy issues when you perform a clean. They then default back to your SilverlightToolkit install. It's horribly complicated. Referencing your projects will create appropriate dependencies that cause everything to build correctly and together. You can imagine what will happen to System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualizations when it tries to reference System.Windows.Controls and the assemblies are built at different times with different dependencies. If you can't, imagine shear sacrilege. And pain. And suffering.

If you follow these guidelines, you should have a much more stable/clean build of SilverlightToolkit, which will make future developments and enhancements easier to bake in (such as targeting a WPF platform for Charting). Unfortunately SilverlightToolkit also no longer accepts user contributions, due to licensing issues, and Microsoft is the sole development team. This makes getting features added a little (read: very) difficult.

Good luck and happy building!