This forced me to resort back to my Vista partition which didn’t make me happy.  I’ve been extremely happy living in my Windows 7 world and I didn’t want to leave just to use SharedView.  I took a quick minute this evening to dig deeper into the issue.  I downloaded a copy of Microsoft Ocra, which allows you to edit the MSI database.  When I checked out the installation conditions the problem was clear. The conditional statement below was used several times.  It seems that SharedView is forward compatible as long as you are running the 32 bit version of Windows XP or greater, but only valid if you are running Vista x64.

NOT(((NOT VersionNT64) AND VersionNT>=501) OR (VersionNT64 AND VersionNT = 600))

I modified the conditions to allow for forward compatibility saved and tried to re-install again.  Success!  I am attaching a copy of the modified MSI, but with the following disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER:  I am attaching this as an example of how to modify an MSI to allow for forward compatibility not for you to install it.  If you choose to install it anyway, I am not responsible for what happens to your system.  By downloading the following attachment you agree to this disclaimer.

Download:

To get the root of the problem we created a simple HTML file and placed it in the root of the directory.  We were still getting the same error.  The next step was to enable logging in IIS which provided us with a little more information, including the exact error 401.1 / 2148074252.  After some head scratching and googling, we ran across this knowledge base article KB896861.  A quick modification to the registry, a reset and we were back in business. 

Location

Hyatt Regency Chicago
151 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL, 60601

Date

January 13th 2009

Register

Presentation Abstract

ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a new framework released with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 that lets you create data-driven ASP.NET Web applications easily. It does this by automatically discovering data-model metadata at run time and deriving UI behavior from it.  A scaffolding framework provides a functional Web site for viewing and editing data. You can easily customize the scaffolding framework by changing elements or creating new ones to override the default behavior.  Come see how ASP.NET Dynamic Data can drastically reduce development time, while still giving you the flexibility necessary to create rich data driven web applications.

Meeting Time & Location

Date: January 8th, 2009
Time: 6:00 pm

Doors open at 5:30pm and the meeting starts at 6:00pm. Everyone is welcome to join us, and the admission is free. Presentations are targeted towards developers and IT professionals.

Thanks to our sponsors, we will again be having FREE PIZZA and cokes beginning at 5:30 (while supplies last).

Location:

The Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Education Center
7435 North Keystone Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46240

Map and directions

Josh Heyse: programming WCF for 90% of developers is just interfaces and classes marked with ServiceContract and DataContract
Josh Heyse: the rest is in the configuration
Josh Heyse: and if you’re a huge nerd you’ll get that pun

Made me smile and figured others might enjoy it as well.

Official Announcement

On September 29, 2008, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio Team System Development Edition will be combined with the Visual Studio Team System Database Edition in Visual Studio Team System 2010.  Microsoft recognized that many developers write front end code in addition to working deeply with database code and database tables. Bringing the feature of Team Development Edition and Team Database Edition together sets together enables you to take advantage of the core tools for application development as well as the necessary tools for database development, including performance profiling, code analysis, code metrics, code coverage, database refactoring, Schema Compare, Data Compare, and more.  You may also be happy to know there is a way to take advantage of this 2 for 1 deal TODAY.  Really, no joke!

Want to hear more about it?  Maybe even see these two incredibly powerful tools together?  Join the Chicago Visual Studio Team System User Group to hear more about how to get your hands on this awesome duo of tools, talk to field experts about how these tools have improved their overall quality of life (OK, maybe just their work environment), and to see them in action!.  We have decided to hold this session in both the Chicago Loop and Downers Grove offices to ensure everyone has a chance to learn about this terrific new opportunity.

To sign up, please email Laskowski.Dave@gmail.com. Please indicate which meeting you plan to attend.

Meeting Agenda
5:30pm – Pizza
6:00pm – Introductions
6:15pm – Presentation and Demo
7:30pm – Q&A and Raffle

Chicago Loop Meeting Details:
Wednesday November 5^th, 2008
77 West Wacker Drive, 23^rd Floor, Chicago, IL
Map

Downers Grove Meeting Details:
Wednesday October 29^th, 2008
3025 Highland Parkway, 3^rd Floor, Downers Grove IL
Map

Speaker Bios:

(Downers Grove)
Paul Hacker is a Principle Consultant at Polaris Solutions, LLC in Indianapolis, with a passion for Team System. He has been working with the product since beta 3. Paul has implemented Team System/TFS in numerous organizations. When not spending time with his family, you can find him presiding over the Indianapolis TFS SIG, Podcasting on Radio TFS or writing tools to enhance Team System. You can reach Paul at paul.hacker@polarissolutions.com

(Chicago Loop)
Josh Heyse is a Senior Solution Architect with Catalyst Software Solutions. He has always focused on staying ahead of the technology curve, investigating Microsoft technologies before they are available to the general public. Josh began developing on beta versions the .NET Framework when they were released in early 2001. Josh is currently focused on WPF, LINQ, and most recently Silverlight 2.0.  As an architect Josh spends a lot of time improving the software development lifecycle by implementing pattern & practices, continuous integration and ALM tools such as Team Foundation Server. MCSD, MCDBA, MCPD

One question did catch my eye though.  It was a member of the ASP.NET forum asking about being able to search on all of the columns within a given table.  [View the Post]  Dynamic Data doesn’t support this functionality out of the box, but it is flexible enough to write something yourself to do it.  The main things that makes this possible is that a single FilterTemplate can return one ore more DynamicFilterParameters which produce lambda predicates.

In this case, you can accomplish this logic of searching multiple columns in a table by saying where ProductName LIKE [Value] or ProductNumber LIKE [Value] etc…  To accomplish this in Dynamic Data Filtering you would utilize the OrExpressionParameter to create a collection of LikeExpressionParameters to do the predicate for each individual column.

I spent a little time creating a simple example which performs this logic.  I also implemented a Columns property which allows you to specify using a comma separated list the columns you want searched.  If Columns is left null or empty all columns are searched.  The aspx for the user control only contains a single asp:TextBox with the Id=TextBox1.

public partial class TableTextSearch : Catalyst.Web.DynamicData.FilterTemplateUserControlBase

{

    public string Columns { get; set; }

    private MetaTable Table

    {

        get

        {

            IDynamicDataSource source = this.FindDataSourceControl();

            if (source != null)

                return source.GetTable();

            return null;

        }

    }

    public override IEnumerable<Parameter> GetWhereParameters(System.Web.DynamicData.IDynamicDataSource dataSource)

    {

        OrExpressionParameter parameter = new OrExpressionParameter();

        string[] cols = null;

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Columns))

        {

            cols = Columns.Split(',');

            for (int i = 0; i < cols.Length; i++)

                cols[i] = cols[i].Trim().ToUpper();

        }

        var columns = (from c in Table.Columns

                       where cols == null || cols.Length == 0 || cols.Contains(c.Name)

                       group c by c.TypeCode).ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g);

        foreach (var column in columns[TypeCode.String])

        {

            parameter.Parameters.Add(new LikeExpressionParameter()

                    {

                        Type = TypeCode.String,

                        Name = column.Name,

                        Value = TextBox1.Text,

                        Like = LikeExpressionParameter.LikeType.Contains

                    });

        }

        yield return parameter;

    }

    public override void LoadQueryStringParameters(System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection parameters)

    {

        TextBox1.Text = parameters["TableTextSearch"];

    }

    public override System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection SaveQueryStringParameters()

    {

        return new NameValueCollection() { { "TableTextSearch", TextBox1.Text } };

    }

    public override void Clear()

    {

        TextBox1.Text = string.Empty;

    }

}

To implement filters like this one you must use the DynamicFilterForm as opposed to the DynamicFilterRepeater.  The reason is that the TableTextSearch filter control is associated with any column/property in particular but the entire table instead.  It may make sense to allow the FilterAttribute to be annotated at the class level to address this.

<asp:DynamicFilterForm ID="DynamicFilterForm1" runat="server" DataSourceID="GridDataSource">

    <FilterTemplate>

        <div>

            Search

        </div>

        <div>

            Keyword: 

            <dd:TableTextSearch runat="server" ID="TableTextSearch" />

            <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton4" runat="server" CommandName="Search">Search</asp:LinkButton>&nbsp;&nbsp;

            <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton5" runat="server" CommandName="Clear">Clear</asp:LinkButton>

        </div>

    </FilterTemplate>

</asp:DynamicFilterForm>

To build upon this example it would be nice to be able to search the DisplayText of foreign columns and potentially non text values.  For example if the user entered a string which can be converted to a date, search all DateTime columns.

Silverlight 2 brings us that green field development experience all developers dream of.  The "I could do this so much better only if I didn’t have to worry about …" feeling we all get when digging into an existing code base.  Now that Microsoft has released the technology it is up to us, the developer community, to start creating best practices around developing on this new technology.  It is looking to be an excellent next year for Rich Internet Application space.

Tim Heuer has an excellent blog post on what you need to get started with Silverlight 2 development.  On a very interesting side note, Eclipse will have support for Silverlight 2… cross browser, cross platform and cross IDE.

My first experience with source control was when I started my internship during freshman winter break.   Never once in the next 6 years of schooling was source control taught.  We had a few classes which used source control, but it was assumed that everyone knew how to use it.  In my experience, developers typically are shown how to use source control during their first day or two on the job by another developer, after that it’s "don’t break the build". 

So why is source control so hard?  Well you have a lot going on.  Ask any developer who has ever worked on a project with an occasionally connected system and they will tell you that the master to master synchronization between the two data sources was the most complicated aspect of the system.  What was meant to change? How do I handle conflict?  Was this deleted from one system or created in another?  To manage this the developer usually tries to accomplish a small set of synchronization rules, but leaves the rest to the user to decide what the intention of the synchronization was.  This means that the users need to be taught how to use the tool.  In our case, as developers, there are very few rules and the onus is on us to correct anything the system can’t figure out.

In addition to source control being hard, we have made it harder by implementing it two different ways, exclusive check-out/in and version merging repositories.

Visual Source Safe is an exclusive source control system which means that the system only allows one person to check-out a file; all other users can read the file but not write to it.  Once the user is done they check-in their change set. This is the ’safest’ form of source control to prevent against unwanted sides effects within a single file.  Most developers on the Microsoft platform are used to this version.

Team Foundation Server (by default) and Subversion are version merging repositories.  This means that everyone has the ability to write to their local files.  When the developer is done with their changes they merge them with the current version within the repository.  Because you do not exclusively check out files you aren’t ensured that the file hasn’t changed since you started working with it.  The developer, that’s you, must carefully merge the two files together.  The source control merge tool checks for conflicts at the line level.  This means that if a given line is changed in either the local or server copy the source control will accept the change automatically.  If both lines have changed, a merge conflict is logged and the user will be prompted to correct the issue.  I will be going into more detail on how to handle merge conflicts in a later post.

One of my roles within Catalyst as an architect and our TFS admin has been to define a source control process for projects moving forward.  I will also be working to educate our developers on that process and to depend their knowledge of source control usage.  This is going to be done through my blog and several presentations given during Lunch & Learns.  These presentations are also available to our clients, if they would like to attend.

When I first create a project in Team Foundation Server, I immediately create the following folders under the root of that source control repository:

• trunk
• branches
• releases

The trunk is where you build and deploy from, no development is done in the trunk.  Developers when assigned a task create a branch under branches, sometimes called dev, for their development.  This is where they begin to code.  This allows them to check code into the server before they have completed their tasks and it will not impact other developers or the build.  This also gives architects or team leads to ability to review code before it is merged into the trunk.

After a developer is done with a task, they merge their branch back into the trunk.  During this time they check to ensure that the code they are checking in doesn’t reference any code that has changed, due to other developers merging into the trunk. Building and running automated unit tests are the easiest ways to due a quick gut check.  In larger projects, someone or even a team is responsible merging into the trunk. 

When the deployment team goes to make a release build they branch the trunk to releases.  QA and support begin working with the release branches so not to impact new development.  Subsequent patches when released are then branched using a majorminorrevision hierarchy.  If a bug is identified to affect the trunk, the code which resolved the bug is also merged with the trunk. 

From a testing point of view, unit testing is performed at the branch level before merges can be performed. Complete unit testing and functional testing is done on the trunk nightly.  The trunk is also where most of the reporting is performed such as static code analysis, code churn, etc…