Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Twitter with style

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:14:55 GMT

I have been using an excellent piece of software for twittering form my Windows Mobile. Twikini has all of the features you would expect, as well as working fantastically with the IPhone like features of Windows Mobile 6.5.

I had used a few of the other apps that are available, but I think this is the best for the way that I use Twitter. The only thing that I have had a problem with is that on my phone keyboard between the “r” and the “t” is the hotkey for “Tweet”, and I quite often send in an unfinished tweet. Really a phone issue, but could do with an optional “confirm tweet” checkbox.

Ahh well, can’t have everything…

Technorati Tags: Twikini,Windows Mobile

Project Natal available soon

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:29:22 GMT

I may be a little late to the game, but this rocks!

The current rumours are that this will be available before Christmas and will cost in the region of £121! I for one will be pre-ordering one as soon as I can :)

Technorati Tags: xbox,xbox 360,xbox360,natal

Stuck with Vista?

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:51:40 GMT

If, like me, you are stuck with the old and decrepit version of Windows that is Vista SP1 at work then you may be interested in Service Pack 2 which became available on the MS Download site today.

Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone (KB948465)

Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 - Five Language Standalone for x64-based systems (KB948465)

I am not saying that I would rather have XP, but even with my work development computer ( 8 cores, 4gb rams, 2x 10000rpm raptors, raid 0+1) I find that it is sometimes a struggle finding some resources with which to run Visual Studio…

For me this is not a lot, and I have more running on my wife's laptop (2 cores, 4gb ram, 5400rpm HDD) with less problems on Windows 7 RC. I am not saying that Windows 7 uses less resources, but it certainly makes better use of them…

Well, lets hope SP2 solves at least some of these problems…

Ominous…

I think as usual with Vista only Part 1 of 3 will be done while I can still work… with part 2 on shutdown and 3 on reboot…

You can find out loads about what is in it from:

Windows Vista SP2 RTM + Windows Vista SP1 Blocker Tool Removed

Hopefully this will work…

Technorati Tags: Windows Vista,Windows Server 2008,Service Pack 2,Windows Vista Service Pack 2,Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2,Vista

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:05:07 GMT

Easy peasy, all you need is the full URL from the project collection and you will be able to connect directly to it as if it was a different Team Server. This functionality was added with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, so if you don’t have SP1 installed yet you had better get it:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

You need to use the following in the connection box “http://[tfsserver]:[port]/[vdir]/[projectCollection]

Although this looks complicated, it makes some sense at least, but is nowhere as nice as using the 2010 connection box:

One of the new things in TFS 2010 is that you can specify a virtual directory that it will run under, the default being “tfs” so you can have everything on the same ports.

So, if your tfs server name is “tfs01.domainname.com” and you take the default vdir of “tfs”, all you need is the collection name. So you could end up with “http://tfs01.domainname.com:80/tfs/MyNewCollection”

Backward compatibility +1

Connecting from Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 is a different story, there is currently no way to connect VS2005 to TFS2010. There has been some discussion around this and its importance to Business Intelligence teams. If you are just opening VS2005/VS2003 occasionally then you could probably get away with using 2010 to control TFS and working in 2005, but many BI developers are still spending a considerable amount of there time in 2005 :(

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2005,Visual Studio 2008,Visual Studo 2010,Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server,Team Foundation Server,TFS,VS2005,VS2010,TFS2010

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:04:55 GMT

I have just finished installing TFS 2010 beta 1 and doing an upgrade of out TFS 2008 data. This did not go well…

Due to a collation mismatch between my original SQL Server 2005 and my new SQL Server 2008 I received an error when upgrading…

[Error @13:57:23.665] TF255184: An error occurred during operation. Message=Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation.
Transaction count after EXECUTE indicates a mismatching number of BEGIN and COMMIT statements. Previous count = 0, current count = 1.. Exception=.
[Error @13:57:23.681] TF254026: An error occurred during the following operation: Upgrade. The error occurred during the following step group: Upgrade.TfsTeamBuild. It occurred on the following step: Check In Build Process Templates. The following message was returned: Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation.
Transaction count after EXECUTE indicates a mismatching number of BEGIN and COMMIT statements. Previous count = 0, current count = 1..
[Info @13:57:23.681] CollectionServicingMonitor - [5/25/2009 2:56:55 PM] Servicing step Check In Build Process Templates failed. (ServicingOperation: Upgrade; Step group: Upgrade.TfsTeamBuild)

And then the roll back of the transaction did not quite work as expected, so although the TFS Administration does not know about my OldTfs2008Test1 project collection.

My client has it listed but with a TF31001 error.…

Solution? Suck it up and reinstall everything, including SQL and change the collation to the same on both servers. :(

Technorati Tags: TFS2010,Team Foundation Server,Team Foundation Server 2010,Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1,Upgrade

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable?

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:31:10 GMT

A little fun game from Microsoft to test your knowledge. Going to see if I get on the leader board, but I do not hold out much any hope…

Check it out:

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Fun,Game

Microsoft MyPhone service available to the public

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:12:53 GMT

Microsoft recently opened up there beta of the MyPhone service to the general public. The service syncs your Mobile phone with the web and allows access to your Contacts Calendar tasks, pictures and more.

I have just left it running, but you can add stuff to your phone through this interface as well. I see the bonus of this as a backup, which I kinda have with Plaxo.com already for my contacts and calendar, but having your pictures and video up there too is much easier than connecting your phone into the computer.

I do not know what the bandwidth is like, but the fact that you cant set the sync any more frequently than once a day is an indication that it must be intensive. Make sure that you have a good hold of your data tariff for this one (I have unlimited for £9 from Orange), but for a beta it is a pretty cool service. I would like to see it integrated with SkyDrive for storage and a roll up of all these bits into http://home.live.com…we can but hope.

Setup you phone by going to http://myphone.microsoft.com

Technorati Tags: MyPhone,Microsoft,Windows Mobile

Solution to connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:18:35 GMT

This problem it seams is to do with the way Visual Studio 2010 connects to your TFS server over HTTPS. The default value for “BypassProxyOnLocal” in Visual Studio 2008 was “False”, but it has been changed to “True” for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. It should be noted that this is currently a Beta 1 workaround and this behaviour may be updated for Beta 2 and RTM.

You can fix this by adding the following registry keys and restarting Visual Studio 2010:

You need to add a “RequestSettings” key to both of the following location that contains a string value pair of “BypassProxyOnLocal=’False’”.

32bit OS Key Locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TeamFoundationServer\10.0\RequestSettings

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\RequestSettings

64bit key locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\TeamFoundationServer\10.0\RequestSettings

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\RequestSettings

You can find out more on the “How to: Change the BypassProxyOnLocal Configuration” documentation on MSDN.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010,Codeplex

Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Martin Hinshelwood — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:00:37 GMT

I have a number of CodePlex projects that I connect to from work and I have had a problem since 2008 that it does not always send my authentication to the proxy server (ISA). What this manifests as is that I get a popup telling me that “Proxy authentication is required”. The workaround was to connect in offline and then click the connect button and everything invariable works with no additional problems.

With Visual Studio 2010 the mater is slightly different. It pops up with a vague error that I had not seen before, but a little searching seamed to indicate that it may be the proxy problem rearing its ugly head in a killer way.

So the “ServicePointManager does not support proxies with the https scheme” error has been seen before when connecting to Windows Communication Foundation services through a proxies. The fix is code based, so that is not something that I can achieve, so I have raised a bug on Connect.

If you are experiencing this problem, then please add your support to the work item:

BUG: Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010,Codeplex

Why is the VS2010 iso so small?

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:14:09 GMT

The reason is simple, it has no MSDN documentation in it. I for one never install the MSDN documentation and just use the online version and have always found it a pain to have it inside the same installation, but may people find it useful.

And, why is there no Offline MSDN documentation? The answer is simple, it is not ready yet…

Technorati Tags: VSTS,Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010,MSDN

Uninstalling Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:10:18 GMT

You may think, why is he uninstalling VS2010? Well, apart from proving that it works…And that it plays well with VS2008 I need to remove the pre-beta beta that I have installed.

This is in fact the second time I have uninstalled VS2010 on this computer, and I had no problems last time, but the difference is that I will be installing a slightly different build :) of Beta 1.

I am hoping that I do not have any problems, but my scenario is largely unsupported.

I have removed visual studio, but it probably left a few trainer that I will need to remove manually. The easiest way is to see what was installed in the last month and check it all… Gruelling I know, but what can you do…

There is a nice little feature in Vista when you are in the programs list that lets you filter the list… coz it can be realy big

Here is he list of software I have installed in the last month:

I have highlighted all of the 2010 bits and it at first seams like there are rather a lot of them, but as you go through the list (I will finish with the .NET 4.0 bits) you find that it is just a cleanup issue..

So I then had some fun uninstalling .NET 4.0…

I know that this was unsupported, and that we were warned us not to do it, but we are developers and we like to push the big red buttons, but I installed the pre-beta beta on my production computer…

During the uninstall there was an infinite number of runtime errors.

And after cancelling and rebooting received lots of .net 4.0 errors for all sorts of applications upon boot.

The same thing happened during my second attempt at uninstalling. The plan now is to try a repair and then an uninstall...

Well, the repair failed, so I am going strait to installing from the new .NET 4.0 Beta 1 release and everything seams to be working ok so far. I realise that my computer will be in an unknown state afterwards, but I can always reinstall when I get the chance.

And after a restart, no problems… Wohooo….

Now to VS2010… And if my infrastructure team get me my VPC there will be TFS fun as Well.

So the end result is that although I have not uninstalled .NET 4.0, I do have the latest version which is what I wanted…

Technorati Tags: Uninstall,.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Visual Studio 2010 Supports UML

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:49:26 GMT

Just in case you have been living in a shed at the bottom of the garden, Visual Studio 2010 is to support UML. As you can see from my diagram, my UML skills are a little, erm, crude. But I think you will get the picture and if you want to do better then just download Visual Studio 2010 on Wednesday if you are not an MSDN subscribe, and if you are… well you can get it today :)

As I have not used UML since university so I do not know if this feature will meet the needs of those that use UML extensively, but I would expect that a lot of time and investment has gone into this area, and if it is lacking in some minor but crucial feature, there is still time to get some changes made…maybe...

Technorati Tags: UML,Visual Studio 2010,Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Multi-Targeting in Visual Studio 2010

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:46:57 GMT

We thought that we had it good in Visual Studio 2008, being able to target .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5, but in reality they were all running on the .NET 2.0 Runtime, just with a different set of available libraries. Well Visual Studio 2010 take it that little bit further by being able to target .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0.

This will be an invaluable feature as, if it turns out to be stable enough, you will be able to build or work on your existing 2.0 Runtime application and websites in Visual Studio 2010. One feature that I was disappointed to see missing is the ability to open project files in both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 simultaneously, that way you could move some of your developers over to 2010 and have the rest on 2008 on the same project…

But I guess we can’t have everything, and some features will be dropped for the sake of actually getting a product finished…

Well done to the Product teams for this mammoth feet…

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010,Multi-Targeting,.NET Framework,2.0 Runtime,.NET 3.0,.NET 3.5,.NET 4.0,4.0 Runtime,VSTS,Visual Studio Team System

Connecting VS2010 to TFS 2008

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:40:56 GMT

Connecting Visual Studio 2010 to Team Foundation Server 2008 is a snitch… If you have done it from VS200x to TFS200x then you will have no problems understanding what is going on…

Unlike previous versions of Team Suit there is not need to install Team Explorer separately as it comes preinstalled.

As you can see, when connecting to a TFS 2008 server you can see a single Team Projects collection called “Legacy server”, and a list of your projects. For more information about Project Collections try Brian Harry’s blog. Once Connected you have all the usual suspects, but just a little prettier…

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1,Visual Studio 2010,TFS,VSTS,Visual Studio Team System

Installing Visual Studio 2010 Team Suit Beta 1

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:39:06 GMT

It’s here, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. This is probably the most exciting product to come out of Microsoft since…well… Visual Studio 2008 ;).

The install will be totally familiar to those of you that have installed Visual Studio before, but you will note that there are no options like we had before where we could choose which components we want installed.

What we do get is the option to install for Managed or Native or both, this makes it easier for the those of us who just want all of the bits for the “thing” that we do.

You can, however click “Customize” at the bottom of the page to see the usual bits that, lets be honest, hardly any of us will use :)

I will be doing a full install by ticking both “Managed” and “Native” to get the works…Once you kick off the install you get a much nicer progress tracker.

The install took around 30 minutes, also a big improvement over previous versions, And you are done.

And what does the new welcome page look like?

Mmmmmm…

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,VS2010,VSTS2010

Installing .NET 4.0 Beta 1 on Windows Vista 64x

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:31:52 GMT

Today we see the first beta release of Microsoft's latest version of the .NET Framework. I will document the install process here, because well, some people just need assurances that it works ;)

Microsoft are adding some excellent features like the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and huge improvements to Domain Specific Languages. There will also be Visual Basic 10 and C# 4 that add a lot of features and bring the two languages closer together in everything except syntax. You can find out more about the exciting features that are adding and the updates to existing features by searching the web, but Lets get to the install…

Just like the previous versions of the .NET Framework, there are really no options on the install… Just accept the licence agreement and install.

The install took less than 20 minutes on my computer, which is a big improvement on 3.5! We will need to see how it performs on a virtual environment which I regularly have to leave overnight for a 3.5 install.

You can find out what is new in the framework from these blogs:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/kathleen/archive/2009/01/07/the-most-important-feature-of-net-4-0.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/wenlong/archive/2008/09/07/net-4-0-wf-wcf-and-oslo.aspx

Technorati Tags: .NET Framework,.NET Framework 4.0

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta 1 Ships

Martin Hinshelwood — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:28:21 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 Team Suit Beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 1 will be available to download from MSDN today at 5pm (GMT) and to the general public on Wednesday.

As you can see from this, there are more pieces to the 2010 puzzle, here is a list from Brian Harry’s blog:

Architecture (http://blogs.msdn.com/camerons/)

Architecture Explorer
Layer diagram
Use case designer
Activity designer
Component diagram
Logical class designer
Sequence diagram
Modelling project system
UML Model explorer
Architecture validation during build

Development & Database (http://blogs.msdn.com/habibh/)

Historical debugging
Test impact analysis
Improved code analysis
Improved profiling (especially multi-tier)
Database extensibility

Lab Management (http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chatterjee, http://blogs.msdn.com/lab_management)

Multi-tier Environment creation and management
Automated deployment
Easily manage machine pools
Network fencing
Checkpoints

Test (http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chatterjee, http://blogs.msdn.com/james_whittaker)

Test planning
Test case management
Test prioritization
Run management & reporting
Project quality reports
Manual test execution
Diagnostic recording (environment, video, etc)
UI Automation recording
Coded UI tests

TFS (my blog http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry)

Work item hierarchy & linking
Improved Agile template
MOSS & WSS Dashboards
Simplified reporting
Improved support for parallel development
Rollback
Build queuing and pooling
Gated checkin
Simplified setup
Scale out of web and data tiers
Admin console
Project move/archive/restore

I will also add to that..

New WPF UI:

Jason Zander on

A New Look for Visual Studio 2010 and

VS2010: On Triangles and Performance

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010,MSDN,Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Unity and ASP.NET

Martin Hinshelwood — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:31:10 GMT

Using Dependency Injection in a website can get a little dodgy, but in my ASP.NET site use the same base code as my WPF app, I needed a little dependency injection to resolve references at runtime when the application type is known. Now in your ASP.NET page just like in your WPF application you need a little extra bit to get it all going. Finding this for WPF is easy, not so much in ASP.

Imports System.Web
Imports System.Web.UI
Imports Microsoft.Practices.Unity
''' <summary>
''' C# version and source
''' http://blogs.msdn.com/mpuleio/archive/2008/07/17/proof-of-concept-a-simple-di-solution-for-asp-net-webforms.aspx
''' </summary>
''' <remarks></remarks>
Public Class UnityHttpModule
    Implements IHttpModule

    Public Sub Dispose() Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Dispose

    End Sub

    Public Sub Init(ByVal context As System.Web.HttpApplication) Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Init
        AddHandler context.PreRequestHandlerExecute, AddressOf OnPreRequestHandlerExecute
    End Sub

    Private Sub OnPreRequestHandlerExecute(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim handler As IHttpHandler = HttpContext.Current.Handler
        If TypeOf handler Is Page Then
            My.Unity.Container.BuildUp(handler.GetType(), handler)

            ' User Controls are ready to be built up after the page initialization is complete
            Dim page As Page = handler
            If Not page Is Nothing Then
                AddHandler page.InitComplete, AddressOf OnPageInitComplete
            End If
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub OnPageInitComplete(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim page As Web.UI.Page = sender
        For Each c In BuildControlTree(page)
            Try
                My.Unity.Container.BuildUp(c.GetType(), c)
            Catch ex As Exception
                ' TODO: Some sort of error handling if important
                WebPortalTrace.Verbose(WebPortalTraceType.Unity, "Unity unable to build up {0}", c.GetType)
            End Try
        Next
    End Sub

    ' Get the controls in the page's control tree excluding the page itself
    Private Function BuildControlTree(ByVal root As Control) As List(Of Control)
        Dim ct As New List(Of Control)
        For Each c In root.Controls
            ct.Add(c)
            ct.AddRange(BuildControlTree(c))
        Next
        Return ct
    End Function

End Class

All you need is to put a reference into your config file:

  <system.web>
    <httpModules>
      <add name="UnityHttpModule" type="Company.Product.UnityHttpModule, Company.Product"/>
    </httpModules>
  </system.web>

And off you go, before you know it you will have dependency injection coming out of your ears.

One of the advantages to using dependency injection is that you could change a piece of functionality without having to recompile and redeploy your site! How about this…

<unity>
    <containers>
      <container>
        <types>
          <type type="Company.Product.ViewModels.IRecentItemsViewModel, Company.Product" mapTo="Company.Product.ViewModels.RecentItemsViewModel, Company.Product" />
        </types>
      </container>
    </containers>
</unity>

The business then decide that they have to have the order of the recent items list changed but that it needs to go into production immediately, so your testing cycle is extremely tight. No problem… fire up a new solution and create a new class that inherits from IRecentItemsViewModel and implement the new functionality. Then compile it as “Company.Product.Hotfix1”, drop it into your test site bin folder and change line above to:

<unity>
    <containers>
      <container>
        <types>
          <type type="Company.Product.ViewModels.IRecentItemsViewModel, Company.Product" mapTo="Company.Product.Hotfix1.ViewModels.RecentItemsViewModel, Company.Product.Hotfix1" />
        </types>
      </container>
    </containers>
</unity>

The site will then load your new code and you can test the only functionality that you have changed, before deploying to production. Now this may not seam like much, but if your system is made up of thousands of views then you may just need this functionality. And it is so easy to achieve that even for small projects it is fantastic.

Technorati Tags: Unity Application Block,Unity,ASP.NET

P.S. Works with MVC… shhhh…

My.Unity.Resolve(Of Ninja)

Martin Hinshelwood — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:17:40 GMT

I have been attempting to integrate the Unity Application Block into my website to allow me to share the same base object code between a WPF and an ASP.NET application. I will let you know how I am getting along later as I am still knee deep in refactoring, but I have found something a little useful.

I have created a custom “My” object in Visual Studio. This means that I can do “My.Unity.Container” to retrieve my UnityContainer object form anywhere is my code. I know it my be trivial to achieve in other ways, but I am a VB degenerate having fun, so leave me alone…

The first thing we need is a way of consistently creating a singleton instance of our UnityContainer across all of our code in the AppDomain.

Imports Microsoft.Practices.Unity

Public Class UnityContainer
    Inherits Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityContainer

    Private Shared sm_UnityContainer As Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityContainer
    Private Shared sm_syncRoot As New Object

    Private Sub New()
        MyBase.New()
    End Sub

    Public Shared ReadOnly Property Current() As Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityContainer
        Get
            If (sm_UnityContainer Is Nothing) Then
                SyncLock sm_syncRoot
                    If (sm_UnityContainer Is Nothing) Then
                        sm_UnityContainer = New UnityContainer
                        'Dim section As UnityConfigurationSection = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("unity")
                        'section.Containers.Default.Configure(sm_UnityContainer)
                    End If
                End SyncLock
            End If
            Return sm_UnityContainer
        End Get
    End Property

End Class

I have commented the lines out, but you could also initialise the Unity Container from a config file, but remember that it will be the top level config of your application root an not the config from the Assembly that you code happens to be in.

We could just leave it at that, and If you use C# this is about your lot, but in VB you have the “My” namespace that gives you access to some useful things all in one place.

In order to achieve this you need to create a Module in the “My” namespace that has a single property that access the previous class.

Imports Common

Namespace My

  <HideModuleName()> _
  Module MyUnityExtensions

        Friend ReadOnly Property Unity() As UnityContainer
            Get
                Return UnityContainer.Current
            End Get
        End Property

    End Module

End Namespace

This the allows you to access the UnityContainer object in the same way that you would access My.User.

Inside the Unity object you will have all of the shared properties and methods that we created earlier.

To examine the use of this I have followed O1eg Smirnov’s Ninja Dependency Injection scenario.

So, I have a Console application that registers a sword type and the resolves out a Ninja Object using Unity.

Imports NinjaCommon

Module Module1

    Sub Main()

        ' Register Weapon
        My.Unity.RegisterType(Of IWeapon, Sword)()
        'Create Ninja
        Dim ninja = My.Unity.Resolve(Of Ninja)()
        ' Ninja uses weapon
        ninja.Weapon.use()
        ' Create Battle
        Dim battle As New NinjaClasses.Battle
        ' Start the fight
        battle.StartFight()

        Console.ReadKey()
    End Sub

End Module

But it then instantiates a Battle class from the NinjaClasses assembly which uses it own My.Unity class to access the same UnityContainer object.

Public Class Battle

    Public Sub New()

    End Sub

    Public Sub StartFight()
        Console.WriteLine("Fight Starting ")
        ' Create 10 ninjas and get them to use their weapon.
        For count = 1 To 10
            Dim ninja = My.Unity.Resolve(Of NinjaCommon.Ninja)()
            ninja.Weapon.use()
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("Fight ended")
    End Sub

End Class

Although this example in no way demonstrates the power of the Unity Application Block, and is a bit silly, I think it demonstartes the use of the “My” namespace.

Technorati Tags: My Namespace Extensions,My Namespace,VB.NET,Unity,Unity Application Block

The Hinshelwood Family Portrait

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:44:35 GMT

For my wife’s birthday my brother and his wife bought us a professional photo shoot, and the photographer got some fantastic shots. I love the one of my daughter jumping. We have had a couple of go’s at this before, but we have always been disappointed in both the photographer and the results.

John Johnston at Perfect Expressions was fantastic, he was patient with the kids, and that takes a lot with my daughter, I think the shots speak for themselves. Looking forward to seeing the rest…

Technorati Tags: Kids,Photography,Family Portrait

Developer Day Scotland

Martin Hinshelwood — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:42:33 GMT

The Developer Developer Developer event held at Glasgow Caledonian University (my University) yesterday was excellent. Kudos to Colin Angus Mackay and the other organisers for all of the effort they have put in once again.

Everything you wanted to know about refactoring but were afraid to ask!

I attended Gary Short's session on refactoring and found pretty much everything he had to say had merit. This session was more about the mechanics of refactoring than the theory, but the theory he did cover was very useful. I especially liked is analogy about code debt. Those things that you just do quickly or in a less than optimal way incur a kind of code debt that you have to pay back at some point otherwise your software will be to waited down to maintain properly.

I only wish that some of my companies developers and especially the IT management had attended. I for one will be taking away that refactoring necessary to part of your iterations. Having a full iteration for refactoring every few iterations may seam like a lot, but it allows you to pay back that debt in manageable chunks.

Embracing a new world - Dynamic languages and .NET

Ben Hall's session on dynamic languages was very interesting even though he did get heckled by Gary after having a dig about Gary's “IronSmalltalk” project...

Ben talked about IronRuby and IronPython, both built by Microsoft on top of the new DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) that allows dynamic languages to be built on top of .NET easily. I for one, being a philistine and liking my comfort zone would like to see IronBasic making an appearance. This is not just for my own benefit, but Ben presented a scenario where you would get a user to enter some code into a textbox and have it executed to provide a grater level of customization to your users without them having to compile an assembly. I feel a TFS Check in Policy coming on :) ) This I feel would benefit from a VB style language that business users, familiar with VB for Office Applications and the macros, could more easily interact with. For example a Check in Policy could allow a project manager to create a custom policy on the fly and have it apply across their project without having to compile an assembly and have it distributed to all of the developer computers...

Make Patterns With Patterns - Introducing the MVVM design pattern for WPF

The main event for me was Ray Booysen’s session on MVVM. I found his delivery excellent and although there was at least one guy that did not get it, this is the pattern that I have been looking for with WPF. I had been looking at Prism, but this is an MVC WPF implementation and I much prefer the MVVM style, although I think that the Prism framework will support MVVM and it brings dependency injection along with some other mice bits . Ray was compelling and informative and his enthusiasm for this topic pulled most of us in immediately. But, before I can fully commit to MVVM I will need to give it a go, and I have a few ideas…

Get the slides

Grok Talks

I missed most of the talks, but I got back just in time to see a session about XmlSerilizer verses XamlSerilizer and the sped benefits of using the XamlSerilizer. This was interesting as I had run into some of the same problems myself and opted for the third way which is the WcfSerilizer which provides the benefit over the XamlSerilizer that it can sterilize generic types and over the XmlSerilizer that it can sterilize IDictionary objects as well.

When good architecture goes bad

Taking a different approach than Gary's session on code debt Mark Dalgarno went further and provided an interactive session on architectural atrophy that showed why a long running product can suffer for a kind of Architectural degradation if the architectural team is not strong enough to make sure that the developers do not deviate from the architecture over time. If the developers have an architectural change that is necessary then it should be presented to the architects who take this on board and modify the overall architecture allowing the change to be incorporated more fully into the overall solution. Again a session that my management and team leads should attend. Especially when either of the scenarios used could have applied to them. In fact the whole talk could have been based on my company.

ASP.NET 4.0

Although I was in the room, I could not say that I attended this session as I was suffering from a late night and an early rise, and by the time this session started I was starting to drift off. Sorry Mike, it was not you, it was me...

Technorati Tags: McDDD,DDDScot

Fail a build if tests fail

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:11:37 GMT

It took me longer than I thought it would to find this, but is you are using TFS2008 and you want builds to fail if any of the tests fail then you can add the following to the tests properties group in your build project (TFSBuild.prof)

<PropertyGroup>
  <!-- TEST ARGUMENTS
   If the RunTest property is set to true, then particular tests within a
   metadata file or test container may be specified here.  This is
   equivalent to the /test switch on mstest.exe.

   <TestNames>BVT;HighPriority</TestNames>
  -->
  <TreatTestFailureAsBuildFailure>true</TreatTestFailureAsBuildFailure>
</PropertyGroup>

Very handy…

Technorati Tags: MSBuild,Team Build,Team Foundation Server,TFS2008,TFS,Team Test,Test Driven Development,Testing

Windows 7 RC

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:44:39 GMT

The Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available next week for Developers on MSDN. It is currently up on Connect for Windows 7 Beta Program participants and should be publically available from the 5th May. You can find out more at the Windows Team Blog.

I feel a couple of reinstalls coming on :)

I have not installed it myself yet, that is a task for the weekend, but you visit “Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 impressions, insights, and expectations” for more information.

Technorati Tags: Widnows,Windows 7,Windows 7 Beta,Windows 7 Release Candidate,Widnows 7 RC

Get Analysis Services last processed date

Martin Hinshelwood — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:55:17 GMT

I need a little bit of code to get the last processed date for the cube that my site connects to:

Public Function GetCubeLastProcessedDates(ByVal AnalysisServer As String) As Collection(Of CubeInfo)
    Dim result As Collection(Of CubeInfo)
    Dim identity As WindowsIdentity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent()
    Dim eCode As Integer = CommonUtility.RevertToSelf()
    Dim oServer As New Server
    Try
        result = New Collection(Of CubeInfo)
        oServer.Connect(String.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "data Source = {0};", AnalysisServer))

        For Each d As Database In oServer.Databases
            For Each c As Cube In d.Cubes
                result.Add(New CubeInfo(d.Name, c.Name, c.LastProcessed))
            Next
        Next

        oServer.Disconnect()
    Catch e As ConnectionException
        ' Do some error handling
    Catch e As AdomdErrorResponseException
        ' Do some error handling
    Catch e As AdomdConnectionException
        ' Do some error handling
    Catch e As Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AmoException
        ' Do some error handling
    Catch e As Exception
        Throw
    Finally
        oServer.Dispose()
        identity.Impersonate()
    End Try
    '------------------------------
    Return result
End Function

The only problem I have with this is that while it takes no longer than 5 seconds to return a negative result, it can take as much as 30 seconds to return when in the positive (i.e. you can access the cube).

This makes it a threading only, and more than that, a nice to have only. If this is critical information then you will just have to wait…

Technorati Tags: SQL Server,Analysis Services

Data Dude R2 is out!

Martin Hinshelwood — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:29:30 GMT

Coming hot on the heals of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR is the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR R2 which features some new bits and better support for SQL 2008.

You can get a full description over at the Microsoft Download site, but this new version of Data Dude has a number of feature enhancements and bug fixes included in the release…

If you are an avid Data Dude user then you will need no encouragement to update, but if you are not and you do any sort of database development then you should take a look, as even with the substantial learning or conversion curve, it will provide the sort of benefits that only .NET code developers have had in the past along with a few other enhancements just for you…

Have you ever wanted to be able to deploy a new version of your database from a USB memory stick and have it automatically produce a differencing script and run it against the target :)

Technorati Tags: VSTS Rangers,Team System,Visual Studio Team System,Data Dude,Database Edition