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Live Webcam for Annular Eclipse 19/20 May/2012

TATWORTH — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:49:14 GMT

At http://panasonic.net/eclipselive/ there is a web cam for tonight's anuular eclipse.

The broadcast starts at 22:00 UT tonight.

APress Deal of the Day - 19/May/2012 - HTML5 and JavaScript Projects

TATWORTH — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:10:31 GMT

Today's $10 deal from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430240327 is HTML5 and JavaScript Projects

"HTML5 and JavaScript Projects shows you how to build sophisticated applications using the core technologies of HTML5, including databases, localStorage, geolocation, video, and audio."

Microsoft Press Ebook Deal of the Day - 19/May/2012 - Programming Windows®, 6th Edition

TATWORTH — Sat, 19 May 2012 05:35:22 GMT

At http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145369079.do Microsoft Deal are offering an excellent deal on Programming Windows®, 6th Edition

"Reimagined for full-screen and touch-optimized apps, Windows 8 provides a platform for reaching new users in new ways. In response, programming legend Charles Petzold is rewriting his classic Programming Windows—one of the most popular programming books of all time—to show developers how to use existing skills and tools to build Windows 8 apps. (See the book's "Description" tab.)

To celebrate, Microsoft Press will release three versions of the eBook for Programming Windows, Sixth Edition, including two pre-release editions that provide crucial access to early content. Based on when you purchase (see table below), you will receive the most recently published version of the eBook—plus any subsequent versions—at special promotional pricing. Act between May 17-31, 2012, and your cost is just $10!

The first "Consumer Preview eBook", based on Windows 8 Consumer Preview, will be approximately 300 pages. The second "Release Preview eBook," based on Windows 8 Release Preview, will update those pages and provide an additional 200-300 pages. The final eBook will be fully updated for the final Windows 8 software."

BizTalk Host setup for your First BizTalk Projects

Michael Stephenson — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:44:13 GMT

Ive been speaking to a few people starting their organisations first BizTalk projects recently and talking about Host setup and what is a good intial setup and how it may change over time.

Normally you see companies go one of two ways to begin with:

1. They just have one BizTalk host with an instance on each server and use it for everything

2. They have many instances for everything and use way more than they need to.

Im a big believer that a little thought about this and how your company plans to use BizTalk over time can help ensure you dont end up messing around with your host setup constantly.

I was saying to the team that probably the best way to start is create the following hosts to begin with.

A host called GenericRecevice which would be a host that your in process receive adapters can use
A host called GenericApplication which is a host for all of your orchestrations
A host called GenericSend which is a host for all of your send ports
A host called Tracking which is used for nothing but tracking.

I recommended they left the BizTalkApplication host because it can be the default incase anyone doesnt follow the above rules but do not have any instances of this host on any servers so your team are forced to fix configuration mistakes and to follow your host rules.

When you setup your host instances this obviously varies where you put each host instance based on the topology of your BizTalk group but having already splitt out your artefacts like suggested above makes it easier to move your hosts around in a consistent manner.

At this point you not have a clear well understood host setup and some simple rules around when you would use each one, however the key thing is that there will often be potential exceptions to these rules and you should ensure that if you want to create a new host for one or more artefacts you are able to explain clearly the reason for this new host and not just have a new host because the developer used a different name like Ive seen happen before.

Lastly a thought on the isolated host. We often tend to just have the one BizTalk Server Isolated Host which comes out of the box and run different adapter types on seperate app pools in IIS as an example. This will cover the majority of cases but of course again there will be occasions where you have a need to do something different which is fine so long as its clearly explained.

I would say that generally good reasons for new hosts out side of this patten will be:

Performance reasons
Security Isolation
Adapter specific scenarios

Just a final note that this is intended as some advice when you start your companies first BizTalk projects. If you set of with this configuration it should cover you nicely for most of your cases.

Cross-platform mobile packaging made easy with VSNomad

Kyle Burns — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:00:38 GMT

Since I have been interested in cross-platform mobile application development, but reluctant to leave behind the IDE goodness that is Visual Studio, I was invited to participate in a private early beta program for VSNomad and asked to share my thoughts. One of the coolest things about the tool is that there is hardly anything to it, so most of this blog entry will be focused around the motivations for a tool like VSNomad rather than "all the things it does". Access to the early beta program is "by request" as opposed to "invitation only", so I would encourage anyone that has an interest in building cross-platform mobile applications to go to http://www.vsnomad.com, click the Download link, and sign up to be included in the beta.

In the desktop applications world, a reasonable argument can be made for creating native applications that are locked in to a specific OS vendor if accepting that lock-in will put you at a market advantage either by allowing you to create a better product, allowing the product to reach market more quickly, making the product less costly to build and maintain, or some combination of two or more of these factors. I say there is a reasonable market for this based on the sheer numbers. Even though Mac has very much increased in popularity and sales, much of that increase has been in the mobile space and many Mac users (even if grudgingly) accept that using VMWare Fusion or Bootcamp to make sure that they have an available instance of Windows available to run "that app" (whatever "that app" which requires Windows is for them). Various versions of the Windows operating system pretty much dominate the desktop market with the installed base of some Windows version sitting just over 92% of the market, leaving just under 8% for "everyone else" with most of that 8% represented by Mac machines.

The tablet and mobile device story is another thing altogether. The top players in this market (when lumped together) are the various flavors of Google's Android operating system at right about 50%, with Apple's more unified line coming in at about 30%, leaving still a fairly hefty 20% for "everyone else". In this world it becomes a much more difficult decision to decide that you're ok with limiting your pool of potential customers to the user of a certain mobile OS, so the drive to either create multiple versions of your app or write your app in such a way that it can be used across platforms is much stronger.

HTML and JavaScript immediately jump to the front when thinking of UI work because these are well-understood and have supporting applications across virtually any modern client computing platforms, but when I think of HTML, I usually think of a browser running "safe" code in a sandboxed environment as opposed to a rich programming platform capable accessing the wide variety of devices and sensors that mark most of today's mobile platforms. This creates the dilemna - how do we make use of the full capabilities of the device but write our applications in a way that allows us to easily support a variety of mobile platforms?

The Apache Cordova project answers the question quite nicely by providing an abstraction layer on top of the various devices and services that you can expect to encounter on a mobile platform. These devices and services include the Accelerometer for motion detection, Camera to capture images and video, Capture for audio, a Compass for directional information, network connectivity state information, a contacts list, basic device data (such as platform and identifying information), File I/O, Geolocation, Media, Notification services (sounds and "toast"), and a client side storage platform for data persistence. For these services, Cordova becomes the single platform that you code against. These libraries are packaged together with native shims which are responsible for handling the actual platform-specific interaction and allow the single set of application code to be built for any supported platform.

So now that I've shared the upside of Cordova and you're chomping at the bit to use your mad HTML skills to become a cross-platform mobile ninja, how do you get started? The answer if you're using Cordova out of the box is "it depends." The Cordova documentation actually has a seperate Getting Started section for each supporting platform, providing instructions including the installation of Eclipse, each of the supported platform-specific SDKs (for some platforms there will be multiple SDKs), and finally the installation of Cordova itself. Once all the installation work is done, it's a simple matter of creating a project with the appropriate structure, digging through a few properties files to get them set up for the intended project and target platform, copying jar and js files to the right location in the structure and creating a java bootstrapper to load start page. Then you can start writing your application. Doesn't that sound easy and like the developer workflow you'd like to follow? Me neither!

VSNomad smooths out many of the lumps in the COrdova workflow by providing a Visual Studio addin which is responsible for creating new Cordova projects with the necessary structure and starting files present and once the project is ready to be built for a device, a single button submits the project to VSNomad's cloud-based build service which handles integration with the appropriate SDK for the build target, leaving the developer's main focus on building a useful app. Using the standard Visual Studio Project Properties paradigm, the user can set an intentionally sparse number of project settings specifying the target platform and supplying any additional information such as developer/app keys for the iOS targets. Once you've clicked the button to submit your application to the cloud service, the cloud service packages up the application and the extension downloads the package which is now now ready to be deployed on your target device - in my case an apk file to be deployed on my son's Kindle Fire.

By default, the VSNomad project includes the Javascript library for Cordova and jQuery mobile, providing support building rich apps that default to an iOS look and feel. Import a library like Knockoutjs for its data binding and MVVM support and you've got a very capable stack supported by the productivity inherent to working in Visual Studio.

With Cordova, access to devices and services is made simple so that as a developer you can focus more on WHAT should be done with these capabilities to make apps useful instead of HOW to access them. VSNomad takes this story a step further by freeing you from mundane setup and configuration tasks and replacing them with a single button click.

WCF Error tracking

Pavan Kumar Pabothu — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:24:19 GMT

Have you ever gotten errors when working with WCF services?

Open up your web.config/app.config on the server side and add the following

<system.diagnostics>
 <!-- This logging is great when WCF does not work. -->
 <sources>
  <source name="System.ServiceModel" switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing" propagateActivity="true">
   <listeners>
    <add name="traceListener" type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener" initializeData= "c:\traces.svclog" />
   </listeners>
  </source>
 </sources>
</system.diagnostics>

A file called traces.svclog will be stored on your harddrive. This will contain the the error message that you're looking for. All you now need is the right tool to open it up. It is called svctraceviewer.exe and usually resides in the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin. If you don't have this folder or anything like it, you go download the Microsoft Windows SDK from here.
Now you can open your log and look for the error that is thrown. There you will find a detailed stacktrace of what's wrong.

Accessing QuickBooks with Entity Framework

dataintegration — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:02:00 GMT

Entity Framework is an object-relational mapping framework that can be used to work with data as objects. While you can run the ADO.NET Entity Data Model wizard in Visual Studio to handle generating the Entity Model for yourself, this can put you at a disadvantage if there are changes in your data source or if you want more control over how the entities operate. In this article we will demonstrate a Code First approach to accessing your QuickBooks Data using the RSSBus ADO.NET Provider.

Even though this article uses the QuickBooks Data Provider, the exact same procedure outlined below can be used with any RSSBus ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through Entity Framework.

Step 1: Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Form project. For the purposes of this article, we will be using a C# project.
Step 2: Add to the project an app.config file. In this file, add the connection string and provider like so:

<connectionStrings>
	<add name="QuickBooksContext" connectionString="Offline=False;User=USERNAME;Password=PASSWORD;URL=http://localhost:2080;QBXML Version=6.0" providerName="System.Data.RSSBus.QuickBooks" />
</connectionStrings>

Step 3: Add a reference to System.Data.Entity and EntityFramework in your project. You may need to download the EntityFramework.dll from Microsoft. In this demo we are using Entity Framework version 4.1.

Step 4: Add a new .cs file to the project and add a class to it. This will be your database context, and it will extend the DbContext class. You will also need to override the OnModelCreating method and remove PluralizaingTableNameConvention and IncludeMetadataConvention from the ModelBuilder Conventions:

protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
 {
    // To remove the plural names
            
    modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<PluralizingTableNameConvention>();
    // To remove calls to EdmTable a metadata table.
    // If this is not removed EF will try to describe and select from EdmTable
    modelBuilder.Conventions.Remove<IncludeMetadataConvention>();
 }

Step 5: Create another .cs file and name it after the QuickBooks entity you are retrieving. In our example, we are retrieving Accounts. In this file you will need to define both the Entity and the Entity Configuration. They will look something like this:

public class Accounts {

	[DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public System.String ID { get; set; }
    public System.String Name { get; set; }
    public System.String Type { get; set; } 
    public System.Double Balance { get; set; }
    public System.DateTime TimeCreated { get; set; }
}
    
public class AccountMap : EntityTypeConfiguration<Accounts> 
{
	public AccountMap() {
        this.ToTable("Accounts");
        this.HasKey(Account => Account.ID);
        this.Property(Account => Account.Name);
        this.Property(Account => Account.Type);
        this.Property(Account => Account.Balance);
        this.Property(Account => Account.TimeCreated);
    }

Step 6: Now that you have created an entity, go back to your context class and add the entity to your Context like so:

public DbSet<Accounts> Account { set; get; }

Step 7: With the context and entity finished, you are now read to query the data in a separate class. For example:

QuickBooksContext context = new QuickBooksContext();
var query = from line in context.Account select line;

Sample Project

To help you get started using the QuickBooks Data Provider with Entity Framework code first approach, download the fully functional sample project. The project includes examples of selecting, inserting, updating, and deleting data from QuickBooks. You will also need the QuickBooks ADO.NET Data Provider to make the connection. You can download a free trial here.

Finding your Office Key

TATWORTH — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:35:58 GMT

Following on from my previous post, I needed also to get my key for Microsoft Office. I found http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/, downloaded it and run it.

Finding your Windows Licence Key

TATWORTH — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:25:55 GMT

One of the problems that I face is having to periodically rebuild my development PCs. When preparing for a re-build it is important to plan on having the right licence key to hand, and a complete list of programs to install. It also helps if like me you keep downloaded installs in a known place as that make re-installation very easy.

So given that I have a number of licence keys for Windows 7 Ultimate, how did I find the one that was used for this PC? I located a very useful article at http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/ht/windows-7-key.htm. This led me to Win Key Finder at http://www.winkeyfinder.com/download/func-showdown/14/

www.utnt.tk

Thota Umesh — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:53:13 GMT

short url for my blog address. hehe..

Storm - A utility for testing Web Services

TATWORTH — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:40:11 GMT

At http://storm.codeplex.com/ there is a free tool for testing Web Services and WCF services.

STORM allows you to
1. Test web services written using any technology (.NET , Java, etc.)
2. Dynamically invoke web service methods even those that have input parameters of complex data types
3. Save development time and money. Creating throw-away test client apps just to test the web service is just too wasteful
4. Test multiple web services from within one UI.
5. Edit/Manipulate the raw soap requests.
6 Others (Try out the tool and find out yourself!)

Choosing the right site template - SharePoint 2010

KunaalKapoor — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:02:50 GMT

SharePoint 2010 provides a number of templates for creating new sites. Most organizations will decide for you which SharePoint templates you're going to use; it’s usually either a Team Site template or a Publishing Site template. The other templates are specialized.

Product	Available Site Templates	Typical Usage Scenarios
SharePoint Foundation 2010	Team Site, Meeting Workspace, Blog	More people contribute content than read it; also when you want basic layouts
SharePoint Server 2010, Standard license; and SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard	Publishing Portal	Web content management sites, such as portals
	Enterprise Wiki	Collaborative sites with Web content management requirements
	Document Center	Sample template to demonstrate SharePoint’s document management features
	Basic and Enterprise Search Centers	Site dedicated to displaying search results
	My Site Host	Site dedicated to hosting My Site
SharePoint Server 2010, Enterprise License*; and SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise	Records Center	Used for managing document lifecycles
	Performance Point Site	Used for creating business intelligence dashboards

*Includes additional Web Parts and services to support advanced enterprise requirements

There are several others which you can read more about on: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262410.aspx

You can convert a team/blank site to a publishing too.

Usually the best thing to do is to go with a blank site and control all features that you turn on. But the main point is that one should know which site template should be chosen to suffice all the requirements of the site. If you will not be using any of the Publishing feature set, then there is no particular reason, to use a Publishing site it should always be based on your list of goals.

All of the features used by a Publishing site are availalble in a Team Site as well. They just aren't turned on by default. You can still use the OOB approval workflows in a team site. However, they aren't integrated with normal web part pages so if you want to use them to control publishing of content you need to turn on the publishing features. You can still do that even if you start with a Team site template. They just aren't turned on by default. There is no particular reason not to use a Team site for an Internet facing site. I frequently start with a Blank site so that I can control all the features and whether they are turned on or off.

Deleting duplicated fields from the Form Library's content type, created due to multiple publish attempts on InfoPath 2010

KunaalKapoor — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:28:59 GMT

If you did not pay attention to the last step before publishing an InfoPath 2010 form to a SharePoint server and you are facing a lot of problems because the publish created duplicate columns. Look no further, this post will make your life easier.

A lot of us use InfoPath and have to deal with its annoying bugs day in and day out. But we just have to be more careful and aware to avoid any situations where there's no second option.

Today, I was working with an InfoPath form, and was converting a regular form to an administratively approved one. I ended up publishing the form a couple of times to my production server which in turn was afflicted by the “duplicate promoted fields / properties” issue, or in easier terms 'duplicate columns' which seems to want to randomly occur when you add / modify new promoted fields.

Just before you publish the form, InfoPath gives you an option of only publishing/recreating the columns that have been modified/added. And it is very important that we update the type of operation on each column. The columns can be site columns, list columns or just stranded doing nothing but making your life miserable depending on how you publish. In mycase, instead of reusing the promoted properties it already created for use on the SharePoint site, InfoPath decided to create you a whole new set of Site columns to use.

Normally this is fine, if only a little annoying – but we were using those forms in conjunction with some workflows, which were relying on those promoted fields to have a consistent name…so this now needed to be fixed. The main point of the workflow not picking up the right columns is that they are bound by column id's. So the workflow would be bound to a column which will never be updated with a value because it's source (in my case the InfoPath itself) updates another column with the same name but different GUID.

InfoPath forms are a lot like other MS file formats and are based around a cabinet file / .cab; so the steps I took the following steps to remove the duplicate fields:

1) Rename my form to .cab

2) Extract everything, and open manifest.xsf in notepad

3) Find the offending duplicate columns, and remove them. You’ll find them within a block similar to <xsf2:listPropertiesExtension> (though the namespace might be different):

If you aren’t sure which ones to remove, you can always compare the columnName property in the <fieldExtension> with the columnName property in the <xsf:field/> near the bottom of the manifest.xsf file.

4) Repack the cabinet – you could use IZarc you can actually open the mainfest.xsf using InfoPath designer (right click and select Design) and then “save as” .xsn, bypassing the fiddly cab creation step.

Once you redeploy / update the form, everything should now be fixed! If you were using the form on a document library, it’s likely you won’t be able to remove the site columns – I ended up recreating the document library to refresh everything but you may not have this luxury if you’ve already got live data in there. So if you're library can't be deleted because there's data in it or it is bound to a List WorkFlow (Never use List WF's, always use reusable WF's), then there is one and only one resort! SHAREPOINT MANAGER 2010. http://tempuri.org/tempuri.html.

Install it on the SP server and delete each duplicated and any other InfoPath related column you have associated with the library. Once there are no traces of InfoPath columns, delete the content type. And republish the form to the server/library. And add the content type for the library again.

Maybe Office 15 will fix all this, but until then make sure you keep your eyes open while working on InfoPath.

C#/.NET Little Wonders: Select() and Where() with Indexes

James Michael Hare — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:11:35 GMT

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here.

We’ve talked about the Select() and Where() LINQ extension methods before. The Select() method lets you project from the source type to a new type, and the Where() method lets you filter the list of items to the ones you are interested in.

Most people know of these methods in their simplest form, where they simply take a projection and predicate respectively that operates on just an element. However, there are overloads for both of these methods that take a delegate that operates on both the element and the index of the element.

So let’s take a look at these and see what we can do with them.

Select() – Projects elements

The Select() method is responsible for projecting a sequence into a new sequence which may or may not be different types and/or values.

As an extension method, it’s most common form is:

Select(Func<T, TResult> projection)
- Projects the source sequence into a new resulting sequence consisting of the results of each item passed through the projection delegate.

As you know, this gives us a lot of power, we can use it to change values (and keep types the same):

        1: // an array of 1 to 10

       2: var numbers = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).ToList();

       3:  

       4: // converts to an array of 2, 4, 6, ..., 20

       5: var doubles = numbers.Select(i => i*2).ToList();

So that’s an example of a projection that changes the values, you can also project to a different type:

       1: // the numbers from 1 to 10

       2: var numbers = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).ToList();

       3:  

       4: // project to list of strings "1: ", "2: ", ...

       5: var lineNumbers = numbers.Select(i => i.ToString() + ": ").ToList();

Now that we’ve reviewed the basic form, let’s look at a lesser-used overload of Select():

Select(Func<T, int, TResult> projection)
- Projects the source sequence into a new resulting sequence consisting of the results of each item and its index in source passed through the projection delegate.

Note the difference here: in this overload the delegate takes not just an element, but an element and the index of that element in the source sequence this method is invoked upon.

Thus, if you had a list of items and wanted to take advantage of the item’s index as well in the projection, you can:

       1: // say that racers consists of the names of racers in the order of finish:

       2: IEnumerable<string> racers = ...;

       3:  

       4: // get a projection of new objects consisting of placing and name

       5: var finishers = racers.Select((r, index) => new { Place = index, Name = r }).ToList();

The code snippet above will take a sequence of string and convert it into a list of anonymous objects representing the racer’s name and their place. So given this form of the Select(), you can use the index as part of the projection and either store it, or use it to build a new value.

One very important note, the index provided to the projection is the index from the sequence the Select() was immediately called from. This is an important distinction because you can chain together multiple operations which may alter the number of items in the sequence (or their order) before the Select() is invoked. This is very similar to the way that Skip() and Take() (click here for a discussion of these two methods) work with their index overloads.

For example:

       1: // fibs under 100

       2: var numbers = new[] { 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 };

       3:  

       4: // even fibs and their indexes?

       5: var evenFibs = numbers

       6:     .Where(f => (f % 2) == 0)

       7:     .Select((f, index) => new { Number = f, Index = index })

       8:     .ToList();

So looking at this code, you might think you’d get a list that contains Number = 2 at Index = 2, Number = 8 at Index 5, and Number = 34 at Index 8. But instead you’ll get Number = 2 at Index = 0, Number = 8 at Index = 1, and Number = 34 at Index = 2.

Why? Because remember that the Where() filters the sequence from (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89) down to just a sequence of the evens (2, 8, 34) and that is the sequence the Select() is operating on, thus that sequence is the one who’s indexes are used. Make sense? The Where() returns a new, shorter sequence, and that is the sequence that Select() uses for its elements and what it bases the indexes from.

So, how would you get the results with the original indexes? Well, one way would be to perform the Select() first, and then filter the results with the Where() second:

       1: // fibs under 100

       2: var numbers = new[] { 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 };

       3:  

       4: // yes, this works...

       5: var evenFibs = numbers

       6:     .Select((f, index) => new { Number = f, Index = index })

       7:     .Where(r => (r.Number % 2) == 0)

       8:     .ToList();

So this one first projects the sequence into a sequence of an anonymous type holding both the number and the index, and then it filters down to only the those that have an even number.

Where() – filters elements

As you know, Where() filters based on a predicate. It’s basic form is:

Where(Func<T, bool> predicate)
- Filters the source sequence to a new sequence that contains only elements that return true from the predicate applied to each element.

So, of course, as you’ve seen in the examples above, we can use Where() to filter a sequence of numbers to just the evens:

       1: // 1 through 10

       2: var numbers = Enumerable.Range(1, 10);

       3:  

       4: // 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

       5: var evens = numbers.Where(n => (n % 2) == 0).ToList();

Just like Select(), the Where() extension method also has an overload that takes passes an index to the predicate:

Where(Func<T, int, bool> predicate)

Filters the source sequence to a new sequence that contains only elements that return true from the predicate applied to each element and its index in source. F

For example, let’s say you wanted to pull every other item in a sequence, you could do this with the overload:

       1: // fibs under 100

       2: var numbers = new[] { 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 };

       3:  

       4: // get every other fib number 

       5: var everyOtherFib = numbers.Where((n, index) => (index % 2) == 0).ToList();

The resulting sequence from the above will yield (1, 2, 5, 13, 34, 89). These may seem like trivial uses, but you could also use them to coordinate across sequences. For example, let’s say you kick off multiple service requests in various threads, and have an array of bool representing whether the results came back successfully, we could filter the requests to get the list of failed requests:

       1: bool[] wasSuccessful = new ...;

       2:  

       3: // get the list of requests that had bad return codes:

       4: var failedRequests = requests.Where((r, index) => !wasSuccessful[index]).ToList();

So the code above goes through the requests, takes the index of each request, and checks to see if wasSuccessful at that same index is false.

Finally, once again it is important to note that the index passed to the Where() clause is the index of the item in the sequence Where() is immediately called upon. So, once again, if you need the index of the item in the original sequence, make sure that none of the clauses before your indexed Select(), Where(), Skip(), or Take() alter the sequence by re-ordering, adding, or removing items.

Sidebar: Naming style for index?

When you use the form of Select(), Where(), Skip(), or Take() where you provide a lambda expression that takes an index, it is often useful to name the lambda variables such that it’s clear which item is the index.

       1: // Ummm, is j the number and k the index?  or vice-versa...?

       2: var evenFibs = numbers

       3:     .Where((j, k) => (k % 2) == 0)

       4:     .ToList();

In the code above, because j and k don’t really have any derivable meaning from the context, we have to know from experience (or Intellisense) that k is the index. However, many folks reading this code may not know that.

This is why typically, and this is just my personal style, I like to name the index variable explicitly index, or at least x so it’s fairly clear that we’re talking about an index and not the value:

       1: // Ah... it was the index!

       2: var evenFibs = numbers

       3:     .Where((j, index) => (index % 2) == 0)

       4:     .ToList();

Summary

The Select() and Where() LINQ extension methods provide powerful ways to manipulate lists. The Select() clause is great for projecting from one sequence to another sequence containing different types/values, and the Where() clause is useful for filtering a sequence down to only those that match a given predicate. Both of these extension methods allow you to not only project and filter based on each element in the sequence, but also based on the element’s index in the sequence. Care should be taken to realize that the index of the item may be altered by chained expressions.

Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,LINQ,Where,Select

Pinning any folder location to the task bar Explorer jump list

jeremyj — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:33:12 GMT

This might not be news to you but for me this was a discovery i made only this week, yes how did i not know this before!

So I discovered how to pin any folder to the Windows Explorer jump list on the Windows 7 task bar. Any entries in the 'Frequent' menu can be pinned using its context menu, but a folder that does not appear in the 'Frequent' menu can still be pinned just by dragging its path from the address bar in the Explorer window onto the task bar icon. The pinned folders can then be accessed by using the context menu of the task bar button.

Actually for a few years now i've been in the habit of pinning frequently accessed folder locations into the Favorites list in the navigation pane, when using XP and also Windows 7. Perhaps my habits formed with Windows XP using folders pinned to the Favorites list in the navigation pane combined with task bar Toolbar folders is the reason why so much time spent using Windows 7 has gone by without without me using this handy feature, but now instead of adding a Toolbar folder i can just pin my RDP folder (and other folders like the SysinternalsSuite) to the Explorer jump list instead.

Enum helper for values specified in attributes

Scott Wojan — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:06:43 GMT

I've used this enum helper from time to time to get an enum value from attributes such as Description and XmlEnumAttribute. Maybe you can find it useful?

public static class EnumEx

{

public static T GetXmlEnumValue<T>(string name)

{

var type = CheckEnum<T>();

var val = (from f in type.GetFields()

let attribute = f.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(System.Xml.Serialization.XmlEnumAttribute), true).FirstOrDefault() as System.Xml.Serialization.XmlEnumAttribute

where attribute != null

&& attribute.Name == name

select (T)f.GetValue(null));

if (val.Count() == 0)

throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("{0} is not a valid XmlEnumAttribute for {1}", name, typeof(T).FullName), "name");

return val.First();

}

public static T GetValueFromDescription<T>(string description)

{

var type = CheckEnum<T>();

var val = (from f in type.GetFields()

let attribute = f.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(System.ComponentModel.DescriptionAttribute), true).FirstOrDefault() as System.ComponentModel.DescriptionAttribute

where attribute != null

&& attribute.Description == description

select (T)f.GetValue(null));

if (val.Count() == 0)

throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("{0} is not a valid description for {1}", description, typeof(T).FullName), "description");

return val.First();

}

private static Type CheckEnum<T>()

{

var type = typeof(T);

if (type.IsEnum == false)

throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("{0} is not an enum", typeof(T)));

return type;

}

Social Meet up on Twitter for Meet Windows Azure on June 7th

Herve Roggero — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:31:10 GMT

Get ready for a cool event on June 7th. Register to watch live (starting at 1PM PDT): here – The event will be presented by Scott Guthrie. To keep updated on this event follow the twitter conversations @WindowsAzure, #MEETAzure, #WindowsAzure.

You can also register for the social meetup on Twitter event, organized by MVP Magnus Martensson.

I assure you; you don’t want to miss this event…

MEET Windows Azure Blog Relay:

Roger Jennings (@rogerjenn): Social meet up on Twitter for Meet Windows Azure on June 7th
Anton Staykov (@astaykov): MEET Windows Azure on June the 7th
Patriek van Dorp (@pvandorp): Social Meet Up for ‘MEET Windows Azure’ on June 7th
Marcel Meijer (@MarcelMeijer): MEET Windows Azure on June the 7th
Nuno (@NunoGodinho): Social Meet Up for ‘MEET Windows Azure’ on June 7th
Shaun Xu (@shaunxu) Let's MEET Windows Azure
Maarten Balliauw (@maartenballiauw): Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June 7th
Magnus Mårtensson (@noopman): Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June 7th
Herve Roggero (@hroggero): Social Meet up on Twitter for Meet Windows Azure on June 7th

What Makes Online Business Systems a Best Workplace in Canada

D'Arcy Lussier — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:35:26 GMT

We’re having a shindig at my work today, Online Business Systems, to celebrate making the “Best Workplaces in Canada” list for the 6th consecutive year. This is a big deal for us, as we put a lot of work and effort into ensuring that our workplace is attractive to top talent, offers fantastic professional development opportunities, and provides challenging & meaningful work.

I’ve worked at a lot of technology consulting companies in Winnipeg, and I can honestly say that Online is hands down the best employer I’ve had the privilege of working for. Here are some things we do that make us one of the best workplaces in Canada:

Professional Development for Every Employee

For a company to grow, it’s employees need to grow. While many companies provide occasional professional development and often require employees to take vacation time, Online takes a different view.

Every employee gets a PD budget – approx $3,500 – to spend on courses, conferences, training, etc. This budget gets renewed every year, and while we do have an approval process in place its more to ensure nobody is taking training that is really off base. Also Online provides 5 days of PD time every year. That’s 5 paid days that can be used towards professional development: attending conferences, attending training, taking time off to study for exams, etc.

And I do mean every employee. Whether you’re a billable consultant, a sales professional, or part of the internal administration team, everyone in the company is given the opportunity to further their skills.

Career Mentor Program and Review Process

We believe that developing someone’s career at Online doesn’t just happen at review time but it should be ongoing throughout the year. We have Career Mentors throughout the company who keep in contact with Onliners in their care to ensure they’re engaged, growing, and happy with their employment at Online. Career Mentors are responsible for reviewing feedback for members of their group and perform annual reviews.

The benefit of this – instead of one or two people in HR responsible for everyone we take a “it takes a village” approach, which creates stronger personal/professional relationships and helps us identify/deal with any issues or concerns employees have sooner.

We Foster a Culture of Innovation

At Online we hire great people and give them the freedom to make positive impacts within the company. Ideas can come from anywhere in the company, and are actually encouraged. We’ve set up a program called “Innovation Den”, where Onliners can pitch their idea to our regional management. Ideas that are accepted are given time, budget, resources – whatever was being asked for – to see it come to fruition.

Innovation doesn’t just happen there though, it can happen anywhere and anytime. I noticed we were going to pay for presentation training which I could easily deliver and for a much lower price. I pitched the idea to management and they loved it. An Onliner wanted to put on a Code Retreat, and Online supported it through money for food and prizes.

We want people to be intrepreuners – working within a company but knowing they have the freedom to fully utilize their interests and talents.

We Have Fun

Every company mentions this, and while I won’t suggest we’re an amazing workplace just because we have BBQs, we do have BBQs – and social events, and team recognition parties for hard work, and celebrations for project success, and…you get the idea.

We work hard, we play hard, and we celebrate our accomplishments and success.

We’re Established and Mature

Online has been around for 26 years and employs approximately 260 people across our offices in Portland, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and Toronto. Our clients include major corporations in the telecommunications, oil/energy, health, finance, and agribusiness sectors.

26 years of business brings a very important trait: maturity. As I mentioned, I’ve worked at many different companies and out of those they top out at about 10 years of age. There is a difference between a company 10 years old and 26 years old – maturity of processes, stronger self identity and culture, and greater capabilities in offerings and skills.

We’re continually striving to be better though, and having fantastic people is the key factor in Online’s evolution over the next 26 years.

Interested?

We’re always looking for great people to join our team. While technology is a huge part of our offerings (Microsoft, Java, Oracle, Power Builder, etc.), we’re equally as deep in business management services: project management, business analysis, change management, quality assurance and testing, etc.

We’re actively looking for .NET and Java developers currently, but we’re always interested in talking to great talent no matter what the discipline.

So how do we match up against your current employer? Do we sound like the type of organization you’d like to work at? If you’re interested in learning more about Online, what its like working there, and current opportunities, please get in touch with me:

Email: dlussier at obsglobal.com
Twitter: darcy_lussier
Or contact me through my blog (click the “Contact” link in the menu)

Technorati Tags: Online Business Systems,Winnipeg,Technology,Best Workplaces in Canada

There are no addresses available for this application - Web Analytics Sharepoint

Patrick Olurotimi Ige — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:41:20 GMT

I was setting up a search service application today and enabling search and crawling content sources.But i decided to test the "Web Analytics Web Part".
But when i added it i got the error:

There are no addresses available for this application

Check that you started the “Managed Metadata Web Service”. This can be found here: Central Admin > System Settings > Manage Services On ServerCheck that you started the “Managed Metadata Web Service”.

Hope that helps

Extending applications to HTML5 & Mobile - recorded webinar

Webgui — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:35:20 GMT

Hi,

The recording of the webinar we did with Forrester Research recently is now available. At this opportunity I would like to thank Jefferey Hammond of Forrester who did a great job in discussing the Open Web, Cloud computing and Mobility trends and presenting the new development challenges they bring and why organizations need to rethink their application development strategies.

The 2nd part of the webinar is a presentation from Gizmox, discussing the Instant CloudMove assessment and transposition tools, which support those trends Jefferey Hammod talked about and help companies extend Windows apps to HTML5 and mobile platforms.

The video is available through the visualwebgui website and it is free of course:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/tabid/738/Default.aspx

Stylecop 4.7.19.22 has been released

TATWORTH — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:50:57 GMT

Stylecop 4.7.22.0 has been released at http://stylecop.codeplex.com/releases/view/79972

This included a fix to a problem I reported at http://stylecop.codeplex.com/discussions/355656

Again well done Andrew and team!

Get Detailed Build Test Results using the TFS API

Tarun Arora — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:37:00 GMT

It’s a Friday evening and you have just checked in that last bit of code, you are waiting for the build to go all green so that you could call it a day. Just then the build summary page comes back red on the test results section. The build summary page tells you that 1 of the test namely HelloWorld.Tests.UnitTest1.Sum_TwoIntNumbers_IncorrectResult_TestMethod has failed…

To know why the test has failed, you have no option but to click on View Test Results link which in turn downloads the trx file from the server so that you can see the error message and possibly identify the root cause of failure from the description error message. If the test list contains more than a 1000 tests you will notice that it takes a lot of time in downloading the test results locally. That’s probably not what you would want to do on a Friday evening…

In this blog post I’ll show you how to use the TFS API to write a simple utility to pull down the test result details programmatically and a bonus power tool for those who read the complete post, let’s get started…

A peek at what we will get to…

1. Connecting to TFS using the API

If you are new to the TFS API, refer to this blog post on getting started with the Visual Studio SDK.

The below snippet will help present a connect to tfs pop up to the user

private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs;
private string _selectedTeamProject;

public void ConnectToTfs()
{
       TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false);
       tfsPP.ShowDialog();
       this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection;
       this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name;
}

2. Get All Build Definitions for the selected Team Project

By using the IBuildService you can get access to the QueryBuildDefinition method which takes team project and returns the build definitions associated to the team project.

private IBuildDefinition[] GetAllBuildDefinitionsFromTheTeamProject(_selectTeamProject)
{
      _bs = _tfs.GetService<IBuildServer>();
      return _bs.QueryBuildDefinitions(_selectedTeamProject);
}

3. Get All Builds Associated to the Build Definition

Get All Builds in the build definition for specific build Definition specifications programmatically, this helps you narrow down the search and get the selected few filtered results, like in the snippet below, we specify the maximum number of builds to return, what build quality builds to return, etc.

// Get All Builds for the selected build definition 
private void cbBuildDef_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
       var bdef = (((ComboBox)sender).SelectedItem) as IBuildDefinition;
       var def = _bs.CreateBuildDetailSpec(_selectedTeamProject);
       def.MaxBuildsPerDefinition = 10;
       def.QueryOrder = BuildQueryOrder.FinishTimeDescending;
       def.DefinitionSpec.Name = bdef.Name;
       def.Status = BuildStatus.All;
       var builds = _bs.QueryBuilds(def).Builds;

        cbBuild.ItemsSource = _bs.QueryBuilds(def).Builds;
        cbBuild.DisplayMemberPath = "BuildNumber";
        cbBuild.SelectedValuePath = "Uri";
        cbBuild.SelectedIndex = 0;
}

4. Get all the Test Results associated to a Build

I’ll be using the ITestManagementService to pull all test runs associated to a build. As you can see below by using the QueryResultsByOutcome I can query for tests that passed or failed or tests that errored. You could also use the QueryResultsByOwner to get test results by individual tfs users.

private void GetTestResult(Uri buildUri)
{
       _tms = _tfs.GetService<ITestManagementService>();
       var testRuns = _tms.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject).TestRuns.ByBuild(buildUri);

        foreach (var testRun in testRuns)
        {
             lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}", testRun.Title));
             lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("TestRunId: {0} | TestPlanId: {1}", testRun.Id, testRun.TestPlanId));
             lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("TestSettingsId: {0} | TestEnvironmentId {1} ", testRun.TestSettingsId, testRun.TestEnvironmentId));

             var totalTests = testRun.Statistics.TotalTests;

              foreach (var et in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Error))
              {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", et.Outcome, et.TestCaseTitle, et.ErrorMessage));
              }

              foreach (var tp in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Passed))
              {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} ", tp.Outcome, tp.TestCaseTitle));
               }

                foreach (var tf in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Failed))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tf.Outcome, tf.TestCaseTitle, tf.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var tw in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Warning))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tw.Outcome, tw.TestCaseTitle, tw.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var ta in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Aborted))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", ta.Outcome, ta.TestCaseTitle, ta.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var tb in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Blocked))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tb.Outcome, tb.TestCaseTitle, tb.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var ti in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Inconclusive))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", ti.Outcome, ti.TestCaseTitle, ti.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var to in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Timeout))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", to.Outcome, to.TestCaseTitle, to.ErrorMessage));
                }

                // Get the test results by user by passing in the Test Foundation Identity
                // testRun.QueryResultsByOwner(TeamFoundationIdentity);
            }

            if(testRuns.Count() == 0)
                lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add("No Test Results have been associated with the selected build");
 }

5. Putting it all together

Download the sample application – wpf, .net 4, you need to have vs sdk installed on your machine to run it.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestManagement.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client;

namespace TfsApiGetTestResultsAndDetailsByStatus
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs;
        private string _selectedTeamProject;
        private IBuildServer _bs;
        private VersionControlServer _vcs;
        private ITestManagementService _tms;

        public void ConnectToTfs()
        {
            TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false);
            tfsPP.ShowDialog();
            this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection;
            this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name;
        }

        private void btnConnect_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            ConnectToTfs();
            _vcs = _tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>();
            cbBuildDef.ItemsSource = GetAllBuildDefinitionsFromTheTeamProject();
            cbBuildDef.DisplayMemberPath = "Name";
            cbBuildDef.SelectedValuePath = "Uri";
            cbBuildDef.SelectedIndex = 0;
        }

        private IBuildDefinition[] GetAllBuildDefinitionsFromTheTeamProject()
        {
            _bs = _tfs.GetService<IBuildServer>();
            return _bs.QueryBuildDefinitions(_selectedTeamProject);
        }

        // Get All Builds for the selected build definition 
        private void cbBuildDef_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            var bdef = (((ComboBox)sender).SelectedItem) as IBuildDefinition;
            var def = _bs.CreateBuildDetailSpec(_selectedTeamProject);
            def.MaxBuildsPerDefinition = 10;
            def.QueryOrder = BuildQueryOrder.FinishTimeDescending;
            def.DefinitionSpec.Name = bdef.Name;
            def.Status = BuildStatus.All;
            var builds = _bs.QueryBuilds(def).Builds;

            cbBuild.ItemsSource = _bs.QueryBuilds(def).Builds;
            cbBuild.DisplayMemberPath = "BuildNumber";
            cbBuild.SelectedValuePath = "Uri";
            cbBuild.SelectedIndex = 0;
        }

        private void cbBuild_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            var build = (((ComboBox)sender).SelectedItem) as IBuildDetail;
            if (build == null && ((ComboBox)sender).Items.Count != 0)
            {
                build = ((ComboBox)sender).Items[0] as IBuildDetail;
                var def = _bs.CreateBuildDetailSpec(_selectedTeamProject);
                GetTestResult(build.Uri);
            }
        }

        private void GetTestResult(Uri buildUri)
        {
            _tms = _tfs.GetService<ITestManagementService>();
            var testRuns = _tms.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject).TestRuns.ByBuild(buildUri);

            foreach (var testRun in testRuns)
            {
                lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}", testRun.Title));
                lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("TestRunId: {0} | TestPlanId: {1}", testRun.Id, testRun.TestPlanId));
                lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("TestSettingsId: {0} | TestEnvironmentId {1} ", testRun.TestSettingsId, testRun.TestEnvironmentId));

                var totalTests = testRun.Statistics.TotalTests;

                foreach (var et in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Error))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", et.Outcome, et.TestCaseTitle, et.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var tp in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Passed))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} ", tp.Outcome, tp.TestCaseTitle));
                }

                foreach (var tf in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Failed))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tf.Outcome, tf.TestCaseTitle, tf.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var tw in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Warning))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tw.Outcome, tw.TestCaseTitle, tw.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var ta in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Aborted))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", ta.Outcome, ta.TestCaseTitle, ta.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var tb in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Blocked))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", tb.Outcome, tb.TestCaseTitle, tb.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var ti in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Inconclusive))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", ti.Outcome, ti.TestCaseTitle, ti.ErrorMessage));
                }

                foreach (var to in testRun.QueryResultsByOutcome(TestOutcome.Timeout))
                {
                    lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add(string.Format("{0}: {1} - {2}", to.Outcome, to.TestCaseTitle, to.ErrorMessage));
                }

                // Get the test results by user by passing in the Test Foundation Identity
                // testRun.QueryResultsByOwner(TeamFoundationIdentity);
            }

            if(testRuns.Count() == 0)
                lstTestRunDetails.Items.Add("No Test Results have been associated with the selected build");
        }
    }
}

6. And the Bonus Power tool…

Thank you for reading this far. If you haven’t already download the Community TFS Build Manager extension from the visual studio extension gallery do so now. The Community TFS Build Manager (TBM) is an open source build management solution developed by the ALM rangers, the build manager simplifies the management of builds in medium to large Team Foundation Server environments. Some common limitations you may run into while dealing with builds through the Visual Studio Build Explorer are not being able to perform bulk operations on builds, create a relationship diagram of the build controller/agents, managing build process templates, etc. The community TFS build manager address that and many other such gaps you may encounter while managing builds through the visual studio build explorer. You can grab the source and read more about the project on CodePlex.

Recently a new feature namely Build Notes has been added to the community TFS Build Manager that let’s you generate an ms word report of the build summary. A sample attached below… Look at the test result section, the trx file is parsed for you to get you a test result list filtered by test result outcome, where failed test also carries the error message. Watch this video or read this post here on what you can achieve with the build notes.

Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.

Check out the other posts on cool tools using TFS API.

SQL Server 2008 R2 setup fails on a Windows Virtual PC (VPC) with error code 2337

Daniel Hester — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:17:04 GMT

When installing SQL Server 2008 R2 (Developer, Standard, or Enterprise) within a Virtual PC you may suffer the following problem:

“The following error has occurred: The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2337.”

The error occurs in the following package: sql_engine_core_shared

It turns out that this problem is with the DVD/ISO Mounting Feature in Windows Virtual PC. To workaround the problem you need to expand the ISO with WinRAR – not WinZip and not by copying the contents of the mounted ISO to the VPC’s hard drive. You need to use WinRAR to extract the ISO; extracting the contents of the ISO with anything else just won’t solve the problem.

Microsoft have acknowledged the problem here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/550502/r2-rc0-install-problem-on-virtual-pc-2007

WinRAR can be found here:

http://www.win-rar.com/download.html

Self Host Web Api's for Integration Testing

Justin Hoffman — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:27:52 GMT

Recently I had a need to write some tests making Web Api calls that would be deployable to the build server without any special configuration.What I did was utilize the Self Hosting feature in the Asp.NetWebApi. First, I created a simple Api controller .

// GET /api/values
    public class ValuesController : ApiController
    {
        public SomeObjects GetByName(string firstName, string lastName)
        {
            var someObjects= new List<SomeObject>()
                               {
                                    new SomeObject
                                    {
                                        FirstName = "Tom",
                                        LastName = "Jones",
                                        Id= 1213
                                    },
                                     new SomeObject
                                    {
                                        FirstName = "Jane",
                                        LastName = "Doe",
                                        Id= 1523
                                    },
                                     new SomeObject
                                    {
                                        FirstName = "John",
                                        LastName = "Doe",
                                        Id= 3123
                                    }
                               };

            return someObjects.Where(x => x.FirstName == firstName && x.LastName == lastName).SingleOrDefault();
        }
    }

Next, I created a simple utility class to execute tests against the hosted service

public static class TestHostingUtil
    {
        public static void ExecuteHostedTest(Action<Task> continuationAction, string routeTemplate = null)
        {
            var routeTempl = "api/{controller}/{id}";
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(routeTemplate))
            {
                routeTempl = routeTemplate;
            }

            var serverConfig = new HttpSelfHostConfiguration("http://localhost:8080/");
            serverConfig.Routes.MapHttpRoute("default", routeTempl, new { id = RouteParameter.Optional, folder = "TestApiControllers" });

            var server = new HttpSelfHostServer(serverConfig);
            
            server.OpenAsync().ContinueWith(continuationAction).Wait();
            server.CloseAsync();
        }
    }

Note the "folder" param in the HttpRoute registration. In the test project this is the folder under which I added the Api controllers, if they were not in a seperate folder you would leave this blank.

Finally, the usuage for your tests:

[TestMethod]
        public void Should_Perform_Get()
        {
            TestHostingUtil.ExecuteHostedTest(task =>
                                  {

                                      // Arrange
                                      var webUtil=
                                          new WebUtil
                                              <SomeObject, SomeObject>(
                                              "http://localhost:8080/api/values?firstName=Tom&lastName=Jones");

                                      // Act
                                      var result = webUtil.Get();

                                      // Assert
                                      result.FirstName.Should().Be("Tom");
                                  });
        }

Microsoft Test Manager–Test Cases Not in a Test Plan

Bob Hardister — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:21:13 GMT

Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 provided support for system testing. Test cases were added as a work item type. But test plans and suites are not work items and this greatly limits the visibility into the management of test artifacts. For example, there is no easy way out-of-the-box to find test cases that don’t belong to a test plan.

Here’s the SQL that creates a list of test cases providing the test case:

ID
Title
State
Assigned To
Area Path
Iteration Path
Plan and Suite Path

You can use the output to identify what test cases are in what plan and suite; and more to the point, which test cases are not in a plan.

Using the Amrein SQL Viewer Web Part you can easily throw this up as a web part on the project portal site where users can globally access, sort and filter the data.

SELECT tco.System_Id as ID
,tco.System_Title as Title
,tco.System_State as State
,ISNULL(p.Name,'null') as Assigned
,tco.AreaPath as Area
,tco.IterationPath as Iteration
,ISNULL(s.SuitePath,'null') as 'Plan'
FROM Tfs_01Warehouse.dbo.vDimTestCaseOverlay tco inner join Tfs_01Warehouse.dbo.DimPerson p
ON tco.System_AssignedTo__PersonSK=p.PersonSK left outer join Tfs_{collection DB}.dbo.tbl_SuiteEntry se ON tco.System_Id=se.TestCaseId left outer join Tfs_01Warehouse.dbo.vDimTestSuiteOverlay s
ON se.SuiteId=s.TestSuiteID
WHERE tco.TeamProjectSK={#} /* team project */
ORDER BY tco.System_Id DESC

Mobile responsive site design in Expression Web

ihaynes — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:35:12 GMT

Although it doesn’t have any specific tools to help responsive or mobile site design this is still possible in Expression Web and I’ve created a number of snippets to help the process.

HTML5 and CSS3 are the key to responsive design, so the snippets cover the new HTML5 layout elements, form input types and microdata tags, and the CSS3 snippets cover box-radius, box-shadow, gradients etc. The mobile snippets include the CSS3 media queries, mobile meta tags and the responsd.js shim that enables older non-HTML5/CSS3 browsers to use the media queries.

The snippets are downloadable from the Expression Gallery:

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/HTML5Snippets

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/CSS3Snippets

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/MobileSnippets

I’ve also created a sample mobile-friendly responsive template for EW.

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/MobileTemplate

One caveat about using the CSS3 media queries with a mobile-first layout (the preferred way to use them) is that the Design view in Expression Web doesn’t recognise the queries and therefore displays the mobile view rather than the appropriate wide screen view. You may therefore have to rely more on browser preview when laying out pages.

SharePoint Saturday NYC Update from the Trenches

MOSSLover — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:49:04 GMT

So as you know I am yet again involved in SPS NYC with my awesome teammates, Greg Hurlman, Jason Gallicchio, Tasha Scott, and Tom Daly. The speakers have finally been picked and a first draft schedule has been posted at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ny. We are also still looking for sponsors if you guys are interested you can also click on the link to grab the form, sign it, and send it to sponsors@spsnyc.com. We are also looking for volunteers and you can fill out the form at the same place listed above. We are offering a t-shirt and a gift card for those who dedicate a couple hours of service to the event. I believe this year will be the best event yet. I am also considering wearing a Viking Helmut with horns if at least one other person will wear a similar item. I would consider dressing up if I could get another person to dress up, but I think that’s asking for too much. Also, I need to run around and help the others put out fires, so I’m not so sure full on dress attire would work out.

Anyway, registration is not yet posted for those of you guys who wish to attend. We might post it more towards the end of June. I am not yet sure what the decision was on the exact date, but normally we post about 6 weeks prior to the event. I hope to see you all this year at the event. Yet again my dad is going to show up, so stop by, attend a few sessions, and say hi to everyone.

Technorati Tags: SPS NYC,SharePoint Saturday,SharePoint

Integrating SharePoint with Fruity Products

MOSSLover — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:42:17 GMT

So as you can see this blog has not been the best in the world lately. Life changes and burn out are killing me lately. Don’t get me wrong I love my job. I love writing things in Visual Studio, in fact this week I got to work with MVC3 for the first time ever. I am completely hooked on MVC3 and will further explore that in the upcoming months. I have entertaining a completely different idea, because I think it would be fun and interesting. The downside is it involves me buying an Apple computer.

I have been fighting buying a Macbook Pro for ages. I love building Windows PCs from scratch. I love knowing that I built the computer that I am using. I guess it stems back from my grandparents teaching me that hard work leads to a more fulfilling accomplishment. Anyway, I am not switching over to the darkside. I just built myself a gaming PC (core i7 process, 24 gb of ram-32 when I RMA the last two chips, 4 hard drives – main being an SSD, and an NVIDIA GTX 570 card). I just want to branch out and learn some new tech, so I figure if I have some spare time (which is like asking for a unicorn), I will start posting more about my new development. Anyway, I am waiting for the WWDC and then I am going to decide on what flavor of Macbook Pro to purchase. It turns out a Macbook Air won’t get me what I want programmatically the processor might not be quite up to par for hardcore development. I wouldn’t want to limit myself to anything softcore right?

So check back here periodically or on twitter. I’m sure I will post something about my endeavors. In the meanwhile I am still working on my personal life and I am happy to say I have friends in the area. For the first time in a very long time some of them are actually female. As you all know my friends for the longest time were members of the SharePoint and .Net Community mainly and of the male breed. So things are working out. I still love every single day in NYC. It is the first city I can 100% say I belong in. If I have my way I will stay in the metro area for a long time. Anyway, I hope you all are having a good time and goodnight.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint and Apple,Microsoft and Apple,Apple

Let’s MEET Windows Azure

Shaun — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:37:18 GMT

Microsoft had just released a new website http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/ which announced an outstanding event named “MEET Windows Azure”. There will be some awesome new features and releases being published around the Windows Azure Platform, the cloud computing platform and cloud-based technologies Microsoft offers. From what I know, this might be the biggest innovation in Windows Azure till now.

The event will be hosted at 1pm PDT, June 7th at the Madrone Studio in San Francisco with limited sites. But it will opened to everyone who is interested in through the live online. If you are willing to join the live stream, like me, go to http://register.meetwindowsazure.com/ to register as soon as possible.

MEET Windows Azure Blog Relay:

- Roger Jennings (@rogerjenn): Social meet up on Twitter for Meet Windows Azure on June 7th
- Anton Staykov (@astaykov): MEET Windows Azure on June the 7th
- Patriek van Dorp (@pvandorp): Social Meet Up for ‘MEET Windows Azure’ on June 7th
- Marcel Meijer (@MarcelMeijer): MEET Windows Azure on June the 7th
- Nuno (@NunoGodinho): Social Meet Up for ‘MEET Windows Azure’ on June 7th
- Magnus Mårtensson (@noopman): Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June 7th
- Maarten Balliauw (@maartenballiauw): Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June 7th
- Shaun Xu (@shaunxu) Let's MEET Windows Azure

Hope this helps,

Shaun

All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.
Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

IQueryable Dynamic Expressions

Jon Canning — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:19:42 GMT

public static class QueryableExtensions
    {
        public static IQueryable<T> Filter<T>(this IQueryable<T> queryable, IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, string>> filters) where T : class
        {
            foreach (var filter in filters)
            {
                var propertyName = typeof(T).GetProperties().Select(x => x.Name).SingleOrDefault(x => x.ToLower() == filter.Key.ToLower());
                if (propertyName.IsNullOrWhiteSpace()) continue;
                var parameterExpression = Expression.Parameter(typeof(T));
                var propertyExpression = Expression.Property(parameterExpression, propertyName);
                var toStringCallExpression = Expression.Call(propertyExpression, typeof(T).GetMethod("ToString"));
                var toLowerCallExpression = Expression.Call(toStringCallExpression, typeof(string).GetMethod("ToLower", Type.EmptyTypes));
                var constantExpression = Expression.Constant(filter.Value.ToLower());
                var equalExpression = Expression.Equal(toLowerCallExpression, constantExpression);
                var methodCallExpression = Expression.Call(typeof(Queryable), "Where", new[] { typeof(T) }, queryable.Expression, Expression.Lambda<Func<T, bool>>(equalExpression, new[] { parameterExpression }));
                queryable = queryable.Provider.CreateQuery(methodCallExpression) as IQueryable<T>;
            }
            return queryable;
        }
    }

Old SQL, Top and a Variable

Bunch — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:48:32 GMT

I came across this the other day. Using SQL 2000 I could not get a Top statement to work with a variable. I had forgotten that only with SQL 2005 and higher could you do this trick. I found a good way around it, you can read about it here. Anyway this works on SQL 2000:

declare @top int
set @top = 5

BEGIN
set rowcount @top
select Some_ID
from tblStuff
set rowcount 0
END

The code above would return the first five records from tblStuff. For any of the newer SQL Server version you can simply use the @top variable in Top like:

select top (@top) Some_ID
from tblStuff

Tags: SQL

Sass vs Less

Renso — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:42:24 GMT

I know there are afew places where you can check out the differences between Sass or Less, but I thought it may be helpful for others to know why I chose one over the other.

Here are some of my sources:

http://sass-lang.com/
http://www.dotlesscss.org/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8411066/less-vs-sass-vs
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/09/an-introduction-to-less-and-comparison-to-sass/

Since my main decision was affected by my IDE I need to mention my development environment:

Visual Studio 2010 with Mindscape's Web Workbench

In short I chose Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheet). My main reason was that when you save the file in VS, it automatically regenerates the CSS file for SCSS on the fly, so you are able to see right away what CSS is being generated and can run your app right away. I am not in the favor of Less in this regard, as although you can specify set of handlers etc to interpret the less file on the fly, I would never use it to interpret on the fly, especially not on production servers.

Also the Ruby team now ships officially with CoffeeScript and Sass by default and will be included by default in the gems when you deploy your Ruby app. Maybe another reason to use it if you're in the Rails framework.

Any comments very welcome as I am am not sure if my assumptions and assertions are true.

Passing in report parameters to TFS 2010 OLAP Web Parts on the Team Portal

Bob Hardister — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:48:00 GMT

There is some helpful information from Ewald Hofman on passing in parameters to the TFS SQL Server Analysis Services OLAP reports.

But, the 2010 schema has changed. You can use the SQL Server Mgmgt Studio to access the metadata and query the tables to seee the new schema and record values.

As an example of the Task Burndown report on the TFS 2010 Project Portal, here's the URL that worked in a browser:

http://{your tfs server}/Reports/Pages/Report.aspx?ItemPath=%2fTfsReports%2fDefaultCollection%2fCcMsd1.0%2fDashboards%2fBurndown&rc%3atoolbar=false&rs%3aCommand=Render&IterationParam=[IterationName].[ParentIterationSK].%26[{the IterationSK value}]

Here's the URL that was accepted in the web part:

/sites/DefaultCollection/CcMsd1.0/_layouts/TfsRedirect.aspx?tf:Type=Report&tf:ReportName=Dashboards%2fBurndown&tf:ShowToolbar=0&Width=381pt&Height= 180pt&tf:Command=Render&tf:Parameters=IterationParam=[IterationName].[ParentIterationSK].%26[17]

To-date though, even though the report processes without error, the passed in parameters don't make any difference/change in the report. So, I gave up on this approach and was somewhat successful with this approach (see my subsequent blog article).

How I Customized Report Parameters for Team Foundation Server 2010

Bob Hardister — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:46:27 GMT

My goal was to have the burndown chart on the team project portal main page display the current iteration.

The default report displays the tasks for the entire team project starting 5 days before the current date and ending 25 days after the current date. FRUSTRATING, to say the least! I mean, what a useless report! Who's Agile book did they get that one from?

What I wanted was to see the burndown for the current iteration. That is, tasks for that iteration only and that iteration starting on a fixed start date and stopping on a fixed finish date.

First, I tried to implement this by passing in the parameters in the web part link url. I talked to about 4 different Microsoft people at PDC; specialist in VS ALM, SSRS, SharePoint. No one knew how to do this. See my original article on this here.

I have yet to be successful on the first approach. Which seems the most obvious way to approach it. I hope that this secret makes its way into the TFS community at some point. No wonder so few use TFS SSRS reporting! Can you sense the frustration?

Then, I came across at article by John Socha-Leialoha on Customizing Report Parameters for Team Foundation Server 2010. This article describes how I used his approach to be successful.

First, save a copy of the report definition so you can restore it if things get messed up.
To access the report definition, from the team project main page, select Reports from the left column and then navigate through the SQl Server Reporting Services (SSRS) location hierarchy to find the report. Click on it to open it. Go to the Properties tab and select the General panel. Click Edit to save a copy of the report definition file. You will need to click the Update button to browse, select and then apply the file to restore the definition
Now, to the point: select the Properties panel and set the iteration path on the report parameters page as John's blog specifies. Note: the parameter string for iteration path [Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[All] must be changed to [Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[Iteration1].&[{ParentIterationSK}]&[{IterationSK}]. I had to use the MS SQL Server Mgmgt Studio (SSMS) to find out what these were. I connected to my TFS server using the SSMS, opened the Tfs_Warehouse Database and queried the rows in the dbo.DimIteration table. From here you can see what the SK values are based on the IterationPath you are interested in. Note2: I don't know what "[Iteration1]" means for sure. It may have to do with the depth of the IterationPath Hierarchy. In my case, I'm only one level down from the root of the iteration path. So, in this case, I must use "[Iteration1]" regardless of the real iteration I want to report on. So, if the full parameter for my first iteration is: [Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[Iteration1].&[14]&[17] and the SK for my second iteration is 18, my parameter for my project's second iteration looks like this: [Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[Iteration1].&[14]&[18]
Next, click the "Override Default" for StartDateParam and EndDateParam. Note: I think this is permanent for the active defintion. I think you can restore the original defintion to reset the default. Type in the start and end date you want (mm/dd/yyyy). The time will default to 12 AM, but you can change this after you have applied the first explicit date values.
Now view and display the report. You should see the report you want :)
Next, rename the report to reflect the iteration it's for
Now create the linked reports as described by John in his blog
Finally, you can easily modify the web part link url to containt the correct report name.

UPDATE:
In subsequent work I confirmed the syntax of the IterationParm string. For example, take -

[Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[Iteration1].&[14]&[18]

The [Iteration1] node does prescribe the depth of the hierarchy. [Iteration1] means root to 1st level. [Iteration2] means root to 1st level to 2nd level] and so forth. The node IDs correspond to the nodes at each level.

So [Work Item].[Iteration Hierarchy].[Iteration4].&[14]&[18]&[54]&[72] specifies an iteration path node at the root>1st>2nd>3rd level.

You can obtain the SSRS report properties IterationParm value using SQL Server Management Studio. Connect using SQL Server Analysis Services and create an MDX query of the work item.iteration hiearchy path node you want to report on. See this great article by John Socha-Leiloha for more details.

Good hunting!

Using a TFS 2010 custom bug work item definition with the MTLM Test Runner

Bob Hardister — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:44:29 GMT

We don’t use the term “Bug,” rather we use “Software Action Request” or “SAR.” I renamed the Bug WI definition from Bug to SAR. I added a few custom fields to our SAR WI definition, but all the Microsoft fields are used and unchanged.

What I want is for the MTLM client to be configured to open a SAR rather than a Bug. In other words, out-of-the-box when a user is manually executing a test case with the MTLM Test Runner client and one of the steps fail, the user clicks a button to create a Bug or link to an existing Bug.

The answer was provided by Rubel Singal in this blog article. It works! Thank you Rubel!

Happy trails!