thespot4sap.com

They weren't on crack; they were just on a new, unknown track!

MSDN Blogs — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, it has been interesting to note how the microsoft.public.platformsdk.mslayerforunicode newsgroup has been getting traffic, but traffic that has nothing whatsoever to do with MSLU, the Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems.

And the other day I got a mail from C++ MVP Mike that explains what is going on here!

His mail:

Did this screen always say "Unicode" when describing the mslayerforunicode newsgroup?  (scroll down on tree on the left also)

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.platformsdk.mslayerforunicode&cat=en_US_5fcd6081-85f7-467c-9e45-91ff49835c3b&lang=en&cr=US

may finally explain why we've seen non-MSLU based questions posted to this newsgroup in the past, and have unjustly scolded people for doing so :)  Or maybe the change was recent.  I'm just wondering if you remembered whether this always said "Unicode", on the tree and in the heading on the pane ("Discussions in Unicode")

Well, they say a picture is worth 1000 words:

Well, that explains it!

I guess I'm old school, getting at newsgroups through NNTP style portals rather than HTML style ones. Which is why I never noticed this one.

But it looks like this "simplification" layer is used with lots of the groups. It is just our bad luck that the one used in this particular group is so misleading....

Or is this a call to repurpose the group? We have the bull by the horns, maybe we should just hang on and ride it?

I mean, given the whole MSLU support question is playing itself out. and the lack of heavy activity on the international newsgroups in general.

But then of course there is the name under NNTP (microsoft.public.platformsdk.mslayerforunicode) to contend with.

Maybe no one uses NNTP anymore.

What do you think?

This post brought to you by ! (U+0021, a.k.a. EXCLAMATION MARK)

ZDNET | Nokia E71

MSDN Blogs — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Nokia E71

Bonnie Cha

4 July 2008

Mobile professionals who need a powerful but sleek messaging-centric smartphone will be well-served by the Nokia E71; just be prepared to pay a price.

For this review, we took a look at the Nokia E71, which steps in to relieve the older Nokia E61i. What the company has done with the E71's design is remarkable, as it's taken the once-bulky smartphone and turned it into an incredibly sleek QWERTY device. You do lose a bit in screen and keyboard size, but we feel it's manageable. Plus, with its strong messaging, productivity and connectivity features plus solid performance, it's worth those little sacrifices. The only downfall is that an unlocked version of the Nokia E71 will go for around 275.

Design

The first thing you'll notice about the Nokia E71 is its design. It's noticeably sleeker and sexier than the Nokia E61i, sporting a compact frame that measures 114mm by 57mm by10mm and weighs 126g. The slimness is especially noticeable when you use the E71 as a phone, or just hold it in the palm of your hand. In addition, the handset has a solid construction with its steel frame. Our only complaint - and it's a minor one - is that the back gets a bit tarnished with fingerprints and smudges.

The Nokia E71 is an extremely sleek smartphone, considering it has a full QWERTY keyboard. Here it is next to the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8310.

On front, there's a 2.36in. non-touch display with a 16-million-colour support and 320-by-240-pixel (QVGA) resolution. The screen is a bit on the small side, but text and images look sharp. It also has a light-sensing technology that adjusts the display's brightness depending on the environment you're in. A new feature that's not readily apparent from looking at the phone is the Business and Personal home screens. You can now toggle between two different home views, depending on whether you're at work or at home. In Business mode, you'll have immediate access to work tools, such as email, the web and the file manager. After hours, you can switch to Personal mode and have your music and photo gallery a click away. Of course, you're not really 'off' from work since you can easily switch back, but it's a nice thought anyway.

Below the display, there's a standard navigation array of two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, and a four-way toggle with a centre select key. In addition, there are four shortcuts to the Home screen, Calendar, Contacts and Messages. You also get a full QWERTY keyboard. Given that the E71 is physically smaller than the E61i, the layout is a bit more cramped with less spacing between the buttons. Still, I found it pretty easy to use, although I do have small fingers. Customers with larger thumbs might want to give it a test drive. On the bright side, the keys don't have that squishy feel of the E61i; they give more of a satisfying, clicky tactile feedback.

Given the phone's smaller size, the E71's full QWERTY keyboard is more cramped than the Nokia E61i. Still, we found it easy to use.

The left spine holds a microSD slot and a micro-USB port. It seems Nokia is sticking with the decision to go with the less standard micro-USB port at this time. It's definitely not a deal-breaker, just a minor inconvenience since you can't use the more widely used mini-USB accessories. On the right side, you have a 2.5mm headset jack, a volume rocker and a voice command activation key. Both sides also have buttons to release the battery cover. The on/off button is located on the top, while the power connector is on the bottom of the unit. Finally, you'll find the camera, flash and self-portrait mirror on the back.

The Nokia E71 comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired headset, a 2GB microSD card, a protective pouch, a lanyard, a software CD and reference material.

Features

If the QWERTY keyboard didn't give it away, the Nokia E71 is a messaging-centric smartphone, although it's certainly not limited to just email. The E71 works with Microsoft Exchange Server, POP3, IMAP and SMTP accounts and has a full attachment viewer. The device is also compatible with a number of push email solutions, including Intellisync Wireless E-mail, Visto and Seven Always-On Mail. The E71 includes a new wizard to help set up your email as it automatically looks for the settings needed to access your account. There are no instant messaging clients preloaded on the device, although you can certainly download software to do so. In fact, there is a download catalogue right on the device where you can find such titles.

Using the new wizard, we configured our review unit to access our Yahoo Plus account by simply entering our login and password. There's also a voice aid utility that uses text-to-speech technology to read aloud not only your messages but your call history, contacts, clock and more. The feature worked fine in our tests, although the voice sounded quite robotic. We'd say this function might come in handy when you need to hear a message while driving; otherwise, it might just be easier to read the information off the phone.

The E71 runs Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 3.1 edition, and comes with full support for viewing and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents with the Quickoffice suite. It appears, however, that the company has done away with the Nokia Team Suite, which first debuted on the Nokia E65. The E71 comes with the Nokia Web browser with support for Flash Lite 3.0, so you're able to view and use such sites as YouTube. The smartphone does have a number of other PIM applications and organisation tools, including Adobe Reader, a Zip Manager, a calendar, notes, a calculator, a clock, a voice recorder and a currency converter. There are also a number of security features, including memory encryption and mobile VPN. There's 110MB of internal dynamic memory, and the microSD slot can accept up to 8GB cards.

On the left side, you'll find a microSD expansion slot, which accepts up to 8GB cards.

The Nokia E71's phone features include world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, speed dial, voice commands, VoIP calls, and text and multimedia messaging. The address book is limited only by the available memory, while the SIM card can hold an additional 250 contacts. Each entry has room for multiple numbers, an email address, home and work addresses, a web URL and so forth. For caller ID purposes, you can pair a contact with a photo or one of 39 polyphonic ringtones. The E71 makes it easy to perform certain tasks from your contact list, as you simply press the right arrow button and a pull-down menu appears where you can choose to place a voice call or send a text, multimedia or audio message.

The E71 is a quad-band GSM phone with GPRS/EDGE and 3G/HSDPA support. Other wireless options include Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g). The smartphone supports a number of Bluetooth profiles, including mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, dial-up networking and file transfer.

The E71 is equipped with a GPS chip and supports Assisted GPS, so it uses the help of mobile masts and Wi-Fi spots to more quickly get a fix on your position. The E71 comes preloaded with the Nokia Maps 2.0 application, which offers plenty of navigation tools, including satellite and hybrid maps, and pedestrian and bicycle modes. For turn-by-turn directions, however, you'll need to pay extra.

Finally, for those times, you do want to switch from business to personal mode, there are a host of multimedia features on the smartphone. The built-in music player supports MP3, WMA, W4A, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ files, as well as OMA DRM 2.0- and WM DRM-protected songs. The music library categorises tracks by artists, albums, genres and composers; you can also create playlists on the phone and adjust the sound with the built-in equaliser. You can listen to your favourite podcasts or listen to the radio (you must use the included earbuds as it contains the FM tuner). If you'd like to watch other videos, you can use RealPlayer to check out 3GPP and MPEG-4 files. There is also a direct link to the Nokia Music Store.

Whether for work or play, you can take photos with the Nokia E71's 3.2-megapixel camera.

The Nokia E71 is also equipped with 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities. There are a number of imaging tools, including autofocus, an LED flash, exposure compensation and digital zoom. You also get multiple scene modes, white balance settings, and colour adjustments. In video mode, there are three quality settings, but you only have access to controls for the scene mode, white balance and colour. Once you're done taking photos or videos, you can share them via multimedia message, email, or Bluetooth; set them as your phone's wallpaper or assign them to a contact; or post them to the web, whether it be on Nokia's Ovi service or a site like Flickr.

Picture quality isn't the greatest, with images having a grainy look to them.

Picture quality was disappointing. We could make out the images, but there was a grainy quality to the photos, and the colours never looked right, even after tweaking some of the settings. Video, on the other hand, looked quite decent.

Performance

We tested the quad-band Nokia E71 in San Francisco using AT&T's service, and call quality was good. We enjoyed clear and loud audio on our end, and we were able to use an airline's voice automated system with no problem. Meanwhile, our friends also reported good sound, although every now and then, they could hear an echo, but not enough to be distracting. Speakerphone quality wasn't quite as stellar. Calls could sound patchy at times, and volume could be a problem in louder environments. We were able to successfully pair the E71 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Active Bluetooth Headphones.

The Nokia E71 was a very responsive smartphone. Long performance lags were rare, and we never experienced any system crashes during our review period. Web browsing was swift, whether we were cruising on AT&T's HSDPA network or using Wi-Fi. One area that could use some improvement was multimedia. Music playback through the phone's speakers sounded flat, even after we fiddled with the equaliser. Watching video clips was fine in short spurts.

The Nokia E71's 1,500mAh battery has a rated talk time of 10.5 hours (GSM) and up to 17 days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests, but will update this section when we have final results. According to FCC radiation tests, the E71 has a digital SAR rating of 1.4 watts per kilogram.

AJAX Javascript call to web service fails when (.asmx) is placed into sub directory

MSDN Blogs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Problem Description

===================

AJAX Javascript call to web service fail with is ‘null or not an object’ , when Web service is placed into sub directory say Service

Error

=====

A Runtime Error has occured

Do you Wish to debug?

Line:53

Error: 'SupportIssue.BrokenService' is null or not an object

Web service code

===================

namespace SupportIssue

{

[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]

[ScriptService]

public class WorkingService : System.Web.Services.WebService

    {

        [WebMethod]

        public string HelloWorld()

        {

            return "Hello World";

        }

In Default.aspx, registering through Script manager

================

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">

            <asp:ServiceReference Path="~/WorkingService.asmx" />

           <asp:ServiceReference Path="~/services/BrokenService.asmx" />

        </Services>

</asp:ScriptManager>

Calling the web service method in Javascript in Default.aspx

=============

            //This works because it is in the same directory

var x = SupportIssue.WorkingService.HelloWorld(OnSucceeded, OnFailed);

//The following line break in to error!!!

var y = SupportIssue.BrokenService.HelloWorld(OnSucceeded, OnFailed);

            function OnSucceeded(result, userContext, methodName)

            {

                alert(result);

            }

            function OnFailed(error, userContext, methodName)

            {

                alert(error);

            }

        </script>

The above line would fail as the web service has been placed in sub directory called services

Same line would succeed if we put out web service (.asmx) file in application Root Folder

-- Tracking through Fiddler trace, notice we are making call to jsdebug

Note : The "/jsdebug" suffix is used by AJAX to get the debug release of Javascript proxy for web service and "/js" for released version

For GET /SupportIssue/WorkingService.asmx/jsdebug HTTP/1.1

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

For GET /SupportIssue/Service/BrokenService.asmx/jsdebug HTTP/1.1

Response:

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error

-- Checking IIS log we got 500

2008-04-26 05:59:02 W3SVC1 127.0.0.1 GET /SupportIssue/Service/BrokenService.asmx/jsdebug - 80

FAREAST\jaskis 127.0.0.1 500 0 0

-- Try Browsing jsdebug for failed request from IE

http://localhost/SupportIssue/Service/BrokenService.asmx/jsdebug

Server Error in '/SupportIssue' Application.

----------------------------------------------------------

No web service found at: /SupportIssue/Service/BrokenService.asmx.

Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: No web service found at: /SupportIssue/Service/BrokenService.asmx.

Workaround

===========

1) Issue seems to be with Web application project and not for Web site, because for WAP Namespaces are added for before class beginning so use Web Site project instead

For example

namespace SupportIssue

{

public class WorkingService.....

}

2) If want to use WAP then change the namespace of classes within the sub directory corresponding to sub directory name only*

Directory/folder Name = Service

As default setting we have namespace(project name) added for WAP

namespace SupportIssue

{

}

Change it to

namespace SupportIssue.Service

{

}

and

var y = SupportIssue.BrokenService.HelloWorld(OnSucceeded, OnFailed);

var y = SupportIssue.Services.BrokenService.HelloWorld(OnSucceeded, OnFailed);

That’s it.

Hope it helps :-)

Channel 9: Amanda Silver on the future of VB

MSDN Blogs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Lots of new features are in store for future versions of VB, according to Amanda Silver of the VB Team. Check out the great Channel 9 interview with Amanda at TechEd to see her talk about LINQ, dynamic typing and Intellisense, improvements in native/Pinvoke calls, multitargeting different versions of the .NET Framework, and other cool stuff. Amanda discusses the pain of having to cut line continuation removal from VS 2008. Unlike C languages, , Visual Basic doesn’t require a trailing semi-colon...(read more)

Contribuciones realizadas por MVPs en Junio08

MSDN Blogs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Articulos

·          Data Profiling Task en Integration Services 2008; Alan Koo

·          tutorial de Silverlight 1.0; Gonzalo Perez

·          WCF REST Services; Joel Francia

Gira nacional 2008 del Microsoft Users Group

Carlos A. Perez

El 26 de Junio de 2008, en la UTN Facultad Regional Resistencia, ocurrió el cierre de la gira nacional 2008 del Microsoft Users Group. A pesar de la intensa lluvia, se dieron cita 170 personas, entre profesores, profesionales del medio, alumnos y público técnico en general, para escuchar durante casi siete horas a cuatro speakers en cinco conferencias, a saber: (1) Carlos Perez, MVP, disertó sobre las generalidades de la nueva familia Windows Server 2008 , mostrando un Hyper-V en WS2008-64bits. Luego (2) German Gaona, colega de Carlos en la Universidad, disertó sobre las nuevas características de Visual Studio Team System 2008 en una charla con más de 55 diapositivas inéditas y ejemplos. En tercer (3) lugar vino el Sr. Darío Quintana, ex alumno de Carlos y Germán y actual integrante del team NHibernate, quien mostró un how-to del nuevo Entity Framework y otras características datacéntricas en el nuevo VS2008 SP1. En cuarto (4) lugar vino la esperada charla de Adrián Cura, desarrollador web con mucha experiencia en ASP.NET y AJAX, donde disertó sobre sus temas preferidos y dio un vistazo a Silverlight 2.0, XAML y Expression Web 2.0.  Por  último, para cerrar (5) la noche, Carlos Pérez (MVP) nuevamente disertó, esta vez sobre desarrollo en movilidad en Windows Mobile 6 + .NET Compact Framework 3.5 + Visual Studio 2008, describiendo también las nuevas capacidades de WCF y LINQ en el móvil, y terminando con una recorrida por el Windows Mobile 6 Software Factory. En el evento se sortearon también revistas del MUG y de MSDN importadas, y el broche de oro lo dio el sorteo de cuatro (4) suscripciones TECHNET Direct 2008, tres para la audiencia en general y una fue donada al Centro de Estudiantes Tecnológicos a través de su Célula .NET, apadrinada por Carlos Pérez, para que sea sorteada entre los alumnos que asistieron. Un gran evento y un gran cierre de temporada para el tour nacional de herramientas 2008 de Microsoft en Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina

Por qué fallan los proyectos de Software?

Patricia Scalzone

En el proceso de construir aplicaciones siempre está el fantasma del fracaso del proyecto.

En esta conferencia, se abordaron los puntos críticos en este proceso y cuáles son los paliativos a tener en cuenta. Se abarcaron diferentes aspectos y metodologías de desarrollo que hacen a una mejor gestión de los proyectos. También se mostró la importancia de por qué contar con la herramienta apropiada que acompañe en todo el ciclo de vida, y se presentó para ello Team Foundation Server. El seminario tuvo lugar el 6 de Junio de 2008 en La Legislatura de la Ciudad de San Juan, en la provincia del mismo nombre, donde asistieron alrededor de 80 personas. Tuvo mucha divulgación en los medios locales.

Ponencia sobre Sql Server 2008 en la Conferencia de Software Guru 2008

José Raúl Guerrero Carreón MVP ASP/ASP.NET

Como parte de las actividades relacionadas con comunidades de desarrollo durante la Conferencia de Software Guru tuve la oportunidad de participar con el tema de Sql Server 2008 donde entre otras características demostramos que nos pueden ofrecer los nuevos tipos de datos en esta nueva versión próxima a salir. Durante este mismo evento tuve la fortuna de participar junto con Julio Casal, el cual presento lo que Silverlight 2.0 puede ofrecer a los desarrolladores de aplicaciones web. Al final fue muy grato estar en esta sesión en la cual Julio y un servidor pudimos compartir experiencias durante casi tres horas con los asistentes.

Webcast de MOSS2007

Gabriel Oliva

pondré las diapositivas en español en mi blog por si alguien mas gusta utilizarlas, desafortunadamente no pude grabar el evento pero puedo programar nuevas sesiones de este y otros materiales para MSDN. Proyecto de Open Source ‘Notifications Framework’ (primer release en codeplex)  

Articulo de creación de webcontrol ‘imageSlideshow’ con ajax (será publicado mañana en codeproject) Próxima conferencia de LINQ C# (25 de Julio en el Tec de Mty Ags)

MVPs en TechEd

·          Jose Antonio Chajon: Mucho me gustaría compartir con la comunidad la maravillosa experiencia que fue Tech Ed 2008

·          Tuve el privilegio de estar en ambos, Developer  e IT Pros, y el aprendizaje fue incomparable debido a las oportunidades de interactuar con la gente de grupo de producto de Microsoft y con diversos clientes. Creo que este tipo de oportunidades son  de los componentes mas Fuertes y únicos del programa.

·          Haaron Gonzalez: Estuve en el Teched 2008 como miembro del staff técnico de SharePoint en el área de boots, estuve atendiendo gente en los boots de Office Business Applications y SharePoint Designer 2007. Definitivamente vivir la experiencia de Staff es fenomenal ya que podemos ver cómo funcionan tras bambalinas la organización de un evento tan grande, así mismo, atender dudas verdaderamente complejas y poder compartir con gente intentando resolver sus problemas técnicos termina siendo más enriquecedor que haber asistido a todas las platicas. Tuve la oportunidad de convivir con Eilene Hao Program Manager de SharePoint Designer, Steve Fox Developer Evangelist, Eric Carter Developer Manager de VSTO entre muchas personalidades del mundo Office y SharePoint.  Paul Andrew Program Manager me invitaron a que siguiera participando y que me animara a ser speaker en próximos eventos, comento que con la participación que tuve en el Office Developer Conference 2008 y en Teched 2008 ya tengo antecedentes como para aplicar como speaker, que me animara. Así que eso haremos en el futuro

·          Gregorio Parra: Este mes de Junio (10 -13) estuve en TechEd IT pros en Orlando como uno de los miembros del Staff de UC. En este evento estuve respondiendo preguntas y mostrando los beneficios de UC para los asistentes al mismo, apoyando asi a los miembros del grupo de producto de Exchange.

·          Santos Martinez

·          Emerson Gonzalez

·          Emiliano Estevez

·          Elias Mereb

·          Cesar Fong

·          Isvet Laclaustra

·          Joel Francia

Technight

Daniel Cazzulino

Junto a Pablo Cibraro, Daniel Cazzulino y Marcelo Tondato, presentamos en el Technight del 27/junio "Sincronizando datos en la web", analizando escenarios donde la sincronización de datos es crítica, y las tecnologías disponibles para usar en esos casos ("FeedSync", Microsoft Sync Framework, Mesh4x and Live Mesh).

WEBCAST sobre Entity Framework  y Conferencia para MSDN de las extensiones de ASPN.NET 3.5

Juan Pablo Garcia

The Evolutions Show – Heroes Happen  - SQL Server 2008: {Business Intelligence total}

Juan Alvarado

Webcast sobre inteligencia de negocios de Mcirosoft, explicando el marco de trabajo conceptual de

BI y como se compone en SQL 2008.  Tambien viendo lo nuevas características de SQL 2008 para Datawarehouse ,Analysis Services, integration services y Reporting Services con las nuevas graficas de Dundas

4 Conferencias de .NET

Daniel Laco

·          Charla desarrollada el Miercoles 4 de Junio en el Grupo de Usuarios Microsoft, en Buenos Aires, Argentina. El tema tratado fue: Frameworks: Qué son?, para qué sirven?, cómo diseño el mío?

·          La plataforma .NET como soporte para aplicaciones de gobierno electrónico. Realizada el 5 de Junio en la sala de vicegobernadores de la Legislatura de la Provincia de San Juan, Argentina. Participaron Gerentes de Sistemas y Project leaders de las areas de sistemas de dependencias gubernamentales, municipalidades, etc.

·          Conferencia en la Universidad Nacional de San Juan el 6 de Junio sobre El desarrollo de aplicaciones con .NET Asistienron mas de 200 estudiantes, sobrepasando ampliamente la capacidad prevista.

·          Win The Web: Evento realizado por Microsoft y DattaTec el 17 de Junio en Buenos Aires. El tema desarrollado fue Agilización del acceso a datos en las aplicaciones web con LinQ  

InBetween

Elias Mereb

La realizacion del "InBetween" realizado el 7 y 8 de junio en las instalaciones del OCCC entre teched dev y itpros, alli Santos fue el encargado del IT PRO CAMP y yo participe como speaker invitado dictando las siguientes charlas:

Windows Server 2008: Security
Windows Server 2008: Technical Overview (TTT Session)

Windows Mobile Line Of Business SOluction Accelerator

Cesar Fong

3-6 Junio: Apoyo a Microsoft (4 horas diarias) en el booth de Windows Mobile en el Teched 2008 Developers hablando sobre Windows Mobile Line Of Business SOluction Accelerator.

Heroes {Puerto Rico}

Isvet Laclaustra

Te comento que hemos estado realizando eventos de CLT / Heroes = Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 desde febrero 2008. Ya hemos realizado cuatro eventos y este sábado próximo estaré ofreciendo un BootCamp “GRATIS” de Windows Server 2008 en las facilidades de HP Hewlett-Packard de Aguadilla Puerto Rico. Este evento tiene una duración de 9 Horas y es un Hands On / Show & Tell.  Como participantes del evento estarán los Ingeniero de HP, miembros de la comunidad del IT Community Staff Puerto Rico.

Iniciativa sobre SilverLight

Joel Francia

Les comparto varios ejemplos que hemos desarrollado:

·          Sample

·          Playernormal

·          Servicios

·          Simamps

Blogo.net en Español

Juan T. Llibre

Tuve el grato placer de hacer la traducción de Blogo.Net al idioma español. Blogo.Net es un "engine" para escribir blogs, escrito en ASP.NET 3.5.

Mira el anuncio del "Blogo.NET fantástico" por el autor de Blogo.Net, Ferdy Christant. El enlace para descargar la versión al español de Blogo.Net ...o directamente.

Anuncio del release de Blogo.Net en inglés, Artículo "The making of Blogo.Net", "The making of Blogo.Net, parte 2” y"The making of Blogo.Net, parte 3

”.

Espero que muchos programadores de .Net en español puedan aprender acerca de lo que hace falta para desarrollar una aplicación para ASP.NET 3.5 con las fuentes de Blogo.Net, que son completamente gratuitas.

 

Vídeo: Herramientas para asegurar la calidad utilizando Visual Studio Team System 2008

Carlos Walzer

Durante el lanzamiento de Visual Studio 2008, he grabado un vídeo exponiendo las Herramientas para asegurar la calidad utilizando Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Allí hago una presentación sobre el aseguramiento de calidad y reviso las técnicas y herramientas propuestas por Visual Studio 2008. Además hago un repaso por:

El vídeo está disponible para bajarlo o verlo en línea.

Además puedes bajar el código y la presentación desde aquí.

 

LatinDevelopers en Universidad Latina de Panama
Rogelio Morrel
Con asistencia de 70 personas, se celebro el evento de Ineta de LatinDevelopers en la Universidad Latina de Panama. Rogelio Morrell expuso temas como Silverlight y la ola nueva de aplicaciones mobiles y RIA. Alex Sanchez demostro algunas anectodas y novedades del TechEd 2008 en Orlando.

 

Saludos

Fernando García Loera

MVP Lead | Community Consultant | Latin American Region

http://blogs.msdn.com/mvplead Que es un MVP?  Como Logro ser MVP?

Using PBM Against SQL2K and SQL2K5

MSDN Blogs — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We get this question a lot: can I use PBM against a SQL2K & SQL2K5 instances. The quick answer is yes but in a limited fashion. PBM is ultimately based on SMO (SQL Server Management Objects) and SMO supports SQL2K, SQL2K5, and SQL2K8. PBM relies on some changes to the DB engine which are not available in versions below SQL2K8, therefore, not all PBM functionality  is available in SQL2K and SQL2K5.

Let's divide the PBM functionality into four key areas:

Authoring policies
Storing policies on a server
Automated policy evaluation
Manual policy evaluation

Authoring Policies

There are two ways to author a policy: connected and disconnect. Connected policy authoring is only supported in SQL2K8. When authoring in connected mode (Object Explorer is connected to an instance) the policy is stored on the server. There is no way to alternatively save the policy to the file system (other than exporting it after it's created on the server). Disconnected authoring saves the policy to the file system (as an XML file). This functionality is only available in SQL2K8 Management Studio. Since it doesn't require a connection to a back-end server you don't need an instance of SQL2K8 available. Therefore, authoring policies is somewhat dependent upon SQL2K8 - you need the toolset but not a server.

Storing Policies On A Server

There are two ways to store a policy on a server: create it on the server and import a policy XML file to the server. Both of these are only available on SQL2K8 servers.

Automated Policy Evaluation

Policy automation is dependent upon enhancements to dependent features only available in SQL2K8 (SQCLR, SMO, Agent and DDL Eventing.) Therefore, automated policy evaluation (Check on Change - Prevent, Check on Change - Log, and Check on Schedule) is only available on SQL2K8 servers. In addition, the automation requires the policy to stored locally on the server which is only supported on SQL2K8.

Manual Policy Evaluation

Manually evaluating a policy is a client-side operation (simply meaning it doesn't run in the context of the DB Engine service) and therefore it requires SQL2K8 Management Studio (or at least the SQL2K8 management stack - PBM & SMO APIs). There are four ways to manually evaluate a policy:

From Object Explorer in Management Studio
From Registered Servers in Management Studio
The PowerShell cmdlet Invoke-PolicyEvaluation
From the PBM API

Object Explorer (OE): Policy evaluation is supported from OE when connected to SQL2K5 and SQL2K8 servers (note: this may also be available when connected to a SQL2K server but I didn't have one available to me at the time of this writing to verify). You get the same Evaluation dialog in both cases. However, when connected to a SQL2K5 server there are no locally stored policies which means you need to select policies from file or from a SQL2K8 server.

Registered Servers (RegSrvrs): Policy evaluation is supported from RegSrvrs for SQL2K, SQL2K5, and SQL2K8 servers. You can evaluate policies that are saved to file or stored on a SQL2K8 server. You can also evaluate policies against a group of servers. The server group can contain mixed versions.

Invoke-PolicyEvaluation: This PowerShell cmdlet can be run against SQL2K, SQL2K5, and SQL2K8 servers. You just pass in the server name to the TargetServerName parameter. You can evaluate policies stored on a SQL2K8 server or on the file system. This blog post shows how to use the Agent PowerShell subsystem in SQL2K8 to create a job that runs a PowerShell script to evaluate policies against a group of servers. These servers can be SQL2K, SQL2K5 and SQL2K8 servers.

PBM API: The PBM API is a public API and contains methods for evaluating policies. This is exactly what we use under the covers for our policy evaluation. You can create your own .Net application which calls this API. Similar to the PowerShell cmdlet you need to pass in a connection to the server to evaluate. This connection can be a SQL2K, SQL2K5, or SQL2K8 connection. The details for how to do this (the code you need to write) is beyond the scope of this posting but is a good topic for a future posting.

Summary

When we designed PBM we accounted for the fact that not all customers immediately upgrade their environment - you have to deal with mixed environments. We wanted to be sure PBM would add value to these mixed environments but we also need to give you a reason to upgrade :-). Therefore, we enable you to run policies against SQL2K and SQL2K5 just not with the same fidelity as SQL2K8.

AOL Users Will Need to Pay $2 a Month For Phone Support

Slashdot — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

destinyland writes "8.7 million AOL subscribers face a new 20% fee increase next month — unless they agree to never call AOL's technical support lines. They'll have to use AOL chat for support or the online help "portal" unless their issue is a failed connection — and they're being enrolled in the program by default unless they opt out. Ominously, AOL used the exact same wording as when they quietly changed their terms of service to allow them to sell subscribers' home phone numbers to telemarketers. 'Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.'"

CRM 4.0 E-Mail Connector Logger Tool

MSDN Blogs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 21 false false false ES ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:" "; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;...(read more)

Overvåker du BizTalk plattformen?

MSDN Blogs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Har ingen planer om å kjøre en lang intro til System Center Operation Manager (SCOM), men har man en BizTalk Server som har litt størrelse og har noe som helst krav til oppetid, bør man vudere å få på plass en overvåkningsløsning.

SCOM benytter seg av agenter og management packs på de ulike maskinene som skal overvåkes. BizTalk 2006 R2 Management Pack er en omskriving av den orginale pack'en fra Operation Manager 2005 (MOM). Den er designet til å håndtere alt som var nytt i R2 inkludert RFID og EDI. Når du har importert pack'en i SCOM vil den automatisk scanne nettverket og finne BizTalk miljøet.

Formålet med denne pack'en er å

Monitorere BizTalk eventer
Samle BizTalk spesifikke performance counters inn i en sentral lokasjon
Fyre av alarmer på eventer

Pack'en er videre designet for å

Overvåking av tilgjengelighet
Denne kan detektere utallige elementer med minimal konfigurering. Den vil automatisk detektere hvis en send eller mottaksport går ned, problemer med forbindelsen til BizTalk database, etc.
Health monitoring
Man kan bruke 'Health Monitoring'-regler for å ha en proaktiv tilnærming for å holde BizTalk miljøet oppe. Den klassifiserer eventer i kjente kategorier som: kritisk feil, feil, advarsel og til informasjon.
Utilization/Performance Tracking
Enterprise Sign Sign On Monitoring

Konklusjonen er at bruk av denne management pack'en er enkelt å sette opp og bruke, og den gir det er oversiktbilde av hvordan BizTalk serveren har det bare ved et blikk.

Datasheet/intro til SCOM 2007 [link]
Nedlasting av trial versjon av SCOM 2007 [link]
Nedlasting av Management Pack for BizTalk Server [link]

Sync Framework

MSDN Blogs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Today I'm working for a customer who wants to implement the Sync Framework. As you probably know the Sync Framework is still beta but RTM is expected somewhere this fall.

The client has a typical problem. They have 7000 field engineers roaming the globe. They need to synchronize a lot of date before and after an assignment. Till now the client had implemented merge replication in SQL 2005 for this. They ran into problems because for merge replication you need to be in the dbo group. Since service engineers are not part of that group they had to edit system stored procedures in order to get this solution to work.

They asked us for a solution. I first tested merge replication in SQL 2008 without success. I heard vaguely about the Sync Framework and decided to give it a try.

The Sync Framework is more .Net then SQL Server. Since I'm not a .Net expert I was a bit worried in the beginning. Luckily implementing the Sync Framework is very easy and doesn't require lots of coding. Here's the graphical explanation in VB.Net(I still don't like C# so I always program in VB.Net):

Create a Windows Forms application in Visual Studio 2008
Add a Local Database Cache to your project.

   
Fill in the wizard screen.

   

   

I connected to a SQL 2008 database so I can use the new change tracking features. This saves your data model because if you don't use change tracking you have to use triggers and tombstone-tables and they will seriously clutter your data model.

The client connection is a SQL Server Compact 3.5. SQL Server Compact is very small(2MB) and uses very little memory; even with pretty large datasets like 10.000 rows. Of course we can't expect miracles of it so loading up a 2GB database is useless. I did try it but performance was not optimal :).

   

When you press Ok the wizard will generate scripts and alter your development database. The scripts come in handy when you want to deploy your solution to the production database.

   
Create a dataset of your generated local data cache.

The wizard proceeds with the dataset screen:

   

   
When you are done creating the dataset, bring up the data sources view in visual studio. Now drag a table from your dataset and drop it on the empty form.

   

   

When you drag a datatable on your form Visual Studio adds all necessary components and code. So without programming you end up with a fully functional form.

I docked the datagridview in the form to make it look better.

   
Now its time to add syncing. First add a button on the toolbar for executing syncing. In the code of the form you add the click event of the button. To obtain the sync code you go back to the local data cache designer

   

   

When you press the Show Code Example link you'll get the code you need. Just paste this code in the click event of the button.

   

Here's the event:

   

Private Sub cmdSync_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles cmdSync.Click

' Call SyncAgent.Synchronize() to initiate the synchronization process.

' Synchronization only updates the local database, not your project's data source.

Dim syncAgent As SampleDataCacheSyncAgent = New SampleDataCacheSyncAgent()

Dim syncStats As Microsoft.Synchronization.Data.SyncStatistics = syncAgent.Synchronize()

   

' TODO: Reload your project data source from the local database (for example, call the TableAdapter.Fill method).

Me.SyncDataSet.Parameters.Merge(Me.ParametersTableAdapter.GetData())

End Sub

   

The merge line I added myself. The form is ready now.

   
Now we move on with the sync class itself to choose what kind of syncing we want to have.

   

   

Now you can choose the syncdirection that fits your needs.

   
The last step is to add conflict management during syncing:

Partial Public Class SampleDataCacheServerSyncProvider

   

Private Sub SampleDataCacheServerSyncProvider_ApplyChangeFailed(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Microsoft.Synchronization.Data.ApplyChangeFailedEventArgs) Handles Me.ApplyChangeFailed

Dim clientChange As DataTable = e.Conflict.ClientChange

Dim serverChange As DataTable = e.Conflict.ServerChange

   

e.Action = Microsoft.Synchronization.Data.ApplyAction.RetryWithForceWrite

End Sub

   

End Class

   

I choose a simple RetryWithForceWrite here but you can code here what you want.

   

   

Conclusion

I build a fully functional sync sample in a few minutes. That's not too bad. Of course this is a simple scenario where complete tables are synchronized. If you want to synchronize on queries you have to write a lot of code yourself. But it is possible. I can think of lots scenarios where this framework could be very useful. Especially with all the smartphones and all that.

Deploying this solution was something else. I ran into lots of problems. There is no installer for Sync Services yet and I didn't succeed in deploying it manually. For now you have to install the complete .Net framework 3.5 SDK and the beta service packs for VS 2008 and .Net 3.5. The installer and the Sync Framework itself are expected to go RTM this fall. So we have to wait a little bit for proper installers.