MSDN Blogs

Desarrollo aplicativo formal

marcod — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:36:00 GMT

Emplear la idea de la formalidad para el desarrollo aplicativo de software puede significar algo muy positivo en relación a la exactitud, puntualidad y consecuencia en las acciones de dicha actividad, sin mencionar las apasionantes facetas al estudiar algo por su objeto formal en los tratados de lógica. La seriedad y compostura juegan de lado del valor de negocio en contraposición al desorden y la insensatez; como ejemplo, al ignorar por completo —una y otra vez— los rasgos que caracterizan a la creación de soluciones de negocio basadas en software como lo es el concepto de emergencia (acción y efecto de emerger) por el cual es propicio para un negocio estar consciente del modelo co-evolutivo solución/problema.

Por otro lado, una connotación popular de la palabra formal es simplemente otra manera de decir tradicional, lo ya conocido, lo ya establecido. Es en este insípido significado que se usa ocasionalmente —en la parte de la realidad que alcanzo a advertir y aplicado a proyectos de desarrollo de software aplicativo— como queriendo decir que es de gente adulta y profesional el tener, por ejemplo, un diagrama de Gantt debidamente detallado por el cual se guía todo el esfuerzo definido por un contrato, también tradicional.

Sin embargo, el problema perenne en el desarrollo aplicativo tradicional, es decir "formal", es:

¿Satisfacemos la emergente necesidad de negocio del usuario/cliente o satisfacemos los ya anacrónicos contrato y gráfica de Gantt?

Si es el contrato y el Gantt, ¿a costa de que el esfuerzo derive en algo que no le servirá al usuario/cliente y no resulte en retorno de inversión?

Si es la emergente necesidad de negocio, ¿a costa de arriesgarse a sufrir penalizaciones por incumplimiento de contrato?

¿No hay más opciones? ¿No hay acaso una diversidad de planteamientos del estado del arte en desarrollo de software para conducir la relación cliente y proveedor hacia el valor de negocio real? ¿En qué están tan distraídos quienes venden y pactan proyectos de desarrollo aplicativo de software como para estar dándose el lujo de perder oportunidades para elevar el estado de la práctica en esta área? ¿Será que en realidad no tienen ningún interés genuino en elevar el estado de la práctica?

Observable.Context, Observable.ObserveOn & Observable.SubscribeOn

JeffVa — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:31:00 GMT

I accidentally posted my planned post on this subject on the RxTeam blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/rxteam/archive/2009/11/21/observable-context-observable-subscribeon-and-observable-observeon.aspx

Observable.Context, Observable.SubscribeOn and Observable.ObserveOn

RxTeam — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:16:01 GMT

People have asked about these three API on the Rx forum and to do these APIs justice, I thought I should write up a blog post explaining the reasoning behind these. A world without Synchronization Let’s assume Rx didn’t use a SynchronizationContext to post its notifications on and we have two observable streams: In the above sample, the different color and shapes represent the different thread these values are send out on (remember, Rx is a push model, so you’re being called by the sender of the...(read more)

T4MVC 2.5.01: added support for Html.RenderAction and Html.Action

davidebb — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:10:19 GMT

To get the latest build of T4MVC:

Go to download page on CodePlex

MVC 2 Beta introduces two nice helpers called Html.RenderAction and Html.Action. Phil Haack described them in detail on his blog, so you may want to read through that before reading this post.

Basically, they’re two additional methods that follow the standard MVC pattern of passing the controller name and action name as literal strings, and the action parameters as anonymous objects. e.g. Copying from Phil’s example, if you have an Action like this:

public ActionResult Menu(MenuOptions options) {
    return PartialView(options);
}

You can write this in your View:

<%= Html.Action("Menu", new { options = new MenuOptions { Width=400, Height=500} })%>

Note how the action name is hard coded, and the MenuOptions parameter is passed as an anonymous object. With T4MVC, you can instead write:

<%= Html.Action(MVC.Home.Menu(new MenuOptions { Width=400, Height=500})); %>

Giving you full intellisense and type checking for the controller name, action name and parameters.

Another advantage is that normally, if you use an ActionName attribute, you’ll need to pass that name instead of the action method name. Again from Phil’s blog:

[ActionName("CoolMenu")]
public ActionResult Menu(MenuOptions options) {
    return PartialView(options);
}

And you then have to pass “CoolMenu” instead of “Menu” when you make the call, which is pretty easy to get in trouble with. But with T4MVC, the fact that you use a non-default Action Name is abstracted out, so you make the exact same Html.RenderAction(MVC.Home.Menu(...)) call.

Of course, all of this is nothing new if you’re used to using T4MVC. It’s just the same pattern as we have everywhere else, applied to those couple new methods. Maybe I’m just rehashing the same old benefits of strong typing and avoiding literal strings :)

On a separate note: I fixed a small bug that happened when you used a custom ActionResult without an explicit ctor. See comments in previous post for details on the issue.

DTACM (D.C.'s Test Automation Coding Manifesto)

ddietric — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:06:00 GMT

I find myself getting more and more frustrated whenever I see test code that is best described as quick and dirty. Now, sometimes I do acknowledge that the world is not perfect (has never been and will never be) so I realize that the following is really my personal ideal that might not fully work in the real world. However, I don't see why that should be an excuse for not trying to get as close as possible. Furthermore, I do realize that some of you will consider parts (or all) of this posting to be highly controversial. This is indeed on purpose and meant as an invitation to comment or, better yet, start a conversation.

So here is my personal set of rules for successfully building test infrastructure and tooling (e.g. runtime environments and automation frameworks) and automated tests:

Leadership

Every test team has a test architect (this can be an additional role for one of the testers on a team, especially if the number of team members is less than or equal to one). The responsibilities of the test architect include:

The overall architecture of the test infrastructure and automation
The quality of the code base
Defining and enforcing the development process used by the test team

Consequently, the test architect has the final say in all matters.

Specifications

All development starts by specifying the behavior of the software to be created in writing with the kind and scope of the specification depending on the chosen development process. An exception can be made only for projects completely owned by one individual if no other project depends on it. In that case it is acceptable to create the specification in parallel.

Code Quality

All code meets the following criteria:

It compiles without any warnings with the warning level on the highest setting
It passes static code analysis (e.g. FxCop) without any warnings
Suppressing individual occurrences of compiler or static code analysis warnings is acceptable if there is a technical reason for it and the reason is properly documented (preferably in code)
It is checked into a source control system
It is reviewed before check in
Test infrastructure and tooling code must be covered by an automated test suite with code paths that cannot (easily) be covered through automated tests covered through manual test cases or code inspection
It is commented on the type and member level and additional comments within member implementations should be added for all non-trivial implementations

Additional requirements can be imposed at the architect's discretion.

Reliability

The reliability of test infrastructure and tooling is proven by the associated test suite. Regression tests are added for all defects found.

Automated tests are reliable when there are no false positives and no false negatives. This implies that rerunning unreliable tests until they pass is unacceptable. Test failures are always tracked down to a product or test defect and fixed accordingly.

User Experience

Usability is a primary goal for all infrastructure and tooling development. User interfaces are as self-explanatory as possible; the output of all software clearly indicates success or failure. The output ends with a summary for software that outputs large amounts of information like test harnesses or deployment utilities. The summary contains enough information for enabling the user to fix all issues in case of failures. Note that this can be as simple as a URL to a website with step-by-step instructions. Any software that requires more than copying files from one location to another in order to install it or requires more than deleting files in one location in order to uninstall it ships as a proper setup package with uninstall capability.

Documentation

The documentation of any project contains the following:

User manual
Sustained engineering documentation

In addition, the documentation for any software that is extensible or a library includes an API reference and sample projects.

Legacy Code

Any legacy code that was written with lower or no quality standards is replaced or refactored.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Bing Maps Silverlight Control Code Samples Available from PDC09

veptblog — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:47:17 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended my session CL36: Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control at PDC09! Hope you had a good time.

Here is a link to the code samples from the session:

Download BingMapsSilverlightSamplesPDC09.zip

To use the code samples locally:

Download and install the Bing Maps Silverlight Control
Download and Unzip the BingMapsSilverlightSamplesPDC09.zip file
Update the references to point to the MapControl DLLs (Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.dll and Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Common.dll) for each of the csproj files
Go to the Bing Maps Account Center and sign up for a Bing Maps Key
Search for “Insert Credentials Here” in the project and replace it with your Bing Maps Key. (They are all in the App.xaml files)

Have fun!

Keith Kinnan

Software Development Lead, Bing Maps Platform

Bing Maps Silverlight Control Code Samples Available from PDC09

keithkin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:45:10 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended my session CL36: Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control at PDC09! Hope you had a good time.

Here is a link to the code samples from the session:

Download BingMapsSilverlightSamplesPDC09.zip

To use the code samples locally:

Download and install the Bing Maps Silverlight Control
Download and Unzip the BingMapsSilverlightSamplesPDC09.zip file
Update the references to point to the MapControl DLLs (Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.dll and Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Common.dll) for each of the csproj files
Go to the Bing Maps Account Center and sign up for a Bing Maps Key
Search for “Insert Credentials Here” in the project and replace it with your Bing Maps Key. (They are all in the App.xaml files)

Have fun!

Order Test Cases

VSTS Quality Tools — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:04:57 GMT

Sometimes, you want to run your tests in a specific order. For example, you are testing an online shopping site. You want to test the work flow of Login, Browse items, Search items, Add items to cart and Check out. You have the test cases for each step in the wok flow. You want to execute the test cases in the above work flow order. By default, MTLM orders the test cases in the order you add them to the suite. However, you may not have added the test cases in the order you want, like what I have in the first picture. In this case, you can click the Order button on the toolbar.

In the following dialog, change the order number. Click Update order button to preview the change. You can have duplicate numbers, MTLM will order the duplicates in the order they show in the list. When you feel good about the new order, you can click Apply Changes to save it.

After that, open Run Tests, select all the tests and click Run. Your tests will be run in the right order!

Thanks,

Christine Zhao

Claims-based security with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and WCF

KentBrown — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:57:20 GMT

There is a great article in MSDN Magazine this month by Michele Bustamante on using WIF to implement claims-based security in WCF Services: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx.

It’s gets to the right level of detail to make it crystal clear. Spend all weekend reading the docs, or spend an hour with Michele’s article? Hmmm… easy choice!

Rockea con Windows 7

Jaime Sanchez — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:50:14 GMT

tweetmeme_url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/jaimesb/archive/2009/11/20/rockea-con-windows-7.aspx'; tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';...(read more)

Silverlight 4 Beta 已经发布

jijia — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:37:26 GMT

回顾 Silverlight 的版本发布，在短短26个月里，Silverlight 发布了其第四个版本。透过 Silverlight 的发布速度以及 Silverlight 在微软三屏一云战略中的重要使命，可以看到，Silverlight 是微软在 RIA 及 Media 平台中的重要投入。

Silverlight 4 Beta 是面向开发者的一次重要发布，开发者和设计师可以利用 Silverlight 4 Beta 中的 100 余项新特性开发测试环境的 Silverlight 应用。

Silverlight 4 Beta 的重要特性包括

Media 的增强支持

摄像头、麦克风的支持
对组播支持
离线 DRM 支持

LOB - 企业级应用的支持

打印支持
支持 UDP 的监听
支持 Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) 框架，即使在应用运行的过程中也增量部署.XAP文件

OOB - 离线浏览模式的增强支持

在 Silverlight 离线用中嵌入和解释 HTML，嵌入 Flash 应用
经过用户许可的系统级权限提升
支持 COM 调用，与本地应用 Interop

其它重要特性

对硬件(读卡器、游戏手柄)的访问和使用
支持拷贝和粘贴
支持文件拖动操作
完全自定义鼠标右键菜单
启动速度提升30%，应用执行速度提升 200%
离线浏览模式中支持通知机制

Silverlight 4 Beta 环境的部署

上手推荐：

PDC 课程：

ScottGu in Keynote Day 2

Others: http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos

博客链接：

PDC2009: What a ride!

camerons — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:36:05 GMT

Just back from PDC! It was a very busy but great experience. It is always exciting to show folks all the great stuff that is about to RTM with Visual Studio 2010, and even better to see how you are planning on using those new capabilities.

I participated in the Day One keynote with Bob Muglia, which was really a blast! We announced a number of great new technologies during this keynote, and I had the pleasure of showing of few of those off. If you go to 1:43:00 in this video, you’ll see my demo from start ( ~10 minutes of demo ). ( You can also see a higher res version of the video from here, starting at ~1:31 ).

I talked about some great stuff you can do with Windows Identity Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, ASP.NET MVC2, the new Windows Server App Fabric, .NET 4, and of course Visual Studio 2010.

All that occurred by 10:30 AM Tuesday morning. That evening, at 4:30, I presented a breakout session called “Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs”. You can see that entire session from here, or a higher res version from here. Had a great time taking lots of questions and showing the product.

On Thursday morning, Mario Rodriguez ( star PM on the TFS team ) and I gave a talk called “A Lap Around Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2010”. Last I checked the video was not yet ready, but visit that link later as it should be up soon.

Oh, and one last thing. Someone finally talked me into getting a Twitter account. I still can’t decide if this is just a complete waste of time, but I promised I’d give it a go for a month or so. If you want, follow me on Twitter.

Data Collection Requirements for Performance Monitor

MiMorr_MSFT — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:29:00 GMT

All Servers

Please ensure that the instructions in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281884 are followed on each server. This will allow for the Process ID value to be included as part of the process monitor data that is being captured.

Download the counters.zip file. Inside this zip you will find 3 text files that contain the counters we are going to feed to the logman command below. Save the appropriate text file to a temporary folder on each server. WFE_Moss2007.txt should be saved to the WFE servers. SQL_Moss2007.txt should be saved to the SQL server(s). Index_Moss2007.txt should be saved to the Index server.

From a command line change to the temporary folder and issue the following commands. This will need to be repeated on every server in the farm. Please change C:\PerfLogs to a directory with the appropriate disk space on the server. Please use an account that has administrative access to the server in order to ensure that we have access to the appropriate counters. Change the domain\userid in the appropriate section of the command below. When you run the command you will be prompted for the password to the account you specify. Change the WFE_Moss2007.txt to the appropriate file for the server you are currently working on.

The command should resemble the following:

Baseline counter:

logman create counter Perf_Baseline -s %COMPUTERNAME% -o C:\PerfLogs\Perf_Baseline_%COMPUTERNAME%.blg -f bin -v mmddhhmm -cf WFE_MOSS2007.txt -si 00:00:30 -cnf 12:00:00 -u "domain\userid" *

After the above command is successful please run the following command:

logman start Perf_Baseline -s %COMPUTERNAME%

Incident counter:

logman create counter Perf_Incident -s %COMPUTERNAME% -o C:\PerfLogs\Perf_Incident_%COMPUTERNAME%.blg -f bin -v mmddhhmm -cf WFE_MOSS2007.txt -si 00:00:05 -max 500 -u "domain\userid" *

We have defined two (2) sets of counters to be used: Perf_Baseline & Perf_Incident. The baseline counter should be running 24x7 on each server. This will allow us to capture baseline performance data so that we have something against which to evaluate any changes.

When an incident occurs, we will need to capture more fine-grained data. For that purpose, we have defined an Incident-based counter to be used. This is identical to the baseline counter except that it samples more frequently. Due to the increased sample rate, it will collect more data faster than the baseline counter. We will need to be diligent with respect to maintaining sufficient disk space to accommodate incident-based captures. Microsoft will only use this counter set during an incident/outage and only for the minimal time necessary. Once the incident-based data has been collected, the customer may turn off the incident counters. However, the baseline counters should continue to be run 24x7 until further notice.

To start the incident based counter, issue the following command from a command line prompt:

logman start Perf_Incident -s %COMPUTERNAME%.

If you are starting the counter local to the machine in question, %COMPUTERNAME% will expand to the appropriate value; otherwise, you will need to specify the NetBIOS name of the computer.

We need to ensure that the data is being collected properly for both counters. We already started the Perf_Baseline counters in step 4 above. Please run the following command on each server to start the Perf_Incident counter:

logman start Perf_Incident -s %COMPUTERNAME%

Wait 10 minutes and then stop both counters on all servers by issuing the following commands:

logman stop Perf_Incident -s %COMPUTERNAME%

logman stop Perf_Baseline -s %COMPUTERNAME%

Zip up the sample that was collected since the counters were started into a file called Sample_ServerName.zip and upload them to the Support Engineer. Start the Perf_Baseline and let it run until given further instructions.

logman start Perf_Baseline -s %COMPUTERNAME%

Please upload the data on the schedule given to you by the Support Engineer.

Gestalt 1.0 and Gestalt Widget Pack Launched!

uberdemo — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:20:00 GMT

MIX Online has released a major update to the Gestalt project. Gestalt has now been incorporated directly into the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR).

Joshua Allen writes: Included ... are our sample video and audio widgets, which come with the Gestalt Widgets pack. By adding a <script> tag to the top of your HTML file, you can automatically enable use of HTML5-compatible video and audio tag syntax:

<html>  
  <head>    
    <script type="text/javascript" 
      src="http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/dlr-20091120.js"></script>    
    <script type="text/javascript" 
      src="http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/dlr/dlrmedia.js"></script>  
  </head>  
  <body>    
    <audio autoplay="false">
        <source src="foo.mp3" type="audio/mp3"></source>
    </audio>  
  </body>
</html>

IIS Data Collection Requirements for Windows 2008

MiMorr_MSFT — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:11:00 GMT

1. Start the Internet Information Services (IIS) manager on each machine. The easiest way to accomplish this is via the applet in the Administrative Tools section of the Start menu.

2. Click on the Machine node in the tree (left hand side). This will bring up the area view in the right hand side. Your display should similar to the following:

3. You will want to double click on the Logging icon to in the IIS section (see diagram above). This will open up the logging options screen:

4. Click on the Select Fields button for the format. Make sure that the Format is set to the default value of W3C. Select all fields to be logged and then click on the OK button at the bottom of the dialog box.

Great PDC session on SharePoint 2010 sandbox solutions

Public Sector DPE Team — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:03:34 GMT

NOTE: This was cross posted from here.

http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/PR10

I missed this session at PDC. There were so many good sessions, it was hard to choose. The good news is that the sessions are now showing up at http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos.

I didn’t get to elaborate on sandbox solutions in any great detail during my recent developer dinner presentation on SharePoint 2010 due to time constraints. However, this is a very important feature of SharePoint that you will want to dig into as you go explore SharePoint 2010. Chances are the environment you will be deploying solutions to will only allow sandboxed solutions.

-Marc

Great PDC session on SharePoint 2010 sandbox solutions

marcsc — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:02:25 GMT

http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/PR10

I missed this session at PDC. There were so many good sessions, it was hard to choose. The good news is that the sessions are now showing up at http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos.

Crabby's shorty shortcut tips for working smarter (Part I)

Crabby Office Lady — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I love finding ways to get my work done quicker so that I can push myself away from my desk, take a deep stretch, and ponder the many avenues I have taken on my way to Crabbydom. What about you? What would YOU be doing if you weren't chained to your desk? How about you learn some new tricks first and figure that out later. In this week’s column , I offer three tips for three programs: Word, Outlook and Excel; in a couple of weeks I’ll cover three more. Here are some examples of my personal tips:...(read more)

Who’s Ready for the Weekend?

GhostCatfish5 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:59:10 GMT

There are tons of things to do this weekend on Xbox LIVE. Remember, tonight November 20, the first live show of 1 vs 100 launches at 10PM ET. And keep playing the game even when it’s not live to increase your score as scores accumulate this season. Want a chance to win a trip to a U.S. city of your choice? Check out the Harvest Hits sweeps which has tons of great prizes running now through November 30. And make sure to join our Community Playdate on Sunday November 22, as we play Modern Warfare 2 with the team from AnalogHype.

IIS Data Collection Requirements for Windows 2003

MiMorr_MSFT — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:56:00 GMT

1. Start the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager on each machine. The easiest way to accomplish this is via the applet in the Administrative Tools section of the Start menu.

2. Open the tree up (on the left hand side) until Web Sites is available. Select and right-click to bring up the Properties pane. This should apply the settings for all of the web sites defined underneath.

3. Verify that Logging is enabled as well as the w3c Extended Log File Format is specified.

4. Click on the Properties... button to get to the detail.

5. Click on the Advanced tab and make sure that ALL properties are selected

6. Once all have been selected, “Apply” and exit out of the IIS Configuration.

The Search Developer Story in SharePoint 2010 - Query Interfaces

enterprisesearch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:39:00 GMT

SharePoint 2010 includes a number of features that make the platform easier to use for developers. An improved Visual Studio integration, the addition of LINQ to the SharePoint platform, sandboxing for deployment, and the new developer dashboard are just a few examples of how developing and deploying SharePoint solutions have become much easier.

As a member of the enterprise search development team that has worked to bring FAST Search into SharePoint 2010, I can tell you that a lot has also been done to benefit developers of search-based solutions. SharePoint 2010 Search and the new FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 have been designed to share a common platform so that search developers can integrate with both SharePoint Search and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 using the same query side interfaces. This means developers don’t have to learn new APIs or programming models, but can leverage the same object models, services and a common query language for both products.

SharePoint developers and architects implementing search-driven applications should understand the available integration options. Depending on requirements, tools, and preferences, one can choose from among several integration points, including a brand new object model in SharePoint 2010. Here’s a list of the different integration points with a brief description of each:

The Federation Object Model (OM)

This is a new search object model in SharePoint 2010. It provides a unified interface for querying against different locations (search providers), giving developers of search-driven Web Parts a way to implement end-user experiences that are independent of the underlying search engine. The object model also allows for combining and merging results from different search providers. Out-of-box Web Parts in SharePoint 2010 are based on this OM, and SharePoint 2010 ships with 3 different types of locations; SharePoint Search, FAST Search and OpenSearch. The Federation OM is also extensible, should you want or need to implement a custom search location outside of the supported types.

The Query Web Service

This is the integration point for applications outside of your SharePoint environment, such as standalone, non-web based applications, or Silverlight applications running in a browser. The Query Web Service is a SOAP based ASMX web service, and supports a number of operations, including:

Querying and getting search results

Getting query suggestions

Getting meta data, e.g. a list managed properties

The same schema is shared for SharePoint Search and FAST Search, and both products support the same operations. For querying, clients can easily switch the search provider by setting a ResultsProvider element in the request XML. A number of extensions are available for FAST Search, e.g. refinement results, advanced sorting using a formula, issuing queries using the FAST Query Language.

The Query RSS Feed

Certain scenarios, like simple mashups, may need only a simple search result list. The RSS feed is an alternative, lightweight integration point for supplying applications outside of SharePoint with a simple RSS result list. The Search Center - the default search front-end in SharePoint 2010 - includes a link to a query-based RSS feed. Switching the engine to the RSS format is done by simply setting a URL provider. Because of its intended simplicity, there are some limitations to what can be returned and customized in the query RSS feed. The object models or the web service integration scenarios are recommended for more advanced applications.

The Query Object Model

This is the lowest level object model, used by the Federation object model, the Query Web Service and the Query RSS feed. Both SharePoint Search and FAST Search support the KeywordQuery object in this object model. While the Federation OM returns XML (to Web Parts), the Query OM returns data types.

The Search Web Parts

Search Web Parts in SharePoint 2010 are common in SharePoint Search and FAST Search, and are now based on the common Federation OM. The Web Parts on a page communicate through a shared Query Manager, a central component of the Federation OM. This makes adding new Web Parts that interact with existing Web Parts simpler than before. For example, a new Tag Cloud Web Part for visualizing the query results can utilize the shared Query Manager for getting results. Developers will also be able to extend out-of-box Web Parts as they now are public in SharePoint 2010 (no longer sealed).

The Common Query Language

Both SharePoint Search and FAST Search support the Keyword Query Language syntax. This is the default query language for both products, and the end-user language supported from the Web Parts in the search centers (including the advanced search page).

FAST Search Extensions

FAST Search has a number of extensions beyond the standard SharePoint Search that are available on both the Federation and Query object models, and as well as on the query web service. Some examples are:

The FAST Query Language, which supports advanced query operators like XRANK for dynamic (query time) term weighting and ranking.
Deep refiners over the whole results set, and the possibility of adding refiners over any managed property
Advanced sorting using managed properties or a query-time sort formula.
Advanced duplicate trimming, with the ability to specify a custom property on which to base duplicate comparisons.
“Similar documents” matching.
FAST Search Admin Object Model for promoting documents or assigning visual best bets to query keywords/phrases.

Building powerful search applications is easier than ever in SharePoint 2010. FAST Search is now integrated into the SharePoint platform and developers of search-driven solutions and applications can leverage a common platform and common APIs for both SharePoint Search and FAST Search. This means applications can be built to support both search engines and then extended if and when desired to take advantage of the more advanced features available with FAST Search, such as dynamic ranking, flexible sort formulae, or deep refiners for insight into your full result set.

Arnt Schøning, Senior Development Engineer | Microsoft Enterprise Search Group

(o on Twitter as @aschoning)

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Public Beta

lionelro — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:31:39 GMT

The BCS team is excited to announce the Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 public betas are available for download from www.microsoft.com/2010. Now for the first time anyone can download and test drive the new capabilities Business Connectivity Services has to offer. So go ahead and download it now, try it out and tell us what you think about it.

Along with the software you can also download the SharePoint 2010 (Beta) SDK. Randall and the SDK team did a great job announcing its availability on their blog post: SharePoint Content and Resources. Being in a beta stage, the SDK documentation is continuously updated; so for the most up to date documentation check out the BCS documentation on MSDN.

- Lionel A. Robinson, Program Manager

WCF RIA Services Presentation Model Explained

deepm — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:23:00 GMT

Earlier this week we released the Beta version of WCF RIA Services for Visual Studio 2008 and the preview version for VS2010 Beta 2. There were a lot of great features added to it from our July CTP. Here is a quick list of all the features:- WCF Integration Compositional hierarchy Better error handling Better support for DomainDataSource Presentation Model Inheritance – Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 only You can get details for most of them from http://silverlight.net/riaservices . One of the features...(read more)

A Custom Storyboard Component in Xaml

MikeHillberg — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:19:00 GMT

In WPF & Silverlight, a Storyboard is a collection of animations running in parallel. Not everyone likes the name “Storyboard” though. The idea behind the name was that that list of timelines running in parallel are like a list of plot lines in the plan for a movie.

In any case, just like you can package up a tree of elements into a re-usable UserControl component, it’s nice to be able to package up a tree of timelines into a re-usable Storyboard component. Here’s an approach to do just that, using Xaml, and made simpler by using a new Xaml feature in WPF4.

For example, here’s a Storyboard that puts three animations on a Rectangle:

<Grid>

    <Grid.Resources>
        <BackEase Amplitude="0.5" x:Key="backEase" />
    </Grid.Resources>

    <Grid.Triggers>
        <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Grid.Loaded">
            <BeginStoryboard>
                <Storyboard TargetName="Rectangle1">
                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Width"
                                     From="0"
                                     EasingFunction="{StaticResource backEase}"
                                     Duration="0:0:1" />

                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Height"
                                     From="0"
                                     EasingFunction="{StaticResource backEase}"
                                     Duration="0:0:1" />

                    <ColorAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Fill.Color"
                                    From="LightGray"
                                    Duration="0:0:1" />
                </Storyboard>

            </BeginStoryboard>
        </EventTrigger>
    </Grid.Triggers>

    <Rectangle Name="Rectangle1" Width="100" Height="100" Fill="Red" />

</Grid>

The goal is to package up this Storyboard into a re-usable component that I can use on any Rectangle that has a SolidColorBrush Fill. To do that, I’ll just move that <Storyboard> markup into a separate Xaml file and parameterize it.

Unfortunately there’s no single menu item for this e.g. in Visual Studio, but it’s not hard to do. What I do is right click on the project, “Add”, “User Control”, name it something like “MyRectangleStoryboard.xaml”, and get something like this:

<UserControl x:Class="CustomStoryboard.MyRectangleStoryboard"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" >
    <Grid>
            
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

… and this:

public partial class MyRectangleStoryboard : UserControl
{
    public MyRectangleStoryboard()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
}

Now, just change “UserControl” to “Storyboard (and remove the <Grid> from the Xaml), and you’re all set:

<Storyboard x:Class="CustomStoryboard2.MyRectangleStoryboard"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" >
    
</Storyboard>

public partial class MyRectangleStoryboard : Storyboard
{
    public MyRectangleStoryboard()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
}

The goal is to use this component instead of the storyboard/animation markup:

<Grid>
    <Grid.Resources>
        <BackEase Amplitude="0.5" x:Key="backEase" />
    </Grid.Resources>

    <Grid.Triggers>
        <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Grid.Loaded">
            <BeginStoryboard>
                <l:MyRectangleStoryboard TargetName="Rectangle1" Duration="0:0:1" EasingFunction="{StaticResource backEase}"/>
            </BeginStoryboard>
        </EventTrigger>
    </Grid.Triggers>

    <Rectangle Name="Rectangle1" Width="100" Height="100" Fill="Red" />

</Grid>

As for the implementation of the MyRectangleStoryboard here’s the markup, which is cut/paste from the original with a couple of modifications for parameterization (which I’ll explain):

<Storyboard x:Class="CustomStoryboard.MyRectangleStoryboard"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:l="clr-namespace:CustomStoryboard" >

    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Width"
                     From="0"
                     Duration="{Binding Duration, Source={l:XRoot}}"
                     EasingFunction="{Binding EasingFunction, Source={l:XRoot}}" />

    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Height"
                     From="0"
                     Duration="{Binding Duration, Source={l:XRoot}}"
                     EasingFunction="{Binding EasingFunction, Source={l:XRoot}}" />

    <ColorAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Fill.Color"
                    From="LightGray"
                    Duration="{Binding Duration, Source={l:XRoot}}" />

    
</Storyboard>

Notice that this custom storyboard is parameterized for the setting of the Duration and the EasingFunction properties on the animations. (Recall that these two properties were set when the MyRectangleStoryboard was used above).

Ordinarily, if you set the Duration on the storyboard it doesn’t inherit down to its children timelines, instead it clips its children timelines. But I want the MyRectangleStoryboard.Duration to actually be the Double/ColorAnimation.Duration, so I bound the Animation.Duration properties to the root’s Duration property.

The source of this binding is a custom “XRoot” markup extension that I wrote. You could equivalently establish this binding in code, and in fact you pretty much have to today. But in WPF4 (which is now in beta), you can write a custom MarkupExtension to access the root of a Xaml document, using the new IRootObjectProvider service. Here’s the implementation:

public class XRoot : MarkupExtension
{
    public override object ProvideValue(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
    {
        var rootProvider = serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IRootObjectProvider)) as IRootObjectProvider;
        if (rootProvider == null)
            return null;

        return rootProvider.RootObject;
    }
}

The other parameterization on this MyRectangleStoryboard component is the EasingFunction. This is a custom property on MyRectangleStoryboard so that I can set it any time I use it. The implementation is just a DependencyProperty:

public partial class MyRectangleStoryboard : Storyboard
{
    public MyRectangleStoryboard()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    public EasingFunctionBase EasingFunction
    {
        get { return (EasingFunctionBase)GetValue(EasingFunctionProperty); }
        set { SetValue(EasingFunctionProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty EasingFunctionProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("EasingFunction", typeof(EasingFunctionBase), typeof(MyRectangleStoryboard));

}

So in the end there’s three takeaways from this:

You can create powerful custom animation sets by subclassing Storyboard.
Xaml is a useful component definition language, it’s not just for controls.
In WPF4, Xaml markup extensions can get explicit access to the lexical root of the Xaml document.

WHY MY WORKFLOW DOES NOT WAKE UP FROM DELAYACTIVITY?

Manpreet Alag — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:18:38 GMT

Lately working with one of the customer’s I came across an interesting lookout.

Basically customer has created a simple workflow for SharePoint in Visual Studio 2008 and had used a delay activity which seems to be causing the problem.

The problem was that workflow runs perfectly fine but after hitting the delay activity, never wakes up.

My first hunch went to the issue with SharePoint Workflows with delay activities (also noted on SharePoint Product Group blog). But the workflow seems to be too simple to get into any of the known issues.

Now I started looking into the deployment of the workflow and noticed that they have deployed the workflow’s assemblies into the BIN folder of the IIS-App under c:\inetpub.

Well, it does not seems to be the problem as the workflow was starting up fine and going through a few activities and facing issue only when hitting the delay activity.

The workflow architecture training earlier came to my rescue.

Basically workflow in 2 different process.

- W3WP.exe
- OWSTIMER.exe

W3WP.exe is the ASP.net worker process. When you first start the workflow (automatically or manually), the workflow assembly is loaded and workflow started by W3WP.exe process.

OWSTIMER.exe comes into picture when the workflow is persisted into the database and need to be woken up and restored into the memory.

In this particular scenario of the customer, the workflow assemblies were there in BIN of the IIS-Application under C:\InetPub folder. Now W3WP.exe process recognize which locations to scan for and from where the assemblies need to be picked up. But once the workflow hits the Delay Activity and it is saved to the database, to wake it up and restore into the in-memory state and continue execution, OWSTIMER.exe does not know the location of the assemblies, therefore the workflow fails to wake up.

Finally the resolution:
Once we determined the problem, suggested the customer to sign the workflow assemblies and deploy them to GAC and remove from the BIN folder of the IIS-Application. Once the changes were done and assemblies deployed to GAC, the workflow worked perfectly fine and completed “as expected”.

Hope this small in-sight helps someone out there with their workflows