knom's developer corner

TechEd Europe 2010–Workflow Foundation 4.0 Session

2010-11-09T18:51:11Z

Thanks for everyone who showed up at my session today!

Please make sure to rate it in the TechEd session voting tool.

You can download the Slides & Demos here.

Big>Days Content is online

2010-03-31T08:56:18Z

The Big>Days are over!

Two interesting weeks of presentations in Innsbruck, Graz, Wien and Linz.

We had a Web-Development Track, where we covered a complete website (“Helfen helfen”).

You can download the complete samples from http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/!

Besides that, we also recorded all sessions in the developer track, you can download them here.

You will find the ALL slides for download on the official Big>Days site.

Until then, you can download the slides from my sessions here:
*) Track 4 - Session 1: Smart Business WebClients mit Silverlight 4
*) Track 3 - Session 2 & 3: Visual Studio 2010 ALM
*) Track 4 – Session 4: ASP.NET AJAX und jQuery

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – Setup Screenshots

2009-10-20T13:59:06Z

Today I’ve installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate on a VHD-booted machine.

The new version of our development tool is based on Windows Presentation Foundation, which means that a lot of new flexibility (e.g. diagrams within the code editor) are possible. VS 2010 comes together with .NET 4 Beta 2.

There’s also a new logo and design for the tool.

MSDN Subscribers can get the public beta 2 on www.msdn.com (which is also redesigned), the rest of you will have to wait until Wednesday.

See below the screenshots of the installation:

The good old “Start Installation” dialog, in new design.

The new Visual Studio Wave, as the installer is loading.

Press “Next” to start installation.

EULA Agreement, and prerequisite installation.

Selection of components to be installed:

Note – This screen got lots slimmer. With the new Ultimate edition you can choose between different languages to be installed, as well as VSTO for Office and Sharepoint Tools.

Installation Screen – Component Overview

WE’RE DONE! This is the new start screen of Visual Studio 2010.

Now with environment settings for “Visual F#” and “Web Development (Code Optimized) as well as “Project Management Settings”.

Here we are.. The new welcome screen! Isn’t it beautiful :-)

IIS7: WCF Services - .SVC do not work

2009-10-14T08:25:50Z

Recently I came across a problem with Windows Communication Foundation Services and IIS 7.

What I did is, deploy a .SVC file to my IIS 7.

The service worked during development on the local ASP.NET Dev Webserver, but after deploying it to the server, there was an error:

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

The configuration section 'system.serviceModel' cannot be read because it is missing a section declaration.

Another error might be:

Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException: The remote server returned an unexpected response: (405) Method not allowed

After some research I found the problem: WCF Services are not registered on the IIS!

To fix it, follow these steps:

Make sure ASP.NET pages work on IIS (if not see below).
Execute the following command with elevated privileges (as administrator):
"%WINDIR%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe" -i

If ASP.NET pages neither work, register ASP.NET first:

Open a command prompt as administrator.
Execute the follow command:
"%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe" –i

For more details see the MSDN documentation:

CodeFest-Meals – Silverlight Webcast Series and Sample App

2009-09-09T16:26:34Z

During the last weeks I’ve been working on a Silverlight sample application called “CodeFest-Meals”. The sample application was built for a webcast series we’re doing on www.codefest.at. One of the goals of the application was to have a nice-design. So Wolfgang Hofellner, who is also the artist of Schabus & Knor comics, designed a nice user interface for me.

Normally I’m more of a XAML guy, but for this series I really forced myself to use NO XAML at all. Everything was done within the new Expression Blend 3. And i really need to admit, it was lots of fun! No XAML any longer for me, at least for CodeFest Meals ;-)

If you’re interested in seeing me doing the entire application completely in Expression Blend 3, have a look at our On-Demand or Live- webcast series.

Live Webcasts - Overview over different topics in Silverlight:

On-demand Webcasts – More in depth episodes on Silverlight:

Part 1 – Blend & Sketchflow Introduction

And last but not least

CodeFest-Meals demo online

Btw: I’m doing an event on Silverlight advanced topics in Vienna on September 25th, which will also be recorded. See here for details.

LINQ-To-Everywhere – List of LINQ Providers

2009-04-27T12:23:05Z

This weekend I’ve built a small application, which queries the “Simpsons” seasons guide data and updates the filenames/descriptions. To do this I needed to query a CSV file. While searching for a LINQ to CSV file implementation I’ve found an interesting list of LINQ Providers provider by MVP Charlie Calvert.

LINQ to CSV

LINQ to Amazon

LINQ to Active Directory

LINQ to Bindable Sources (SyncLINQ)

LINQ to C# project

LINQ to Continuous Data (CLinq)

LINQ to CRM

LINQ To Geo - Language Integrated Query for Geospatial Data

LINQ to Excel

LINQ to Expressions (MetaLinq)

LINQ Extender (Toolkit for building LINQ Providers)

LINQ to Flickr

LINQ to Google

LINQ to Indexes (LINQ and i40)

LINQ to IQueryable (Matt Warren on Providers)

LINQ to Metaweb(freebase)

LINQ to MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSql (DbLinq)

LINQ to NCover

LINQ to Opf3

LINQ to Parallel (PLINQ)

Windows 7 – VHD Boot – Setup Guideline

2009-04-07T09:40:32Z

Windows 7 has a really useful feature called “VHD Boot”. With that you can boot your entire Windows out of a Virtual Hard Disk file (as those used with Virtual PC or Virtual Server).

This VHD file is mounted as a virtual disk, you can use it as a normal hard disk drive, but all the data is stored in ONE file. The machine is booted physically (unlike with Virtual PC), so you can only run one at a time, but have the full machine’s power.

The advantages are magnificent:

Simply copy one file (the .VHD file) and you’re entire system is included.
Create incremental VHD files: One VHD file can be based on another one. So if you have different systems, create a base Win7 VHD and make all others incremental. This will save a lot of disk space!

There’re also some small disadvantages :-)

The .VHD booted OS needs to be Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.
There’s a performance decrease of about 3%.
Hibernate and some BitLocker scenarios don’t work
(BitLocker CAN be used within the guest VHD though, but not on the disk where the VHD resides).
Windows Experience index won’t work.

For the last three months, all my machines have been running as VHD booted ones.

Btw. you can exchange physically booted VHD file with Virtual PC VHD files. All you need to do is running sysprep /generalize /oobe. Also the OS needs to be 32-Bit because of Virtual PC.

So how do you install a VHD-Boot machine?

Boot the system with a setup DVD or USB stick.
At the setup screen, don’t choose “Install Now”, but press “Shift-F10” to get into command line mode [thanks to the many feedbacks for this shortcut!].
Enter diskpart to start the partitioning utitlity.
Create a new VHD file by entering

create vdisk file=”D:\pathToVhd.vhd” type=expandable maximum=maxsizeInMegabyte

For differencing VHDs you need to add an additional parameter parent=”D:\pathtoparent.vhd”.
Now select the new VHD and attach it as a physical disk.

select vdisk file=”D:\pathToVhd.vhd”
attach vdisk
After that switch back to the setup window (e.g. using ALT+TAB) and start the setup.
Proceed the normal setup, but make sure you install to the correct disk (normally the last one), ignore the “Windows cannot install to this disk” warning!!

At next startup, you’ll see Windows 7 in the boot menu!

Optional: If you want to add a VHD manually to the boot menu, you just need to copy an existing entry and set some parameters:

bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "New Windows 7 Installation"
bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd
bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd
bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on

Btw: My colleague Stefan has posted a detailed article on incremental disks.

Slides and Demos from BigDays 2009 are online!

2009-03-23T00:22:00Z

These days I'm travelling around austria with our biggest developer & IT Pro event Big>Days 2009!

This year's theme was "packen wir's an" - translated "let's get to work"!

Accompanying the theme we built a multi-tier application with .NET 3.5 and Silverlight called "Rent-A-Worker"!

You can download the sources at http://www.codeplex.com/BigDays09/!

If you're interested in the slides of my four sessoins, feel free to get them here

Enable Instant Answers – in a country outside of the US

2009-03-04T12:05:00Z

IE 8 Searchbar – Instant Answers is really cool (see below).

There’s only one problem: It doesn’t work in Austria (as in many other countries). I suppose it only works in the US :-)

To make it work, you need to change the regional settings to “English-US”.

There are two ways to do it

Change your regional settings :-) (that’s really bad…)
Change the settings of the search URL

The latter is the more interesting I suppose!

I had a look at the registry and found out that there is a setting for the search provider suggestion URL.

[Updated for BING] It’s under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\
SearchScopes\{0116A124-45AC-4E95-81CF-08D9FD996515}

There go to SuggestionsURLFallback and you will see that the URL ends with &FORM=IE8SSC&market={Language}. All you need to do is change {Language} to en-us.

Voila! Instant Answers will work for you, whatever your machine settings are.

You can download the registry .REG file here. (Just double click on it, to import the setting). [Update for BING]

Custom Search Providers for Internet Explorer

2009-02-12T16:12:00Z

I’m sure all of you know the search box in Internet Explorer!

You can search ANY searchable site there via pluggable search providers.

Per default some of them are installed, but you can add your own!

Here’s how to do it:

Go to the page you want to search through.
Search for “TEST”.
Copy the URL of the search result page (where TEST should be in somewhere)
Now go to the Internet Explorer Search Page and paste the URL in the rst textbox.
Choose a name and select install.
Now you have a new search provider in the search box, which will search the wanted page (and substitute TEST with your search text).

Note.. the search providers are standardized and will work in any browser, which supports the open search specification.

Note 2: Some sites are clever enough to include a search provider already!

Read here how you can solve equations, get the current weather or other thing directly in the search box.