MSDN Blogs

The Euro Summit for Those Not in Europe -- A Twitter List for Getting Trends Data on Startups on the Continent

Brian Johnson MS — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:29:09 GMT

The European BizSpark Summit starts June 7. We've got a lot going on right now in the run up to the event. There's this People's Choice Awards challenge. We're going to give the People's Choice Award to one of the fifteen companies that gets the most ...read more...(read more)

【世界大会への道】マイクロソフトリサーチ研修旅行を終えて北京で感じたこと

Microsoft Japan Academic Evangelism — Sat, 26 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

本ブログは Microsoft Student Partners （MSP）で香港大学経営経済学部に交換留学中の森下将宏さんによる寄稿です。

■北京は凄かった
まず着いて早々、北京という都市の発展ぶりに驚きました。
2008 年に開催された北京オリンピックに向けて急速に都市が整備されたのが要因だそうです。
シンガポールとロサンゼルスを足して 2 で割ったような、世界のどことも似ても似つかぬような強大な現代都市がそこにはありました。

■中国人学生とのプロジェクト発表会
今回の研修におけるメインイベントの 1 つがこの中国人学生とのプロジェクト発表会です。
中国人 MSP 2 名、昨年度イマジンカップニューヨーク世界大会組み込み部門 2 位のチームより 1 名、
そして世界大会ではライバルとなる今年のイマジンカップ中国代表 (ソフトウェアデザイン部門) の 2 名の学生が参加し、
それぞれのプロジェクトを英語で発表しました。

日本代表の "Coccolo" "Team*Blossom" は、初の英語プレゼンテーションということでかなり緊張していた様子でしたが、
テクノロジー、イマジンカップ、そして何よりも学生という共通項のお蔭で、有意義な時間が過ごせました。
日中関係は複雑な側面もありますが、今後ますます重要性が高まってくると思うので
個人的にはこういった交流を通して、特に若い世代の相互理解を深めていきたいと考えております。

■マイクロソフト リサーチの日本人研究者による研究発表
現地の日本人研究者の方に、デモを交えた様々な研究発表をして頂きました。
タッチ＆ペンを使った新型インターフェイス、英語-日本語の機械翻訳技術、画像による画像検索技術、
ソフトウェアによる動画補正技術など、市場にまだ一般に出回る前の（※一部技術は既に公開済み）大変興味深い技術を
その研究に携わる方より直々にご紹介頂きました。

■イマジンカップ日本代表チームによるプレゼン発表会
本研修の最終日にイマジンカップ日本代表チームによるプレゼン発表会が実施されました。
メンターの産業技術総合研究所の後藤真孝先生、現地日本人研究者、マイクロソフトディベロップメント株式会社
代表取締役社長の加治佐俊一氏による手厳しい質問、コメントが続き、チームメンバーの大変悔しそうな表情が印象的でした。

しかし、と同時に皆同じ想いを抱いていたと思うのですが、世界大会まで 1 ヶ月以上あるこの時期に、
さまざまな具体的な改善点が見つかるのは、プロジェクトが上手く仕上がってきている証拠です。
ぜひともベストな状態で世界大会に臨んで欲しいと思います。

以上の通り、 2 泊 3 日という限られた時間の中で本当に中身の濃い研修となりました。
「百聞は一見に如かず」とはよく言いますが、グローバル社会における中国の存在感の高まりというものを感じる上で
この言葉を何度も思い出したものです。
今回感じた様々な想いを胸に、僕も含め皆で日本チームとしてイマジンカップ世界大会に臨んでいきたいと思います。

＃森下さんには、今回中国の MSP メンバーとイマジンカップ日本代表の交流の場をアレンジしていただきました。
また、7 月には世界の MSP から 25 名選ばれた Social Media Team のメンバーの一員としてイマジンカップ世界大会の模様を、
世界中の人々に発信していく役割を担っていただきます。

ISV Video: iVoteSports Brings Social Networking for Sports Fans on Azure

Bruce Kyle — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:42:00 GMT

iVoteSports Baseball Edition makes you part of the action of a live Major League Baseball game using your iPhone or Android device.

ISV Video: iVoteSports Brings Social Networking for Sports Fans on Azure

In this video, iVoteSports CEO and co-founder, Dennis Peters, speaks with Microsoft Principal Architect Evangelist Brian Loesgen. Dennis discusses how iVoteSports delivers a consumer-oriented interactive social networking experience for sports fans while watching or attending sporting events, which creates a more engaging experience for fans.

...(read more)

Security In the Cloud, part 1

Surf4Fun — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:44:00 GMT

What is the Service Level of Agreement (SLA) for the security of the various Cloud Storage Services like Amazon, Google, Azure, Sales Force Automation and so forth? A paper titled:

Enabling Security in Cloud Storage SLAs with CloudProof

Paper: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/helenw/papers/cloudproof-longer.pdf

This paper maintains that security is a way to differentiate the cloud systems. The cloud system that can demonstrate security levels will certainly differentiate the Cloud product. The paper further describes the difference between cloud security and the secure file system.

There is a lot of stuff to review in this paper! Check it out.

Visual Studio Team Announces Roadmap of Products, Pricing, Features

Bruce Kyle — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:41:00 GMT

The final product lineup and specifications for the next release of Visual Studio has been announced on the Visual Studio blog. The announcement was made in the posting A look ahead at the Visual Studio 11 product lineup and platform support.

Get insight on recent and future pricing and licensing changes.

...(read more)

Visio, Visio Services & SharePoint : Introduction

Equipe SharePoint de Microsoft Consulting Services — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:29:00 GMT

Bonjour à tous,

Par ce billet, je souhaite introduire une série d'articles que je vais partager avec vous autour de Visio et SharePoint.

J'ai l'occasion d'utiliser largement les deux et leur combinaison montre un grand intérêt !

Ainsi dans les prochaines semaines, nous nous intéresserons aux sujets suivants :

Visio Services: possibilités, configuration, considérations d'architecture
Visio Services & Architecture IT
Visio, Visio Services & Analyse fonctionnelle
Exemples

Série Visio, Visio Services & SharePoint

Introduction

Cependant, avant d'entrer dans le détail, les quelques lignes qui suivent vous donnent une présentation sommaire de ces produits/fonctionnalités ainsi que des liens intéressants pour aller plus loin.

Visio

Visio est le logiciel de la suite Office permettant de réaliser des diagrammes évolués. Ces diagrammes pouvant être aussi bien des schémas d'architecture/infrastructure informatique, des organigrammes, des plans de construction ou des processus métier.

Pour la petite histoire, Visio a 20 ans (première version en 1992). Au travers des différentes versions (on en est à la 6^e ), ce logiciel s'est enrichi de fonctionnalités : intégration à Office, diagrammes professionnels, connexion des formes aux données, partage des diagrammes…

Pour une présentation exhaustive, je vous suggère les liens ci-dessous:

SharePoint

Je suppose que si vous lisez ce billet, c'est que vous connaissez forcement SharePoint ! SharePoint est la plateforme Microsoft de gestion de l'information et de collaboration professionnelle. Il permet entre autres (je vous épargne la liste des fonctionnalités) de partager des documents dont les diagrammes Visio présentés plus haut.

Présentation de SharePoint

Visio Services

(Here comes the magic)

Dans les précédentes versions de Visio, pour partager ses diagrammes, on avait le choix soit :

De s'assurer que tous nos interlocuteurs possèdent le logiciel Visio pour consulter notre diagramme
De convertir ce diagramme en un format largement consultable (pdf, image…)

Visio Services est la fonctionnalité de SharePoint 2010 répondant à ce besoin de pouvoir partager ces diagrammes en s'affranchissant de la contrainte du logiciel d'édition qu'est Visio.

Visio Services permet donc de publier des diagrammes pour les rendre consultables dans un navigateur Web.

Dans les prochains billets, nous verrons en détail quelles sont les utilisations concrètes qui sont faites.

Stay tuned !

Guelnoji NJETEIN, Consultant SharePoint Microsoft Services

Be pushy with Push Notification in your Game: Class scope variables and HttpNotificationChannel

Surf4Fun — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:55:00 GMT

Part 2: http://aka.ms/PushyNotification

No matter what I have said in the past, XNA is going to be around for awhile in the Windows Phone 7.5, so let’s not leave opportunity on the table, open a New Project Windows Phone Game. If you are using the Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, you will need to download the C# Express (2010) package to get everything to work.

FYI: This article does end with complete code and the expectation that you need the code to make things understandable, but to keep the article short and to the point, I have not included all of the code.

The minimum using you will need are, an the one extra is highlighted:

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input;

using Microsoft.Phone.Notification

In the class scope area you will need to add a few variables, I have used a color coded approach, takes a bunch more time then normal, so might not continue with this style, it does clarify things visually

 Grey Lines are in program by default

/// Lines that start with /// are a special type of comments  when you put a comment after the <summary> tag line, the comment shows up in the intellisense

 String that will be used to store the notification string

 Memory allocation for the SpriteFont

 Boolean variable to hold the channel status

 Creates a notification channel between the Microsoft Push Notification Service and the Push Client and creates a new subscription for raw notifications.

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402556(v=VS.92).aspx

public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game {

GraphicsDeviceManager graphics;

SpriteBatch spriteBatch;

         /// <summary>         /// Default message if URI isn't set up or if it is, then it will be used for the message from the client         /// </summary>

string msgNotification = "Nothing Pushed from the Client Application, not an error";

         /// <summary>         /// Font used for message         /// </summary>

SpriteFont msgFont;

         /// <summary>         ///          /// </summary>

bool bChannelStatus = true

;         /// <summary>         ///      /// </summary>

HttpNotificationChannel notifyChannel;

public Game1() {

To keep this simple, I don’t have the completed code yet, but will have it posted shortly on a later blog.

Windows 8 Server Beta et PowerShell Web Access

Equipe SharePoint de Microsoft Consulting Services — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:38:00 GMT

Parmi les nombreuses nouveautés de Windows 8 Server, vous aurez sans doute remarqué Windows PowerShell Web Access. Ce nouveau concept, qui vient avec Windows PowerShell 3.0 permet ni plus ni moins que la possibilité d’exécutez du code PowerShell depuis un navigateur en accès distant d’un serveur. La connexion et les commandes sont exécutées entièrement via le protocole sécurisé https, permettant de gagner en sécurisation pour l’administration des plateformes.

Ceci est un gros gain potentiel pour l’administration de ferme Windows Servers et principalement des fermes SharePoint 2010 hébergées sur Windows 8. Remote PowerShell et les command lets SharePoint n’étant compatible, Powershell Web Access peut être une bonne réponse d’administration des plateformes.

Pour configurer Windows PowerShell Web Access, vous pouvez suivre la procédure détaillée de technet disponible ici : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831611.aspx#BKMK_install

Pour commencer, il vous faut activer la feature Windows PowerShell Web Access, pour cela :

Ouvrir "Server Manager", cliquer sur "Manage" et "Add Roles and Feature" :

Dans la section "Feature", cocher la case "Windows PowerShell Web Access" :

Patientez durant l'installation :

Lorsque l'installation est terminée, cliquer sur Close.
Ouvrez une nouvelle ligne de commande PowerShell (ou PowerShell ISE comme dans mon cas), avec des droits d'administrateur
Saisir la commande "Import-Module PowerShellWebAccess" pour charger le module dédiée à cette nouvelle fonctionnalité
Lancer la commande "Install-PswaWebApplication" pour créer l'application web dans IIS qui va permettre la connexion à distance. Vous pouvez remarquer que par défaut cette command let va installer la web app en tant que répertoire virtuelle du site par défaut de IIS (donc en HTTP par défaut) et créer un nouvel application pool nommé "pswa_pool" :

L'installation de la web application est terminée, il nous faut maintenant ajouter les utilisateurs qui vont pouvoir se connecter à distance sur l'interface. Pour cela, vous pouvez utiliser la command let "Add-PswaAuthorizationRule" avec les comptes souhaités. par défaut vous pouvez utilisez la ligne de commande "Add-PswaAuthorizationRule * * *" pour ajouter tous les utilisateurs de ce serveur :

Ouvrez maintenant Internet Explorer 10 et connectez vous à l'adresse http://<votre-serveur>/pswa/. Vous pouvez remarquer que vous ne pouvez pas vous logger sur le site. En effet le protocole HTTPS est obligatoire pour pouvoir utiliser Windows PowerShell Web Access :

Ouvrir "IIS Manager", dépliez le site "Defaut Site" et cliquer sur "Edit Bindings". Cliquer sur "Add..." et ajouter un nouveau binding de type https avec le certificat SSL de votre choix :

Reconnectez vous dans Internet Explorer 10 et à l'adresse en https https://<votre-serveur>/pswa/. Entrer le login et le mot de passe de votre compte admin, puis le nom de la machine :

Vous avez désormais accès dans la fenêtre web à un prompt de ligne de commande PowerShell et vous pouvez exécutez les commandes que vous souhaitez :

Comme vous avez pu le constater dans ce billet, activer PowerShell Web Access est simple sur Windows 8 Server !

De nouveaux scénarios d'administration se basant sur son utilisation vont pouvoir être mis en place au sein des centres de services SharePoint, vivement la RTM de Windows 8 !

Olivier CARPENTIER, Consultant SharePoint Microsoft Services

[Sample of May 26th] Uninstall disks with VDS

Jialiang Ge [MSFT] — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:13:00 GMT

Sample Download: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CppVDSUninstallDisks-7192ea26

This sample demonstrates how to use VDS to uninstall disks and volumes.

Warning: uninstalling a disk may lead to potential data loss. Use this sample with care.

This sample takes the disk number performs a complete uninstall, including the dismount of the volume and uninstall underlying disks.

To use this sample you will need to provide the disk number for input. This can be found by right clicking on my computer choosing manage, once the Manage UI is open choose Disk Management and look for the TEST disk that you wish to uninstall. The number associated with this TEST disk will be the input parameter. After you run the sample this TEST disk should disappear from Disk Management. If you are not using VHD's for this test you will need to reboot your system for the disk to be recognized by Disk Management.

For detailed introduction of the sample, please read the documentation at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CppVDSUninstallDisks-7192ea26

You can find more code samples that demonstrate the most typical programming scenarios by using Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Sample Browser or Sample Browser Visual Studio extension. They give you the flexibility to search samples, download samples on demand, manage the downloaded samples in a centralized place, and automatically be notified about sample updates. If it is the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please watch the introduction video on Microsoft Showcase, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/.

Recursos de desenvolvimento para Windows 8

VitorCiaramella — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:50:00 GMT

Central do Desenvolvedor Windows 8	http://bit.ly/W8DevCenter
Design Metro Style	http://bit.ly/MetroDesign
Guia geral Aplicativos Metro Style	http://bit.ly/GuiaMetroStyleApp
Consumer Preview e Visual Studio	http://bit.ly/W8ConsumerPreview
Material dos treinamentos	http://bit.ly/W8CampMaterial
Exemplos de código	http://bit.ly/W8Samples
Checklist de qualidade	http://bit.ly/W8Checklist
Post sobre Windows Store	http://bit.ly/W8AppsWanted
Advertising	http://bit.ly/MetroAds
Windows Azure	http://bit.ly/AzureW8
Post sobre Bing Maps	http://binged.it/BingMapsW8
Planejando aplicativos Metro Style	http://bit.ly/PlanejandoMetroApps
Cenários (Migração, Games e etc)	http://bit.ly/CenariosMetroApps

Recursos de desenvolvimento para Windows 8

VitorCiaramella — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:50:00 GMT

Central do Desenvolvedor Windows 8 http://bit.ly/W8DevCenter Design Metro Style http://bit.ly/MetroDesign Guia geral Aplicativos Metro Style http://bit.ly/GuiaMetroStyleApp Consumer ...read more...(read more)

Preparing for the Windows 8 Opportunity

Jon Box, MSFT — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:35:24 GMT

Yes, there’s a new O/S coming from Microsoft. It’s more different than any Windows before. Windows is truly reimagined. It’s also a big opportunity for our customers and our partners, across the whole ecosystem. As my DPE friends and I work with partners to prepare for the coming wave of goodness, I want to point out some resources that I share on a daily basis.

My blog has been quiet for several months now. I look forward to telling more about my experience with Windows 8, as I’ve been using it everyday for several months now. I also can’t wait to show off some of the app’s that our team has been a part of.

Announcing TouchDevelop v2.8: structured datatypes, tags, pages+buttons, better api search, featured screenshots, and more!

Nikolai Tillmann — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:37:00 GMT

After v2.7, which was just bug fixes and updates to the license agreement, the TouchDevelop team (Nikolai Tillmann, Michał Moskal, Peli de Halleux, Manuel Fahndrich, Sebastian Burckhardt) is excited to finally announce shipping v2.8 today: The latest version allows you to define structured datatypes, including tables, indices, decorators, and objects. We have also added the ability to create simple user interfaces by adding pages and buttons. This update also packs several new visual and social features, including featured screenshots shown in all script lists, and tags to organize the script bazaar. As always, we also fixed many bugs.

You can install the latest version from the Windows Phone Marketplace; you might have to wait a few hours before the latest TouchDevelop version becomes available in your marketplace.

Like TouchDevelop on Facebook to stay up to date. Visit touchdevelop.com to see all the scripts that people have created with TouchDevelop.

Structured datatypes (records)

Until now, you could not declare your own datatypes in TouchDevelop. TouchDevelop always offered many built-in collection types, but you could not declare your own. We saw that many users got creative by encoding values in JSON objects and strings. This is no longer necessary! TouchDevelop now allows you to define structured datatypes. As with the code editor in TouchDevelop, you declare tables, indices, decorators, objects via a structured editor.

For more information, read the new overview documentation on records: structured datatypes (records).

Today, the record state is stored locally on the phone. Coming in a future app update, you may choose to move certain tables and indices to the cloud and then share them among different users.

Tags, featured screenshots, users, subscriptions

All TouchDevelop users have published so many scripts and screenshots already that it was getting hard to find all the cool games and tools that you created. With this update, we are introducing the concepts of tags and subscriptions in the app. Tags such as education, entertainment, games, tools are a way to organize scripts in the script bazaar. Any user can assign tags to scripts. When you publish a new script, you should assign a tag to it right away. The tags given most often to a script determine in which tag views that script will appear. Users can add tags in the rate&review page in the script bazaar in the app.

Every script appearing in a script list is now shown with a featured screenshot (if the script has any screenshot). At this time, you cannot choose yourself which screenshot gets featured – TouchDevelop automatically picks one that looks best. So don’t forget to upload screenshots for your scripts!

Scripts that have tags and screenshots are more likely to get featured.

You can also browse the list of all users in the app. Users are ordered by their scores – you get points when other users like your scripts or comments, when you use more language features, and when other users subscribe to you.

If you like many scripts of another user, you can subscribe to the user - just tap on the subscribe button on the user's page. You will then receive notifications whenever that user publishes a new script.

Revamped help and API search

You can now access a help page in the app for each built-in API. When you write an expression in the TouchDevelop expression editor, tap on a property name in the expression; a little help text appears under the expression and just above the buttons; tap on the little help text, and the full API help page will open up. Watch video…

The intellibuttons at the bottom of the expression editor often provide you the choices you are looking for. But sometimes what you are looking for is not listed. That's because in the cloud, TouchDevelop analyzes all scripts that were published in the past and using that information the app tries to predict what you are going to do next; sometimes, this prediction fails to list what you want, and then you need to do an old-fashioned search for the variable, action, built-in API, … We revamped the API search so that you no longer have to swipe through different pages; instead, you can immediately start typing a part of the name you are looking for. Watch video…

Pages and Buttons

While TouchDevelop had great support for 2D graphics with the board, it was a bit cumbersome to create custom user interfaces for TouchDevelop scripts. This is now changing: You can now create pages, and pages can have buttons. You can only operate on the wall that belongs to the current page, but you can push a new page that becomes the current page, and you can pop the current page. This matches the typical navigation behavior in mobile apps, where you can go into nested pages, and then you go back along a stack. Unlike a typical social wall, you probably want to organize your user interface from top to bottom; you can now set the direction in which new items are posted to the wall.

New Samples

https://www.touchdevelop.com/jvuua - my bird log: Browse bird species and tracks your sightings – uses records, pages, buttons, and more
https://www.touchdevelop.com/fiol – rmc reader: Explores the content of research.microsoft.com – uses records, pages, buttons, and more
https://www.touchdevelop.com/svkv – khan academy browser – uses pages

New APIs

Browse through new APIs: https://www.touchdevelop.com/help/apidiff/200070/200080
Read more about records: https://www.touchdevelop.com/doc?path=records.pdf

Last Words…

If you want to stay up-to-date, like TouchDevelop on Facebook.

Oh, and we changed the way you declare local variables. The hammer is gone! Watch video…

HIS hidden gem: Disable BiDi reversal

Mohamed M Malek — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:23:34 GMT

Recently I was working on a very complex integration project using BizTalk Server 2010 stack. This project involved integrating with legacy IBM mainframe system. The integration involved working with BizTalk Adapter for Host Applications to call Mainframe hosted applications as part of specific processes. The application mainly involved passing parameters to this COBOL application and getting the results back. Some of the parameters and results returned contained Arabic latters and characters. Arabic is a considered a complex language which requires complex language processor which is called a Transcriber. If you are familiar with the Arabic language it needs to actions to be rendered correctly:

1- The shape of the Arabic letters changes according to their context; meaning that the way we write the latter differs depending upon which letter is before and after the letter we are writing. This phase we call the shaping phase.

2- The second phase is the reversal; Arabic language is written from right to left and hence the characters need to be reversed for it to be rendered correctly. This phase we call the reversal phase.

Usually when you are dealing with Arabic programs and languages you need to execute both these phases for correct display of the sentence. Now HIS 2010 contains a special engine that deals with complex languages such as Arabic this is the TransBIDI.dll and by default this is working as normal and performs both phases as expected.

The problem we faced while integrating with the COBOL program is that it required only the execution of the shaping phase but wanted the letters not to be reversed! Although this (for me) is a strange request and initially I started to think about some sort of customizations and complex scenarios to my surprise I have found that HIS server (starting of HIS 2004) recognized this need and provided a solution to it. Although the KB article I have found talks about the DB2 adapter I found that it applies to all HIS host adapters including the Host Application adapter. Here is an excerpt of the KB article on how to apply this hot fix.

This hotfix enables the CP420PhysicalStorage registry value. You can use this registry value to define how the OLE DB Provider for DB2 treats the string data according to the physical storage. By default, after you apply this hotfix, Host Integration Server 2004 reverses the string data that is sent to the mainframe or received from the mainframe. However, for some mainframe programs, you may not want Host Integration Server 2004 to reverse the string data.
To force Host Integration Server 2004 to process the string data without reversing the data, add the CP420PhysicalStorage registry value to the Host Integration Server 2004-based computer. To create the registry value, follow these steps:
Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Host Integration Server

3. Right-click Host Integration Server, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. Type CP420PhysicalStorage as the name of the registry value, and then press ENTER.

5. Double-click CP420PhysicalStorage, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.

To return Host Integration Server to the default value and reverse the string data, set the CP420PhysicalStorage registry value to 0.

The complete KB article can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;890353

I hope this saves someone else’s day as it saved mine

Upcoming Blog maintenance

Sridhar P — Sat, 26 May 2012 07:43:05 GMT

I have been thinking of moving from a free wordpress blog, which is what my blog is currently, to a self hosted wordpress blog. I will be trying the move this weekend. While I will try my best to keep … Continue reading →...(read more)

探索性测试揭秘

billliu — Sat, 26 May 2012 06:24:00 GMT

最近看了不少有关探索性测试的讨论和观点，老实说越看越糊涂。所以忍不住吐槽一下，在这里和大家讨论一下探索性测试。希望对于想学习和尝试探索性测试的朋友有所帮助澄清，或者是更加糊涂，^_^。

探索性测试有很多很多的定义：

百度百科的定义：“同时设计测试和执行测试”。嗯。。什么意思？

Cem 老人家的正式定义：“a style of software testing that emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of the individual tester to continually optimize the quality of his/her work by treating test-related learning, test design, test execution, and test result interpretation as mutually supportive activities that run in parallel throughout the project”。啊。。糊涂了。。。

有人说：“手工测试就是探索性测试”。更糊涂了。。。

又有人说：“探索性测试就是一遍探索一遍测试”。彻底糊涂了。。。。

。。。。。

那么探索性测试到底是啥玩意啊？

我们先来看一个例子吧。很多人都玩过猜数字的游戏吧。我心里想一个数字，你来猜。你可以问任何问题，我回答“是”还是“不是”。然后你通过不断问问题和我的回答来最终猜到我心想的数字。在猜对的情况下问的问题越少得分越高。比如，我心里想了一个数字。你可以问“大于零？”，我说“是”。你现在知道是正数了，你然后问“小于100？”，我说“是”。你现在知道是小于100的正数，你然后问“小于50？”，我说“不是”。你现在知道是介于50和100间的数。你继续再问几次后因该就能猜对了。

在这个简单的游戏中有两个策略至关重要：

你要根据前面问题的答案来分析和设计下一个问题。第一个问题可能不着边，但是第二个问题会让你跟接近你想要的答案。第三个会更加靠近，以此类推。
仅仅根据前面问题的答案来设计下一个问题可以最终帮你猜对数字，但是要想用最少的问题来猜对数字不仅要根据前面问题的答案，而且需要对问题本身其它知识加以综合运用使用其它策略和技术。比如在知道是小于100的正数后，你可以使用binary search，最多猜6次就可以猜对；如果你不知道binary search，你可以猜是否小于90？小于80？小于70？… 猜上十几次也可以猜对；或者猜是否小于99？小于98？小于97？… 猜上几十次也可以猜对。所以采用不同策略直接决定你猜对的速度。

所以两个关键因素：前面问题的答案＋有效的策略。

探索性测试和猜数字游戏完全一样。在这里要猜的数字就是你要找的bug。你问的问题就是你做的测试，每个问题的答案就是你测试过程中产品的输出。第一轮你只有一个非常模糊的范围比如测试某个模块的某个功能。在你测试的时候通过观察产品的反应和输出来判断分析下一步做什么会发现bug。当然实际测试中不会像猜数字那样直接和简单。

下面我们来看一下一个真实的测试例子。有一次我在测试一个用户界面的录入页面。用户可以输入比如姓名，年龄，等等很多信息，最后系统根据输入的内容处理保存到数据库中。当然我对每一个输入框都会尝试不同的数据比如空值，很长的字符串，空格等等，系统都没有问题。但是我注意到每次保存的时候系统都会生成一个本地文件，该文件的名字是其中一个输入框的我的输入。该输入框的唯一限制就是不可以为空不可以超过255个字符。我想到文件名字中不可以有斜杠“\”，于是我就在该输入框中如入“ab\cd”，它通过了输入校验，但是保存的时候系统就崩溃了。这就是探索性测试一个非常典型的例子，通过观察分析上一次测试的产品反应和输出来判断系统会有问题的地方，然后设计调整步骤和测试数据反复尝试直到完全验证模块没有问题或找到bug.

探索性测试和手工测试的区别：手工测试通常是指完全按照预先设计好的步骤一步一步人工测试直到验证了所要验证的功能。如果结果和预期结果一致，则验证通过；如果不一致，则是bug.可以看出手工测试过程单调没有思考没有变通。在上面的猜数字的游戏中你明明已经知道是正数，你还在按照游戏开始前设计的步骤问大于－100？大于－90？。。。。当然现实生活中没有这样的傻子，在你“手工”测试的时候你或多或少已经使用“探索性”了，只不过你没有意识到罢了。所以很多人误认为探索性测试是个时髦新测试技术，研究了半天又不知道到底新在那里和自己一致做的有什么不同。或者恍然大悟原来自己已经探索了很多年了。但是探索性测试有效率高和效率低之分，所以有人干脆就把效率高ET的才叫ET, 效率低的ET叫手工测试。这也是让人糊涂的原因之一吧。

测试自动化就是把手工测试的每个步骤有测试自动化工具来完成。好处是不用人做了，缺点是测试过程中仍然没有思考没有变通。

Ad-hoc测试（随机测试）：没有预先设计好的步骤，也没有明确目标，也没有策略。在上面猜数字的游戏中你明明知道是正数，你还在东一榔头，西一棒槌的乱猜等于100？等于－100？等于0？。。。当然也有可能被你一不小心蒙对了。

探索性测试和测试自动化各有各的优缺点。至于什么时候开始测试自动化，什么时候开始ET，先测试自动化后ET,还是先ET后测试自动化需要看项目产品具体情况了。没有绝对对错，以尽早发现bug,发现更多的的bug为宗旨。另外既然ET和测试自动化的各自优缺点，微软有些组最近两年在尝试“探索性测试自动化”的方式来把探索性测试和测试自动化相结合，充分发挥各自的优点。看到这里你可能要恨我了，我刚学会测试自动化，你又提倡ET了；我刚搞清楚ET，你又开始提倡探索性测试自动化了。。。呵呵，人类发展过程就是通过社会分工，扬长避短。专注于做自己擅长的事情，把自己不擅长做的事情交给擅长的人去做。社会发展是如此，云计算是如此，测试也是如此。有人说过：“The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid （test automation）. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant (exploratory test). The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation。”

其实我们可以看到探索性测试入门容易或者你已经在做了多年了，难得是有效地探索性测试，或者做效率高的ET（否则被别人不屑为手工测试了J）。那么如何根据前面的测试结果来分析和思考，如何才能敏锐地嗅觉到通向bug的种种线索？当然有多种方式来训练自己这方面的能力。还有如何衡量考核ET的效率，投入和产出比率？欲知详情，请听下回分解。。。。

或者把这篇文章在微博上转发5次，我会发私信告诉你，哈哈。。。。

Create multiple threads to see if work is done simultaneously

CalvinH — Sat, 26 May 2012 02:04:58 GMT

When you hear about threads and threading, you hear that they allow concurrent execution of code, which is supposed to lead to better performance. Most computers nowadays have more than one CPU, meaning that each CPU can be executing code at the same time. Hit Ctrl-Shift-Escape to bring up Task Manager, then switch to the Performance tab. Here in CPU Usage history, my 2 year old Dell laptop shows 4 separate panels and thus 4 CPUS. If you have an infinite loop in 1 thread, then the CPU usage will...(read more)

Microsoft Research Team wins the MinuteSort Challenge

Surf4Fun — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:35:45 GMT

Check this out for a cool last minute paper for High School classes.

Sorting data over a network using a new approach developed by a Microsoft Research Team. To see the results go to the Sort Benchmark Home Page.

This impacts the search results in Bing, since the code generated will likely be put into Bing, although I have no input from anyone that this is the case.

From a quick review of the Distributed System papers I think the paper that describes the posible process is this paper:

John R. Douceur, Jeremy Elson, Jon Howell, and Jacob R. Lorch, The Utility Coprocessor: Massively Parallel Computation from the Coffee Shop, in Proceedings of the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 22 June 2010

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/siliconvalley/projects/sortbenchmark/dmsort.pdf

I could be wrong, and I am just guessing. But seriously why would you expect any better, let me know if you figure something else out.

The rules for this contest are:

All the sort benchmarks share the following ground rules:

Must sort to and from operating system files on secondary storage.
No raw disk usage allowed since we are trying to test the IO subsystem.
File or device striping (RAID 0) are allowed (encouraged) to get bandwidth. If file striping is used then the concatenated files must form a sorted file.
The output file must be created as part of the sort.
Time includes the launching of the sort program.
The sort input records must be 100 bytes in length, with the first 10 bytes being a random key.
Use the gensortrecord generator to create the input records.
The sort output file must be validated for correct key order and checksum.
The hardware used should be commercially available (off-the-shelf), and unmodified (e.g. no processor over or under clocking).

US hacks al-Qaida / US does not hack al-Qaida

tzink — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:30:52 GMT

A couple of interesting stories are out yesterday and today. Yesterday, we learned that the US had hacked Yemeni website that was run by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and replaced advertisements showing extremists killing Americans into ones that showed advertisements that showed the attacks killing Muslim civilians in the terror attacks.

From ABC News:

In a rare glimpse into cyberwarfare tactics, a top U.S. official has explicitly acknowledged that the U.S. government hacked into websites run by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen, changing advertisements that boasted about killing Americans into advertisements that underscored the deaths of Muslim civilians in al-Qaida terror attacks.

During her keynote speech at the Special Operations Command gala dinner in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that State Department specialists attacked sites tied to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that were trying to recruit new members by "bragging about killing Americans."

"Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," Clinton said. "We can tell our efforts are starting to have an impact because extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the internet."

It had been suspected that the U.S. government played some role in shutting down several jihadi web forums earlier this year, but officials from the CIA and counterterrorism community had previously denied any involvement.

Wow, that’s pretty impressive (impressive is not the term I mean to use but you know what I mean). The US government hacked into a terrorist propaganda website and changed images designed to recruit more people to their cause, and instead replaced them with images that undermine their cause. They did this with technical knowhow that we all know the US possesses but always denies.

However, a subsequent article today in the Christian Science Monitor contradicts that earlier story. Far from performing any hacking, any ham-and-egger could have done what the US did. You just need to know how to login to a forum and upload images (and use Photoshop):

Early media reports of Secretary Clinton's speech created a buzz because they mischaracterized State's move on the Yemeni tribal sites as a hacking attack on a rogue website. That would have been novel since cyberwar hacking – taking over, spying on, or attacking a computer network or website – has been the province of intelligence agencies and US Cyber Command.

Apparently the only technical skills needed to do what the State experts did was to know how to create a new user account on the Yemeni tribal forum in question (an open public website, not a terrorist or Jihadi website) and to upload or post a new message and photo to it, experts on the matter say. Add to that an ability to use Photoshop.

"There was no hacking involved at all," says William McCants, a jihadi research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research and development center serving the Navy. "They [the State Department team] overtly message on non-jihadi forums that anybody can sign up for. They represent themselves as a member of the US government. By law they have to identify themselves."

In the specific instance mentioned by Clinton, Al Qaeda supporters apparently posted a picture that purported to be one of coffins holding US servicemen – draped with American flags and prepared to be loaded onto a cargo airplane, according to McCants and another researcher, both of whom had seen the picture. The message bragged about how many Americans Al Qaeda had killed.

What the State Department did was to run a counter message with a similar picture – but with the coffins draped with Yemeni flags and noting how many Yemenis the terrorist group had killed – the flags apparently Photoshopped onto the picture.

After reading this, it’s way less impressive. It’s one of those tit-for-tat Internet discussions that many of us have had – someone says “Iron Man is the best superhero!” and then you respond with “No way! Batman is way better!” No major technical skill required.

Of course, I don’t that anyone ever asserted that the US hacked the website, rather, I think that Secretary of State Clinton made these remarks and the reporter in the original story misinterpreted what she said.

This is more of a story in politics about people in the State Department monitoring websites, trying to counter propaganda. It’s not a story about security.

Move along, move along.

Unless, of course, you want to read about what the US is doing in this area. In which case, feel free to read the article at your perusal.

Tutorial on How to Use Service Bus EAI Bridges to do a SQL Azure Lookup

Nitin Mehrotra_MSFT — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:16:56 GMT

This post is in continuation to the blog post yesterday announcing a sample on how to do a SQL Azure lookup using Service Bus EAI Bridges.

The post is available here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nitinme/archive/2012/05/25/sample-using-service-bus-eai-bridges-for-sql-azure-lookup.aspx
The sample is available here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Using-EAI-Bridges-with-SQL-be2b5761

In this post, I present to you an end-to-end tutorial (as detailed as it could get) on how to create your own Service Bus EAI application to perform a SQL Azure Lookup. In other words, lets just say, that I wrote the sample I mentioned earlier using the set of steps that I have documented in this tutorial:

Here’s a link to the tutorial: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj136830.aspx

This tutorial is based around a business scenario involving two organizations in the Healthcare industry. Northwind Traders is a healthcare service provider that handles medical insurance claims for an insurance provider, Humongous Insurance. Northwind sends insurance claims as flat file messages to Humongous Insurance. Humongous Insurance processes these claims and stores them in an in-house using an on-premise SQL Server database. Humongous Insurance wants to deploy this business process as an application on Windows Azure. Humongous Insurance decides to use the integration capabilities in the April 2012 release of Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs to deploy this application on the cloud.

Apart from demonstrating the SQL Azure lookup capability of the EAI bridges, the tutorial also describes how to use the following features of the EAI bridge:

Processing flat file messages by using XML One-Way Bridge. For more information, see Flat-file Support In One-Way Bridge.
Creating a flat-file schema by using the Flat File Schema wizard. For more information, see How to Use the Flat File Schema Wizard.
Using an FTP source to send messages to an XML One-Way Bridge. For more information, see Using FTP Source.
Tracking a message as it gets processed through the bridges. For more information, see Operational Tracking of Messages Processed by the Bridge

I encourage you to go ahead and run the tutorial to build your own application. If you just want to see how this feature works without going into the concepts and the details, you have the sample here.

A very weird story about the founder of McAfee

tzink — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:03:40 GMT

Yesterday I discovered this story on Gizmodo after a friend in my Facebook feed posted it, or commented it, or read it (I forget which, I can’t be expected to remember these things). It was about the original founder of McAfee, John McAfee (who left the company many years ago). The story is crazy!

Gizmodo: Meth Labs and Dead Dogs: How the founder of McAfee Antivirus Went on the Run in Belize

If you’re looking at that title and thinking “Huh? Is that a joke designed to trick me into clicking that link?” the answer is “Most Assuredly Not!”

You really should read it yourself, but if you’re too lazy to click on the link and read the story, I’ll give you a synopsis:

John McAfee, 66, is the founder of McAfee A/V who left the company several years ago. He has done a couple of things since then (some dubious), but his latest business venture is (was?) a company looking to launch a next-generation antibiotic… based in Belize. Based in Belize?
McAfee (from this point forward, I am referring to the guy and not the company) has an odd life, including a 17-year old girlfriend. But one day, agents from Belize’s Gang Suppression Unit (GSU) show up at his property, armed and taking names, destroying property. They shoot his dog and arrest McAfee along with some of his employees.
The GSU charges McAfee with running an illegal meth lab and possession of illegal firearms. They toss him in jail. Calls (from 3rd parties) to the Belizean police are either unreturned or they are simply answered with what I’ve just told you – McAfee is charged with running an illegal meth lab.
Eventually, McAfee gets out of prison but has gone into hiding. He has not returned home but instead is laying low, trying to stay under the radar. However, he is very bored while in hiding. There’s almost nothing to do.
Why did the GSU charge McAfee? He can only speculate, but he did not donate money to a local politician who became very irate. His arrest was a message saying “If you don’t cough up what we’re asking for, we’ll get you back.”

Crazy stuff.

PS, below is a picture of me in Belize in 2010. Had I known that the politicians were that unstable, I may have thought twice about going:

Brent's Favorite Bug

humbugreality — Fri, 25 May 2012 22:55:00 GMT

This bug is my favorite mostly because of how my experience with it transformed my career.

It was 1998. I was a middle manager for a platform called CDO, Collaboration Data Objects. The API’s were to allow Application Developers to build fantastic workflow tools on top on Exchange Server. The platform was available on client and server OS’s. If you’ve ever used the mail API’s in .NET or CDONTS on NT, you’ve used it.

Exchange Server back then partnered with the Outlook and Windows Server teams. CDO was going to be newly shipping in Outlook and the (then) upcoming Windows release. My team and I were all very excited about it. We carefully considered all of the cases, wrote up beautiful plans, drew up perfect schedules, and then…

Proceeded to execute in an entirely interrupt-driven fashion. Whatever emergency Dev had, my team had. Exchange itself had heavily marketed itself as an App platform, so whatever emergency it had, my team had as well.

This was all good until I got a call from my manager. It seemed someone in the Outlook team had found a bug in CDO. Office was a couple of weeks past locking its build down for final ship. The bar had to be pretty high for any bug to get fixed. Well, this one was.

The claim was CDO was not working on Windows 98…. At All.

I guffawed indignantly at that claim. Of course, it works! My team was the best test team ever. So I went about trying to debug what might have gone wrong. Silly User!

So I did what I had done a zillion times before, except something new happened this time….

NOTHING!

I stared at the screen in disbelief. I was shocked. I tried again. Still NOTHING!

I called in my Dev middle manager peer and asked him what he thought I was doing wrong. He asked a bunch of questions that all showed nothing. So he got one of his developers to debug.

“Oh”, he said nonchalantly, “from the callstack, you are missing DCOM. See… It’s failing to load a DLL.”

So we looked to see what was wrong with DCOM… We found out that it wasn’t available on that OS. EVER!!!

My team, being server based, had all been testing on NT. Not, you see, on the Windows 98 OS that Office had just used to sign off.

FAIL.

I was dejected. I looked over all of our plans. We planned it. But we had failed to execute on covering it. Just had not yet gotten to it and had not tracked it as an exit criteria. None of my 35 testers, 20 developers and 5 PMs had tried it.

It was definitely a bad moment. Once I realized that I was going to need recall Office from shipping on time for this, I was miserable. So I began practicing my speech and walking to my boss’ office. One of my frontline managers intercepted me. I think he knew I was going to fall on my sword. If I had been my boss at that moment, I would have fired me.

“Brent, don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Anything. Go home. Sleep on it just 1 night. If you still feel the same way, I won’t stand in your way.”

That was reasonable. So I did. Had a nightcap and tried (failed) to get a wink of sleep. When I came in, I found the same manager there… And in the same clothes… In fact, so was my whole team. They had all done an all nighter.

You see what happened was my team did not want to see me go down with the ship. They had all worked together to find a fix and completely test it end to end in 24 hrs (including finding and fixing bugs). The whole undone section of my test plan was repaired in 24 hrs.

So yes, I went to talk to my boss the next day. And yes, I got yelled at, but my team had given me a way out of the nightmare.

This is my favorite bug because of two things:

It reinforced the importance of testing.
It showed me why it is *always* important to invest in and be loyal to your employees.

-- Brent Jensen

Do you have a bug whose story you love to tell? Let me know!

XNA Slide Deck and Demoes

Mohamed Yamama — Fri, 25 May 2012 22:34:00 GMT

As per your requests kindly find attached XNA Slide Deck and Demoes :)

[Please read the DISCLAIMER for this blog here.]

BizSpark European Summit 2012 Finalists

Brian Johnson MS — Fri, 25 May 2012 22:02:00 GMT

JamPot have developed a Software as a Service (SaaS) product (TheAppBuilder) that enables anyone to create a mobile phone “app” for a fraction of the current developer fees. TheAppBuilder is a game-changing product as no technical skills are ...read more...(read more)

RichEdit 8.0 Image Support

MurrayS3 — Fri, 25 May 2012 21:04:44 GMT

Up until RichEdit 8.0, RichEdit’s native image support was limited to metafiles, enhanced metafiles, and simple images like bitmaps (bmp’s). If OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) had supported other types, such as jpg’s, png’s and gif’s, RichEdit would have supported them automatically. But OLE’s functionality was frozen years ago. RichEdit 5.0 added “blobs”, which are light-weight OLE-like objects that the RichEdit client, like OneNote, renders. These blobs allow OneNote to insert and render many kinds of images. More recently, Microsoft created the Windows Imaging Component (see also), which supports the most popular image formats and allows extensions. RichEdit 8.0 uses this component to provide image support for jpg’s png’s and gif’s. This blog post summarizes the capabilities and APIs to take advantage of this facility.

A number of facilities that ship in Office RichEdit’s are not available in the Windows 8 RichEdit mostly because there wasn’t time to test them thoroughly outside the Office environment and to document them properly. One such facility is the RichEdit blob. RichEdit 8 uses its own built-in implementation of the blob to store and render images using the Windows Imaging Component.

There are two ways to insert images into a classic RichEdit 8 instance (use Windows 8 msftedit.dll): the EM_INSERTIMAGE message and the TOM2 ITextRange2::InsertImage() method. In addition, you can insert images into a WinRT RichEditBox using the WinRT TOM Windows.UI.Text.ITextRange.InsertImage() method. The first two specify the image dimensions in HIMETRIC units (.01 mm = 2540/inch) and the WinRT method uses Device Independent Pixels (96/inch). For example, to have a 4”×3” image in a classic RichEdit instance, use a width of 4×2540 = 10160 and a height of 7620.

In addition to the height and width, the APIs have an ascent parameter, which is usually zero. It’s included in case the image contains text that should be aligned with the text base line. In the original blob implementation for OneNote, this was used (and still is) for aligning hand written images with the text baseline. It’s also useful for aligning images of mathematics with the text baseline. This second use is supported by the ITextServices2::TxGetNaturalSize2() to return the baseline of text images created using RichEdit. This facility is used in the Office Equation ribbon.

You can save files including images in the RTF file format. The images are saved via RichEdit’s blob extension to RTF. This uses the OLE \object destination with a RichEdit-specific type of \objblob1. Unfortunately this type is known only to RichEdit. It would be better to save it as a native RTF shape ({\*\shppict{\pict{…}}) so that Word and other programs could understand it. Also then RichEdit could support such images in Word-generated RTF files. Hopefully next time…

MSDN Blogs

The Euro Summit for Those Not in Europe -- A Twitter List for Getting Trends Data on Startups on the Continent

【世界大会への道】マイクロソフト リサーチ研修旅行を終えて北京で感じたこと

ISV Video: iVoteSports Brings Social Networking for Sports Fans on Azure

Security In the Cloud, part 1

Visual Studio Team Announces Roadmap of Products, Pricing, Features

Visio, Visio Services & SharePoint : Introduction

Série Visio, Visio Services & SharePoint

Visio

SharePoint

Visio Services

Be pushy with Push Notification in your Game: Class scope variables and HttpNotificationChannel

Windows 8 Server Beta et PowerShell Web Access

[Sample of May 26th] Uninstall disks with VDS

Recursos de desenvolvimento para Windows 8

Recursos de desenvolvimento para Windows 8

Preparing for the Windows 8 Opportunity

Announcing TouchDevelop v2.8: structured datatypes, tags, pages+buttons, better api search, featured screenshots, and more!

Structured datatypes (records)

Tags, featured screenshots, users, subscriptions

Revamped help and API search

Pages and Buttons

New Samples

New APIs

Last Words…

HIS hidden gem: Disable BiDi reversal

Upcoming Blog maintenance

探索性测试揭秘

Create multiple threads to see if work is done simultaneously

Microsoft Research Team wins the MinuteSort Challenge

US hacks al-Qaida / US does not hack al-Qaida

Tutorial on How to Use Service Bus EAI Bridges to do a SQL Azure Lookup

A very weird story about the founder of McAfee

Brent's Favorite Bug

XNA Slide Deck and Demoes

BizSpark European Summit 2012 Finalists

RichEdit 8.0 Image Support

【世界大会への道】マイクロソフトリサーチ研修旅行を終えて北京で感じたこと