Brian Groth's Life at Microsoft : Development

Build apps without writing code: Popfly

bgroth — Sun, 20 May 2007 18:38:00 GMT

Microsoft just announced Popfly and once it is available for everyone to use, we can all build interesting applications on the web, all without writing code. Michael Gannotti explains it best on his blog.

MSF Agile

bgroth — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 22:27:00 GMT

I just came across the core ideas behind the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development, which you can download. After you download the content, you can find the following information, which I think are great points to keep in mind while running any project:

Partner with Customers – Customer validation is often the difference between real and fictional business value. Understanding the value proposition of your solution and communicating it effectively is a key success factor.
Foster open communications – In order to maximize members' individual effectiveness and optimize efficiencies in the work, information has to be readily available and actively shared
Work toward a shared vision – Having a generally long-term and unbounded vision inspires the team to rise above its fear of uncertainty and preoccupation with the current state of things and to reach for what could be.
Empower team members – In an effective team, all members are empowered to deliver on their own commitments and to feel confident that other team members will also meet theirs.
Establish clear accountability and shared responsibility – Failure to establish clearly understood lines of accountability and responsibility on projects often results in duplicated efforts or missing deliverables.
Focus on delivering business value – While many technology projects focus on the delivery of technology, technology is not delivered for its own sake—solutions must provide tangible business value.
Stay Agile, Adapt to Change – The more an organization seeks to maximize the business impact of a technology investment, the more they venture into new territories. This new ground is inherently uncertain and subject to change as exploration and experimentation results in new needs and methods. To pretend or demand certainty in the face of this uncertainty would, at the very least, be unrealistic and, at the most, dysfunctional.
Invest in quality – An investment in quality therefore becomes an investment in people, as well as in processes and tools. Successful quality management programs recognize this and incorporate quality into the culture of the organization.
Learn from all experiences – Taking time to learn while on tight deadlines with limited resources is difficult to do, and tougher to justify, to both the team and the stakeholders. However, the failure to learn from all experiences is a guarantee that we will repeat them, as well as their associated project consequences.
Always Create Shippable Products – The team should be committed to creating the highest quality product while making changes. Each change should be done in the context of the belief that the product should be ready to ship at any time.

SOA Demo on MSDN's Channel 9

bgroth — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 03:17:00 GMT

Our video is now live on http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=38823. To repeat the explanation of this demo, which originated in e-mail from me to the Scobleizer himself is:

I work in the Redmond MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) and we have a very interesting Service Oriented Architecture solution that uses InfoPath, BizTalk, ASP.NET Web Services, RPG on an AS/400, CICS on a Mainframe, J2EE on WebSphere, Pocket PC, SQL Server, Speech Server, and MOM. It is really a solution to put web services in front of these non-Microsoft apps, and use MOM to monitor events and play back web services, and use BizTalk to orchestrate everything together.

Here is a very rough idea of what we have:

We have the following legacy “backend” systems: (they were written for use by a single user, but we now have them working for multiple users):
1. RPG application on an AS/400. I think it interacts with a DB2 database on the same box, but would need to verify that.
2. WebSphere (J2EE using DB2) on UNIX (an RS/6000 box I think).
3. CICS application on an IBM Mainframe (MP/3000 running OS/390).
These are all “front-ended” by ASP.NET Web Services, which can pop events (when errors occur) to the event log, which are then monitored by our MOM server. We also use a playback feature to monitor what’s behind the web services so we know if these legacy systems go down, even when nobody is using them.
There is also a SQL Server used to keep track of the status of orders in the AS/400. This is because we also have a Pocket PC application that interacts with a web service to change the status of the order (New Order, Allocated, Picked, Shipped).
We use an InfoPath form to kick off a purchase order, which starts everything into motion.
We also record the order in SAP after everything is done.
We also (soon) use Speech Server to call someone with the status of the order.
Various BizTalk 2004 orchestrations control the logic of routing the order through the different systems.

Sorry the video never got to the Microsoft Speech Server part, which consists of getting a phone call and having the shipping information, including order number, spoken to whoever answers the phone. Also, my description above forgets to mention Microsoft Host Integration Server.

Please let me know what you think!

TulaFale: A Security Tool for Web Services

bgroth — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 02:11:00 GMT

TulaFala looks to be pretting interesting. It is part of the Samoa Project from Microsoft Research in Cambridge. See http://securing.ws/. The description of the problem and the project sounds impressive, and useful:

An XML web service is, to a first approximation, a wide-area RPC service in which requests and responses are encoded in XML as SOAP envelopes, and transported over HTTP. Applications exist on the internet (for programmatic access to search engines and retail), on intranets (for enterprise systems integration), and are emerging between intranets (for the e-science Grid and for e-business). Specifications (such as WS-Security, now at OASIS) and early toolkits (such as Microsoft's WSE product) exist for securing web services by applying cryptographic transforms to SOAP envelopes.

The underlying principles, and indeed the difficulties, of using cryptography to secure RPC protocols have been known for many years, and there has been a sustained and successful effort to devise formal methods for specifying and verifying the security goals of such protocols. One line of work, embodied in the spi calculus of Abadi and Gordon and the applied pi calculus of Abadi and Fournet, has been to represent protocols as symbolic processes, and to apply techniques from the theory of the pi calculus, including equational reasoning, type-checking, and resolution theorem-proving, to attempt to verify security properties such as confidentiality and authenticity, or to uncover bugs.

The goal of the Samoa Project is to exploit recent theoretical advances in the analysis of security protocols in the practical setting of XML web services. Some early outcomes of this research include an implementation of declarative security attributes for web services and the design of a logic-based approach to checking SOAP-based protocols.

I haven't tried the tool yet, but if you do, please send some feedback to the people noted on that web page, or post some feedback to my blog and I'll route it to them.

Script to invoke the current user’s screen saver

bgroth — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:03:00 GMT

Thanks to The Scripting Dude for this script, which I made a small correction to. Save it as a .vbs file and run it to invoke the screen saver for the currently logged on user.

' This script runs the screen saver associated to the current user.

Set oShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WSCript.shell")
Set WMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:")
Set colComputerSystem = WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem")

For Each objProperty in colComputerSystem
strUsername = replace(objProperty.UserName, "\","\\")
Next

strWQL = "SELECT * FROM Win32_Desktop WHERE Name='" & strUserName & "'"
Set colDesktopItems = WMIService.ExecQuery(strWQL)

For Each objDesktopItem in colDesktopItems
oShell.run objDesktopItem.ScreenSaverExecutable
Next

' This will show you who is logged on, if you are interested:
' msgbox(strUserName)

VB Script to get list of services into an Excel list

bgroth — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 04:46:00 GMT

Borrowing some code from the following from the TechNet Script Repository for Office:

I was able to make a little VB Script app that lists all of the services on my Windows XP box, format the column headers, and mark each stopped service in red. Yes, you can get the same info in many other ways, but this way is in Excel, which is one of my favorite applications.

Save the following code to a .vbs file and run it from the command line:

' Create a new and blank spreadsheet:

Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

objExcel.Visible = True

objExcel.Workbooks.Add

' Format the cell A1 and add the text: Service

objExcel.Cells(1, 1).Value = "Service"

objExcel.Cells(1, 1).Font.Bold = TRUE

objExcel.Cells(1, 1).Interior.ColorIndex = 43

objExcel.Cells(1, 1).Font.ColorIndex = 2

' Format the cell A1 and add the text: Status

objExcel.Cells(1, 2).Value = "Status"

objExcel.Cells(1, 2).Font.Bold = TRUE

objExcel.Cells(1, 2).Interior.ColorIndex = 50

objExcel.Cells(1, 2).Font.ColorIndex = 2

' Find the Windows services on this computer

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject _

    ("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colServices = objWMIService.ExecQuery _

    ("Select * From Win32_Service")

' Write each service to Excel, starting in A2

x = 1

For Each objService in colServices

    x = x + 1

    objExcel.Cells(x, 1) = objService.Name

    objExcel.Cells(x, 2) = objService.State

    if objService.State = "Stopped" then

        objExcel.Cells(x, 2).Font.ColorIndex = 3

    end if

Next

' Autofit the first column to fit the longest service name

objExcel.Columns("A:A").EntireColumn.AutoFit

Improved Command-Line with Web Services App

bgroth — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 14:23:00 GMT

Thanks to Darshan Singh from http://www.yukonxml.com/. My simple app now formats the XML before displaying it to you. Here's the code - I know I learned something from it, so hopefully you can too:

set SOAPClient = createobject("MSSOAP.SOAPClient")
SOAPClient.mssoapinit "http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL"
Dim responseEnv
Dim displayStr
Set responseEnv = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.3.0")
responseEnv.loadXML(SOAPClient.GetQuote(wscript.arguments(0)))
displayStr = responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Name").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + " (" + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Symbol").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + " ) " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Last").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + " " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/PercentageChange").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + " " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Date").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + " " + UCase(responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Time").nodeTypedValue)
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------" + VBNewLine
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "Open: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Open").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "High: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/High").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "Low: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Low").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "Volume: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/Volume").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "P/E Ratio: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/P-E").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "Prev. Close: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/PreviousClose").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "52-Week Range: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/AnnRange").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "Market Cap: " + responseEnv.selectSingleNode("/StockQuotes/Stock/MktCap").nodeTypedValue
displayStr = displayStr + VBNewLine + "-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------" + VBNewLine
MsgBox displayStr, 0, UCase(wscript.arguments(0))

From the command line, run:

C:\>Stocks.vbs MSFT

Command-line with Web Services and Arguments

bgroth — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 01:24:00 GMT

I added the small feature of being able to pass an argument to the Stock.vbs file so you can pass it any stock quote.

My Stock.vbs file is:

set SOAPClient = createobject("MSSOAP.SOAPClient")
SOAPClient.mssoapinit "http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL"
WScript.Echo wscript.arguments(0) & " = " & SOAPClient.GetQuote(wscript.arguments(0))

The part in bold is the change from a previous post that allows the argument. To run it, from a command line, run:

C:\>Stocks.vbs MSFT

Call a Web Service from a Command-Line

bgroth — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 05:45:00 GMT

For all you command-line freaks out there, I hope you know about Microsoft's scripting technologies. Hopefully you are also aware that web services is the hot new thing and is certainly a great way to architect solutions these days. So, combining those two things (WS+Script), here is how to call a web service from a command-line via script:

Save the following as MSFT.vbs:

set SOAPClient = createobject("MSSOAP.SOAPClient")
SOAPClient.mssoapinit "http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?WSDL"
WScript.Echo "MSFT = " & SOAPClient.GetQuote("MSFT")

Then from a command prompt, run:

C:\>MSFT.vbs

After a few seconds, (it has to hit the web server, which gets the data, then sends it back to you) a text box will pop up with the XML that is returned from the web service, which in this case, tells you the current stock information for Microsoft.

Thanks to http://www.webservicex.net for making the web service available.
Thanks to http://groups.msn.com/windowsscript/windowsxp.msnw for giving the example (with a web service that no longer existed, so my example is sort of an update to that one)

Find a TON of very cool scripts on the TechNet Script Center.

I'm sure someone out there can come up with a useful example based on this idea. Want to give me some of those ideas? Better yet, want to write some and share them with me?

Visual Studio Express links

bgroth — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:55:00 GMT

Some feedback from my last post asked for links to something other than just the .exe files. So, here you go:

Have fun and please, go build some great Smart Clients. Then tell me about it and I'll happily link to it from my blog.

Demos You Can Download

bgroth — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:58:00 GMT

I recently cruised through the microsoft.com site looking for demos of real world solutions that include some custom code and configuration. Here is what I found:

IBuySpy Demos:

IBuySpy Portal

SQL CE: IBuySpy Delivery Application Design

Speech Enabled ASP.NET Commerce Starter Kit

IBuySpy Storefront

Fitch & Mather Demos:

Fitch & Mather Stocks

Speech Enabled Fitch & Mather Stocks

Fabrikam

Office Code Samples

Contoso: XML in Office

Duwamish

Microsoft .NET Pet Shop

It would be great if someone would build a set of virtual machines for me with all of those IBuySpy demos installed, configured, and working. (hint to my fellow Microsoftees)

PowerPoint Text to Speech, Part 2

bgroth — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:23:00 GMT

I got some feedback from my PowerPoint TTS blog that a couple of people were having problems getting it to work. In an attempt to keep my readers happy, I wanted to make sure my code and insructions were correct. I verified my instructions, using Office 2003, and everything works as I noted. But, to expand on the instructions a bit, focused on the problems noted, it sounds like the reference hasn't been set. From VB, when in Module 1, verify that the following references are selected. In my case, all of these were selected by default, except "Microsoft Excel 11.0 Object Library". You should have the following selected, in the following order of priority (not sure if that matters though):

Visual Basic for Applications
Microsoft PowerPoint 11.0 Object Library
OLE Automation
Microsoft Office 11.0 Object Library
Microsoft Excel 11.0 Object Library

So if these references are selected in VBA, then please take a look at these Knowledge Base articles for further assistance.

How to automate Excel Text to Speech in another Office program
XL2002: "Run-time Error 1004" When You Attempt to Use Text to Speech in Macro - Sue Waetzig, and maybe David H, based on this article, I think you may not have installed the Text to Speech feature in Excel. To fix this, run Setup again for Office and select Custom during the setup wizard, then make sure all of the Excel features are selected during setup.

Please let me know if this helps!

My First VS2005 C# App: MSNBC Newspaper App

bgroth — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 06:06:00 GMT

I finally got around to building my first app with Visual Studio 2005. And no, I am not the only Microsoftee who doesn't write code for a living. Thankfully Betsy Aoki just posted a good writeup about her first VB.NET programming class. I built what I consider a personalized online newspaper app. Here’s how:

Visual Studio 2005 (I think I am using the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Beta)
Create a New Project
The Type of Project is: Visual C# - Windows Application (could be VB.NET too I suppose)
Set the Form (Form1) properties to:

Text: MSNBC Newspaper
(a cool one to use is FormBorderStyle: None - but then you have to use Alt+F4 to close the application. So, I suggest using the default FormBorderStyle:Sizable)
WindowState: Maximized

Drag the Web Browser control from the Toolbox to the form
Set the Browser Control (webBrowser1) properties to:

Url: http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx

Save the project as “MSNBC Newspaper”
Build the project
Publish the project (I published it to “c:\temp\MSNBC Newspaper”)
Then go to “c:\temp\MSNBC Newspaper” and run setup.exe to install your new application. It will then show up under Start/Programs/Microsoft

And that’s it: 10 lines of instructions, no code, and a fully installable and versionable application that I can use as customized my morning newspaper. Of course, I wish I could add RSS feeds into MSNBC’s newsbot page.