MSDN Blogs

POP QUIZ: What are Free Threads in the Threadpool

Tom — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:04:57 GMT

So here is the next trivia question for everyone. If you have tried to change the Threadpool settings for .NET, you have seen the minFreeThreads and minLocalFreeThreads settings.

What are those settings really used for? What do they control or how do they limit things within the Threadpool?

For extra credit, when would be a time that you would want to change these from the defaults and how would you adjust them?

As always, I will wait until tomorrow to post any of the comments and will also post the answer.

Fasttrack Architecture Review Dates

ISV Virtual Design Review Team — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:03:00 GMT

To make it easy for ISVs to plan the best time to have a a Fasttrack review, we have booked a whole host of new half day slots that are available from now until Christmas 2008. We will probably also add some dates for Edinburgh and Manchester, so do let us know if those locations would work better than London.

Below are the dates we have available, and we are now open for bookings. We will have our SQL Server expert at many of the sessions, and have marked those days with a "(SQL)", so if your areas of interest includes databases, data mining, or reporting, please pick one of those dates.

Monday, 1st September 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00) - (SQL)

Wednesday, 24th September 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00) - (SQL)

Thursday, 25th September 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00)

Monday, 13th October 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00) - (SQL)

Tuesday, 14th October 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00)

Thursday, 20th November 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00)

Friday, 21st November 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00) - (SQL)

Wednesday, 3rd December 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00) - (SQL)

Thursday, 4th December 2008 - London - Morning (9:30 - 13:00) / Afternoon (13:30 - 17:00)

If you want want to apply, now is the time. if you have not applied for one before, be sure to read this background info on what a Fasttrack Architecture Review is and then actually apply for one of the reviews

IMPORTANT: Fasttrack Architecture Reviews are only open to ISVs in the UK who are members of the Microsoft Partner Program at the Gold or Certified level, or are members of the Empower, Action Pack or Metro programs. If you are not eligible, then this would be an ideal time to join the Microsoft Partner Program and make yourself eligible asap.

Ganadores de Imagine Cup 2008

armanhal — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:43:00 GMT

Quiero felicitar al equipo Lava Lamp del Tec de Monterrey CEM que obtuvo el 2o lugar mundial en la categoría ShortFilm! y aprovecho para compartirles la lista completa de ganadores del concurso.

Software Design
• First place: Australia — Team SOAK
Team Members: David Burela, Dimaz Pramudya, Ed Hooper, Long Zheng
• Second place: Slovakia — Team Housekeepers
Team Members: Marián Hönsch, Michal Kompan, Jakub Šimko, Dušan Zeleník
• Third place: Hungary — Team DigitalMania
Team Members: Ákos Kapui, Laszló Zöld, Bálint Orosz, Gergely Orosz

Embedded Development
• First place: Singapore — Team Trail Blazers
Team Members: Pinto James Dominic, Shi Ben Yong, Hu Shuhan, Denver Lim
• Second place: TIE
Ireland — Team AcidRain
Team Members: Brian Byrne, Aodhan Coffey, Karl O’Dwyer
China — Team Wings
Team Members: Shibiao Xu, Junjie Li, Zhongjie Wang, Lei Yan
• Third place: Poland — Team Aero@PUT
Team Members: Piotr Kryger, Mikołaj Małaczyński, Jakub Pawłowski, Piotr Slęzak

Game Development
• First place: Brazil — Team Mother Gaia Studio
Team Members: Guilherme Campos, Helena Van Kampen, Rafael F. Costa, Túlio Sória
• Second place: Belgium — Team Drunk Puppy Productions
Team Members: Kenny Deriemaeker, Filip Van Bouwel, Timothy Vanherberghen, Jeroen van Raevels
• Third place: Korea — Team GOMZ
Team Members: Kim Dong Hoon, Kim Ki Hwan, Park Min Kyu

“Project Hoshimi” (Programming Battle)
• First place: Russia — Team Red Devils
Team Members: Ilya Grebnov, Sergei Grebnov
• Second place: China — Team Zephyr
Team Members: Peng Guo, Jiaze Huang
• Third place: Ukraine — Team Dream Team
Team Members: Pavlo Liapota, Margaryta Skrypachova
IT Challenge
• First place: France — Jean-Benoit Paux
• Second place: Romania — Cosmin-Viorel Ilie
• Third place: China — Yan Liu
Algorithm
• First place: Ukraine — Roman Koshlyak
• Second place: Hungary — Szilveszter Szebeni
• Third place: Japan — Naohiro Takahashi

Photography
• First place: United States — Team Provisio
Team Members: Jennifer Hui, Melissa Hui
• Second place: Austria — Team Austria
Team Members: Rosa Maria Binder, Benedikt Wurth
• Third place: Croatia — Team Voodoo Delirum
Team Members: Duje Nebojša Pandžić, Martin Štokić
Short Film
• First place: Korea — Team NEIP
Team Members: Il Jin Joung, Seong Ran An, Yeun Jun Choo, Sung Wook Lee
• Second place: Mexico — Team Lava Lamp
Team Members: Grace Montoya, Aldo Murillo
• Third place: Canada — Robotree
Team Members: Drake Birmann, Ryan Morrison, Media Ridha, Dan Tran
Interface Design
• First place: United States — Team IU EcoVis
Team Member: David Roedl, William Odom
• Second place: Canada — TeamGreeNet
Team Members: Jin Fan, Kevin Muise
• Third place: France — Team Edelweiss
Team Members: Johanna Rowe, Steven Muhr

[PL] Pomysł na Workflow

danieb — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Ameryki nie odkryję jak stwierdzę, że Workflow Foundation to potężna machina.
Temat tłuczemy już od jakiegoś czasu i w Polsce udało się już parę ciekawych przykładów wykorzystania Workflow Foundation pokazać choćby na premierze Heroes Happen Here.

Gdy poznajemy Workflow Foundation to pierwsze pytanie dla praktyka jakie się pojawia to jak zaimplementować Workflow elastycznie. W ramach paczki mamy narzędzia do modelowania, uruchamiania i usług uruchomieniowych. Procesy nigdy nie są stałe więc w kwestii tego pierwszego chciałbym móc łatwo zmieniać już raz stworzone procesy i/lub dodawać nowe.

Tutaj znowu mamy parę elementów, na które warto zwrócić uwagę. Dzieląc na warstwy łatwo wyodrębnimy część prezentacyjną, czyli jakiś ludzki edytor, który moglibyśmy ofiarować nie tylko naszym klientom, ale i naszym konsultantom i wdrożeniowcom przygotowującym system do realnej pracy. Druga warstwa to sama organizacja dynamicznego wgrywania przepływów, ich organizacji w systemie co ma wpływ na trzecią czyli sam proces migracji pomiędzy nazwijmy to wersją deweloperską (rozwijaną) oraz produkcyjnym status quo.

Wchodząc głebiej w temat pewnie jeszcze bardziej byśmy go sobie skomplikowali, aby na końcu dojść do wniosku, że nawet z tak potężnym frameworkiem jak Workflow Foundation temat przepływów zrealizowany poważnie i z architektonicznym rozmachem, to nie taka trywialna sprawa.

Uproszczając trochę dam wam zalążek czegoś co można wydaje mi się z sensem wykorzystać. Dotyczy głównie tej drugiej warstwy czyli organizacji przepływów (tworzenie/modelowanie, wgrywanie i dynamiczne uruchamianie).

Gdy w Visual Studio spojrzymy na diagram Workflow Foundation to możemy wyodrębnić trzy podejścia do samego modelu:
1) 100% XML w postaci odłamu języka Xaml czyli xoml (i ew. kodem osadzonym w znaczniku <x:code>)
2) XML + kod (gdzie mamy plik xoml z definicją oraz plik xoml.cs z kodem)
3) 100% kod i generowanie przepływu z "palca"

WorkflowRuntime z każdym z tych typów radzi sobie wyśmienicie poprzez:

WorkflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow();

W standardowej sytuacji, gdy mamy twardo skodowany workflow w Visual Studio to powinien on mieć twardy typ po którym tworzymy instancję ala:

WorkflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow(typeof(MySuperWorkflow));

Nie będę opowiadał o workflow tworzonym 100% z poziomu kodu ponieważ nie jest to najlatwiejsza droga do stworzenia sympatycznych narzedzi modelowania dla użytkowników końcowych. Wydaje mi się, że standardowa kontrolka do modelowania w Visual Studio oraz klasy służące do serializacji Workflow same w sobie narzucają zainteresowanie się plikami *.xoml. Chyba, że ktoś lubi sobie narzucać więcej pracy niż potrzeba. Ja nie.

Więc mamy pliki .xoml lub ewentualnie pliki .xoml.cs. Przy rozdzieleniu istotne jest aby pamiętać o zgodności sygnatur pomiędzy plikami. Mając takowe pliki możemy próbować surowo wgrać je ze "źródeł". Służy do tego alternatywna odmiana metody CreateWorkflow, której parametrem wejściowym jest XmlReader. Wtedy zamiast powyższego w skrócie uzyskamy coś ala:

XmlReader xomlDefinition = XmlReader.Create(@"MySuperWorkflow.xoml");
WorkflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow(xomlDefinition);

Jeśli wszystko się zgadza nasza instancja powinna się bez problemu utworzyć. Tutaj jednak pojawia się dużo problemów związanych z walidacją. Otóż przy wykonaniu tej metody Workflow sobie w tle wszystko kompiluje do .NET Framework i weryfikuje zgodność wszystkich potrzebnych zależności. Wierzę, że przy pierwszej próbie wykorzystania XmlReadera wielu z was dostanie wiele razy zwrot w postaci WorkflowValidationFailedException, tam najczęściej zdarzają się błedy, które w detalach tej klasy są w miarę przejrzyście opisane.

Od razu polecam do naszych powyższych dwóch linijek dodać try catch analogiczny do poniższego:

catch (WorkflowValidationFailedException e)
{
     Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
     Console.Write("ERROR: ");
     Console.ResetColor();
     Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
     Console.WriteLine(" # Validations failed: " + e.Errors.Count + " found.");
     foreach (ValidationError err in e.Errors)
     {
         Console.WriteLine(" * E" + err.ErrorNumber + ": " + err.ErrorText);
     }
}

Zwracane komunikaty warto uzupełnić o lekturę opisującą każdy błąd. Naprawa nie jest trywialna, zwłaszcza przy skompilikowanych referencjach. Dlatego proponuję prostszą drogę - kompilacja.

Kompilacja, która i tak się odbywa, a my możemy mieć przynajmniej nad nią kontrolę w procesie edycji, modelowania, wbudowywania w system i wykonywania. Jak to miało by wyglądać w szczególe? Już opisuję:

Mamy nasz workflow w pliku xoml z ewentualnym dodatkiem w postaci partial class w xoml.cs. I teraz parę linijek kodu z komentarzem:

        WorkflowCompiler compiler = new WorkflowCompiler();

Tutaj stworzyłem obiekt kompilatora Workflow

        WorkflowCompilerParameters parms =
            new WorkflowCompilerParameters(
                new string[] { @"CustomRefAssembly01.dll", @"CustomRefAssembly02.dll"
                },"CachedDynamicWorkflows.dll", false);

Tutaj stworzyłem parametry kompilacji, która zawiera informację o referencjach (CustomRefAssembly*.dll), nazwę stworzonej dll z skompilowanymi workflowami, oraz czy to ma być wersja release czy debug.

        WorkflowCompilerResults res = compiler.Compile(parms,
                new string [] { @"XmlOnlyWorkflow.xoml" , //tylko xoml
                                @"XmlAndCodeWorkflow.xoml", //wersja z odseparowanym kodem
                                @"XmlAndCodeWorkflow.xoml.cs", //i partial class
                } );

No i oczywiście powyżej kompilacja wszystkich plików, które przekazuję w tablicy i wynikowo mają być zapisane w tej jednej pojedynczej DLLce z dodatkowym assembly. Teraz poniżej czas na sprawdzenie wyników:

if (res.Errors.Count == 0)
{
    instance = runtime.CreateWorkflow(res.CompiledAssembly.GetTypes()[0]);
    // lub może bardziej czytelnie
    instance = runtime.CreateWorkflow(
               res.CompiledAssembly.GetType("MySuperWorkflow"));
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Workflow compilation failed! Details:");
    Console.WriteLine("Errors = " + res.Errors.Count);
    foreach (WorkflowCompilerError compilerErr in res.Errors)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("E" + compilerErr.ErrorNumber
                     + ": " + compilerErr.ErrorText);
    }
    Console.WriteLine("[End of Compilation]");
}

Generalnie WorkflowCompilerResults.Errors zawiera komplet informacji o udanej/nieudanej kompilacji. Jeśli wszystko się powiodło to w WorkflowCompilerResults.CompiledAssembly mamy skompilowany obiekt System.Reflection.Assembly, który jest już załadowany i gotowy do wykorzystania.

Teraz co w powyższym takiego pięknego jeśli miałbym spojrzeć na to bardziej architektonicznie. Otóż wyobraźmy sobie nasz system, który tworzymy. Powiedzmy jakiś ERPik. Rozdzielamy go na dwie części. Pierwsza to faktyczna warstwa uruchomieniowa, z która ma do czynienia nasz kochany użytkownik. Druga to część administracyjno-deweloperska.

W tym panelu administracyjnym mamy repozytorium wszystkich workflow z referencją do źródeł, które gdzieś przetrzymujemy. Każdy z nich możemy edytować i dodawać kod .NET Framework w locie. Dodając do kompilacji odpowiednie referencje w edytorze skryptów do Workflow można dodać referencję do jakiegoś namespace'a z obiektami biznesowymi, do których nasz workflow powiniene mieć dostęp w swoim kodzie. Na koniec możemy kompilować cały system, wrzucić gdzieś z boku dllkę i zacząć testy całego środowiska a jak wszystko jest okay to dllka komponent potem odblokowujemy użytkownikom. Pakiet źródeł można przetrzymywać w jakimś jednym pliku archiwum lub luźno, z boku wersjonować, tworzyć swoje standardy i modyfikacje i mieć przekompilowane wersje z procesami dostosowanymi do poszcezgólnych potrzeb konkretnych grup klientów, z którymi nauczyliśmy się mieć do czynienia. Wszystko bez ruszania podstawowego kernela, który można sobie na boku dalej rozwijać.

Wyobrażam sobie taki skompilowany pakiet modeli do workflow w czymś co umownie nazywam Workflow Server. Tam w ramach odpowiednio zaimplementowanego procesu wrzucałbym nową wersję modeli wymagającą zatrzymania/pauzy serwisu, uwzględnienia przepływów już uruchomionych i zamrożonych wersją właśnie przez swój status. Sprawa znowu się zaczyna kompilować, ale jak widzicie sam fakt dynamicznie wgranego modelu workflow w Workflow Foundation to sprawa trywialna wymagająca dosłownie paru linijek kodu. Nic odkrywczego niby, w końcu pewnego rodzaju nakładka na System.Reflection oraz System.CodeDom, ale zawsze jest to jakiś pomysł na workflow w praktyce. No.. przynajmniej zalążek.

Technorati Tagi: Polish posts,coding,.NET Framework,Workflow Foundation

Working on TFS SDK improvements

bharry — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:17:00 GMT

We are working on improving the TFS SDK to make it easier for people who want to write extensions. There are many areas for improvement so it's hard to pick a place to start. We chose, for the first project, a sample VS add-in that demonstrates a pretty wide array of ways in which you can integrate with TFS, inside VS. It includes the sample VS add-in infrastructure, examples of invoking the TFS API, querying selection and receiving events.

This sample is focused on version control and we are working on another one more targeted at work item tracking. It is not intended to be a useful tool in and of itself, but rather a demonstration of how to access each of these extensibility points. I've included a screen shot below that shows that it's just a dialog with a bunch of buttons that allows you to exercise the various extensibility points. Accompanying the sample is a pretty thorough document outlining how to use it and what it is doing.

We are still finalizing the sample but I'm interested in getting early feedback on it. I've attached a zip file with the sample in it to this blog post. If you have the inclination, try it out and let us know if it is something that is useful to you or if there is something you'd really like us to add or change. I'm expecting we will publish an official "final" version in the next few weeks.

Thanks,

Brian

Digital Green wins award in the Stockholm Challenge 2008

FrancoisAjenstat — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:16:22 GMT

Rikin Gandhi, assistant researcher at Microsoft Research India, has won an award in the Stockholm Challenge 2008. Gandhi’s project, called Digital Green, won this year in the "Culture" category. Digital Green is a combined system of technology and social organization that consists of locally produced videos of farmers exploring improved agricultural practices, and mediated screening sessions in which farmers regularly gather to watch the videos in the presence of a local facilitator to provoke discussion. By using locally produced video and mediated instruction, efforts are amplified in the dissemination of agricultural knowledge to smallholder farmers in India.

Congratulations Rikin! Digital Green is a prime example of technology helping people live more sustainable lives and your colleagues on the environmental sustainability team applaud you. You can read a great story on Rikin at http://research.microsoft.com/news/featurestories/publish/Digital_Green_award.aspx?0hp=n3

The Stockholm Challenge began in 1994, originally as a way to highlight the best ICT projects in Europe. It's since evolved to become perhaps the best-known ICT-for-development prize internationally. For more details on the prize and check out Digital Green's Stockholm Challenge entry submission.

All you can eat meter data management

MSPowerUtilities — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:08:00 GMT

Nearly every utility knows they are moving toward the day when customer meters will provide the range and volume of information that fundamentally changes the business model of the industry, forever. That day may be one step closer.

Microsoft partner Itron announced in late May some exciting news about its successful test of its Itron Enterprise Edition Meter Data Management (MDM) product, a key building block component for Advanced Metering Infrastructure solutions. Built upon SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008, the MDM test compiled data from 4.5 million meters, every half-hour, or the equivalent of hourly data for 9 million meters. The test imported over 200 million intervals of data and served to ensure that MDM meets the needs of large utility companies and can scale to the increasingly sophisticated advanced metering infrastructure solutions that are being introduced or piloted in programs across the industry.

Itron’s press release contains a lot of great information about test results, but what’s important to note about the tests is the flexibility of the systems. In my view the state of AMI is in its infancy and companies are making all sorts of decisions about how they will set up their frameworks. Right now there’s no right answer to how to do it – that will evolve over time, just as other utility solutions for customer care, asset optimization and business intelligence have. The key though is having flexible technology systems in place that can handle the tremendous onslaught of data that AMI will produce.

For instance, while the tests measured data every half hour, there’s really no standard in place to suggest that every 30 minutes is the right interval. Many utilities are leaning towards 15 minute interval data. Some have talked about five minute intervals, but the value of going to that granularity is very questionable. Who knows? The key is having reliable IT systems that can handle the decision, whatever it turns out to be.

We congratulate Itron for its successful effort in bringing us closer to the day of AMI. - Larry Kuhl

PowerPoint + Beer = A new dimension in karaoke

OfficeOnline — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:02:00 GMT

Not to be outdone by the Japanese creators of karaoke, German beer hall denizens have created a new variety of pub sport featuring everyone’s favorite “persuasion software.” In PowerPoint karaoke (as it has come to be known), inebriated volunteers deliver an impromptu presentation based upon random PowerPoint decks downloaded from the web.

You can read more about it here:

http://www.tiara.org/blog/?p=192

Or, if you would prefer, you can watch an Australian (more or less speaking English) performing PowerPoint karaoke. --Eric S.

Tendencias en desarrollo de software - proceso

marcod — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:45:00 GMT

Quiero compartir una reflexión y un artículo que Microsoft solicitó a un líder de opinión en la industria del desarrollo de software.

Como a muchos, también a mí me ha tocado comprobar la importancia que Microsoft le da al feedback que llega de los usuarios y de las tendencias que a estos les importa. Un ejemplo se puede ver en la evolución de Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), el cual continúa reflejando más explícitamente los aprendizajes que hemos tenido internamente a lo largo de los años, así como los aprendizajes que otros en la industria están adquiriendo.

MSF for Agile Software Development representa nuestro intento inicial para incorporar una tendencia que ha merecido la atención de un creciente número de clientes y usuarios.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/process

Nuestros productos para el desarrollo de software seguro continuarán tratando de ofrecer lo que algunas tendencias marcan, las cuales también continuarán influyendo en las decisiones de los clientes y usuarios. Tendencias como las que Kent Beck explica en el siguiente artículo:

Tools for Agility - A White paper by Kent Beck

A manera de pilón, ofrezco la siguiente pregunta para su reflexión:

“Análisis, diseño, programación, pruebas,… ¿Son actividades o son etapas en el proceso de desarrollo?”

Si te llegó a la mente algo como: ‘¿Acaso importa si son actividades o etapas?’ El artículo referido puede ofrecerte más detalles para contestar dichas preguntas.

Tickled by a Rosario feature

bharry — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:44:02 GMT

Today, I'm finally getting around to working on something I've been wanting to do for a while. Rosario is a big release with a ton of great stuff and I've been thinking for a while that I really need to work on figuring out how to articulate all of that value in a way that people can really understand and be excited about. To make sure I'm not forgetting anything, I decided to peruse our feature list to refresh my memory on everything we are doing. In the process I got to use one of the new Rosario features (after all, we already dogfooding Rosario for some scenarios) and I was just so tickled I had to share it.

There are a thousand or more features in the Rosario feature database in various states, some related to each other, others not. To help make sense of all of the features, we group related features into "Deliverables" that are a set of features we build and deliver at the same time. So I really want to see the list of deliverables (there are far fewer of them) but I want to see the feature detail easily in the event I can't remember what is in the deliverable. So, what I want is:

All deliverables for my team that have not been cut (no point in looking at the ones we've already decided not to do) and all of the related features that are also not cut. I want them grouped by "feature team" and include the current state of the deliverable. It turns out that in Rosario, this is an unbelievably easy thing to do and after 15-20 minutes of poking through it, I have a good overview of what we are doing :) To make things even better, this functionality is in the Rosario CTPs we've already released so you can try this kind of thing out yourself just for kicks.

Here's the query that I wrote (in Team System Web Access). Note we have a custom link type called "Produces" which is a relationship from a deliverable to the list of features that the deliverable will produce.

Running that query produces a really nice hierarchical list of deliverables and the related features... A few of these, you'll notice we ended up deciding to release early in SP1 :)

The new features for helping you manage lots of work items with complex relationships are really just truly amazing. I really think you are going to like it a lot.

Brian

Workflow with a long processing time stopping abruptly with the message - "Failed on Start (Retrying)"

varunmalhotra — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:35:20 GMT

Recently I was working on a SharePoint Workflow issue. The workflow had just two activities in it - The WorkFlowActivated activity & The CodeActivity activity. The WorkFlowActivated activity had normal stuff - activating certain workflow variables (Normal Stuff). The CodeActivity activity had a huge code base (around 3000 lines and 10 private methods). The code in the code activity involves - reading the added item's field value and then does a lot of calculations and then creates items into a new list. The items written to the list range from 300 to 10000. The workflow worked perfectly if the items to be written were below 1200. Just as the workflow items increased from 1200, the workflow stopped after writing 1200 items and the status of the workflow showed as "Failed on Start (Retrying)". The workflow used to take anything beyond 3 minutes to complete. (Took arnd 5 mins to write 1200 items)

So I started analyzing the code (in the CodeActivity activity) , but as such nothing noteworthy was found. Since the workflow is a long duration workflow, I thought probably one should check the property associated with the workflow - WorkFlowTimeOut property. By default this property's value is 5 mins. If a workflow is taking more than 5 mins to complete, the workflow would stop after 5 mins.

So I simply increased the WorkFlowTimeOut property's value to 30 mins using the stsadm command:

Stsadm –o setproperty –pn workflow-eventdelivery-timeout –pv 30

And Voila! this worked. This property is a cool property to check whenever you have workflow's which have a lot of processing and normally run for more than 5 mins.

You can read about this command at the following link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288917(TechNet.10).aspx

MVP Blogs de LATAM

ferglo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:31:00 GMT

Hola

A pesar de que ya está la lista de los blogs de los MVPs en mi Blogroll, quiero compartir con ustedes la lista pero ahora con la tecnología.

Access

Gustavo Delucchi

Admin Framework

Isvet Laclaustra

ASP.NET

Biztalk

Tomas Restrepo

C++

Ricardo Gonzalez

Client App Dev

Connected System Developer

Pablo Cibraro

Consumer Security

Customer Experience

Jose Espinoza Landa

Developer Security

Rogelio Morrell

Directory Services

Embedded

Hector Obregon

Exchange

Forefront

Fox Pro

IIS

Carlos Zelaya

Angel "Java" Lopez

Management Infrastructure

Emiliano G. Estevez

SharePoint

SQL Server

Team System

VB .NET

Windows Desktop Experience

Elias Mereb

Windows Mobile

Cesar Fong

Windows Server Customer Experience

XBOX

Agustin Cervantes

XML

Saludos

Fernando García Loera

MVP Lead | Community Consultant | Latin American Region

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

New Language Support

Steve Gordon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:26:00 GMT

Just recently, we added two new markets to the IM Control and Messenger Library. The languages that we added, namely Hebrew and Arabic, are unique in that they are the first right-to-left languages we have supported. For developers that have handled globalization before, you probably recognize the unique challenges associated with right-to-left languages. Not only do words flow from the right to left, but usually all visual markup is reversed as well to assist the speakers of these languages.

To try the IM Control for these markets, please visit:

Note that your operating system must support these languages in order for them to be displayed properly. For the complete listing of languages and markets supported, please visit the IM Control Parameter Reference page. As always, your continued feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve Gordon
Lead Developer
Windows Live Messenger & Contacts Web Platform

Channel9 с Алексеем Пахуновым - 32 бита в 64 разрядах или Windows изнутри

mikcher — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:17:59 GMT

В новом эпизоде Russian Channel 9 Алексей Пахунов, известный блоггер со стажем, рассказывает про устройство ядра Windows - в частности, про поддержку работы 32-битных приложений в 64-разрадной операционной системе.

Оставляйте вопросы и комментарии на странице ролика.

Who and how shipped which IME when and where?

Michael S. Kaplan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:01:00 GMT

The question seemed almost deceptively easy:

Please help me with the location from where I can download Microsoft IME Standard 2003 for Windows. I have located the Microsoft Office IME 2003 [here], but could not find the IME 2003 for Windows.

Actually, the Office and Windows IMEs are very closely related, and there are not going to always be downloads for them.

Like in this case.

Here is the big list that as colleague over in support was able to provide:

Office IME 2007
IME Version: 12.x
Included with: 2007 Microsoft Office System
Microsoft IME
IME Version: 10.x
Included with: Windows Vista
IME 2003
IME Version: 9.x
Included with: Office 2003
IME 2002
IME Version: 8.1.7xxx
Included with: Windows Server 2003, Windows XP x64
IME 2002
IME Version: 8.1.4xxx
Included with: Windows XP
IME 2002
IME Version: 8.0
Included with: Office XP
IME 2000
IME Version: 7.1
Included with: Windows Me
IME 2000
IME Version: 7.0
Included with: Windows 2000, Office 2000

This seemed like a very handy list to have, so I figured it would make sense to put it in a blog -- that way next time the question comes up I'll remember it. :-)

This blog brought to you by ഐ (U+0d10, aka MALAYALAM LETTER AI)

Warning: This cereal may contain traces of spiders

oldnewthing — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:00:01 GMT

In a Lisbon grocery store, I was looking at the ingredient panel of a box of cereal. It contained the information in multiple languages, and French came first. I was momentarily stunned by the following warning:

Traces possibles d'arachides.

I guess this falls in the category of "Raymond misreads French cereal box warnings."

The evolution of menu templates: 16-bit classic menus

oldnewthing — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Menus aren't as complicated as dialogs. There are no fonts, no positioning, it's just a list of menu items and flags. Well, okay, there's the recursive part, when a menu has a submenu. But that's really the only wrinkle. Most of it is pretty boring.

The 16-bit classic menu template begins with the following header:

struct MENUHEADER16 {
 WORD wVersion;
 WORD cbHeaderSize;
 BYTE rgbExtra[cbHeaderSize];
};

The version is zero for 16-bit classic menu templates, and the cbHeaderSize is the number of extra bytes in the menu header that have to be skipped over to find the first actual menu item. In practice, cbHeaderSize is always zero. This header exists only on the top level menu; recursive submenus do not have a MENUHEADER16.

After the header (and any extra bytes specified by cbHeaderSize) comes a packed array of menu item templates. There are two types of menu item templates, normal items and pop-up submenus. First, let's look at the normal items:

struct NORMALMENUITEM16 {
 WORD wFlags;       // menu item flags (MFT_*, MFS_*)
 WORD wID;          // menu item ID
 CHAR szText[];     // null terminated ANSI string
};

Normal items represent menu items that are not pop-up submenus, and they take a pretty straightforward form. All you get are flags, the item ID, and the menu item text. The flags are values such as MFT_STRING, MFT_MENUBARBREAK, and MFS_DISABLED. Of course, the MF_POPUP flag is not allowed, since this is a normal item template. The flag MFS_HILITE is also not allowed, for reasons we will see later.

The other type of menu item template is the pop-up submenu.

struct POPUPMENUITEM16 {
 WORD wFlags;       // menu item flags (MFT_*, MFS_*)
 CHAR szText[];     // null terminated ANSI string
};

The pop-up item template doesn't have an ID, the MF_POPUP flag must be set in the flags (naturally), the MFS_HILITE flag must not be set, and it is immediately followed by... another menu resource, minus the resource header, which describes the pop-up submenu itself. (This is the recursive part.)

The end of the list of menu item templates is reached when an item with the MF_END flag is set in its flags. And now you see why MFS_HILITE is disallowed:

#define MF_END              0x00000080L
#define MF_HILITE           0x00000080L
#define MFS_HILITE          MF_HILITE

If you set the MF_HILITE flag, it would be mistaken for the end of the menu template. Fortunately, there's no need to set the MFS_HILITE flag in the menu item template since highlighting happens at runtime based on the user's mouse and keyboard activity, not at menu creation time.

To make all this discussion concrete, let's convert this rather uninteresting menu resource into a menu template:

1 MENU
BEGIN
  POPUP "&File"
  BEGIN
    MENUITEM "&Open\tCtrl+O", 100
    MENUITEM SEPARATOR
    MENUITEM "&Exit\tAlt+X",  101
  END
  POPUP "&View"
  BEGIN
    MENUITEM "&Status Bar", 102, CHECKED
  END
END

The menu template for this classic 16-bit menu would go something like this: We start with the header, which always looks the same.

0000  00 00      // wVersion = 0
0002  00 00      // cbHeaderSize = 0

Next comes the list of menu items. Our first is a pop-up submenu, so the MF_POPUP flag is set, indicating that we have a POPUPMENUITEM16:

0004  10 00     // wFlags = MF_POPUP
                // no wID
0006  26 46 69 6C 65 00 // "&File" + null terminator

Since this is a pop-up menu, the contents of the pop-up menu follow. This is the recursive part of the menu template format: we have a menu template inside the outer one. The first item of the pop-up menu is a string and therefore takes the form of a NORMALMENUITEM16:

000C  00 00     // wFlags = MFT_STRING
000E  64 00     // wID = 100
0010  26 4F 70 65 6E 09 43 74 72 6C 2B 4F 00
                // "&Open\tCtrl+O" + null terminator

The next item of the pop-up menu is a separator. If you have been following the rules strictly, you would generate the separator like this:

001D  00 08     // wFlags = MFT_SEPARATOR
001F  00 00     // wID = 0
0021  00        // ""

However, it turns out that there is an alternate form for separators, namely to pass all zeroes:

001D  00 00     // wFlags = 0
001F  00 00     // wID = 0
0021  00        // ""

The existence of this alternate form is actually an artifact of history, which we'll look at next time. But for now, just realize that you can express a separator in two different ways, either the official way with MFT_SEPARATOR or the alternate way with wFlags = 0. Either works just fine.

Anyway, let's finish up that submenu with the final item, which is a string. We set the MF_END flag to indicate that this is the end of the (nested) menu.

0022  80 00    // wFlags = MFT_STRING | MF_END
0024  65 00    // wID = 101
0026  26 45 78 69 74 09 41 6C 74 2B 58 00
               // "&Exit\tAlt+X" + null terminator

With the completion of the nested menu, we pop back to the top-level menu. Next comes the "View" submenu.

0032  90 00     // wFlags = MF_POPUP | MF_END
                // no wID
0034  26 56 69 65 77 00 // "&View" + null terminator

The MF_POPUP flag marks this as a POPUPMENUITEM16, which means that there is no wID. And look, the MF_END flag is set, which means that this is the last item on the top-level menu. But we're not finished yet, since we still have to read the nested submenu. (Notice that the "end of menu" marker is far away from the actual end of the menu!)

003A  88 00    // wFlags = MFT_STRING | MFS_CHECKED | MF_END
003C  65 00    // wID = 102
003E  26 53 74 61 74 75 73 20 42 61 72 00
                // "&Status Bar" + null terminator

The submenu consists of a single item, so its first item is also its last (MF_END). Now that the submenu is complete, we pop back to the main menu again, but as we saw, the main menu is also complete, so that concludes the entire menu template.

Next time, we'll look at that strange alternate form for separator items before returning to the history of menu templates.

Using TFS 2008 Power Tools to modify server's offline state

benryan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Normally to reset your client's view of a TFS server from Offline to Online, you would 'Go Online' with a solution bound to that server. The server's offline state is reset as part of this operation. If you want to manually mark your server as Online (or Offline), you can modify the Offline and AuoReconnect registry key values mentioned in: http://blogs.msdn.com/benryan/archive/2007/12/12/when-and-how-does-my-solution-go-offline.aspx. I

f you want to avoid directly modifying the registry, there is now a UI available to update the values. This UI is the 'tfpt tweakui' command found in the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools (available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx).

To use tweakui to modify your server's offline state simply select your server in the list view, click the Edit button and set the states of the "Auto reconnect this server on startup" and "Server is offline" checkboxes.

Manually taking your server offline could be useful if you are pulling your client machine off the network and want to work offline without waiting for a solution to discover its offline state by timing out its server connection attempt. Manually taking your server online has the marginal benefit of having your next attempt to open a solution prompt you during the open to take the solution online as opposed to having to manually choosing the Go Online menu option or toolbar button after the solution has opened.

Latest version (1.5) of the logging script for MSMQ 3.0

JohnBrea — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Microsoft PSS might ask you to change the logging level of MSMQ (in Windows XP, 2003) when helping you troubleshoot a support case. The script for this is in the appendix of the MSMQ FAQ but sometimes copy/pasting the lines to a text file generates formatting errors that stop it working. So I've attached it to this post to make it more easily available (and I get to test posting attachments too). Note - The binary MSMQLOG.BIN files that are generated by MSMQ cannot be formatted to readable text without...(read more)

.NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit

mcabrera — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:56:22 GMT

Este training kit posee presentaciones, hands-on labs y demos de las siguientes tecnologías:

ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET Dynamic Data
ASP.NET AJAX History
ASP.NET Silverlight Controls
ADO.NET Data Services
ADO.NET Entity Framework

Súper recomendable para todos aquellos que quieran entrenar o entrenarse en dichas tecnologías.

Les dejo el link para que lo puedan bajar:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=355C80E9-FDE0-4812-98B5-8A03F5874E96&displaylang=en

How to Prepare for Microsoft Dynamics GP Support

ukdynsupport — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:44:00 GMT

If you are submitting an electronic support request, be sure to include these details in your description of the situation.

The following guide can help you prepare for a support request:

Microsoft Dynamics Solution Information

1. Describe the procedure you were trying to accomplish when the error occurred.

o What was the exact error message? Can you please provide screen shots?

o What module (Financial, Sales, etc.) were you working in?

o What window were you using?

o What were you doing when you got the message?

2. What version of the product are you using? (Please provide steps to retrieve GP and add-on build numbers)

3. What steps have you tried so far to resolve the situation?

4. Have you been able to complete the task before? If so, what is different since the last time you completed the task?

5. Does the problem occur from any other workstation or with another user?

6. Do you have similar problems in other modules as well?

7. Do you have any third-party products (applications developed by another vendor) loaded?

8. Are you able to recreate the problem?

9. Do you have a backup system in place? Can a backup be restored?

10. Can you provide a dexsql.log and Sql trace?

Hardware/System Information

1. What type of server is being used? (Windows NT, Windows 2000, etc.)

2. What operating system are the client workstations running? (Windows XP, Windows NT, Windows Vista, etc.)

3. How many workstations have the problem?

4. Are there any workstations that are working? What is different about these workstations?

5. Does the hardware satisfy our minimum requirements?

6. How much RAM do you have? How much available disk space do you have on the server and workstations?

7. What protocols do you have loaded on the server and/or on the workstation? (TCP/IP, IPX/SPX or NETBEUI)

8. What type of network card is being used on the server/workstation?

9. What type of network hub are you using?

10. How many users do you normally have on the system?

Sunita Patel

.NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit

Martin.Cabrera@microsoft.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:30:27 GMT

Este training kit posee presentaciones, hands-on labs y demos de las siguientes tecnologías:

ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET Dynamic Data
ASP.NET AJAX History
ASP.NET Silverlight Controls
ADO.NET Data Services
ADO.NET Entity Framework

Súper recomendable para todos aquellos que quieran entrenar o entrenarse en dichas tecnologías.

Les dejo el link para que lo puedan bajar:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=355C80E9-FDE0-4812-98B5-8A03F5874E96&displaylang=en

Web 2.0 Patterns Wiki

Dragos Manolescu — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:23:13 GMT

Last week a group comprising Felix Nyffenegger, Judith Bishop, Duane Nickull, Marco Brambilla, Marco Egli, Michael Mahemoff, Patrice Pelland, Petri Selonen, Steve Burns, Wolf Logan, and Wei Wei joined me and Joe Yoder at the Web 2.0 pattern mining workshop at ETH Zuerich.

Several clusters emerged around the workshop's presentations. For example, Patrice and Wolf's coverage of gadgets and gadget platforms pushed our exploration to the UI/glass. Some of the common traits include:

Provide an open platform
Support several technologies (JavaScript, Silverlight, Flash)
Package applications as gadgets
Extend instrumentation to include the client
Provider feeds raw content, users create personalized mashups

Also on the first day Duane and Steve's coverage of cloud-hosted services brought forth the following:

Execution context awareness
Scale services up and down

Add more capacity quickly, only when you need it
Remove capacity when you no longer need it

Leverage analytics-increase awareness of server utilization
Abstract out the hardware

Push into the cloud
Leverage virtualization

On the second day Michael's focus on gadgets and OpenSocial directed us to paleosocial patterns, while Felix and Marco's coverage of Web 2.0 site navigation put on the table vizualizations (e.g., debategraph.com, tafiti.com), presentation shifting (e.g., piclens.com, Photosynth), and others.

During the workshop we also designed a web-based video player that surfaced many of the solutions we looked into. Besides reminding us what it's like to use a real blackboard this exercise helped cluster some of the emerging themes:

Key-value store: Amazon Dynamo/S3, BigTable (Google)
Streaming: Hulu, YouTube streaming (not Flash)
Client time synchro service: NTP, MMORPG
Social network integration services: Oauth, OpenID/Passport
Mash-up engine: PopFly, Yahoo! pipes
Monetization (social cash -> $, analytics, instrumentation): AdSense, witkey.com, SiteMeter, Elance
Video: Vime, Nicovideo.jp, Jaman.com
Mood: Musicovery, Yahoo! IM, Nabaztag.com
Friend states: Twitter
IM: Facebook/MySpace, Twitter, Shoutbox
Recommendations: Tuneglue, Netflix, Facebook

We are planning on fleshing out some of the emerging patterns as a a distributed, collaborative endeavor. We have a wiki site to provide the locus of collaboration for this work. For the moment only the folks who attended the workshop could add and change the content. I expect that to change as the content shapes up so stay tuned.