DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Lear

jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:58:12 GMT

In this post I'll show how you can use jQuery to call a WCF REST service without requiring the ASP.NET AJAX ScriptManager and the client scripts that it loads by default.

Why Do "Not Windows Store"?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:14:35 GMT

On Friday we released an open source alternative to the Windows Store for Windows 8 Apps called the "Not Windows Store". Why? Will people even want unverified apps? Aren't multiple app stores a detriment to end users?

Integrating JavaScript and C# with Script#

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:22:21 GMT

Have you ever had an enum in your server code that you wanted to access in client side code? Or wanted the safety of compile time errors when there are discrepancies between your server-side and client-side code? Or had a C# Data Transfer Object (DTO) that you wanted to enable Intellisense for in JavaScript? I hadn't found a good solution either ... until now.

Advanced Burn Up Charts

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:15:45 GMT

The problem is that burndown charts lack two essential pieces of information. First, how much work was actually accomplished during a given iteration (as opposed to how much work remains to be completed) and second how much total work the project contains (or if you prefer how much scope has increased each iteration).

Type-Safe Entity Framework Include

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:40:31 GMT

Unlike many ORM solutions MS Entity Framework does not lazy fetch accessed tables. Coming from LINQ to SQL I didn't like this feature at first because it meant adding a bunch of loosely typed include statements to every SQL call. But I quickly realized the performance benefits, not to mention the N+1 problem just goes away. But, I still had heartburn over the loose typing of the include statement, so I came up with my own strongly typed include.

Death to the DAO and How to Test LINQ

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:15:52 GMT

Occasionally I hear complaints that LINQ is hard to unit test. These complaints aren't about LINQ to objects, mind you, they're specific to the complexities of the flavors of LINQ that turn C# code into something else like SQL or CAML using expression trees. The most common technologies are LINQ to SQL, the Entity Framework, or in my case at the moment LINQ to SharePoint. In this post I'm going to propose a technique that makes testing LINQ not just easy, but downright elegant - assuming you're ok with extension methods - lots of extension methods. And assuming you're ready to kill your Data Access Objects (DAO) tier.

Client Side AJAX Applications in SharePoint 2010 - Part 3

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:46:29 GMT

The last part in a three part series that explores building client side AJAX applications with ASP.Net AJAX 4 Templating and the WCF Data Services (aka ADO.Net Data Services, aka oData, aka Astoria) in SharePoint 2010. This part focuses on writing data back to SharePoint lists with ASP.Net AJAX Templates.

Client Side AJAX Applications in SharePoint 2010 - Part 2

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:01:46 GMT

Part two of a three part series that explores building client side AJAX applications with ASP.Net AJAX 4 Templating and the WCF Data Services (aka ADO.Net Data Services, aka oData, aka Astoria) in SharePoint 2010. Part two shows how to create an application page in Visual Studio 2010 and then write a simple ASP.Net AJAX 4 Template page.

Client Side AJAX Applications in SharePoint 2010 - Part 1

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:35:16 GMT

Part one of a three part series that explores building client side AJAX applications with ASP.Net AJAX 4 Templating and the WCF Data Services (aka ADO.Net Data Services, aka oData, aka Astoria) in SharePoint 2010. Part one focuses on the WCF Data Services aspects of SharePoint 2010.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 is NOT the same full Silverlight 3 RTM

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:19:01 GMT

This article lists the differences between the Silverlight mobile and Silverlight 3 RTM runtimes. Even though Microsoft announced that there is not "Silverlight Lite" version, there are plenty of differences to be aware of between the two runtimes.

[video] How To Create Burndown Charts For User Stories in SharePoint

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:41:17 GMT

This 13 minute screencast shows you how to create a user stories list in SharePoint and build burn up and burn down charts off of the data using Microsoft Excel. It includes the custom fields you'll need in SharePoint, the formula's you'll have to create in Excel, and shows tips along the way like how to simplify refreshing your reports when data changes.

Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 virtual imag

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:30:00 GMT

Here's a great way to get up-to-speed with Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010.download the complete virtual images and get started! Choose one of the three virtualization options below: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Hyper-V) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Windows [7] Virtual PC) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1) Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate provides an integrated environment of tools and server infrastructure that simplifies the entire application development process.

Business Process Modeling for Software Developers

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:15:55 GMT

As a software developer I never thought I'd be saying this (I suppose eight years of working for the company that invented this technique might bias me), but you can not underestimate the value of business process modeling when starting a new project. This is especially true if it's a small project and you don't have the benefit of a dedicated requirements analyst. As a consultant (or as a person who is learning someone else's business) your job is to understand your customers existing business better than they do themselves. And you need to be on the same page with others regarding how you are going to change their day to day functions. And that's what business process modeling is for. You may ignore this document after the first week on the project, in fact I would encourage you to. But even if you throw it away immediately after creating it, the process of developing the document will still: * Flush out important questions * Show your customer you understand their world * Help document the project to other developers * Facilitate communication (especially with the people who pay the bills) * Generate user stories (requirements) * Identify the entities that can feed into an Entity Relationship Diagram (or database I suppose) * Aid making good choices for the decisions it be hard to undo later (like whether to manually code workflows or use Windows Workflow Foundation) * More clearly identify pain points and areas where your software can help end users; and * Identify metrics that can help determine project success from an ROI and product owner's perspective Convinced this is a tool you need in your toolbelt yet? As long as the answer isn't "I only write code leave me alone" then check out this quick how-to:

Ruby on Rails, a Microsoft Developer's Perspective

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:57:08 GMT

Ever wondered what it would be like to branch out of the Microsoft world after being immersed in it for twelve years?

SharePoint 2010 Expectations Meet Reality

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:18:36 GMT

A list of ten current SharePoint failures (such as testability, lack of referential integiry, poor usability, etc), and how SharePoint 2010 resolves or fails to resolve each one.

TFS Sucks, here is a list why

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:45:03 GMT

If you are thinking about using TFS here is a list of reasons why TFS sucks for SCM. Any suggestions on making these annoyances go away is very welcome.

Unit Testing SharePoint - Past, Present, and Sporm

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:42:54 GMT

As I described in SharePoint: The Wild West of Software Development there is a serious problem when you develop for SharePoint: ensuring quality through unit testing is really, really hard. And that's where a new open source tool just released today called sporm (SharePoint Object Relational Mapper) comes in. While sporm provides many benefits besides simplified unit testing I wanted to focus on this topic first, because sporm's approach, which models the entity framework in the way it supports POCO's, is a unique feature not available with other SharePoint tools like LINQ to SharePoint.

SharePoint: The Wild West of Software Development

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:00:02 GMT

Some argue that Microsoft developers lack rigor -- that techniques like unit testing and continuous integration are virtually unheard of in this space. That's rubbish. I would be shocked if the percentage of developers that track code coverage is significantly different for the .Net or Java spaces (not quite mainstream, but respectable). Mind you I'm talking .Net development in general. SharePoint, now that's another story.

IEnumerable.Count() is a Code Smell

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:44:04 GMT

Count() is a frequently abused LINQ extension method that iterates through every item in an enumerable. But many developers don't realize that .Count() won't short circuit after it finds more than zero items -- it will continue iterating through every single item. This article introduces the problem and proposes a couple of solutions.

Tuple, a new type on .Net 4.0

Mon, 25 May 2009 21:46:37 GMT

If you ever played with some language that have the Tuple type I bet you miss it in .Net. Well 4.0 adds it.

Secrets of SharePoint 2010 Exposed at TechEd 2009

Mon, 18 May 2009 08:32:29 GMT

The details of SharePoint 2010 are under tight wraps. If you asked any of the presenters at Tech Ed the typical response was "I have no idea what you're talking about." But that doesn't mean presenters didn't occasionally slip up or say more than they probably should have.

IE6 not supported in SharePoint 2010; IE6 support expires July 2010

Tue, 12 May 2009 02:57:56 GMT

Quotes from the article: "...Due to this focus Internet Explorer 6 will not be a supported browser for SharePoint Server 2010." Q: Is Internet Explorer 6 officially supported by Microsoft? A: Official Microsoft Product Support for Internet Explorer 6 will expire in July 2010. You can find additional information on Microsoft's Support Lifecycle Policy including specific dates, product information and support offerings here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy.

Add an action to a SharePoint list actions menu for a specific list

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:50:06 GMT

If you have ever tried adding a SharePoint custom action to the actions menu and tried using "List" or "ContentType" as the "RegistrationType" and then tried to specify a specific list or content type in the "RegistrationId" you know that it doesn't work. SharePoint will silently not render your custom action. If you try and target a generic list using a "RegistrationId" of "100" you will see that SharePoint will gladly render your action on every list in the site. I have found a rather kludgy work around to the problem.

Code Access Security Cheat Sheet

Thu, 07 May 2009 19:46:05 GMT

A full page cheat sheet on Code Access Security (CAS). Includes screenshots of the .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration tool. Describes the following terms: Permission, PermissionSet, Code Group, Policy Level, Assembly Instance, Evidence; and Evidence Type.

Roadmap of Microsoft Certifications - SQL Server Certifications

Tue, 05 May 2009 09:31:14 GMT

In these times of economic slowdown and uncertainties, more and more IT professionals are concerned about their job security and their qualifications. With job insecurity looming on their minds, it is a common trend for developers to start hunting for ways to update their skills. Sound knowledge and real world work experience are always a good way to help secure your future. However, a great way to demonstrate knowledge and competence is by having a certification in the technology one claims to be proficient in.