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  • OData: The Open Data Protocol

    Mike asked me to write something about OData for this week’s MSDN Flash Newsletter – reproducing that below – mostly just a bit of fun as it’s hard to fit anything into these short articles. It’s hard to write an article to teach you anything about OData in 500 words. Why set out on that journey when we can do something “less boring instead”; Run up your browser. I recommend IE8 as it seems to have most control around viewing raw XML but you can use “View Source” in FireFox or Chrome. Remember in IE8 to switch off the lipstick that it applies to ATOM/RSS data by using the following menu options; Tools | Internet Options | Content | Feeds and Web Slices | Settings | Feed Reading View OFF Point it at http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog (the Netflix movie catalog in OData format) Notice that the default XML namespace is the open standard ATOM Publishing Protocol Query for Movie People: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/People . Notice that the default XML namespace is the open standard ATOM XML format Double extra bonus...
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  • Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (6–Validation)

    One of the strengths of WCF RIA Services is in its capabilities around the application of common validation logic on both the client tier and the service tier. If I take the simplest route to create a new Silverlight+RIA Services project as in File | New Project; and then make sure that I “switch on” RIA Services; and then add a new Entity Data Model for my Northwind database to the generated web application project; generating that model from the database with just a couple of tables into it (Categories and Products); giving me a nice small model; and then basing a Domain Service on that model, using Visual Studio to add another new item (Domain Service class) into my web application project; and in the wizard that pops up to generate the skeleton bits of service-side code for me I enable editing for my Product entity set but not for my Category entity set and I also ask Visual Studio to generate metadata classes for me as in the dialog below; then, with all that done, Visual studio will generate for me service...

  • Silverlight and WebSockets

    I was intrigued by this post from Tomek which has links to a prototype of an application built with Silverlight but using WebSockets. It’s kind of interesting because running the application in IE9 gives me; now, the only bit of that application that’s actually Silverlight is the highlighted blue square which is providing a client side implementation of WebSockets to the browser based code which is just HTML/JS. If I run in Chrome I see; because Chrome has support for WebSockets already and so the sample switches out the Silverlight functionality. If you’ve not read about WebSockets then there’s a starter here and info on the protocol up here . If you’ve programmed with connected, TCP sockets then you know that the model is essentially; Server listens. Client connects. Connection stays open during lifetime of communication. Client and Server send stuff any time they like in a full-duplex manner. So, traditional sockets are great in that they allow full duplex comms such as when the server wants to notify the client...

  • “The Way of MEF”–UK Sessions with Glenn Block

    We were very lucky to have Glenn Block in the UK recently and he did a whole morning talking about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) to a fairly packed room of around 120 developers on the UK Microsoft Campus. I was really pleased to be able to host Glenn but I also wanted to get the sessions filmed so that we could share them with people who couldn’t make it on the day. But in all honesty we (Microsoft) can be pretty cheap around some of this stuff and I didn’t have any money to pay for filming. But then the sun shone on me and Ian Smith ( UK .NET contractor, Silverlight Outsider , film buff, etc ) saved the day by dropping me a mail saying something like “Hey, I’m coming along – do you want me to film it?”. Naturally, the answer was “Yes, please” and Ian did a great job. As an aside; Ian filmed the sessions for free in his own time with his own kit and did the post-editing work on them. He does a tonne of that kind of work for the UK developer community. Ian does a better job than any of the paid-for...

  • Visual Studio Solution Navigator

    From the Visual Studio blog, the “Solution Navigator” looks pretty cool… Update: I changed my mind on this. This is not just about the “Solution Navigator” which turns out to be very cool indeed and a far better way of navigating around your solution than the Solution Explorer. Solution Navigator but installing the Power Tools (which I must admit I haven’t done before) gives you so much more. It’s “Visual Studio 2010++” Now, one or two things I’m finding it hard to work with – specifically I’ve got very used to the way I type my brackets (braces) and the Power Tools are trying to be a bit too clever for my liking but I can turn stuff on/off so that’s fine; and I was a little suspicious at first of the “Searchable Add Reference” dialog but I’m starting to really like it; and I have no idea what you call this thing where I hover over a parameter; and it lets me do the “nav thing” right there on the tooltip; but it’s all very neat – I’d say if you haven’t got these installed into your Visual Studio 2010 then you...
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  • Debugging a “Silverlight Business Application” Out Of Browser

    If you’re using RIA Services then you might be using the “Silverlight Business Application” template which has an issue with out-of-browser debugging which causes it to throw an exception rather than start your debugging session properly. Fortunately, it’s an easy workaround documented below; “ Debugging an OOB Silverlight Business Application ”

  • 48 Best Free Software Downloads from Microsoft

    Just a quick call-out for a page I visit from time to time on TechRadar. “ 48 best free software downloads from Microsoft ” It’s been there a while but I had cause to revisit it today to find out more about the free “Learning Content Development System” which is something you might want to try if you put together online courses. I hadn’t seen it before and hence I went and revisited that page to see how it ranked up there. Of the 48 things listed here I use; Debugging Tools for Windows Process Monitor Virtual PC Process Explorer Expression Encoder (although I admit I’m on the paid for version of 4.0) pptPlex (although not very often) Desktops SharedView Visual Studio Express Editions Web Platform Installer Silverlight Naturally, you could argue for some other things to be in that list ( SQL Express? Windows Phone Tools? etc. ) but it’s a good resource nonetheless.
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  • WCF DataServices & the Processing Pipeline?

    I spent quite a lot of time with WCF Data Services (‘Astoria’/’ADO.NET Data Services’ as it was) in its first iteration. It’s a framework that I really like so I’m feeling a little guilty that I haven’t found time to completely revisit it as it becomes part of a ‘much bigger thing’ (i.e. OData ) and as it got rev’d in .NET 4.0 and (from a client perspective) Silverlight 4. I have been doing some of that revisiting in a piecemeal fashion though and there’s good material out there. For instance I came across articles such as Elisa’s and the main MSDN library page which give you enhancements such as; the DataServiceCollection<T> type on the client side to do a tonne of binding goodness and auto-change tracking server driven paging obtaining a total row count for an entity set either with the data or on its own as a separate piece of data client side projections (i.e. selecting just the columns of data that you want) more flexibility around how you plug in your server side data in order so that you can expose;...

  • OData Slides from the NxtGen User Group Festival

    I did a short session on the Open Data Protocol (OData) last week at the NxtGen User Group and I thought I’d share the slides here. There are quite a few builds/animations in that slide-deck so I’d suggest that downloading it will produce a better experience than viewing it on SlideShare.

  • A Sliver of Silverlight on ActiveTuts

    I’ve got a couple of little Silverlight tutorials up on the ActiveTuts site; for active followers of this blog and for folks that are heavily into Silverlight they’re possibly a bit on the introductory-end of the spectrum and I certainly don’t claim that they’re comprehensive in any way, shape or form – just me making some use of Silverlight 4, the Bing Maps control, Visual Studio 2010 and a little bit of Expression Blend 4 to put something together. I’m hoping to revisit with more explanation around some of the things that drop out of that tutorial if enough folks show interest in Silverlight on a site that’s about RIA but which is primarily (or entirely ) about Flash, ActionScript and Flex up until now so I’m very pleased to be able to put a little tiny sliver of Silverlight amongst those techs.

  • Whitepapers on the Parallel Computing Developer Centre

    The Parallel developer centre on MSDN has a growing number of whitepapers that are really worth delving into. I’d started reading this one ( it’s a big one but worthwhile ); Patterns for Parallel Programming- Understanding and Applying Parallel Patterns with the .NET Framework 4 before I’d realised that it had a whole bunch of attractive-looking friends as well; Parallel Programming in .NET 4- Coding Guidelines Debugging Task-Based Parallel Applications in Visual Studio 2010 Using Cancellation Support in .NET Framework 4 Parent-Child Task Relationships in the .NET Framework 4 .NET Matters- Aggregating Exceptions Performance Characteristics of New Synchronization Primitives in the .NET Framework 4 and then some perhaps more esoteric but, equally important/interesting ones – it’s not often you see the term “false sharing” appear in an MSDN article; Thread-safe Collections in .NET Framework 4 and Their Performance Characteristics .NET Matters- False Sharing but there’s a whole bunch more up at the developer centre...

  • Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (5–Authentication)

    It’s a fairly common requirement that a business service authenticates a client and it’s usually (at least) for the purpose of authorisation whereby we can control which users have access to an application or to some of its functionality. The two ways you usually go about it with a web site or web service are; integrated – i.e. let the web server do it via something like Basic Authentication, Digest Authentication, Windows Authentication. “forms” – i.e. the web server leaves the traffic well alone and something like ASP.NET steps in to make sure that each request carries an appropriate token (cookie) indicating that it has been authenticated. Unauthenticated traffic is usually redirected to a “login page” which harvests credentials and returns a suitable cookie to be replayed on subsequent requests. Usually, the former is done against credentials managed by Windows whereas the latter is done against credentials managed by the application itself (or by ASP.NET on its behalf). Where “forms” authentication can get...

  • Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Training in London (Paid)

    Just a quick link to the week of “Professional Scrum Developer Training” that’s being run by Adam Cogan and Martin Hinshelwood in the week of 26th July to 30th July. You can find the details on Martin’s blog here; Professional Scrum Developer Training and it looks like there’s still a 50% discount offer here and there’s a pretty detailed description of the content that’s delivered that week. Possibly see you there if I get a chance to come along

  • Virtual Desktop 101

    I really liked Ian’s post “ Virtual Desktop 101 ” – there are tonnes of implications in all this desktop virtualisaton technology for the client developer (particularly the client developer who’s expecting a decent graphics card and that is likely to include the HTML5 developer in the not-so-distant future).
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  • IE9 Platform Preview 3

    If you’ve not been and done the test-drive of IE9 yet then the 3rd preview version has just gone out and it’s really, really worth taking a look even if you’re an internet-denier like me who thinks all this HTML and Javascript stuff will never take off and that the world is just waiting to re-awaken to the power of RIAs and rich client applications. New in this preview? <audio> <video> <canvas> Web Open Font Format (WOFF) Click the picture to go and do the test-drive (this is for developers rather than end-users); If you’re following the whole RIA/rich client story then I think some of the IE demos will have specific interest to you such as Deep Zoom , IMDb Video Panorama , Web Fonts , Canvas Pad , Amazon Shelf , FishIE Tank . “Interesting times”
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(C) Mike Taulty, 2010. All rights reserved. The information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion. Inappropriate comments will be deleted at the authors discretion. All code samples are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.
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