public class MyApp
{
// Create a form as the parent for the Help window.
private Form m_HelpFormParent = new Form();
public MyApp()
{
// Enforce creation of a handle to the form
m_HelpFormParent.CreateControl();
}
public ShowHelp(string url, HelpNavigator command, object parameter)
{
// Call ShowHelp with the form created for this purpose as parent
Help.ShowHelp(HelpFormParent, url , command , parameter );
}
}
One of the best things I liked was the ability to test with the free version for a reasonble amount of time (like forever) with a only few limitations. In the meanwhile our team has grown over the 10 user limit restriction and we have bought the product since it serves it's purpose very well. And that for only € 440, which gives you the abaility to use Gemini with unlimited users and on an internet-facing server!
These features combined with the financial aspect, convinced me to give it a try. Therefore I grabbed an old machine with a clean Windows XP installation. The machine specifications where not typically high end, with it's Intel Pentium III running at 800 MHz and 512 MB of RAM. Only installing takes a lot of time, but using the Gemini application has no noticable delays running on this hardware!
How to get up and running with Gemini on this machine (quickly may not be the right word, since 800 MHz is not lightning fast ...):
Additional (optional) steps:
Last thing that I should really mention is the Gemini ScreenCapture application. This application allows a tester to quickly take a screenshot of the screen/window/user defined region and attach it to an existing issue. Before submitting it, the tester can something on the screenshot annotate with a pencil. This is really a cool feature that our testes use a lot.
WPF is officially released. The tooling however to create i.e. XAML pages is in a very early state. The tools available at the time of writing can be found at the bottom of this page under resources. Therefore the amount of time it needs to write a WPF enabled application takes roughly 3 times longer than it should take, because of minimal tooling support. However it can still make sense to develop a WPF application, i.e. when the requirements of the app can be far more easily covered by an application using WPF.
Why is WPF such a revolution in UI design? The last transistion of the UI was 20 year ago. Every UI up until now was based upon GDI, invented in 1984. WPF is build on top of DirectX, which is capable of using all the power of graphic cards that are available to those stunning games also.
Furtermore it is vector based, making it possible to zoom without loss of detail.
In an attempt to fill in the gap between the rich UI experience on with Windows Forms on the web, a subset of WPF will be created by Microsoft, which is currently known as WPF/e (the e stands for everywhere). Some features are missing, like i.e. 3D. But WPF/e does not require .NET 3.0. It's even platform independent. It therefore supports MAC and Linux also. WPF/e will be introduced before the end of 2007. It will be a serious competitor for the nowadays widely used Flash.
User interfaces can be specified by XAML files (pronounced "Zammel"). XAML is an XML file, that describes the user interface as an hierarchy of (visual) elements. XAML is a big step towards declarative programming- Decalre what you want, not how it happens.
Sampleviewer (installed with "Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0", currenlty a CTP) takes you around all the features of WPF one by one.
Differences between WPF and Windows Forms
Databinding:
XAML Based Application (XBAP) are WPF enabled applications which can be used within a browser.
Animation can consist of:
Styles can be applied on the fly trough code or to triggers (i.e. hovering a button).
Ink is enabled in WPF (on Windows XP, after installing appropriate libaries).
3D Rendering of surfaces
Types of events within the tree hierarchy of an WPF application
Tools for XAML:
Other resources:
Other blogs:
Examples of XAML Based Applications:
Next Generation Reading:
Rich UI Framework
Demo "Allscripts Patient Monitoring" shows WPF in Full power. It can be found at the PDC2005 page of Rob Relyea
"Power of Design, use design for better User Experience."
WPF is targetted to be used by 3 roles:
http://www.notstatic.com/
http://www.loveyoursoftware.com/
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What can be animated:
Why do you need animation? Animation fits the way the Human Brain works!
What technology should be chosen?
WPF Examples WPF Application Portofolio
Datatemplate is a piece of XAML (segments) that describes how te represent the data. Switching at runtime of datatemplate is possible!!!
Demo cancer application: www.interknowlogy.com
Demo (from Microsoft site): ExpenseIT, WPF/e demo, extension is .xbap
Demo Evolution Media Center
Demo UniveRSS A cool Reader!
Best reference book at the moment: WPF Unleashed
Windows forms is at it's end-of-life. It will not being taken very further more.
WPF is in the early stages and will be primarly focussed by Microsoft to improve.
On BIG teams a dedicated developer for creating designs.
Some answers to questions from the audience:
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ASP.Live track: Building a Custom Membership and Role Provider
It's posible to use all the standard ASP.NET controls for login, loginstatus and so forth by implementing your own Custom Membership Provider. By also implementing a Custom Role Provider even the ASP.NET Web Site Administration tool works for managing users and roles.
By default ASPNET.MDF contains the user info. However what to do if you already have a database with user and/or role info. The following figure shows that the Proider Model allows you to replace an existing default provider with your own one in order to accomplish this:
All "MemberShip Provider Properties" must be overriden.
What about Password protection:
4GuysFromRolla has a very good book about customizing the Membership with additional information for the user (like address, telephone, ...)
Role Provider Properties and Methods needs to be implemented (more needs to be implemented as with Membership Provider, but not all)
Web.config can exists per directory!
Microsoft provides an example provider: Introduction to the Provider Model on MSDN
Writing a Custom Membership Provider for the Login Control in ASP.NET 2.0, by Dina Fleet Berry
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Plain Old Windows Forms tricks:
The tricks being presented by Billy Hollis were:
All examples and sheets will be made available trough www.dotnetmasters.com/VSLifeSF.htm.
XSLT Debugger
Future XSD Designer (availble within "Orcas")
Features including:
Data Interaction - LINQ to Entities
Service Oriented Architectur (SOA) Design Patterns with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
When metadata is turned on then the WSDL. The URL of WSDL ends typically with <url>?WSDL. This returns the top document that has a hierarchy of other WSDL documents describing each method or property on the interface. These can be viewed trough url?WSDL=
Next to the WSDL an XSD schema is available also.
It's possible to extend (not change) the contract with an amendent. When a client uses an older proxy then the current service implements the response object has a filled ExtensionData element where the amendent can be found.
Breaking changes should be created within a new namespace. Nothing new here ...
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
All possibilities from gaming engines made available within the .NET Framework.
WPF can call on GPU tools:
Handles for windows nog longer exists. WPF renders controls within the main WPF window, which is the only window.
Since I have some experience with OpenSceneGraph, which is an excellent engine for 3D visualisation, I automatically compare WPF with the OSG. XAML is a declarative way of describing a scene, in some way this can be compared to a "scene graph" stored in an .OSG file. XAML however has the advantage that it can be verified against a scheme. I do not know whether both can be fully compared and hope to find that out within the next couple of days.
WPF uses style (wich can be compared to stateset in OSG???). Templates are more powerfull styles.
WPF uses scRGB values. -scRGB(0.5, 0.75,1.0).
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Use Patterns & Practices for setting up Windows Communication Foundation. Visual Studio integrated CTP does a bad job for any more complex than very simple configurations.
WCF can be used for any layer (or better tier) that you want to implement for your solution. WCF can be scaled up (network boundary) or down (appdomain cross) later on, i.e. by implementing another protocol.
WCF Gives you:
Directly addresses .ASMX (and general Web Service) deficiencies:
So use WCF instead of .NET Remoting or .ASMX Web Services. These last 2 are deprecated. WCF fully replaces them, and offers a lot of other options more.
One remark must be made that the full functionality of VSTO only works under VS 2005 Team System Edition. Some functionality will not work under VS 2005 Pro.
Database
Schema can be placed under source control trough the use of scripts. Every obejct within the database gets it's own script, like table, index and so on.
Developing a database project with Visual Studio looks very similar to devloping source code within a project. A live database can be imported and brought under source control. Check in and check out is very similar as with code. DBA Developers can change the database offline. When ready the DBA can review and update the live database.
Just renaming a field or so leads to "compile errors", because the field could be referenced. "Rename Refactoring" is capable of updating a field and all the places where it is referenced. This is very powerfull. This comes (optionally) with a "preview changes" dialog and it's also possible to use undo.
Database build, deployment and data generation can be integrated into MSBuild. Two types of deployments exist:
Unit testing is now available, so you're existing code does not break upon changes.
PowerTools will be distrubuted trough the web. These include:
ASP.NET
Brian Randall from MCWTech
"There is NO MAGIC to make your applications run faster"
Tools:
Tips:
Visual Studio Team Test lets you easily create repeatable tests, that can be adjusted to generate random requests to the ASP.NET page under test. These tests can be used within a load-test scenario. Performance counters help in determining where bottlenecks can be found.
N-Tier is not the same as N-Layer.
N-Layer is always good, especially to structure your code, which makes it maitainable. N-Tier involves a process-boundary, or even a network boundary. Therefore a tradeoff must be evaluated from the following:
Formula to calculate the Concurrent Transactions Per Second (ctps):
ctps = (NrOfUsers / UserThinkTime) * TransactionDuration
Split up Business Logic Layer in Client and Server.
In order to use business logic close to the UI for a rich UI feeling and close to the data layer for multi-object logic, one could split the business layer.
The splitted layer could be conneced using a DataPortal, which encapsulates the underlying mechanism (Remoting, WCF, Webservice, etc) of transfering the business objects from the client to the server and back. The DataPortal is an implementation of the Channel Adapter Design Pattern.
Using event and (binary) serialization.
Be careful with events and serialization, because you might serialize more than expected, depending on the serializer being used. Serializers that serialize (private) fields will also try to serialize the class that has an event subscription on the class, because it's referenced in the list of subscribers. 3 possibilities from here:
Solution for preventing the subscriber class from being serialized is to implement your own implementation of AddHandler, RemoveHandler and RaiseHandler.
The CSLA Framework.
"Rockford Lhotka’s CSLA .NET framework is an application development framework that reduces the cost of building and maintaining applications.
The framework enables the use of object-oriented design as the basis for creating powerful applications. Business objects based on the framework support many advanced features to simplify the creation of Windows Forms, Web Forms and Web Services interfaces." (copied from CSLA website)
The CSLA Framework combines (when needed) the best of object orientation and databinding, by providing a set of base-classes for objects that already common functionality for implementing IBindable.
Als it provides a method for defining Validation and Authorization rules. One can add (static) methods that add rules to a rules collection. For Authhorization each getter, setter and method must start with an additional call to a generic validation method to determine whether the current user may access the getter/setter/method in question. For Validation the setter must add an additional call to a generic validation method. Important here is that a "bad value" must be accepted and no exception may be thrown. The databindable components or errorprovider must examine an object to determine whether it has valid values for each property.
This framework could really enforce a jumpstart when implementing an object oriented design, that needs to be coupled preferably by standard .NET databinding.
LINQ, Language Integrated Query.
LINQ is a Microsoft Project that adds a native quering syntax to .NET Framework programming languages, therfore reducing the roughly 20 lines of code needed to fetch data back to 3 lines.
Additional CSLA resources:
