Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.: The Blog

Beantown .NET meeting on Thursday, 2/11/2010: Rjae Easton, "Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers"

Benjamin Day — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:53:07 GMT

Beantown .NET is going to be meeting next Thursday, 2/11/2010. This month we have Rjae Easton presenting “Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers”.

As always, our meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers – better yet, bring your boss. It is not required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by email by 3pm on the day of the meeting to help speed your way through building security and to give us an idea how much pizza to order.

Future meetings:

- March 4 – James Phillips, Entity Framework, WCF, & Unit Testing

- April 1 – TBA

- May 6 – TBA

-Ben

When: Thursday, 2/11/10, 6p – 8p

Where:

Microsoft NERD

1 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA

Directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx

Parking: Paid parking is available in 1 Memorial Drive.

Title: Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers

Abstract:

So here’s the question: if Moore’s law is indeed bounded by quantum tunneling, then how the heck are we supposed to produce higher performing and more scalable systems. Well, the answer is upon is: put more and more processors into our systems. Multi-core systems are now ubiquitous and some projections talk about 64 to 128 cores as commonplace on the server in the very near future.

But that’s not a complete solution, is it? Until we write software to harness multiple cores, we are bounded by the speed of a single processor and a single unit of work. This presentation is about how use parallelism constructs in .NET Framework 4.0 to produce truly concurrent processing. We will test the differences between unbounded threading and work-stealing thread pools, see how to partition compute-bound operations by structure and by data, and examine synchronization and exception handling in a parallel programming model.

There’s going to be lots of code, mostly code, so if you would rather see bar graphs and theory this is not the talk for you.

Bio:

Rjae has been a software developer for 23 years now, but still gets carded. He has had many opportunities to manage, but has eschewed them all because somebody has to write the code. Rjae is methodology agnostic and prefers to focus on three practices: free-flowing communication, test-driven development, and cleaning code every single day.

Rjae works with a network other Zen programmers to provide solutions for finance, healthcare, and various other industries. He is currently writing a book titled: Test Driven Development Zen.

Windows Azure Sample Code – A Real Application

Benjamin Day — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:45:21 GMT

We here at Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc have been working on creating a training course for Windows Azure. Rather than just showing the students how to do basic skills and coding with Windows Azure and Azure Storage, I wanted to be able to make some architectural recommendations and be able to describe the best practices for not just coding but also unit testing. (Just because Windows Azure is a new technology doesn’t mean that developers should ignore known and established best practices, right?) So, this pretty much meant that we had to write a real application.

What we wrote was a content management system to run and maintain a web site. Download the source code.

I’ll be writing more about this code (hopefully) over the next few months.

Here are some of the goals for the application:

unit testing & testability
use Windows Azure Storage as the back-end
use the Repository pattern to encapsulate the data access logic for maintenance and testability purposes
use the Domain Model and Service Layer patterns for business logic
use Domain Model objects that require complex saves across table storage and blob storage
implement lazy loading for properties on the domain model objects in a medium-trust environment
use Model-View-Presenter in the ASP.NET presentation tier
re-usable storage logic using C# generics
Forms Authentication security using the sample Membership and Role providers
Dependency Injection using Unity with Windows Azure
Access Windows Azure Storage from outside of a hosted Windows Azure application role

There are two projects that you need to know about in the sample code: Benday.Cms.CloudService and Benday.Cms.Security.WpfUi. The CloudService project governs all the role-based code. The WpfUi has all the initialization logic for storage and allows you to set up an administrator user and create test content for the web site.

When you start the CloudService project, it will start up the Azure WebRole for the web site. This is the Benday.Cms.WebUI project. Once you have used the WpfUi application to add an administrator, you can log in to the administrator web site by going to http://localhost:81/administrator. The default username is administrator and the default password is P@$$w0rd. If you’ve used WpfUi to create test content, you’ll be dropped in to the Folder List screen and you should see 3 content folders for the website.

Click on the folders to view the pages, links, and files contained in that folder.

I hope you learn something from our code and let me know if you have any problems or suggestions.

Download the source code.

-Ben

-- Looking for Windows Azure training? Need help getting going with Windows Azure? Want some architectural guidance? Drop us a line at info@benday.com and be sure to check out the course description for our upcoming Windows Azure Application Architecture & Development course!

Beantown .NET Meeting on Thursday, 1/7/2010: Jason Haley, Windows Azure SDK

Benjamin Day — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:57:45 GMT

Beantown .NET is going to be meeting on Thursday, 1/7/2010. This month we have Jason Haley presenting “Get Started with the Windows Azure SDK”.

As always, our meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers – better yet, bring your boss. It is not required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by 3pm on the day of the meeting to help speed your way through building security and to give us an idea how much pizza to order. Click here to RSVP.

Future meetings:
- February 11 – Rjae Easton, “Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers”
- March 4 – TBA
- April 1 – TBA

When: Thursday, 11/5/09, 6p – 8p
Where:
Microsoft NERD
1 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA
Directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx
Parking: Paid parking is available in 1 Memorial Drive.

Title: Get Started with the Windows Azure SDK

Abstract:
In this session, we will cover what a .Net developer needs to know to get started with the Windows Azure SDK. We will spend some time digging into the samples provided by Microsoft and discuss some ways to help you “get up to speed” with Azure quickly.

Bio:
Jason Haley is a local Independent consultant who specializes in Microsoft technologies and lately has been spending a lot of time getting to know Windows Azure. He has also been a member of the Beantown.Net user group since it started in July 2004. http://www.jasonhaley.com/

Beantown/Boston Azure Meeting on Thursday, 12/3/2009: Michael Stiefel on Azure

Benjamin Day — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:58:55 GMT

Beantown .NET will be meeting on Thursday, 12/3/2009. We’ve had a minor change in plans and this month we’ll be joining forces with the new Boston Azure User Group http://bostonazure.org/. (Don’t worry. We’re working to reschedule Bill Heys’ branching and merging talk for another month.) This month the speakers will be Mike Werner and Michael Stiefel discussing recent developments from Microsoft coming out of PDC with an emphasis on what’s happening in Azure.

As always, our meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers – better yet, bring your boss. It is not required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by 3pm on the day of the meeting to help speed your way through building security and give us an idea how much pizza to order. Click here to RSVP.

Since we’re joining forces with the Boston Azure User Group, we’re going to be meeting on a slightly different schedule.

- 6:00pm -- Azure videos from PDC
- 6:30pm – Pizza
- 7:00pm – Mike Werner & Michael Stiefel
- 8:45pm – Wrap up

Future meetings:
- January 7 – TBA
- February 11 – Rjae Easton, “Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers”
- March 4 – TBA

-Ben

Title:
What happened at PDC & What’s up with Azure?
When: Thursday, 12/3/09, 6p – 8:45p
Where:
Microsoft NERD
1 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA
Directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx
Parking: Paid parking is available in 1 Memorial Drive.

Updated Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 Install Guide – Now with Virtual Lab Management

Benjamin Day — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:55:08 GMT

A few weeks ago, I published v0.1 of our Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 installation guide. Since then, we’ve fixed a few bugs and added a walk-through for installing Team Foundation Server 2010 Virtual Lab Manager.

There are definitely more bugs to be found. If you find bugs or run in to problems with your installation of TFS2010 or TFS Virtual Lab Management 2010, please tell us.

Click here to download the updated TFS2010 & Lab Management installation guide.

-Ben

--- Looking for help getting prepared for Team Foundation Server 2010 and Visual Studio Ultimate 2010? Want guidance on how to leverage the best practice and application lifecycle management (ALM) tools and features of Visual Studio Ultimate 2010? Drop us a line at info@benday.com.

Hook Visual Studio Web Tests in to TFS Team Build

Benjamin Day — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:57:45 GMT

SearchWinDevelopment.com has posted another of my Team System “tips” on their site. This one walks you through running Visual Studio Web Tests from a Team Build.

Run Visual Studio Web Tests from a Team Foundation Server Build
By Ben Day
13 Nov 2009 | SearchWinDevelopment.com

One of the great features of Visual Studio 2008 is the ability to test Web applications using Web Tests. Web Tests allow you to record a user's path through a running Web application and turn these actions into an automated test that Visual Studio can later run against subsequent builds of your application. They're immensely helpful for quickly validating Web application builds to see if your application is working properly. The idea is that you record your use cases as Web Tests and then Visual Studio can QA your application for you. This eliminates a lot of tedious manual testing and can greatly speed up your testing cycles.

Here’s the link to the complete article.
Here’s a link to download the source code.

-Ben

--Looking for training, consulting, or coaching on Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server 2008 & 2010, and Visual Studio Ultimate 2010? Drop us a line at info@benday.com for more information.

Incorporate Windows Azure unit tests in to TFS Team Builds

Benjamin Day — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:41:32 GMT

I’ve started writing “tips” for SearchWinDevelopment.com on Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and Unit Testing. Look for them to trickle out over the next few months.

They’ve posted one that I wrote about making Team Foundation Server Builds work with Windows Azure project. It’s easy enough to compile Windows Azure projects from Team Build but if you’ve written unit tests that use Windows Azure Storage, you need to do some extra work. The basic gist is this:

1. Run the Team Build Service in interactive mode
2. After compiling your code and before the unit tests execute, run DevTableGen.exe to initializes your local storage database
3. Start DevelopmentStorage.exe so that your Azure Storage development endpoints are running
4. Run your unit tests

Build and unit test Windows Azure projects from TFS Team Build
by Ben Day
13 Nov 2009 | SearchWinDevelopment.com

One of the great things about Windows Azure is that you can leverage a lot of your existing skills to write cloud-based applications. Want to run ASP.NET applications? No problem. Want to do WCF? Works fine. Windows Azure let's you write and run highly scalable and highly available applications. But what good is a highly scalable Web application if the Web site scales like crazy but the database is super slow? The answer is 'no good at all' and that's why we have the options of Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure. For this article, we'll focus on Windows Azure Storage.

Windows Azure Storage is a fast, scalable, and reliable storage solution for your Windows Azure applications. With the Windows Azure SDK, you get a version of Azure's cloud server and cloud storage that run on your desktop – DevFabric.exe and DevelopmentStorage.exe, respectively.

Now, just because you're running your applications in the cloud, there's no excuse for not unit testing your application. Arguably, since Windows Azure doesn't allow you to debug your application running on their cloud servers, you almost need unit tests in your development environment even more to make sure that you're catching your errors before you deploy out to the cloud.

Here’s a link to the full article.

Here’s a link to download the Team Build script source code for the article.

-Ben

-- Looking for training on Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage? Our Windows Azure Architecture & Development course will be available in February of 2010. Drop us a line at info@benday.com for more information.

Beantown .NET User Group Meeting on 11/5/2009: 4 Short Talks on Developer Utilities

Benjamin Day — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:26:40 GMT

Beantown .NET is going to be meeting on Thursday, 11/5/2009. This month we’ll be doing 4 short topics about 4 different development utilities presented by Beantown members.

The talks will be:

· Nick Parker on JetBrains’ dotTrace Code Profiler
· Shaun Avery on Firebug
· Jason Haley on PowerCommands for Reflector
· Ben Day (me) on CodeRush & Refactor Pro

As always, our meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers – better yet, bring your boss. It is not required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by 3pm on the day of the meeting to help speed your way through building security and give us an idea how much pizza to order. Click here to RSVP.

Future meetings:

- December 3 – Bill Heys, “Branching & Merging Best Practices”
- January 7 – TBA
- February 11 – Rjae Easton, “Parallelism Zen for .NET Developers”

-Ben

When: Thursday, 11/5/09, 6p – 8p

Where:
Microsoft NERD
1 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA

Directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com/About/Directions/tabid/89/Default.aspx

Parking: Paid parking is available in 1 Memorial Drive.

Add a Footer Row to a Silverlight 3 DataGrid

Benjamin Day — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:08:55 GMT

A missing feature in the Silverlight 3 DataGrid is the ability to add a footer row. For example, if you were trying to create a timesheet application using Silverlight, you’d want to be able to show the total number of hours for each day as shown in the image below.

The solution that I came up with is slightly hack-y but definitely works. Rather than relying on the DataGrid to provide a footer, create your own UserControl that snaps a footer row on to the bottom of the grid using a StackPanel.

<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
    <data:DataGrid x:Name="m_grid"
            DataContext="{Binding Mode=OneWay}"
            ItemsSource="{Binding Weeks, Mode=TwoWay}"
            HeadersVisibility="Column" GridLinesVisibility="All"
            AutoGenerateColumns="False" LayoutUpdated="m_grid_LayoutUpdated" >
        <data:DataGrid.Columns>
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Task.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Project Name"/>
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Monday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Monday"/>
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Tuesday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Tuesday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Wednesday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Wednesday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Thursday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Thursday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Friday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Friday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Saturday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Saturday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Sunday.Value, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Sunday" />
            <data:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding TotalHours, Mode=TwoWay}" Header="Total Hours" />
        </data:DataGrid.Columns>
    </data:DataGrid>
    <Grid HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Top" x:Name="m_gridFooter">
        <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <ColumnDefinition />
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
            <ColumnDefinition/>
        </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="0" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="Totals" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="1" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding MondayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="2" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding TuesdayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="3" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding WednesdayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="4" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding ThursdayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="5" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding FridayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="6" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding SaturdayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="7" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding SundayTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
        <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Grid.Column="8" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                 Text="{Binding GrandTotal, Mode=OneWay}" Padding="5,0,0,0" FontWeight="Bold"/>
    </Grid>
</StackPanel>

Ok. So what do you do when the DataGrid’s columns get re-sized? Basically, how do you keep the footer cells aligned and sized to match the columns in the DataGrid? The answer is pretty easy. Once you have the DataGrid and the supporting footer controls added to the StackPanel, you can create an event handler that attaches to the DataGrid’s LayoutUpdated event so that you can keep the footer columns. Whenever the LayoutUpdated event fires, iterate over the columns in the DataGrid and set the corresponding footer cell control width to the same value.

private void SyncColumnWidths(DataGrid source, Grid target)
{
    if (source == null || target == null)
    {
        return;
    }

    if (target.ColumnDefinitions.Count == source.Columns.Count)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < target.ColumnDefinitions.Count; i++)
        {
            target.ColumnDefinitions[i].Width = new GridLength(source.Columns[i].ActualWidth);
        }
    }
}

Click here to view a running online sample.
Click here to download the source code.

-Ben

ITNAmerica / Microsoft Software + Services Case Study (plus Team Foundation Server)

Benjamin Day — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:16:16 GMT

One of my clients just got featured in a Microsoft case study about Software + Services. ITNAmerica is based in Portland, Maine and provides flexible transportation options for seniors who are no longer able to drive. The Microsoft case study features the scalability and flexibility features of ITN’s SOA-based architecture and their success with Microsoft’s development tools such as .NET, WCF, Visual Studio Team System, and Team Foundation Server.

I feel very lucky that I got the opportunity to help them out with their TFS and VSTS implementation and to later help them write their applications and assist with their software architecture. Projects and companies like this don’t come around every day.

Click here to view the case study.

-Ben