More Wally - Wallace B. McClure

Today's my birthday

wallym — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:26:00 GMT

Rock!

MonoDevelop on Mac, Windows, and Linux

wallym — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:00:00 GMT

I don't really care about Linux (jk), but MonoDevelop is working on my Mac and Windows. I've been playing with MonoDevelop on my Mac. The key is that MonoDevelop is running on Windows. Check it out at http://monodevelop.com/.

Wally

Getting it done and moving on

wallym — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:52:00 GMT

I'm always trying to learn something new, especially on the business side of a relationship. I came across this article:

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/IT-Management/Does-CIO-Behavior-Derail-Intentions-526614/

with this quote:

Unconscious Motivator No. 1 is all about “doing it right” and continuously improving. That’s a noble, lofty goal, but it’s largely at odds with ever-changing business priorities and demands, uncertain or conflicting business strategies, and a rise in short-term business focus that rewards speed over quality.

It really speaks to a lot of the heart of problems in IT. Very good article and something we can all work towards.

Why Microsoft is failing in Search

wallym — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:35:00 GMT

Microsoft is talking about search again. Last month, they were saying that their search results were just as good as google. Now, its Bing will save the day. It will do this, and this, and this....... Geez it sounds like a bunch of developers talking about features and the one with the more features win. No, that's not the answer. As we have learned, the one with the most features doesn't always win.

If Microsoft wants to be successful in search, it needs to start over. Their algorithms for search are wowfully inadequate compared to google. Why do I say this? Go do a search on Grand Rapis Day of .NET. The first three entries are my blog entries from 2008. You have to scroll down to see results that might mean something and most likely you have to go to the next page. Search Google and it brings back relevant information in the first page, and most likely the first few entries.

Build a good product and market it. People will find you. If you don't build a good product, people don't care about it. Search is the base product that brings visitors to a site. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that. Now, they've claim that they have gotten search right and are building on top of that. Seriously, I don't believe that. The search that I made above describes the problem. No one cares about the other features because Live.com search is not considered to be optimal compared to Google's search. How is Bing going to be better?

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET 4.0 Beta 1 on msdn downloads

wallym — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:47:00 GMT

Since no one else has said it, I will. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET 4.0 Beta 1 are on msdn for subscribers. Just stay off until my download is complete. ;-)

Why can't developers just get along.....................

wallym — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Its an interesting dynamic to watch developers attempt to talk to each other. Very rarely during the course of heated discussions is there any concept of reason or being polite to each other.

Now, let me be the first to say that this dynamic is not anything new, nor is this a dynamic that I have not done. Its not a new concept and I suspect will go on to the end of time. I've inadvertently(and occassionaly in the long past done this on purpose) done this myself, so I'm quite familiar with the problem.

Historical

I think that there is an interesting historical perspective to this. I think that there is value in discussion and the posting and discussion of ideas. The dark ages of the Catholic Church punishing anyone that disagreed with its teachings may be over, but that doesn't stop individuals from doing this. When one can not get some one over to their side through reason, publically deriding someone else is perfectly acceptable. Scientific discussions have had this for a long time. Fred Hoyle, while being one of our great thinkers, had no problem with this. While he has a great mind, he had no problem using public humiliation as a tool to convince others. Hoyle is the person that coined the term the "Big Bang" Theory as a derargatory term used against George Lamaitra and others that did not agree with Hoyle's Steady State Theory of the Universe. BTW, did you know that while Hoyle disagreed with the "Big Bang Theory" he did come up with NucleoSynthesis. 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

ASP.NET

I've watched this occur in development circles, but significantly in the past two years. A couple of years ago, I watched as this tide called ALT.NET seemed to take off. It had some very interesting ideas. Some that I believed in some that I did not, but I wanted to listen to it. I started reading in the mailing list and listened to one complaint after another. Personal arguments occurred and it just sounded like noise. I loved the idea of making developers more productive, but the idea seemed to degrade into "My Way is Right and your Way is Wrong." I had lunch with David Laribee last fall. David was widely credited with starting ALT.NET. We were talking and as expected the discussion turned towards ALT.NET. He just shook his head and lamented how he felt that the process he started was co-opted by those that could scream the loudest. I feel for you Dave!

Around the time of ALT.NET starting, MS's ASP.NET team started making builds of ASP.NET MVC available. When one looks at the features of MVC logically, it has some very good features to it and some interesting ideas. The ASP.NET team has said that MVC isn't really meant for those already doing webforms development, that its meant for those not currently on the ASP.NET platform. Its meant to entice them over so that they can be doing similar development on .NET. Now, I'm all for options, but the problem is that arguments have occurred over MVC vs. Webforms and its devolved into the typical technology "Jane you ignorant ***" discussion. I've inadvertently let myself step into it. Its a slippery slope. Now, I believe that ASP.NET Webforms has some good features. So does ASP.NET MVC. This has not stopped the world from trying to pick a winner and belittle the other side. Here's a quote from an article two weeks old:

Let's be clear, ASP.NET MVC is an improvement over WebForms - and those developers refusing to leverage ASP.NET MVC (or something else) for new projects are simply lazy. by Karl Seguin

Now, I don't blame Karl for a mean and evil quote. I'm sure that he is not a bad, mean, or evil person. However, that was a smear across all devs not doing what he claims is right. It doesn't sit right with a lot of people.

ORM

Object Relational Mapping is a technology used to allow developers to integrate client side objects with a data store. There are pluses and minues to using or not using it. The only examples that MS shows for integrating with the Windows Azure Table Storage are using LINQ, which is roughly an ORM. One day, on Twitter, I vented my frustration on LINQ/EF/ORM. Now, Twitter doesn't allow people to fully explain what is going on. Its limited to 140 characters. Response ranged from supportive to I was an idiot for using LINQ/EF and not using NHibernate, this inspite of the fact that there was no NHibernate support for Azure Storage at that time.

What the users want?

Your users want X. My users want Y. X & Y may not match up 100% or at all. Users have and need something different, each one of them. I work primarily in the consulting world. In it, I've got a defined set of users. The public internet is different. You've all kinds of users. Heck, do they even speak the same language as you? Do you have a lot of code that works already? Customers have different needs. Some don't mind buying more hardware to solve a problem. Some do. It just depends. This is a mistake that I've made over the past. A couple of months ago, a discusison occurred at ASPInsiders about ORM. I tried to share the info about what my customers needed and thus my view on ORM. I was rebuffed for not being "with the times." I was pointing out that my customers need the fastest solution possible. The reason is that getting servers into their data center takes a long time and is not something that can be done lightly. For others, this isn't a problem.

What am I suggesting?

Coming from a still reforming pita, I suggest that we learn a little more respect for others. Don't just blurt out something based on an assumption about someone's intent. Don't assume that your answer is right and someone else's is wrong. Webforms and MVC both have a place. ORM and direct Sql/Sprocs have a place in a solution. Other technologies have pluses and minuses.

Personal Note: I've been working with ASP.NET 4 AJAX and am really impressed. I'm moving towards AJAX style UIs with data served up over web services and efficient libraries helping me work with the DOM. I'm thinking the best thing to do is to minimize the the amount of this code behind (webforms and mvc stuff). Does it work for everyone? Absolutely not! Heck, it may not even pan out to be a good idea. BTW, I've been reading through the Wrox book on jQuery and CSS by Richard York. Its very helpful and something I really like.

Suggestion

Here are a few suggestions:

Don't get too hung up in the technology. Technologies come and go. They solve problems that we are already having. They typically don't solve forward looking problems.
Realize that just because you don't agree with someone on a particular subject doesn't mean that they don't have good ideas. For example, I don't agree with some ideas that I have read online and have started talking about this more. Does it mean that these people are wrong all the time? Absolutely not. People think I hate some of these groups that I have written about earlier this year. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not agree with these groups all the time. Since I have talked about my dislikes in the past, let's focus on the likes right now.

ALT.NET. Who could disagree with the goal of improving development and learning new ideas? We should always be learning new things and open to new ways of doing something better.
Performance. Performance is important, but only to the extent that the user notices. Don't sweat everything.
Customer Focus. Joel Spolsky's attention to customer experienece is something that I wish I had. I fight for the customers, but his focus is legendary!

Remember that there are other things that drive people. Some folks have lives outside of technology.
The perfect technology does not exist. There are merely some that are better suited to specific uses than others.

What did you do the last time someone called you?

ASP.NET Podcast Show #140 - ASP.NET 4.0 Ajax Databinding

wallym — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Original Url: http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2009/04/28/asp-net-podcast-show-140-asp-net-4-0-ajax-databinding.aspx

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Show Notes:

First in a series of videos on an app I am creating that runs on Windows Azure.
Would you like to be involved in the app? If so, contact me through Email at wbm [at] wallym dot com or Twitter @wbm.
This is a preview, things will change. link: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=24645
ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX Setup.
Running Application.
Some javascript regex from Simon Whatley. http://www.simonwhatley.co.uk/
Pseudo Columns.

$index.
$dataItem.

Databinding and Caching. Its probably better to chain the requests instead of running them in parallel, which is what my code allows to happen.
Upcoming Events:

INETA Live Webcasts with Rachel Appel and Steven Andrews.
geekSpeak with Jennifer Marsman and Glen Gordon.
TechEd - I won't be there, but it will be great.
State of Indiana Tour in June with INETA.

Ft. Wayne.
South Bend.
Evansville.

CodeStock in June.
devLink in August.

PS. I started getting sick about 5-10 minutes into the show, so if I sound somewhat confusing after that, I apologize.

Source Code:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPage.Master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Content.aspx.cs" Inherits="TwitterApp.Content" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="head" runat="server">

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server">

<asp:ScriptManager ID="sm" runat="server">

<asp:ScriptReference ScriptMode="Inherit" Name="MicrosoftAjax.js" Path="~/js/MicrosoftAjax.js" />

<asp:ScriptReference ScriptMode="Inherit" Path="~/js/MicrosoftAjaxAdoNet.js" />

<asp:ScriptReference ScriptMode="Inherit" Path="~/js/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js" />

</Scripts>

<asp:ServiceReference Path="~/TwitterService.svc" />

</Services>

</asp:ScriptManager>

<asp:TextBox ID="Status" runat="server"

TextMode="MultiLine" Rows="2" Columns="70" /><br />

<input type="button" ID="btnSubmit"

onclick="SubmitStatus()" value="Submit Status" />

var userName = "More_Wally";

function SubmitStatus() {

var Status = $get('<%=Status.ClientID %>');

var userStatus = Status.value;

Status.value = "";

TwitterService.SubmitUserStatus(userName, userStatus,

TwitterPostCallBack);

}

function TwitterPostCallBack(result) {

TwitterService.GetUserTimeLine(userName,

TwitterServiceCallBack, TwitterServiceFailure);

}

var dv;

function pageLoad() {

var tblS = $get("tblStatus");

var uiElement = $get("twitterFriendsTimeLineListView");

dv = new Sys.UI.DataView(uiElement);

dv.add_itemCreated(fillExtra);

dv.initialize();

TwitterService.GetFriends(userName, StoreFriendsCallBack);

TwitterService.GetUserTimeLine(userName, TwitterServiceCallBack, TwitterServiceFailure);

}

var dd;

function StoreFriendsCallBack(result) {

dd = result;

}

function TwitterServiceCallBack(result) {

dv.set_data(result);

//dv.updated();

//tblStatus.style.visibility = "visible";

}

function FriendsCallBack(result, userCtx) {

dd = result;

DisplaySelect(dd, userCtx);

}

function DisplaySelect(data, userCtx) {

var i;

var opt;

var sel = $get("to" + userCtx.index);

sel.options.add(new Option("", ""));

for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {

opt = new Option(data[i].name, data[i].screen_name);

sel.options.add(opt);

}

var i = 0;

function fillExtra(sender, Args) {

var ctx = Args.get_templateContext();

var dt = Args.get_dataItem();

var strOut = "";

var strReturn = "<br />";

var Out = $get("Output");

var userCtx =

{

index: ctx.index

}

if (i == 0) {

strOut = "ctx<br />";

for (m in ctx) {

strOut += m + strReturn;

}

strOut += "<br/>ctx.nodes[0]<br />";

for (m in ctx.nodes[0]) {

strOut += m + strReturn;

}

strOut += "<br/>Data Item:<br />";

for (m in dt) {

strOut += m + strReturn;

}

Out.innerHTML = strOut;

}

i++;

if (dd == null) {

TwitterService.GetFriends("More_Wally", FriendsCallBack, null, userCtx);

}

else {

DisplaySelect(dd, userCtx);

}

function TwitterServiceFailure(result) {

alert("An error occurred");

}

function IterateDV() {

var count = dv.get_items().length;

var rw = "";

var controlId;

var ctx = dv.get_templateContext()

for (i = 0; i < count; i++) {

if (i == 0) {

//rw = dv.get_items()[i].elements[0].childNodes[2].childNodes[0].innerHTML;

rw = $get("Number" + i).innerHTML;

}

else {

rw += "," + $get("Number" + i).innerHTML;

}

alert(rw);

}

function SendMessage(i) {

var userName = "More_Wally";

var sendTo = $get("to" + i).value;

var userStatus = $get("message" + i).value;

TwitterService.DMSend(userName, sendTo, userStatus,

TwitterPostCallBack, TwitterServiceFailure);

}

String.prototype.parseURL = function() {

var URL = /[A-Za-z]+:\/\/[A-Za-z0-9-_]+\.[A-Za-z0-9-_:%&\?\/.=]+/;

var matches = this.match(URL);

var stringToReplace = this;

while (matches != null ) {

var m = matches[0];

var url = "<a href='" + m + "'>" + m + "</a>";

stringToReplace = stringToReplace.replace(m, url);

matches = stringToReplace.substring(stringToReplace.indexOf(url) +

url.length).match(URL);

}

return (stringToReplace);

};

String.prototype.parseUsername = function() {

var userName = /[@]+[A-Za-z0-9-_]+/;

var matches = this.match(userName);

var stringToReplace = this;

while ( matches != null ) {

var m = matches[0];

var finalMatch = m.replace("@", "");

var url = "<a href='http://twitter.com/" + finalMatch + "' target='_new'>" + m + "</a>";

stringToReplace = stringToReplace.replace(m, url);

matches = stringToReplace.substring(stringToReplace.indexOf(url) + url.length).match(userName);

};

return (stringToReplace);

};

String.prototype.parseHashtag = function() {

var hashTag = /[#]+[A-Za-z0-9-_]+/;

var matches = this.match(hashTag);

var stringToReplace = this;

while (matches != null) {

var m = matches[0];

var finalMatch = m.replace("#", "%23");

var url = "<a href='http://search.twitter.com/search?q=" + finalMatch +

"' target='_new'>" + m + "</a>";

stringToReplace = stringToReplace.replace(m, url);

matches = stringToReplace.substring(stringToReplace.indexOf(url) +

url.length).match(hashTag);

};

return (stringToReplace);

};

</script>

<input type="button" id="btnIterate"

value="Iterate" onclick="IterateDV()" />

<table>

<td>

<thead>

<tr>

<th>

User Name

</th>

<th>

Status

</th>

<th>

Number

</th>

</tr>

</thead>

<tbody id="twitterFriendsTimeLineListView"

class="sys-template" >

<tr>

{{UserName}}<br />

</span>

</td>

</td>

<td>

<div sys:id="{{ 'Number' + $index }}">{{ $index }}</div>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>

</td>

<td>

<input type="button" sys:id="{{ 'btn' + $index }}"

value="Send a direct message" onclick="{{ 'SendMessage(' + $index + ')' }}" />

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

2 way data binding<br />

{ binding Status }<br />

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<div code:before="if (i != 19) {" code:after="}">break</div>

</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

</td>

<td>

</div>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</asp:Content>

Images:

Binding Links with ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX

wallym — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:15:00 GMT

I'm working on binding data from twitter into a grid with ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX in my Windows Azure application. One thing I need to do is to create bound links. Off the top of my head, I'd just use an <a href='url/{{ link }}'>........</a> Well, that wasn't the right thing. I looked at my example and started thinking about what was happening. The piece that I started thinking about more was the sys:attribute="......" type syntax. I started thinking that this was how to bind data to an attribute in a tag. I tried <a sys:href="{{ 'url' + link }}">.......</a>. Low and behold, the sytax I tried worked. I was getting links that worked.

ASP.NET Podcast Show #139 - David Penton and Pat Helland on Cloud Computing - audio

wallym — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

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Original Url: http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2009/04/01/asp-net-podcast-show-139-david-penton-and-pat-helland-audio.aspx

Show Notes:

Pat Helland: http://blogs.msdn.com/pathelland/
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft SQL Server (architecture team): http://www.microsoft.com/SQL/default.mspx
Tandem Computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers
NonStop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop_SQL
Microsoft Azure: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/
HAL Computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Computer_Systems
Google AppEngine: http://code.google.com/appengine/
Amazon EC2: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
Electricity Rate Comparison by State: http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/115.htm
Above the Clouds: http://berkeleyclouds.blogspot.com/2009/02/above-clouds-released.html
Azure Cloud Computing Forums for getting an application up and going: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazure/threads

Codestock Session Submissions

wallym — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:47:00 GMT

If you are not familiar with it, CodeStock is June 26-27 in Knoxville, TN. If you have not submitted your talk, do so now. Run, don't walk over to http://www.codestock.org/Speakers.aspx and submit your session. Session submissions are due by the end of today (March 31).

More things that I have learned with Azure

wallym — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:30:00 GMT

I've been working on this application to run on Windows Azure. I wanted to share a few things that I have learned. I'm not sure if I have missed these being covered else where, but I want to bring them up here for my own knowledge. I find that I remember things much better if I blog them than if I put them on twitter.

Resource not found for the segment 'ObjectTableName." Steve Smith has a good blog post on this at http://stevesmithblog.com/blog/azure-table-storage-gotcha/. I got this message, followed Steve's instructions and bang, still go the message. WTF is that about! Anyway, I found that I had to reset the table storage through the azure development storage applet and then recreate the tables from the objects in Visual Studio. Once I did that, things seemed to work better. Yippee!
Another note, that you can get this error when you operate on a LINQ query that returns no objects.
I was running queries that were not returning any data. WTF is that about! Then it hit me, LINQ doesn't return data until you actually ask for that data. I need to force LINQ to send me some data in some situations. How can I force this to occur? I saw that some of my queries were returning data and some were not. I started playing around and found that if I called .ToList<T>() after my query that the data always came back to me. I figure that was a step in the right direction.
Azure Development Tools use Sql Server Express on the local development machine to store data during development. I decided to look and see what is happening. Guess what, you can connect up and see your data just like you thought you could in any application. Also, you can use Sql Server tools to see WTF is going on. I used that to figure out the issue above.
DateTime.Now vs. DateTime.UtcNow. Have you used DateTime.Now in an Azure query? It works just fine when you are running in the local development fabric. Deployed to the azure hosted fabric and I got an error. You can't quite connect VS.NET to the hosted fabric to see what is going on. After lots of testing, I changed the query I was doing to use DateTime.UtcNow and low and behold my app started posting messages to twitter from the hosted fabric.

eTag error in Windows Azure

wallym — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Have you gotten this type of error in Windows Azure:

Since entity type 'ObjectName' has one or more etag properties, If-Match HTTP header must be specified for DELETE operations on this type.

If so, the fix is really simple. The problem is that you have created a new object and are trying to stuff it back into your entities.

My code to resolve this looks like this:

        public void TwitterEntryDelete(string PartKey, string RowKey)
        {
            TwitterEntry te = new TwitterEntry()
            {
                PartitionKey = PartKey,
                RowKey = RowKey
            };
            AttachTo("TwitterEntries", te, "*"); // <-- The final parameter is the key to solving the problem. You need to tell EF to disregard where this object came from and to put the object into the collection.
            DeleteObject(te);
            SaveChanges();
        }

By disregarding where the object came from, we can go ahead and tell the system to put the object in our collection(attach) and then operate on the object.

More reminders / gotchas from the trenches with Azure

wallym — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:00:00 GMT

I've been working on setting up my VPC for Azure's March CTP. This is a fresh install. I had everything installed. Here are a couple of gotchas that you have to remember:

SqlExpress needs to be running. I had the .\SqlExpress service turned off in my archived vpc. With the service off, the dev tools can't see the database service so they fail.
A database can be setup by right clicking on your cloud service and selecting "Create Test Storage Tables."
With a new installation, windows communication foundation (WCF) is most likely not setup. You may need to setup calls to WCF. To setup WCF, you may need to login as an Administrator and run "ServiceModelReg -i"

ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX - Caching Data on the client

wallym — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:00:00 GMT

One of the interesting new objects in ASP.NET 4.0 AJAX is the DataView. its a client side object which is associated with a display tag of some type. In my examples, I've been using a table. I assume it could be anything. One of the features of the DataView is the ability to call an event each time a record is bound to the DataView. This is similar in concept to the server side asp.net grids which have the OnRowDataBound events (or similarly named). One of the common scenarios that I see is to have a drop down list box inside of a record. This could represent typically anything. As I was working through the DataView, I thought about some type of efficient way to cache the data. In my scenario, the data is constant across the rows, so caching it is fairly easy. Anyway, here goes:

I call the method to get my data first before doing anything else in my page load client side event:
TwitterService.GetFriends(userName, StoreFriendsCallBack);
TwitterService.GetUserTimeLine(userName, TwitterServiceCallBack, TwitterServiceFailure);
In side of my StoreFriendsCallBack method, all I do is store my data to a global js variable I call dd.
    function StoreFriendsCallBack(result) {
        dd = result;
    }
Finally, I test to see if my dd (dropdown) object has any data or not. If it has data, I use it, if not, then I go ahead and call back to the server to get my data.
        if (dd == null) {
            TwitterService.GetFriends("More_Wally", FriendsCallBack, null, userCtx);
        }
        else {
            DisplaySelect(dd, userCtx);
        }

ASP.NET 4.0 Preview 4 works fine in other browsers

wallym — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:45:00 GMT

When I first worked with the original ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX, some folks told me that it only worked with IE, which was wrong then. I decided to take a look at ASP.NET 4.0 Preview 4 in Chrome and Firefox. I looked at my an example dataview i'm working with in my azure application. Low and behold, it looked the same in IE8, Firefox 3, and Chrome 2 beta. Here's a display of all of them.

IE8:

Firefox 3:

Chrome 2 beta:

There may be something that doesn't work right outside of IE, but I haven't seen it so far.