Tafiti

Check the implementation of cool Silverlight application here - http://www.tafiti.com/
Cheers - Dipesh

Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Scott Hanselman has compiled a great list of .net tools a Developer must have...

It includes few of the ASP.NET Must Haves and Visual Studio add in's like -
UrlRewriting.NET - An open source URL rewriter, implemented as an HttpModule.
Web Development Helper - that allows ASP.NET 2.0 built into a Browser Toolbar.
Blinq - A tool for generating ASP.NET websites for displaying, creating, and manipulating data based on database schema.....and many more Visual studio add in's.

Check for details at his site at: http://www.hanselman.com/tools

Happy programming!

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and Silverlight RC1...this Friday!

Microsoft announced the availability today of the second beta version of its upcoming Visual Studio 2008 developer tools and the last version of its Silverlight rich media software code before the final version ships.

The second version of VS 2008, which is still scheduled to ship before the end of the year, includes a Silverlight add-in that allows developers to start building Silverlight rich Internet applications in VS 2008 and work with designer colleagues using the new Expression Web design tool, Microsoft said. With this beta release, VS 2008 is 99% complete, according to a Microsoft spokeswoman.

Scott Guthrie, general manager of Microsoft's developer division, noted in a blog post yesterday that one of the biggest features Web developers will discover in this beta version of VS 2008 is a "dramatically improved HTML designer" and rich Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support. VS 2008 now uses the same Web designer that ships with Microsoft's new Expression Web design tool, he added.

"In addition to providing lots of new functionality, you'll also find that this Web designer is much faster than the VS 2005 version (which was based on a much older code base)," he wrote.

VS 2008 adds "split view" editing so that developers can see both the HTML source and design view at the same time and have changes made in one view be updated in the other, he added. The version also includes a new tool window that shows the CSS and the corresponding rules for the page a developer is editing. It can be used from within the design view or source view of a page.

Microsoft also announced the second beta version of the .Net Framework 3.5, which now includes full project template and tools support for many of the .Net Framework 3.0 compatibilities previously provided.

More...

Cheers - Dipesh Joshi

Acropolis July CTP now available for download...

Acropolis July CTP now available for download

The July CTP of Acropolis includes work to improve transition animations, better design time support, simpler support for custom themes, and various bug fixes. Start working with the CTP today.

Check some interesting videos here - http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos.aspx

Learn more - http://windowsclient.net/
Cheers - Dipesh Joshi

Scrum

Over this weekend I came across one more agile development technique called as "Scrum". I watched a video on microsoft site talking about scrum...which was very boring :) However reading wikipedia was fun. I was not aware that scrum is also kind of a group formation in rugby game (because of my lack of knowledge in this game, this term should be used in cricket too :)

However, i am just writing this offtopic because it was fresh in my mind and what i observe in my project. This is more of an agile kind of management but i don't think this seems to be effective for long duration complex projects. My 2 cents! :)

However, it was good to know ... learn more on wiki by typing scrum. Cheerio - Dj

How do you bring web site down so that users cannot access any page for new patch release or upgradation of release?

How do you bring web site down so that users cannot access any page for new patch release or upgradation of release? There are ofcourse numerous ways to do that but one of the easiest way in .net 2.0 is copying Application offline (app_offline.htm) htm file into the root directory of the web site. Users will not get 404 or other HTML error pages but user friendly HTML (app_offline.htm) page.

Here's quick video which shows the demonstration...


HTH - Dipesh

What is MDM ? Master Data Management

So with the news that Microsoft has acquired MDM expert provider company Stratature there is a whole new thrill in the software and particularly in the SOA market to know how MDM fits into the bigger picture.

Update from Microsoft - www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/microsoft_bi_goes_mdm.html

So what is MDM ? here's what you find a definition when you search on Wiki -
"Master Data Management (MDM), also known as Reference Data Management, is a sub-discipline of Data architecture within Information Technology (IT) that focuses on the management of reference or master data that is shared by several disparate IT systems and groups. MDM is required to enable consistent computing between diverse system architectures and business functions.

Large companies often have IT systems that are used by diverse business functions (e.g., finance, sales, R&D, etc.) and span across multiple countries. These diverse systems usually need to share key data that is relevant to the parent company (e.g., products, customers, and suppliers). It is critical for the company to consistently use these shared data elements through various IT systems.

Most enterprises have implemented their own special blends of ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence, Financial Reporting, Planning, and other operational systems in order to accommodate unique business requirements. Each of these systems requires the same dimensional information to operate, yet they manage this information independently, which directly affects dimensional synchronization and reconciliation across systems. Master data management software aims to integrate dimensional and master data across BI, data warehouse, financial and operational systems, providing for accurate, consistent and compliant enterprise reporting.

Master data management can go beyond data integration. MDM generally has a data governance component. Data governance means having to define clear data owners and users, having clear business policies regarding what is good master data and what is not. Master data management is also about providing continuous reports and alerts to master data owners and the stewards regarding the health of the master data."



Check more on MDM at Wikipedia site - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Data_Management

More details in MS article - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190163.aspx

MDM doesn't seem to be like a new concept but it's getting more visibility now! Let's see how far this can succeed and fit the SOA bill! Cheers - Dipesh

Useful Tools (Reflector and addins)

Do you need a -
Tool to analyze .net assembly and show design quality metrics ?
Tool to quickly create class diagram ?
Tool to generate code to write unit tests, stubs and wrappers ?
Tool to draw sequence diagrams ?

Find all addins here at codeplex -
http://www.codeplex.com/reflectoraddins

Download .net reflector here

Mozilla releases Firefox 3 Alpha 6 (code name - Gran Paradiso)

Mozilla releases Firefox 3 Alpha 6 - low key launch... but according to the Alpha 6 release notes this version includes:

Updated SQLite engine to version 3.3.17;
Support for site-specific preferences--text size;
A new Quit dialog box that resolves termination errors;
Added permanent 'Restart Firefox' button to Add-Ons Manager;
Miscellaneous fixes to download manager including correctly displaying large file sizes; various Places fixes;
and miscellaneous Gecko 1.9 bug fixes.

Source: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9740050-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) release...

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) is here...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E6FD8663-8B77-4649-8D36-3830E18528FA&displaylang=en

.NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on the new features added in .NET Framework 3.0, for example, Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 contains a number of new features in several technology areas. These new features have been added as new assemblies to avoid breaking changes. They include the following:

Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature will let you write code written in LINQ-enabled languages to filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, collections, XML, and DataSets by using the same syntax.

ASP.NET AJAX lets you create more efficient, more interactive, and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.

New Web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards.

Full tooling support for WF, WCF, and WPF, including the new workflow-enabled services technology.

New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 base class library (BCL) address the most common customer requests.
Time is ticking :) Cheers - Dipesh

Release plan MS CRM 3.0 Update Rollup 2.0

Microsoft CRM Sustained Engineering plans to release Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Update Rollup 2 Monday, June 25th. Update Rollup 2 is a well tested, cumulative set of updates for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 3.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook 3.0, including performance enhancements, which are packaged together for easy deployment.

Comprehensive information about this release will be available via the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 927751, which will be simultaneously published with the Rollup packages on the Microsoft Download Center. When published, the Update Rollup 2 packages will be available via http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=81674DA5-FFEF-492A-A7B1-7E1F1951B05F

This update rollup includes packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook 3.0 to maintain parity between the client and server components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

Credits - Matt HTH - DJ

How to convert a structure/object/string into XML in .net and reverse?

How to convert a structure/object/string into XML in .net and reverse?

Check this -
http://www.dotnetjohn.com/articles.aspx?articleid=173

HTH - Dipesh

How to get name value from a CRM lookup - Primary Field/ Primary value diff?!

How to get name value from a lookup in CRM table?

if you have a lookup (foreign key) in your CRM table you can easily access its GUID but what if you want to get its name associated?

You may probably think that you may have to goto the parent table and pull name column value. Well, thats true but the easier way is to just append the name to the attribute in the referential table.

Example -
Guest (Primary table), has columns (GuestID, Name)
Reservations (Referential/child table), has columns (ResID, ResDate, .... GuestID(fkey/lookup type)

When you access Resrevations you can directly get GuestID (GUID) AND Guest Name (appending name) through the entity exposed by the CRM web service.

Check this -



More background on why this is or how this is check the Understanding CRM Metadata: PrimaryKey and PrimaryField article by MSCRM. Thanks - Dipesh

One liner - (Tips and Tricks) String pattern matching - RegEx()

Most of you know but sometimes we keep wondering best ways to do this. RegEx is the solution in .net for any type of string matching pattern.

More details on RegEx visit - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az24scfc.aspx

RegEx is part of System.Text.RegularExpressions Namespace
How to verify if an email is valid in .net?
Trick -

bool IsValidEmail(string strIn)
{
// Return true if strIn is in valid e-mail format.
return Regex.IsMatch(strIn, @"^([\w-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([\w-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$");
}

How to remove/strip invalid characters from a string using RegEx in .net?
Trick -

String CleanInput(string strIn)
{
// Replace invalid characters with empty strings.
return Regex.Replace(strIn, @"[^\w\.@-]", "");
}

How to check if a particular character within a string is alphabet/char or alphanumeric or hexa?
Trick (alpha) - (checks if first char is alphabet)

return Regex.IsMatch(yourString.Substring(0,1), @"[a-zA-Z]");

HTH - Dipesh

E-bay to go....

E-bay all set to have ebay to go! You can have search results for any of your fav. items and copy the code on ur website and get paid :) So now someone can browse ebay site from outside world too :) Cheers - Dipesh

You tube launches online editing tool to mix video clips with images and music...

"You tube" http://youtube.com launches online editing tool that allows users to mix video clips with images and music... way to go!
This is piggybacked upon the tool that Adobe developed. Yahoo has already implemented this! Check out urself by remixing videos on youtube.com. Cheers - Dipesh @ Jun 17th 2007

Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) webcasts...

Check the upcoming Microsoft webcasts on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) -

SOA Overview
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

Learn how the Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision and technology can help you realize a more agile and connected enterprise by using an IT infrastructure that can help streamline business processes, increase customer responsiveness, and improve interactions with key partners.

Presenters: Kris Horrocks and Yumay Chang, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818538


Messaging & Communications
Friday, June 15, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

Applications commonly communicate with other applications, both inside and outside the organization. Modern applications also must often fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), exposing some of their functionality as interoperable services accessible by other software. Achieving these goals requires support for service-oriented applications to communicate with other services.

In this session we’ll share with you the technology Microsoft provides to build web services that support the latest WS-* standards endorsed by all major vendors. In addition, we’ll tie it in with the previous discussion around Software Factories and show how Microsoft supports rapid development of these services through tooling support.

Presenters: Steve Swartz and Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818539


Business Process & Workflow
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

In this session we will discuss the Business Process and Workflow capabilities necessary in service oriented architecture and provide guidance for selecting the most appropriate technology from Microsoft’s portfolio. We will discuss the requirements for service composition in client applications, composite services, service intermediaries, and line of business applications. In addition, we will examine the differences between general purpose workflow platforms, domain specific workflow products, and cross organization business process concerns.

Presenters: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818540

Tools & Modelling
Friday, June 22, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

The advance in tooling has allowed business to drive down the cost of development by over 100% in the last 10 years. However, in the same period of time the number of successful projects has not increased significantly. In fact it has consistently run at right around 30% of projects are deemed successful. Software development, as currently practiced, is slow, expensive and error prone, often yielding products with large numbers of defects, causing serious problems of usability, reliability, performance, security and other qualities of service.


This talk addresses how to identify typical customer pains in software development and shows how Microsoft tools offer a solution that enables collaboration across the extended team of project managers, architects, developers, testers, and business stakeholders and allows new solutions to be developed faster, cheaper and better though industrialization of software development.

Presenters: Erik Gunvaldson, Don Smith, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6818541


SOA Workshop Series: Enterprise Service Bus
Friday, June 29, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

This webcast explores the service oriented capabilities necessary to support mediated service communication and our guidance for implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform. In addition, we will discuss the increasing need for broadly available service bus capabilities beyond the edges of the enterprise.

Presenter: Kris Horrocks, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834394

SOA Workshop for Architects: Identity and Access
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

The main reason that identity is now such a hot topic is based upon the fact that there is more opportunity to connect. High bandwidth communications via the Internet are now almost ubiquitous and span a broad range of scenario within organizations, between organizations, at home and elsewhere This has resulted in a rapid increase in the adoption of products and services available via the internet, and many of these services require some form of user authentication, but with the proliferation of phishing schemes there is no safe way to say who you are on the internet.

In this session we will show you Microsoft’s solution on identity and access can addresses these common concerns presented by the web, and how through identity federation a user can access services that require a different set of credentials in a transparent fashion.

Presenter: Kim Cameron, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:
1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834536

SOA Workshop for Architects: Governance and Management
Friday, July 13, 2007
8:00am (GMT-8) Pacific Time (US & Canada),
Language: English-American

As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often than not, the pace of that growth is uneven. As applications, functionalities and people are added across the board at various points in time, the complexity of the enterprise multiplies and the harder it can be to manage and, more importantly, to keep secure.

A dynamic system is Microsoft’s vision for what an agile business looks like—where IT works closely with business in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing and adaptable environment. Come hear about Microsoft’s technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process, and IT infrastructure using technology.

Presenter: Jeff Johnson, Microsoft Corporation

To register and join this webcast:

1. Click on (or enter in your browser) the address of the registration page:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6834551

Credits - Lisa McIntosh, Regards - Dj

Online word processor, site monitoring, online sheet and more with Zoho notebook...

Hello All - Need an Online word processor, 24x7 site monitoring, online word sheet without downloading any software ... check Zoho notebook...

I saw this demo of Zoho Notebook... thought of sharing this with you all, must watch video: http://blogs.zoho.com/general/zoho-notebook-launches/

Zoho has huge online stable products like:
- Zoho On-Demand CRM Solution (good one, i liked the idea :)
- Zoho Online Word processor (no download)
- Zoho 24x7 site monitoring
- Zoho Wiki too!

Check out more if you are interested in buying their products at http://www.zoho.com/ ... Sounds more like my manager Sooho :”)
Cheers, happy weekend – Dipesh

Online word processor, site monitoring, online sheet and more with Zoho notebook...

Hello All - I saw this demo of Zoho Notebook... thought of sharing this with you all, must watch video: http://blogs.zoho.com/general/zoho-notebook-launches/

Zoho has huge online stable products like:
- Zoho On-Demand CRM Solution (good one, i liked the idea :)
- Zoho Online Word processor (no download)
- Zoho 24x7 site monitoring
- Zoho Wiki too!

Check out more if you are interested in buying their products at http://www.zoho.com/ ... Sounds more like my manager Sooho :”)
Cheers, happy weekend – Dipesh

Georgian to Julian date - C#

How do i convert from Georgian date to Julian Date in .net 2.0 - C#?
Very simple..... but thought of sharing this because i got confused myself for a second.

btw, quick intro Georgian dates are the one's that we normally use in our day to day life - mm/dd/yyyy format or similar. Julian dates are more like numbers that we find in Excel kind of tools. I came across this when i had a requirement where one of the web service was expecting Julian kind of format. So to cut the crap... this one line of code helps you to convert from Georgian date format to Julian in .net -
private static string GetJDate(DateTime gdate)
{
// Georgian date - "06/07/2007" Julian date - "39240";
return gDate.ToOADate().ToString();
}

Cheerio - Dipesh Joshi
Coming soon - Please spare some time to check my videos soon on YouTube and Google videos :) (I will update this post)

MS Dynamics CRM 3.0 - Exchange Server 2007

If you are looking out for an update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0-Exchange E-mail Router this link below provides you support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=f7656f0f-4195-4a7d-b654-2786787e1422&displaylang=en&tm

Cheers - Dipesh

Google Gears... Get your applications working even when offline!

You can now make your web applications work offline! So, you don't need internet to get connected? Partially true....

Check this simple application (install google gears first) - http://code.google.com/apis/gears/samples/hello_world_database.html

Check the tutorial here - http://code.google.com/apis/gears/tutorial.html
Check the architecture here - http://code.google.com/apis/gears/architecture.html

Message here is clear - "Google" wants to have a solid client footprint... http://code.google.com/apis/gears

Get's interesting.. is it? :) Cheers - Dipesh

Google, Salesforce.com to partner on Web site

Salesforce.com and Google are expected to launch a combined Web site today (dated June 5th 2007) that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords.

So Google allows you to insert ads into your video stream now (it's already in beta!). The customers that want their ads published will be maintained in this online CRM tool developed by Salesforce.com. This will be mostly targeted to small and mid companies. Check the news here - http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9725819-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Cheers - Dipesh

CRM "object type" code changes for different environments...

Did you know that the CRM entity "object type" code changes for different environments in QA and development. I didn't know that but Gaurav posted this question to the community to see if there was a way by which we can sync up these object types in development and QA.

Unfortunately, there is NO straight way to keep them in sync! However, you can use the metadata webservice to retrieve the correct objecttypeid for a particular entity. Check CRM SDK or let me know if you need the code. Thanks - Dipesh

CRM insert issue "Unable to connect to the remote server " ...force sleep

Hello – I was almost pulling out my hair with this CRM insert issue "Unable to connect to the remote server "… :)
I have written a small console based utility in net 2.0 … which tries to insert 7000 odd records (custom entity property records) into CRM. I am using CRM webservice to do this.

However, before inserting into CRM I am checking if property record already exists in CRM database or not. I am using "RetrieveMultiple" to search a particular property record and accordingly insert or update one in CRM.

Everything works fine if I run the utility from my computer (client computer) to populate the CRM Dev database but when I try to run this utility from the Dev server itself (through remote desktop connection) after loading 3000 odd records it keeps on failing at RetrieveMultiple() statement. The exception it shows is as below -

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Error: --- > Unable to connect to the remote server

Stack Trace: ----- > at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream()

at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)

at MS.Data.CrmWebService.CrmService.Create(BusinessEntity entity)

at MS.Integration.RIM.Program.PopulatePropertyEntity(CrmService crmService, Ratings retFR_Mobil)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Initially, I thought this would be occurring because of bad data but I figured that if I rerun the utility to start from 2999 again then it works fine again and stops randomly after loading 1000 odd records or so again.

So I was pretty confident that this may NOT be because of bad data! It also ran from my machine just fine.

So the question was "Does the CRM web service time out after few inserts"
OR
Does CRM have limitations while inserting records quickly?

Solution - I tried doing a force sleep for 30 secs and it worked fine. For you if this doesn't work then try these steps -

This may also be caused by the number of ports available in IIS - every create method will be creating a new connection to the server, and after a certain period, all the available ports are used up and no new connections can be made.

I recommend looking at the article here on Performance [1] and setting the UnsafeAuthenticatedConnectionSharing on the CrmService to true. This *should* then only create one connection and re-use it for all your data inserts.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2007/01/09/best-practices-for-better-performance-from-your-custom-code.aspx


Credits to Rich for psting me on this. Rich you are the man! :)
HTH - Dipesh