Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Beta 1.2 for VS2005 RTM

Download details: Windows Workflow Foundation

"Version: 1.2
Date Published:  11/4/2005
Language:  English
Download Size:  2272 KB - 108113 KB*
*Download size depends on selected download components.

Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow-enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a Microsoft® WinFX® name space (System.Workflow), an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Windows Workflow Foundation is available (currently as Beta) for both client and server versions of Windows. Windows Workflow Foundation supports a wide range of scenarios including workflow within line-of-business applications, user interface page flow, document-centric workflow, human workflow, composite workflow for service-oriented applications, business rule-driven workflow and workflow for systems management.

There are two downloads on this page:

The Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 runtime components are required for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services "3.0" (Beta 1), Office "12" servers (Beta 1), and "FrontPage 12" (Beta 1).

The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation are required for customers who are designing workflows in Visual Studio 2005 and/or require the Windows Workflow Foundation SDK."

I'm very interested in WF... Now to install this on my primary or in a VPC?

I like the standard beta disclaimer on the page, "Note: This is a Beta release. Therefore, do not install these builds on machines you depend on."

sigh... VPC

Now all I have to do is build a VPC with VS2005 RTM on it. Oh well it's just time and drive space.  :|

(via JOPX on SharePoint, MCMS, Office 2003 and SOA - Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 - VS.Net 2005 RTM compliant...)    

Update #1 – 11/5/2005 @ 4:46PM PST:
Here’s a post from the MS WF Tech Manager, Paul Andrew, Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2005 RTM that confirms WF beta 1.2 is for VS2005/.Net 2.0 RTM.

“…In terms of functionality there's no difference between Beta 1 and Beta 1.2 but they require different versions of the .NET Framework.

1. Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1 requires the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2


2. Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 requires the .NET Framework 2.0 RTM

…”

This is starting to really piss me off… Election Voice Spam

This coming Tuesday, November 8th, we have a special election here in California. For the past week or so our home phone has been ringing off the hook with automated recorded calls for or against the different ballot measures.

And the pace of call seems to be picking up. We’ve had five calls, just today!

And it’s really, really starting to annoy me. Today I’m starting a tally by measure and the stance the recorded caller would like us to take.

AND I WILL VOTE FOR WHO EVER CALLS ME LESS! So if I get 2 calls for Yes on Proposition 74 and 1 for No on 74, then I’m voting No on 74.

Okay, maybe I won’t go to that extreme, but I sure am getting pissed at the constant calling.

It’s not enough that every other commercial is on these propositions, my mailbox is full of ads for and against, it’s all over the radio, but now I feel my home is truly being invaded by those involved. It’s the “push” and aggressive nature of this method of pushing their agenda that has raised my hackles.

The worse part of it all there’s little I can really do about it. EXCEPT with the power of my voice here in my blog (hahaha ;) and in the casting of my vote.

These calls are nothing less than worthless voice spam and their value is like that of spam, resulting in annoyance, frustration, irritation and finally anger.

Okay… I feel better now… Thanks.   (

SQL Server "Cannot generate SSPI context" Solution for When Not Connected to Domain

SQL Protocols : "Cannot generate SSPI context" error message, when connect to local SQL Server outside domain

"...
[MDAC] “Cannot generate SSPI context”;

It can happen when all of followings are true:
(1) The hosting machine of SQL Server is connected to a network, including home network or dialup connection, but it is disconnected from its domain.
(2) The OS of the hosting machine is Windows XP or 2000. Not windows 2003.
(3) The connection is to a local SQL Server.
(4) Connection configuration causes network library to choose TCP/IP provider.

...

In very rare case, however, if you really in need of TCP/IP connection, the option is to use TCP/IP loop-back address, i.e. “127.0.0.1”, as your . For example, if your connection string has form of “\” and is not prefixed with “tcp”, without modifying the connection string, you can configure an alias with alias name as \, protocol as TCP/IP, server as “127.0.0.1\” or “127.0.0.1,”. Remember that the “Cannot Generate SSPI context” problem described in this post only happens when connecting to a local server; thus, the “127.0.0.1” is applicable. ..."

This information helped me solve some recent "Cannot generate SSPI context" problems so I wanted to make sure I shared (and captured it here in case I need it again in the future)

I develop on my notebook and in many cases in remote locations (i.e. home). I recently moved to Windows XP and that's when the problems started. If I were to VPN into work, everything would work fine. But I'd rather not have to VPN in just to development and run my projects...

This evening I had ENOUGH! It was fix it or else... Luckily it ended up being a easy fix. The above post's suggestion to use the loop-back IP address did the trick for me.

Now I'm happily testing my apps without being connected to the domain/network. (Yeah I know... working/coding/testing on a Friday night... I so need a life. But I've heard they are over rated ;)

This GIF says it all...

Enough said...

(Via
Full of I.T. - Full of I.T. : So much to blog. So little time. So much SQL Server 2005)

Have a Mint? (C# RSS Starter Kit)

Mint Source - Academic Alliance - Microsoft UK



"Mint Source is the unconventional new starter kit for students that enables you to quickly get your hands on the freshest, hottest technology from Microsoft. Think of it as a direct line to Microsoft information. We'll give you samples of what you can do and the tools to do it. Get ahead. Get Mint Source... and be the first to download the latest knowledge and tools. Free 'n' easy just got easier. "

This is a kind of interesting little VS2005/C# 2.0 WinForm RSS Starter Kit.

But I think I like the Evil Lamb best of all... lol

Amazon ECS.Net Library

Amazon Web Services Blog: Amazon ECS.Net Library

"AmazonECS.Net is a free, open source .Net library. The library was used to build the DVDs Universe site.

Classes are provided to represent many ECS search and lookup operations including requests for item details, new releases, browse node children, browse node paths, similar items, top sellers, and the shopping cart. The site also includes demos of each function."

AmazonECS.Net .:. a .net library for the Amazon E-Commerce Service

"AmazonECS.Net is an open-source .net library developed in C# for the Amazon E-Commerce Service. It can be used in any .Net application by any developer who wants to use Amazon's ECS. Built using a simple and clean design, it is very easy to use and implement.

The library can be used in many ways, from a simple item listing in an application or website to a complete high-level ecommerce website including remote shopping cart management. AmazonECS.Net makes it simple to earn money using your Amazon Associates account. It also features a caching engine for all requests to make response times smoother and faster.

Most libraries available for Amazon's ECS are in PHP. AmazonECS.Net is one of the firsts (if not the first) made publicly available for the .Net platform.

Features
The library currently supports the following features:

Access Amazon.com product data (only the US locale is supported)
Request Validation
Caching engine
Search and browse Amazon
Navigate categories
Get detailed item informations
Get latest releases
Get top sellers
Manage a remote shopping cart ..."

Man if you're doing Amazon development in .Net, you just gotta to check this out.

Glad it only comes with a ASP.Net demo. This gives me a chance to learn as I create a WinForm demo... ;)

Related Past Post X-Ref:
Using Amazon Web services to build an app that searches for books, music or movies
ASP.Net Code Sample - ECS Custom Control in VB.Net

DevAge Source Pack 1.0 Released

DevAge Source Pack 1.0

"DevAgeSourcePack is a set of .NET projects created to extend and add some new features to the standard .NET Framework. DevAgeSourcePack is developed as an Open Source project, licensed under a MIT style license. You can copy and modify the code or simply reference the binary version directly from your projects.

One of the most popular project of this package is SourceGrid control, see SourceGrid 3 article for details.

DevAgeSourcePack is written in C# and C++, compiled with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and Visual Studio .NET 2003.

...

DevAgeSourcePack 1.0 is the first official release. There is still some work to do, especially to improve the usability and performance and to complete the documentation but it is quite stable. ..."

This is a very cool OSS .Net package, which includes a number of cool Windows Forms controls and a complete Grid control.

LEGO Factory

LEGO Shop At Home

"With LEGO Factory, you can now design your own original custom LEGO model, and then purchase all of the bricks and elements you need to build your model for real! Just follow the easy steps below to start custom building today."

Life is good when you have LEGO's... ;)

(via Make: - Build your own LEGO kit...)

Outlook Redemption 4 Released

“Redemption 4.0.0.452
Version 4.0 of Redemption includes a completely new library: RDO (Redemption Data Objects) that can function as a complete replacement of the CDO 1.21 library.

While Safe*Item Redemption objects are designed to be used with either Outlook Object Model or CDO 1.21 objects to work around the security prompts with minimum modifications to the existing code, RDO is designed to provide a complete functionality replacement for CDO 1.21, which besides being blocked by the security patch, also hasn't been updated (functionality-wise) for almost 10 years.

RDO blends the low level access of CDO 1.21 with the functionality of the Outlook Object Model. It can be used from any code: COM add-ins, EXEs, scripts, Windows Services, etc. It can be used in any language that supports IDispatch-friendly objects (VB, VB Script, Java, .Net languages, C/C++, Delphi, etc).
 
For the complete documentation, see http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/rdo/”

If you are doing ANY Outlook/MAPI/CDO development, then you owe it to yourself to check out Outlook Redemption. This is a must have tool…

Today I heard the 4.0 has been released and that there’s now a new very cool library called Redemption Data Objects (RDO – Which reminds me of old RDO – Remote Data Objects, but that’s just cause I’ve been VB Man since V1…)

I could have really used this about 6 months ago when I migrated an Outlook 2000 (pre-Security SP) to Outlook 2003. Talk about painful…

Anyway, this sounds VERY cool and I’m glad to see Redemption continue to improve with age.

For more information about Outlook Redemption, see http://www.dimastr.com/redemption

PicoZip Recovery Tool (Recover Lost ZIP Passwords)

Zip Password Recovery Fast and Easy - PicoZip Recovery Tool

"PicoZip Recovery Tool is an easy-to-use program that can help you recover lost or forgotten passwords from password protected* Zip files created by compression utilities like PicoZip, WinZip, PKZip, etc.
Features

Simple and intuitive user interface
Supports Zip archives and self-extracting Zip archives.
Provides Brute Force and Dictionary recovery methods
Can pause and resume recovery job
Supports Win95,98,2000,ME,XP

* AES encrypted Zip files are not currently supported.

This program is distributed as Freeware (100% Free - No ads, no spyware, no catch). You may use it free of charge and feel free to share it with your friends. If you really like this program, consider supporting us by purchasing other software products that we develop, such as PicoZip, our award-winning file compression utility."

A free zip password recovery tool can come in handy sometimes...

(via The Portable Freeware Collection - PicoZip Recovery Tool)

"10 Free .NET Development Tools"

Richard Slade : 10 Free .NET Development Tools

Richard Slade has posted a Top 10 list of Free .Net Tools. They are the "Big 10" that you'd pretty much have to be living in a cave to not know about... (Not that there's anything wrong with living in caves... ;)

If the listed tools are so common, why am I posted about it? It has a nice intro into each project ("What is it?"), some screen snaps and is a great single source for the URL's ("Where can I find it?").

Tools listed are:
1. NANT
2. CruseControl.Net
3. NUnit
4. TestDriven.Net
5. RegEx Designer.Net
6. FxCop
7. NDoc
8. NUnitASP
9. Mono
10. NCover

My own Top 10:
1. Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector
2. Google
3. Paint.Net
4. Cropper
5. MSINC.Plugins library (Also check out the other cool projects at Morrison Schwartz - www.ms-inc.net)
6. SharpDevelop (Also check out the other cool projects at www.ICShareCode.com)
7. DotLucene - The Open Source Search Engine for .NET

Grr... um... Okay, it's my Top 7 List. I seem to have a brain cramp and that's all that comes to mind (besides what Richard already posted about of course)...

"Statistical parsing of English sentences"

Statistical parsing of English sentences - The Code Project - C# Programming

"...OpenNLP is both the name of a group of open source projects related to natural language processing (NLP), and the name of a library of NLP tools written in Java by Jason Baldridge, Tom Morton, and Gann Bierner. My C# port is based upon the latest version (1.2.0) of the Java OpenNLP tools, released in April 2005. Development of the Java library is ongoing, and I hope to update the C# port as new developments occur.

Tools included in the C# port are: a sentence splitter, a tokenizer, a part-of-speech tagger, a chunker (used to 'find non-recursive syntactic annotation such as noun phrase chunks'), a parser, and a name finder. ... . All of these tools are driven by maximum entropy models processed by the SharpEntropy library.

...

Name finding

"Name finding" is the term used by the OpenNLP library to refer to the identification of classes of entity within the sentence - for example, people's name, locations, dates, and so on. The name finder can find up to seven different types of entity, represented by the seven maximum entropy model files in the NameFind subfolder - date, location, money, organization, percentage, person and time. It would, of course, be possible to train new models using the SharpEntropy library, to find other classes of entity. Since this algorithm is dependent on the use of training data, and there are many, many tokens that might come into a category such as "person" or "location", it is far from foolproof. ..."

I should be able to use this, or something like it.

Hum... Interesting...

"Run DOS Commands from .NET with Free msDOScommand Class"

Run DOS Commands from .NET with Free msDOScommand Class | developer.* Blogs

"The msDOScommand class, written in Visual Basic.Net, executes MS-DOS commands and provides both status and results.

Features:
* A guarantee that results are complete as a string from each of one or more MS-DOS commands. This is provided by terminating each MS-DOS command in a submitted batch with a dummy file create command. The existence of the dummy file (which is erased by default) proves when tested by msDOScommand that your prior commands executed...avoiding the very dangerous phenomenon of random failures in MS-DOS calls.

* Full thread safety which means that while one instance CANNOT issue more than one command for competing execution, you can access the Status property of this class while waiting for an MS-DOS job, and perform other work while waiting for the command.

You can download the msDOSCommand code here (2MB zip file).

...

...the class removes the VB programmer from having to code asynchronous calls to shell() to run MS-DOS commands.

The software as available comes with a comprehensive test form and application for Windows/.Net which allows you to create an msDOScommand instance, inspect it, test it, and so forth.

...

I do ask that msDOScommand be used ethically. It has no special code for preventing evil commands such as creation of unknown cookies or erasing files. Since you will have the source you can consider adding these safeguards."

Sounds kind of cool. Like it or not, sometimes you just need those old crusty DOS commands...

California State Controller's Office - Search the Vault - Unclaimed Property

California State Controller's Office - Search the Vault - Unclaimed Property

"You may be richer than you think. The State of California is holding over $4.8 billion in Unclaimed Property. These assets have been turned over to the State for safekeeping by businesses and other organizations as required by law.

There is no charge to file a claim for Unclaimed Property. During the last state fiscal year, over 239,000 accounts, valued at $238.5 million, were claimed by their rightful owners. You can use this Web site to search for property you may have lost or forgotten.

This Web site contains information about the Unclaimed Property Program and provides the forms you need when filing a claim for Unclaimed Property. ..."

Very cool. I didn't find anything for myself/my immediate family but I did find something that might for my brother-in-law...

(via O'Reilly Network - Is California holding your property?)

CosmoPOD.com - Free Remote KDE Desktop with 1GB Storage

CosmoPOD.com

"Welcome to CosmoPOD.com your free for life Personal Online Desktop.

Free 1GB online to store and edit your emails, office documents, calander, organizer, photos and files, chat to friends play games surf the web even faster and more from any computer on your own personal online desktop and access it from anywhere in the world.

100% free
1GB of email and online file storage free
Secure
Virus, Spam, Popup, Phishing, Pharming, Spy and Ad ware protected

Be free of emailing files back and forth between computers only to have to edit them from different locations with incompatible applications.

Travelers safely and easily store and edit your documents from anywhere in the world whilst on your journeys.

Work at a computer all day? So why own a computer at home that is unsafe and consistently causing hassles just to organize and store your personal documents and emails?

..."

Sounds kind of interesting...

Using either a Java applet or NoDesktop/NX client you can connect to your free host KDE desktop, with 1GB of storage. Check out KDE.org this interview for more info on this.

The site/service appears to be effected by the "digg/dot-KDE effect", so I can't yet connect to a desktop session... I'll be trying again later.

(via digg - Free Remote KDE Desktop w/ 1GB of personal Storage)

Lego Barcode Reader

barcode reader

"The Barcode Scanner uses standard LEGO parts with two exceptions. The first is the laserbrick, a selfbuilt LEGO brick with a modified laser pointer connected to an output of the RCX. The second part is the barcode label from a LEGO box.

The list of tasks, the hardware of the Barcode Scanner must be able to perform:
_ moving the sliding carriage and the barcode label (using a gear) in both directions by a motor
_ detecting the start position of the sliding carriage by a switch
_ detecting the position of the sliding carriage with a rotation sensor
_ measuring the amount of reflected laser light and detecting black & white bars with a light sensor
_ powering the laser on and off

..."

lol... Very cool.

I'd like to have a barcode scanner for my Bookshelf project. And I have a couple Mindstorm's around...

And there's something hot about building a laser into a lego project. ;)

(via Make: - LEGO barcode reader)

GotCodeSnippets.NET

GotCodeSnippets.NET: THE online source for Visual Studio code snippets

"Q: What is a "Code Snippet"?
A: A Code Snippet is a reusable block of code. Unlike a static copy-and-paste approach, code snippets allow for dynamic instances of code by allowing placeholders into mini templates of code. Code snippets are a new feature of Visual Studio 2005."

This is a very cool snippet site for VS 2005. Snippet's are downloadable as VSI's making installing them simple.

Snippets are searchable and the site provides a RSS feed too.

(Via del.icio.us/catarino/dotnet/)