Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 10/12/2008

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Free “Programming Microsoft Robotics Studio” eBook (reg-ware, Copyright 2008, for MSRS v1.5)

Ravings of a Developer TS - Free e-Book of the Month: Programming Microsoft Robotics Studio

“For 25 years, Microsoft Press books have focused on helping you take your skills and knowledge to the next level. Celebrate our 25th Anniversary with a "Free E-Book of the Month" offer! Simply sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection Newsletter for notification of offers, register, and download the selection of the month.

Programming Microsoft Robotics Studio

By Sara Morgan
ISBN: 9780735624320

Visualize, build, and deploy the next innovation in robotic applications. …”

Because I just can’t get enough stuff to read… and well robots are cool… don’t ya know… ;)

(via Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew - Dew Drop - October 17, 2008)

Friday, October 17, 2008

Report Builder for SQL Server 2008 RTM’s

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Report Builder 2.0)

“Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Report Builder 2.0 provides an intuitive report authoring environment for business and power users. It supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. The download provides a stand-alone installer for Report Builder 2.0

File Name: ReportBuilder.msi

Version: 10.00.1600.60

Date Published: 10/17/2008

Language: English

Download Size: 18.7 MB

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 delivers an intuitive, Office-like report authoring environment enabling business and power users to leverage their experience with Microsoft Office 2007 products. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including:

Flexible report layout caabilities of SQL Server 2008 Report Definition Language

Data Visualizations including charts and gauges

Richly formatted textboxes

Export to Microsoft Office Word format

Features specific to Report Builder 2.0 are focused on simplifying the process of creating and editing reports and queries and include the following:

Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions

Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server

Support for using server resources such as shared data sources

Query designers for multiple data sources including a Microsoft SQL Server-specific query designer

…” [Overview leached in full]

When we get approval to start using SQL Server 2008 (when ever that is…) this might come in handy.

From what I’ve seen and heard of it, it seems pretty cool. More powerful than the original Report Builder in SQL Server 2005, but not the overkill that building reports in Visual Studio can be.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

XNA Game Studio 3.0 RTM/RTW October 30th, 2008

XNA Creators Club - XNA GS Goes Live October 30th

“By now you may have heard that The New Xbox Experience (NXE) will go live globally on November 19, 2008! Xbox LIVE Community Games is a new channel within NXE and will launch in the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, and Spain at the same time. We're currently working to include even more countries at launch or shortly after so stay tuned for even more parts of the world to go live.

In addition, independent game developers will be happy to know that XNA Game Studio 3.0 will be available for download on October 30, 2008 so they can to convert their creations and prepare them to be a part of the launch of Xbox LIVE Community Games on November 19.” [Post leached in full]

Oh may, the last week in October is going quite the release week for developers… Win7, XNA4, Mesh SDK and all the other magical stuff from PDC… wow.

(via Machaira's Space - XNA GS 3.0 to hit soon)

Related Past Post XRef:
XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP Available (Get your Zune Gaming on! :)

A pocket guide I hope you never need, but probably will… The E-Discovery Pocket Guide from the California Bar

EDD Update - California Bar Puts "New" EDD Standard of Professional Conduct in Writing

“It's always a pleasure to hear from my Bay Area buddy, Richard Best. Commissioner Best served the San Francisco Superior Court for almost thirty years and now functions as a private judge and discovery referee. But, I think more people know Richard for his longtime missionary work spreading the gospel of forensic technology and civil discovery.

Richard reports that the Litigation Section of the State Bar of California sent a copy of its "E-Discovery Pocket Guide" to its 10,000 members and every California judge. With such wide distribution by the Bar and its strong language listing concepts litigators "must" understand, I wondered whether it sets a new floor of professional responsibility for Golden State attorneys. …

… But even if the pocket guide doesn't set a new floor for professional conduct, its wide distribution and pointed exposition of essential knowledge is sure to have lawyers lax about EDD walking on eggshells. …

”

As a pocket guide it’s only two pages, but if you get involved in an e-discovery situation you’ll need all the information you can get and if you don’t know what you don’t know then this guide may come in handy.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Silverlight Spy for Silverlight 2 – RTM Support and new UI Automation feature (think automated testing)

First Floor Blog - Silverlight Spy for Silverlight 2

“Silverlight Spy version 2.0.0.32 is available and includes support for Silverlight 2 RTW, the version Microsoft released today (Tuesday, October 14). Among a number of bug fixes this Spy version provides a couple of new features such as support for UI automation and various browser improvements.

Compatibility

Silverlight Spy is compatible with Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and Silverlight 2 RTW applications. Compatibility with Beta 2 will be dropped somewhere in the future. New features added to the Spy will not necessarily work with Beta 2 applications.

UI Automation

New to Silverlight Spy is support for UI automation. UI automation in Silverlight 2 provides accessibility features and can be used for automated testing as well. Silverlight Spy exposes the automation attached dependency properties on all framework elements. And Silverlight Spy implements a UI Automation client which allows you to browse the UI Automation tree of your Silverlight application. …

…”

The cool SilverLight Spy gets upgraded to support RTM as well as a cool new feature. Click through for the complete list of updates and fixes…

Scrum for Team System 2.2 Released – More Reports, bug fixes, SQL Server 2008 and new Report Slide Show feature

Scrum for Team System – Announcements - Scrum for Team System Version 2.2 released

“Today sees the release of the Scrum for Team System version 2.2 process template.

Version 2.2 supports the following environments:

TFS 2008 / TFS 2008 SP1

SQL Server 2005 / SQL Server 2008

WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007

What’s new in version 2.2?

New Engineering Practices reports:

Build Code Churn

Build Duration

Build Files

Build League

Build Quality

Build Static Analysis and Compile

Build Unit Tests

Builds

Code Coverage

Last Build Unit Test Results

SharePoint Portal

Installer now includes the fixes required to upgrade the SfTS 1.2 project portals

"Reports List" Web part fixed to show report list when Team Project Name contains spaces

…

Report Slide Show

A new feature of version 2.2 is the “Report Slide Show”. This is a web based utility to show a rolling display of reports which is ideal for display in the team area. The display duration and report selection is controlled by a configuration file hosted on the serve. The list of team projects reported on is controlled by the web page query string.

Upgrading 2.x projects to version 2.2

Included in the installed components is a command line utility that will upgrade your existing (Version SfTS 2.x) team projects to the latest (2.2) version.

…

Version 2.2 and SQL Server 2008

Also included in the installed components is a SQL Server 2008 patch…

…”

Sometimes it’s the little things… We have Project names with spaces, so the above mentioned SharePoint Portal fix will be nice to have. Much easier than not using spaces, underscores or building our own report lists manually.

The new reports are pretty cool too. Especially since in our current sprint we getting a good number of unit tests in and a fairly high code coverage… ;)

Monday, October 13, 2008

Lucky Number 7 – It’s official, Windows 7 will be… “Windows 7”

Windows Vista News - Introducing Windows 7

“…

For me, one of the most exciting times in the release of a new product is right before we show it to the world for the first time. And that time is right now.

In a few weeks we are going to be talking about the details of this release at the PDC and at WinHEC. We will be sharing a pre-beta "developer only release" with attendees of both shows and giving them the first broad in-depth look at what we've been up to. I can't wait for them to see it.

And, as you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, "Windows 7." But now is a good time to announce that we've decided to officially call the next version of Windows, "Windows 7."

…

Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore "Windows 7" just makes sense.

…”

Wow, who tied up and gagged the marketing guys? We’re getting a sane name? One that makes sense? No way…

Seventh version AND Windows has seven letters. That has an interesting symmetry to it…

(via Me about things... - And the winner is… Windows 7)

Mary-Jo was right… SilverLight 2 has RTM’ed (Downloadable tomorrow, Tuesday, October 14th). Plus Eclipse IDE support for SilverLight coming too…

Microsoft PressPass - Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2, Already Reaching One in Four Consumers Worldwide

“Redmond, Wash. — Oct. 13, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Silverlight 2, one of the industry’s most comprehensive and powerful solutions for the creation and delivery of applications and media experiences through a Web browser. Silverlight 2 delivers a wide range of new features and tools that enable designers and developers to better collaborate while creating more accessible, more discoverable and more secure user experiences.

Microsoft also announced further support of open source communities by funding advanced Silverlight development capabilities with the Eclipse Foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE) and by providing new controls to developers with the Silverlight Control Pack (SCP) under the Microsoft Permissive License.

…

Continued Commitment to Openness and Interoperability

Microsoft announced plans to support additional tools for developing Silverlight applications by providing funding to Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member, to lead a project to integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE. Soyatec plans to release the project under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0 on SourceForge and submit it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project.

Microsoft also will release the Silverlight Control Pack and publish on MSDN the technical specification for the Silverlight Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary. The SCP, which will augment the powerful built-in control set in Silverlight, will be released under the Microsoft Permissive License, an Open Source Initiative-approved license, and includes controls such as DockPanel, ViewBox, TreeView, Accordion and AutoComplete. The Silverlight XAML vocabulary specification, released under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), will better enable third-party ISVs to create products that can read and write XAML for Silverlight.

…

Get Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2 will be available for download on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight. Customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.

A technology preview of the Soyatec project is available today at http://www.eclipse4sl.org, with a complete version available in second half of 2009.

…”

Big day today… Wonder if this means we’ll hear about SilverLight 3 at PDC? :P

(via Tim Sneath - Silverlight 2 – Today is the Day!)

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Reflecting on COM component with ITypeInfo, for when you don’t have Interop assembly/Runtime Callable Wrapper

Lucian's VBlog - Reflection on COM objects

“…

Reflection on .Net objects is done through System.Type and is very easy. For instance, "Dim type = GetType(System.String)" and now you can look at all the members and inheritance hierarchy of the System.String class.

Reflection on COM types is also easy if they have an interop assembly. For instance, add a project reference to the COM Microsoft Speech Library and again do "GetType(SpeechLib.SpVoice)". This lets you reflect on the .Net "Runtime Callable Wrapper" that's in the interop assembly, that was generated from the COM type's type library, and that contains all information that the type library had.

But sometimes you'll be given COM objects that don't have .Net interop assemblies in your code. I ran into this when I wrote a managed plugin for Visual Studio. For reflection here you have to use ITypeInfo instead of System.Type. Here's code to get that ITypeInfo, then dig through it and print out all the members. I'm a novice at COM programming, so I'd welcome suggestions and improvements. (Note: I deliberately didn't attempt to invent some API that would wrap ITypeInfo/TYPEDESC, but it looks ripe for it...)

…”

There’s some interesting code here, code that would probably take me about a billon years (maybe even 700 billion) to discover and figure out myself…

If you are interested in using .Net/VB to peek into the COM world directly from code (i.e. we don’t need to stink’n RCW/Interop…), you should check out this article.

(via The Visual Basic Team - Reflection on COM objects (Lucian Wischik))