The Problem Solver : ClickOnce

Nederlandse CodeCamp 2009

Maurice — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:26:00 GMT

Op 21 november 2009 organiseren de SDN, Stichting dotNed en VBcentral samen het derde Nederlandse Code Camp. Dit is een dag lang met code, code sharing, freaking en gezellig samenzijn. Een evenement door ontwikkelaars, voor ontwikkelaars. De regie ligt voor een belangrijk deel bij de deelnemers! Het aantal plaatsen voor deelnemers is wel beperkt tot maximaal 150. Wacht dus niet te lang met beslissen want voor je het weet is er geen plaats meer. Vergeet bij je aanmelding niet op te geven welke onderwerpen je interesse hebben. Bovendien nodigen we iedereen graag uit om zelf een sessie in te vullen.

Op de website, www.codecamp.nl, vind je meer informatie en kan je je aanmelden.

PDC session download

Maurice — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:17:52 GMT

Want to download and watch all PDC content? Then there are a couple of ways to get at them. The official way if to go through the session agenda at the conference site. See https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx. You see all sessions but it takes a bit of work. Another nice way is through Channel 9 by using the following feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/pdc2008/RSS/?tag=videos.

But the best as far as I am concerned is using the list compiled by Greg Duncan. Check this list http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/10/pdc2008-quick-video-link-list.html. And it even has the Visual Basic source code used to generate the list

Enjoy the videos!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
Wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

.NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit

Maurice — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:32:52 GMT

Want to know what is new in the .NET 3.5 SP1 framework or Visual Studio 2008 SP1? Then check out the presentations and labs here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=355C80E9-FDE0-4812-98B5-8A03F5874E96&displaylang=en

Overview

The .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, demos, and event materials. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the .NET 3.5 Enhancement features including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Routing, ADO.NET Data Services, ADO.NET Entity Framework, WCF 3.5 SP1, and the .NET Framework Client Profile.

Now this is nowhere near complete but a good place to start.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 available

Maurice — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:33:33 GMT

It is available from the subscriptions download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx

Get it while it is hot

Enjoy!

CodeCamp 2008

Maurice — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:39:22 GMT

Afgelopen jaar hebben we het eerste CodeCamp in Nederland georganiseerd en dat was een groot succes. De meeste deelnemers vroegen om meer, sommige zelfs om een CodeCamp per kwartaal of een heel weekend lang. Nou hebben we dat laatste nog niet gedaan maar we zijn wel aan de slag gegaan om een nieuw CodeCamp te organiseren. Als datum hebben we zaterdag 6 september gekozen. Gelukkig waren Microsoft en Class-a behulpzaam en kunnen we, net als vorig jaar, weer in het Microsoft Innovation Center in Barneveld terecht. Een mooie datum en locatie om uitgerust van de vakantie een hoop kennis uit te wisselen.

Het programma staat nog niet helemaal vast, hou daar de website voor in de gaten, maar je kan er ondermeer de bekende Nederlandse sprekers verwachten. Uiteraard kan je zelf ook nog een sessie voorstellen dus als je een idee hebt voor een leuke sessie laat het dan zo snel mogelijk weten.

Dus zet de datum vast in je agenda en meld je zo snel mogelijk aan op de website www.code-camp.nl.

Het CodeCamp is een gezamenlijk initiatief van de SDN, de stichting DotNed en VB Central.

ClickOnce certificate expiration

Maurice — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:59:58 GMT

I just heard about a pretty nasty "bug" with ClickOnce. Well it isn't an actual bug but still a nasty problem to run into.

The problem is actually with the certificate used to sign a ClickOnce installer. When you create a new ClickOnce installer Visual Studio will automatically generate the required certificate for you. And the intention was that this was only a temporary certificate and that a developer would replace it with a real one. Now it turns out that most people, including me, think there is only a single advantage to using a real and that is the claim that the certificate is from an untrusted publisher. Well that is only a warning most people ignore anyway so why bother with the real certificate.

Well it turns out there is a second, much larger, disadvantage to using the generated certificate. And that is the fact that it is only valid for a single year. And after that year the ClickOnce installation will stop downloading new updates.

More information, including a workaround, can be found here.

Thanks to Eric Knox and Cory Smith for pointing this out.

Enjoy!

DevDays and The Hague Jazz

Maurice — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:38:12 GMT

Last week was pretty interesting and busy

First we had the DevDays on Thursday and Friday. I was there to answer questions from the audience. I didn't get too many questions so I could take my time and actually spend around 90 minutes answering questions from one and around 1 hour with another. Add some more smaller questions and it kept me busy but still left time to check a few sessions.

One notable session I watched was by Neno Loje. It was the first time I saw him speak and he did a session about advanced ClickOnce. He did an excellent job. In general I enjoyed the two days and have to congratulate "mister DevDays" Arie Leeuwesteijn on a job well done

Besides the day program there was a new evening program on the Thursday. This was a lighter program with fun session. The best session was IT Boxing with Hassan Fadili as a referee. He is actually a real referee on his spare time and he did an excellent job!

So Friday evening I went to The Hague Jazz. I was kind of tired by then but it was still great fun. I forgot to take my DSLR so I shot a few, lousy quality, pictures with my phone.

Enjoy!

How to Download all of Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Maurice — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:05:00 GMT

VS2008 SP1 Beta is quite a package. By default the installation downloads the packages as needed and when needed. Now that is just fine if you only need to install a single machine. But when you need to install multiple, possibly virtual, machines like I have to it just wastes a lot of bandwidth and time . Fortunately there is a solution and it can be found here in the blog post by Heath Stewart.

Enjoy!

Workflow Persistence Service using SQL Server Compact

Maurice — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:11:29 GMT

As I mentioned previously I was working in a Workflow Persistence Service using SQL Server Compact as the back end store. Now this might not be the best persistence store to use in every application but it has a number of advantages.

One of the main advantages is ClickOnce deployment. In the case of the standard SqlWorkflowPersistenceService you need to have SQL Server installed and running and create the database, with a name of your choosing, using two scripts. Not a big problem but something that needs to be done first and is outside of the realm of what you would like to do with ClickOnce. Not so with SQL Server Compact. No with SqlCe you can just deploy a number of DLL's with your application and you are ready to go, so much easier and very ClickOnce compatible Add easy installation is just what you want when you are creating sample applications.

I actually did all the data access using LINQ to SQL which fully supports SqlCe as a client. It might appear not to as there is no designer support like with SQL Server itself but runtime it works just fine . using LINQ to SQL actually made the data access very easy and has an additional benefit, if you want to use the full SQL Server all you need to do is provide a different database connections string. One additional benefit of using LINQ to SQL was that is can check if the database exists and, if not, create it with a single function call. No need to mess with those tedious Create Table statements in SQL scripts!

Imports TheProblemSolver.Workflow.Hosting.Persistence

Module Module1
    Class Program
        Shared Sub Main()
            Using workflowRuntime As New WorkflowRuntime()

                Dim connectionStr As String = "Data Source=WorkflowPersistenceDatabase.sdf"
                Dim unloadOnIdle As Boolean = True
                Dim loadingInterval As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15)
                Dim persistence As New SqlCeWorkflowPersistenceService(connectionStr, _
                                                                       unloadOnIdle, _
                                                                       loadingInterval)
                workflowRuntime.AddService(persistence)

                Dim workflowInstance As WorkflowInstance
                workflowInstance = workflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow(GetType(Workflow1))
                workflowInstance.Start()

                Console.WriteLine("Press enter to stop...")
                Console.ReadLine()
            End Using
        End Sub
    End Class
End Module

Usage is real simple and pretty much the same as the standard SqlWorkflowPersistenceService type. The only extra is to set a reference to the TheProblemSolver.Workflow.Hosting.Persistence.dll that includes the SqlCeWorkflowPersistenceService type.

using System;
using System.Workflow.Runtime;
using TheProblemSolver.Workflow.Hosting.Persistence;

namespace TestClient
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (WorkflowRuntime workflowRuntime = new WorkflowRuntime())
            {
                string connectionStr = @"Data Source=WorkflowPersistenceDatabase.sdf";
                bool unloadOnIdle = true;
                TimeSpan loadingInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15);
                SqlCeWorkflowPersistenceService persistence = 
                    new SqlCeWorkflowPersistenceService(connectionStr, unloadOnIdle, loadingInterval);
                workflowRuntime.AddService(persistence);

                WorkflowInstance instance = workflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow(typeof(Workflow1));
                instance.Start();

                Console.WriteLine("Press enter to stop...");
                Console.ReadLine();
            }
        }
    }
}

If you want to download the SqlCeWorkflowPersistenceService you can find it here. Any feedback, hopefully good, will be appreciated!

Enjoy!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Visual Studio Tools for Office voor Visual Basic for Application ontwikkelaars

Maurice — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:50:28 GMT

Op 6 maart heb ik een presentatie geven bij de Nationale Office Dag in Ede. Hier zijn de slides en voorbeelden te downloaden.

Enjoy!

www.TheProblemSolver.nl
http://wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu

Sync Services for ADO.NET and SQL Express on the client

Maurice — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:40:00 GMT

Earlier this week at the SDC conference I gave a presentation about the Sync Services for ADO.NET. Some attendees where pretty exited about this new possibility to sync data between a local data cache and some sever. Especially that they could use pretty much any database on the server as long as there is a managed provider. Now on the client side people where somewhat less thrilled that the only option seemed to be SQLce. In fact only a single person in the audience was currently using SQLce. Now I think SQLce is a very interesting product and could be used as a replacement for SQL Express in a fair number of applications so I suggest you take a look at it. However the good news is that Microsoft is planning on releasing a sample local provider for SQL Express on the client when Visual Studio 2008, Sync Services and SQL Server Compact are released.

Still I highly recommend taking a good look at SQLce as it is more that adequate in quite a few cases and it can make life a lot easier

Enjoy!

ClickOnce and System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException

Maurice — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:25:00 GMT

I just got bitten by this one. Turns out you cannot change the folder structure of an application deployed using ClickOnce after it has been deployed. Now all I did was add a new folder, something that is quite common! If I had been renaming existing folders I might be able to understand this but with a new folder containing 1 new XML file? No not really and I think this should be allowed.

Anyway Microsoft acknowledges this as a bug, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911792/en-us for more details. I haven’t checked yet but sure hope this is fixed in Visual Studio 2008!

Other than that I think ClickOnce is great for deploying applications. Just make sure you know about Mage.exe and MageUI.exe so you can alter/update the manifests from development to test and to production. More about Mage here http://msmvps.com/blogs/theproblemsolver/archive/2006/04/05/89390.aspx.

Take care.