Navigation in XAML Browser Applications

XAML browser applications also known as XBAPs have the features of a web application as well as those of rich client applications leveraging most of the capabilities of WPF. As web applications they can be published to a web server and can be browsed on IE and Firefox.
Page navigation is an important part of application development and Windows Presentation Foundation supports navigation in two types of applications. These are the standalone application and the XAML browser application also known as XBAP applications. In addition to navigation between pages in the application it also supports navigation to other types of content such as HTML, objects and XAML files.


Read the details here.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit December 2009 Update and Windows 7

Although Windows 7 appears to be a great improvement over Windows Vista and Windows XP

to be replaced by Windows 7, the common prerequisites for working with Windows Azure Platform
appear to be limited to:
Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP as shown.



How come Windows 7 was left out of this?

How come VS 2010 was left out of this?



The common prerequisites from the Microsoft site are:


.NETFramework 3.5 SP1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 [VS90sp1-KB945140-ENU.exe]
ASP.NET MVC 1.0
Windows Powershell 1.0

The OS requirements for the above are :
Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008(for Powershell)

Greening the internet access

WiFi has become a fact of life and many home computers access the internet freely from wherever they are, be it in the kitchen, be it in front of the television. Most of the laptops come with WiFi connectivity. They need a modem and a RF router to get this level of flexibility. It is high time that these devices be integrated to reduce the clutter and the wastage of material. The ISPs supply the cable modems which can really be replaced by an integrated device that has both the functionalities.

SQL Azure and Spatial Data Types

The present version of SQL Azure (10.25.9085) does not support the 'Geometry' and 'Geography' data types of which the 'Geometry' data type conforms to Open Geospatial Consortium's Simple Features of SQL Specification Version 1.1.0.

However businesses may be interested in tagging data from their far flung resources with some information on their location which may involve these data types. Perhaps this is one of the items on the feature wish list of future versions of many businesses. With SQL Azure data being resident in the 'clouds', this feature is all the more important.

Want to hear a 15 minutes intro to SQL Azure?

Come and attend my talk at NJSQL User's group meeting here.

These questinos will be answered:
What is SQL Azure?

Where does it fit in?

How do you get a SQL Azure Account?

How do I get on to it?

What is the first thing I do with it?

How do I create a database?

What do I need to work with it in SSMS?

How do I populate a database with objects?

What tools are available for me to work with SQL Azure?

Can I create a linked server?

Does it work with XML?

How do I migrate data to SQL Azure?

How do programs interact with data?

How do I synchronize data ?

What tools are there for me in Visual Studio?

Microsoft Access and SQL Azure

MS Access is one of the oldest of Microsoft products cherished by many. It makes business sense to enable MS Access developers to leverage their knowledge base to create front end while pushing their data to SQL Azure thus making use of Microsoft Access Projects supported in the 2007 version. This not only increases SQL Azure platform adoption but also that of MS Access. The main problem, as it stands now is connectivity between MS Access and SQL Azure. The ODBC connectivity can be improved if a driver can be created specifically for SQL Azure, or the existing driver tweaked to support SQL Azure. The ODBC driver that downloads with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP has problems to connect via ODBC.

Problem uninstalling Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1

Betas roll out fast and of course you need to have the latest beta. VS 2010 Beta 2 has been out for some time. I wanted to install and before doing so I had to unistall (on my Windows 7 RC Ultimate). The removal went fine but the program asked for a particular file of the TFS Object Model(executable file). It was installed online and there was no disc for this. The named executable was not in the file system. I aborted and got this message saved.
------------------------------

[12/09/09,11:50:00] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates VC 10.0 Runtime (x86) was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Help 3.0 Beta 1 was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio Macro Tools was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 - ENU was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 4.0 Runtime was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Office Development Tools for Visual Studio 2010 was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:01] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Dotfuscator Software Services - Community Edition was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:02] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates SQL Server Compact Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 ENU) was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:02] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Sync Framework SDK v1.0 (x86) ENU was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:02] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Performance Collection Tools (x86) was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:02] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Network Emulation (x86) was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:03] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft SQL Publishing Wizard 1.4 was not attempted to be installed.

[12/09/09,11:50:03] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates TFS Object Model (x86) was not attempted to be installed.

-----------------------------------

Finally looking through Control Panel I saw this file (TFS Object Model related) but it was disabled. I tried uninstalling it (it was an .msi file). Voila it worked.

After this I uninstalled the one I wanted to within a very short time.

New 'Upgrade' feature in Windows Azure quite nice

You created a Hello World Sample like I did and wondering what if you wanted to run another sample with your account. 1 token in CTP gives you just one hosting service. You have the option to delete your service and create a new service.

I was not prepared to do this because I was not sure whether I still retain the ability to create a new service.

I went back to my Hello World project and made changes to the Default.aspx and then rebuilt the project and published it again. This time, in the Windows Azure portal, I chose to make a upgrade in the staging area. It took quite sometime (when I was holding my breath). But finally it did work as intended. Quite good.

The new upgrade approach can directly upgrade an incremenatl version in 'Produciton' rather than going thru' 'Staging ' first. Reduces time to deploy.

OK. Now, can you make it a little faster?

Synchronizing with a cloud database

In fortifying and solidifying its relational cloud database service-SQL Azure, Microsoft has come up with a new tool, the Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure November CTP. All that you need to do is to click and presto, you are in sync.

This tool [SQL Azure Data Sync Tool for SQL Server] makes synchronizing SQL Azure with a local server that much more efficient (compared to force fitting ADO.NET) and that much more reliable.This power pack provides the SqlAzureSyncProvider that automates much of the synchronizing task, that is, a wizard will step in, and take charge. However you may need to keep your SQL Server Agent up and running and happy.

My Experience with this tool:

It's a pretty neat tool except that it did not install the client template in my Visual Studio 2008 SP1(go to bottom of the posting). The database syncronization works like a Swiss clock. The tool needs to create a scope for synhronization. If the two databases (one on SQL Azure and the other on site) exist then the database on SQL Azure must be dropped and a schema is created first time you run the sync program. Run it again and you see the data. Make sure the SQL Agent Service is well oiled.

You want my other syncronization articles. Here they are:

http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Database-Code/Deployment-of-the-MobiLink-Synchronization-Model-Wizard-in-SQL-Anywhere-10/


http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Database-Code/MobiLink-Synchronization-Wizard-in-SQL-Anywhere-10/

Added after first post:

A forum posting resolved this issue:
The template is visible if you were to create a C# application rather than a VB.NET application


Another update 12/6/2009
The wizard throws a exception when you try to connect to SQL azure in a C# project

Final update 12/08/2009
By design the template is not included in VB.NET
There is an error in the first window of the wizard
Review the threads here.