VS.NET 2008 & VS.NET 2005 Solution Files

I recently made the move to Beta 2 for my main project and so-far-so-good, I haven't made the move to the 3.5 framework yet, I probably will as soon as I get the RTM later this month.  I'm being a bit cautious and not installing and beta components on my build server so I did a little research and found this article on information for working with your projects in both VS.NET 2008 and VS.NET 2005 concurrently.

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/122975.aspx

Basically just make a copy of your solution file, then change the "Format Version" and "# Visual Studio"

ProjectName_2005.sln

ProjectName_2008.sln

From what I can tell so far, the actual project files just aren't a problem.

-ec

AJAX File Upload

As we all know that if you put any sort of file upload control on a form where you use AJAX (ex. the ASP.NET ScriptManager and UpdatePanel) it won't upload the file via an XMLHttpRequest.  So that means you have two options; first not use the update panel; second, put a button on the form that does a full post back to upload the file, and another one to just do the save.  Actually the second one could be fairly attractive for providing some sort of feedback on large file uploads, but that isn't the point of this post.

Here's a hack that at least allows me to do this until I can figure out a more elegant approach, but first a quick background.  Within my architecture I have web parts which are essentially a tool bar with Save, Cancel & Delete and a form of fields that get updated.  I have this wrapped into a nice server side custom control and all my panels use the same architecture so this was a change only in one spot.

Basically what I do is capture the "onchange" event on the <input type="file" id="foo" onchange="swapSaveButtons();" /> control.  I then invoke some java script that swaps out the save button on the form that is registered for an async post back (it does this by default on an update panel) for one that does a full post back:

<asp:UpdatePanel ID="oUpdatePanel" runat='server'>
   <Triggers>
      <asp:PostBackTrigger ControlID="btnFoo" />
   </Triggers>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

A more elegant approach would be to interact with the ScriptManager with client javascript, but I couldn't find any APIs.  So basically in most cases, the normal save button that does the async post back triggers the trip to the server and the AJAX panel is happy.  In the case where the user selects a file, we swap out the normal save button with one that does a full post back and the file gets uploaded.  Of course this solution isn't perfect, but the worst case scenario is one where there is no file to upload and we still do a round trip.  That probably isn't the end of the world.

I would be very happy to hear of other approaches that would be transparent to the user and workflow.

-ec

Annual Computer Upgrade

Well it’s time for my annual computer upgrade.  After reading Scott Hanselmans post on the ultimate developer rig, Scott Guthries post on Drive Speed and their impact on compiling and the much anticipated release of VS.NET 2008, I decided it’s time for a new computer.  After looking at all the high end machines out there, they seemed to be focused mainly on gaming so I decided to roll my own.  The guy I talked to said I could over clock the CPU to around 3.2GHz so picked up a huge CPU cooling fan.  I stopped off at CompUSA this afternoon and went on a shopping spree and picked up the following components:

1. Quad Core 2.4 CPU
2. 2 x 2GB Ram
3. Cooler Master CM Cosmos ATX Full Tower Case
4. 2 x Raptor 10K Hard Drives
5. Cooler Master 750Watt ATX Power Supply
6. Zalman USA CNPS Processor Cooler
7. 2 x 8600GT 256MB Dual DVI Video Cards
8.  NForce 680I Motherboard
9. I also purchased a two year walk-in warranty on the processor and mother board since it's my intention to overclock these.
    

All in all it set me back about $2000.  It’s 4:15PM on Saturday and I’m going to start assembling, as I go I’ll be putting some of my findings and as well as how much work and time is involved with assembling this type of machine:

<notes>
     <note> I’ll be doing a little write-up as I go</note>
     <note> I think the last machine I built from scratch as an 80286, does anyone remember that processor? </note>
     <note> Since this was on a Saturday and after listening to Cigar Dave, this was after a couple beers and a cigar</note>
</notes>

Your mileage will probably vary ...

Here goes!

Step 1 – 4:20 -- Mount the Power Supply and Motherboard to the Chassis
Step 0.5 4:35      Ok, I’ve never been too good about reading the manuals…after all it’s only hardware right?  Need to install the processor on the board BEFORE installing the Motherboard on the chassis.  This is necessary because there is a brace for the cooling fan on the back side of the motherboard.

The brace is installed on the back and the fan on the front, when installing the fan the “S” clip doesn’t look like it will bend into place but if you put one side in then carefully hold the other end down you can tighten it up.  I probably should have gotten some lock-tight to hold these screws in place, but it should be alright

Mounting Bracket on back of mother board

Mounting Bracket on front of mother board

Quad Core Processor

Processor Installed with cooling fan

Step 2.0 5:00      Install Ram, this was fairly straight forward, I purchased 2 2GB sticks so I can later put in an extra 4GB.  The person that helped me pick out the parts also suggested a RAM cooler, for $15 I thought it probably wasn’t a bad idea.  Besides it has a cool blue LED that J

Step 3.0 5:10      Install Mother Board – OK let’s try this again, fairly straight forward, was a little tighter trying to get some of the screw in place but not bad.

Step 4.0 5:15      Connect the power, this one could be interesting…connecting the power wasn’t too bad, only three connectors there are two eight pin blocks, and of course I tried the wrong one first for the auxiliary power, but as I remembered from the last time I built a system, for the most part, you can’t put the wrong connector in place.

Step 5.0 5:25      Install the hard drives, this case has an awesome drive bay, I probably won’t ever fill it up but it’s a nice way to organize the hardware.  To start with I’m going to go with two Raptor 10K 150GB hard drives.  To start with I’m not going to use RAID, but have the programs on one and my source code on another as per Scott G.'s post.  I’m pretty good about committing my changes throughout the day so I’m not too worried about losing any data.  Also with this machine, I’m going to try to be very good about only installing the bare minimum on the actual host machine, then use either VM Ware or a different computer for installing all the other “crap”.  I just need this machine to fly and if I need to repave it at some point this type of configuration (only a few core apps and snapshots of my VMs) should make it relatively painless.

This was incredibly simple, access to the back with the removable back panel made this even simpler than I had hoped.

Step 6.0 5:45      Connect Power Switch, Power LED, Reset Switch and HDD LED.  This was fairly straight forward since, however since the LED’s have a +/- polarity, I needed to get this right.  I couldn’t find anything in the documentation on this however I saw a little “G” by one of the pins, I’m going to assume that this is ground or “-“, this was also on the white wire.  I have a 50/50 shot and I think I increased my odds a bit with the “G”.  I should know soon enough wrong assumption…exactly opposite is the case the white wire is the “+”.

Step 7.0 5:50      Install the rest of the front panel connectors.  External SATA (wow this could be really interesting) a few USB 2.0 connectors as well as some audio and an IE1394…I expect this to go smoothly…yup no problems.  The only gotcha here is that on the audio connector there is one for HD audio and one for AC97.  The mother board said HD so we’ll go with that one.

Step 8.0 6:00      Install the fan connectors…again I hope this to be straight forward…yup, no problem.  The only little gotcha here was the inside the coil on the cooler for the CPU the fan cable was sort of bunched up. So I had to fish this out…not really a problem.  Four external fans on this thing…it better run cool!!!  I just hope it doesn’t sound like a jet engine when I fire it up.

Step 8.5 6:05      The better half said the chili was ready, so since she let me get the new machine, I guess I better eat with her J.  I think after dinner I just need to install a graphics card and DVD drive and I should be ready to try a POST.

Step 9.0 6:45      After a quick dinner, I’m back at it now just install a VGA card and the DVD drive and I’ll be ready to test.  No problem.  I’m going to order a couple Dual DVI NVidia Cards, but for now I stuffed an older ATI PCI Express card to get ‘er fired up.

Step 10.0 6:50    Hook up keyboard, mouse, monitor and power cables

Step 11.0 6:55    Power up????????...no go L The diagnostics LEDs say Code 7F, check the POST error, but the monitor isn’t coming on.  I’m using an ATI PCIx card in an NVidia Mother board, I think I’ll try an old NVidia PCI card.  Yup, that was it…video card wasn’t pumping out anything.  Alright from unpacking to a successful POST, was a little under 3 hours with about a 45 minute dinner break.  In summary I really love the case, it was worth the extra $75.  Now for the fun!

Step 12.0 7:10    Install Windows Vista Business 64 bit edition

Complete 7:45 – probably took about ½ hour to do the complete Vista install.

Step 13.0 8:00    Overclocking - I found this thread on http://www.hardocp.com  this was a pretty good overview of everything I needed to know and was especially good since I've never done this before.  After playing with it a bit, it looks like my processor isn’t very happy at around 3.0 GHz, so I throttled it back to around 2.81Ghz and I’m running Prime 95 on it overnight to do a little stress testing.  If that looks good, I’ll probably settle in on that.  I a little worried in that a few times when I booted it didn’t find the main hard drive, but this was when I had it set to 3.0 GHz so we’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Step 14.0 9:40 Finish for today…let Prime 95 run overnight and see if I have a stable machine.

Done – 6:30 AM   Prime 95 ran all night without any problems.  The CPU’s actually remained fairly cool.  I may try to bump up the clock speed, but let’s see how a quad core 2.8GHz machine does on some basic bench marks

Benchmarks

These are from my 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo box running Windows Ultimate with approximately 3.8 GB of useable RAM.  It should be noted that this machine is about 1 year since the last fresh OS install and is in desperate need of repaving.

1)      Power on until login screen is ready 1 minute 27 seconds

2)      Login until all the “junk” is loaded 1 minute 40 seconds

3)      Load my main VS.NET project 37 sub projects and probably about 200K LOC 22 seconds

4)      Full rebuild of my main project 56 seconds

Once I get VS 2008 RTM, I'll post my bench marks of the new machine

-ec

DevConn 2007

I had a hard time convincing my self to go to Fall DevConnections 2007 in Las Vegas.  I was really glad I went, I think I'm finally feeling that I'm on the tail end of the learning curve with the new technology releases from Microsoft.  I can't by any stretch of my imagination an expert in any of the new technologies but at least with some recent development experiences and attending numerous sessions over the past few days at think I've got a good lay of the land, at least to a point where I have a good sense of the capabilities of the new technologies and should be able to match up a problem to the right solution. 

Here are some of my findings from this conference:
1) I'm anxious to start using VS.NET 2008 (to be released later November), specifically I'm interested in the better support for developing AJAX sites with intellisense and script debugging.  I'm also interested to see the performance enhancements in the new product.  I'm starting to get a little frustrated with some performance issues in VS.NET 2005.

2) I'm starting to "feel-the-love" with Silverlight 1.0.  Although it's extremely exciting to think that Silverlight 1.1 can be programmed with any .NET languages instead of just JavaScript as in 1.0, I'm just not there yet for 1.1.  I like it that there is a nice and small 1-2MB file that can be loaded and installed with little to no friction is great for 1.0, but although I appreciate the ambition of moving .NET into all the different worlds with Silverlight 1.1 I think there might be too many moving parts.  I think the XAML Browsers applications are probably a better alternative...we will see, I sincerely hope to be proved wrong :).

3) I think I'm starting to feel a little better about LINQ as well.  In the past LINQ seems to have been presented as a completely different way of working with data, well yes it is, but in demos I've seen this was going to start leaking into the UI layer.  It seems like there are two really different uses for LINQ, the first working with pure objects via collections of different sorts, and the second is LINQ to SQL.  As with my previous post, it seems like for the most part we should let the Database handle the getting/filtering of data and that is what LINQ to SQL does (saw some awesome demos of seeing the SQL that LINQ generates and the execute it).  I'm still not sold on the other approach (at least in the 90% apps that sit on top of a database) where we use LINQ to work with collections of objects.  I can see some edge cases where this might be kind of nice, but I just can't see this in the vast majority.  I need to get my hands dirty with LINQ to SQL, it might be a nice alternative to CodeGen which I'm still a big fan of...stay tuned.

4) I attended a session on the Microsoft Sync Platform, very cool...kind of packages up a lot of nice features I built into a client application.  It was good verification that I got the architecture right!

5) There are some new additions to WF in 2008, specifically the ability to create WCF end points for sending and receiving messages.  I can't say I completely understand this yet, but there most certainly appears to be some interesting capabilities here.  There is also a project to embed a WF designer into client applications.  This could get very interesting.

6) It seemed like in a number of sessions I went to the presenters had one problem or another with their technologies, I guess this is probably a case of being on the tail end of the betas for Microsoft's latest releases.  I also give a few presentations on some of the latest cutting edge stuff and it makes me feel just a bit better that I'm not the only one that runs into some "technical challenges" doing demos.

In summary...another good conference, the next one will be in April in Orlando 

-ec

LINQ Thoughts

We'll it's been a long time since my last post, I've been extremely busy over the past few months, both working on The Chaos Filter as well as client work.  I have spent a bit of time on some new technologies that hopefully I'll get a little time to do some additional posts.  These include Silverlight, Microsoft Office Communications Server Speech Server, and learned a lot from Marshall Harrison of GotSpeech.NET fame.  I've also built a nifty little WCF service that does call backs to .NET clients, this could be very interesting.

Any way, I should probably get back on topic...it seems like everyone is going ga-ga for LINQ, yes, I agree this is a very cool technology, but I'm just not feeling the love from the perspective of providing a new set of capabilities we just didn't have before.  Maybe it's the type of systems I build that is prompting my skepticism.  Most of the systems I would consider are "transactional" or maybe stateless would be a better description.  This includes ASP.NET web page processing and other services oriented programming, basically take a bit of information do something with it (talk to the database, store a file transform it, cook it up in a pan) and send something back to the user.  That's not to say however that I'm not implementing an object oriented approach.  It's just there is a distinct start point, interaction with a whole bunch of objects to do "stuff" and a distinct end point and other than some very simple state and context information (usually stored in some sort of persistence storage such as a DB) I just don't keep state in memory between transactions.

Saying that, let's discuss a different class of application.  I'm currently re-inventing an IM server (OK, I got a good reason to do that, but that's not the point).  With this IM server, I'm using the WCF service as I mentioned above to make call backs to clients out in the cloud that have initiated a session (still need to understand the plumbing and underlying mechanism here, but again that's not the point).  So basically I have a service running in the background, clients connect and open a session, interact with that session and I can send call backs when invitations come in or send out a message to a conversation.  What this means is I'm creating almost an In Memory Data Store that contains relevant information to manage these sessions.  Basically right now, I've got everything working off of System.Collections.Generics.Dictionary objects where it's fairly simple to do a lookup to get basic state information for what I need.  Alright we are three paragraphs into this, I guess I should finally get back to LINQ and how it relates.  My in-memory database of state information is starting to get a bit more complicated and I would love a better way to do lookups against this database, I can see the value of LINQ in a BIG-WAY for this type of application, hopefully if you made it this far, you do to.  Unfortunately for this application it's a .NET 3.0 app, and I'm not ready to jump to .NET 3.5 to leverage this new technology.  So setting aside the using LINQ for relational DB access and the political debate that it brings, is this a valid use for LINQ in things that we just couldn't do before?  If so how many of us are writing these types of stateful applications of those of us that are writing these how many of these should actually be stateless and thus minimizing the impact that the new LINQ .NET 3.5 features provide?  I'm not proposing I have the answer here, but I'm posing the question...

-ec

Hi, My name is Kevin and I'm a VS.NET Junky

Now to the rant, well for the most part I have two main problems that are really starting to drive me nuts, first is performance and the second is VS.NET crashing.  Another side bar please, I've been in this industry since the early ninety’s and developing programs since the early eighties we've come a very long ways.  I remember a couple of multiyear long projects I worked on in the mid to late nineties.  These were VC++ apps that literally to 30 to 45 minutes to compile each code-build-link-test cycle, some of us built some test harnesses to cut this down, but still it took 3 to 5 minutes.  As I continue my rant looking back at those projects really puts things in perspective. 

So what do I mean by performance issues, I have what I think is a fairy high-end developer machine, not like this monster machine that Scott Hanselman put together (oh yes - I will have a quad core box sitting under my desk by the end of the summer) but a decent machine none the less, I have a Core 2 Duo running at 2.13GHz with 4GB ram and a decent SATA hard drive, I've also got a USB drive I'm using to leverage ReadyBoost on my Vista machine.  Here is a link to a better description of my setup.  I'm currently working on a fairly large C# solution with about 25 projects and 4 web applications.  The application was written so that the user interface is a collection of Custom Controls or more specifically WebParts so each time I make updates I need to compile my control libraries or business objects libraries.  If my system has recently been rebooted I can usually do the edit-compile-test cycle in about 15-20 seconds, that includes the ASP.NET page recompiling with the new control library.  I have to admit, when you think about all the work it's doing, that is really incredible.  With this type of edit-compile-test cycle you can really achieve the state of flow as describe in the wonderful book PeopleWare productive projects and teams, a classic must read.  I have a terrible habit of working on too many things at once, I'm lucky, in that I can very quickly context switch however this generally results in a number of applications being open at one time on my computer.  After about 3-5 days of working on my Vista machine (for some crazy reason I installed Vista Ultimate, might that be part of the problem?) my compile times slowly start creeping up to where they are starting to approach 45-60 seconds.  In reality this just doesn't seem that long however it's just long enough to interrupt the "flow".  I think the thing that really makes my blood boil is when I'm watching the output pane in VS.NET and it says the compile completes, its 100% complete with zero errors, then, as I usually run my computer with task manager open, that little green bar sits at about 50%-75% VS.NET is non-responsive and I usually say something to my computer like..."That's OK, I'll just sit here and wait, no problem I don't have anything better to do...are you finished?...are you finished?"  (I get some strange looks from my better half, but I think she is getting used to it) then about 15-20 seconds later I can see if what I did actually worked.  Alright again only about 15-20 seconds but it certainly blows-the-flow.  That closes out the first part of my rant...in all reality, what VS.NET does is incredible, but the extra 30 seconds is just enough to let my mind wonder, check my emails, IM etc... (ding...maybe that's the real problem I have AADD and should look to fix my compile time issue with medications, trade one addition for another).  One thing that I try to do to "keep-the-flow" going is with an excellent tool called TestDriven.NET this get's my edit-compile-test time down to a matter of a few seconds when I'm working on my business logic, if you aren't using this why not?  In full disclaimer, I have CodeRush and TestDriven.NET plug-ins installed, I don’t think they are the problem.  My prior machine was a 3.0GHz Pentium D and 3GB RAM, I installed Vista Business and the VS2008 Beta 2 (not in a Virtual PC).  I don't plan on installing any other software on that machine and will see how it performs.

Rant number two...this one won't be nearly as long, about every 30-50th compile, as soon as I see that "Build Successful" message in my status bar, within a blink of eye Visual Studio disappears from my screen.  No error message no log entry...nothing, it's just gone.  I start it up and load my project (which takes between 2-3 minutes) and have never lost any work, but my solution settings (such as which files are open etc...) get lost.  Really a little annoying.  Whenever I get a free 4-5 hours I'm going to repave the machine and only install VS.NET and the key tools necessary for doing development, this time I mean it for sure, really only my development apps.

There, I got that off my chest after looking at the good the bad and the ugly, the reality of it for the size of our solutions and all the competing junk I have on my machine, I should be happy these compile in 5 minutes and I'm probably being greedy, but as with most developers I like to rant and complain.

Bottom line, thank you Microsoft for feeding my habit and providing me with a great (but not perfect) set of tools to write software to keep my clients happy and thus pay my bills, let’s see if we can do it a tad better in Orcas.

-ec

WF/Everywhere

(Work From Everywhere)

We'll it's summer time again and time to head out to the beach.  We have a travel trailer my wife and I take down to Fort Myers Beach in Florida to a place call the Red Coconut nice place right on the beach.  As an on line addict I need to have a decent Internet connection or I go through withdrawls...pretty sad.

What I'm currently using is a Sprint wireless card along with Linksys router that it plugs into.

This combination rocks!  I'm getting excellent download rates

It also has a built in WiFi radio, so I can sit outside my travel trailer and get on this connection.  It also works great as a switch to distribute connectivity.  I have my MCE 2005 box hooked into it and we watched a streaming version of Lost from the ABC site with a perfect picture!  This also works great if you have a Sling box player (highly recommended).

So if you haven't looked at EVDO lately I highly recommend it, for about $60 a month it's an awesome solution.

-ec

MEDC 2007 - Day 1

Actually the first day was yesterday with MIX, I went over there with high-hopes of watching another great key-note by Scott Guthrie, I made the trip from the Monte Carlo to the Venetian early that morning, got registered and headed up to the meeting room.  I was greeted by a not-so-friendly security guard saying the MIX sticker on my badge wouldn't let me onto the fourth floor...guess there was something in the fine print, oh well.  I came back that afternoon and went to a couple great sessions, one on identity, it really seems like OpenID is really going to merit a series investment in time over the coming months.  The other conference I went to was on security with AJAX enabled applications.  This was a great session as a refresher/reminder that building a secure application really needs to be started from day one and built into the architecture, at least its much easier that way.  Overall the $395 I paid to add MIX to the MEDC conference was well worth it

The conference started out with a bang with the Key Note by Robbie Bach the president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division.  He made a great case for developing software as a service and one of the biggest clients for those services is going to be mobile devices.  I also so some great demos on another one of the things I love to work on in my spare time (what's that?) Home Automation.  I really need to look at some of the latest developments in this area starting with Microsoft's Home Server.

Key points on what I took away from today's sessions

• Microsoft/Verisign finally came up with a "sane" way of signing mobile CAB files for WM 5.0.  Before you had to sign all your files, send them to Verisign, let them do their thing, get those files back.  Package them into a CAB and send it back up to them to sign the completed package.  What a pain in the ass, no real way to automate.  Just introduced this week, you can just start sending up the CAB file and it only costs one signing event!  Now it seems reasonable to sign the files...
• There is now an applications out there called fakeGPS.  I have a project coming up in May where I need to report on GPS data from a device, I'm looking forward to digging into this technology.
• According to Microsoft, WM6.0 and the Compact Frameworks are 100% back-wards compatible.  I have a fairly large WM5.0 application I've developed so I'll put this through the test, I really hope this is the case!
• On WM6.0 devices the Compact Frameworks 2.0 SP2 and SQL Server Compact edition are baked into the ROM...nice!
• On the large WM5.0 application I developed there is a good chunk of the code that deals with one handed operation on a Pocket PC type device (read not smart phone) I always thought this was a real hack...it was nice to see the Microsoft presenters give a demo of how to do this (and their implementation was really even more of a hack ;) ). 
• In Windows Mobile there is an event that I can subscribe to (something like Connection Status Changed) this will be fired when the connection via cell phone changes.  As part of my mobile application based upon a schedule I check the server for changes...kind of messy and probably wasteful the easy solution here would be to use an SMS message to kick of replication, yet this isn't that great either.  What I'm thinking about is that I'll build some sort of registration type service where the device can register with the server it's IP address as the connection status changes, then the server could make a TCP/IP call to the device to initiate replication (or maybe just send changes)
• New terminology for WM6.0 (Don't shoot the messenger)
  • Smartphone (no touch pad) - Now called "Windows Mobile Standard"
  • Pocket PC Phone - Now called "Windows Mobile Professional"
  • PDA's (no phone) - Now called "Windows Mobile Classic"

Overall this was a great day...picked up lot's of tips & tricks and validated all my design considerations over the past year.

-ec