One or two C# developers needed for a one+ year project with our client in Montpelier. Experience with C# and Visual Studio needed; knowledge of SQL Server 2005 helpful. This is a contract position with hourly rate appropriate to experience. Please send resumes and contact information to Marge Kolkin (recruiter@compass-sys.com) and reference position #719. No resume is EVER submitted for a position without explicit permission from the candidate. We do our best to acknowledge all responses.
All posts by Julie
Silverlight’s VS2008 Controls …that’s where the DataGrid is!
Last week, I pointed out a screenshot in Expression Blend from Scott Guthrie’s post about Silverligth 2.0, showing a lot of new controls. Roger Jennings asked – so where’s this datagrid I keep hearing about? I thought perhaps it was in the additional tools that were not visible in the screenshot, since there was a scrollbar.
I installed Silverlight 2.0 and the March Preview of Expression Blend 2.5 (oh dear, another “.5” version) and opened up to see what else was there. Here’s the default view.
Here are all of the controls in the asset library.
No DataGrid.
BUt then I created a new Silverlight app in VS2008. I can’t get over the Blend designer actually being right there inside of the VS IDE! And there is the DataGrid. But alas, no InkPresenter.
I spent some time (even digging around the dlls in Reflector) trying to find the SL version of the InkPresenter but finally decided to just give in.
Opening a Silverlight 1.1 project in VS2008 after installing Silverlight 2.0
[update: hmmm, I gave up trying to get the app working and started a new one from scratch, so “good to go” was only relative!]
The MSBuild files for Silverlight 1.1 were tucked inside of the MSBuild’s Visual Studio folder. Now they are in their own folder.
If you try to open up a project created with Silverlight 1.1 in VS2008, you will get a message that the C:\program files\msbuild\microsoft\visualSutiod\v9.0\Silverlight\Microsoft.Silverlight.Csharp.targets (or VisualBasic.targets) file can’t be found and you won’t be allowed to open the project.
Click OK to let the solution load.
In the Solution Explorer you should seethe project listed but unavailable. Right click on it and choose the Edit option. The project’s MSBuild file will open.
Scroll down until you find the Import Project= element that points to the targets file.
All you should have to do is replace
“VisualStudio9.0\Silverlight\”
with
“Silverlight\v2.0\”
Then you can reload the project after saving.
[continuing…]
Next steps are to get the right APIs referenced. Add references should show you relevant Silvelright 2.0 APIs. You’ll see that the old ones are no longer valid (the warning icon). YOu can delete them. In there place you need to ref:
- System [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
- System.Core [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
- System.Windows [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
- System.Windows.Browser [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
- System.WIndows.Controls [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Client]System.Windows.Controls.Extended [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Client]
- System.XML [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
I’m down to one error and when I figure it out I’ll append again.
Virtual MIX – the keynote
At the last minute, I had to forego heading out to Las Vegas for MIX but thanks to streaming, I was able to watch the 3 hour keynote given/hosted by Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. I say “hosted” becasue there were many many amazing demos of work different companies have been doing.
There will be so many people blogging about the keynote that I don’t want to reiterate everything. A few highlights were seeing some major innovation in IE8 (along with Dean’s cool t-shirt – the ie logo and the e in “eight” result in a clever image) and Silverlight 2 goodness – especially Vertigo’s silverlight app for Hard Rock Cafe (go Scott (even if he doesn’t post a lot on his blog!)). Thanks to Guy Burstein who posted all of the critical links in a few blog posts this morning, there’s also one to the technology that Vertigo used called Deep Zoom.
Okay, Scott Guthrie juggling for a Cirque du Soleil audition was pretty cute, too.
The real goods are:
- IE8 Beta
- Silverlight 2 Beta and dev tools and SDK
- Expression Studio Beta (don’t forget Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview)
- A passing mention that the next preview of MVC is available.
Because he did such a good job at it, I’m going to take advantage of Guy’s posts with lots and lots of links.
Deep Zoom in Silverlight 2
I missed the discussion of the one DATA related thing because of a phone call! “SQL Server Data Services: Microsoft announced a preview of SQL Server Data Services, a building block service designed for developers and businesses that need scalable, easily programmable and cost-effective data storage with robust database query capabilities. ” Sheesh. Roger Jennings has blogged about this particular piece.
Writing about EF with no limits
When I wrote my Intro to ADO.NET Entity Framework article for CoDe Magazine last year, I was told I had to keep it under 5000 words. That was painful. There was so much I left had to leave out that I still thought was part of an intro. I have had to get the hook quite a few times when presenting on EF. I have so much I want to share.
Now that I’m writing a book, nobody is telling me that I have to squeeze all of my thoughts into a little box and I can write and write whatever I want.
I knew this was ready to spill out of me. I already have 100 pages. Who knew!
It won’t all come so easily, and some of those 100 pages didn’t since I was forced to look carefully at things I have glazed over previously. But I am enjoying this part of the process while it lasts!
Surface Computing on C.S.I. Miami
I just happened to walk into the room where Rich and our neice were watching t.v. last night, just as a Surface computer made its appearance! Very cool. Read more here…
[A new DevLife post]
Hello, Fedex Ground? Have you heard of the internet?
I actually received a postcard in the mail from FedEx Ground asking me for directions to my house so they could deliver a package.
To be fair, I think perhaps the fact that the bridge on my road is closed so they have to come up another road could pose some confusion to a driver new to our area (if that’s the case), but you’d think they might be able to figure that out.
Need a cute puppy picture fix?
Most of the 35 puppies from my parents’ three recent litters are now at their new homes. The owners have been sending lots of pictures of their new beloved babies and they are collected on the home page of my parents’ website: www.blueheavennewfoundlands.com
For example, here’s Hank who went to live with a family in Akron, NY. I’m definitely in love with this little guy already. The name’s pretty good, too.
Microsoft MDM, Entity Framework and Astoria – is Jasper the missing link?
Confession: I had never heard of Microsoft Master Data Management before seeing Jamie Thompson’s blogpost, MDM -> Entity Framework -> ADO.Net Data Services. Better together?. MDM is a BI tool created by a company called Stratature, which Microsoft acquired in June. Jamie writes more about that in Microsoft purchases Stratature. Notice which technology MDM is listed under on Microsoft’s website.
Jamie sees a strong connection between MDM and entity framework’s capabilities, however he points out one big disconnect which is that EF can’t create EDMs on the fly at run time.
But can’t it? We’ve actually seen some explorations into this with the long ignored Jasper project, an incubator project that was previewed at last year’s MIX conference. I wrote an article about Jasper for OReilly which you can read to get an idea of what that’s all about: Build Dynamic Database Applications in .NET with Project Codename “Jasper” .
The short explanation is that Jasper dynamically generated an EDM on the fly at runtime by pointing to a database. Then some intelligent dynamic controls use Convention over Configuration to make assumptions about what you want to do with whatever data model was created. Dynamic languages are core to how Jasper works.
Jamie points out that Brian Dawson and Jeff Derstadt both expressed interest in his questions about bridging the two and providing the ability to dynamically create EDMs. Well, they’ve already got some of that work done. Maybe it will revive some interest in the ideas that were being put forth with Jasper.
I also grinned when Jamie said he had “cheated” by manually adding associations into an EDM based on an MDM database because MDM didn’t infer the relationships. That’s not cheating; that’s what the conceptual layer is for! 🙂
Expression Blend with Silverlight 2.0- Controls, controls, controls!
Scott Guthrie has written about Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2.0 in this blog post.
I just wanted to highlight one of the screenshots from his blog post.
Ooooh – look at ALL of those controls!!!
