My team is hiring

Looking for a job? Are you a mid-level to expert web developer in C#, ASP.Net and Sql Server? My team builds web apps for the Navy, and we need some help.

We have two requisitions open for web developers. The jobs are in Ventura County, CA or Kern County, CA. Please apply using the links below:

Mid-level experience:

https://www.cytiva.com/jacobs/ext/detail.asp?jacobs13535

More experience:

https://www.cytiva.com/jacobs/ext/detail.asp?jacobs13536

Activating an upgrade edition of Windows 7 after a clean install

In my experience, technical support calls are only frustrating because of vocabulary problems.  If the customer could convey the problem using vocabulary the support rep is familiar with, and if the rep can communicate the solution using words the customer understands, bingo!

I spent a good hour on the phone today trying to activate Windows 7 after I installed a new hard drive in my MacBook Pro.  I was very pleased with the outcome (I’m active!), and with the technical support rep who finally helped me.  But, to get to him, I had to convince two reps before him that what I was doing warranted further help.  The first rep in the Activation Center said I had an “invalid product key”, and that I would have to talk with customer support.  The second rep told me they no longer support activating Windows on Mac computers with a clean install, and I would have to reinstall Windows XP, then perform an upgrade install (really?)  I did not accept that answer (since it would take me the rest of the day to reinstall 2 versions of Windows AND re-setup my development machine and projects).  After staying on hold for a supervisor for a few minutes he created a case number for me with the Windows technical support team.

The key vocabulary words (for those of you who may need to call and talk to someone about this yourself) are: “Custom Install” vs. “Upgrade Install”, and using the MSDT tool to change my activation file from “custom” to “upgrade” so that my product key would work.

Here is the email explaining my experience with the Windows team:

Hi Charlie,
This is Adrian with Microsoft Windows Technical Support. 
It was my pleasure to work with you on your Windows service request [case # deleted].  I hope that you were happy with the service provided to you.
Based on our last conversation it appears that this service request is resolved and ready to be archived.  If this is not correct or if you are not happy with the support we've provided please let us know as soon as possible.  My goal is to ensure that your experience with Microsoft Windows Technical Support leaves you pleased with our products and services.
Here is a summary of the key points of the service request for your records:
ACTION:
Charlie, you were trying to activate the copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.
RESULT:
You were not able to activate Windows 7 Ultimate as got an error '0xC004f061'.
CAUSE:
You were using an upgrade DVD to do a custom installation and the activation files installed were for custom and not for upgrade.
RESOLUTION:
Charlie, we used the MSDT (Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool), changed the activation file from custom to upgrade and activated Windows 7 Ultimate.
If you have any feedback regarding Microsoft support, we would be glad to hear from you.  If you would feel more comfortable speaking with someone else regarding my service, Rajiv, my manager, would be very happy to hear your comments and suggestions.  You may reach my manager by sending an email to [manager’s email address].
Thank you for contacting Microsoft Windows Technical Support.

Geo Tracks – 12 Jun 2010

What is Geo Tracks?  My first post like this was a couple years ago, and it has been more than a year since my last Geo Tracks post… mainly because of a much shorter commute, also because I don’t have a Geo anymore!

After a year of local radio and NPR, I’m taking back my 40 minutes a day.  I purchased a cassette adapter so I’m back in business… I’ll log the good parts of my commuter listening here.

Hanselminutes 216 - Geek Relationship Tips with Scott's Wife.  Some practical ways Scott and Mo make their marriage work.  Good tips here about finances, setting expectations, assuming the best… I enjoyed it!

Hanselminutes 210 – John Lam and the Science of Fitness.  I am a couch potato right now… so hearing John Lam’s enthusiasm for using sensors to calculate his power output in watts while cycling was a bit over the top for me.  It is cool to hear about the types of sensors that are becoming available to every day Joes, and how it is becoming more acceptable, even expected, to share your data/progress in social apps like Twitter or Facebook.  Scott even jumped on the bandwagon recently by posting his LoseIt updates to Twitter.  I responded by reading about the HundredPushups and Couch to 5K programs while eating a bag of chips.

Cornerstone Simi Podcast 05/30/2010 – The End.  Francis Chan’s last message to his church in Simi Valley.  God has blessed me through this podcast, and I’m sad that Francis won’t be using this platform to teach anymore.  I’m excited to see how God will use him next though… and the good news is I have a lot of Francis messages to catch up on.

Cornerstone Simi Podcast 05/02/2010 – Salvation.  Francis compares salvation to harmonies in music, those weird 3D posters, and other things that you either “just suddenly get” or not.  He who has ears, let him hear.

Tracking SQL Server procedure and function changes

This Stack Overflow question inspired me to create a couple batch files today:

1. gen_all.cmd (creates one text file for each stored procedure and function in a database)

@echo off sqlcmd -E -S .\SQLEXPRESS -d DATABASE -h-1 -Q "SET NOCOUNT ON SELECT ROUTINE_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Routines WHERE ROUTINE_NAME NOT LIKE 'dt_%%' AND (ROUTINE_TYPE = 'PROCEDURE' OR ROUTINE_TYPE = 'FUNCTION')" -o "sp_list.txt" for /f %%a in (sp_list.txt) do sqlcmd -E -S .\SQLEXPRESS -d DATABASE -h-1 -Q "SET NOCOUNT ON SELECT N'IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N''[dbo].['+ROUTINE_NAME+N']'')) DROP '+ROUTINE_TYPE+N' [dbo].['+ROUTINE_NAME+']' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Routines WHERE ROUTINE_NAME = '%%a' UNION ALL SELECT N'GO' UNION ALL select [text] from sysobjects join syscomments on sysobjects.id = syscomments.id where sysobjects.[name] = '%%a' UNION ALL SELECT N'GO'" -o "ProcsAndFuncs\%%a.sql" del sp_list.txt

2. gen_since.cmd (same as gen_all.cmd, but takes a date/time parameter and only generates files for procs/funcs that were created or altered since the specified date/time)

@echo off sqlcmd -E -S .\SQLEXPRESS -d DATABASE -h-1 -Q "SET NOCOUNT ON SELECT ROUTINE_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Routines WHERE ROUTINE_NAME NOT LIKE 'dt_%%' AND (ROUTINE_TYPE = 'PROCEDURE' OR ROUTINE_TYPE = 'FUNCTION') AND (CREATED >= convert(datetime,'%1') OR LAST_ALTERED >= convert(datetime,'%1'))" -o "sp_list.txt" for /f %%a in (sp_list.txt) do sqlcmd -E -S .\SQLEXPRESS -d DATABASE -h-1 -Q "SET NOCOUNT ON SELECT N'IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N''[dbo].['+ROUTINE_NAME+N']'')) DROP '+ROUTINE_TYPE+N' [dbo].['+ROUTINE_NAME+']' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Routines WHERE ROUTINE_NAME = '%%a' UNION ALL SELECT N'GO' UNION ALL select [text] from sysobjects join syscomments on sysobjects.id = syscomments.id where sysobjects.[name] = '%%a' UNION ALL SELECT N'GO'" -o "ProcsAndFuncs\%%a.sql" del sp_list.txt

Usage (to generate any files altered on or after Jun 5th):

gen_since 06/05/2010

I know there are some slick database change management tools out there, both OSS (Tarantino) and commercial (Redgate SQL Compare)… but I’m going to try using this simple batch file for a while as a nice, mindless way to save my DB objects as files that can be tracked in source control.

Test driving the TekPub ASP.Net MVC2 Starter Site

I like starter sites… we use one I put together at work (I called it BlankSolution).  They make it really fast to get up and running on a new project, AND to carry over improvements and best practices from project to project.  They are also great for learning.

Rob Conery released an MVC 2 starter site recently which looks really interesting.  Go check it out to see all the goodies it includes… then come back here to read about my experience using it to build up a real project (the NCharlie Task Board of course!)

Here we go, step by step (I’m following Rob’s blog post announcing the 0.5 release):

1. Download the bits from CodePlex, extract the zip and open the solution.  Screeeech… error opening in VS 2008.  Something about a bad pointer in the Web.csproj file to MSBuild “v10.0” WebApplicationTargets.  A quick edit to the csproj file (changed v10.0 to v9.0) fixed that (I won’t be forking the starter project for fixes if I find them… just want to see how quickly I can get up and running tonight.)

2. Set up the app to use SubSonic (the ORM tool Rob wrote).  Using Subsonic is a “for now” choice, to quickly build up the database from POCO domain classes.

- Global.asax.cs needs one change, on line 135.  Change “SiteEFSession” to “SubSonicSimple”.

- SubSonicSimple.cs needs one change, on line 18, add the name of the connection string the app will use, “SiteData”.

- The Web.config file doesn’t need to change, as long as your local database instance name is “SQLEXPRESS”.

3. Add a new Class Library project to the solution to hold the domain classes.  I called it “Core”.  Make sure to add the “Core” project to the “Web” project’s references.

(Side note: If you read through the comments on Rob’s getting started post, he ripped some guy a new one for suggesting he put his domain entities in a separate project, and add separate “Model” classes that map between the Core and the UI… so proceed at your own risk!)

- Add the domain classes:

4. Modify HomeController.cs:

- Add ISession as a private, injected member.

- Grab all the Board records from the database, ordered by Board name, and paged

public class HomeController : Controller {
    private ISession _session;

    public HomeController(ISession session)
    {
        _session = session;
    }

    public ActionResult Index(int? page) {
        var boards = _session.All<Board>().OrderBy(x => x.Name);
        var list = new List<Board>(boards);

        return View(list);
    }

5. Control-F5 to build and run the site… it builds, but:

6. I had some problems.

- First, my SQL Server instance is version 2005… Rob’s Site.mdf file in the App_Data folder is v655 (2008 I think), and it would not open.  I created a new “SiteData” blank database on my local instance, modify the connection string in Web.config, and tried again.  Same beautiful error screen I got before.

- Second (I looked in the Event Viewer for this exception), I found this in the exception detail:

Exception information:
    Exception type: InvalidOperationException
    Exception message: Can't decide which property to consider the Key - you can create one called 'ID' or mark one with SubSonicPrimaryKey attribute

…so, I added an “ID” property to by Board class, and tried again.  Error screen.

- This time the “Index.aspx” view is expecting the model to be “Web.Model.User”, and I’m passing it a list of Board entities to choke on… that makes sense.  So I changed the “Inherits” directive at the top of Index.aspx to expect IList<Core.Domain.Board>, and removed the one “EditorFor” statement on line 35, and…

 

It’s alive!  It took me almost 2 hours to follow Rob’s getting started post to this point… I didn’t get to the part about switching SubSonic out for EF or LinqToSql.  I’ll leave that, and making this into an actual Task Board, for next time.

NCharlie Task Board – MVC Version

It’s unfortunate that paid work has to take precedence over fun blog projects like this… but that’s life!  I have an hour or so tonight, so I’m jumping back in to this task board project.

Last time (February, ‘10!) I wrote about the Webforms implementation of the task board.  That was a good exercise for me, because I’ll be able to take many of the patterns and tools from that little project directly into my “for pay” projects, which are still all Webforms.

This MVC version will take up more than one post; I will try to keep the posts a bit shorter, and I want to record the implementation details with enough depth that I’ll be able to use these notes later to quickly ramp up my team on MVC projects when we get there.

This (image at right) is the initial project tree from Solution Explorer.  You can see some of the same elements from the Webforms version (AutoMapper, StructureMap, a Master page, an NHibernate configuration file and TransactionBoundaryModule that implements the “Session per Request” pattern for data access operations.)  This UI.Mvc project references the same “Core” project that the Webforms project references.

To quickly get started with the “Model-View-Controller” pattern in this project, I created the TaskBoardController class and added one ActionResult method named “Index”:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var board = new Board("My hard coded test board", 1, 1);
    var column = new Column("Col1", board);
    var task = new Task("task1", column);

    var model = new[] { Mapper.Map<Board, BoardViewModel>(board) };
    return View(model);
}

You can see it just creates a new, hard-coded task board entity, maps it to the BoardViewModel class, and returns it.

To quickly create a View page that will accept this ActionResult, I right-click on the method name “Index” and choose “New View”:

This brings up the Add View wizard, in which I can create a new ASPX view file that is strongly typed to my BoardViewModel class, uses the Master page for my project, and puts in some initial code to display the data:

I chose “List” as the View content type, because that selection assumes I will be returning an enumerable list of models, and puts a “foreach” loop into the ASPX page (I’ll use that code later as I build up the task board… where I used the ASP Repeater control in the Webforms project, I’ll use “foreach” to create the correct HTML in this MVC view page.  This is pure code-generated quick and dirty programming… which I think is dangerous if you don’t use it correctly, but valuable for quickly understanding the ingredients in an MVC web app and getting started with a screen quickly.  Even though this view of the BoardViewModel doesn’t look anything like a task board yet, I think it is useful as an exercise:

To see the generated code, check out the HTML in the Index.aspx file that creates this view.  I tagged this code in source control as “MVC quick start”.  Next, I’ll do things right and create some tests that define a set of actions and expected behavior for the TaskBoardController.

NCharlie Task Board – Webforms version

…in which the task board UI comes alive.

I’ve got my domain objects and simple persistence finished.  Now I will implement the user interface first using ASP.Net Webforms.  I created screen mockups in an earlier post, and this view model class is a representation of that screen:

public class BoardViewModel
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int CommunityId { get; set; }
    public int PageId { get; set; }

    public ColumnViewModel[] Columns { get; set; }
    public class ColumnViewModel
    {
        public string Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }

        public TaskViewModel[] Tasks { get; set; }
        public class TaskViewModel
        {
            public string Id { get; set; }
            public string Name { get; set; }
            public bool InFirstColumn { get; set; }
            public bool InLastColumn { get; set; }
        }
    }
}

The user interface for this model is a “board” with a variable number of columns, each of which has a variable number of tasks in it that can jump forward or back to other columns.  For the Webforms version I use nested Repeater controls to accomplish this.  This is how it turned out:

I’m keeping this post short, but there is actually plenty to talk about behind the scenes that I may cover in more detail in later posts.  For now, here’s a list of elements that in my opinion made this little project fun to work on:

• Uses a master page, NCharlie.master



• Uses jQuery for showing/hiding textboxes for user input



• Uses Automapper to simplify mapping entities retrieved from the database to the view model for display



• Uses the StructureMap IoC container for injection of IBoardRepository into the page constructor



• Web.config modification: added HttpModule reference for the TransactionBoundaryModule class (implements the Unit of Work pattern using one NHibernate Session Per Http Request)

There are some things I need to improve… for example, I don’t have StructureMap configured to automatically inject the repository class.  Rather, I’m asking StructureMap for it explicitly in the constructor… simply because I’m still weak in that area and need to learn how.  Also, I skipped writing tests for this bit of code… mainly because I find it hard to write tests for Webform controller classes.  Hopefully I will be able to fix that when I implement the MVC version.

Check it out in the Webform branch of the NCharlie source.

NCharlie – Simple Persistence with Fluent NHibernate

Now that I have the domain objects (Board, Column and Task) built up and tested, it is time to wire them up to a database.  I want to create them, click Save, go home and play Wii with my boys… then come back the next day to find them persisted, waiting for me to work with them again.

I’m going to keep this part really simple… because it should be.  The days of writing stored procedures, or ADO.Net connection, command, execution and mapping code are dead to me.  At least here in the NCharlie project they are!

First, I’ll give credit where credit is due… The folks at Headspring have contributed lots of code to the community through open source projects like CodeCampServer.  The following simple data access code, and most of the NCharlie starter project, comes from the example project Jimmy Bogard used at his MVC boot camp course in January.  Check out the NCharlie source to see the configuration files and base classes that make the following simple mapping code possible.

Here’s a test showing that I want to persist a Board entity to a database:

Here’s a mapping class that makes the test pass:

That’s all that’s needed to get the Board entity saved.  I really like the simple syntax used here… no strings like “Name” or “CommunityId” in this code.

I wanted to keep it short and simple here… I did add some other persistence features (cascading updates/deletes, joins.)  You can check out the code (which includes mapping code for the other entities) in the source branch tagged 2010-0218-persistence.

NCharlie Project Mockup, Domain Model

Here are the mockups of the two project screens I will focus on in the next few posts.  First, here is a the page that allows users to create a new task board:

I will want this application to allow users to set up multiple task boards for different teams/groups.  Since I’d like to use this software at work someday, each task board will have a unique CommunityId and PageId so they can reside in a portal application.  Once a new task board is created, columns and tasks may be added to it:

A task can move forward and backward through the columns.  Columns and tasks may be deleted.

The problem domain contains Boards, Columns and Tasks.

This set of user stories describes the functionality of the task board:

• When adding a new Board, the Board Name, CommunityId and PageId should be specified.
• When adding a new Column to a Board, the Column name should be specified.
• When adding a new Task, a Task description should be specified.
• When displaying a Board, all the Board’s columns should be shown.
• A new Column should be added to the end of the Board’s list of columns.
• A Column may be deleted.
• When displaying a Column on a Board, all the Column’s Tasks should be shown.
• A Task may Task should be added to the end of the Column’s list of Tasks.
• A Task may be moved from its Column to an adjacent Column.

I wrote unit tests for the non-trivial stories above, and created domain objects and methods to make them pass:

Here is the class diagram for this simple domain:

I tagged the code for this post in source control, you can check it out here.  Next I’ll walk through the data access code… Or I’ll create view models and UI elements… Or I’ll step back and explain some patterns in the NCharlie starter project… I’ll have to surprise you because I don’t know yet!

Resurrecting NCharlie

We delivered some software at my day job last week that has been keeping me pretty busy for the past few weeks.  To celebrate, I am revving up the NCharlie project again to buzz out some things I picked up in Austin last month.

I’ve already spent some time integrating StructureMap, Automapper, and Fluent NHibernate into a task manager Webforms application that uses the patterns I learned last month in bootcamp.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

We’ve been using a “task board” like this at work to move our development tasks through to deployment.

I know, the CSS needs some work… but the thing is working!  Here’s what I’ve done so far:

1. Started a new blank solution for NCharlie in Visual Studio 2008.
2. Added .Net 3.5 projects for the Core NCharlie project, a Webforms UI project, an MVC UI project (using ASP.Net MVC 2 RC 2), Integration and Unit Test projects.
3. I put the blank NCharlie starter project (no entities, tests, views… just the architecture) into a branch tagged ncharlie-starter.

As of tonight, the version in the trunk of the NCharlie repository matches the starter project.  My plan is to build it up using a branch per feature, and blog about it as I go.  I plan to mirror the functionality using Webforms and the MVC framework.  I think it will be a good way for me to cut my teeth on MVC, plus it will be interesting to compare the two when it is done.

MVC Bootcamp takeaway

I just finished three days of Headspring MVC bootcamp training with Jimmy Bogard.

Impressions:

Great training, I would highly recommend anything these guys offer. I enjoy a fast pace, hands on (lots of programming exercises) style of training, and that's what I got. Jimmy is a good teacher... I already knew that, since I've been reading his blog for the past year or so and I've picked up a lot a good pointers to things that help me in my work. He is also a good communicator teaching in front of a room full of diverse programmers. If you are new to MVC like I am, this course is great for introducing concepts that may be new to web forms programmers... but like the MVC book that Jimmy co-authored, the class goes way beyond the introduction by showing how they leverage some of the features in MVC (ActionFilters and ResultFilters, HtmlTemplates, Model binding and validation...) to build applications quickly that are easier to maintain. We used the release candidate of ASP.Net MVC 2 in class.

Takeaway:

We use ASP.Net web forms at work, and I don't think we will change to MVC in the near future. Maybe at some point in the next year - I'm not sure yet. I knew that going into this class, but I also hoped I would learn about valuable patterns and tools that we can use right now (yes, even in web form development) that will make us go faster or that will make our apps easier to maintain. My hopes were not dashed... here is my list of "valuables" (this list is more for me and my team... but if someone else gets something out of it, great!):

1. Model Binding - this seemed magic to me at first, and comes for free in the MVC framework. When a form posts to the server, the action method ("event handler" for us web form devs) that accepts the post takes the payload in as a parameter... which is already mapped to a model class. No tedious "model.FirstName = txtFirstName.Text" code to write. This would be nice to have in our work... there may already be something similar in web form development that I just don't know about. If not, I don't think it would be much work to write some convention-based code that does this type of work for us.
2. ViewModel validation using property attributes - we write a lot of repetitive code that validates email addresses, phone numbers, department numbers, etc. It would be nice to be able to put an attribute on a property in our ViewModel class (for example, "[EmailAddress]" and have the form post automatically check these for us.
3. Html builders - the RC version of ASP.Net MVC 2 has helper methods like "Html.EditorFor(x => x.FirstName)" which spit out the label, text box, and validation message element for a property called "FirstName" on a view model. We do something similar with user controls for our pages... but we could do a lot better, and the implementation in MVC gives me some ideas. MVC 2 even has an "Html.EditorForModel()" method that will render the entire collection of form controls needed for a particular view model. Handy!
4. Use an IoC container like StructureMap - we have been using poor man's dependency injection for a few months now, but we need to step it up and use the factory pattern to do the heavy lifting for us... if a presenter/controller class needs an IPersonRepository, get it from the factory. Stop explicitly injecting it when the controller is requested.
5. Use AutoMapper to map domain models to view models. Jimmy is right, mapping code is tedious to write.
6. Move to NHibernate. I've been gently moving our team away from classic data access layers with ADO.Net for the past year. We use a really simple, in-house ORM that I wrote (yes, I know... I re-invented the wheel - but it seemed the best way to transition) that reduces the number of stored procedures per project by ~90%. It is time to go all the way, so we can realize the performance, maintainability, and code-quality benefits NHibernate will bring.
7. Lighten up our presenter/controller classes. These are still pretty heavy in our team... something Jimmy showed us, and I will be looking up in CodeCampServer, was using the Strategy pattern to execute commands when a form requests something. For example, a form posts to the server and needs to save data... CodeCampServer uses an "ExecuteCommand" method to pass the ViewModel payload, and the domain entity type, to another class that handles the work of mapping and persisting.

I'm sure I am forgetting something... I took good notes though that I'm sure will be printed and worn out over the next months. Thanks for a great class Jimmy!

Bootcamp 2010

I will be attending a 3 day bootcamp on ASP.Net MVC in Austin next week, taught by Jimmy Bogard.

It has been almost a year since I took Headspring's Agile .Net Bootcamp (March 2009, taught by Matt Hinze). We are still using web forms where I work, but we have adopted many of the tools/patterns/practices I learned about last year (Unit testing, using an ORM, SOLID principles). My prioritized notes from bootcamp 2009 of "what to implement back at work" are here on my desk... I refer back to them often.

This year, I'm looking forward to Jimmy's presentation on how he uses the MVC framework... we will most likely adopt MVC later this year. But I'm also hoping to come back a little stronger, or at least with more information awareness, in some areas I know I'm weak in. These are not necessarily listed in the course description, but from what I've seen in the Headspring blogosphere and CodeCampServer, these are integral parts of their projects:

- Inversion of Control (IOC)
- Unit of Work pattern and how it works with a web request
- Basic usage of AutoMapper?
- Better design in general (I still build pretty heavy controllers)

And, of course I'm looking forward to seeing Austin again and having a slice of Bevo for dinner one night!