Slides and code from DDDSW

I’ve popped my slides and code on my sky drive, they can be downloaded from here:

I had an excellent time, and really enjoyed giving the talk, as well as going to the other talks :)  Guy and the team deserve every kudos going for putting on such an excellent event!  Hopefully I’ll be back next year :)

Visual Studio 2010

Having an MSDN subscription I’ve been lucky enough to get Visual Studio 2010 a couple of days early. I’ve installed it happily on my Vista installation (main dev box) and it runs faster (IMHO) than VS2008 does, so I’m dead chuffed!

I then tried installing it on my Win 7 installation (dev laptop), but the damn things always bombs out with the following dialog when the progress bar completes

on this screen

I’ve tried disabling Anti Virus (AVG), removing the external HD it was running from and running it locally, I’ve tried running it from the local HD in CloneDrive as opposed to from the external HD, I’ve tried removing CloneDrive and I’ve even copied the contents of the ISO to a local folder and run it that way. But still no joy.

I thought I’d be smart and check the event logs, but nope, they just said it had completed successfully :P Oddly enough Professional works...

Ah well, if anyone else has any ideas as to why this might have happened I’m open to suggestions :)

WF 4.0 Beta

So the Beta of WF 4.0 comes out for subscribers tomorrow, you can find more out here.

The WF series I’ve been writing will continue with the Beta, and parts 1, 2 and 3 will be updated.

Stay tuned for the rewrites and new articles :)

Windows 7 and WF 4.0

I've now had Windows 7 on my box since Sunday and although i don't have some of the nicer features coming in the Beta (the improved Taskbar and dockable Apps) I'm enjoying the features I've got to play with.

I've hit a problem with the Virtual Hard Disk mounting, where every time I try mounting a VHD file I get told that no provider is available. Here's a piccy of the image.


I've contacted the Windows 7 team (who are VERY helpful) and have identified that is was a problem with my upgrade from Vista as a driver didn't install properly. I haven't got the solution yet, as I'm currently helping the team understand why the installation didn't work. Once we know why it failed, I'll get the solution and I'll post if here. So if you've upgraded from Vista and VHD mounting isn't working and you're getting the same message as me, stay tuned as the solution will be up soon!

So on Windows 7 I'm running the VPC of the WF 4.0. I've run the first 3 labs so far and it's looking damn good. Labs 1 to 3 are:

1. Your first workflow
2. DB interaction
3. Your first WCF hosted Workflow

The new WPF designer is a lot friendlier to use than the original. I particular like that:

You now longer have to jump to code in order to setup variables in the Workflow


And Arguments :)


You can set variables on the activities (a lot friendlier than continually using the Properties pane)


and of course being a WPF based designer, you can now zoom in :)


I've found a few issues so far which I'm about to email in, but here they are in case you're interested in such things:

1. Error messages for activties aren't modal

2. Doing HOL 3, adding Rule called "If DiscountPoints <>

1. Misspelt variable in condition
2. Corrected spelling
3. Finished setting up rest of rule
4. Noticed the error provider against the "Condition" stating the "Name 'DiscountPoint' is not declared".
5. This was odd as I had corrected this on the activity
6. Clicked the property, click a different property. The incorrect value from condition was then used to update the condition on the activity
7. Correct in the property, click out and the activity was updated3. No feedback from interaction with bread crumbs on WF designer.

3. I would expect highlighting of the word I'm over, or something to show it can be used.

4. WCFTestClient freezes at approx 50% when adding a service that contains an error

5. Compiler didn't pick up error in Assign activity when a variable that didn't exist was used

Whats next? Well I'll be looking at doing a project and putting the walkthough on this blog and looking at writing a session on WF 4.0. Maybe even a comparison with 3.0/3.5 :) Stay tuned for my further adventures in WF and possibly dates for a WF 4.0 session!

Two bits of sexy news from PDC :)

WF 3.0/3.5 has effectively been taken out back and shot, and replaced with alot sexier version. First look makes it look far easier to use and extend, and can be skinned with WPF :)

VS2010 is being converted to a WPF based app (like the Expression tools), and will be taking advantage of a new extensibility model being included in .Net 4.0.

I can't wait to get hold of the CTPs! :D

Debugging a modular application

So you're working on a modular application and you've got individual modules in seperate solutions. You can't currently hit F5 to debug these modules as they're just a class library. What do you do?

It's nice and easy, all you need to do is setup a Post Build Event script and change the Debugger options. Follow these easy steps:

1. Open the Build Events tab in the Project properties.
2. Edit the PostBuild script so that it copies the Projects DLL and PDB files to the location of the application you're extending. A basic Post Build Event to do this would look like so:

if $(ConfigurationName) == "Debug" xcopy "$(TargetPath)" "C:\Program\MyApp" /i /y

if $(ConfigurationName) == "Debug" xcopy "$(OutDir)MyDll.pdb" "C:\Program\MyApp" /i /y

3. Save the Post Build script
4. Open the Debug tab in the Project properties.
5. Set the Start External Program to the absolute path of the exe you're extending, e.g. "C:\Programs\MyApp\App.exe".
6. Set the Working Directory to the directory containing the application your extending "C:\Programs\MyApp". Save.

Now when you hit F5 the DLLs and PDBs are copied to the directory, and the target application is run up for your debugging pleasure.

VS2008 SP1 and the missing Toolbox controls

I recently upgraded my VS2008 installation to the new SP1 release, I found that several of the .Net controls disappeared from the ToolBox, including the Button.

A new Toolbox also appeared labelled "#13119" with nothing in it.

To resolve this issue I had to delete the cached version of the Toolbox in my User profile, then when restarted VS2008 recreated the Toolbox and my missing controls reappeared.

Sorted :)