Ben H Blog - Keep it Simple, Then Refactor.

Last week was VS Live in Redmond.  I’m just recovering enough to write a post about it.  It was a great conference.  The best thing about this conference is the interaction between presenters and attendees.  As a presenter I love the ability to talk offline with attendees at all the different events setup by the conference organizers.  I also like interacting with the rest of the presenters at the conference as well.  I really feel energized and ready to go after taking in all the information at the conference.

I presented two sessions in Redmond.  One on Internet Explorer\HTML5\CSS3 and one on using MEF to build composable applications.  Both sessions went well.  The attendees had great questions and were well engaged.  During these sessions a few code changes and demos were done.  Below are links to the updated slides and demo code:

IE9: HTML5 Developer Overview

MEF Composition

Let me know if you have any feedback regarding the content of these files.  Other than that I want to say thank you to all those that attended my sessions.

After all that happened in Redmond I am jazzed to do it all again in Orlando.  If you have not registered for the Orlando conference do it here now as early bird pricing ends next week.  As a presenter I love to attend the other sessions at the conference and gain as much knowledge as possible.  In Redmond I was always conflicted on which sessions to attend.  I’m looking forward to catching those sessions I missed in Orlando.

Hopefully the temperature in Orlando will be a bit warmer as well.  See you there.

We all know that PDC… I mean BUILD is coming up in a couple weeks in Anaheim, California.  Microsoft is keeping all the announcements (Including a real agenda) for BUILD really close to the vest.  One thing is for sure, there will be some fallout after BUILD.  Many questions, rumors and suspicions will be debated out there in cyberspace.  What better place to get the real answers than at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond?  VS Live in Redmond includes sessions from some of the top names in the industry, including many Microsoft Product\Program Managers.  No one knows what will come out at BUILD (Or no one can talk about it until after BUILD).  In the short time between BUILD and VS Live the speakers will undoubtedly be up to speed on what is going on in the Microsoft world.  Join us at VS Live and have access to all the speakers to get your questions answered by real world software engineers.

Early bird rates are available until Sept. 7th.  Click on the image below to register for VS Live in Redmond and get a special speaker discount.

By the way I will be presenting on HTML 5 and MEF at VS Live in Redmond.  I sincerely hope to see you there.

I just wanted to make a quick post to inform everyone about an an all day HTML5 event coming to Colorado Springs on Friday, June 10th.  The event is presented by Microsoft and includes demoes, presentations and hands-on labs.  MS Developer Evangelists Dr. Doris Chen and Michael Palermo will host and present the event.

Now for the info that will seal the deal.  The thing that makes taking a Friday off work to attend this event worth it.  I will make a guest appearance during some of the demoes and try to throw Michael Palermo off his game.  Demoes are hard enough when you do them yourself.  Now Michael will have to deal with me driving while he directs me from the backseat.  Should be an enjoyable ride.

To get more details and register for the event visit the MS Events site here.  I hope to see you on June 10th.  It will be epic!  (As the kids say these days)

Ever since PDC 2010 there has been tons of controversy and debate swirling around HTML 5 and what it means for Silverlight.  About a week ago Scott Guthrie wrote a post that I found on the Silverlight Team Blog (here) that addresses this issue.  I recommend reading that post and the comments as well.  When all the buzz came out about HTML 5 I saw a bunch of angry posts from Silverlight developers.  Many of the comments on Scott’s post fall along the same lines.  However, it has been months since PDC and people are starting to calm down and realize that HTML 5 is just another tool in the tool box.  I compare this to the ASP.NET MVC release and how it affected Web forms developers.  At first you feel threatened.  You think that all the hard work you put into mastering Web forms or Silverlight will be irrelevant.  After awhile you realize that new technologies simply give you more options when solving problems for your clients.

My opinion is that HTML 5 and Silverlight will co-exist for a very long time.  The reason is they have different usages and solve different problems.  Especially in the mobile space.  No matter how you slice it users like the native experience of apps on their mobile devices.  I know with HTML 5 you can make websites look and feel like native mobile apps, but the experience is still just a bit off.  So Silverlight will be around as a mobile development story for some time.

I also believe Silverlight will remain for awhile because of the fact that HTML 5 is JavaScript intensive.  In my opinion JavaScript is still not as friendly to work with as managed code, even with all the new libraries like JQuery and Dojo.  Maybe someday the libraries and tooling will make developing JavaScript easier.  Again that is not going to happen for some time.

So, let’s review our UI choices for developing new .NET applications.  There is ASP.NET, ASP.MVC, Silverlight and don’t forget WPF.  I know that is simplifying things quite a bit, but in general that is what we have from a .NET perspective.  Each one of these technologies have there pros and cons.  The best advice I can give you is to design your applications with services and business layers so your UI is as thin as possible.  If you do that, it is not really that hard to create a UI layer for every one of these technologies.

I recently deployed a solution I was working on that used ASP.NET Authentication via the WCF Authentication Service.  When I called the service it returned a fault exception that read:

AuthenticationService is Disabled

I could not figure out why.  What happened was my web.config on the server was lacking the following entry to enable the service:

<system.web.extensions>
  <scripting>
    <webServices>
      <authenticationService enabled="true"/> 
    </webServices>  
  </scripting> 
</system.web.extensions>

I hope this helps solve your problem.

I’ve used ASP.NET Authentication on a handful of projects.  I am using it now as well and I ran into some strange issues that I wanted to pass along.  First of all this is one of the most useful post I found on using the WCF Authentication Service.  Read that post for a good step by step guide.

I had everything setup and it appeared to be working.  When I would call the Login method on the service I got back true telling me everything was working.  However, the very next line I would try to call a method on my custom service that resided on that site and I would get an unauthorized request.  I pulled my hair out on this for a long time until I found this new .NET Framework 4.0 entry in the web.config.

<machineKey validationKey="Your Key" decryptionKey="Your Decrypt Key" validation="SHA1"/>

This new entry is needed for applications that run on separate servers to talk the same language when doing authentication.  Obviously you will need generate your own keys for your sites but this fixed it for me.  This entry is needed on both the server calling the Authentication Service as well as the server hosting the service.

There could be multiple reasons authentication fails, but this is the one that bit me and took a long time to figure out.  Hopefully this will save you the trouble I had to go through to get this fixed.

I recently presented at the Denver Visual Studio User Group on this topic.  The approach I took was to start with an out of the box working Silverlight application and then tweak to using caching for performance reasons.  The next step is to persist that cache on the client side to make it even faster and not even require a round trip to the server.  After that I took it even further by saving the entire data structure to isolated storage to allow offline use of the application using the out of browser option of Silverlight.  Finally I expanded it even further by turning it into a WPF application that stored the data in a local SQL Server data base that was synced back to the server using the Microsoft Sync Framework.  To me this is a pretty natural progression of an application.  Build the prototype and then tweak it through different phases to expand it’s capability.

While building these demos I had to refactor a bunch of things through the progression of the changes.  This again to me is very natural.  I find that if I start by simply solving the problem the pieces of the system that need to be refactored and extend become crystal clear in the end.  Where as if I try to architect the application for every possible future change I tend to end up with an over architected system.  Again keep it simple and refactor later.

I think we all know caching is an essential part of almost every web based application.  That was the gist of the first part of the presentation.  The last part showed some of the pros and cons of the Microsoft Sync Framework.  There is some great documentation around this framework here.  If you are new to the sync framework I suggest taking the time to read through a couple of these docs to understand how it works.  My slides also contain some of information regarding the sync framework.  My personal take on it is it is pretty easy to get started with.  The issue I have is what happens when you get errors.  Synchronizing two data sources is by nature a difficult process and errors will occur.  Using this framework is kind of like using a black box.  You sometimes want more control than you are going to get.  Bottom line if I was looking to sync multiple data sources I would start with this framework.  It is a no brainer to get started with and provides a ton a cool functionality.  However, if I started having issues I might revert back to my old ways of just building a sync tool for my own need.

I had a great time presenting and putting together this talk.  Below is a link to the slides and the completed solution if you are interested.

Demos and Slides

I’m happy to say that I am presenting for the SSWUG.ORG Spring '10 Ultimate Virtual Conference.  This is a three day conference full of great information related to the Microsoft stack.  Most presenters are MVPs but all are industry leaders who share their real world experience during their fifty minute sessions.    The cost of the conference is $190 for early birds.  Check out a list of all the great sessions and register at www.vconferenceonline.com.  You can get a $30 discount if you use my VIP code of BHOELTINGSPVC10.  Enjoy!

The last session I taped was a demo filled session on how to create a robust multi-layer application using the ADO.NET Entity Framework as the data access layer strategy.  Entity Framework is not perfect.  However, it is a great starting part that allows for extensibility that makes is a nice part of an application’s architecture.  EF 4.0 has taken great strides and gives the developer total control of the generated code via T4 templates.  This session contain less than 10 slides and pretty much 40 minutes of demos.  If you are interested in watching this session please sign up to attend the virtual conference.  The cost is minimal ($190) and the ROI will be huge.  Check out a list of all the great sessions and register at www.vconferenceonline.com.  You can get a $30 discount if you use my VIP code of BHOELTINGSPVC10.  Enjoy!

I also finished taping my Silverlight session.  In this session we start from scratch with building a Silverlight navigation application.  We walk through setting up the URI mapping to provide deep linking.  We also wire up some data that the deep linking will use to look up data based on the link.  This is a great session for anyone thinking about using Silverlight to build a multiple page applications.  If you are interested in watching this session please sign up to attend the virtual conference.  The cost is minimal ($190) and the ROI will be huge.  Check out a list of all the great sessions and register at www.vconferenceonline.com.  You can get a $30 discount if you use my VIP code of BHOELTINGSPVC10.  Enjoy!

I just finished up taping of two sessions for the SSWUG virtual conference.  The sessions were Beginning OOP with C# part I and II.  I think the sessions went well.  The sessions walk through the basic concepts of creating and using objects.  They start simple and expand to refactor the solution as the business requirements change.  If you are new to C# and trying to make sense of it all these are the sessions for you.  If you already understand the basic concepts of OOP, in part II we dig into some more advanced topics related to interacting with database and saving, updating and deleting the data in your objects.  I think there is something for everyone in this two part series.  If you are interested in watching these sessions please sign up to attend the virtual conference.  The cost is minimal ($190) and the ROI will be huge.  Check out a list of all the great sessions and register at www.vconferenceonline.com.  You can get a $30 discount if you use my VIP code of BHOELTINGSPVC10.  Enjoy!