Ezequiel Jadib’s Blog

As Diego Poza announced in his post, we have just published a new guidance to help CAB developers familiarize themselves with the Composite Application Guidance by comparing the main components of both libraries.

Let’s take a look at the guidance content index:

Because the Composite UI Application Block and the Composite Application Guidance are targeted to build composite applications, they have similar core concepts. These core concepts have different implementations. The following figure compares the implementation of the core concepts.
 

Want more?

Download the Composite Application Guidance for Composite UI Application Block Developers from Codeplex.

Feedback

We really want your feedback on this guidance, so feel free to give us your feedback on the discussion board.

Enjoy!

After publishing an alpha version, a beta version and a RC 1 version I’m glad to announce that the final version of Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008 has been published on MSDN.

What is new in this release?

• The April 2008 release of Smart Client Software Factory includes support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. This release does not support Visual Studio 2005.
• April 2008 Guidance Package can run side-by-side with May 2007 Guidance Package.
• The April 2008 release requires Guidance Automation Extensions 1.4.
• Support for Enterprise Library 3.1.
• We fixed a few bugs that were identified by the community. These are some of the bugs fixed:
  • WPF C# View is not being disposed correctly
  • View does not properly dispose
  • Install fails when VB is not installed
  • ShowViewInWorkspace Id
  • Error with WPF SmartParts and ISmartPartInfoProvider Title is required
  • Visual Basic Version of the SCSF has a missing code in the view’s dispose method
  • App.config is not using the signed assemblies (PublicKeyToken is null)

How to enable a May 2007 solution

If you have a May 2007 solution and you want to enable it to use this new guidance please read this page.

Known Issues

In this page you will find the list of known issues that exists in Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008.

Downloads

Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008

Smart Client Software Factory Source Code - April 2008

Smart Client Software Factory Documentation - April 2008 (CHM format)

Documentation

Documentation on MSDN (HTML format)

Feedback

Feel free to give us your feedback on the discussion board. If you see issues, please post them to the Issue Tracker.

More Information of this release

For more information about this new release please read Blaine’s post and Michael’s post.

Enjoy this new guidance.

Smart Client Software Factory / Web Client Software Factory / Prism / p&p Documentation Tools

• Web Client Software Factory Documentation - What is New? by Mariano Szklanny
• patterns & practices Documentation Tools on CodePlex (Spanish) by Ezequiel Morito
• Prism: Second drop by Ezequiel Jadib
• Prism: First drop published  by Ezequiel Jadib
• E-Commerce Catalog: New articles published by Ezequiel Jadib 
• SCSF Sample Application and Demo Script published on Smart Client Contrib by Ezequiel Jadib
• Prism (WPF Composite Client) Codeplex Site Launched by Ezequiel Jadib

C#

• Differences: Delegates vs Events by Damian Schenkelman
• C# by Damian Schenkelman
• Cómo: Generar tipos genéricos dinámicos (Spanish) by Ignacio Baumann Fonay

TDD

• Test driven development (TDD) by Damian Schenkelman
• Test driven development (part 2) by Damian Schenkelman

IT / VMware / openSUSE

• Permission problems virtualizing devices on openSUSE host (VMware Server) by Franco Jorge
• DHCP server problem on openSUSE - Default Declaration  by Franco Jorge

Object Oriented Programming

• Object Oriented Programming by Damian Schenkelman
• Object Oriented Programming (Part 2) by Damian Schenkelman

Architecture

• Un poco de Arquitectura (Spanish) by Leandro Boffi

New Southies

• Mi Primer dia en Southworks! (Spanish) by Leandro Boffi

Some time ago, I wrote a post about How to update the installer to run Smart Client Software Factory in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

Now I’m proud to announce that we shipped an Alpha version of Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008. As Blaine announced before, in order to run this new release you will require an upgrade of GAX/GAT to the February 2008 release.

For more information about this new release you can read the following posts:

• SCSF April 2008 Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Published to CodePlex by Blaine
• Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Alpha Available by Michael
• Alpha version of SCSF April 2008 that supports Visual Studio 2008 is now available by Sebastian
• Versión Alpha de SCSF April 2008 con soporte para Visual Studio 2008 ya está disponible by Mariano (in Spanish)

Note: This is not the final release and still has known bugs. Use at your own risk

Download SCSF April 2008 Alpha Release and give us your feedback on the discussion board.

We have just published a new SCSF sample application on the Smart Client Contrib project. We have published also a demo script that provides step-by-step instructions to create a SCSF application. The goal of this demo script is to help presenters give a presentation that illustrates the main aspects of SCSF such as WorkItems, Commands, EventBroker, Services, Workspaces and the Dependency Injection pattern.

The application consists of two Business Modules:

• Notifications module: this module populates the Main Menu Strip of the Shell with two items and adds them as invokers of the DumpWorkItem and ShowNews commands respectively. It also adds two views to the Shell.
• Stocks module: this module shows BuyStock and Reports SmartParts in the the Shell.

The Shell is made up of two Workspaces: an OutlookBarWorkspace (the one in the right) and a DockPanelWorkspace (the one in the left). These workspaces are in the SCSF contrib project too.

Enjoy this new sample.

Download

I’m happy to announce that we have published the Smart Client Software Factory Knowledge Base.

The purpose of this Knowledge Base is categorize and organize blogs posts, CodePlex pages, CodePlex posts, etc that can be valuable for the community. With this kind of information organized the community will have a new place to search for help/guidance.

Here are the categories in which we propose to organize the information:

• ‌Composite UI Application Block
• Composite UI Application Block State
• Deployment
• ‌Future of Smart Client Software Factory
• Getting Started
• Guidance Packages
• Hands-on Labs
• Known Issues / Fixes
• Model View Presenter (MVP)
• Modularity
• Security
• Services
• Smart Client Software Factory Contrib
• Smart Client Software Factory in Orcas
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

We are going to update the KB periodically, so stay tuned.
Enjoy the Knowledge Base.

Now that we have Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 (SCSF) installed on a box with only Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2, we may want to install the SCSF source code, and why not, customize the guidance package.

To do this, we first have to modify the source code installer as we do with the factory installer (with some slightly different steps).

1. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.

   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk) .

2. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open…. Browse to %programfiles%\Microsoft Smart Client Factory\Source Code Installer and select the SmartClientFactorySourceInstall.msi file.
     
   Figure 1. The Orca MSI editor with the Smart Client Software Factory Source Code msi opened.

3. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
     
   Figure 2. The RegLocator table of the SCSF Source Code msi.

4. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • VisualStudioProjectRegistry
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
     

   This is how it should look after replacing these values 
   
   Figure 3. The RegLocator table values modified.

5. Save the changes. 
6. Install Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 source code.
    
   Figure 4. The SCSF Source Code is properly installed. 

Now that the source code is installed, we need to open the guidance package to see if we are able to customize it or if we have to do something else before.

1. Browse to %sourcecodedir% and open GuidancePackage.sln.
2. Because the Guidance Package was created with a previous version of Visual Studio you must convert the solution. The Conversion Wizard will guide you through the process. Click Next to proceed.
   
   Figure 5. The Visual Studio Conversion Wizard.
3. Click Finish to start the conversion.
4. Click Close.
5. If you try to build de solution you will encounter compilation errors.
   
   Figure 6. Compilation errors after building the guidance package.
   
   This happens because the package and the installer references to GAX 1.2 assemblies instead of GAX 1.3
   
   Figure 7. Missing references in the guidance package and in the installer.
6. Remove the references and add them again. You will find the assemblies in the .NET Tab of the Add Reference dialog or in %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies.

   Note: The assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Design is included in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK. You have to install the SDK in order to add this reference (Download SDK). After installing it the assembly will appear in the .NET Tab.

7. Customize your package. Build, register and enjoy!. 

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

NOTE: A new version of Smart Client Software Factory was published. This new version is for Visual Studio 2008. Please check this post for more information.

One of the prerequisites to install SCSF is having Visual Studio 2005. This prerequisite doesn’t allow us to install SCSF in a box with only Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2 installed.

Figure 1. The error raised by the SCSF installer if you don’t have Visual Studio 2005 installed.

In this post, I will detail the steps you have to follow in order to use SCSF with Orcas Beta 2.

1. Install Guidance Automation Extensions Technology Preview (July 2007 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Beta 2).
2. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.

   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk) .

3. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open…. Select the SCSF MSI file (Smart Client Software Factory – May 2007.msi).
   
   Figure 2. The Orca MSI editor with the Smart Client Software Factory msi opened.

4. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
   
   Figure 3. The RegLocator table of the SCSF msi.
5. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • FindVSInstallDir
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
   • VistualStudioHelpRegistrySearch

   This is how it should look after replacing these values
   
   Figure 4. The RegLocator table values modified.

6. Save the changes.
   
   Figure 5. The Orca MSI Editor save dialog.
7. Install Smart Client Software Factory May 2007.

  
Figure 6. The SCSF is properly installed.

Figure 7. The SCSF solution created with Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2.

Figure 8. The SCSF solution created with Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2 running.

Known Issues

Note: Sebastian Iacomuzzi wrote about the possible workarounds you can apply to fix this known issues. Check out the following posts:

• Smart Client Software Factory & Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Workarounds for C# Known Issues
• Smart Client Software Factory & Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Workarounds for Visual Basic Known Issues

In C#:

• Compiling errors after run the Add WPF-View (with presenter) recipe (missing references).
  • Change the project’s target framework to 3.0 to compile successfully.

In VB:

• Compile errors after run the Create Solution recipe (Form1 is not a member of "Shell").
  • Change Form1 to ShellForm to compile successfully.
• Application crashes after run the Add WPF-View (with presenter) recipe. 
  • Still researching on this.

We are working on this issues in order to provide the steps to fix them. I will post about it so stay tuned.

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

The SCSF Team has published a preview of the HoL’s they have been working on.

Here’s what is included in this preview:

• Lab 1: Creating the Initial Solution
• Lab 2: Creating a Business module
• Lab 3: Creating a View
• Lab 4: Creating a Service
• Lab 5: Creating a Foundational Module

Get the bits now.

For more information, please visit Mariano’s post.

Luciano Panaro has written a blog post where he shows how to modify the SCSF Guidance Package to store the solution’s global values (which are originally stored in the .sln file) in a xml file.

It is a good example of how to face a gp customization.

Hope you find Luciano’s post useful.