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Thanks
RV

Windows 8 - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx?pv=36:481

Windows Server 2012 - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx?pv=36:483

Thanks
RV

I created a page that would make a simple AJAX call to Translate method to translate a given input string.

<script type="text/javascript">
     $(document).ready(function () {
         $("#translateButton").click(function () {
             $(".translationResult").each(function () {
                 var translationResultObject = this;
                 var translationData = {};
                 translationData.appId = $("#bingAPIKey").text();
                 translationData.to = $(translationResultObject).attr("id");
                 translationData.from = "en";
                 translationData.text = $("#translationInput").val();
          $.ajax({
            url: 'https://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Ajax.svc/Translate',
            data: translationData,
            dataType: 'jsonp',
            jsonp: 'oncomplete',
            success: function (data) {
               $(translationResultObject).text(data);
            }
          });
             });

         });
     });

 </script>

Note the data type in AJAX call, I am using jsonp instead of json as the Bing AJAX interface calls use callback mechanism to return data. However I am not passing the callback function name and relying on the success method itself to use the context variable to assign my translated text back to DOM. You can also use another callback function and use jsonpCallback to direct jquery to use that. If you want to do that then use GetTranslations along with options parameter to pass State back and forth. I had bunch of div elements that provided the needed input for the AJAX call to do its work.

<div class="languageLabel">German:</div> <div id="de" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Japanese:</div> <div id="ja" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">French:</div> <div id="fr" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Spanish:</div> <div id="es" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Chinese Simplified:</div> <div id="zh-CHS" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Chinese Traditional:</div> <div id="zh-CHT" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Russian:</div> <div id="ru" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Italian:</div> <div id="it" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Korean:</div> <div id="ko" class="translationResult"></div><br />
<div class="languageLabel">Portugese:</div> <div id="pt" class="translationResult"></div><br />

Now lets see all of this in action.

I have attached the entire htm file to this blog post for reference.

Thanks
RV

TranslateStrings.htm

1. Netduino - Arduino with .NET MF
2. QUnit - JavaScript unit testing
3. MVC 4

BTW, in my last team I was working on Web Application Configuration Analyzer v2.0, it was released couple of months ago, you can find the updated version @ https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=573. I will have more info on WACA 2.0 later.

Thanks
RV

Thanks
Anil RV

1. From the presented Launchpad under the “Quick Actions” Section screen click on the “View scan results” link or go to “File” menu and select “View scan results”. You can also get to this screen by clicking on the “View Report” button after a scan, which will automatically select that scan for the report.

2. From the first drop down box, select a server to view a scan result. The drop down box displays all the server names for which results have been generated by the tool. Upon selecting the server name, the list box displays the scanned dates and times starting with latest date and timestamp.

3. The report is divided into multiple sections. You can navigate to corresponding section by clicking the links in summary table. There are four sections for every report. First is the Summary, which tells you about the machine and its specific attributes. This section also serves as the index allowing you to select a link to jump to that specific section. The next section is the General application Rules. This is where all rules pertaining to a machine regardless to the machines purpose. The next section contains the IIS Application rules. If a user knows this machine is an IIS box then this section should have all the security rules for IIS in one contained section. The last section is for SQL server. Assuming the server is a SQL server machine all rules pertaining to SQL Server will be in this section.

4. Results from scanning a machine falls into one of four states: Passed, Failed, Indeterminate and Not Applicable. Passed indicates the rules was tested and based on WACA’s scan discovery the rule passed. Failed indicates after the rule was scanned for the discovery was the rule failed the test. Not Applicable state is used when specific application such as IIS or SQL Server is not present on the target machine. Indeterminate state is applied when a specific rule cannot find the underlying data due to missing information to process the rule. For example, Indeterminate state could be returned for the “Unnecessary service (Alerter) is not running” rule if the service itself is not present on the target machine. Investigate indeterminate rules by using the descriptions and resolutions from Excel export.

5. Severity and resolution provide additional context to the rule and only failed rules include resolutions to fix the violation. Context may determine whether a failure in WACA is a bug to be fixed. Some checks, for example, are applicable for servers facing the extranet, but would be considered false positives for any other environment. The description for the checks provides guidance for these scenarios.

6. Exporting to Excel and using the Filter feature can help with quickly identifying and managing failures.

Thanks
Anil RV

1. Launch the application by going to Windows Start Menu and selecting “Microsoft Information Security”, “Web Application Configuration Analyzer v1.0” and “Web Application Configuration Analyzer”.

2. From the presented Launchpad screen under the “Quick Actions” Section click on the “Scan a machine” link or go to “File” menu and select “Scan a machine”.

3. Enter the fully qualified domain name of the target machine and click “Scan” button to start the scan. You can also enter the SQL instance name to scan a SQL server on that machine.

Note that you need administrative permissions on the target machine along with remote registry and WMI services. The tool will perform prerequisite scanning first to determine server existence, administrative access, IIS and SQL versions and remote services availability. If WACA is unable to connect to the SQL Server either because of network or permission issues, the user will be prompted to continue the scan.

4. It is not required that the target machine have either IIS or SQL installed, WACA will recognize this and report its results accordingly.

5. A message is displayed indicating that the scan is completed. Click on the “View Report” button to view the report.

Thanks
Anil RV

Web Application Configuration Analyzer (WACA) is a tool that scans a server against a set of best practices recommended for pre-production and production servers. It can also be used by developers to ensure that their codebase works within a secure / hardened environment (although many of the checks are not as applicable for developers). The list of best practices is derived from the Microsoft Information Security & Risk Management Deployment Review Standards used internally at Microsoft to harden production and pre-production environments for line of business applications. The Deployment Review standards themselves were derived from content released by Microsoft Patterns & Practices, in particular: Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures available at: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994921.aspx. It uses an agent-less scan that requires the user to have admin privileges on the target server, as well as any SQL Server instances running on that machine.

• Scan a machine for more than 140 rules
• Generate HTML based reports
• Compare two scans to view the differences
• Export results to Excel
• Export results to Team Foundation Server

You can download the tool from https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=60585590-57df-4fc1-8f0c-05a286059406. You can view a demo of the tool in this channel9 screencast.

Thanks
Anil RV

• ASUS EEEPC 900HD
• Windows Embedded Standard 7 Toolkit
• Evaluation Key (180-day)

Once you have Windows Embedded Standard 7 Toolkit installed open up the Image Configuration Editor (ICE) to start creating an “Answer” file that includes the list of components and drivers for your target image. Here is a screenshot of ICE with my sample “Answer” file.

The easiest thing to do is to create a new answer file, which automatically adds the core OS features. Select the appropriate drivers, user interface, and features. You can customize the start up program with custom shell to use a User interface to provide access to other programs. For instance, I am planning to configure shell to start IE after boot process and launch a custom page from "$OEM$ Folder” which includes a list of Icons that user can select to open the corresponding programs. Over time I can replace that with native application. Customize and have fun!

Thanks
Anil RV

First step in this integration is to compile the assembly and register it in Global Assembly Cache (GAC) using gacutil.exe. Open up Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010) in administrator mode by going to Start –> All Programs –> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 –> Visual Studio Tools. Type gacutil /i <custom library location> to register it in the GAC. This will ensure that the assembly is available for the Visual Studio toolbox and Visual Studio workflow designer and will allow the workflow host to access the custom activity.

Second step involves creating the build workflow process template. Instead of creating a new workflow template, we will make use of the default template that ships with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. Create a new build definition in your TFS project and click on the process item to bring up the template configuration screen.

Instead of modifying the default template please create a copy of it by clicking on new and selecting "Copy an existing XAML file”.

Once we have the new XAML file, open it up from the Source Control or from the local workspace which should load the Visual Studio workflow designer. Right click on the toolbox, select “Choose Items”, select “System.Activities” and click “Browse” to select the activity DLL, ensure that you select the custom activity in the “Team Foundation Build Activities” tab. Once you have it on the toolbox, now its time to drop it in a sequence for it start sending email. When you open the copy of the “Default Template” and collapse the workflow, you should see 4 parts of the main sequence – Get The Build, Update The Drop Location, Run on Agent and Check In Gated Changes for CheckInShelveset Builds – in which we will be making changes to Run on Agent sequence. 

Double click on “Run On Agent” to open the sequence and drag and drop the custom activity from toolbox after where we would be adding the custom activity. At the end of “Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items” sequence, drop a new “Sequence” from “Control Flow” group in toolbox and rename it to “Send Build Mail”. Now double click on the newly created sequence to drop the custom activity and configure its properties.

MailFrom, Mailto, StmpServer and Subject are very generic, notice that subject is using dynamic property “BuildNumber” to concatenate with subject to distinguish between various build definitions that use the same template. Build Detail can be directly configured with global variable “BuildDetail” that provides build summary information. The associated changesets is not that simple because the temporary variable that stores this information is not exposed back up to the “Run On Agent” sequence for us to use. So, let’s add a new variable “IList<Changeset>” and set the scope to the “Build On Agent” sequence.

Click on the “Variables” button at the bottom of the workflow designer to bring up the list of variables at the “Run On Agent” sequence. Add a new variable called “TempAssociatedChangesets” with variable type “IList<Changeset>” and scope set to “Run On Agent”. Double click on the “Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items” and “Sequence” in the “Try” block to add an “Assign” activity. Drop the “Assign” activity from “Primitives” tab of toolbox, set “To” to “TempAssociatedChangesets” and “From” to “associatedChangesets”.

Now you can go back to the “SendEmailActivity” and set the “BuildAssociatedChangesets” property to “TempAssociatedChangesets”. This should give the build activity access to the associated work items and files.

Now save the template and check in the file to save the changes in source control. On your build server you have to do the following things:

1. Register the custom activity in Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
2. Run the “Build Host” with the account that has permissions to send email as the mail from account. You can do this by going to the “Team Foundation Server Administration Console” and click on properties to set the build account.

After this, just schedule a build to receive the following email.

The email itself is not entirely bug free, like date and time are not correct and some times change sets repeat multiple times which need to be fixed, so feel free to modify the build activity and let me know the changes.

Many thanks to the following folks who helped me in creating this solution.

Jim Lamb - https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2010/02/12/how-to-create-a-custom-workflow-activity-for-tfs-build-2010.aspx
Jacob Ehn - https://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/Default.aspx

Thanks
Anil RV