jpelak's blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/feed.xml Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:24:16 GMT en-US hourly 1 Moved to new blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/moved-to-new-blog Mon, 28 May 2007 21:40:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2007/05/28/moved-to-new-blog/ I now post exclusively to http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde.

Thanks,

jmp

]]> Note to self - do not connect through O'Hare... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/note-to-self-do-not-connect-through-ohare Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2007/03/24/note-to-self-do-not-connect-through-ohare/ As nice as Chicago is, it's generally a bad idea to connect flights through the Windy City.  I know I'm not the first to make this observation, but I think this might be a good place to keep a few notes to self.

On another note, it would be great if there were some sort of warning system for airport delays similar to the ones we have for traffic congestion/incidents - maybe this exists somewhere...

]]> MapPoint Web Service + WPF https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/mappoint-web-service-wpf Wed, 13 Sep 2006 07:16:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/09/13/mappoint-web-service-wpf/ The MapPoint Web Service SDK puts tremendous power in the hands of developers.  The Windows Presentation Foundation puts tremendous power in the hands of developers.

How might they be put together?  I think I have an approach that I'd like to share which could help in many cases.  It works like this:

 

1. Use the MapPoint Web Service SDK to generate a map

2. Download the map and assign it as the source of a WPF Image

3. Place a transparent (or semi-transparent) Canvas over the Image

4. Use client side transformations to add objects to the Canvas in the appropriate location

 

You'll need to geocode the latitude and longitude of every object you add to the Canvas (the MapPoint Web Service SDK has methods to do this), and you'll have get the client side transformations right to make this work (the MapPoint Web Service SDK has samples that show how to do this), but if you do, you'll have the complete power of WPF at your disposal.

In other words, the objects you plot on the map can be stylized and programmed however you like.

Not bad, eh?  I'll post some code snippets once I get a little further along with this...

 

]]> Maps in Apps https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/maps-in-apps Fri, 01 Sep 2006 23:59:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/09/01/maps-in-apps/ When I first joined Microsoft, I was sent to help build an application for a large telecommunications company which had some heavy-duty mapping requirements.  This app needed to enable the display and design of undersea fiber optic cable networks.  I had just been through my new-employee training, and thus had the following guidance and support to fall back on:

"don't mess up"

"lotsa luck"

Fortunately, I had a really great UX designer to work with, and even more fortunately, I had a good friend in the GIS business with a powerful ActiveX control that was just hitting its beta cycle.  After about 9 months of intensive development to get all the clicks, layers, and transformations right, the result was an app that met the above requirements and enjoyed several good years in production (it might even still be in use.)

I later got to work on a GIS application (for the same telecommunications company) which connected maps to OLAP data, and had my first encounters with plotting geo-coded points on a map.  I'm not sure if this app survived the telecomm meltdown earlier this decade, but it did at least enjoy a couple good years of production usage.

Since that time, I haven't had any GIS applications to work on, so I stood on the sidelines and watched the remarkable progress made by software industry in bringing interactive mapping into broad usage.  I think it's time to get off the sidelines and back into being a GIS programmer.

Tonight, I registered for a MapPoint Web Service developer account (from the form on https://mappoint-css.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/MwsSignup/Eval2.aspx.)  While I wait the 1 to 2 business days to receive my key, I'll have to satisifed with reading through the SDK documentation and samples (no, I don't get out much, but this is as good as it gets for me on a rainy holiday weekend.)

If you're an ISV looking to add features that could differentiate your products, I encourage you to check out MapPoint and Virtual Earth - there's quite a bit there, and it looks quite easy to implement and integrate.  Just be sure to get your developer key before you try to get started.

]]> 3rd Party Controls for WPF https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/3rd-party-controls-for-wpf Sat, 26 Aug 2006 09:14:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/08/26/3rd-party-controls-for-wpf/ In browsing around the Windows Vista developer center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista), I noticed the 3rd party control link on the WPF page.  From that page (http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/presentation/), you can access dowloads of the Infragistics Data Presenter and the Software FX ChartFX controls for WPF.

I've been working with both of these controls informally over the last few months, and it's quite impressive to see how these vendors have embraced WPF to produce high-quality components that make use of WPF as it was intended to be used.  I hadn't realized that were publically available though, or I would've posted on this much sooner.

If you're a WPF enthusiast (like me), I encourage you to follow the download links and give these components a try.  The versions I'm using are compatible with the June CTP builds of Vista and NetFX3, and can stylized and templatized to your liking - just start with the samples they provide and have at it.

]]> A New York minute... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/a-new-york-minute Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:01:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/08/25/a-new-york-minute/ I had a "New York Minute" yesterday - it went something like this.

I stepped out onto the Avenue of the Americas into the pouring rain yesterday afternoon and began my hike downtown in search of some Szechuan dumplings.  I had packed a rather large umbrella, and proceeded to pop it open, even though I knew that would make it a little tricky to dodge my fellow pedestrians at rush hour.

About a block into journey, a woman I had never seen before appeared next to me under my apparently-too-large-for-just-one umbrella.

Her: "Hi - mind if I share your umbrella?"

Me: "Uh..."

Her: "I have a job interview somewhere around here and don't want to get all soaked."

Me: "Uh..."

Her: "It's in the McGraw Hill building - it's right around here somewhere."

Me: "Uh..."

Her: "Oh - there it is gotta go - thanks!"

I immediately checked my pockets, and once I assured myself they still contained every thing they had just a short while ago, I yelled "Good luck!" as she ran across 6th Avenue.

Only in New York - where a "New York Minute" unfolds in about 5 or 6 seconds.

I don't know if she got the job, but if she did, I hope she's using the .NET Framework 3.0.

 

]]> Software as a Service Seminar - NYC - 5/3/2006 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/software-as-a-service-seminar-nyc-532006 Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:04:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/04/24/software-as-a-service-seminar-nyc-532006/ Software as a Service is a topic of great interest in the ISV industry of late.  Because end users increasingly demand a hosted option, many ISVs are assessing the ways in which their business models, technology and operations should evolve.  

 

We have a seminar coming up in New York City on May 3rd that it's not too late to register for.  If you're at all interested in this topic, I highly encourage you to attend - follow the link below or click on the graphic to get signed up.

 

Hope to see you there!

 

 

To register and for more details, go to: http://www.dynamicevents.com/GlobalSoftwareAsAServiceSeminar/

]]> A walk through WinFx (third of a series) - the joy of WCF endpoints https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/a-walk-through-winfx-third-of-a-series-the-joy-of-wcf-endpoints Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:18:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/04/22/a-walk-through-winfx-third-of-a-series-the-joy-of-wcf-endpoints/

It's been a while since I posted on this this (does it still qualify as a series?), but I'll continue and in the hope that I'll be able to pick up the frequency.  In the first postings in this series, I discussed how I'd like to build a small CRM-ish application to track activity with the ISVs I work with, and in the second I discussed how Dynamics CRM 3.0 could serve as the basis for such an application.  I'd like to now discuss how WCF can be used to provide a simple endpoint to serve data entities up to consumers (such as WPF applications.)

This week marked my first forays into WCF programming, and I was impressed by what I found.  It wasn't the advanced features that made the impression though, but rather the simple basic things we all have to grapple with as developers and architects.  As I mentioned, I'd like to use this application to track things like contacts, events, and locations in MSCRM, but I'd like to surface those entities through a WCF endpoint.  That requires the definition of a Service Contract and a Data Contract.  As services typically provide one or more operations and data entities typically consist of one or more members, I also had to define a set of Operation Contracts and Data Members to complete the implementation of my end point.

In WCF, this is simply a matter of using the System.Runtime.Serialization and System.ServiceModel namespaces and marking your data entities and service classes appropriately.  To retrieve a list of locations for a given ISV from a WCF endpoint, I modeled it using code like the following:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Runtime.Serialization;

using System.Text;

using System.ServiceModel;

 

namespace IsvApp.ServicesLayer.Contracts

{

    [DataContract]

    public class Location

    {

        [DataMember]

        public Guid IsvId;

        [DataMember]

        public Guid LocationId;

        [DataMember]

        public string Name;

        [DataMember]

        public string Description;

        [DataMember]

        public string Address1;

        // plus the usual, then...

        [DataMember]

        public double Latitude;

        [DataMember]

        public double Longitude;

        // and a couple more, then...

    }

 

    [DataContract]

    public class LocationFilter

    {

        // much like Location - you’ll see this in action below...

    }

 

 

    [DataContract]

    public class Locations

    {

        [DataMember]

        public int TotalLocationCount;

 

        [DataMember]

        public List<Locations> LocationList;

    }

 

    [ServiceContract]

    public interface ILocationSvc

    {

        [OperationContract]

        Locations GetLocations(LocationFilter filter);

    }

 

    public class LocationSvc : ILocationSvc

    {

        public Locations GetLocations(LocationFilter filter);

    }

}

That’s all it took to specify a few non-trivial objects which could be easily transported across a remoting boundary and returned in aggregate, along with a simple interface and a service class to implement it.  After running svcutil.exe and adding the proxy and configuration information, I could test my endpoint by building a console application similar to the following:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using IsvApp.ServicesLayer.Contracts;

 

namespace isvapptest

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            // create the WCF service proxy

            LocationSvcProxy locationSvc = new LocationSvcProxy();

 

            // create the filter object

            LocationFilter   filter      = new LocationFilter();

 

            // set filter parameters to constrain result set

            filter.OrderColumnName   = "isv_name";

            filter.OrderAscending    = true;

            filter.GetTotalCount     = true;

            filter.GetTotalCountOnly = true;

            filter.StartIndex        = 0;

            filter.MaxLocationCount  = 10;

 

            // use WCF service proxy to fetch data

            Locations locations = locationSvc.GetLocations(filter);

            Console.WriteLine("locations.TotalLocationCount = {0}",

                               locations.TotalLocationCount);

 

            // iterate over data

            int i = 0;

            foreach (Location location in locations.LocationList)

            {

                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Location[{0}]: {1}",

                                                filter.StartIndex,

                                                location.ToString()));

            }

            

            // rest of code...then

            return;

        }

    }

}

This is a relatively straightforward usage pattern for fetching a set of data from a WCF endpoint which leaves all the transport, authentication, authorization, and even federation cognizance out of both the client and server code.  If you’ve backed off of attempting using complex types over web services or lamented about all the type system tricks you had to employ to do so, I highly encourage you to take a look at WCF and give a pattern like this a shot.  I think you’ll be impressed as well.

 

In my next posting, I’ll attempt to illustrate how this could be bound to a ListView in a WPF application.

 

]]> In the air again... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/in-the-air-again Tue, 18 Apr 2006 08:11:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/04/18/in-the-air-again/ My well-traveled laptop, now loaded with WPF demos on Vista, is on its way to my esteemed colleague John Wiese.

I trust John will take good care of it and return it to me shortly.  If not, I trust he'll ghostwrite a series of killer blog postings under my name and then ship me his new laptop when it arrives.  :)

Good luck John!

]]> Ribbons and Task Panes in Office 2007 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/jpelak/ribbons-and-task-panes-in-office-2007 Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:32:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpelak/2006/04/09/ribbons-and-task-panes-in-office-2007/ Two of the major enhancements to Office 2007 are the addition of ribbons and task panes for developers adding on to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other Office applications.  Together, they represent a major opportunity for ISVs to leverage the productivity tools many millions of users are familiar with in their products.

If you're fortunate enough to have access to either the Beta 1 or the Beta 1 Technical Refresh builds of Office 2007, you're probably already familiar with the power ribbons and task panes bring.  If you've been playing with the pre-release builds of the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007, you're familiar with the accessibility to these features our forthcoming development tools provide.

All that adds up to an opportunity to provide deep and natural integration with Office and your applications, which in turn provides an opportunity to surf the coming Office/Vista wave.  How?

  • If you currently export your data to Excel, consider exporting to Excel's OpenXML file format and use a ribbon as the means to make that happen
  • If you currently use Word mail merges, consider generating documents in Word's OpenXML file format and use a ribbon as the means to make that happen
  • If you currently need to walk users through a multi-stage process or provide handy access to contextual data, consider using a task pane to provide the UI

It's a bit to get your mind around, but I think it's worth the effort.

]]>