http://spservices.codeplex.com/

http://quoteadvantage.codeplex.com/

zAnimation is finally on codeplex. You can find it here: http://zanimation.codeplex.com/.

It’s all very basic for now, no samples or documentation yet. The code is somewhat documented. I believe experienced people will have no problem using it. It’s just a matter of selecting the right content processor, checking out my past blog entry to write a definitions file, and writing model.Play(“Walk”); I won’t be working on the documentation or samples the next 2 weeks, my exams are still more important.

Deixo aqui a referência para um “acelerador” para o desenvolvimento de uma solução de de factura electrónica em cima do Office. Chama-se FactOffice.

Esta solução – FactOffice, gratuita, em código aberto – foi desenvolvida em Espanha, com o seu quadro legal que não é o mesmo que por cá, mas poderá ser um ponto de partida para quem quiser integrar as soluções de factura electrónica com o Microsoft Office 2007.

Features:

• Issuing of Electronic invoices and paper invoices.
• Has 4 predefined templates for adjusting the requirements of the invoice.
• Management of issued, received and drafts.
• Invoice validation:
  • Accounting Validation
  • Facturae 3.1 Schema Validation
  • XAdES Signature Validation
• Invoice import for visualization and/or validation (from Facturae 3.1 XML and generated by another user of the addin).
• Invoice export in Facturae 3.1 XML.
• Corrective/amendment invoice generation.
• Create new invoices from one previously issued.
• Send Invoices thru e-mail.
• Multilanguage interface (English, Spanish and Catalan)

Según el blog de Within Windows hace unos dias habia acusado a publicado sus sospechas de que Microsoft tenia fragmentos de código de la herramienta ImageMaster (que se encuentra bajo licencia GPL), en su herramienta para crear instaladores de Windows 7 en USB.

Como en casi todas los programas de Microsoft se distribuyen con restricciones en cuanto al uso de ese software y esta no era la exepción. La herramienta fue retirada del sitio de Microsoft y todavia no se sabe nada de que es lo que va a pasar.

Visto en: Within Windows

Creating MOSS workflows in VS2005 can be cumbersome.  Whist in VS2008 there’s a useful Wizard to take the pain out of creating custom workflows, in VS2005 you need to complete a number of manual processes.

To help move things along, a similar template project has been initiated for developers using VS2005.  The full details can be found on the CodePlex website ….http://www.codeplex.com/wss3workflow

Hello All!

I have finally done it; that is, add a project to codeplex! 

It consists of a Silverlight project (called StoryboarHelperProject) with a class called StoryboardHelper.cs.   Currently it has two public static methods called FadeInFrameworkElement and FadeIOutFrameworkElement. They allow you to specify a FrameworkElement to be faded in or out over a specified duration after a specified delay time.

It is my hope that people will add to the StoryboardHelper class to make this the most comprehensive Silverlight Storyboard helper class around!

Please take a look and start to contribute to your Silvelright Community today!

URL: http://slstoryboardhelper.codeplex.com/

Victor

Introduction

A lot of the code that gets written for any software project can end up being for the supporting systems surrounding the end product. This can include build systems, tests, installers, deployment tools, etc. I’ve found that some of the greatest explorations in learning can be found by writing these systems. One gets to learn potentially new technologies and be a little more experiential with how they approach the problems. To me, some of my favorite projects have been for the supporting systems. One of those recent projects gave me the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into PowerShell.

History

This actually all started years ago when we wanted to find a good way to deploy SSRS reports during part of our one-click build and deploy system, powered by NAnt. We ended up writing a custom NAnt task which worked very well. It could take a source directory tree and pretty much replicate it to SSRS, all using the web service. It ended up being a very efficient, low impact way to deploy reports and resources. We were able to also use this little NAnt gem to deploy reports on a real customer install. Albeit we had to distribute a trimmed NAnt system in our deploy package. This worked for a while but we soon outgrew what the system could provide in a reasonable manner.

The biggest downside is that our NAnt task was pretty much an all or nothing deploy. There was no in between. Plus, being an XML build system, if we wanted to change any aspect of the deploy it required editing the NAnt project file. We therefore turned to PowerShell to help us accomplish this.

Solution

We’ve created (and are using internally) a full blown PowerShell Provider to help us accomplish this task:

In performing administrative tasks, the user may need to examine data stored in a data store (for example, the file system, the Windows Registry, or a certificate store). To make these operations easier, Windows PowerShell defines a module called a Windows PowerShell provider that can be used to access a specific data store, such as the Windows Registry. Each provider supports a set of related cmdlets to give the user a symmetrical view of the data in the store.

As you can see a provider fits the bill perfectly and the solution ends up being super dynamic as it currently allows for the following operations on SSRS:

• list items on a report server
• navigate the report server structure
• create/delete reports
• create/delete folders
• create/delete data sources
• create/delete resources

With this in place one can either script the deployment or wrap it up in a pretty GUI front-end by using a Runspace in your favorite .NET language.

Open Source

All of this has been placed on CodePlex under the SSRS PowerShell Provider (ssrsposh) project and is available for the all. It has served our immediate purpose and hopefully it will serve others. If not, my hope is for it to continue to evolve to meet those needs of others.

More to come in the future.

The sharejPoint blog, managed by The jPoint Project, has a post over at http://bit.ly/blog_jPoint_YouTube and the video is at http://bit.ly/3C3bab. The video has me introducing jPoint and going through a quick demonstration.

(Video Screenshot is an image hyperlinked to YouTube video)

This video says it is 9:33 long, but the intro and demo really only lasts until 5:59. The rest of the video is a silent intro that I added in order to re-upload the video with enough of a checksum difference for YouYube not to reject it as a duplicate. The first video that was created did not have the correct zoom points at places. The silent part which is a couple of minutes at the end is not necessarily a waste of time. It shows the jPInspector example which shows the power of jPoint.Form. This acts as a preview of the next video. So, how did I do for my first video screencast? What can I do to improve the next one?

Just wanted to drop a quick note to say that I have just release v0.2 of the beta for the SharePoint link checker solution on CodePlex. The updates include:

• Performance improvements to make scans a bit quicker
• The reports are stored in temporary files until they are pushed back up to central admin, freeing up memory
• The URLs that are checked are now properly cached so a HTTP request will not be sent to the same URL twice
• A time limit of 45 minutes was added to prevent an issue where the timer job would essentially time out and restart, preventing it from saving a report because the scan wouldn’t finish. Now if the scan goes for that long it will save the report with everything that it has already found.

So as you might be guessing, these changes came about while running the tool on some larger SharePoint sites. I think what I’m going to need to do is ditch the model that sees this run as a SharePoint timer job and swap it for something that is a Windows Service that runs on the server instead. That way I won’t be limited to a time limit to run the job within, I just need to change the UI to allow it to schedule the jobs in a way that the Windows Service will know about them, and then I need to look at the deployment model as well, because a WSP file can’t deploy a Windows service (I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve for this one though!)

Anyway, get on over to http://splinkchecker.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34450 to download it and be sure to let me know what you think of it

http://mscrmbulkupdatetool.codeplex.com/

Me hago eco de la noticia publicada en el blog de Julián Inza en el que anuncia la aparición de una nueva versión de la aplicación FactOffice.

Se trata de la versión 1.2, que soluciona un error de validación del CIF europeo en las plantillas (La parte de código interno de dicha validación ya se actualizó en la anterior versión 1.1)

Como recordaréis, FactOffice es una herramienta que presentó Microsoft y que desarrolló Albalia Interactiva que está revolucionando el mundo de la factura electrónica al permitir generar facturas electrónicas en formato XML “Facturae 3.1″ con la aplicación Microsoft Word 2007.

El acceso a la descarga de este Add-in lo tenéis en la siguiente dirección:

http://factoffice.codeplex.com

Para más información al respecto, os sugiero seguir las recomendaciones que incluye Julián en su post.

I have just finished putting together a new SharePoint project for Codeplex (again something I put together for Readify that they have let me share). This one is designed to report on broken links in a site. Basically it works by scanning a site collection to find all the links in any publishing HTML fields, link fields, summary link fields, summary link web parts and content editor web parts and then does a quick HTTP Request to make sure that there is something at that URL. This means it can reports on links to content both within the SharePoint site as well as links to external sites.

I have labeled the current release as a beta because I know there are features that should be in this that I haven’t had the chance to put in yet, but it does work quite well in its current form. Anyway if you want more info, or you want to download and try the link checker head over to codeplex and check it out!

http://splinkchecker.codeplex.com/

Luna, is a place for us to share the scripts, all kinds. http://luna.codeplex.com

As was recently reported by Martin Owens, at this years Software Freedom Day Richard Stallman took his behaviour to a whole new revolting level by calling Miguel de Icaza a traitor. This wasn’t related to anything except Miguels recent decision to sit on the Codeplex foundation board, a foundation whose stated mission it is to further Open Source in business. It is no secret that Microsoft is the seed of this our newest member in the family of Open Source promotors, even earmarking a million dollars to that aim and dedicating time and personnel to let the foundation reach its lofty aim. In fact in recent years Microsoft has gotten quite involved with Open Source by releasing code of their own, getting licenses approved from the OSI and donating substantial amounts of money to existing projects. In a highly published move they even recently submitted 20.000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. They are no longer the bully of the 90’s, they are changing but their transformation is not complete, and it certainly will not be the instantaneous conversion some people expect of them.

Now Miguel is no stranger to abuse, in a personally shameful moment right after the famed Novell-Microsoft collaboration agreement, fueled by Bruce Perens’, fallacious, claim that the deal was in violation of the GPLv2 even I send the Novell Open Audio podcast an angry mail asking them to dedicate time debating this on the show. Miguel kindly wrote me a lengthy personal mail calming my fears and he never used a harsh word despite what I now realize were words far outside of rational discourse. I have since that moment had a tremendous amount of respect for Miguel as a person, he is probably the person in the community who faces the most opposition and abuse despite the amount of work he has done historically and continue to do to improve the free desktop. You might disagree with his methods of improvement but I have never seen Miguel use a tone of aggression in rebutting his opponents.

If I live to be a thousand years I will never master that level of calmness while under fire, I realise that with some degree of sadness. Had Richard viciously attacked me the way he did Miguel I am sure at tirade would have ensued, I know it to be my style. Miguels reply is nothing short of admirable. It is a constructive polite call for civility in the views on how to improve our community.

I am glad our community has someone like Miguel, I am glad he does the work he does and I believe that it fills a vital piece of the puzzle to get Open Source everywhere and turn former opponents into new friends. Utopia won’t be built in a day but Miguel certain laid his fair share of rocks to let it happen.

Or -

Higher-Order High-Resolution Timer for the Masses

Timing code is so common that many timers exist in the .Net Framework. One can resort to simplistic timing via Environment.TickCount DateTime.Now, but this is a low-resolution timer that does not accurately reflect the current tick count and is therefore not usable for precision timing. As this[1] MSDN article shows, its resolution is actually 10 ms for modern versions of Windows (NT 3.5 or later).

Also see this[2] article about three timing tactics for .Net.

(System.Diagnostics.) Stopwatch to the rescue. This class is a simple stopwatch that is easy to use. However even this class can be repetitive to use many times. The way to make this even easier is to create a higher-order function. I wanted to create such a function but figured it would be nice to include in my extension method library on codeplex.

The problem is that dispatching off an action is not nice (not even the latest C# 4.0 mitigates this). So I created a new enum type Timer that reflects two units of measure – ticks and milliseconds. Now an extension method can dispatch over this type and measure time for a delegate. This is how the code is used (work is an Action that performs the work to be timed)

var ms = Timer.ms.Time(() => work());

I dare you to simplify this. See code on extensia[3] on codeplex.

If C# worked a little more like I’d like it to, it’d be possible to write something like this, using extension methods

var ms = Work.Time();

Maybe C# 5.0.

The latest improvement here, is a method to show (via (System.Diagnostics.) Trace, which can be fed into the Console via a listener) the timing information in a nicely formatted way – it allows you to write this

Timer.µs.Show(() => Test(), "test");
Timer.Ticks.Show(() => Test(), "test");

The first line displays the measurements in whole microseconds, the seond one in the unit closest to the order of magnitude below or equal to one second. This eases formatting quite a bit. The output of a Ticks measurement looks like

test() finished in 235025 ticks (100 ms)

As you can see the appropriate unit (milliseconds) is chosen. This number is calculated based on Stopwatch.Frequency which defines the resolution of the underlying timer.

Notice the that the special character “µ”, which is a nice cherry on the top for this interface. I have also begun using the greek alpha, beta and gamma symbols for parametric type names to make them stand out more (although these symbols are also be useful for math variables, so it’s not a clear cut case on their usability for this purpose).

2009/10/10: updated the post with a correction and a couple of references: it is not Environment.TickCount that is (necessarily) imprecise (relatively speaking), it is DateTime.Now. However Stopwatch is the best approach to timing precisely since it exposes the timing frequency and whether the timer is actually high-precision as a boolean property (Environment does not appear to expose frequency information) and it is supposedly the highest-precision timer in the .Net Framework (BCL).

References

• [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.now.aspx
• [2] http://reflexangle.blogspot.com/2009/04/datetimenow-vs-systemdiagnosticsstopwat.html
• [3] http://extensia.codeplex.com

Recently, Microsoft initiated a new foundation called CodePlex which will allow for individuals and businesses to connect and collaborate on open source projects.  This new foundation has been founded by Microsoft, yet is its own non-profit entity, with Microsoft as it’s core contributor.   While I see this as the next move from Microsoft coming into the open source arena, I wonder about the projects that will be hosted.

Apparently, the leadership consists of an interim board, which will one day be replaced by a more permanent board.  Several of the board members are familiar names: 

• Steve Ramji, Microsoft
• Miguel de Icaza, Novell

About half the board members are from Microsoft with the others coming from around the Linux and Open Source community.  While the main Codeplex project is open to any project, the foundation will decide what to take on itself, with a few suggestions already coming from Microsoft.

The initial question in my mind is what if the project that is being suggested has nothing to do with Microsoft technology?  I imagine being a collaborative effort, the technologies will probably surround interoperability between systems, which is certainly not a bad thing as long as the code is publicly available.  However, when bringing open source and proprietary technologies together, someone is bound to mention patents.  What happens if a patent is trespassed, and it is someone working within CodePlex Foundation?  This sort of scenario could form a rather interesting PR issue for Microsoft if it ever encountered it.

Currently, there is only one sponsor of the foundation, Microsoft.  I imagine that Novell would join sometime in the future.  As far as the other corporations are concerned, it will be interesting to see if IBM would join the effort.   

As far as I can tell, the actual CodePlex collaborative site, which is owned by Microsoft, works like Launchpad and Sourceforge and is used to host open source projects — which brings me to my big question:  What’s the point?

The project’s site states:

“…we expect the Codeplex Foundation to be complimentary to, and not competitive with, other open source foundations.”

The foundation is apparently supposed to be different from other foundations, of which several are listed as examples.  The complaint is that the other foundations only cover a particular piece of software or system, rather than the broad spectrum that the CodePlex Foundation is intended to cover.  That is very true, and it is nice to see Microsoft pulling together some open source collaboration.  What might be interesting in the future is how patents are handled within the project.  Will patent encumberences cause unrest between members?  Will Microsoft or the pro-Microsoft board only allow members of corporations who have signed patent agreements?  Either way, it is nice to see Microsoft opening themselves up to the open source world.

I’ve been spending some time looking at the Forms Based Authentication solution that is part of the CKS – it has some great web parts and management forms for working with forms based authentication in SharePoint – but I did find that there are a couple of things to make sure you do before everything will work for you correctly that I thought I would share here.

When activating the user management feature you get an error about a dependant feature not being installed

When you run the setup script you might find that you get yourself into some trouble when the feature “FBAManagementSelf” tries to activate, complaining that a feature that is a dependency of this one is not installed. Technically this is true, the feature it is looking for isn’t installed and that is because it was cut from the solution. So the fix here is to update the feature.xml file and remove the dependency. Browse to 12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\FBAManagementSelf in windows explorer and open feature.xml and remove these lines:

<ActivationDependency FeatureId="01AA8D8B-000A-4c35-8F4F-5D1280377650" />
<!--  My Settings Save Override  -->

“Object reference not set to instance of an object” error on FBA User Management page

This one had me stumped for a short while, but wasn’t too hard to figure out. Basically what was happening when I clicked on the link from the site settings page I would keep getting the good old NullReferenceException error message there – after downloading the source code and debugging this it became pretty easy to figure out. Basically what this page is doing by default is showing a list of users in the current site that are forms based authentication users – so if none of your FBA users exist in the user info list in the site, then there will be nothing returned and the exception is thrown.

The fix is easy – go in and grant one of your FBA users permission to the site somewhere. This will add them to the list and then when you browse back to the page you will find the exception is gone and you can see the list now.

Apart from that the install and setup was fine for me, just set up your forms based authentication source just like you would normally, and then install this solution to get all the extra goodies and you are off and running!

Ryan Paul at Ars technica (http://arstechnica.com/authors/ryan-paul/) writes an article on Microsoft decision to start “[...] the CodePlex Foundation, a nonprofit organization tasked with getting commercial software vendors to invest time on open source development. It has $1 million in seed money and some questions about how neutral it will be.” (full article at http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/new-microsoft-backed-open-source-foundation-faces-questions.ars).

I think that Microsoft move, though could help the development of open sourced software (because of money and influence that Microsoft can put in), could not be neutral for a couple of reasons:

1. because Microsoft has built his own success and money on proprietary software
2. because no one gives anything for nothing: i think that with “open source” being more widely spread then evere, Microsoft is thinking of acquiring weight in this community by putting people at work under his protection.

Let’s see what happens

This post also as a comment at http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/new-microsoft-backed-open-source-foundation-faces-questions.ars?comments=1&comment_id=991002341041

Mr Ramji was the open source czar at Redmond...The most dangerous job in Redmond? I wonder if Mr Ramji had someone test the food from the Redmond canteen before he ate it?.....

Microsoft is alleged to be launching a foundation to support to Open Source software and its ethos.

The interim president is non other than Sam Ramji, who recently announced he was leaving Microsoft and his position of open source czar at Redmond.

So now we look at another member of this “foundation” who has been appointed, Mr De Icazza, who recently visited this blog to answer questions on MONO and several (IMO) worrying “attractions” he had to Microsoft.    Mr De Icazza (as always) does not fudge his opinion and is always quite direct in his posts.  Over on his blog HERE he has a few words to say about his new appointment.

There are still many things that I would like to see Microsoft do, and many things that I believe Microsoft has to change to become a full member of the open source community, but it is encouraging to me to see Microsoft evolve. I hope that the CodePlex foundation will help us continue to build bridges between our communities.

Encouraging?  Mr De Icazza, please for a minute think about what you are saying.  Microsoft (like any company) is not on some crusade to make the IT world better for everyone, UNLESS there is something in it for them. (IMO)

Its not rocket science and that isn’t an attack at Microsoft per say.  If ANY company is to survive it needs to return a profit, Microsoft is no different to any other company and Microsoft (IMO) will only do something if it is of benefit to them (either directly or indirectly)

I am glad that I was asked to be part of the board of directors of the foundation. And to work together with some great advisory board.

To be fair though, with all the alleged pro Microsoft comments he has made (even forgetting about MONO) how could Microsoft choose anyone else?

For me the Codeplex Foundation is typical of Microsoft arrogance.  In my opinion they look at something and say “Yeah great idea, we like that…Now follow us, we will tell you how to do it better…it’ll be great…”

To look at the “mission statement” if you will, it says:

a non-profit foundation formed with the mission of enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities, launched today

I wonder how difficult it is for Microsoft to say the words “non-profit”?

To be fair to Sam Ramji (the interim president), people around the net have said very positive things about him and whilst he is only an interim president, you have to give him credit for previously holding what I would think would be the most difficult job in a proprietary firm.  I wonder if when he was at the Microsoft canteen he had a food taster incase of poison?

From the Codeplex site, Microsoft have this to say:

The CodePlex Foundation will complement existing open source foundations and organizations, providing a forum in which best practices and shared understanding can be established by a broad group of participants, both software companies and open source communities. Initial funding for the Foundation comes from Microsoft Corporation.

Lets all take a minute of silence in thanks to the mighty Microsoft.  Done that?  Now ask the question “Whats in it for them?”

Mr Ramji says:

We plan to gather best practices for how software companies that have worked with, and work on, open source projects can do so optimally

and my question to him would be: Where do software patents fit into this “vision”?

In the meantime Microsoft is looking for a new open source person to fill the space left by Mr Ramji.

My money is on Mr De Icazza – he has sure earned it (IMO).

From the Codeplex site the members of this foundation are as follows:

• 

  Microsoft has a great new idea: "The Codeplex Foundation" and its got many people to tell you why its great and how things should be done....God bless Microsoft!...Back in the real world, I am wondering, how many more schemes is Microsoft going to have and when is Redmond going to get the message?

  Sam Ramji, President
  sramji@codeplex.org
  Biography

• Bill Staples, Vice President
  Microsoft
  bills@codeplex.org
  Biography
• Stephanie Davies Boesch, Secretary & Treasurer
  Microsoft
  stephda@codeplex.org
  Biography
• Miguel de Icaza
  Novell
  miguel@codeplex.org
  Biography
• D. Britton Johnston
  Microsoft
  brittj@codeplex.org
  Biography