Developer Pills

More effort on Testing Technologies

When i try to pull more from Google about the amazing project Pex i've came across another effort toward testing technologies.. Microsoft CodeName "Camano"

…a standalone application that allows users the ability to author, plan and manage a testing effort from a simple UI specialized for displaying test artifacts. 

More on Camano

Pex: Unit Test Generation

I've never been excited about a research project as my feeling today toward Pex, Pex is a MSR project that will enable test-driven development for wider adoptability, it runs static analysis on your code and generate unit test to cover your codebase - the more yuou run Pex the more covarage you got - and it's also suggest ways for you to protect your code..

for example if you have a parameterized function and the null value throw exception Pex thrwoing chunk of code that checks the parameter before use it. this is a simple scenario but you get the idea.

for how long test-driven development have been around it was very hard to convenice business and stakholders to adopte it inside development teams. with Pex ithink this won't be that hard as the time consumed to write thousand of test cases will be reduced by tests that increase covarage generated by Pes (Parametrized tests - like in MbUnit).

check out the Pex Project and Blog also there is this screencast don't miss this screencast pretty amazing stuff.

Tiny Tip: Exporting to Excel from GridView inside UpdatePanel

This is a basic feature that most of todays application provide the most widly used implementation make use of the Response object to write to all the page which dosn't go well with ajax calls that concerns with only a portion of the page.

you can place the export button outside the girdview ofcourse but itn's that conveniant for all secenarions, however you can tell the updatepanel to do a semi full post back when specifit trigger is fired using the following:

<Triggers>
            <asp:PostBackTrigger ControlID="btnExport" />
        </Triggers> 

tafiti: A very cool Silverlight search show case

A very cool show case for Silverlight maybe, the functionality not emprisive like the graphics

Source: http://www.tafiti.com/Original/default.aspx

Volta announced, GWT Architecture and Script#

Microsoft Live Labs announce the new web coming technology Volta, which is a set of developer tools that in plain English work as MSIL re-compiler to cross-browser compliant JavaScript .

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Volta simply allow you to use your existing C#/VB.NET/IronPython or any other .NET language to write code that you can control it's execution side Server/Client by decorating the Class with attribute and the Volta post-compiler take care of spitting JavaScript code.

if you are looking for highly optimized JavaScript code i don't think this is for you. you can look for alternatives like Nikhil Kothari's Script# or Google Web Toolkit.

Erik Meijer Volta Architect explains the difference between Volta and GWT

From an architectural point of view, Volta facilitates a many-to-many mapping between programming languages and execution environments by leveraging the Common Intermediate Language as defined by ISO/IEC 23271:2006. The idea of using a common intermediate language to translate M source languages into N target languages dates back as far as 1958 with UNCOL (see also this). You can use any .NET language to write your application and compile it to a .NET assembly using an unmodified compiler. Volta then post-processes the generated MSIL inside the assembly based on declarative annotations in the code by automatically inserting all the boilerplate code necessary for running the application across multiple tiers and making asynchronous invocations. Finally, you deploy the modified assembly on any target execution environment that is capable of executing MSIL.

Live Labs summarize Volta:

• Language-independence. Write Volta code in any language that compiles into MSIL. For example, C#, VB, IronPython, etc.
• Leverage the entire .NET toolchain. Use libraries; the IDE, Intellisense, auto-complete, snippets; FxCop; profiler; class browser; ILDASM; and so on.
• Low entry barrier. Reduce your learning burden; use “only the languages in the room.”
• Brown-field applicability. Volta-enable existing applications for the cloud.
• Beyond 2 tiers. Refactor to as many tiers as you need using exactly the same mechanisms recursively applied.

Download Volta CTP

.NETwork User Group first meeting (Cairo, Egypt)

I am super excited I wanted to pull this off long time ago, I've talked about this with my good friend Mohamed Hossam over at SilverKey but other stuff kept us busy enough to delay this.

anyway some other engineers here in Egypt had the time to put together the first .NET User Group in Cairo, and for the first gathering will have the rock star speaker for the evening Stephen Forte

check the details and see you there.

.Network.org user group launch (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM)
Speakers:
Stephen Forte (Microsoft MVP & NewYork RD)
Location:
Microsoft, Smart Village.
Busses will be available at:
Nady El-Sekka (5:00 PM - 5:30 PM)
Abdel Mon'em Reyad Sq (5:00 PM - 5:30 PM)

Speakers Biography
Stephen Forte is the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world.
Agenda
6:00 PM – 6:30 PM: Keynote speech by Remon Zakaria and Mohammed Wahby
Remon & Mohammed will give the keynote speech about the concept of the user group, its definition & their vision for the .Network group.
6:30 PM – 7:15 PM: Session #1 SQL Server 2008 sneak peak by Stephen Forte
Stephen will give us an overview about the new & very-interesting SQL Server 2008 features.
7:15 PM – 7:30 PM: Coffee Break
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM: Session #2 Design Patterns by Stephen Forte
Stephen will talk about design patterns in general and show the MVC design pattern as well as database design patterns for build the right applicaiton architecture.

Windows Live Labs announce Volta

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Developers can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting for you.  Volta comprises tools such as end-to-end profiling to make architectural refactoring and optimization simple and quick. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without any changes to the application.

read more

Very interesting and healthy way of thinking!