Laurent Duveau : WCF

My Silverlight talk at Montreal .NET User Group

pluginbaby — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:31:00 GMT

This week I gave a Silverlight presentation at the Montreal .NET Community (www.dotnetmontreal.com).

Very few slides and lots of code, I built live from scratch a Silverlight business oriented application with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend, here is what I demoed:

Entity Framework over a SQL Server db (beers!)
LINQ
WCF service + asynchronous call on the Silverlight 2 client + best practice
Design and Animation with Blend + a few tips (tab key to collapse windows, properties search)
Tips to prevent an animation from running twice
DataGrid templating (custom columns, custom selected row view)
DataBinding
Isolated Storage cache [Learn more]
Custom alternative “no Silverlight installed” version as well a as a way to simulate a user without Silverlight in IE. I finally build a nice working version of the page with data for the user without forcing him to install Silverlight. [Learn more]
Quickly talked about some of the new features coming with Silverlight 3 (currently beta)

Silverlight experience:	Alternative ASP.NET version:

Lot’s of content! I wanted to show a bit of Silverlight 3 but that was too much.

You can download my code (*) here:

As well as the slides (french):

(*) The download include the asynchronous Database update as users edit the DataGrid.

For those of you who are interested to hear about Silverlight 3 don’t worry you still have plenty of events coming!

Montreal Code Camp in may
Forum des architectes in may
Our Silverlight Tour training
More to come…

My Silverlight session at DevTeach Montreal

pluginbaby — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:23:48 GMT

During my “Business oriented Silverlight 2 application” talk at DevTeach conference (december 2008) I used Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend to build an application that retrieves SQL server data (Beers!) through an Entity Framework model and exposes it to a Silverlight client via a WCF service and LINQ queries. I did some design and animation, added a ComboBox and DataGrid to display data and asynchronously update the model as users edit it. Then I showed how to use local cache on the client to optimize network traffic and finally applyed some Style to shape the UI.

I had only 2 slides in my ppt deck, and here is my funny slide #2:

I coded all that live on stage in 60 min without any errors!

As promised here is the source code of the application I built live:

Slides:

[Beers Db by Andy Beaulieu]

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

My Silverlight talk at Microsoft Innovation Briefing

pluginbaby — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:54:00 GMT

This morning I did a Silverlight 2 talk at Microsoft Montreal, during a half-day briefing called Building Compelling Websites on the Microsoft Platform.

That was a 1 hour talk to present Silverlight 2, DeepZoom, Expression Blend and create from scratch a Silverlight 2 application which consume LINQ To SQL data exposed by a WCF service with VS2008.

I would like to thank Paul Laberge for offering me the opportunity to do my very first presentation in english...

Here are the links to the online demos I showed:

DeepZoom:
http://memorabilia.hardrock.com

Performances comparison with DHTML/Flex/SL1.0/SL2:
http://www.bubblemark.com

Free charts controls:
http://www.visifire.com

Medical sample (amazing) application:
http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/

Here is a link to the powerpoint slides I used:

Here is a zip file with the DeepZoom "Bill Gates" demo (hope you liked it!) and the Silverlight 2 + WCF + LINQ app I built live.

You'll appreciate my funky UI.

For the gentleman who asked the question I couldn't answer:

Question: "Can you customize the default Loading animation the user get while waiting for a Silverlight application to start ?"

Answer: "Yes! you can find a tutorial in the Quickstarts: http://silverlight.net/QuickStarts/BuildUi/SplashScreen.aspx"

Silverlight 2: migrating from alpha to beta 1

pluginbaby — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:24:12 GMT

Today I had to migrate a Silverlight Alpha 1.1 project to Silverlight 2 beta 1 for a client.

As we had to expect there are a lot of changes!

First thing to notice: after installing Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 you won't be able to open your Silverlight 1.1 projects in VS2008, you have to migrate.

The best way is to create a new Silverlight application and copy your old files there, then this article will be a huge help to fix your issues:
MSDN: Breaking Changes in Silverlight 2
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189007(vs.95).aspx

Here are some of the changes I had to deal with:

HtmlDocument.GetElementByID -> HtmlDocument.GetElementById
System.Windows.WebApplication.RegisterScriptableObject -> HtmlPage.RegisterScriptableObject
System.Windows.WebApplication -> System.Windows.Application
[Scriptable] attribute -> [ScriptableType] for class, [ScriptableMember] for methods

And the one who surprised me the most: Web Services

It is said that you have to regenerate your Web Service client proxies, but when looking for "Add Web Reference" in VS2008, I don't find it!! I just have "Add Service Reference" which is WCF for me. For ASP.NET 3.5 projects, you have both "Add Service Reference" for WCF and "Add Web Reference" for Web Services.
I know that Silverlight 2 supports both WCF and Web Services, so where the hell is "Add Web Reference" ??

Answer is: use "Add Service Reference"!
Calling a Web Service in Silverlight 2 is very similar to calling a WCF Service, that means that you have to specify binding and endpoint.

Second surprise: all web service calls must be asynchronous!
You must implement the async pattern, that surprised me at first, but now I found that this is not a bad thing and just requires 2 or 3 lines of code, so get used to it!

For syntax and code details I invite you to read this very good post :
Calling web services with Silverlight 2
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/03/14/calling-web-services-with-silverlight-2.aspx

.NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

pluginbaby — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:56:30 GMT

It is available to download and print:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7B645F3A-6D22-4548-A0D8-C2A27E1917F8&displaylang=en

Still hungry about Framework 3.0 ?

pluginbaby — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:02:11 GMT

Here is a cool link to a .NET Framework 3.0 training kit for WorkFlow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and CardSpace including a set of hands-on-labs, demos, and presentations.

It has 13 presentations, 10 labs, and 16 Demos in it.

Get it there :
http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/presentations/entry8793.aspx

Hungry about Framework 3 ?

pluginbaby — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:45:18 GMT

Go to DinnerNow !!!

This is a great sample application which use the latest Microsoft technologies !

"DinnerNow is a fictious marketplace where customers can order food from local restaurants for delivery to their home or office. This sample is designed to demonstrate how you can develop a connected application using several new Microsoft technologies."

And the list of technologies used is amazing :

Windows Communication Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows CardSpace
Windows Powershell
IIS7
ASP.NET Ajax Extensions
Virtual Earth
Gadgets
Linq
.NET Compact Framework

The entire DinnerNow sample application can be downloaded from CodePlex :
http://www.codeplex.com/dinnernow/release/projectreleases.aspx

There is also a cool video (but it breaks before the end...) :
http://www.dinnernow.net/downloads/videos/Scenario1_web/flash/default.html