How to deploy and test a Windows Phone 7 application into the phone?

Hi,

Working on some Windows Phone 7 development project, I came across the following question from the customer when releasing an sprint: ‘I have bought a phone. How can I deploy the app into it?’.

Easy question but not so easy answer if you are not familiarized with some aspects like: Windows Phone 7 locking, registration, App Hub membership Marketplace, and so on.

So, after some research I decided to share here my conclusions that could save time to somebody else when having to answer the same question:

1. First, deploying means to distribute the .XAP file which you can get it after compilation (debug as well as release mode).
2. Nevertheless, for deploying that .XAP into your phone you need to meet some requirements:

• Windows Phone Developer tools must be installed (instructions here)
• Your Windows Phone device must be registered (instructions here). Bear in mind that registrations implies:
  • having a valid App Hub developer account ($99 annual fee)
  • identity validation with GeoTrust which could take some days.
  • living / having a valid and legal address on one of these countries.

A registration walkthrough can be followed here.

• The Zune client software must be installed on the host computer (downloadable from here)

After complying with the above requirements, you will need to run the Application Deployment Tool (included with Developer tools) in order to deploy the app to the device. Instructions here.

But, what happens if you cannot comply with one of the above requirements? for instance, my country is not listed? Some possible workarounds for the above:

• Have your Windows Phone 7 device unlocked for developing purposes (nothing to do with telcos locking). ChevronWP7 seemed to be a great tool for doing that but currently seems to be discontinued (after the guys had some discussions with Microsoft :p).
• Try this tool (it requires the phone to be unlocked) (I personally haven’t tried it yet)
• On the meanwhile, use the emulator that is included in the developer tools :(

Now, what happens for instance if your customer is not technical and is not willing to install any development tool for deploying your app into his/her phone? In this case, according to this article there would be possible to submit an app to Marketplace that remains private and only available to be downloaded by the people we just want to. Sounds good (and logical btw) but it seems that this feature is still not available :(.

So, as far as I can see as workaround I guess you could use Marketplace, uploading a free app that asks for some kind of PIN when loads in order to work. This PIN should only be shared by you and your customer. Make sense? But, for uploading an app to Marketplace you must be registered as well as the app should pass the certification test which could put you in a loop :(.

If you have any comments / suggestions / news on this matter, please post a comment.

Hope this helps to save somebody else’s time.  Also hope Microsoft could give developers more tools in order to support offshoring scenarios where development is being done in different, not yet listed countries and customers are not so willing (or just cannot) install a bunch of dev tools just for deploying an app to their phones.

Pablo Peralta.

Twitter: @pabloperalta

Checklist for testing and reviewing ssis packages

At UruIT we work a lot with SQL Server Integration Services and compiled several best practices found on the web that we already adopted. Many of them related to performance tips and conventions. At the end of this post I am sharing some usfeul links.

Nevertheless, we still couldn’t find something like a checklist that we could follow in order to say: ‘ok, if all this bullets are in green we can move forward to going live’. Hence, we built our own basic checklist which are already following in order to review packages. We use to apply this checklist in peer reviews too and now, decided to share with the community.

Please, if you find it useful and have feedback to improve it, I will be really glad to hear it.

So, here is the checklist:

This way, we only consider a package is completed if everything of the above is ‘OK’. Make sense? Simple an useful for us.

Hope you find it useful,

Juan Pablo Turielli.

Useful information that we compiled into our SSIS development standard:

Top 10 SQL Server Integration Services Best Practices

Considerations for High Volume ETL Using SQL Server Integration Services

SSIS: Package Naming Convention

SSIS: Suggested Best Practices and naming conventions

SSIS: Package design pattern for loading a data warehouse

Introducing Windows Phone 7 Panoramic View

[Click here to download sample code for this article]

Introduction

One of the most acclaimed features of the new Windows Phone 7 is the Panorama View, which allows the users to browse an application by visualizing pages like if they were part of a whole panoramic view.

In this article, we will see how to work with a Panorama View, the pros and cons it presents, and a sample design intended to replace the standard navigation approach.

Creating a Panorama Application

The development tools for Windows Phone (January 2011 update available here) automatically install a template to work with Panorama Applications, which are nothing but Silverlight applications, with a sample Panorama View in the main page, containing two pages in the view.

There are some important considerations about the Panorama View that I would like to share here:

· The user switches from one page to another by dragging the current page to the left or the right, much like a phone image viewer.

· The view is indeed panoramic, so there isn’t a first or last page. After browsing all the pages, the first visited page comes next.

· When visualizing a page, a small part of the next page can already be visualized at the right, so the data for that page must already be loaded. However, as we will see next, an event can be handled when switching from one page to another, in order to load data dynamically.

This is the XAML code for the previous view:

<controls:Panorama Title="my application">
    <controls:Panorama.Background>
        <ImageBrush ImageSource="PanoramaBackground.png"/>
    </controls:Panorama.Background>
 
    <!--Panorama item one-->
    <controls:PanoramaItem Header="first item">
        <!--Double line list with text wrapping-->
        <ListBox Margin="0,0,-12,0" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
            <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Margin="0,0,0,17" Width="432">
                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding LineOne}" TextWrapping="Wrap" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextExtraLargeStyle}"/>
                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding LineTwo}" TextWrapping="Wrap" Margin="12,-6,12,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextSubtleStyle}"/>
                    </StackPanel>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        </ListBox>
    </controls:PanoramaItem>
 
    <!--Panorama item two-->
    <!--Use 'Orientation="Horizontal"' to enable a panel that lays out horizontally-->
    <controls:PanoramaItem Header="second item">
        <!--Double line list with image placeholder and text wrapping-->
        <ListBox Margin="0,0,-12,0" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
            <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="0,0,0,17">
                        <!--Replace rectangle with image-->
                        <Rectangle Height="100" Width="100" Fill="#FFE5001b" Margin="12,0,9,0"/>
                        <StackPanel Width="311">                                    
                            <TextBlock Text="{Binding LineOne}" TextWrapping="Wrap" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextExtraLargeStyle}"/>
                            <TextBlock Text="{Binding LineTwo}" TextWrapping="Wrap" Margin="12,-6,12,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextSubtleStyle}"/>
                        </StackPanel>
                    </StackPanel>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        </ListBox>
    </controls:PanoramaItem>
</controls:Panorama>

The control used for the view is Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Panorama, which is an Items control. The “Title” property holds the text used in the top of the view. This class has also a “Background” property, that holds the brush used as the background of the view. Each page is an instance of the PanoramaItem class, which is a Content control that shows the text of the “Header” property at the top, and the content below it.

Loading data dynamically within views

Having all the data pre-loaded can be a problem (and impossible) to several types of applications, and can also have a severe impact on the performance of an application because of the extended loading process at the beginning. Fortunately, there is a way to load the content for the pages dynamically.

When the user switches from one page to another, the SelectionChanged event of the Panorama view is triggered. The event args for this event contain the old PanoramaItem in the RemovedItems collection, and the new item in the AddedItems collection. Here’s an example:

void OnSelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.AddedItems.Count > 0)
    {
        PanoramaItem newPage = (e.AddedItems[0] as PanoramaItem);
        newPage.Content = new TextBlock() { Text = "Data loaded dynamically. You selected item #" + ItemsList.SelectedIndex.ToString() };
    }
}

Switching from one page to another programmatically

Another key requirement is to switch from one page to another programmatically, or after some user action, like pressing a button. The Panorama View is also prepared for these cases, using the DefaultItem property:

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    // Switch to page #2:
    PanoramaView.DefaultItem = PanoramaView.Items[1];
}

Designing an application

We present here a basic design to use the Panorama View in order to replace the classic navigation controls, but trying to keep the design as close as possible. What we will do, is to create an abstract class that will be inherited by all of our panoramic pages. This is the PanoramaNavigationPage in the next diagram:

The Panorama View will then have our pages as items.

<controls:Panorama Title="my application" Name="PanoramaView">
    <controls:Panorama.Background>
        <ImageBrush ImageSource="PanoramaBackground.png"/>
    </controls:Panorama.Background>
            
    <pages:SamplePage1></pages:SamplePage1>
    <pages:SamplePageWithHeader></pages:SamplePageWithHeader>
            
</controls:Panorama>

Then in the MainPage, we handle the SelectionChanged event (OnPanoramaNavigation), calling the OnNavigatedFrom for the removed item, and the OnNavigatedTo for the added item.

Finally the MainPage exposes the Navigate method that switches the view from a page to another.

With this simple approach we have a restricted alternative to the classic navigation.

Sample application

Here is the full source code of an application featuring all of the topics of this article

This application contains a Panorama View and follows the previous design to separate each page’s implementation and handle the basic navigation events.

The first page overrides the OnNavigatedFrom method to show a MessageBox indicating the user that he is leaving that page.

The second page shows a header with the page title, and contains a button that programmatically navigates to the first page.

Conclusions

The Panorama View offers a user friendly way to browse through an application. However, there are some key behaviors to consider, like the piece of next page that is visible when the user is viewing the current one.

We saw that the Panorama has all the features to adapt to several kind of applications and can even replace the classic navigation approach, but at the price of requiring more design work to accomplish.

Alfonso Cora.