What type of Project is needed by your client?
Most of these days, everyone are moving to cloud apps. More or less, they are deciding to have their applications be available on web. Is it a trend or all requirements are demanding to become web apps?
Before we proceed further, from my understanding is that the need of the application decides the nature of the application, neither the investor nor any other party that is involved in the application life cycle. NOT EVEN THE END USER.
But how do we understand the nature of the application?
The below questionnaire helps in understanding the current requirement.
| Sl | Question | Yes/NO/NA |
| 1 | Are your users comfortable using a Web browser? | |
| 2 | Are your users located in remote sites? | |
| 3 | Do your users in remote sites have access to the Internet? | |
| 4 | Are you creating a Business to Business (B2B) application? | |
| 5 | Are you creating a Business to Consumer (B2C) application? | |
| 6 | Is the amount of data entered minimal? | |
| 7 | Is the amount of data to display on the screen minimal? | |
| 8 | Is the number of fields on the screen fairly small? | |
| 9 | Does each user "own" their data? | |
| 10 | Are the same rows of data rarely updated by multiple users at the same time? | |
| 11 | Is this application mainly for light data entry, where speed of data entry isn’t critical? | |
| 12 | Is there a lot of data review that requires "tall" pages? | |
| 13 | Do your users like to scroll through the data, as opposed to tabbing through data? | |
| 14 | Are there minimal data items on a screen that cause other data to change on that same screen? | |
| 15 | Can your users minimize the need to exchange data dynamically with other products running on the same desktop? | |
| 16 | Is performance a secondary consideration? | |
| 17 | Do your developers (or you) want to develop for the Web? | |
| 18 | Do your developers (or you) have the skills to develop for the Web (or can they quickly learn how)? | |
| 19 | Do you want a very graphically appealing look and feel? | |
| 20 | Do you have a lot of large screens that would warrant scrolling windows? | |
| 21 | Is it important to keep deployment costs to a minimum? | |
| 22 | Is it important to keep upgrade costs to a minimum? | |
| 23 | Will there be frequent updates to software? | |
| 24 | Can you hire/train Web programmers more cheaply than desktop programmers? | |
| 25 | Do investors and/or shareholders want a Web application? | |
| 26 | Would your users prefer a browser interface to a desktop application? | |
| 27 | Do users in remote sites have a high-speed connection to your internal network? | |
| 28 | Is it fairly easy to install Internet access in remote sites? | |
| 29 | When your users travel, do they usually have access to the Internet? | |
| 30 | The application interacts with other providers over internet (such as weather notifications, GPS, GIS, etc) ? | |
| 31 | Is this application only for one department? | |
| 32 | Is there a need to connect to special hardware? | |
| 33 | Do you need Drag-and-Drop support in this application? | |
| 34 | Are you designing a game, CAD, or CAM application? | |
| 35 | Do you need a lot of special controls for limiting data input (such as input masks)? | |
| 36 | Can deployment of this system be done through a network, by distributing CDs, or using push servers? | |
| 37 | The major portion of the user make use of this application from work desk? | |
| 38 | Is there a scope of gadgets usage in the near future? | |
| 39 | The application should function when the data is modified by other users? (And yet, warn the user before committing?) | |
| 40 | The application should have a facility for auditing the data manipulation? | |
| 41 | Can the application be hosted on intranet of the deployment location? | |
| 42 | The application doesn’t demands the data sharing from online portals (such as XE for all the latest currency details) ? | |
| 43 | The count of the multiple users at any given point is greater than 10? | |
| 44 | The count of the concurrent users at any given point is greater than 1000? | |
| 45 | The users systems are built with Intel ‘x’Core / Pentium technology? | |
| 46 | Are the user systems within the secured environment? | |
| 47 | There will be multiple versions of this application and buyers are licensed WRT these versions | |
| 48 | Can upgrades of this system be done through a network, by distributing CDs, or using push servers? | |
| 49 | The application does not demands extensive processing power? | |
| 50 | Can the application be split into different hosts, depending on the roles of the different users? |
Now that we have some understanding about the requirement, then how do we compile this information.
Step 1) Please replace all the Yes / No / NA with 1/0/-1 respectively from the below table
Step 2) Add the responses from Q1 to Q31 and store it separately
Step 3) Add the responses from Q32 to Q50 and store it separately
Step 4) Subtract Step 3 result from Step 2 result
You would get a final number either +ve or –ve.
Response 1) Any number that is greater than 10, that is a need of WebApplication
Response 2) Any number that is less than 10 and a non-negative number indicates the need of a WinApplication
Response 3) Any negative number reflects as a smart client (or) split application architecture
ASP.NET 70-515 Exam Preparation points
I’ve written the mentioned exam and completed this in the second attempt. I’ve failed in my first attempt, but passed in the second attempt. The second attempt for all the Microsoft exams is free. One of my friend asked me about the highlight points that helped me to attend the exam. This post arrived while preparation of the bulleted points that I recollect from the exam.
The whole exam pattern can be divided into 3 + 2 = 5 sections. The first 3 sections are more concentrate on the enhancements in v4.0 along with the traditional questions from v3.0 based. The second 2 sections are mainly into configuration and deployment of any web app that is developed using ASP.NET v4.0
To make the long story short, here is the full details that I’ve in my mind. Ofcourse, I’ve not mentioned any thing about MVC as a separate section, because, MVC is a pattern for me but not a new enhancement from the point of framework. Having mentioned that you can even consider that there are few questions pertaining about MVC too, thus, don’t forget to give attention towards MVC.
1) Traditional WebApplication questions
1) How to Configure Web Forms pages
2) What are master pages and themes
3) What is globalization
4) What are the page life cycle events
5) How to implement caching and how to manage view-state & Validate user input
2) Questions that are new to ASP.NET v4.0 Controls
6) What are user controls and how to implement
7) What are the mechanisms using which we can manipulate user interface controls from code-behind
8) What controls help to Display and Manipulate Data
9) What are the new ways to implement DataBound / DataSource controls
10) Query and manipulate data by using LINQ (ofcourse, this doesn’t new to v4.0 but the exam questions are based on v3.0 LINQ)
3) This section is about new enhancements from ASP.NET v4.0
11) What is Client-Side Scripting and AJAX
12) How to induce the dynamic features to a page by using JavaScript
13) How to handle JavaScript events
3.1)Services Enhancements
14) How to create and consume a data service
15) How to create and configure a Dynamic Data project
4) Configuration Section targeting the production environment
16) How to configuring and Extending a Web Application
17) How to configure authentication and authorization
18) How to configure providers
19) How to create and configure HttpHandlers and HttpModules
20) How to Configure initialization and error handling
21) How to reference and configure ASMX and WCF services
22) How to Configure projects and solutions, and reference assemblies
23) What are custom routes and how to create controllers & actions
5) Standard Deployment of WebApps
24) How to debug a Web application
25) How to deploy a Web application
So, if you are attending this exam, please give your self a second study about the above mentioned points. If you are aware of fundamentals of these topics, that’s it you are thru. Happy certification.
Sending SMS from .NET Application
Today, when visiting the MSDN forums, came across of a request about the subject of this post. While replying, thought of writing a post with visual aids. So that it would be more meaningful. But unfortunate that MSDN forum doesn’t support to upload the Images. Hence is the blog post.
Before we talk about .NET application, it is required to understand how SMS works and the integration with some application. Thus, let’s see what happens when some one sends SMS. Am not going to talk about SMS sent to any phone with 10 digits unique number, but am talking about sending SMS sent to less than 10 digits number, sent on some reserved interfaces (or) mass SMS receiving mechanism. Mostly these kind of requirements come into action when polling is required or a kind of reality shows like American Idol in USA and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa from Zee Tv in India.
Let’s start with how this kind of polling is offered by the Providers, called as SCS Providers ie., Short Code Service Providers. Any business person who is interested to utilize the services of such SCS first has to register with these SCSProviders. The SCSProviders charge according to their business plans. Here is a simple example about the pricing by one of the Indian SCS Provider
Short Code Number: 53426
Short Code: <KEYWORD> As per request *(subject to availability)
Sub Keyword: Multiple ( e.g. <ShortCode Keyword> <sub-keyword>)
Control Panel: Web Based
Auto-Welcome: An SMS will be send to the customer who will send your short code. This message can be customized from control panel. You can create different Welcome message for sub-keywords also.
Reports: Daily Keyword/Sub Keyword based
Database: Database of received SMS will be available in your account with us. (Web Based)
Auto-Forward:To SMS (An SMS will be sent to desired number with Sender’s Mobile Number SMS Forwarding Cost: 25 P/SMS)
- To Email (An Email will be sent to desired mail id with Sender’s Mobile Number, Keyword)
- Web URL (This will submit the sender’s mobile number and keyword to desired web-page and the result of the page will used as Reply Back SMS. This web page could be dynamic in nature to give any user specific reply back. e.g. Result of Exam through SMS Request)
Network Support: All India
Setup Time: 48 Hrs. after approval of Keyword availability
Setup Fee: NIL
Monthly Rental: 4,500/- [4500 + 556 (Service Tax): Rs.5056]
Quarterly Rental: 4,000/- [12000 + 1483 (Service Tax): Rs.13,483]
Half Yearly Rental: 3,500/- [21,000 + 2596 (Service Tax): Rs.23,596]
Yearly Rental: 3,000/- [36,000 + 4450 (Service Tax): Rs.40,450]
Rs. 4,450/- Off on Yearly subscription.
One Year Pricing (after discount): Rs.36,000/-
Hope you are now clear about the pricing details of any SCS Provider. Let me show you how the SCS provider works with some visual representation. The infrastructure and the working model would be some thing similar to that of the below mentioned
Now that you understand how your SMS communication is implemented in real world, let’s see how this can be extended so that any application can handle the situation when SMS received as well as sent.
Most of the SCS Providers do the URL Forwarding, which means they invoke any of the given URL when they get an SMS. Thus, it is the responsibility of the business application to provide any URL to receive the information about the SMS. The URL would be some thing like, http://mybusiness.com/getsms.aspx?phonenumber=93829283928&message=thisiscool
Which means that the business owner should expose some interface by means of a WebPage (or) WebService (or) what ever is feasible for the business. Once the business application gets the information, it is all within the workflow of the rules that is orchestrated by the business owners. The entire crux of this post remains in this last paragraph. Well, for a web developer, I don’t think it is required to explain how to collect the query parameters as well as send any query parameters. This is all fine to collect the SMS sent by the users on a reserved number like 53426. But now, how about sending back some information to the phones via SMS?
As you see in the diagram that every SCSProviders have a feature called as URL Forwarding, they would also be having a web page where you can send some data that would be passed onto the SMS sender. The page that is provided by the SCSProvider would be some thing like http://SCSPWebSite.com/sendsms.aspx?phnumr=93829283928&message=thisisreply .. Hope now you are totally aware of how to send SMS with the help of SCS Providers as well as receive SMS in a web application.
What do you say?
Visual Basic is the Core attention by Microsoft
Workflow foundation is currently at 4th version. The main coding syntax that is expected for any of the code activities are more from the VB code syntax. Hence, it is proven that Microsoft considers VB as primary language while doing any kind of Research.
Apart of this, there is one more fact that there is a recent toolkit released from Microsoft, just yesterday, ie., 28th Nov 2010. It is RTW for Windows Phone developer. This release enables Visual Basic developers to create Silverlight applications for Windows Phone 7 using the final version of the windows phone developer tools.
You can download the Windows Phone developer tools RTW from this link.
MSN mailbox size is 500 GB
Don’t think that this is a false or fake news. I usually configure my outlook with my msn account. To my surprise when I’ve seen the server status of my MSN account, am surprised to learn that MSN is allocating 500 GB space for each mail account. You don’t believe me!! Here is the proof. See the below image, still you don’t believe that I’ve a valid point and you trust that the image is morphed by me.. ha ha ha.. then come and meet me personally, I’ll show you from my laptop.
Apart of all, how it would be, if i recommend you to configure your MSN account with your local outlook!!! Sounds great right!! Then you don’t have to suspect me, you can witness yourself. Try it ..
SVN Repository Migration
Our current employer decided to have the code base as VisualSVN. So we stated a demo server and then after successful trail started a staging server for our project. For the entire March month it worked well, and we decided to have another VisualSVN server as production. During the last week we have decided to migrate our staging SVN source to production box, but now the problem is about history or revision of the full one month.
After binging and googling, I’ve found many alternatives. Most of all, I’ve realized one simple solution and migrated the entire code base from staging to production as simple as cake biting.
Problem :
Source SVN is at 10.4.5.68 and the repositories are installed at D:\
Target SVN is at 119.18.112.63 and the repositories are installed at E:\
Solution:
Step 1:
Copy all the project folders from 5.68\d$\repository\<<projectRepositories>> to 112.63\e$\repository\
Step 2:
Copy the auth files from 5.68 to 112.63, this would copy all the users along with their project groups
Step 3:
Go to the client side and just relocate your SVN url by right clicking on the folder and point to “SVN=>Relocate”
That’s is done.. did you try?
EntLib 5.0 & Unity 2.0 Release Dates
Am a big favorite of EntLib. I started using this from v1.1 during June 2005. The good thing from the latest version is that they are not adding any more blocks, on top of it they are removing some unwanted code.
They are targeting to release this by 14th of April after 2days of VS2010.
MSDN Code Gallery Tags
This link gives you a beautiful access to the code snippets available from MSDN Code Gallery. The way it is designed is great.
IE 8 Beta1 and SL2.0 – Today
Today, I’ve downloaded IE8 beta 1 as well as Silverlight 2.0 installed on my laptop. This day have seen many products released at Mix 08 by great personalities like Scott Guthrie, Bob Familiar, Guy Burstein, IEBlog, etc. According to Jane Kim at an interview for Mix08, Activities and WebSlices are two of the most exciting new features in IE8.
Apart of IE8.0 and SL2.0, there are other products such as
I’ve downloaded all these .. and am trying out one by one .. what about you??
Web Client Software Factory
Microsoft released “Web Client Software Factory 2.0 – WCSF2.0” both at Microsoft’s site as well as at Codeplex. According to Codeplex, the Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) provides a set of guidance for architects and developers building enterprise Web applications. It is existing to read these words,
Am trying out this.. will soon post all my comments on this.. are you trying out this??? what are your comments
Tips and Tricks from my Experience 
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