DEV012 Building WPF XAML Browser Applications - few patches

Few patches you may need to use for this lab: You getting "Error 32 SignTool reported an error SignTool Error: Signtool requires CAPICOM version 2.1.0.1 or higher" - solutions is here. You getting "Request for the permission of type System.Net.WebPermission" - it could be caused by a range of reasons. In my case - I needed to set Execute permissions to "Scripts only" rather than "Scripts and Executables". If it not helps you - here few more receipts: partial trust WPF app Request for the permission of type System.Net.WebPermission

Consolas - ClearType font optimized for programming environment

Few patches you may need to use for this lab: You getting "Error 32 SignTool reported an error SignTool Error: Signtool requires CAPICOM version 2.1.0.1 or higher" - solutions is here. You getting "Request for the permission of type System.Net.WebPermission" - it could be caused by a range of reasons. In my case - I needed to set Execute permissions to "Scripts only" rather than "Scripts and Executables". If it not helps you - here few more receipts: partial trust WPF app Request for the permission of type System.Net.WebPermission

WCF Performance

Some time ago I've developed a Comet infrastructure for the ASP.NET Ajax. As part of its possibilities - it enables to serialize server-side objects and stream them to the handling function at client side. It was working like a breeze, until Ive streamed some object with Date field, say something like that:         public class TestMessage         {             public string _s1 = "s1";             public int _i1 = 1;             public DateTime _t1 = DateTime.Now;         } Now, an instance of this TestMessage was correctly deserialized into JS object, exclude its DateTime fields, which was appearing in following form: {...} _i1: 1 _s1: "s1" _t1: "/Date(777)/" If youre affected by similar problem here is the reason: 1) JSON representation for the string was changed from @777@ to \/777\/ in the latest Ajax release (to prevent serialization of strings that looks like date into Date format), where 777 is num of milliseconds since January 1, 1970 UTC. 2) Currently - at the server side DateTime object is serialized as "_t1":"\/Date(777)\/" 3) If you stream it as-is to the client-side JS recognizes single \ as escape character and your date actually became /Date(777)/, which is wrong format for deserialization. So, if you want to stream your objects correctly you here is small RegEx-based utility Ive did for it:         private static class ReplaceDateOrchestrationRegularExpression         {             private const string _regex =                 "(?\")(?\\\\)(?/Date\\([\\d]+\\))(?\\\\)(?<" + "postfix>/\")";             private static readonly RegexOptions _options = ((RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace | RegexOptions.Multiline) | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);             public static readonly Regex Expression = new Regex(_regex, _options);             public const string ReplaceOptions =                 @"${prefix}${firstDateSlash}\${body}${secondDateSlash}\${postfix}";         }         private static string ConvertToClientSideJson( string jsonedArgument )         {             return ReplaceDateOrchestrationRegularExpression.Expression.Replace( jsonedArgument, ReplaceDateOrchestrationRegularExpression.ReplaceOptions);         }

Errors in PageFlowInstanceStore.sql when installing DB for PageFlowQuickstart in WCSF

When trying to install PageFlowQuickstart.sql to create DB for the PageFlowQuickstart of WCSF I've encountered the following errors: OSQL -S "localhost" -d "PageFlowPersistenceStore" -E -n -i "..\..\Blocks\PageFlow\Scripts\PageFlowInstanceStore.sql" Msg 137, Level 15, State 2, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_DeleteInstance, Line 6 Must declare the scalar variable "@instanceId". Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_GetLastRunningInstanceByCorrelationToken, Line 12 Invalid column name 'running'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_GetInstanceByTypeAndByCorrelationToken, Line 6 Invalid column name 'InstanceId'. Msg 137, Level 15, State 2, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_ChangeInstanceStatus, Line 8 Must declare the scalar variable "@Running". Msg 137, Level 15, State 2, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_SetRunningInstanceForCorrelationToken, Line 24 Must declare the scalar variable "@instanceID". Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Server localhost, Procedure pageFlow_GetTypeByInstanceId, Line 9 Invalid column name 'InstanceId'. If you're getting hit by this problem - here is the reason: whole SQL script is written in assumption that DB collation is case-insensitive. Just fix the letters case ( @InstanceId instead of @instanceId , etc.) and you have it fixed.

How to keep Format Painter active in Office-style applications...

Here is the trick - double click the format painter icon to format multiple elements. Press ESC to end formating.

Free e-book: Rapid C# Windows Development

"Rapid C# for Windows Development" by Joseph Chancellor is available (in .pdf format) for free download from LLBLGen Pro site.

Benchmarking LINQ vs. DAAB vs. ADO.NET

Abstract: This article presents benchmarking results of performance of SP calls using LINQ, Data-access application block and ADO.NET. Some time ago I was doing LINQ performance benchmarking, looking for an option of replacing our existing data layer with it. One thing that was especially important for me to check - was performance of executing SP's. The reason is that most of our DAL logic resides in SP's at one hand and that performance-critical parts are implemented as SP's as well (for all the good reasons, like possibility to benefit from queries compilation etc). Below are performance benchmarking results of execution uspGetManagerEmployees SP from AdventureWorks DB. (Basically it does some sort of JOIN to retrieve records of employees data for the specified Manager ID). I tested three data-access models - raw ADO.NET vs. DAAB (our current DAL workhorse) vs. LINQ (May 2006 preview version). As a prerequisite for running this test you'll need AdventureWorks DB and installation of LINQ. Few side-notes: I've left opening of DB connection out of the context of benchmarked section. Only SP execution is measured. I use ExecuteReader rather than ExecuteDataSet, as it is much more lightweight. For LINQ benchmark I using GetEnumerator(). So here goes the test code: 1. Plain ADO.NET: public static void SqlSPBench() { string connectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Integrated Security=True"; using( SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection( connectionString ) ) { conn.Open(); Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch(); watch.Start(); int count = 10000; for( int i = 0; i < count; i++ ) { using( SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand() ) { cmd.Connection = conn; cmd.CommandText = "uspGetManagerEmployees"; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; cmd.Parameters.Add( new SqlParameter( "ManagerID", 3 ) ); using( SqlDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader( CommandBehavior.Default ) ) { //while (reader.Read()) //{ // Console.WriteLine(reader[3]); //} } } } watch.Stop(); Console.WriteLine( "Running " + count + " SP's using SQL ExecuteReader took " + watch.ElapsedMilliseconds + " ms"); Console.ReadLine(); } } 2. DAAB (Data Access Application Block): public static void SqlSpDAAB() { Database adventureWorksDataBase = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase( "AdventureWorks" ); Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch(); watch.Start(); int count = 10000; for( int i =0; i<count; i++ ) { using( DBCommandWrapper sp_uspGetManagerEmployees = adventureWorksDataBase.GetStoredProcCommandWrapper( "uspGetManagerEmployees" ) ) { sp_uspGetManagerEmployees.AddInParameter( "@ManagerID", DbType.Int32, 3 ); using( IDataReader dataReader = adventureWorksDataBase.ExecuteReader( sp_uspGetManagerEmployees ) ) { //DataSet results = // adventureWorksDataBase.ExecuteDataSet( sp_uspGetManagerEmployees ); } } } watch.Stop(); Console.WriteLine( "Running " + count + " SP's using DAAB took " + watch.ElapsedMilliseconds + " ms"); Console.ReadLine(); } 3. LINQ (using ORM layer produced by SQLMetal.exe - "c:\Program Files\LINQ Preview\Bin\SqlMetal.exe" /server:. /database:AdventureWorks /pluralize /sprocs /code:AdventureWorks.cs): public static void LinqSPBench() { string connectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Integrated Security=True"; AdventureWorks adventureWorks = new AdventureWorks( connectionString ); Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch(); watch.Start(); int count = 10000; for( int i =0; i<count; i++ ) { StoredProcedureResult<UspGetManagerEmployeesResult> result = adventureWorks.UspGetManagerEmployees( 3 ); IEnumerator<UspGetManagerEmployeesResult> enumerator = result.GetEnumerator(); //while( enumerator.MoveNext() ) //{ // Console.WriteLine( enumerator.Current.LastName ); //} } watch.Stop(); Console.WriteLine( "Running " + count + " SP's using LINQ took " + watch.ElapsedMilliseconds + " ms"); Console.ReadLine(); } Here are timing results of this benchmarking test: Running 10000 SP's using SQL ExecuteReader took 42806 ms Running 10000 SP's using DAAB took 46443 ms Running 10000 SP's using LINQ took 55136 ms Results So, comparing to the raw ADO.NET - DAAB is 8% slower and LINQ is 28% slower. Comparing to DAAB - LINQ is 18% slower. CPU usage intensity is about 2% average for raw ADO.NET vs. about 8% for DAAB vs. about 20% for LINQ - order of magnitude worse than raw ADO.NET (CPU graphs captured with perfmon below). Fig. 1 ADO.NET - CPU usage Fig. 2 DAAB - CPU usage Fig. 3 LINQ - CPU usage In overall - this performance overhead is quite disappointing. I still consider to use LINQ, as we have DAL/BLL servers in our architecture, which we may merely upgrade to faster hardware, while isolating thin-client computers from this performance overhead. I think it's a big challenge for the LINQ team to address its performance.