Tag: Software
All the articles with the tag "Software".
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MEF will not get easier, it’s cool as ICE
Over the past few weeks, several people asked me to show them how to use MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework), some of them seemed to have some difficulties with the concept of MEF. I tried explaining that it will not get easier than it is currently, hence the title of this blog post. MEF is based on 3 keywords: export, import, compose. Since these 3 words all start with a letter that can be combined to a word, and MEF is cool, here’s a hint on how to remember it: MEF is cool as ICE! Imagine the following: You want to construct a shed somewhere in your back yard. There’s tools to accomplish that, such as a hammer and a saw. There’s also material, such as nails and wooden boards. Let’s go for this! Here’s a piece of code to build the shed: [code:c#]
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Microsoft Web Development Summit 2009
Being in the US for 2 times in a month (PDC09 and Web Development Summit) is fun, tiring and rewarding. The WDS09 was an invite-only event organized by Microsoft, focusing on interaction between Microsoft and the PHP community. I must say: the event has been helpful and interesting for both parties! This was actually my first time at the WDS which has been around for 5 years already. The Interop team invited me there, and I want to thank them for doing that: it was a great trip, a great event and I got the chance to meet lots of new people.
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PHP Managed Extensibility Framework – PHPMEF
While flying sitting in the airplane to the Microsoft Web Developer Summit in Seattle, I was watching some PDC09 sessions on my laptop. During the MEF session, an idea popped up: there is no MEF for PHP! 3500 kilometers after that moment, PHP got its own MEF… MEF is a .NET library, targeting extensibility of projects. It allows you to declaratively extend your application instead of requiring you to do a lot of plumbing. All this is done with three concepts in mind: export, import and compose. (Glenn, I stole the previous sentence from your blog). “PHPMEF” uses the same concepts in order to provide this extensibility features.
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Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse for PHP developers
Pfew! Finally I can spread the word on this! While working on the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, I had the opportunity to test-drive the development builds of the WIndows Azure Tools for Eclipse. Today, the project has been released officially at www.windowsazure4e.org. Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse provides a series of wizards and utilities that allow developers to write, debug, and configure for and deploy PHP applications to Windows Azure. The plug-in also bundles the existing Windows Azure SDK for PHP, which was introduced a few months ago. This SDK provides a simple API for PHP developers who use the Windows Azure storage component, making it very easy to use the blob, queue and table data storage features. Just visit the project site at http://phpazure.codeplex.com/.
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Simple API for Cloud Application Services
Zend, in co-operation with IBM, Microsoft, Rackspace, GoGrid and other cloud leaders, today have released their Simple API for Cloud Application Services project. The Simple Cloud API project empowers developers to use one interface to interact with the cloud services offered by different vendors. These vendors are all contributing to this open source project, making sure the Simple Cloud API “fits like a glove” on top of their service. Zend Cloud adapters will be available for services such as: Note that the Simple Cloud API is focused on providing a simple and re-usable interface across different cloud services. This implicates that specific features a service offers will not be available using the Simple Cloud API.
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SQL Azure Manager
A few days ago, the SQL Server Team announced the availability of three major CTP’s and several new upcoming projects in the SQL related family tree: SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server StreamInsight and SQL Azure. Now that last one is interesting: Microsoft will offer a 1GB or 10GB database server “in the cloud” for a good price.
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Application-wide action filters in ASP.NET MVC
Ever had a team of developers using your ASP.NET MVC framework? Chances are you have implemented some action filters (i.e. for logging) which should be applied on all controllers in the application. Two ways to do this: kindly ask your developers to add a [Logging] attribute to the controllers they write, or kindly ask to inherit from SomeCustomControllerWithActionsInPlace.
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Mocking - VISUG session (screencast)
A new screencast has just been uploaded to the MSDN Belgium Chopsticks page. Don't forget to rate the video! Abstract: "This session provides an introduction to unit testing using mock objects. It builds a small application using TDD (test driven development). To enable easier unit testing, all dependencies are removed from code and introduced as mock objects. Afterwards, a mocking framework by the name of Moq (mock you) is used to shorten unit tests and create a maintainable set of unit tests for the example application. " Slides and example code can be found in my previous blog post on this session: Mocking - VISUG session
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Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure
As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Interoperability, a new open source project has just been released on CodePlex: PHP SDK for Windows Azure, bridging PHP developers to Windows Azure. PHPAzure is an open source project to provide software development kit for Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage – Blobs, Tables & Queues. I’m pleased that Microsoft has chosen RealDolmen and me to work on the PHP SDK for Windows Azure.
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PHPPowerPoint 0.1.0 (CTP1) released!
People following me on Twitter could have already guessed, but here’s something I probably should not have done for my agenda: next to the well known PHPExcel class library, I’ve now also started something similar for PowerPoint: PHPPowerPoint. Just like with PHPExcel, PHPPowerPoint can be used to generate PPTX files from a PHP application. This can be done by creating an in-memory presentation that consists of slides and different shapes, which can then be written to disk using a writer (of which there’s currently only one for PowerPoint 2007). Here’s some sample code: [code:c#] /* Create new PHPPowerPoint object */$objPHPPowerPoint = new PHPPowerPoint(); /* Create slide */$currentSlide = $objPHPPowerPoint->getActiveSlide();