Windows Communication Foundation (or WCF for short) is an interface located inside the .NET Framework for creating connected, service-oriented applications. We can use C# and Visual Studio 2010 to build a simple WCF Client and WCF Server. We will start by developing the server and the service it will provide, and from that we can build a WCF Client based on that very server.
Users with touch screens, stylus-enabled screens, or USB stylus pads appreciate the ability to write and markup documents and files. Plenty of modern applications today support inking natively (Example: OneNote 2010, one application I use in conjunction with my Lenovo tablet as a digital notebook on most days of the week) for a variety of purposes and actions. You may not know it already, but Silverlight has all the required libraries in place to utilizing inking on screen. So today I’ve put together a little Silverlight web app to demonstrate.
So we can read XML in a variety of ways (one example here, and another here). So can we write it in C#? Of course we can! So lets jump right into shall we?
If you are new to Visual Studio, you may not be familiar with how “Solution Folders” work. Visual Studio allows you to group together any number of sub-projects that your root solution may contain. However, what is strange about Solution Folders in Visual Studio is that they do not create the same logical structure on your disk. Solution Folders will not create a mirror on your hard drive. They just create a logical grouping inside your Visual Studio Project. They will not move files around, or create directories for your projects when you create Solution Folders and place your projects inside them. It is a good practice to have your logical project structure to have a one-to-one relationship with your physical directory structure, and the behavior of the Solution Folders do not follow this. But there is a way for Visual Studio to create the physical structure on the disk when adding projects to the solution.
Yesterday I talked about using C# to extract information from a simple XML file. Well today we can take it one step further. Instead of using the regular XML library and commands, we can use LINQ to build a query to extract the information we desire, and place it into our object list.
XML is a wonderful way to store information that needs to be read in by a machine or piece of software. It is simple to follow, and you can use it to store and transmit your custom data structures and information across an internet connection or in between bits of software on a local machine. C# has methods built in that can read and write XML files. So today I have put together a little program that will extract a few objects from an XML file in C# for you to see.
In a previous post I discussed chaining C# delegates together. In the source code example, I created a generic DelegateMath class to house a few basic math operations. This time we will replace those functions with simpler and shorter lambda expressions.
Another cool thing about delegates is the ability to chain them together. Say for example you have an object modification process, and you need a given object to be manipulated in a very specific order. Well you could use a delegate chain to accomplish that. For a simple example I have written up a C# delegate chain program that evaluates a mathematical expression following the order of operations by using a delegate chain.
Today marked the beginning of my real co-op experience and work tasks here at Mercer. The morning started off with a conference call with dev-team members from China, India, and the rest of us here in Louisville via teleconferencing. The reason for the meeting was to demo the new features and functionality of the latest release for a Mercer product. Deployment will be occurring later this week, but before that could happen some last minute testing needed to be done.
On Monday I started my first day of my second co-op with a new employer. I will be working with Mercer, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, developing and supporting C# and .NET Mercer applications. The past two days have been filled with standard new hire training and orientation sessions and plenty of reading. However it is the brief product overview and C# introduction sessions I learned the most from.