First, download the actual non-aplha release of LINQ to XSD and extract it.  You will need to have .NET 3.5 installed to run LINQ to XSD.  The project itself is a Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 project.  You should be able to change it to .NET 3.5 with no problems.  I’m not sure about using .NET 2.0.   I still assume these steps should work with Mapguide Open Source 2.2 given its pretty much the same thing as MGE 2011.  Please let me know if you try it and that is not the case.

Building the classes

Last time around we had to mess around with Visual Studio projects, building temporary code, finding and extracting that code from temporary files.  This time around, we’re given a nice little executable that can be run in a batch file.   I’ve posted a copy of my batch file below but it was simply made using a dir /b > CreateMapguideNetObjects.cmd in the Mapguide server schema folder (which by default is to c:\Program Files\Autodesk\MapGuideEnterprise2011\Server\Schema) .  I then edited that file with a text editor that support macros and removed the following schema files:

• FdoProviderCapabilities-1.0.0.xsd
• LoadProcedure-1.0.0.xsd
• LoadProcedure-1.1.0.xsd
• LayerDefinition-1.0.0.xsd
• LayerDefinition-1.1.0.xsd
• LayerDefinition-1.2.0.xsd
• SiteInformation-1.0.0.xsd
• SiteVersion-1.0.0.xsd
• SymbolDefinition-1.0.0.xsd
• WebLayout-1.0.0.xsd

These files are deprecated object definitions from previous Mapguide releases.  In the end each line in the batch file looks a little like this:

LinqToXsd ApplicationDefinition-1.0.0.xsd /filename:ApplicationDefinition.cs

Executing the batch file will create a number of C# files containing appropriately named classes.

Setting up your project

At this point you should be able to fire up Visual Studio and create a new C# project.   If you have an existing project from a previous version of Mapguide its good to start fresh.  Also, don’t try this in an existing solution that is dependant on the project that contains the Mapguide objects.  This will just result in a bunch of extra screwing around to avoid compiler errors from missing code during the process.    This time around its a lot easier.  Create a new DLL project.  Add a reference to the Xml.Schema.Linq.dll file that was included with LinqToXsd.exe.   Add a reference to the following Mapguide dlls:

• OSGeo.Mapguide.Foundation
• OSGeo.Mapguide.Geometry
• OSGeo.Mapguide.MapguideCommon
• OSGeo.Mapguide.PlatformBase
• OSGeo.Mapguide.Web

You’ll also need to ensure that the appropriate unmanaged assemblies are available in the calling applications bin folder when you go to run this stuff. 

Next place all of the generated C# files in the new project.  Once you build you’re going to see a ton of errors.  We’ll clean those up.

To resolve a lot of these errors I did a global search and replace on “global::” and replaced it with nothing.  Also, I wrapped each class in a unique wrapper classes to prevent duplicate type errors.  Finally, the case issue with DataType was still an issue – and I resolved it by changing the case on DataType to be Datatype:

   1: public string DataType {

   2: public string Datatype {

For a complete view of the changes I made do a file compare between the code in the attached zip file and your newly generated code.

<insert 3 week gap here, wherein I had a hell of a time getting MGE 2011 installed and properly licensed so that I could actually test this newly created code, oh and I also went on vacation for a few days too =)/>

And back.  The best part about this is that it seems ALL my old RADE code just worked with upgraded basic layouts after changing it to look for the object definitions within the new wrapper classes.   Now I just need to add support for flexible layouts and we’ll be laughing.

The Code

Please note – I didn’t rebase the code.  It’s all in the RADE.MGE namespace.  If you would like to use it, feel free to re-base it – or just leave it as is.  Also, if you create any unit tests or enhancements and would like to share them – please feel free!  

As I update the project myself, or receive updates I will update this file.

. 

Finally, the example code I posted long ago will still work with this new project.  Perhaps one day, I’ll post some fancy new code in C# =)

Hope this comes in handy, I welcome your comments.

   1: Line: 2

   2: Char: 2498

   3: Error: 'OpenLayers.Lang' is null or not an object

   4: Code: 0

Loading the web tier on the Mapguide server worked fine.  Very odd.  I ended up doing a file comparison between the two web tiers and noticed the only significant difference was this in the web.config:

   1: <staticContent>

   2:     <mimeMap fileExtension=".json" mimeType="application/json" />

   3: </staticContent>

Adding this tag to IIS 7 on Vista resulted in an error, the tag must be something new in IIS 7.5.  However, after manually adding the mime type mapping to the server – my flexible layout now loads perfectly on the local Vista web tier.

This mime type mapping can be added on either the virtual directory, or the server level.  I chos to add it to the server.  Either way, to add it select the appropriate level in IIS manager.  In the right hand window double click “Mime Types”.  Click Add and you can enter the .json extension and the mime type.  Once this is added, Vista/IIS7 was now properly serving out flexible layers

Came across this blog post today detailing an awesome honey pot project by a UK ISP.  They’re turning the tides on phone spammers.   There are some hilarious mp3’s on the site where you can hear the “conversation” between the honey pot and one of the “moron” phone spammers.  They’re keeping some of these calls on the line for 4+ minutes.  Totally awesome.

I hope someone can take initiative and setup something similar in North America.  If I had the resources I would take this on in a heartbeat…

Hats off to you guys.. =)

Came across Automapper.   This is a perfect match for my needs:

AutoMapper uses a fluent configuration API to define an object-object mapping strategy.   AutoMapper uses a convention-based matching algorithm to match up source to destination values. Currently, AutoMapper is geared towards model projection scenarios to flatten complex object models to DTOs and other simple objects, whose design is better suited for serialization, communication, messaging, or simply an anti-corruption layer between the domain and application layer.

It was quick to setup, and painless to use.  First define your object to object mappings:

   1: Mapper.CreateMap<RADE.BO.Domain.Application, RADE.BO.Entity.Application>();

   1: /// <summary>

   2: /// Convert a DTOApplication to abnd 

   3: /// </summary>

   4: /// <param name="app"></param>

   5: /// <returns></returns>

   6: public static RADE.BO.Domain.Application Convert(Application app)

   7: {

   8:   if (app == null) return null;

   9:   LoadDtoMappings();

  10:   return AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<Application, RADE.BO.Domain.Application>(app);

  11: }

  12:  

  13: /// <summary>

  14: /// Convert a list of domain Application objects to DTO Application objects

  15: /// </summary>

  16: /// <param name="apps">List of domain Application objects</param>

  17: /// <returns>List of DTO Application objects</returns>

  18: public static List<Application> Convert(List<RADE.BO.Domain.Application> apps)

  19: {

  20:     LoadDtoMappings();

  21:     return apps.Select(AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<RADE.BO.Domain.Application, Application>).ToList();

  22: }

It’s important to note that if your source object contains nested objects – a mapping for each nested object must also be defined.  This goes on recursively through nested objects.  My domain Application object contains some numerous sub objects – Map, Layer etc.  In this case rather than establish mappings for these child objects – I removed these objects from my DTO as the client consuming these objects would never need that data.  This also keeps the size of any data possibly being serialized down.   Automapper dealt with this automatically.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Automapper can do.  Next step is to define unit test coverage using the configuration validation, but it’s sleep time now… =)

   1: "<a href=”{0}” target=”_blank”>{0}</a>"

This format string of course when applied to the source data would result in a hyperlink being created with the URL in both the href property of the link as well as the  visible link text.  Lance called and asked if it would be possible to change the report so that it showed simply the word “View” instead of the url.  We already had a remote control session running so I opened up his RADE and changed the format string to:

   1: "<a href=”{0}” target=”_blank”>View</a>"

He saw this small change and I heard him slap his forehead, and he asked “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner, I’ve wanted to do this forever!”.  To this I responded “You never asked…”

So the moral of this story is directed to managers, sales types, or any other person who works with software developers.   We’re incredibly smart, and there is far too much good stuff inside our heads for us to just “tell you everything”.  If we were to try, you would either fall asleep or your head would pop.   So please, rather than expect us to tell you what you want to know – just ask. =)

Other honorable mentions include:

• Hand Grenades
• Molotov Cocktails
• Nitroglycerin (this is OK when in medication format)

If you’re planning some air travel in the near future – leave your catapult at home!  Maple Syrup and spread is completely OK though!

After much mucking around the best solution I could find was to disconnect the iPhone from the usb cable, start the windows Device Manager and un-install the Apple iPhone driver from the Portable Devices section of the devices.  Make sure you check the delete driver checkbox.  Finally, re-connect your iPhone and the driver should re-install allowing you to see your device in Windows Explorer again.

No images on device

So now I can see my phone in Vista – but when I browse to the device the internal storage folders are empty.  There are tons of images in the “Camera Roll” when looking at the phone.  After much more muckery – I found one image that was saved from the interwebs rather than taken with the phones’ camera.  Once I deleted this image, and reconnected the phone all the images showed up no problem.

I’ve upgraded the solution to 2010.  I’ve done all the refactoring and finished my work.  Everything tests out great in both unit tests and “developers computer” tests.  Just need to get the installer updated and get the pesky “other peoples computers” thing out of the way. 

I’ve updated the pre-requisites on my installer to include .NET 4.0 – rebuilt the installer and boom. 

Error 1001.  Exception occurred while initializing the installation.  System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly ‘file:///C:\Program Files\Landor\ … \RADE.Connect.Service.exe’ or one of its dependencies.  This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.

After much mucking around I found the hidden property that I needed to change.  I needed to change the .NET version of the .NET Launch Condition.  To find this gem right click on the deployment project in the solution explorer and choose View\Launch Conditions.  Next right click on the “.NET Framework” under “Launch Conditions” and choose “properties”.  In the properties dialog change the Version to be “.NET Framework 4”.

Update 4/20/2010

Don’t forget to edit the .NET version for both Release and Debug configurations.

http://msdn.microsoft.com

wooo!

In the meantime, The Register has a good write up on some of the new goodies coming in an hour or so.  That will learn me for getting up early.  Oh well, time for another cap!

System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type ‘Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleConnection’ to type ‘System.Data.Common.DbConnection’

This was one of those awesome “doesn’t happen on any of my machine” errors.  After some mucking around we determined that the client machine was using the Oracle 10g  R1 client.  The machines and VMs here we used for testing were all running either 11g, or 10g R2.  Doh!

The simple resolution to this was to modify the NHhibernate config and add the following property:

   1: <property name="hbm2ddl.keywords">none</property>

Depending on your underlying databases and mappings this could cause problems with your code project.  Hopefully you’re not using reserved words, or bad Oracle syntax =).

Under the hood, the problem seems to be that the Oracle10gDialect does not provide an implementation of IDataBaseSchema for 10gR1.   Fabio Maulo has provided some sample code and the steps on how to create the appropriate metadata for your database and submit it to the NHibernate project for inclusion.

The NUnit test engine is great.   I didn’t realize this was a ReSharper tool at first.  Now, I can’t live without it.

The localization plugin is going to save me days of effort on an upcoming action item. 

The class/code generating tools are indispensible – especially if you create a lot of classes (e.g NHibernate POCO’s).

The refactorings have been helping me slowly increase the legibility of my code – and also helping me build better coding habits.  Check out the comparison between version 5.0 and 4.5.

If you’ve never tried ReSharper – now is the time.  only I could make the time to properly learn all the different tools available…

NH used to assume Castle – but now it needs to be configured.  In addition to the Castly proxy, there is a new LinFu proxy available too.   Don’t bother with NHibernate the release notes! , Davy Brion has it all for you here =). 

I opted to go with the Castly Dynamic Proxy – I’m not in a position to do any performance tests between– Castle has been around a long time and has a pretty big user base.  Good post on stackoverflow on this subject.  However, LinFu would have won if I was basing my choice on name alone…

After a bit of fiddling, I’m back up and running with NH 2.1 and shiny new validation attributes.   

mmmm validation…

RADE and FullCircle and builds usually have the ODP.NET version in the web.confg set by the installer, but development builds usually come from my machine and are configured for use with the Oracle 11 ODP.NET.   If this is set incorrectly, you will get an error that looks a little something like this:

The IDbCommand and IDbConnection implementation in the assembly Oracle.DataAccess could not be found. Ensure that the assembly Oracle.DataAccess is located in the application directory or in the Global Assembly Cache. If the assembly is in the GAC, use <qualifyAssembly/> element in the application configuration file to specify the full name of the assembly.

To use an different version of the Oracle client, the web.config must be edited and the QualifyAssembly section must have its version property set appropriately.  This will also apply for an app.config too.

   1: <runtime>

   2:     <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">

   3:         <qualifyAssembly partialName="Oracle.DataAccess" fullName="Oracle.DataAccess, Version=2.102.2.20, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f429c47342"/>

   4:     </assemblyBinding>

   5: </runtime>

Possible values for this are:

• 11g: Version=2.102.2.20
• 10g R2: Version=1.102.3.0
• 10g: Version=10.2.0.100

Set your config appropriately and you’re good to go.

Thank you Google…

After installing Mapguide 2010 (both server and web tier) on a server running 2009 and updating the license manager appropriately, you’ll notice that the service is not running.  Attempts to start the service will result in an error message logged in the Windows Application Log that looks a little bit like this:

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( MapGuide Enterprise 2010 Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Port 2801 is not available, please try using a different port.

So we need to setup one of the Mapguide installations to use a different set of ports.  I’ve chosen to modify the behavior of Mapguide 2010, though these changes could be made for Mapguide 2009 instead.   For this process we’ll need three free ports.  For simplicity its nice to keep these ports sequential.  You will need to ensure that the ports you choose are available on your system.

First we need to edit the serverconfig.ini in the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MapGuideEnterprise2010\Server\Bin folder.   First lets change the Port in the AdministrativeConnectionProperties section from 2800 to lets say 3800.   Next in the ClientConnectionProperties section change the port to 3801.  Finally change the port in SiteConnectionProperties to 3802.

Next we need to edit the webconfig.ini in the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MapGuideEnterprise2010\WebServerExtensions folder.  We need to update the port numbers in this config to match the numbers in the server config.  Remember the web config is the client that will usually be consuming the server service.  Finally, as the configuration settings for the web tier may be cached you should restart IIS using iisreset.exe.  This will clear the cached port configurations and Mapguide Studio / Mapguide Administration will now work properly.

Once that is done, the 2009 repository can be migrated to 2010 by following the steps included in the Help/MGE2010UpgradingWindows.htm file on your installation disc/folder.

PHP Problems

Once MGE 2010 has been installed I had a problem with PHP.  Multiple PHPs can be bad news.  I’ve found that running both MGE 2009 and 2010 using the PHP provided with 2010 seems to do the trick.  First you will need to edit the Windows system path.  Update the path variable there to point to the 2010 PHP installation.  If a 2010 path variable exists already – remove the 2009 path.  Next open the IIS manager and ensure that both the MGE 2009 and MGE 2010 virtual directory trees are pointing to the MGE 2010 php extension in the Application Extension Mappings.

Once these changes have been made, do a quick IISreset and you should now be able to login to both the Mapguide admins, as well as have Mapguide Studio connect to the appropriate servers.  Again – this setup could have issues – so consider your environment and needs before configuring a server with both releases of Mapguide.

Remote Web Tiers

If you need to run a shared Mapguide server with web tiers installed on individual development machines don’t forget to set the ports on each development machine.   The Mapguide installer will prompt for the Mapguide server IP address – but the webconfig.ini will need to be updated with the appropriate ports manually.  Not doing do will result in your web tier talking to the 2009 server – and much confusion =)

Finally one note on IP addressees and remote web tiers.  If you plan to use a remote web tier – make sure your Mapguide server is setup using the actual IP address of the server and not 127.0.0.1.  If your Mapguide server is configured with 127.0.0.1, you will get a “Cannot establish connection.” error on the remote web tiers when attempting to create and use a session.  Using real IP addresses (either internal or external) will prevent this error from occurring.

I was getting some strange IO errors in SQL Server.   dbcc checkdb was telling me “OMG this is bad”, Checkdsk on the drive was saying things like “Windows cannot complete the scan”.  I wandered off to get some more coffee thinking this was going to be a fun night.  When I got back I saw a console message sent from a Rackspace support technician asking me if there was anything he could do to help.  I sent him back my phone number and asked him to give me a call.

After a bit of conversation on the server we agreed they would strip out the guts of the server and replace all the drives, controllers, and motherboard.  I went to bed, and the server was back up and ready for me the next morning.  So, 10:30pm Friday night, Rackspace support is proactively finding my problems and tracking me down.   I now understand what they mean when they call their support “fanatical”…

<3 Rackspace.

And I’m sure you’re sitting there thinking “can’t he find something better to do on a Friday night?”, well you now know the answer to that question…

The problem is this.   x64 Applications cannot use the x86 driver.  In my previous attempts to get basic Oracle/ODP connectivity on my x64 Vista machine I ended up running the 11g x86 Oracle client.  Today I was back to the Oracle download site – and lookie lookie.  They’ve released an Oracle Server 2008 x64 client!  2008 is basically Vista so, maybe, just maybe – I thought Oracle will give us some x64 love.  Here are some steps that will help you get running:

First thing is first.  Backup your TNSnames.ora.  Its found in the network\admin folder. 

Next I un-installed the x86 11.1.0.6 client.   Delete the leftovers with windows explorer.

Next download both the 11.1.0.7 client for both x86 and x64 (yes, we need to run with both…)

First I installed the x64 client.  I like to do full runtime installations. 

Next, I copy my backed up tnsnames.ora into the network\admin folder.

Now fire up Map 2010 x64 – connect to Oracle server – Success!  Happy Happy Days.  Unfortunately, fire up Toad for Oracle (which is still 32 bit) and it fails with an error of “Cannot find OCI.DLL”.  Doh.

So, I go ahead and install the Oracle 11.1.0.7  x86 client.  I install it to the client_2 folder.  Then copy my tnsnames backup into the network\admin folder in the client_2 folder.  Restart Toad, and success!

Now I want to check one last thing.  Last time I was dealing with this fun issue – I had to set my development projects to only run in x86 mode.  So, I fire up my FullCircle development project and try it out.  Running IIS in x86 mode works.   Running IIS in x64 mode failed..

The ‘MSDAORA’ provider is not registered on the local machine

It seems the Microsoft MSDAORA provider doesn’t exist in x64 – so change your connection to use the Oracle OraOLEDB.Oracle instead and x64 projects run no problem.  It would be perfect to one day get one install that does both x86 and x64 – but for now, I’m content with this setup.

1. 1. performance and memory usage improvements
2. 2. Solution-wide code inspections (tons of cool tools to find unused params, privates, etc)
3. 3. VB9 support (too bad I’ve been busy moving to C# =])
4. 4. Native MSTest Support (I much prefer NUnit though)

Check it out.  ReSharper is one of the tools I use every day and couldn’t live without…One more day and I’ll be done in Visual Lisp and can actually try out the new release a little more =)

   1: #header {width:100%; height:50px;    background: #7D7D7D url(images/header.gif) left top no-repeat;}

When the master page is used from a page deeper than the site root, the paths in the CSS become invalid.  To work around this I made my CSS dynamic!  I added a new page to my project in the CSS folder.  I called this page allcss.aspx.css.   Open up this new aspx file and remove all the html.  Leave only the page header definition:

   1: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="all.css.aspx.cs" Inherits="landorIS.com.css.allcss" ContentType="text/css" %>

Note that you may need to update your classnames and stuff depending on how you name the file.  I wanted my file name to reflect the fact that it was a CSS file – but it’s still needed to end with .aspx to ensure the file would be properly parsed by the ASP.NET engine without having to mess with the extension mapping on the web server.  This resulted in Visual Studio making some illegal class names.

Also be sure that you add the ContentType attribute to the @Page definition, and set it to “text/css”, or you will get an error in some browsers stating that the Mime Type “text/html” is not “text/css”.  Nice of Firefox to do a little validation on the content.

At this point you can add your CSS to the file and use <%%> tags or codebehind to manipulate the values.  Now the CSS that was causing problems with the images looks like this:

   1: background:url('<%=ResolveUrl("~/img/header-bg.png")%>') no-repeat 0 0;

Now when the CSS is requested by the browser and rendered out, the URL to the image file will be properly displayed as /RootFoolder/img/header-bg.png.  This is a very simple modification, but one could go a little more crazy and do something like  detect browser make/model and send out browser specific css in pre-defined literals, or possibly add authentication checks. 

I’ve been using Automated Build Studio (ABS) for some time now to ensure consistent, and fast builds of our products.  I’m incredibly pleased with it.   One of the key benefits to ABS is its versatility.  Yes, the primary goals of this product is to automate the software build process – and a lot of specific tools are provided in the product to accomplish this (e.g. working with source control, easy tools to automate compiling etc).  Build systems are really just a collection of tasks, usually very small tasks – but often there are dozens, hundreds or even thousands of these tasks.  Task as small as running a dos command line statement, copying files, making a zip file.  When I noticed that ABS gives you the ability to automate FTP operations, it got me thinking – this “build” tool could be used to automate so many of those little tasks I’ve always meant to ‘just write a small batch file’ for – but never got around to doing…

One of our most critical pieces of data is our Sourcegear Vault database for our source code version control.   No source code, no software company – don’t think I need to say much more.   Vault uses SQL server to store its bits.  Well would you look at that.  ABS has a “backup database” component.  The workflow of what I want to accomplish is quite simple:

1. 1. Backup and verify SQL server databases
2. 2. Zip up said backup files
3. 3. Upload the zip file to an FTP server that cannot burn down or blow up at the same time as our database server.

Pretty simple – and ABS will do everything we need – and then some.  So let’s get started.  First, I have to assume you have an SQL server running with databases in it.  I also assume you have an FTP server setup and running.  If you really wanna get fancy – get an FTP server that supports SSL running.  I recommend FileZilla server.

ABS Installed on same machine as SQL Server

If ABS is installed on the same machine as SQL server we can make use of the built in macro operations to backup SQL server.  Start up ABS and create a new macro.  We’re going to start off simple – and maybe we’ll add some cool later.  First we’ll add a database backup operation.  From the left hand Operations “toolbox” click on SQL to expand the operations available there.  Double click on “Back Up Database”.  This will add a database backup action to our macro.  On the right hand side of the screen in the “macro” section, double click on the new macro operation and fill in the needed information to connect to your SQL server.  Be sure to specify the database, destination path and that the type of output is File.  If you have more than one database you want to backup – add another backup operation and repeat the process.  To backup Vault – we need to backup the sgvault and the sgmaster databases.

If you run your macro at this point you will be prompted with a message that “The executable file of the “SQLMaint” tool is not specified.   The SQLMaint executable is installed with your SQL server instance and can be found in the Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn folder.  Setup your tools to point to this file.  Note, MSSQL.1 will change depending on the instance of SQL server you are running.

But, SQL Server is installed on another machine and that’s the way I like it!

Yup, me too.  The built in SQL Server backup operations depend on the SQLMaint executable to run backup process.  Again, this file is installed with SQL server and I could not get this file to run on machine that did not have SQL Server installed.

Instead what I did was created a batch file/SQL script combo on the machine running SQL server and scheduled a task to execute this batch file. The SQL script looks like this:

   1: BACKUP DATABASE [sgmaster] TO  DISK = N'C:\MSSQLData\backups\sgmaster.bak' WITH FORMAT, INIT,  NAME = N'Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10

   2: GO

   3: BACKUP DATABASE [sgvault] TO  DISK = N'C:\MSSQLData\backups\sgvault.bak' WITH FORMAT, INIT,  NAME = N'Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10

   4: GO

A batch file that executes this script is scheduled to run at a fixed interval and simply consists of this:

   1: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn\SQLCMD.EXE" -S localhost -i "C:\AdminScripts\SQL Server\backup.sql"

This batch file on execution creates two files in c:\MSSQLData\backups.  These files will be processed by the next step in the macro.  Note that because no username or password information is being specified here, the user set to run this task must have the appropriate rights in SQL server.  This batch file is executed by adding a windows scheduler task.

Whichever path you chose for creating your backup file.  Go ahead and run the macro item for an SQL backup, or from the SQL server execute your batch file to get a backup made of the database(s).

Building the zip file

The next operation we need can be found in the “Archivers” section on the left.  I’m using Zip for this example.   Add a “Pack Files With zip” operation to the macro and setup the properties.  Define the archive name locally.  Next we’ll need to set the path to the files to zip.  We’ll use UNC paths to access a share on our SQL server.  Depending on the rights of the user executing the macro, the administrative shares on the SQL server can be used or a new share can be created with the appropriate permissions assigned.

I set the zip to use the “Best” compression for the “Pack Level” and told it to “Move to archive” which results in the files being zipped getting deleted.  I also set a password on the zip – but make sure you write that down somewhere =).

Select the new archive item and click the “Run the selected operation” button.  This should create a new zip file for you in the appropriate location.

Uploading the zip

In the toolbox expand FTP and we’re going to add a “Connect to FTP” operation.  Double click this operation in the macro section and setup the properties.  Add your hostname, user name, password.  Set the port if necessary.  If your FTP server is using SSL setup the SSL information.  You can now click the “Run the selected operation” button to test the FTP connection.  If needed add some “Create FTP Directory” and “Set Current FTP Directory” items as needed.  Finally we’ll upload the newly created zip.

Add a new “Upload File(s) to FTP” operation to your macro.   Browse to and select the newly create zip file.

Click the big Green Go button – and your backup should be created (for a local SQL server), a zip files made, and that zip file should be uploaded to your SSL enabled FTP server.

Scheduling the macro run

ABS comes with a nice little interface to add scheduled executions.  From the “Tasks” menu choose “Windows Scheduler”.  This will bring up the task scheduler window.  Click Add to add a new task.  Up will come a helpful wizard that will help you setup the task.  Set the various options like name, macro file, execution time and frequency and you’re done.   If your SQL server is on another machine, and you have scheduled that backup to run, you will need to ensure that this task is scheduled to execute after the backup is complete – otherwise your backup could be incomplete.

Summary

Building this macro let us cancel our LiveVault account, saving the company a decent amount of cash per month.  While making use of a tool we needed for our one click build system for RADE and FullCircle, and our dedicated Rackspace server, we were able to ensure we critical offsite backups being automatically taken care of.

This basic macro should help you get started with ABS to implement your own offsite backup solution – possibly making use of resources you already have in place.  Obviously this macro can be enhance significantly – other resources can be zipped up and backed up.  The ABS scripting and variables can be implemented to append a unique number or a date to the file name which would allow for a range of backups to be stored. 

Enjoy!

This complexity resulted in infrequent builds and as a result the code was not tested as well as it should have been.  Not to mention, I’d get really frustrated and even pissed off on build days.   It took me a while to find a system that really made me happy.  On a whim one night I downloaded Automated Build Studio (ABS) and gave it a shot.  After installing ABS on a new virtual machine that would become our dedicated build system I fired it up.  I was pretty impressed with the wide range of actions and  tools it supported.  In our environment we had several must have items:

• 1. SourceGear Vault
• 2. Visual Studio 2008
• 3. Oracle/SQL Server
• 4. Installshield 2009

ABS worked with all of them.  In addition to the key requirements I had – it supported a plethora of other operations.

First thing I did was sketch out a rough outline of what was involved in creating a build.  Get latest source code, compile, delete temporary files, etc etc etc.  I started selecting various options from the ABS and fleshing out my macro.  Within a couple of hours, I had a sweet macro in place.  My macro started to look like this:

• Getting the latest code from Vault
• Compile all assemblies
• Delete the temporary files
• Build the needed release folder structure
• Move the new files into the needed structure
• Execute Remotesoft Protector on all assemblies
• Increment the build version, and set the version on all assemblies
• Create a label of the build in Vault
• Build a zip of the release
• Build the Installshield installer
• Connect to the build FTP and upload the new build

The best part – all of this was occurring in a 100% reliable fashion, oh and it took minutes for a full build to occur.  Over time, this project was tweaked, and copied.  It evolved as I learned more about ABS – or thought up new requirements.  Take FullCircle for example, it has evolved into three editions, sharing a similar yet different set of source files.  ABS lets me rebuild all three editions with the click of a button – in minutes.   Long long ago, in the before times something like this would have taken days, and years off my life.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve been able to do with ABS – some other cool features worth mentioning is that builds can be scheduled to run, there is a web application for viewing build history as well as kicking off builds.  It has a scripting language, and the support I’ve received is fantastic.  The price of the product makes the decision to buy ABS a non issue.

Man, now I’m starting to sound like a sales guy. =)  Seriously though, check out Automated Build Studio if you develop boxed, or even custom software.

Every time, I hit the Google looking for SQL scripts – and I can’t seem to find anything, or I find that one script for mySQL.  The last time I did this, I created a set of SQL scripts and I saved them.  I forgot that I saved them – and made another SQL script.  Doh. 

This time when I was working on the new contact form for this site, I decided to write this blog post in hopes that the next time I need to do this – when I search Google my blog might come up and remind me not to re-invent the wheel.  So I’ve included a zip with the SQL script here.  This script is for SQL server 2005 – but will translate over to Oracle very easily.

If you find any problems with the script, or feel like adding more countries, feel free to pass those changes along to me!

It’s been a crazy couple of months (since Autodesk University 2008), and we are getting closer to the end of the craziness.  Let me sum things up, and hopefully gain your forgiveness for the lack of posts for two months. =)  At AU we unveiled FullCircle, and the reception has been phenomenal.  FullCircle is our newest product built made with RADE.   So after returning from AU, and getting all that feedback from partners and customers we set to work finishin, testing, and polishing the first release of FullCircle – Standard Edition.

FullCircle has two main functions.  First, it allows users to login and query data from their Oracle, SQL Server, and Access databases.  The tabular information is then sent down as an Excel spreadsheet where users may edit or append data.  This spreadsheet can then uploaded to FullCircle and processed.  The updates/inserts are applied to the appropriate database table.

The second key function of FullCircle is for Adapx Capturx for Excel users.   FullCircle allows Excel forms to be defined and saved.  Users can then download the form templates from the repository, print the forms with Capturx, and fill them out.  When the digital pen is docked, and the hand writing is processed back into Excel – these Excel files can then be processed with FullCircle.  The inserts (or updates if needed) are processed and put into the appropriate database table(s).  No temporary tables are used that require processing after the fact (unless of course, this is what you want to do), no custom coding.

On top of that we’ve been hard at work building this new site, setting up the new blogs, doing all that good stuff.  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel…

More soon!

I’ve heard people talking about Topobase for quite some time.  I’ve heard good, and I’ve heard bad.  Today I got my first look at the product.  Topobase is a server product that works with Oracle spatial to facilitate the creation, editing and sharing of spatial data in Oracle.  A client is provided with a full API and users can access data using AutoCAD Map or a web client based on Mapguide Enterprise.

The design of Topobase looks to be well tiered.  Using ADO.NET and OraDirect.net it also supports connection pooling.  They provide a neat VB.NET scripting interface that helps build simple workflows, and data validation rules.

All in all, everything they are putting forward looks quite cool.  Visual studio templates to build Topobase plugins that can be loaded right into the Topobase UI.  It could become a very cool starting point for developers/consultants to start building tools to work on data. But there are a few problems…

Topobase is by no means a new product.  It’s several revisions in since Autodesk aquired it – but it still seems to have some performance problem.  During the presentation this morning, Topobase took over a minute to load.  Once loaded, it took over a minute to load and render a small dataset.  Now, Oracle/Topobase and AutoCAD Map were running within a virtual machine, running on a notebook.  Even still – that’s slow.

Now, I’m no Autodesk insider.  I’m also not a business expert (but I have been learning a thing or two about it over the years).  History does tend to repeat itself.  I look back at GIS Design Server and Vision.  Like Topobase, both of these products were acquired by Autodesk.  Like Topobase, these products were ‘Enterprise Data Store’ type things.  Both these products are now "not actively promoted", and customers are encouraged to migrate to Topobase.  With the Autodesk stock price down – they are going to trim fat.  The Autodesk reseller channel for the most part does not have the skills to use, support, or sell this tool – and it really is a developer/consultant tool.   My fear about Topobase is that if I were to invest the time in learning and developing for Topobase, Autodesk will "retire" the product.  Then that invested time is wasted, but more importantly the relationship with my customers is damaged by leaving them stranded up s**t creek with yet another dead ‘Enterprise Data Store’ thing.

It’s a catch 22.  So its not unreasonable to think that Autodesk needs developers like us to adopt, promote, and sell Topobase to help keep it alive.  I’m interested in hearing your opinions on this subject…

This morning I attended the SQL Server 2008 with AutoCAD Map 3D and Autodesk MapGuide (GS100-3) presented by Orest Halustchak (Technical Architect at Autodesk) and Isaac Kunen (Senior Program Manager at Microsoft).   First it was really nice to bring in the brains from Microsoft for a presentation on SQL server.

This class was especially interesting to me, as I have not yet made time to look at SQL server 2008 in great depths.  It looks like Microsoft done a pretty good job at their first spatial offering.  I’m always hesitant to jump in heads first to a first release.  Hey I waited until Mapguide Enterprise 2009 before I even really considered writing any code for it.  If you are new to spatial databases, or you have a more basic need (no need for more advanced Linear Referencing System or network tracing functionality) SQL server might be right for you.  If you already have SQL server experience, the learning curve going to SQL 2008 spatial is going to be a lot less nasty than starting with Oracle Spatial.

The spatial functionality is available all versions of SQL server, except for the compact edition.  Yes, even the free Express version contains the spatial engine.  This is good news.  Often times when Oracle comes up (even the express edition), people get scared.  Oracle has a scary, difficult stigma associated with.  Spatial abilities with SQL server Express could be very helpful in getting a spatial engine into smaller shops.

Microsoft is pretty good with the small details.  One of the cool features of SQL 2008 is the ability to view the spatial data right in SQL Management Studio.  Note this doesn’t seem to be available in the Express edition of Management Studio. 

AutoCAD Map and Mapguide seem to work pretty well with SQL 2008.  I plan to load some larger data sets into SQL 2008 in the coming weeks to see how it performs in comparison to Oracle spatial.

Here is a tip for planning for AU.  Consider budgeting to eat outside of the Autodesk provided buffets.  =)

I also have to add that bringing small children on airplanes is cruel, the US Airways coffee sucks, but the orange juice is great =)

In long – for a number of reasons there was not a strait line between upgrading my machine to SP1 and noticing the problem.  This made diagnosing the problem significantly more complicated because I had no idea when it actually started.  At the time, I was dealing with x64 and Oracle clients.  This had prompted me to start doing all my dev in an XP virtual machine.  Eventually, the slowless of developing in a VM drove me insane and I just had to get my machine working again.  So I got Oracle dealt with – but that left this annoying error.

It was a complete fluke that I noticed this.  The stars aligned, and I manually compiled some assemblies, instead of pushing the big green button on my build system.  This resulted in my assemblies not being run through the Remotesoft Protector.  All of a sudden the problem went away.  At the time I had been using Protector 2.x which would not support .NET 3.5 SP1 fully. So, either stop using Protector, or upgrade to the latest version which resolves this problem =)

The correct path to Oracle happiness in my case was the 11g client.  It works great with my 10.2 server.  The important bit in was to use the 32 bit install rather than the 64 bit install.  One of my primary tools for accessing Oracle is Toad for Oracle 9.x.  Quest Software states that Toad for Oracle 9.6 is the first version to really support the 11g client.  However, it does NOT support the x64 client.

So the last time I tried to solve this, after a long day, and a fun night of head banging with a wall – when I tried the 11g client, I used x64 cbuild – and saw that Toad wouldn’t work, I threw a little hissyfit and went to bed.  Long story short, installing both the 32bit 11g client and 11g ODAC/ODP seems to have done the trick.  Now – there is one important little piece o’ information that you will need to know.  Though I have not confirmed this, I suspect that x64 applications will not be able to use the driver. 

That said, from a development point of view you will need to set IIS to run at 32 bit.  On IIS 5.x/6.x this is a server wide setting from a dos window:

   1: cscript %SYSTEMDRIVE%\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1

   2: %SYSTEMROOT%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

If you’re running Vista or Server 2008 with IIS7, you have things a little better.  You can configure each application pool to run as 32 or 64 bit.  For winform development, change the compile properties of the project to set the target platform to be x86.

I’m really glad that’s over…but I still want a proper x64 ODAC.  Come on Oracle .. =)

Update February 2009 – I have made a happy ending post on my new blog.  Got Oracle client working in both 32 and 64 bit mode.  Check it out.

Thanks Autodesk! =)

I hate this error.  Someone would give me a new Oracle dump file.  I’d try to view the spatial data and boom – ORA-13226.  If I was lucky, there was only a couple of tables in it.  Chances are, there were hundreds of tables in it.  Sometimes I’d need to add the reference to the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view, sometimes I wouldn’t.   Sometimes the index would already exist and just need to be rebuilt.

Regardless of the scenario, it would often involve a lot of SQL – or messing around to try and remember the SQL.  Every time this would pop up I would think to myself, “I really should write an app…”.  Well I finally did.

So, here is my announcement.  The RADE Spatial Indexer is just about ready for beta.  Initially this app does three things.

• It will list tables and views with geometry columns that are not part of the USER_SDO_GEOM_META data view and help you add them.
• It will list spatial tables without indexes and help you create them.
• It will list spatial tables with indexes and help you re-index them.

No more exporting queries to text files and using a macro to edit them to build your SQL for rebuilding those indexes.  I’ve tried to add some nice friendly helpers, such as a button that will suggest the spatial metadata settings for a table based on the existing meta data records.  The ability to mass create or rebuild indexes is also been a fantastic helper.

I’m recruiting brave individuals for a small closed beta program that will begin in about two weeks.  If you are interested in being a tester please e-mail indexer (at) landorIS.com and let me know.  Remember, this is a beta – so I really do not suggest you run this on a production, or important server.  That said, I have been using it in various states on my own ‘production’ development Oracle server.

As an incentive for helping me out.  If you submit feedback (be it a bug report or feature request) – I will set you up with a free license once we release 1.0.  I know you’re hooked and want to sign up.  I know it.  Just in case you need a little more, here is a few screen caps..

Look at how easy it could be to define metadata.  Click the suggest button and it will iterate through the metadata settings for other spatial tables in the schema.  Once you have one row defined, use the sync button to set all rows to the same values.  Click process and its done.

Within seconds, have hundreds of spatial indexes being re-created…Creating new indexes is almost as easy.

So instead I have centralized my server resources into a nice VM setup running on my beefy Dell server.  Now, regardless of which machine I use to develop I can still access the same data sets.  This is especially nice when traveling.  Specifically Mapguide Server and web tier are installed on my development web server.  When coding, I will either use my local IIS or the built in Visual Studio web server.  This poses one problem when working with Mapguide.  Referencing the web tier on the shared server from another web server will result in cross site scripting (XSS) errors.  Basically, javascript on one web server cannot access javascript code on another web server, which under most circumstances is a good thing.  When trying to develop using the Mapguide Web API on a central Mapguide server this poses a problem as the web tier API is wholly contained within the virtual directory on another server.  Gotta love when ’security’ jumps up bites us in the behind.

The simple solution to this problem is to install the Mapguide web tier on every development machine.  This will require that each development machine have a web server installed, but chances are that is already the case.  When installing the web tier be sure to have the IP address of the Mapguide server handy as it will needed during the install.  Once the web tier is running locally, reference the local web tier in your URLs and the cross site scripting vulnerabilities go away!  If you’re running the 64 Bit version of Vista on your development machine, check out my post installing the web tier on Vista x64

In a nutshell this is a result of installing Mapguide server before the Oracle client is installed on the server.  The solution is to do a repair install of Mapguide Server (or a re-install if you prefer) once the Oracle client is installed.  Hopefully next year when this comes up again – writing this down will help me remember.  Worst case Google might pick this up and I’ll find my own post when I search for it…

So I’m going to add one more search result on this error message.  After much muckery – I’ve resolved my instance of the problem.  The background is simple.  I have an ASP.NET web application with a few DLL projects and a deployment project.  As stated, I’ve created a new install of Windows XP.  First ensure that you have the 2008 Web Deployment Project add-on installed.  That can also cause this error (in some cases).

The key thing in this case was the lack of IIS on the machine.  On my primary development machine (the one where Oracle is a massive pain) I do have IIS installed, and the last time I ran this project from that machine – Oracle was working OK with the data access hack.  But apparently something has changed on that box and now I’m getting the evil "Oracle client and networking components were not found." error.  So I gave up.

First obvious work around is to install IIS.  I’m sick of messing around today, and just want to work.  So the quicker solution is to enable the built in development web server.  This can be accomplished by right clicking the unloaded project in the Visual Studio solution explorer and choosing "Edit <projectname.whateverlanguateyouuseproj>".  This will bring up the XML view of the project.  Find the ProjectExtensions section of the config and change UseIIS to be False.  Setting this up could also prevent problems when you have a larger, or more dynamic team accessing the project.

   1: <ProjectExtensions>

   2:     <VisualStudio>

   3:       <FlavorProperties GUID="{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21}">

   4:         <WebProjectProperties>

   5:           <UseIIS>False</UseIIS>

   6:           <AutoAssignPort>False</AutoAssignPort>

   7:           <DevelopmentServerPort>4088</DevelopmentServerPort>

   8:           <DevelopmentServerVPath>/webrade</DevelopmentServerVPath>

   9:           <IISUrl>http://localhost/WebRADE32</IISUrl>

  10:           <NTLMAuthentication>False</NTLMAuthentication>

  11:           <UseCustomServer>False</UseCustomServer>

  12:           <CustomServerUrl>

  13:           </CustomServerUrl>

  14:           <SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>False</SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>

  15:         </WebProjectProperties>

  16:       </FlavorProperties>

  17:     </VisualStudio>

  18:   </ProjectExtensions>

Reload the project, and it should load now.

P.S. Oracle, please please please release something for Vista x64 and ODAC/ODP.  Even an alpha.  I promise I will test on an x86 machine before I release..

I did some brief looking around and word on the internets is that the YUI compressor is one of the better compressors out there.  The YUI compressor is an open source java applet.   This *should* work with Mapguide Open, heck this might even be done already in MGOS – but I am only using Enterprise so I cannot confirm, deny, or test this.  

Some of the key things the compressor will do:

1. remove all comments
2. remove all white space and line breaks
3. rename all local variables and parameters to single characters

The YUI compressor should not alter variable values or your logic in any way.

To use the YUI compressor you will need to have Java installed.  Note that if you have the Oracle client installed, you probably have Java already  Once you have Java, you can download a copy of the YUI compressor (I’m going to start referring to it as the YC now…).  If you don’t feel like downloading Java and the YC – I’ve attached the processed files at the bottom of this post.

Lets first look at the javascript shipped with Mapguide Enterprise.  If you browse to your web server extension viewer files (the default location is C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MapGuideEnterprise2009\WebServerExtensions\www\viewerfiles I believe) you will see ten javascript files.  If you choose to process these files on your own please back them up first.  Don’t blame me if you don’t backup your files and something goes wrong =).

Before YC:

Using the YC is simple:

   1: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\browserdetect.js browserdetect.js

Update the paths to Java and the YC as per your environment.  Using the handy dir /B *.js > go.bat I created a batch file of all the javascript files in the viewerfiles folder.  Be sure to run this from a dos window in the viewerfiles folder, or update the paths.  You will also need to create the comp folder in viewerfiles.   Quick cut and pasting created the following batch file:

   1: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\browserdetect.js browserdetect.js

   2: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\contextmenu.js contextmenu.js

   3: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\digitize.js digitize.js

   4: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\hashtable.js hashtable.js

   5: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\initdwfctrl.js initdwfctrl.js

   6: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\legend.js legend.js

   7: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\numfmt.js numfmt.js

   8: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\pngfix_map.js pngfix_map.js

   9: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\sarissa.js sarissa.js

  10: c:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe -jar f:\utils\YUICompress\yuicompressor-2.3.6\build\yuicompressor-2.3.6.jar -o comp\wz_jsgraphics.js wz_jsgraphics.js

(*Sorry about the overlap.  I’m working on a new layout and am addressing that in there)

Running that output all of the compressed of the files down somewhat, to pretty significantly.

A quick comparison of one of the function calls:

   1: function MenuData(menuName, arrowHeight, scrollInc, scrollDelay, minSize, iconScrollUp, iconScrollUpDisabled, iconScrollDown, iconScrollDownDisabled, owner, withIFrame, bkColor)

   2: function MenuData(F,H,I,K,E,G,D,J,A,C,B,L)

As you can see – the savings can be significant.

I’m not using the Fusion viewer yet so I did not process those files, but I did check some of the JS in there and each script file had a huge header comment.  It looks like Fusion could also benefit from some compression action.  Please note, I’ve been running my web tier using this script for a day or two.  I’ve not run any serious testing on this code – so try this at your own risk.  You did make that backup I suggested, right?  That said, I have not personally experienced any problems yet.  Also, should you compress your viewerfiles and have problems be sure to try your backups.  Especially before calling your dealer or Autodesk for help. (sorry product support and ADN guys.  Please don’t hate me =] ).

if you would rather not run the YC yourself.

Enjoy!

Long ago (it seems like a lifetime) I worked for a company called Kanotech.  One of my first real development projects of scale was on the @MAppDR product.  @MApp was a powerful AutoCAD Map extension built for AT&T/Comcast cable.  My first task was to head to Seattle and learn how field technicians would walk the existing RF Plant (fancy word for cabling and RF equipment) and map the existing assets, on paper.  The first task was devise a way to run @MApp on one of the early rugged Hammerhead pen computers.  I walked the streets of the greater Seattle area with some of the field technicians and got my first introduction into the world of cable TV networks.  At the end of this trip I had a collection of notes and enough information to design and implement the pen based version of @MApp.  This was the beginning of my life with @MApp.

With the bigger picture in mind, there were many underlying goals for @MAppDR, one of the key needs was standards enforcement (and creation -  Evan created the first solid standard which, though very much evolved is still in use today).  Like many organizations back in the day (and likely even today) the mapping data being generated was garbage.  Each division, each consultant, sometimes each drafter had their own set of "Standards".  As Evan put it, the mapping data was "Only good for printing" – and even that was a stretch in some of the sample data we saw.  Our top priority was to create a set of tools which facilitated drafting standards compliant drawings – as well as a method to test each drawing to ensure the drawing was truly compliant.

Under the hood, @MAppDR was all database driven.  Layers, cable types and properties, even symbols and block attributes could be configured in the database.  Generic lisp calls were defined to allow simple wrapper functions to be created to add new entities to the application.  The application had been created using an extensive amount of AutoLisp, VB6, C++/ObjectARX, Python, and SQL Server/Access databases.  Let me tell you, I still have nightmares about parentheses =).

The drafting tools, in retrospect were good.  Damn good.  Obvious elements were there, select a cable, or equipment type using standard AutoCAD toolbar buttons.  @MAppDR went a step further.  It would create/set the layer, set the desired object snaps, draft the cable.  Network connected equipment would snap to the cable, rotate, trim and physically connect itself to the model.  In some circumstances, inserting a block/cable of a certain type also required an accompanying block.  If required, the user would be prompted to insert these as well.  In some cases – these blocks were placed automatically.  Using @MAppDR – a user could draft very clean RF drawings without having to really know  AutoCAD.  Every piece of possible equipment was available from a comprehensive set of toolbars – and only one click away. 

On insertion of blocks, the user was presented with a form powered by the attribute information stored in the databases.  Some attributes were required, some were populated programmatically based on nearby objects or other conditions, and some were selected from lookups or manually entered by the user. 

@MAppDR had a really cool connectivity process.  This process would perform physical connectivity on the network, following rules defined for equipment inputs and outputs.  In addition to this, rules were also defined to dictate what equipment could connect to other equipment.  This connectivity, in my opinion was one of the most powerful components of @MAppDR.  Connectivity information was stored on the entities.  When a trace was done, we could follow the network and do all kinds of great reporting.  I recall one situation where we knew that in situations where a specific combination of equipment was setup – it would cause service problems.  Within a few hours, I had a batch process created that would process hundreds of drawings and spit out a report of nodes, and locations where this combination existed.  The problems in the field were fixed even before customer complaints came in. 

One of the key requirements for @MAppDR was a quality assurance process.  We defined several "levels" of QA.  Each level of QA required a password to execute.  The first two levels of QA were for contractors doing mapping redraft, or drafting.  These levels would let the consultants know that the required data had been entered and would "stamp" the drawing.  The drawings were then submitted, and Comcast staff would run their password protected version of the QA routines – which would verify that indeed the contractor had done the required work.  If not, the drawing was rejected and the contractor had to fix it.  I can say with a great deal of certainty that Comcast, using @MAppDR is one of the few organizations with near perfect data.  And the things they do with that data are incredible.

The final version of @MApp, @MappRF could have dominated the cable industry.  Sadly, it was never completed.  This release added RF design to the drafting.  A library of equipment was created, as well as design parameters which were sub-selection of the equipment that let the RF designer know what equipment was available to be used.  All of the equipment’s operating parameters were captured.  As the user drafted equipment, the actual equipment model would be selected on the attributes.  This allowed us to increase the efficiency of populating attributes during the drafting phase all the while making the stored data even more accurate and complete.   

One of the coolest bits of @MAppRF was what came to be known as the TRID.  The TRID was a  multi-threaded C++ control was created that contained a tree-grid hybrid.  This form could be docked within AutoCAD or floating on a separate monitor.  As the user drafted, the RF signal and power calculations were performed in real-time, without interfering with the drafting process.  I recall being told, this project would be simple.  RF design is just table math.  And it is, but, mix in a multi-threaded C++ form running per entity calculations on a potentially infinite number of frequencies both going forward, and backwards – oh and sprinkle in a little bit of power draw calculations.  Then tell me its simple.  =)

If I could do it over again.  Wow, what a difference the current technology would make.  By far the single largest flaw @MApp has is its dependence on drawing based storage.  Given the timeline, we didn’t have a choice.  Oracle Spatial was available, but immature.  Going with Oracle at that time would have likely been more grief than it was worth.   Seamless map access would be a must.  Given the times we used a special piece of ObjectARX code called the SPE.  This gave us spatial analysis abilities that rival even Oracle Spatial.  One of the major downfalls here is that it required AutoCAD to run.  Therefore – most of the calculations had to occur within AutoCAD itself.  This became a problem as other applications could benefit from these operations – but couldn’t take advantage of them without also being AutoCAD based. 

Leveraging a multi-tiered architecture, a lot of the common functions could be moved to a more SOA like architecture.  Now, though the TRID could still be a multi-threaded form in AutoCAD – the calculations could be done on the server side – thereby making the AutoCAD portion a presentation layer – instead of a business logic layer.  Now the RF design calculations could be done in any user interface – instead of having to opening a drawing in AutoCAD. 

And that my dear reader, concludes my epic tale on @MApp.  Even this large novel like piece only scratched the surface of this project.  It was my life for many years.  I slept under my desk a number of times – but it was a great project.  It was fun to think about it again and put together something to share with you. =)

However, in most cases you’re better off using a form and posting your data up to the server side that way, as the limitations on data are so large you will likely not need to worry about them.  Sometimes, query strings can also show your users just a little too much information – though I’m by no means a proponent of "security through obscurity" hiding a little bit more from your users will keep the curious ones a little more in check =).

When working with Mapguide Enterprise/Mapguide Open Source we need to grab some potentially massive XML strings from the MgMap object and pass these along to the server side for processing.  Take the selection XML from the MgMap object, even a single entity selection can use a significant portion of the characters available in the query string.  On top of that, passing this data via query string requires that the data be URL encoded, using even more of our precious query string characters.

Depending on the design of your application it may not always be feasible to define a hard coded form, or even a form defined server side using ASP.NET.  In some cases (you guessed it – my case) you may want to use javascript and do all the work on the client side to define a form and pass the data long that way.

Well you’re in luck, I found a pretty nice solution (WELL, at least I’m liking it  =]).   I’m kicking myself for not realizing this long ago, but oh well.  So the following javascript function demonstrates how to build, add, populate, and submit a form on the fly using some information from the MgMap object.

   1: function postData()   

   2: {   3: //get the map   

   3: mapObj = GetMap();   

   4:  

   5: //define the new form   

   6: var newForm = document.createElement("form");   

   7: //set the method to POST - the opposite of query strings..   

   8: newForm.method="POST";  

   9:  //add the new form to the current document  

  10:  document.body.appendChild(newForm);  

  11:  

  12:  //lets get some data and add it to the form  

  13:  AddFormElement(newForm, "MapName", oMap.GetMapName());  

  14:  AddFormElement(newForm, "SID", oMap.GetSessionId());  

  15:  //be sure you escape the selection XML - or you will get an error on post about a   

  16:  //"potentially dangerous form value".  Remember on the server side to Server.UrlDecode() it  

  17:  AddFormElement(newForm, "sel", escape(oMap.GetSelectionXML()));  

  18:  

  19:  //lets create our new window  

  20:  var szTarget = "targetWin"  

  21:  newForm.target = szTarget;  

  22:  //set the name/path of the ASPX file you want to process your form with  

  23:  newForm.action = "/url_to_open/file.aspx"  

  24:  

  25:  //open a new window to submit the form to.  Its a good idea to have a blank.htm so you don't get a file not found error  

  26:  var oWin = window.open("blank.htm",szTarget,'menubar=yes, resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes, status=no,toolbar=no,width=300, height=300');  

  27:  

  28:  //give the window focus.  Users like this  

  29:  oWin.focus();  

  30:  

  31:  //submit the form - it will now open in the new window  

  32:  newForm.submit();  

  33:  //remove the form from the document, we're done with it  

  34:  document.body.removeChild(newForm);  

  35:  }  

  36:  

  37:  function AddFormElement(form, elementName, elementVal)  

  38:  {  

  39:      var newElement = document.createElement("<input name='" + elementName + "' type='hidden'/>");  

  40:      newElement.value = elementVal;  

  41:      form.appendChild(newElement);  

  42:      return form;  

  43:  }

On the server side, you can now access this data from ASP.NET using Request.Form, for example Request.Form("MapName") would give you the map name.  Don’t forget when retrieving the selection XML to run that through Server.UrlDecode, or HttpUtility.UrlDecode.

As usual, any comments, bugs, or rotten fruit – send em my way.  Enjoy!

Report looked good.  The results were sorting, checkboxes working.   Wait a minute, I selected the entire map.  There should be more than twenty items returned.  So a quick search of my twelve thousand saved e-mails from the Mapguide Users mailing list turned up what needed to be done.  Fortunately Autodesk added a GenerateFilters call to MgSelection.  This call returns an MgStringCollection of filters.

Basically the solution to this problem is to use GenerateFilters instead of GenerateFilter, and loop through the results.  Each time, appending the returned keys to the complete list.  For example:

   1: Public Shared Function GetSelectedKeysString(ByRef siteConn As MgSiteConnection, _

   2:     ByRef resSvc As MgResourceService, ByVal oMap As MgMap, ByVal SessionId As String, _

   3:     ByVal SelectionXML As String, ByVal layerResID As MgResourceIdentifier, _

   4:     ByVal keyFieldName As String) As String

   5:  

   6:     Dim szKeys As String = ""

   7:     Dim oSel As New MgSelection(oMap)

   8:     oSel.FromXml(SelectionXML)

   9:     Dim curLay As MgLayerBase

  10:     'isolate the layer

  11:     For Each layerItem As MgLayerBase In oSel.GetLayers

  12:         If layerItem.Name = layerResID.Name Then

  13:             curLay = layerItem

  14:         End If

  15:     Next

  16:  

  17:     Dim featSvc As MgFeatureService = siteConn.CreateService(MgServiceType.FeatureService)

  18:     Dim queryOptions As New MgFeatureQueryOptions

  19:     Dim featureClassName As String = curLay.GetFeatureClassName

  20:     'workaround using GenerateFilters and looping through the results as needed

  21:     Dim featureReader As MgFeatureReader

  22:     Dim filters As MgStringCollection = oSel.GenerateFilters(curLay, featureClassName, 20)

  23:     Dim filterCnt As Integer = 0

  24:     While filterCnt < filters.GetCount

  25:         queryOptions.SetFilter(filters.GetItem(filterCnt))

  26:         featureReader = featSvc.SelectFeatures(New MgResourceIdentifier(curLay.GetFeatureSourceId), featureClassName, queryOptions)

  27:         While featureReader.ReadNext

  28:             If szKeys = "" Then

  29:                 szKeys = ConvertPropertyToString(featureReader, keyFieldName)

  30:             Else

  31:                 szKeys &= "," & ConvertPropertyToString(featureReader, keyFieldName)

  32:             End If

  33:         End While

  34:         featureReader.Close()

  35:         featureReader.Dispose()

  36:         filterCnt += 1

  37:     End While

  38:     Return szKeys

  39: End Function

In this code, we get the selection from the MgMap object and then isolate the layer in question.  Then we generate the collection of filters and loop through them.  Each time, adding the appropriate value to the list of keys.  Note the use of ConverPropertyToString, this needs to be used to ensure that the various data types are converted over to string.

.  If you’re looking for a C# example of how to use GenerateFilters one is provided in the source for buffers.aspx.

After making these changes my reports now look all proper! hurray.  Maybe I can hit the sack now?  nahh.

NHibernate was a tough curve for me.  Initially, I started testing code generators.  After spending a significant amount of time reading, testing, and pulling out hair I came to the conclusion that NHibernate code generation is still not there.  From my experiences Genwise is probably the best code generator out there right now – but its still lacking in some areas.  More importantly however, I learned that code generation is not a good place to start when implementing NHibernate for the first time.  There is so much going on under the hood – in my opinion you need to start off doing a reasonable size project by hand.  Code generation has significant benefits, because the generated code is so similar with simple replacements it just makes a lot of sense once you wrap your head around what’s going on with NHibernate.

As per my previous post on ReSharper when implementing nHibernate by hand, ReSharper is a must have.  Just the other day I found a *great* ReSharper NHibernate Plugin.  When editing NHibernate HBM XML files, it does a bunch of validation right in the editor.  Saves you a lot of time finding problems without having to actually run a unit test and debug sometimes cryptic error messages.

I bought a copy of NHibernate In Action.  I would recommend this book to you only if you have no experience, or understanding of Object Relational Mappers.  As the book stands right now, it’s not really a good developer reference and only covers really basic examples.  The documents that helped me the most to get everything up and running was The NHibernate FAQ.  The NHibernate documentation is pretty cryptic.  Don’t read this stuff 12 hours into your day.  No amount of RedBull will give you the focus needed to make sense of it.  In the first 8 hours of the day, its quite helpful.

I primarily work in VB.NET.  For this project however, I switched to C#.  Maybe now, the my colleagues at Bear Mountain will stop giving me a hard time =).  Seriously though.  Examples are a LOT easier to come by in C#, probably 10:1.

Finally, get NUnit running.  I had a lot of problems using the built in Microsoft Test projects with NHibernate – so I’ll be sticking with NUnit. If you’ve never done unit testing (you know who you are) do it.  Particularly in this case – its crucial.  You (Again you know who you are =]) used to write simple winform apps, and put a bunch of buttons on them.  Don’t do that. 

So, if you are one of the RADE non-developer users and you read on this far.  Congrats.  This milestone will not directly help you with your use of RADE.  However, it’s a large step forward for the underlying architecture – and you will benefit from that. 

Well back to Visual Studio I go..

Press enter and you are prompted for the class name.  So Visual Studio has this of course, but this is a small example of some of the time savings you can achieve.  Enter the class name and you start off with an empty class.  Next, lets define a couple of private members.   Let’s run with the following example.

   1: namespace RADE.BO.Domain

   2: {

   3:     public class SampleClass

   4:     {

   5:         private Int32 _ID;

   6:         private String _Description;

   7:         private Int64 _BiggerInt;

   8:     }

   9: }

Simple class.  Three member variables.  Here is where the big time savers come in.  Next, click Alt+Insert again and you will be prompted with the following options:

Choose Properties.  You will now be given the option to select one or many fields, set the access rights, read only and virtual properties as well a bunch of others. 

Execute that and all of your get/sets are defined.  My one complaint is that ReSharper is not maintaining the type on the properties.  My Int32’s become int, and Int64’s become long’s.  Apparently this is slated to be fixed.  

So yes, this sample class is tiny, but the time savings on larger classes, or projects full of classes are significant.  The last feature I’ve been using extensively in this project is the generate constructor tool.  Again, a form is displayed with the defined properties, select the ones you want and boom.  You can create half a dozen different constructors in seconds.  I’ve created a full object model on, roughly 20 different mildly complex objects in less than an hour, around midnight on a Sunday =)

Some of the other things ReSharper does is suggest code cleanup ideas by removing unused directives, easy execution of NUnit tests, improved code completion.  I encourage you to check it out, download a ReSharper trial.

First, download and install Oracle 11g ODAC and Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio. (Link requires registration)   This should get the 32bit stuff installed.   I’m still using an Oracle 10g R2 server.  You will likely need to grab a copy of the TNSnames.ora for your existing client folder and place it in the appropriate tree of the 11g product home.

This however is not enough to get .NET working with ODP.  Go to the folder where you extracted the zip.  We need to find the Oracle.DataAccess.dll.  This can be found in the file named filegroup4.jar, in the stage\components\oracle.ntoledb.odp_net_2.  Winrar will open .jar files if needed.  Extract the Oracle.DataAscess.dll file.

For now, I’ve put a copy of this file in my projects lib folder.  I then added a reference directly to this file from all projects that need ODP access. 

Keep in mind – before you ship you may want to remove this reference and ensure that the .DLL file doesn’t get included in your build.  This should get your Vista x64 box developing with ODP.

To Oracle – come on guys.  Give us some Vista x64 love!

So a data connection was created pointing to the Oracle 10g schema.  This database contained a number of tables containing Lat/Long point geometry entities.  I created a layer pointing to the table in question.  I created a layer pointing to that data connection.  At this point the entities showed up as expected in the both the DWF and the AJAX viewers.  Once again, I could not select any of the entities.  I checked the server logs, no errors were reported.

In troubleshoot mode, I tried just about everything I could think of but nothing would work.  I simplified the theme, created new layers, removed all other layers from them map.  Eventually I created a new layer from another table.  Luckily, the entities on this layer could be selected.  It must be a problem with the underlying data.  On a hunch, I checked the table definitions – specifically looking at primary keys.  The selectable layer had a primary key defined, the problem layer did not.  (Good thing I cannot take credit for creating this source data =))

So, I created a primary key on the problem table, did a touch on the layer definition (opening the definition in Studio and saving it without any changes) and then left for twenty minutes.  I’m thinking there is some sort of caching going within the server, and I’m not sure how it works.  Immediately reloading the map after adding the primary key did not work – the entities were still not selectable.  When I came back – the items in the viewers were now selectable.

So long story short, if again you cannot select map entities using the Autodesk FDO Provider for Oracle ensure that the source table has a primary key defined.  Hopefully this saves someone some grief =)

RADE includes a configurable web mapping interface that incorporates queries, reports, charts and basic editing tools. These “components” work with the data you have stored in one or more databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Access) and can be used by any application made with RADE. Right now RADE supports MapGuide 6.x, we are in the process however of extending the mapping interface to allow RADE applications to use multiple web mapping engines including MapGuide 6.x, MapGuide Enterprise 2009 / Mapguide Open Source 2.0 and Google Maps. Other mapping engines may be implemented in the future.  

An application made with RADE is a collection of queries, reports, charts, and of course users/groups managed by the integrated RADE security model. They are your custom solutions founded upon the bedrock that RADE provides.

A user with basic knowledge of their underlying database structure can design customized queries, reports, and charts in a matter of hours. Solutions can be as broad or as narrow as needed depending on the requirements of the organization. All of this work is done using RADE’s web-based administration tools.  

Before RADE, I worked for a provider of customizable desktop GIS, automated map standardization, and facilities management solutions for both government and industry. GIS/Geospatial implementations involved a lot of customized work, specific to particular clients, and could seldom be easily reused. This is when and where I came to realize that there had to be a better way to develop solutions.  

As RADE developed, we put it to the test and have been developing a series of standalone applications build on its framework. With RADE, we are saving time on projects which results in significant cost savings and rapid delivery for our clients.  

Out of curiosity one day, I connected RADE to my accounting and bug-tracking databases just to see what would happen. With a little research into the underlying databases — I was able to create both queries and reports on both data sources. No map required.  

As a developer I have projects that require me to extend RADE with more proprietary code. Take FloorView for example. FloorView is a complete vertical application built on top of RADE. It uses the RADE security/authentication system in addition to the RADE queries and reports — but is in itself a full application. This allowed us to leverage the existing functionality saving time, and money. In addition to this, FloorView appears as a RADE application when authorized users login to the site keeping all of the RADE based applications in one convenient location.  

In addition to FloorView a number of other vertical applications have been developed on top of, or using RADE. They include solutions for address management, disaster planning and recovery, sexual predator and offender tracking, crime mapping and analysis, oil and gas lease management and service request tracking and management.  

The best analogy I have for RADE is “Developer in a Box”.  Much of the work is already done for you…

With Mapguide Enterprise – I may have found a solution.  Recently I created a themed layer for municipalities.  There were twenty five municipalities in a single spatial table.  Each municipality had a unique code.   In an effort to bang these off quickly I added the twenty five municipalities and the filter condition.   Next I entered the twenty five legend labels.

Here is the developer friendly method I came up with creating a somewhat visually appealing color range.  In the first condition I set first set the transparency to 50%.  The transparency affects the resulting color.  Select the color combo and choose "More Colors".  This should bring up the custom color dialog.  First, select one of the "Custom Color" boxes and set the Hue to 0. Next I created a color I wanted to use as my starting shade.

At this point, I saved the color using the "Add to Custom Colors" button.  Your form should look something like this:

Click OK a couple of times and your first condition should be set.  Next I selected my next condition, and clicked the color combo again choosing "More Colors" once again.  This time, select the saved custom color and it should reset the form with the previously saved shade.  At this point I incremented the Hue by 20 to 20.  Click ok a couple of times and repeat.  I was not re-saving my shade, though I suppose that might have made sense.  Each time you repeat this process increase the hue by 20 until you hit the max of 239.

If needed, and you do hit the max hue start the process over starting with another complimentary base shade with a hue of 0. Using a hue increment of 40 might have resulted in more distinct colorations and may be a good idea.

I think it turned out OK, but then again as I stated earlier – I’m color stupid. 

Anyhow, I wanted to share the Pima County Mapguide Color Chart.  I can’t believe I hadn’t found this page sooner.  A fantastic, and crucial reference.   Tons of useful settings for the chart generator.  Show the hex codes for using the colors in HTML, Decimal RGB values for Mapguide Enterprise \ Autocad.  The colors under the Decimal heading are the RGB values – ordered in Red, Green, Blue.  I’ve been using the chart in this config.

Thanks Pima County.  Hopefully, you guys were able to come up with a programmatic method of creating this chart.  I’d hate to be the guy tasked with ‘eyedropping’ all these colors using Photoshop or something.

The decimal values by the way should work with AutoCAD too.

First off, my server was running IIS in 32 bit mode.  This was required to run the previous releases of Vault.  Once the install was complete, I started a dos window and set IIS back to 64 bit:

cscript.exe C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 0

Then I ran an iisreset.

When I fired up my browser to check the vault service, there was a problem.  All it would display was "Service Unavailable".  At this point, even html files were not being served out.  Did a search on the Sourcegear forums and couldn’t find anything.  It’s been a long week and I was not firing on all cylinders – so I called up the support team.  (Good thing I renewed my maintenance, oh, this morning =D).  At this point Beth from SourceGear and I brainstormed through the situation and came to the following conclusions:

I was the first customer to call with x64 problems.  Yay for being first!

In IIS Manager, the application pool was disabled.  A check of the event logs showed the following information:

Source: W3SVC-WP

Event ID: 2268

Could not load all ISAPI filters for site/service.  Therefore startup aborted.

This prompted a check the web service extensions.  Sure enough, there was a web service extension there configured for ASP.NET pointing to the 32 Bit assemblies.  I prohibited this extension, and added a new one pointing to the 64 bit aspnet_isapi.dll.  Re-enable the application pool and load a page in the browser – still nothing.

Finally – the last step needed to get everything serving properly was to run the following from the x64 framework folder:

c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis -I -enable

So in summary the following steps should get your Vault server upgraded and running in native x64.  Bear in mind, my server is ONLY running Vault and these steps will break ASP.NET 1.1 applications (and lower) and possibly other code you might have running on the server.

   1: Backup SGVault and SGMaster databases (did I even need to include this?)

   2: Un-install the 32 bit Vault server

   3: Install the 64 bit Vault server

   4: Run cscript.exe C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 0

   5: Run c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis -I -enable

   6: Start IIS Manager. 

   7: Double check the vault virtual directories to ensure the ASP.NET version is set to v2.0

   8: Prohibit the ASP.Net 32 bit isapi web service extension

   9: Add the ASP.Net 64 bit isapi web service extension

  10: run IISReset.exe

mmmm x64 goodness.  Thanks again to Beth for helping me work through this =)

It’s come to the point where I need to get to a one step build.  The first move in here was to implement Remotesoft Protector in my build process as protecting the assemblies ended up being one of the bigger pains in the butt when building.

So to kick things off, we need to work with MSBuild a little bit.  Originally, I tried using the <exec> call from MSBuild.  This didn’t give me the flexibility to loop through the files being generated.  So I started writing a custom build task.  Please read this great article on building custom tasks if you are new to this.

In summary, I defined a number of get/set methods for the globals I wanted the build engine to set, and in the Execute function I set it up to loop through the passed .DLL files, and execute Protector on each.  After the dlls were processed, they were moved out of the protected folder and the protected folder was removed.  If you are having problems getting your task running, check out this article on debugging  custom MSBuild tasks.

RADE uses a Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment Project to deploy all of the files on build, so to implement the new task we need to do some editing in the project.  Open the project either with a text editor, or in Visual Studio by a right click on the project and choosing "Open Project File".  This part is quite simple.  First ensure that the assembly generated by building your task is in the same folder as the web deployment .wdproj file.  Next we need to add a line near the top of the web deployment project:

   1: <Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="3.5">

   2:     <UsingTask TaskName="Landor.Deploy.BuildTasks.RemoteSoftProtector" AssemblyFile="Landor.Deploy.Buildtasks.dll"/>

   3:     <PropertyGroup>...

Here we point the UsingTask call to both the namespace and class of our protector code, as well assembly.  One more change to make.  Scroll to the end of the project and you should see a number of empty <Target> tags.  We need to add some code to the Name="Afterbuild" tag.

   1: <Target Name="AfterBuild">

   2:         <ItemGroup>

   3:             <DLLFiles Include="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Release\Bin\*.dll"/>

   4:         </ItemGroup>

   5:         <RemoteSoftProtector

   6:             Files="@(DLLFiles)"

   7:             ProtectorEXEPath="C:\Program Files (x86)\Remotesoft\Protector\bin\protector.exe"

   8:             ProtectorParams="-neutral -string -cctor -clrversion v2.0.50727"

   9:             BinFolder="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Release\Bin\"

  10:             Exclusions="AjaxControlToolkit.dll;Microsoft.Xml.Schema.Linq.dll;ZedGraph.Web.dll"

  11:         />

  12: </Target>

Two things occur here.  First, in the <Itemgroup> tag we are initializing a variable called DLLFiles, and it’s getting all the .DLL files in the project’s Release\Bin build folder.   Note that this process creates a semi-colon delimited list of full paths and files.

The next thing that occurs is actually calling the build task using the <RemoteSoftProtector> tag.  The tag name should/must match the name of the build tasks’ class.  Within this tag, we are setting all of the defined public properties, using the same name as those defined with our build task class.

This concludes a day of fun learning how MSBuild and custom tasks work.  Hopefully it helps you out a bit.  Bugs or comments, let me know.

Obfuscation was one of my first answers to this problem.  An obfuscator ships with Visual Studio Pro, free and there are many available on the market.  Obfuscation just didn’t do it for me.  I once helped a customer troubleshoot problems with one of their software solutions from an unnamed vendor using Reflector and walking through the obfuscated code.  This was really a painful experience, it does make it harder to figure out what is going on – but a friend of mine suggested a product that takes code protection one step further.

Hello Remotesoft Protector.  This product is pretty cool.  If you purchase the protector product you will receive three components.  Salamander .NET Decompiler, .NET Obfuscator, and .NET Protector.  Initially I was processing my assemblies with both the obfuscator and the protector.   Now a days, I pretty much only run my assemblies through the protector.

Once you’ve processed an assembly with the protector and you open it up in reflector things are going to look a little different.  Here is a little before and after action for you:

Now lets take a look at the same code, but after being protected:

That’s it.  Protector has made all your code go bye bye =)  What’s happened here?  As I understand it, Protector compiles all your managed .NET code into native code.  So, yes, is it possible to disassemble native binaries.  The difference here is the height of the bar – with plain .NET assemblies even my grand mother could get my code.  Reverse engineering a native assembly is a different story.  If someone with the skill to do that wants your code – well you must be writing some damn fine code.  It would probably be easier for that kind of person to write it from scratch =)

I’ve been working on increasing my Joel Test score lately.  One of my biggies is the one step build for RADE.  That sentence really doesn’t do the task justice.  The first step I’m tackling in the one step build is automating the process of protecting my .NET assemblies.  I could not find any resources on doing with with MSBuild.  Once I get it working, I’ll post some code.

All that said, I highly recommend you check out Protector if code protection is your thing.  The price is a little bit steep at 1899$ for 1-5 developers – but how much money have you invested in that one little DLL or EXE file?

One of my first tasks with Mapguide Enterprise was to build a map on the fly.  There were examples for adding layers to the map programmatically after the viewer had loaded, but this didn’t match the desired flow of my application.  Also, having come from years of Mapguide 6.5 and lower -  I was trying to avoid as much client side automation as possible.  The new Web Tier API was one of the things that excited me the most about Mapguide Enterprise / Mapguide Open Source

I’ve pasted the full, commented code here, as well as attached a solution containing the two projects needed.  Note these projects are Visual Studio 2008 projects.  Please feel free to use this code for learning purposes.  If it helps you out, link back to this article =)

If you choose instead to create a new project, be sure to add a project or DLL reference to the OSGeo.Mapguide.Objects.dll file we created previously .  The project I’ve included here contains both the sample Web Application project, as well as a copy of the .NET objects for Mapguide project.  It should be almost ready for the running.  Also ensure there is a reference to the Microsoft.XML.Schema.Linq namespace added to the project.  Also copy the required .DLL files from the Autodesk provided .NET viewer\bin folder to the web projects bin folder.  I did not include these here as I was not sure of the legality of doing so.

First load up the Sheboygan package into your Mapguide repository.  For the purposes of this example, open the Map definition in Mapguide Studio (or equivalent) and remove all the layers and layer groups from the map.  If you forget to do this you will get a Duplicate Object error when you load up the map.  Once that is done, you are ready to try out the code.

You should be able top unzip the zip and open the MGEDynamicAuthoringSample.sln file with Visual Studio.  Pretty much the only thing you may need to change are the constants to match your machine specific items:

   1: 'set some contants up - webconfig.ini, map viewer url, Map, Layout and Layer locatinos

   2: Private Const gszWebConfig As String = "C:\inetpub\MapGuideEnterprise2009\WebServerExtensions\www\webconfig.ini"

   3: Private Const gszViewerUrl As String = "http://localhost/mapguide2009/mapviewerdwf"

   4: Private Const gszMapResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Maps/Sheboygan.MapDefinition"

   5: Private Const gszLayerFolderResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Layers.Folder"

   6: Private Const gszLayoutResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Layouts/SheboyganAsp.WebLayout"

   7: 'lets run with Administrator for noew to eliminate permission problems.  Update your password as needed, or specify your

   8: 'own credentials if you are comfortable with setting up repository permissions.

   9: Private Const gszMGUser As String = "Administrator"

  10: Private Const gszMGPass As String = "admin"

Once you’ve changed all the needed settings, you should be good to go.  Run the code in Visual Studio and you should now see a map similar to the default Sheboygan map.  The key difference is that all of the layers will exist within the layer group we created programmatically.

Commented Codebehind:

   1: Imports OSGeo.MapGuide

   2: 'we still need to import and use system.xml, but don't really need to use many parts of the XML

   3: 'functionality =)

   4: Imports System.Xml

   5: Partial Public Class _Default

   6:     '' 'So for this example, we're going to use the sheboygan sample package available from 

   7:     '' ' http://mapguide.osgeo.org/download/releases/2.0.x-samples.  Be sure to grab both the 

   8:     '' ' dotnetviewstample.zip as well as the sheboygan.mgp.  Import the package using

   9:     '' ' the mapguide site administrator.  I've tried to use the default resource paths

  10:     '' ' but some tweaking of map will be needed

  11:     '' ' 

  12:     '' ' Open the map definition in Studio, and remove all the layers from Samples/Sheboygan/Maps/Sheboygan.MapDefinition 

  13:     '' ' we're going to add them dynamically    

  14:  

  15:     Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

  16:  

  17:     'set some contants up - webconfig.ini, map viewer url, Map, Layout and Layer locatinos

  18:     Private Const gszWebConfig As String = "C:\inetpub\MapGuideEnterprise2009\WebServerExtensions\www\webconfig.ini"

  19:     Private Const gszViewerUrl As String = "http://localhost/mapguide2009/mapviewerdwf"

  20:     Private Const gszMapResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Maps/Sheboygan.MapDefinition"

  21:     Private Const gszLayerFolderResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Layers.Folder"

  22:     Private Const gszLayoutResID As String = "Library://Samples/Sheboygan/Layouts/SheboyganAsp.WebLayout"

  23:     Private Const gszMGUser As String = "Administrator"

  24:     Private Const gszMGPass As String = "admin"

  25:  

  26:     ''' <summary>

  27:     ''' Page_Load does everything =)  Be sure to copy the dll files from your mapviewernet\bin folder to this projects bin folder.

  28:     ''' I did not include them as that might have violated some autodesk license.    

  29:     ''' </summary>

  30:     ''' <param name="sender"></param>

  31:     ''' <param name="e"></param>

  32:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

  33:     Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load

  34:  

  35:         'setup our siteconnection

  36:         Dim siteConnection As New MgSiteConnection

  37:         siteConnection = CreateMGSession(gszMGUser, gszMGPass, gszWebConfig)

  38:         Dim szSessionId As String = siteConnection.GetSite.CreateSession()

  39:  

  40:         'create our connection to the resource service

  41:         Dim resSvc As MgResourceService

  42:         resSvc = siteConnection.CreateService(MgServiceType.ResourceService)

  43:  

  44:         'get or set the resourceid of the map to load - in this case i'm just going to hard code it

  45:         Dim mapResourceID As New MgResourceIdentifier(gszMapResID)

  46:  

  47:         'load the existing map from the libary into an XML document

  48:         Dim mapXML As XmlDocument = GetResourceXML(resSvc, mapResourceID)

  49:  

  50:         'so at this point we have an XML document.  Let's try using our new OSGeo.Mapguide.Object classes

  51:         Dim newMapDefinition As New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition

  52:  

  53:         'to load the xml - call the shared/static method of MapDefinition.Parse on the OuterXML of the XMLDocument

  54:         newMapDefinition = OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition.Parse(mapXML.OuterXml)

  55:  

  56:         'at this point we have a loaded .NET Object containing the map.  Try using Intellisense to see the different methods

  57:         'Lets add a layer group now

  58:  

  59:         'add any needed layer groups to the map.  In this example we're only going to add one.

  60:         Dim szLayerGroupName As String = "NewLayerGroup"

  61:         Dim szLayerGroupAlias As String = "My Layer Group Alias"

  62:         newMapDefinition = AddMapLayerGroup(newMapDefinition, szLayerGroupName, szLayerGroupAlias)

  63:  

  64:         'get or set the resourceid of the folder that contains our layers to add

  65:         Dim layerPath As New MgResourceIdentifier(gszLayerFolderResID)

  66:  

  67:         'so we now have a layer group in our map.  Lets add the layers

  68:         AddFolderOfLayers(resSvc, newMapDefinition, layerPath, szLayerGroupName)

  69:  

  70:         'at this point our map definition is loaded.  Lets convert it back to XML and save it to the session

  71:         Dim newMapDoc As New XmlDocument

  72:         newMapDoc.PreserveWhitespace = True

  73:  

  74:         Dim szXML As String = newMapDefinition.Untyped.ToString

  75:         newMapDoc.LoadXml(szXML)

  76:  

  77:         'create our 'new' resourceID in the session repository

  78:         Dim newMapResourceID As New MgResourceIdentifier("Session:" & szSessionId & "//" & mapResourceID.GetName() & "." & MgResourceType.MapDefinition)

  79:  

  80:         'save the newly created map in the session repository

  81:         CreateSessionResource(resSvc, newMapDoc, szSessionId, newMapResourceID.GetName, MgResourceType.MapDefinition)

  82:  

  83:         'now lets deal with the layout - we need to load up the library layout, update the map definition, and save it to the repository

  84:         Dim layoutResourceID As New MgResourceIdentifier(gszLayoutResID)

  85:         Dim newLayoutResourceID As New MgResourceIdentifier("Session:" & szSessionId & "//" & layoutResourceID.GetName() & "." & MgResourceType.WebLayout)

  86:  

  87:         'same process here, load the XML, parse the XML into the new .net Object

  88:         Dim layoutXML As XmlDocument = GetResourceXML(resSvc, layoutResourceID)

  89:  

  90:         Dim newLayout As New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.WebLayout

  91:         newLayout = OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.WebLayout.Parse(layoutXML.OuterXml)

  92:  

  93:         'update the map resource ID in the layout to point to our newly created map in the session

  94:         newLayout.Map.ResourceId = newMapResourceID.ToString

  95:  

  96:         'finally go through the motinos to save the layout to the session

  97:         Dim newLayoutXML As New XmlDocument

  98:         newLayoutXML.PreserveWhitespace = True

  99:         newLayoutXML.LoadXml(newLayout.Untyped.ToString())

 100:  

 101:         CreateSessionResource(resSvc, newLayoutXML, szSessionId, newLayoutResourceID.GetName, MgResourceType.WebLayout)

 102:  

 103:         'our last step is to update the src attribute of the iframe with the information needed to load the newly created layout

 104:         SetupIFrame(newLayoutResourceID, szSessionId)

 105:     End Sub

 106:     Private Sub SetupIFrame(ByVal layoutResId As MgResourceIdentifier, ByVal szSessionID As String)

 107:         'build the URL based on our constants, and the layout + session info

 108:         Dim szUrl As String = gszViewerUrl & "?WEBLAYOUT=" & layoutResId.ToString & "&SESSION=" & szSessionID

 109:  

 110:         'update the iframe

 111:         ifrmViewer.Attributes.Add("src", szUrl)

 112:     End Sub

 113:     ''' <summary>

 114:     ''' Adds a layer group to the passed MapDefinition, and returns the updated MapDefinition Object.

 115:     ''' If desired, additional parameters could be added to this to customize the various other properties

 116:     ''' like ShowInLegend etc        

 117:     ''' </summary>

 118:     ''' <param name="mapDef">The loaded MapDefinition obect</param>

 119:     ''' <param name="szLayerGroupName">The Layer Name of the new layer group</param>

 120:     ''' <param name="szLayerGroupAlias">The Layer Alias of the new layer group</param>

 121:     ''' <returns>the passed MapDefinition, with the new layer group added</returns>

 122:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 123:     Public Shared Function AddMapLayerGroup(ByVal mapDef As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition, ByVal szLayerGroupName As String, ByVal szLayerGroupAlias As String) As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition

 124:         Dim newLayGRoup As New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapLayerGroupType

 125:         newLayGRoup.Name = szLayerGroupName

 126:         newLayGRoup.LegendLabel = szLayerGroupAlias

 127:         newLayGRoup.ShowInLegend = "True"

 128:         newLayGRoup.ExpandInLegend = "True"

 129:         newLayGRoup.Visible = "True"

 130:         newLayGRoup.Group = ""

 131:         mapDef.MapLayerGroup.Add(newLayGRoup)

 132:         Return mapDef

 133:     End Function

 134:  

 135:     ''' <summary>

 136:     ''' Adds all layer definitions within the specified repository folder to the specified map

 137:     ''' </summary>

 138:     ''' <param name="resSvc">An open resource service connection</param>

 139:     ''' <param name="newMap">the MapDefinition object to modify</param>

 140:     ''' <param name="resLocation">The folder in the repository to search for layer objects</param>

 141:     ''' <returns>Update MapDefinition object</returns>

 142:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 143:     Public Shared Function AddFolderOfLayers(ByRef resSvc As MgResourceService, ByVal newMap As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition, ByVal resLocation As MgResourceIdentifier, ByVal szLayerGroupName As String) As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapDefinition

 144:         'get the list of layers in the folder

 145:         Dim resList As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.ResourceList

 146:         'use GetAllResources to get a new resList

 147:         resList = GetAllResources(resSvc, resLocation, 1, MgResourceType.LayerDefinition)

 148:  

 149:         'resList items are pretty much a collection of resrouceDocumentLocalTypes so define one of these to use in the for loop

 150:         Dim resItem As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.ResourceList.ResourceDocumentLocalType

 151:  

 152:         'define a new layerResID to use in the loop

 153:         Dim layerResID As MgResourceIdentifier

 154:  

 155:         'for each layer - process it and add it to the map

 156:         Dim newLayerType As New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapLayerType

 157:         For Each resItem In resList.ResourceDocument

 158:             layerResID = New MgResourceIdentifier(resItem.ResourceId)

 159:             'for adding a layer to the map - we must use the MapLayerType object 

 160:             newLayerType = New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.MapLayerType

 161:             newLayerType.ResourceId = layerResID.ToString

 162:             'Be sure to specify the name of the 

 163:             newLayerType.Group = szLayerGroupName

 164:             newLayerType.Name = layerResID.GetName

 165:             newLayerType.Selectable = "false"

 166:             newLayerType.ShowInLegend = "true"

 167:             newLayerType.LegendLabel = layerResID.GetName

 168:             newLayerType.ExpandInLegend = "true"

 169:             newLayerType.Visible = "true"

 170:  

 171:             newMap.MapLayer.Insert(0, newLayerType)

 172:         Next

 173:         'return the updated MapDefinition

 174:         Return newMap

 175:     End Function

 176:  

 177:     'Some handy functions

 178:  

 179:     ''' <summary>

 180:     ''' Saves the specified XMLDocument to the session respository

 181:     ''' </summary>

 182:     ''' <param name="resSvc">The open resource service connection</param>

 183:     ''' <param name="xmlDoc">the XMLDocument to save to the session repository</param>

 184:     ''' <param name="szSessionId">String containing the session ID</param>

 185:     ''' <param name="szName">The name of the newly created object in the repository</param>

 186:     ''' <param name="szResourceType">the object type</param>

 187:     ''' <returns></returns>

 188:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 189:     Public Shared Function CreateSessionResource(ByRef resSvc As MgResourceService, ByVal xmlDoc As XmlDocument, ByVal szSessionId As String, ByVal szName As String, ByVal szResourceType As String) As MgResourceIdentifier

 190:         Dim byteSource As MgByteSource = getByteSource(xmlDoc)

 191:         Dim resID As New MgResourceIdentifier("Session:" & szSessionId & "//" & szName & "." & szResourceType)

 192:         resSvc.SetResource(resID, byteSource.GetReader, Nothing)

 193:         Return resID

 194:     End Function

 195:  

 196:     ''' <summary>

 197:     ''' Returns an MgByteSource for the passed XMLDocument

 198:     ''' </summary>

 199:     ''' <param name="xmlDoc">The XMLDocument to convert</param>

 200:     ''' <returns>MgByteSource of the XMLDocumnet</returns>

 201:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 202:     Public Shared Function getByteSource(ByVal xmlDoc As XmlDocument) As MgByteSource

 203:         Dim xmlStream As New IO.MemoryStream

 204:         xmlDoc.Save(xmlStream)

 205:         Dim arrBytes() As Byte = xmlStream.ToArray()

 206:         Dim Enc As Encoding = Encoding.UTF8

 207:         Dim docString As String = New String(Enc.GetChars(arrBytes))

 208:         arrBytes = Nothing

 209:  

 210:         Dim arrOutput(docString.Length - 1) As Byte

 211:         Dim nByteCount As Integer = Enc.GetBytes(docString, 0, docString.Length, arrOutput, 0)

 212:  

 213:         Dim byteSource As New MgByteSource(arrOutput, arrOutput.Length)

 214:         byteSource.SetMimeType(MgMimeType.Xml)

 215:  

 216:         Return byteSource

 217:     End Function

 218:  

 219:     ''' <summary>

 220:     ''' returns a loaded XML document of the specified resourceID

 221:     ''' </summary>

 222:     ''' <param name="resSvc">An open connection to the Mapguide Resource Service</param>

 223:     ''' <param name="resId">The MgResourceID of the entity in question</param>

 224:     ''' <returns>A loaded XMLDocument of the specified resource</returns>

 225:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 226:     Public Shared Function GetResourceXML(ByRef resSvc As MgResourceService, ByVal resId As MgResourceIdentifier) As XmlDocument

 227:         Dim retDoc As New XmlDocument

 228:         retDoc.PreserveWhitespace = True

 229:  

 230:         Dim szXML As String = resSvc.GetResourceContent(resId).ToString()

 231:         Dim nByteCount As Integer

 232:         Dim arrByte(szXML.Length) As Byte

 233:         nByteCount = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(szXML, 0, szXML.Length, arrByte, 0)

 234:  

 235:         Dim memStream As New IO.MemoryStream(arrByte)

 236:         retDoc.Load(memStream)

 237:         Return retDoc

 238:     End Function

 239:  

 240:  

 241:     ''' <summary>

 242:     ''' Create a new mapguide session and return the resulting session ID

 243:     ''' </summary>

 244:     ''' <param name="szMGUser">Valid mapguide user name</param>

 245:     ''' <param name="szMGPass">Valid password for the specified mapguide user name</param>

 246:     ''' <param name="szMGWebTier">The path to the Mapguide web tier (valid on the mapguide web server</param>

 247:     ''' <returns>MgSiteConnection - the newly created mapguide site connection</returns>

 248:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 249:     Public Shared Function CreateMGSession(ByVal szMGUser As String, ByVal szMGPass As String, ByVal szMGWebTier As String) As MgSiteConnection

 250:         MapGuideApi.MgInitializeWebTier(szMGWebTier)

 251:         Dim siteConnection As New MgSiteConnection()

 252:         siteConnection.Open(New MgUserInformation(szMGUser, szMGPass))

 253:         Return siteConnection

 254:     End Function

 255:  

 256:     ''' <summary>

 257:     ''' Converts MgReader to XMLDocument

 258:     ''' </summary>

 259:     ''' <param name="byteReader">Loaded MgByteReader</param>

 260:     ''' <returns>Loaded XMLDocument</returns>

 261:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 262:     Public Shared Function ConvertMgReaderXml(ByVal byteReader As MgByteReader) As XmlDocument

 263:         Dim szXML As String

 264:         Try

 265:             szXML = byteReader.ToString

 266:         Catch ex As Exception

 267:             Throw ex

 268:         End Try

 269:         Dim nByteCount As Integer

 270:         Dim arrByte(szXML.Length) As Byte

 271:         Try

 272:             nByteCount = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(szXML, 0, szXML.Length, arrByte, 0)

 273:         Catch ex As Exception

 274:             Throw ex

 275:         End Try

 276:  

 277:         Dim memStream As New IO.MemoryStream(arrByte)

 278:         Dim retDoc As New XmlDocument

 279:         retDoc.PreserveWhitespace = True

 280:         Try

 281:             retDoc.Load(memStream)

 282:         Catch ex As Exception

 283:             memStream.Close()

 284:             memStream.Dispose()

 285:             Throw ex

 286:         End Try

 287:         memStream.Close()

 288:         memStream.Dispose()

 289:         Return retDoc

 290:     End Function

 291:  

 292:     ''' <summary>

 293:     ''' Gets a ResourceList for each item in the specified repository folder.

 294:     ''' </summary>

 295:     ''' <param name="resSvc">The opened resource server connection</param>

 296:     ''' <param name="resId">The MgResourceId of the folder we want to enumerate</param>

 297:     ''' <param name="nDepth">The folder depth to enumerate.  From the Mapguide Web API Reference:

 298:     ''' (int) Recursion depth, relative to the specified resource.

 299:     '''* If the resource is a document, depth must be set to 0.

 300:     '''* If the resource is a folder:

 301:     '''      o If the depth is equal to 0, only information about the specified folder is returned.

 302:     '''      o If the depth is greater than 0, information about the folder and its descendants up to the specified depth are returned.

 303:     '''* If the depth is -1, information about the folder and all its descendants is returned.

 304:     ''' </param>

 305:     ''' <param name="szType">Again from the Mapguide Web API Reference:

 306:     '''     (String/string) Type of the resource to be enumerated. (Case sensitive.) See MgResourceType  for valid types. If the type is a folder, 

 307:     '''     you must include the trailing slash.

 308:     '''     Or, this can be set to null, in which case information about all resource types is returned

 309:     ''' </param>

 310:     ''' <returns>OSGeo.Mapguide.Objects.ResourceList of resource entities</returns>

 311:     ''' <remarks></remarks>

 312:     Public Shared Function GetAllResources(ByRef resSvc As MgResourceService, ByVal resId As MgResourceIdentifier, ByVal nDepth As Integer, ByVal szType As String) As OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.ResourceList

 313:         Dim retDoc As XmlDocument

 314:         retDoc = ConvertMgReaderXml(resSvc.EnumerateResources(resId, nDepth, szType))

 315:  

 316:         Dim resourceList As New OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.ResourceList

 317:         resourceList = OSGeo.MapGuide.Objects.ResourceList.Parse(retDoc.OuterXml)

 318:         Return resourceList

 319:     End Function

 320: End Class

If you have any questions or comments – feel free to let me know.

One of my first tasks with Mapguide was to add some layers to the map, before the viewer had loaded up, save that map in the session repository and then build a layout for the map – again in the session repository.  I tried various ways of working with the XML provided by the resource  service, and read through many of the e-mails on the topic from the Osgeo list, but I just couldn’t get it to work.  So I set out on my mission to get an object based method of getting things done.  First, as per the developer documentation I tried out xsd.exe.  XSD allowed me to get a class skeleton created, but there was a lot of work needed to a rounded API running.   I had been recently investigating the new functionality Microsoft was exposing with LINQ – and I came across LINQ to XSD.  For more information on Linq to XSD the Microsoft XML team blog is a good place to start. 

So download LINQ to XSD Alpha 0.2 and install it.  You will need to have .NET 3.5 installed first.  In addition to that I’m using Visual Studio 2008 Pro.  I have tried these steps with both Mapguide Enterprise 2008 and  2009.  I have to assume the resulting code will work with Mapguide Open Source as well.

Setting up your project

At this point you should be able to fire up Visual Studio and create a new project.  If you are a VB developer, I’m afraid you’re going to have to dive into a bit of C#, as its the only support language right now.  It’s not that bad.

The new project window should look a little like this:

Choose LINQ to XSD Library and give the project a name.  Once the new project is loaded, create a new folder called XSD.  Browse to your Mapguide 2009/OS 2.0 server Schema folder (on a default installation its c:\Program Files\Autodesk\MapGuideEnterprise2009\Server\Schema).  Take a these files and drag them into the new XSD folder.

Back in Visual Studio, select all of the XSD files.  Look in the property window and change the "Build Action" to be "LinqToXsdSchema".

Building the project

At this point, right click on the project in Visual Studio, and choose build.  You should have 173 errors.  This is caused by having multiple, similar versions of some of the XSDs.  Let’s exclude the following files:

• FdoProviderCapabilities-1.0.0.xsd
• LayerDefinition-1.0.0.xsd
• LayerDefinition-1.1.0.xsd
• LoadProcedure-1.0.0.xsd
• SymbolDefinition-1.0.0.xsd

Rebuild the project and we should be down to five errors.  I have found that by excluding the following files I was able to get the code to generate:

• ApplicationDefinition-1.0.0.xsd
• ApplicationDefinitionInfo-1.0.0.xsd
• SymbolLibrary-1.0.0.xsd

For my purposes, I was not too concerned about being able to work with these entity types programmatically (at least at this time).  If anyone is able to work around and would like to share it, please let me know.

Build the project again, and we will see three new errors.  This time we will need to dig into the generated code to correct them.  For each of the three errors we will want