In this post, we are going to have a look at UI commands. UI commands are responsible for reacting to user input, for example the send button click in the sample I use throughout this series of agile user interface development in .NET series. For other posts in this series look here: table of contents.

We have seen in the last post that the view binds a command to the send button that it gets from the view-model:

<Button Command="{Binding SendMessageCommand}" IsDefault="True">Send</Button>

.NET, Administration, Agile .NET, Agile, Architecture, Design, User Interface, WPF

Last time we started looking at sample code with the view-model class for the UI to send messages on channels (table of contents).

In this post, we continue with the next responsibility, the visualization.

The View

The view is responsible for visualizing the domain model to the user. We have seen in the last post that the view-model provides a simplified mini-model to the view. That means that the view does not have to care about the domain model as a whole with all its interactions and constraints. The view-model provides only the part of the domain model that is relevant to the current screen the user is seeing thus simplifying the job of the view.

.NET, Administration, Agile .NET, Agile, Architecture, Design, User Interface, WPF

After the posts (table of contents) in which I covered why we need an agile UI design pattern, it’s big picture and the needed tools, I start digging into sample code. I’ll show in each post a small part of the whole picture. If you want to get all at once then you find the source of all samples at http://sourceforge.net/projects/procollee. ProCollEE is my playground to experiment with WPF and UI design.

Lets start

Yes, let’s start. But where?

There is one UI design pattern – presenter first (link) – that explicitly states where to start in its name. But unfortunately, the presenter first pattern packs too many responsibilities into the presenter. Therefore, not the best source to get an answer from.

But we have to start somewhere, don’t we?

In my experience, I normally know what has to be visualized in a dialog or window, but I don’t know yet how exactly the data is visualized or where to get it from.

.NET, Administration, Agile .NET, Agile, Architecture, Design, User Interface, WPF

In the last post, I showed you the big picture of my UI design pattern. Before I can start showing you sample code for the different parts, I need to introduce some tools, which are used to glue all the tiny parts together:

• Dependency Injection
• Design By Contract
• Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication
• Test Driven Development

.NET, Administration, Agile .NET, Agile, Architecture, code contracts, event broker, Ninject, Test Driven Development, User Interface

In the most cases there are benefits when all data (log and db) files are on the network storage. Think off the benefit in terms of performance and backup. The Install wizard of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 shows only the option to change the path of the temporary database. In this guide I show you how to move the databases. Please keep in mind to create a backup of your db’s before starting. I know backup is only for hot shower takers, gym bag losers and armpit hair blow-dryers;-). On my test server the path looks like:

Administration, Software 2007, ldf, master.mdf, mdb, server, sql

There are a lot of HowTos in the web talking about PXE boot and how to configure it. But most of them are applied to a particular Linux/Unix distribution or a particular Thin-Client Boot framework.

The goal of this HowTo is to show which components are needed in an PXE boot environment and how they are related to each other. No particular linux distribution and no particular framework.
After this article you will be able to set up a little PXE boot environment in your private (home)network for backup/recovery purpose or just for fun.

This article is not going to explain how to create a “net-bootable” recovery image. This will be discussed in the next article.

Administration dhcp, nfs, PXE, recovery, tftp

As some of you might already know Windows 7 is now released for manufacturing and will soon be available. Eric Ligman provides on the Microsoft SMB Community Blog a nice set of cool videos about the new features of Windows 7 such as User State Migration Tool, BranchCache, Direct Access, User Account Control (UAC) and many more. I recommend his blog post for everyone who wants a deeper insight into the exciting features of Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2009/07/23/9846705.aspx

Administration, Software Eric Ligman, Features Microsoft Community Blog, Windows 7

Martin one of our famous blog readers submitted a wish, … He would love to see a list of of the most useful mac os x apps. I know there are lots of other sites on the web taking care of it already, but hey guys its a growing community. Well keep up your great work. Martin.

The question is not so easy answered though. Mac OS X leopard has already most of the things I need built-in. But there are still some. Let us start with some basic tools I use.

Administration, Ask a geek, Software Cyberduck, freeciv, keypass, Latex, mac, os x, Skype, vmware

Sometimes bad things happen, sometimes ugly things happen. One of the very bad things that can happen is when an active domain controller crashes and there is no backup available. The case becomes really ugly if nobody cares about the crashed controller for about 60 days (forest that was created on a domain controller running Windows Server 2003 and earlier) or 180 days (forest that was created on a domain controller running Windows Server 2003 sp1 and later). On this depends the default tombstone lifetime of directory objects. Later we will investigate on the tombstone. 

Administration AD, Controller, Domain, FSMO

For a project I have to learn some of the specialty of an iScsi NAS. To be precise it was Net App FAS 2500 Filer. These things are very nice but a little too expensive for my personal use. But Net App offers a nice simulator of their product and the simulator is free. You just need to create an account on the Net App web site and search for the word ”simulator” or just follow this link. (http://now.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/simulator). Some bloody side note: the website doesn’t work fine with safari. Just use Firefox and all works well in this case.

Administration, Hardware, Software .NET, app, filer, nas, NetApp, vmware