Interactive Application Architecture Patterns (MVC, MVP, PAC)

I just came across this article by Derek Greer that discusses the three similar interactive application architecture patterns: the Model-View-Controller, Model-View-Presenter and Presentation-Abstraction-Control pattern. If you are interested to learn this patterns and understand their differences, this article is highly recommended for you.

The author also mentions the Microsoft Patterns & Practices Patterns MVP and MVP w/ Application Controller, which are used in the Web Client Software Factory (WCSF).

I am currently using WCSF, and I am not sure if I should use MVP with or without Application Controller. Martin Fowler describes in his P of EAA book that there is little value in using an Application Controller if the flow and navigation of your application is pretty simple so that anyone can visit any screen in pretty much any order. He also mentions that the strength of an Application Controller comes from definite rules about the order in which pages should be visited and different views depending on the state of objects.

.NET 3.5 Exams

Since Visual Studio 2008 is already available for MSDN subscribers, I am wondering when the current certifications will change due to this new release.

Currently, the MCPD certification is based on the exams related to VS2005 / .NET 2.0.
According to this blog, there are new exams for .NET 3.5. These exams are:

• 71-502 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Presentation Foundation
• 71-503 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Communication Foundation
• 71-504 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Workflow Foundation
  

Each exam gives you an MCTS certification in that specific area, but there is no mention if these exams will be incorporated into the MCPD certification. Hopefully, MS announces the new changes for MCPD. For now, I will wait a little bit until this happens since I do not want to waste time studying for obsolete exams.

Evaluating Advantages of Test Driven Development

One of the assignments of my graduation course COMP610 - Selected Topics in Software Engineering is to present a research paper on a topic covered during this course. One of the topics that I find interesting is Test Driven Development. I decided to present the following article:

Evaluating Advantages of Test Driven Development: A Controlled Experiment with Professionals

This is the first time I create a Webcast. I used CamStudio to record the presentation, which records it into AVI files. I used Windows Movie Maker to do some editing in the presentation. I am not sure if there is a better tool for that, but it worked. The output file was a WMV of 33 MB. If no editing was necessary, I could just convert the original AVI to the flash format before uploading. One tool to make this conversion is Free FLV Converter 2.3.

The presentation is only 20 minutes long, but it took a while for me to get it done. Well, now it is over and you can see it at SCIS Streaming Video Site. Enjoy it!

Edmonton Code Camp 2007

Last week I was at the University of Alberta attending the Edmonton Code Camp 2007.

The Code Camp is a one day developer conference driven by the local developer community. It happened on Saturday October 21. I was very impressed with the organization and quality of the presentations. I am glad that we have such an engaging .NET community in Edmonton volunteering to organize an event like this.

I attended the following sessions: Introduction to TDD, NHibernate, MonoRail, and Alt.NET.

Some technologies and tools that were presented through these sessions:

• Rhino Mocks: a dynamic mock object framework.
• Windsor Container: Inversion of control container.
• ActiveWriter: an addin for Visual Studio 2005 to design a domain model and to generate code decorated with ActiveRecord attributes.
  

Some recommended books:

• NHibernate in Action (not published yet)
• Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET

Tool for C# Format

I am using this tool for formating C# code for publishing in a blog:

http://manoli.net/csharpformat/

The formatted code will look like:

using System;

public class HelloWorld
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // Comment line
        Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
    }
}

Evidence Based Scheduling

This is a new article from Joel Spolsky talking about Evidence Based Scheduling:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html

Creating a new virtual machine for VMWare Player

VMware Player does not allow you to create a virtual machine from the scratch, only to run existing ones. In order to create new virtual machines, you can use the qemu-img.exe program that comes with QEMU.

The virtual machine consists of two files: the vmdk which you create using the qemu-img.exe program, and the vmx file which is a plain text configuration file.

The following post contains instructions of how to create these files:
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html

In his example, the author uses the guest Operating System as Windows XP. To create a virtual machine for different operating systems, simply change the value of the guestOS variable located at the vmx file. The following link contains the supported values:
http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/vmware-player-image-creation.php#oscodes