Codesta Weblog

We Need a Great Software QA Lead

We have more details now on the special resource we're looking for to help lead our QA efforts. The job description is provided below, and we'd like to add a couple of key notes:

1. Experience with Agile Software Development Practices is a Must - What can we say... We're an Agile development shop!
2. Past Software Development Experience is a Significant Asset - First and foremost, we are looking for a QA Lead. That said, we will give the right resource opportunities to contribute to development projects. This role is not a path to a future software development job at Codesta. We simply have lots of technical needs, and the ability to write scripts, develop pieces of code or lead an internal project effort is extremely valuable to us.
3. We Are Looking for A Lead - We want someone with previous QA Analyst experience and has demonstrated their interest in a QA career.

We hope these comments provide insights into the person we're looking for, and we can't wait for that person to join us here at Codesta.

Position: Software Quality Assurance Lead , 1+ Year Experience
Location: Toronto, Ontario

Do you take ownership of your projects and productivity? Do you want to expand your QA experience and contribute to development projects? Do you like learning new technologies and methodologies? Then Codesta is the place for you…

We have an immediate opening for an experienced Quality Assurance Lead. Our ideal candidate has software testing experience with systems using today’s common platforms, such as Java/JEE, LAMP, C# /.NET and Ruby on Rails. Our lead will also be responsible for supporting development by deploying continuous integration environments, logging defects, and performing regression testing. In addition, you will have the opportunity to contribute to internal development efforts. On all projects you will join our experienced development team and interact directly with our customers.
 
If this sounds like you, please submit your resume with cover letter including information on your potential start date and sample work to careers@codesta.com. No telephone inquiries please.

JOB OVERVIEW
-    Perform testing of client applications
-    Develop, recommend and implement effective QA strategies
-    Actively interface with customers and act as liaison with software development team

BREAKDOWN OF RESPONSIBILITIES
-    75% Quality Assurance Testing and Supporting Activities
-    15% Internal Software Development Efforts
-    10% Personal Development, Training, IT Projects Support

REQUIREMENTS
-    Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related discipline or equivalent experience
-    3+ years work experience as a Quality Assurance Analyst testing software systems, including writing test plans
-    1+ year work experience as a Quality Assurance Lead, including experience deploying test and integration systems, familiarity with automation tools and
-    Experience testing modern, dynamic web applications and web services such as REST and SOAP interfaces
-    An avid problem solver with keen attention to detail
-    Individual who thrives on new challenges, is a quick learner and enjoys exploring new technologies
-    Excellent communication skills, written & verbal, works well in a team environment
-    Candidates applying for the position must be legally eligible to work in Canada
 
ADDITIONAL ASSETS
-    Web-based systems testing experience, including simulating multiple web browsers and load balancing
-    Mobile Application testing across multiple platforms including iPhone, Android and Blackberry
-    Experience with one or more of Microsoft C# /.NET, Java/J2EE, Ruby on Rails or LAMP stack technologies
-    Experience with common QA tools such as Continuum, CruiseControl, TeamCity, Jira and FogBugz

ABOUT CODESTA
Codesta helps companies design and create software products. We use a balance of people and process to turn ideas into innovative products. Our clients want to produce new products quickly and collaboratively using whatever toolset is needed to get the job done. We take an extreme amount of pride in our ability to contribute to our clients’ success by building robust, well architected applications. With offices in Palo Alto, California and Toronto, Canada, Codesta has built new products for companies across North America in sectors ranging from mobile to pharmaceutical to consumer imaging.

We're Hiring!

We're excited to report that we're growing and need to hire 3, possibly 4, talented people to join Codesta in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We think it's a great place to work, and hope you'll take the time to learn more about us... then apply! We'll post the complete job descriptions very soon (especially for the QA role), but in the interim we're looking for:

1. Software Developer, 3+ Years Experience
2. Software Developer, 1+ Year Experience
3. Quality Assurance Lead, 3+ Years Experience

If we end up needing a 4th team member, the requirements will be for another Software Developer with 1+ year experience. Must Haves and Nice to Haves will include the following:

Must Haves:

1. Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from an Outstanding University
2. Real World Work Experience, as specified per role
3. Experience and Skill with One or More of Microsoft C# / .NET, Java/J2EE, Ruby on Rails or LAMP Stack Technologies
4. Excellent Communication and Presentation Skills, Written and Verbal
5. Legally Eligible to Work in Canada

Nice to Haves:

1. Experience with C, C++, Blackberry Development Environment, XML, XSLT, Web Services, PHP
2. Past Experience with Common Development Tools such as CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Eclipse and Rally
3. Training and Experience using Agile Project Management Methodologies including Scrum
4. Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Design Patterns, and UML experience

If this sounds like you, please don't delay and send your resume to careers@codesta.com. We can't wait to hear from you!

A blurb about us... Codesta helps companies design and create software products. We use a balance of people and process to turn ideas into innovative products. Our clients want to produce new products quickly and collaboratively using whatever toolset is needed to get the job done. We take an extreme amount of pride in our ability to contribute to our clients’ success by building robust, well architected applications. With offices in Palo Alto, California and Toronto, Canada, Codesta has built new products for companies across North America in sectors ranging from mobile to pharmaceutical to consumer imaging.

Mobile Monday -- Google Insights on Mobile Devices

Alex Nicolaou and Punit Soni of Google did a good job tonight of presenting Google's mobile vision.  I don't think any of their presentation was too surprising given announcements related to abandoning Gears for HTML5, HTML5 video support going into YouTube, and Google's focus on web applications in general. It is good to see this strategy spelled out, accompanied by compelling demos and presented to a large audience.

A number of the demos focused on HTML5's ability to do local storage of data and included showing a Google calendar web application working with and without a network connection. This, as Alex pointed out, is the future of web applications; a rich javascript application with local storage for speed and reliability and constant access to the cloud to support it all. As we've seen with iPhone apps, very powerful applications can be written using exactly this model.

Alex also demoed a paned version of Gmail mobile for the iPad (which one wag from the audience compared to Outlook from 7 years ago) which was released today.

Making Sense of Agile

Over the years I've attended many events and heard the many, many Agile claims! "Better, Faster, Cheaper" has been repeated over and over again yet confusion persists and the masses still believe Agile is "something for Software Development"...  Why?!?!? Codesta has been using Agile for over 4 years, shouldn't we be able to explain it?

Well... I'm happy to report I think I finally can. Don't get me wrong, I've tried many times before, but never with success I was satisfied with. For instance, I've delivered all of these messages in the past:

• Production Ready Software
• Iterative Software Development
• Balance Between Development and Documentation
• Customer Driven Development
• Multi-Disciplinary Teams
• I could go on and on...

But I was always left feeling a little flat. On Tuesday night, that changed. I attended the TPMA's meeting which was set to discuss "Working with an Agile Development Team". Like I said, I've been here before, but one eureka moment later, and I was a "new Agile man". The Agile tenet that I failed to convey, and I believe is most important, is that Agile enables you to skip ever having to discuss, document, design and develop the majority of software features you don't need.

While sitting on the TPMA's panel Gino Marckx, Agile Practice Lead at ThoughtCorp, shared that 45% of all software features are NEVER USED! When you think about that, it's a staggering statement. If you've ever developed a piece of software, you likely know that every detail (to varying degrees) is discussed, documented, designed and developed. If you took an approach that eliminated this waste, you'd save 45% of your time and money. Said another way... That's like driving your car almost twice as far on the same tank of gas!

Now if only I could find a process well suited for "sifting the wheat from the chaff"! Wait a moment... Agile!

Agile, regardless of whether you're using Scrum, Lean, RUP, XP etc... is really about the backlog. It's the domain a product manager is supposed to control and determines what gets done. Philosophically, the number one item in your backlog is supposed to represent the next unit of work that is most valuable to your users, customers, company etc... It's the wheat in your bread, and ultimately what should butter your bread! If you're disciplined with your approach, the chaff (aka the waste, or more eloquently described as the "lower priority items") should always filter down the list. Ultimately, the chaff should never be developed. Why? Because change happens. Priorities shift, new products are introduced, disruptive competitors enter the market etc... etc... Change is always happening and enabling your company to manage change saves you time and money.

Now note the use of the work "disciplined" above. Agile is often described as "less process" or "more loosey-goosey". I would contend that just because a process is lighter, doesn't automatically make it easier. Any parent will tell you Magic 1-2-3 is an easy technique to comprehend, but just as the book tells you... "It's the implementing which is the hard part". Agile is exactly the same. Implement whatever flavour of Agile you want, but if you're undisciplined prepare to watch it go sideways in a hurry. Agile is not a panacea, it's a philosophy which requires your attention and participation. The good news? If you do it, and stick with it, the results (and savings) should follow. Agile isn't just for developers anymore... I believe it's the best thing going for Product Managers too.

Out with IE6, Please In with the New

Sometimes we come across articles that are so near and dear to our hearts we feel we just to need to share them again. One such topic is Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. Many times we're asked why development efforts cost extra, or worse "so much more", when clients include IE6. It's always a hard question to answer, but we try, often with mixed results. Similarly Tom Conlon, writer for Popular Science, remarks:

"...Those unfamiliar with the Internet Explorer 6 saga might wonder what the big deal is."

It's for this reason that we had to read Tom's article "Inside the Excruciatingly Slow Death of Internet Explorer 6" published March 1st, 2010 on popsci.com. In his article, Tom shares key reasons for why the industry has been so slow to move off IE6, including:

1. It's estimated that 20% of Internet users are still using the browser! Wow, considering it's almost 10 years old.
2. IT Drag - Enterprise IT departments, particularly those in slow moving industries like Pharmaceuticals and Medicine, are hesitant to install new clients and invest in new development efforts to make existing systems just work.

Tom, and many others, theorize that there are other drivers extending IE6's lifespan. Regardless, IE6 remains a standards non-compliant browser (no CSS support for instance) and a headache for developers worldwide. Unfortunately, this headache is going to last a while with Microsoft officially supporting Windows XP, including IE6, through April 8th, 2014.

Realizing the Future with HP

On Wednesday I had the good fortune of attending Hewlett Packard's "Realize the Future" meetings in Toronto. I say good fortune because I have the opportunity to attend a lot of events, and it's nice when an organization treats you as well as HP. Paul Tsaparis, CEO of HP Canada, immediately noted that we as attendees have a lot of demands on our time, and he appreciated we chose to spend some with HP. The event was very, very polished, and lots of useful tidbits of information was shared.

Realize the Future focuses on developments in 3 key areas, Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Application Modernization. All 3 topics are near and dear to our hearts at Codesta, and I was interested in any insights they might share in the domain of application modernization. While the session wasn't overwhelming, it was still good...

The day began with 2 hours of keynotes, which in my opinion is never a good idea, but I was pleasantly surprised how the speakers kept things moving along. Highlights included:

1. Paul Tsaparis, CEO of HP Canada - Topic was "Creating Advantage Today and Tomorrow" and I feel Paul did an excellent job communicating the priority for IT organizations to shift how they're spending their budgets. Paul shared that typical IT organizations are spending anywhere from 80% to 90% of their budgets on maintenance and only 10% to 20% on innovation. He positioned HP's strategy as enabling IT organizations to shift their spending, helping reduce maintenance expenses while increasing innovation investment. This is an excellent goal and one many IT organizations should take to heart.
2. Marius Haas, SVP and General Manager, ProCurve Networking - Topic was "Creating Advantage from Converged Infrastructure" and I found Marius' discussion of HP's new FlexFabric networking technology very interesting. A solution which can truly make networks highspeed with low latency and also very easy to provision is an awesome combination.
3. Kristina Robinson, VP and General Manager, Business Intelligence Solutions - Topic was "Creating Advantage Through Insights" and Kristina spent her time discussing the explosive growth of data globally. One factoid I found particularly interesting was HP's assertion that knowledge workers spend 24% of their time just looking for information. They've estimated that time costs $14K USD per worker per annum, which is pretty staggering. If you're looking for a new way to justify your latest BI project, you might want to quote Kristina!
4. Robb Rasmussen, VP and General Manager, Best Shore Services, HP Enterprise Services - Topic was "Creating Advantage Through Applications" and Robb spent time discussing the importance of Software Lifecycle Management. He also shared some of the new developments at HP Labs, including their efforts on Intelligent Infrastructure. Programmable networks is another area of interest for me, and HP has some cool stuff in the works in this area.

Other interesting highlights I picked up over the course of the day include:

1. Application costs are 8% acquisition and 92% maintenance. My favourite quote of the day!
2. HP has 30 Million servers deployed globally, 5 Million of which are Virtual Servers. They anticipate that by 2012 they will have 60 Million virtual servers deployed!
3. HP claims to have the largest install base of Oracle, SAP, VMWare and Linux on its infrastructure.
4. HP estimates storage requirements will grow 6x by 2013!
5. 247 Billion emails will be sent this year! 
6. HP is the 6th largest software manufacturer in the world.

Overall it was a good day, and Codesta certainly continues to be a big advocate of virtualization. We've already seen the benefits of virtual testing environments, Amazon EC2 services and the efficiency of not having to manage your infrastructure. I'm very interested to see how it continues to change our development practices, hopefully resulting in better products for our customers.

Tips and Tricks with Visual Studio

Visual Studio Setup and Deployment Project Tips and Tricks

Setup and deployment projects were a welcome addition to the Visual Studio project templates. They have allowed many a developer an easy way to quickly produce installers for their applications. However, as with most of Microsoft's offerings, you only get so far out of the box and most real-world use cases require one to delve a little further into the workings. So, let us delve!

Having recently created an installer for a web application using the Setup and Deployment project template and after spending much time on Google searching for ways to do certain things, I thought it might be helpful to collect some of my findings together so that others may benefit (and so I have somewhere central to find these answers again next time!).

There are two main areas with respect with respect to deployment projects that I would like to focus on - the use of Custom Actions and Bootstrapping. For an introduction to and basic information regarding Setup and Deployment projects, you can take a look here and here.

1. Custom Actions

Briefly, custom actions allow you to hook into the installation pipeline of the Microsoft Installer. They allow developers to add customized logic (such as creating a database) as part of the installation process and it is through them that you will enhance your installer. Through custom actions, you can add custom logic to any or all of the following phases of installation:

• Install
• Commit
• Rollback
• Uninstall

Each phase corresponds to a public method you can override in your custom actions class and insert required logic. See this for information on creating custom actions and adding to your Setup and Deployment project.

Now that we understand that custom actions are the means by which we can extend Setup and Deployment projects and add additional actions to be performed during installation, let's take a look at some of the basic tasks I have needed to do within an installer that were enabled through custom actions:

1. Creating a database
2. Importing data
3. Adding a desktop shortcut
4. Updating web.config
5. Adding ASP.NET services
6. Handling errors
7. Debugging your custom actions

1. Creating a Database

   While creating a SQL Server database does not require large amounts of math, here I mainly wanted to highlight the awesomeness of the SqlConnectionStringBuilder class. The existence of www.connectionstrings.com proves that I'm not the only one who draws a blank sometimes on proper connection string format! The SqlConnectionStringBuilder class builds it for you (surprise!) which can be very helpful (especially for SQL Express databases). Note the creation of a Trusted connection (connStrBuilder.IntegratedSecurity = true;)

    private void CreateDB(string dbServer, string dbName)
    {
     SqlConnectionStringBuilder connStrBuilder = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder();
     connStrBuilder.InitialCatalog = "master";
     connStrBuilder.DataSource = dbServer;
     connStrBuilder.ConnectTimeout = 5;
     connStrBuilder.IntegratedSecurity = true;
   
     string sql = string.Format("CREATE DATABASE {0}", dbName);
     SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(sql, conn);
   
     //Init connection, open and set db
     conn.ConnectionString = connStrBuilder.ConnectionString;
     cmd.Connection.Open();
     try
     {
     cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
     }
     catch (Exception ex)
     {
     throw ex;
     }
     finally
     {
     cmd.Connection.Close();
     }
    }
   						

   You would call the CreateDB from the Install method as follows:

    public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
    {
     serverName = this.Context.Parameters["dbServer"];
     databaseName = this.Context.Parameters["dbName"];
   
     CreateDB(serverName, databaseName);
    }
   
   						

   You'll note the references to Context.Parameters - the Parameters collection is how information collected by the installer is made available to you in your custom actions. In this example, I had added a custom dialog box to the installer with two textboxes for gathering the names of the database server and database to create. On the Custom Actions view of my Setup and Deployment project, I have set the CustomActionData property to indicate that I want the value from textbox CUSTOMTEXTA1 to be available as dbServer and the value from textbox CUSTOMTEXTA2 to be available as dbName. I have also set the selected target virtual directory name as TGTVDIR. These values are then made available to me in Context.Parameters in my custom action.

   
   

   	/dbServer=[CUSTOMTEXTA1] /dbName=[CUSTOMTEXTA2] /TGTVDIR=[TARGETVDIR]
   						

2. Importing Data

   Any developer who has experience with MySQL, specifically with backing up (bless you, mysqldump) and restoring a database, simply cannot understand why the task is not as smooth with SQL Server. One will quite often wish to create a database and fill it with data as part of the installation process, which with MySQL is dead simple.

   As a solution, Microsoft now has their Database Publishing Wizard, which makes things much easier - here at last is an easy way to script a database. However, I ran into an issue in using (finding) the tool and in my search engine travels I noticed I wasn't the only one so I'll call out the obvious now. The original Database Publishing Wizard was introduced as an easily found and downloadable add-on to SQL Server 2005. Since the introduction of SQL Server 2008, the downloadable version was apparently done away with and the functionality is now an included feature. Thus you will find many Microsoft blogs/articles etc. insisting that Database Publishing Wizard should show up as a context menu item in both Visual Studio 2008 and within SQL Management Studio when you right-click on a database node - it does not. At least not for myself and a host of other developers with access to google (see here for an example). However, right-clicking on a database node and selecting Tasks->Generate Scripts will give you the payoff you're looking for. I never did find out why the discrepancy and I lost interest after I found the indicated solution.

   My main reason for wanting to talk about importing data is due to an issue I encountered with running my database install script. It seems to be specific to SQL Server 2008, but I am not 100% certain of that. The problem I encountered is that SQL Server would run out of memory while running my import script! The exact error I was getting is "There is insufficient system memory in resource pool 'internal' to run this query". I was trying to execute the script in one go using the ExecuteNonQuery() method of SqlCommand class and even though it wasn't a particularly long script, I kept encountering the problem (there appears to be some known issue with SQL Server in this regard - see this article for more information). Suffice it to say that my interest lay (and lies) not in tracking down or even understanding SQL Server issues but in writing code so I needed a solution that didn't involve me tinkering with or reading any more about SQL Server 2008. The long and short of it is that in order to run the data import script, I had to break my script into individual commands and run them one by one (oh, and restarting the SQL Server service is also helpful). The code snippet below shows this process:

    private void ExecuteSql(string dbServer, string dbName, string sql)
    {
     SqlConnectionStringBuilder connStrBuilder = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder();
     connStrBuilder.UserID = "MyDBUserId";
     connStrBuilder.Password = "MyDBUserPassword";
     connStrBuilder.InitialCatalog = "master";
     connStrBuilder.DataSource = dbServer;
     connStrBuilder.ConnectTimeout = 5;
   
     SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(sql, conn);
   
     //Init connection, open and set db
     conn.ConnectionString = connStrBuilder.ConnectionString;
     cmd.Connection.Open();
     cmd.Connection.ChangeDatabase(dbName);
     try
     {
     string[] commands = sql.Split(new string[] { "GO\r\n", "GO", "GO\t" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
     foreach (string c in commands)
     {
      cmd.CommandText = c;
      cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
     }
     }
     catch (Exception ex)
     {
     throw ex;
     }
     finally
     {
     cmd.Connection.Close();
     }
    }
   						

   Hope this is helpful to someone.

3. Adding a Desktop Shortcut

   For desktop applications, creating a shortcut using the Setup and Deployment project template is quite simple. However, to create a shortcut to a web application is a little more involved (or can be). For a recently developed web application, I created an installer that allowed the user to set the web server and the virtual directory into which to install the application. I then needed to dynamically create a shortcut to the application using the user-set values. I accomplished this through a custom action as shown below.

    private void CreateShortcut()
    {
     string vdirPath = this.Context.Parameters["TGTVDIR"];
     System.Configuration.Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(string.Format(@"/{0}", vdirPath));
     string path = config.FilePath.Replace("web.config","");
     string shortcutFileName = string.Format(@"{0}\MyWebApplication.lnk", Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.DesktopDirectory));
   			
     WshShellClass shell = new WshShellClass();
     IWshRuntimeLibrary.IWshShortcut shortcut = (IWshRuntimeLibrary.IWshShortcut)shell.CreateShortcut(shortcutFileName);
     shortcut.TargetPath = string.Format("http://localhost/{0}", vdirPath);
     shortcut.Description = "Launch MyWebApplication";
     shortcut.IconLocation = string.Format(@"{0}MyWebApplication.ico",path);
   			
     shortcut.Save();
    }
   						

   NOTE: In order to use the WshShellClass class, you will need to add a reference to the Windows Script Host Object Model COM object.

   
   

4. Updating web.config

   Sometime you want to update the web.config your application ships with to reflect the user's environment without having the users edit the file themselves. For example, after asking the user for the name of the database server/database and creating the database, you will want to then update the web.config with new connection string information. How/where should this be done? You guessed it! In a custom action:

   	private void UpdateWebConfig(string connectionString)
   	{
   		//virtual directory passed in from installer in CustomActionData
   		string vdirPath = this.Context.Parameters["TGTVDIR"];
   
   		try
   		{
   			//open the web.config
   			System.Configuration.Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(string.Format(@"/{0}", vdirPath));
   
   			//change the connectionString for the DB
   			config.ConnectionStrings.ConnectionStrings["MyAppsConnectionStrings"].ConnectionString = connectionString;
   			config.Save();
   		}
   		catch (Exception ex)
   		{
   			throw ex;
   		}
   	}
   						

5. Adding ASP.NET Services

   Adding ASP.NET services (membership, profiles etc.) to your SQL Server database is normally accomplished using the aspnet_reqsql.exe command line tool, but you can also accomplish this programmatically within your custom action. Instead of trying to execute the actual aspnet_regsql.exe using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(), there is an easier way built into the .NET framework:

   	//Add ASP.NET membership service
   	SqlConnectionStringBuilder connStrBuilder = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder();
   	connStrBuilder.InitialCatalog = "master";
   	connStrBuilder.DataSource = serverName;
   	connStrBuilder.IntegratedSecurity = true;
   	SqlServices.Install(dbName, SqlFeatures.All, connStrBuilder.ConnectionString);
   						

   Where the SqlFeatures enum has the following values:

   • None
   • Membership
   • Profile
   • RoleManager
   • Personalization
   • SqlWebEventProvider
   • All

6. Handling Errors

   When something unexpected goes wrong during the installation process, the installer automatically rolls back any changes it has made during the incomplete installation. However, this does not extend to any custom actions performed by you. If there are any changes that your custom action code performed that should be undone, you must undo them yourself by hooking into the installer's Rollback phase. To hook into the Rollback phase, you must override and implement the Rollback method in your custom actions. For example, the following custom action Rollback code deletes the database that was created in the Install method:

    public override void Rollback(IDictionary savedState)
    {
     base.Rollback(savedState);
     //Remove database if we are rolling back for
     //any reason other than because the selected 
     //DB exists (if it does, we don't want to delete an existing DB -
     //it might have useful data
     if (!((bool)savedState["dbExists"]))
     {
     SqlConnection.ClearAllPools();
     Server server = new Server((string)savedState["serverName"]);
     try
     {
      server.Databases[(string)savedState["dbName"]].Drop();
     }
     catch (Exception ex)
     {
      MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
     }
     }
    }
   						

7. Debugging Your Custom Actions

   Before we leave our discussion of useful tasks to perform in a Custom Action, you may want to know how you go about debugging your custom actions (remember, your custom action code is executing within the context of Microsoft Installer, so you can't simply press F5 in Visual Studio and start debugging). Like debugging any other external code, you can attach directly to the running installer process using the 'Attach to Process' command from the Visual Studio Debug menu, or (simpler) you can force a debugger break in your custom action code which will invoke the debugger and start debugging from the point of the break. See below:

    public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
    {
     System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
   
     //Custom action code...
    }
   
   						

So there you have it - hopefully the explanation of some of these common installation activities that can be performed using custom actions has been useful for you. Now let's talk a little about installer prerequisites.

2. Prerequisites and Bootstrapping

Most applications developed with Visual Studio will have some sort of dependency upon one component or another and will require that said components are installed on the machine before the application will run/install (e.g. a particular version of the .NET framework, Crystal Reports, Sql Server etc.). Setup and Deployment projects allow you to install other components as part of the installation of your application (a process known as 'bootstrapping'). Visual Studio comes with several components to get you going and, with a little effort you can create your own bootstrap packages for components not included with Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2008 comes with the following prerequisites:

• .NET Framework 2.0
• Visual C++ Runtime Libraries
• Windows Installer 3.1
• .NET Framework Client Profile
• .NET Framework 3.0
• .NET Framework 3.5
• Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008
• Microsoft Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Report Viewer
• Sql Server Compact 3.5
• Microsoft Visual Basic PowerPacks 1.2
• Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 3.0 Runtime Service Pack 1
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2

All the required information for the various Bootstrapper packages are defined using xml files that Visual Studio consumes to find and understand everything about a package (what files are included, any related products or prerequisites, what to do on install error etc.).

1. Specifying Prerequisites

   To specify prerequisites for your application, select Properties for your Setup and Deployment project and click the "Prerequisites" button.

   
   

   This will bring up a list of available bootstrapper packages on your machine.

   
   

   Note the section for specifying install location. If you wish to include the prerequisite binaries as part of your installer instead of the user needing to download them as needed (e.g. think of an installation that must be accomplished without internet access), then you can tell Visual Studio to download them from the same location as your application, which will package the prerequisite with your installer (and potentially bloat the size tremendously - e.g. the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 package adds 191MB to the installer!).

2. Custom Prerequisites

   It is possible for a developer to create their own bootstrap packages that will be detected by Visual Studio and thereafter added as a prerequisite to a Setup and Deployment project. The list of boostrapper packages available to Visual Studio is generated based upon available packages in the \Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\ directory.

   
   

   In order to make new prerequisites available to your Setup and Deployment projects, you must create your own bootstrapper packages and deploy them into this directory. While it is possible to create the requisite xml describing the package by hand, you will make your life so much easier if you make use of a Microsoft tool called the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator (BMG), available here. The BMG tool guides you through various options for your package using an easy GUI and once you have made various selections regarding your package, it will then compile the results for you into xml files (product.xml and package.xml). See the included help file for more information. Oh, by the way make sure you explicitly set the exit code for success - I had a package that kept failing with the message "Installation successful" (very confusing, that!). It turns out it was because relying on the default treatment of system exit codes was not sufficient and I had to explicitly set exit code 0 as a success code.

   As an example, here is the product.xml and package.xml code for a bootstrapper package I created for the ASP.NET MVC runtime:
   

   product.xml:

   ?<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Product ProductCode="ASP.NET.MVC" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
    <RelatedProducts>
   	<DependsOnProduct Code="Microsoft.Net.Framework.3.5.SP1" />
   	<DependsOnProduct Code="Microsoft.Windows.Installer.3.1" />
    </RelatedProducts>
   						

   
   package.xml:

   ?<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Package Name="DisplayName" Culture="Culture" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/2004/01/bootstrapper">
    <PackageFiles CopyAllPackageFiles="false">
    <PackageFile Name="aspnetmvc1.msi" HomeSite="http://www.asp.net/mVC/download/" PublicKey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
    </PackageFiles>
    <Commands Reboot="Defer">
    <Command PackageFile="aspnetmvc1.msi" EstimatedInstallSeconds="30">
    <ExitCodes>
    <ExitCode Value="0" Result="Success" />
    <DefaultExitCode Result="Fail" String="Anunexpectedexitcodewasr" FormatMessageFromSystem="true" />
    </ExitCodes>
    </Command>
    </Commands>
    <Strings>
    <String Name="Culture">en</String>
    <String Name="DisplayName">ASP.NET MVC 1.0</String>
    <String Name="Anunexpectedexitcodewasr">An unexpected exit code was returned from the installer. The installation failed.</String>
    </Strings>
   </Package>
   						

   This article showing how to include the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 as a prerequisite is a good reference for the process.

I hope these tips will be helpful for you in extending the usefulness of Setup and Deployment Projects and the breadth of available prerequisite packages.

Seven iPhone Development Rules of Thumb

I've been an Apple developer since it was called NeXT and found the following rules of thumb helpful when introducing new people to Apple development.

1. Read the introductory documentation.  Build a simple application.  Read the documentation again.

The Apple development environment is very different from other application development environments. There is going to be some ramp up time. This isn't like learning .NET after you learned Java.

Expect to throw away your first couple of applications.

2. Don't buck the system.

This is a general theme in the Apple world. If you do things the Apple way, life is pretty easy. If you try to do things the MFC/.NET/Java way... it will be very hard.

Apple heavily uses the delegate pattern. Don't fight it. Apple's view of MVC is a little odd. Adapt.

3. If it seems hard, you're probably doing it wrong.

The Apple developer forums are full of people tracking down difficult problems that are solved by simply doing it in a slightly different way. Not all of these are cases of RTFM, sometimes it's just a trick that all the experienced developers know and you just need to ask.

If something seems harder than it should, head for Google or Bing sooner rather than later!

4. Respect "Apple doesn't want you to do this".

Apple makes customization of most things easy and customization of things it doesn't really want you mucking with very hard. This has been the case since Mac OS X was NeXTStep and cell phones were the size of a brick.

Apple has stringent rules on iPhone apps. Apple wants you to do things a certain way, so just go with the program. Or develop for Android/Blackberry/Pre.

5. Understand retain, copy, release and autorelease.

Really, really understand them. You need to know at a visceral level when to retain or copy, when to release and when to autorelease.

If you run into a retain/release imbalance, stop and think about it until you understand where you went wrong. Don't just start inserting retains and releases until the problem goes away. If you really think about these every time it won't be too long before you never create them again.

6. Learn the difference between should, will and did methods.

Create a simple delegate example and log when every method is called. Read the documentation before and after you think you understand how this all works.

7. Don't ignore warnings.

Warnings are often telling you that your code doesn't do what you think it is  doing. Or that things don't work the way you think they do. 

Beyond Pathauto

The Pathauto module is the Drupal supplied solution to automatically create URL aliases based on the title of a node. You can adjust this in the Pathauto configuration following some basic patterns, but sometimes this is not enough.

Drupal has another mechanism with which you can create custom URL’s for each node. One just has to edit the node, find the “URL path settings” fieldset, and add an alias to that node. If you have a website that publishes a lot of content, doing this manually will become tedious, error prone, and even impractical.

We had a requirement on a recent project where there were Drupal nodes that had to be accessible from a URL that was not possible to automatically generate with the Pathauto module. Our custom content type stored data for a media review that was one of several types: a video game review, movie review, book review and so on. For SEO purposes, we needed to generate a URL based on the review type and its title, for example a game would have the URL games/game-title, a movie would have movies/movie-title. The problem with the Pathauto module was that it could only categorize a content type with one type of URL pattern so all reviews could be stored in games/game-title or movies/movie-title, but not both. Using a custom Drupal module allows you the flexibility to create different URL alias patterns based on your own rules and data. Here is how:

Step 1: Configure Pathauto

• Go to the Pathauto configuration page at "/admin/settings/pathauto".
• Click on the "Node Path Settings" field set.
• Find the Label "Pattern for all Page", then set the "pattern" for that content type.
• For now we just need to add the "[title]" pattern in the text box. 

Step 2: Create a Module:

We need to create a module that is the same name as the CCK content type you have existing in your system. In our case we would create a module named Review.module. (Please see Drupal documentation for how to add modules).

Step 3: Override the Hook Nodeapi:

What we will do in the module is hijack this pattern and add what we want to it.
In the review.info module you will need to add a dependency with the AutoPath module to ensure that it is turned on for this to work (Please see Drupal documentation for how to add module dependencies).

Next edit the review.module file and add the following code.

// This allows us to use the functions defined in the
// autopath module.
require_once '../modules/contrib/pathauto/pathauto.module';

//Now all we need to do is to overload the node_api hook

function review_nodeapi (&$node, $op, $a3 = NULL, $a4 = NULL){

  $is_inserting = FALSE;
  if ($node->type == 'review') {
if ($op ==  'insert'){
  $is_inserting = TRUE;
}

// Preparing the array for the URL alias insertion   
$placeholders = pathauto_get_placeholders('node', $node);

// Detect what type it is, and modify the title
// the Pathauto module must be enabled for this to work.
// $node->node_type stores the type of review
//  (‘game’,’music’, ‘movie’)
$node_type = $node->node_type;

// pathauto_cleanstring removes all spaces and special
// characters from the title in preparation of url format.
$cleantitle = pathauto_cleanstring($node->title, FALSE);

// The url that will be created: 
$cleantitle = ‘reviews/’ . $node_type . '/'. $cleantitle;

// Place it in the array in the 15, 16 position
// (this indicates it is a alias for a node)
$placeholders['values'][15] = $cleantitle;
$placeholders['values'][16] = $cleantitle;
if ($is_inserting) {
  pathauto_create_alias('node', 'insert', $placeholders,
"node/" .$node->nid,  $node->nid, $node->type);
} else  {
  pathauto_create_alias('node', 'update', $placeholders,
"node/" .$node->nid,  $node->nid, $node->type);
}
  } // end if node->type = ‘review’
} // end node_api hook

Now any time you add a review it will have a url alias that consists of www.yoursite.com/reviews/[review-type]/[title-of-review]’

Drupal: Easing Content Type Proliferation

In this blog post we will show you how to allow content editors to edit similar but different "pages" in Drupal, all based on a shared content type without confusion, by hiding the unnecessary form elements.

There can be times when you wish to create several similar content types that only differ slightly from one another (perhaps by a field or two). Let’s take a website that posts environmental warnings on different types of pollution as an example. The site could report air pollution, water pollution and ground pollution warnings. One option is to create 3 separate content types, one for each type of pollution. Air pollution may have an air quality index field, while ground pollution may have a field that shows how it affects the property value of nearby buildings. The point here is that most of the fields for all 3 content types are the same. Discovery Date, Detail Review, Severity, and so on. An alternative implementation is to use one content type called Pollution and a field in that content type named ‘Pollution_type’. This field in the content type would allow us the flexibility to know what type of pollution we are dealing with.

The problem comes when an environmental investigator wishes to add a new air pollution warning. They will see a Drupal form with a ground pollution area field, land value field and all the other fields which are not related to the air pollution type. This can make the user interface crowded with unrelated fields, and unusable. So how can we have one content type and one form which adapts to the type of pollution a user has selected? 

Simple.

By overriding the node_form.tpl file in the themes directory for the ‘pollution’ node type, we can take full control of the appearance of our form. We can then add some JavaScript, or better yet JQuery, which will hide and show elements based on which review type the user has chosen.

Step 1: Set Up CCK Fields

To set this example up we need a simple CCK content type with the following fields (please see Drupal documentation about how to create CCK fields):

Review_ type : drop down with default fields: ( 1 – air, 2 – ground, 3 – water)
hazard_time (text box)
area_affected (text box)
warning_date (date)
warning_details (text area)

etc ...

Step 2: Override the Node Form for the Review Content Type

To do so you need to create a function in the template.php file (which will be found in your themes directory). The name of the function will need to take on the following form:

phptemplate_[content_type]_node_form() and in our case the function will look like the following:

function phptemplate_pollution_node_form($form) {
    drupal_add_js('sites/all/modules/js/pollution.js');  

    // Add JQuery to act on the form
    // load the review_node_form.tpl.php file to render this 
    //form.   
    return _phptemplate_callback('pollution_node_form',
    array('form' => $form));  
}

The reason why this works is because when Drupal processes the form for a particular node that has been queued up to render, it will search through the template.php file for a function in the form of phtemplate_[content_type]_node_form: If it finds one it will then load and render the form returned by this function.

Step 3: Render a Custom Form

In the themes directory you need to create the form theme function that is returned by the function in the template.php function. In our example this would be pollution_node_form.tpl.php

Now in the pollution_node_form.tpl.php file we create the HTML and attributes we need to render the form. This includes any tags and classes that will help us when we use JQuery to hide and show the form.

<?php>

<legend> Type And Title </legend>
<?php echo drupal_render($form['field_pollution_type']); ?>
    <?php echo drupal_render($form['title']); ?>
<div id=’warning’>
    <?php echo drupal_render($form['field_warning]); ?>
</div>
<div id= 'land_pollute_field’>
    <?php echo drupal_render($form['field_land_area_affected
]); ?>
</div>
<div id= ‘air_pollute_field’>
    <?php echo drupal_render($form['field_direction_of_
movement]); ?>
</div>
// render other field from the CCK content type ..
<?php>
    // Unset form elements that you don’t want rendered
        unset($form['attachments']);
        unset($form['menu']);
    …
     // Render the rest of the form …
        echo drupal_render($form);
?>

Now to get the JQuery to connect with the HTML id’s of each separate div we add the following JQuery file to the JavaScipt file referred to in Step 2. In our example the file should be named warning.js and be in the /themes/yourtheme/js directory.

$(document).ready( function() {
    // Need to initialize on page load which fields are shown on the page.
    $("#land_pollute_field").css("display","block");
    $("#water_pollute_field").css("display","none");
    $("#air_pollute_field").css("display","none");

    var choice = $("#edit-field-pollution-type").val();  
// You will need to find the ‘id’ of the dropdown list 
    switch(choice) {
        case “land":
            $("#land_pollute_field").css("display","block");
            $("#water_pollute_field").css("display","none");
            $("#air_pollute_field").css("display","none");

        break;
        case "air": 
            
            $("#water_pollute_field").css("display","none");
            $("#land_pollute_field").css("display","none");
            $("#air_pollute_field").css("display","block");

        break;
        case "water":
            $("#land_pollute_field").css("display","none");
            $("#water_pollute_field").css("display","block");
            $("#air_pollute_field").css("display","none");
        break;
});

From here its easy to expand the form and manipulate the layout as needed.