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Kinect SDK – resources for developers

The official Kinect SDK is here, so there shouldn’t be any problems with incompatible frameworks and libraries on Windows systems. That being said, there are already a couple of interesting resources that I would say are important for developers who just start Kinect development, and for those that were already working with it (e.g. with OpenNI or OpenKinect).

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Binaries/Toolkits/Samples

Documentation

Videos

Projects

NOTE: More resources/links will be added as those appear. If you have something to add, leave a link in the comments section below.

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Using the TabControl on Windows Phone 7

By default, the Windows Phone 7 SDK doesn't have a TabControl. It is a quite useful component already available in Silverlight and although it doesn't quite follow the Metro style, it can have its use. For example, some Android applications have a similar UI:

Adding Relevant Features

It is so very important to remember that relevant features sometimes need to be added to a phone to make it as fully operational as we would all like for it to be. Sadly, there are some people who don’t realize that they need to put this kind of time and effort in, and they may end up using a phone that doesn’t have all of the functionality that they deserve it. 

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Using the LongListSelector control on Windows Phone 7

Yesterday I looked into the Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone and I covered some of the controls that are included in the current build. One of the controls that might be a bit unusual to configure and get working is LongListSelector, which allows you to group items inside a list. With a regular ListBox, you can display data but there is no way to jump directly to an item set, and there is no way to group items.

Clumping Items Together

One of the best features of any phone is the ability to clump together large lists of items so that they become easier to sort through. Not every phone has this ability though, and it can be very frustrating for some phone owners who are just trying to go through their lists in the easiest ways possible. 

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Operating with image files in a Windows Phone 7 application

Images Add to the Experience

Adding images to something that you are working on in the Windows 7 phone can be a great way to appeal to people in a more full way. This is to say that many users of your programs and services will expect to see images contained within. 

Humans are a visual species, and it is always nice when the tools that we use provide us with the images that we have come to expect from the services that we use. 

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Develop Web Apps in F# with WebSharper

A New Programming Language Has Grabbed the Spotlight

Programmers universally stand up and take notice when a new programming language takes hold. Sometimes, those programmers are eager to give it a try and see what it is all about. In other cases, they may pan the whole thing as not being the right fit for what they need out of it. 

Either way, there is no question that programmers will at least take a look at what this new language is about and try to determine on their own if it has real value for them or not. Right now, that programming language is F#. 

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5-minute Observable.FromAsyncPattern sample for Windows Phone 7

If you are looking to create code that models the observable.fromAsyncPattern, you can get started with some basic key types. You’ll need to be able to develop your own implementations from IObserver or IObservable.

Here you can develop the sequences you want with the data that you want. Learn the basic elements of observable sequences, how to get values into them, and how to select the values you want from them. 

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Real email accounts inside the Windows Phone emulator

You can now get email accounts with the Windows Phone Emulator. With this Mail app, you can have all your email accounts in one place. You don’t have to access your emails to different websites or apps.

While you couldn't do this easily in the past, you can use the Windows Phone Emulate to do this. Windows Phone Emulator is a tool that comes with various features for development. For instance, documentation, emulator images, tools for Visual Studio, and obtaining a sample code.

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Using application settings in Windows Phone 7 apps

Many applications have user input that should be somehow preserved in order to be restored when the application starts again. This includes preferences, URLs, general information, and whatnot. As in any other .NET application, a Windows Phone 7 application supports application settings.

Although the concept is similar, the way it is implemented is a bit different compared to regular console applications, for example. The way you are used to access them is through Properties.Settings.Default or through the Application Properties dialog. Both of these options are not available in a Windows Phone 7 application.

Instead, you should use IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings, which is a member of the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace. The application settings are stored in a local application-scoped file that can, in fact, be created via IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication().CreateFile(path). 

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How to run multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator

It’s not that difficult to run multiple instances of a Windows Phone 7 emulator, or any other mobile emulator for that matter, when you’re doing testing, development, or having some DIY fun! 

You can run multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator by generating unique GUIDs for each instance that you need to run. You’ll also need to pass a VMID in order to get these multiple instances working. You can also run multiple instances of later versions of Windows phones like Windows Mobile 10. 

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What’s the Difference Between Static Class vs. Singleton Patterns in C#?

When developing apps with C# in the .NET framework, you have a choice between two single, shared class instances. Whether you decide to use a static keyword or a singleton design pattern depends on several factors, which are outlined in the article below.          

Key Differences Between Static Classes and Singleton Patterns

Put simply, a singleton is a pattern while a static class is a keyword. This means you can create one, persistent instance across an application’s entire lifespan with a singleton. The nifty thing about singletons is that a single instance can be used as a parameter for other methods. On the other hand, static classes only permit static methods and can’t be passed as parameters. 

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How to Provision an Azure SQL Database With Active Directory Authentication

In this article, we will talk about how to provision an Azure SQL Database with authentication restricted to Active Directory users/groups/applications. We will use Pulumi to do that.

Why This Article?

In a previous article, I already talked about connecting to an Azure SQL Database using Azure Active Directory authentication. However, my focus was on querying an Azure SQL Database from C# code (from an ASP.NET 6 Minimal API that was using Microsoft.Data.SqlClient "Active Directory Default" authentication mode, to be more precise), and not on the configuration of the Azure AD authentication itself.

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Functional Testing For ASP.NET Core API

What Is Functional Testing, Actually?

Functional testing is the process through which we determine if a piece of software is acting following pre-determined requirements. It uses black-box testing techniques, in which the tester does not know the internal system logic.

In the scope of API, we need to prepare possible requests that we expect to get and be sure that endpoints return a proper response for any payload.

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Desktop High-Performance Computing

Ever since Amazon Web Services debuted in 2008, builders of complex engineering software systems have had increasingly powerful ways to scale heavy computational workloads in the cloud. 

Calculations that previously would have required the purchase of dozens of expensive servers can now be executed at a fraction of the cost in AWS. Unfortunately, not all engineering software packages are server-based, much less cloud-based. 

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How to Vaults and Wallets for Simple, Secure Connectivity

This is the third in a series of blogs on data-driven microservices design mechanisms and transaction patterns with the Oracle converged database. The first blog illustrated how to connect to an Oracle database in Java, JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Go as succinctly as possible. The second blog illustrated how to use that connection to receive and send messages with Oracle AQ (Advanced Queueing) queues and topics and conduct an update and read from the database using all of these same languages.  The goal of this third blog is to provide details on how to secure connections in these same languages as well as convenience integration features that are provided by microservice frameworks, specifically Helidon and Micronaut.

When making secure connections to Oracle databases there are two items to consider, the wallet and the password. We will discuss and provide examples of both in this blog.

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Developing Event-Driven Microservices

This is the second in a series of blogs on data-driven microservices design mechanisms and transaction patterns with the Oracle converged database. The first blog illustrated how to connect to an Oracle database in Java, JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Go as succinctly as possible. The goal of this second blog is to use that connection to receive and send messages with Oracle AQ (Advanced Queueing) queues and topics and conduct an update and read from the database using all of these same languages.

Advanced Queuing (AQ) is a messaging system that is part of every Oracle database edition and was first released in 2002. AQ sharded queues introduced partitioning in release 12c and is now called Transaction Event Queues (TEQ).