Windows Store for Developers

Windows store is really an important part of Windows 8 platform. Windows store is the place where user find the metro-style apps. Windows Store is the distribution point for metro style applications.

The idea behind building the windows store is connecting people to as many apps as possible.

Additional details about the Developer opportunity coming on windows 8 with the windows store. Windows store is designed to make it as easy as possible for people to find out.

The minimal hierarchy helps to place as many as apps on surface, you are tap away to find the app on store. The navigation is simple and easy to use like windows 8 model. The idea behind the design is to get people to tap these tiles, Behind each tile there is a app listing page. This is the surface area for the developer for you to really establish both character and capability of your app.

Windows Store is an opportunity to reach wider range of audience with free and paid apps in various categories.

The opportunity for you as developer is completely unprecedented. Every iPhone, iPad, Android phone and Android Tablet and Mac sold in last two years can be viewed in below picture

What is SharePoint Solution Package?

What is SharePoint Solution Package?

SharePoint has a system which bundles all the components of a SharePoint Foundation extension in to a single file which is called a Solution Package. The Solution Package file has the extension .wsp.

The contents of solutions package are

• Assemblies
• Web Parts Site Definition files - Site definition is a unique type of SharePoint website. It contains (onet.xml, webtemp*.xml, and default.aspx)
• Application Pages - these can be .aspx pagesResource files and resources- Resource files (can be *.doc or *.xls ) and Resources are (*.resx)

Developers can easily change the site functionality using package files. It enables administrators to easily install the solution packages on server farm in one action instead of installing separately to each server on farm.

The solution package contains a manifest file and it tells the deployment engine what it should with those files inside manifest.

Solution packages have a hierarchical structure, Manifest file is at the root, Feature, resource and site definition directories are in subdirectories.

Microsoft Codename Cloud Numerics

Microsoft Codename "Cloud Numerics" is a new .NET programming framework which can be used to perform intensive numeric computations on large distributed data sets. If you are

someone who works with large data sets, extracting the data and forming and simulating the models then you might need more computing power and memory. What to do? Is cloud is the option?? Is that possible

to analyze the data and message computing using Cloud? There is a solution with Microsoft Codename "Cloud Numerics" it is easy to write models and applications and can handle the large datasets. You can use visual studio to write these types of applications. Create a project of type Cloud Numerics Application in Visual Studio. You immediately have a access to an extensive set of numericals functions ranging from basic mathematics to statistics and algebra.

ASP.NET Web API

ASP.NET Web API is Framework for building for building HTTP services on top of the .NET Framework. It ships with ASP.NET MVC 4. You can install the ASP.NET MVC 4 fromhere. ASP.NET Web API is a integrated Framework resulted in joint effort from WCF and ASP.NET teams. WCF REST is now replaced by ASP.NET Web API. You can read thepostto migrate your existing WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API. This post briefly discuss about why we need it and how we can use it in ASP.NET and other projects.

Why use ASP.NET Web API?

• Reach More Clients– By creating HTTP services by using client appropriate formats you making your application broadly available. Your services not just consumed by browsers but also client applications, mobile applications and other devices. In this way you are having interoperability with other applications directly by consuming your services
• ASP.NET Web API uses content negotiation which makes it easy to provide the right format for each client like XML, JSON or custom formats
• Scale with the Cloud –by using fully asynchronous task based service framework which provide light-weight hosting options including windows azure web or worker roles.

Embrace HTTPHTTP is an application level protocol and is supported on clients. It really simplifies the communication with clients.

T-SQL features in SQL Server 2012

This post discuss about new T-SQL features in SQL Server 2012. The features which I am going to discuss here are Window Functions. Windowing and additional analytic functions are very cool and they are replacing cursors in T-SQL. Cursors are still available for use but windowing functions give better performance over cursors.

What is window function?

Window function is a function that applied against a set of rows. It allows you to do grouping and also allows you to see individual rows in one query.

Usually when you do group by you can only see the things that are in group by and aggregates. Suppose if I want to see sales group by sales person and also want to see individual rows that sales person sold then You can achieve this in SQL Server 2005 using over clause. Over clause always let you return groups and individuals in same row.

In 2005 we also have ranking functions using over clause. You can also use ranking functions with aggregate functions. What you do not have in 2005 is you did not have order by ability or selecting a window frame for result set.