In my current Project we have a UI, where Business analysts write down rules to transform database columns, which Programmers pick up and then code it using COBOL.
I'm working with my team to transform this UI so that we can automate this process so that we can minimize most of the coding exercise as most of the rules are pretty simple, for ex: Mapping values based on another column, Date Formatting, CASE/IF-THEN-ELSE types.
Before building something from scratch I wanted to make sure that there isn't something which can help us, (tool/framework).
Please suggest
Details: We are trying to develop as a desktop application, Windows Standalone application, using c# or Dot net.
There are things called rules engine. You can check out for something like Dro
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I need to draw a more elaborate Mindmap to present my test strategy to my client. I have no experience of creating mind map with any tool.
Can someone suggest any good mindmap making tool?
For "pure" mind mapping I would suggest Freeplane (free and open source). I know people using Freeplane for professional test case generation. Very helpful in this respect are
extensive scripting support that can be used to support testcase entry and for customized exports
multiple fields per node that can be used for different purposes: attributes (tabular data), notes, detail
If your primary focus is the generation of presentations then you should probably use a different tool.
For more elaborate mindmap I would suggest XMind.
With XMind you can even create testcases inside your mindmap using its matrix features. There are lots more features like:
Timeline
Gantt view
Filters
Drilldown
Try https://github.com/mindolph/Mindolph , this desktop application provides features that you can create and manage mind map easily.
You may try online service MindMup or desktop ConceptDraw MINDMAP. Though the first one is not that professional and intuitive as ConceptDraw tool, it is free. The second product has a 21-day trial period, brainstorm mode, multiple hyperlinks, export to MS PowerPoint or Web pages and so on.
I need to create an application to auto generate C code. ie. User can design the logic from the G-UI using basic blocks from C. This is similar to Matlab Code Generation. I need to do this using .net framework. When I search for the samples, I've seen about rehosting workflow foundation. I don't have any idea about WF4. Can you please anybody tell me is it possible to do the designer(Design is like flowchart) using WF4? And also I have seen some samples using MFC? I'm not sure which one can be applicable for my situation..
I think you are confusing the Flowchart and Rehosted Workflow designer in WF as some kind of UI to draw the flowcharts.
Workflows are meant for executing business process and the different blocks like If-Else
While etc help to implement a business logic.
Workflow Designer just provides a visual way of representing those if else / whiles etc so that developers and possible super users of the application can modify the business logic in a more visual manner instead of writing them using code.
I've used MVC before and really like the way it is organized but at times I have to go back to working on ASP.net Webform applications and really wonder what the best way to organize the code is.
Does anyone know of resources that deal with just that? I am pretty familiar with C# but would like to gain further insight.
An example would be a news article portion of a website.
You'd have a web form to display the data to users and then one for administrators to post the articles. Do you simply do everything in the code behind or do you farm it out to another controller-like class you've created?
Break the logical components into separate modules, which could mean separate namespaces; so you might end up with separate assemblies as well.
You cannot code everything into the code-behind; especially if you are doing a large project. All you need to do is to decide on the data exchange contract between modules, or layers. You should clearly specify the module1 guy that you will need a method Foo(param1, param2, param2):bool, and you expect it to translate news into another language.
I've been looking into ASP.NET Dynamic Data and how it does scaffolding and routing. I've only scratched the surface, but it's looking like I'd have to create a template for each table that I didn't want to display all columns the same way.
My first impression after looking at dynamic data is that it would seem like less time on the programmer to have to edit one-time generated user controls rather than build a template for each table that doesn't have a uniform display behavior.
What proven solutions are people currently using that help ease the laborious tasks of creating ASP.NET CRUD type user controls?
Thanks
In ASP.NET webforms we use CodeSmith. From a single entity we generate admin pages, codebehinds, service layers, data layers and db stored procedures. All in a matter of seconds. I'd recommend you check it our for quickly building the crud in your apps.
We're actually working on our own code generation tool. It has already proven to work perfectly on the lower layers and now we're on the way to extend it for the presentation layer, that is for generating user controls.
I've not looked into dynamic data (although I'd like to when I have some time) but my biggest fear is always to lose flexibility. The problem is that these front-ends are then maybe generated dynamically each time based on some template and editing, especially bringing in special customer wishes becomes quite difficult. For small standard apps it may work perfectly though.
What we're therefore doing is to "generate" these usercontrols based on a set of standard custom server controls we've developed, but we'll generate just the first time from some static information about the entities in our application. Then you can continue customizing.
Such systems should help the developer, improving his development speed, doing the initial awkward work but then they should give him the flexibility to modify till the maximum. They should not add additional complexity...
I used .netTiers CodeSmith templates long time ago (years) and it was proven so strong, so, it must be more than great now.
I know a (big) company who have built a customization engine (allowing GUI for internal company options) around those templates to use them in most of their applications and were so successful.
I've used http://www.ironspeed.com/ in the past which has been great. Saved us MONTHS of time on our last project which has a big DB, so the cost is worth it. But it looks a bit ugly and can be tricky to update the DB schema once you've generated.
Obviously not much widespread use out there other than whats provided in Visual Studio.
Have a look at Blinq.
A client wants to "Web-enable" a spreadsheet calculation -- the user to specify the values of certain cells, then show them the resulting values in other cells.
(They do NOT want to show the user a "spreadsheet-like" interface. This is not a UI question.)
They have a huge spreadsheet with lots of calculations over many, many sheets. But, in the end, only two things matter -- (1) you put numbers in a couple cells on one sheet, and (2) you get corresponding numbers off a couple cells in another sheet. The rest of it is a black box.
I want to present a UI to the user to enter the numbers they want, then I'd like to programatically open the Excel file, set the numbers, tell it to re-calc, and read the result out.
Is this possible/advisable? Is there a commercial component that makes this easier? Are their pitfalls I'm not considering?
(I know I can use Office Automation to do this, but I know it's not recommended to do that server-side, since it tries to run in the context of a user, etc.)
A lot of people are saying I need to recreate the formulas in code. However, this would be staggeringly complex.
It is possible, but not advisable (and officially unsupported).
You can interact with Excel through COM or the .NET Primary Interop Assemblies, but this is meant to be a client-side process.
On the server side, no display or desktop is available and any unexpected dialog boxes (for example) will make your web app hang – your app will behave flaky.
Also, attaching an Excel process to each request isn't exactly a low-resource approach.
Working out the black box and re-implementing it in a proper programming language is clearly the better (as in "more reliable and faster") option.
Related reading: KB257757: Considerations for server-side Automation of Office
You definitely don't want to be using interop on the server side, it's bad enough using it as a kludge on the client side.
I can see two options:
Figure out the spreadsheet logic. This may benefit you in the long term by making the business logic a known quantity, and in the short term you may find that there are actually bugs in the spreadsheet (I have encountered tons of monster spreadsheets used for years that turn out to have simple bugs in them - everyone just assumed the answers must be right)
Evaluate SpreadSheetGear.NET, which is basically a replacement for interop that does it all without Excel (it replicates a huge chunk of Excel's non-visual logic and IO in .NET)
Although this is certainly possible using ASP.NET, it's very inadvisable. It's un-scalable and prone to concurrency errors.
Your best bet is to analyze the spreadsheet calculations and duplicate them. Now, granted, your business is not going to like the time it takes to do this, but it will (presumably) give them a more usable system.
Alternatively, you can simply serve up the spreadsheet to users from your website, in which case you do almost nothing.
Edit: If your stakeholders really insist on using Excel server-side, I suggest you take a good hard look at Excel Services as #John Saunders suggests. It may not get you everything you want, but it'll get you quite a bit, and should solve some of the issues you'll end up with trying to do it server-side with ASP.NET.
That's not to say that it's a panacea; your mileage will certainly vary. And Sharepoint isn't exactly cheap to buy or maintain. In fact, short-term costs could easily be dwarfed by long-term costs if you go the Sharepoint route--but it might the best option to fit a requirement.
I still suggest you push back in favor of coding all of your logic in a separate .NET module. That way you can use it both server-side and client-side. Excel can easily pass calculations to a COM object, and you can very easily publish your .NET library as COM objects. In the end, you'd have a much more maintainable and usable architecture.
Neglecting the discussion whether it makes sense to manipulate an excel sheet on the server-side, one way to perform this would probably look like adopting the
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll
Using this library, you can tell Excel to open a Spreadsheet, change and read the contents from .NET. I have used the library in a WinForm application, and I guess that it can also be used from ASP.NET.
Still, consider the concurrency problems already mentioned... However, if the sheet is accessed unfrequently, why not...
The simplest way to do this might be to:
Upload the Excel workbook to Google Docs -- this is very clean, in my experience
Use the Google Spreadsheets Data API to update the data and return the numbers.
Here's a link to get you started on this, if you want to go that direction:
http://code.google.com/apis/spreadsheets/overview.html
Let me be more adamant than others have been: do not use Excel server-side. It is intended to be used as a desktop application, meaning it is not intended to be used from random different threads, possibly multiple threads at a time. You're better off writing your own spreadsheet than trying to use Excel (or any other Office desktop product) form a server.
This is one of the reasons that Excel Services exists. A quick search on MSDN turned up this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/category/11361.aspx. That's a category list, so contains a list of blog posts on the subject. See also Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.WebServices Namespace.
It sounds like you're talking that the user has the spreadsheet open on their local system, and you want a web site to manipulate that local spreadsheet?
If that's the case, you can't really do that. Even Office automation won't help, unless you want to require them to upload the sheet to the server and download a new altered version.
What you can do is create a web service to do the calculations and add some vba or vsto code to the Excel sheet to talk to that service.