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I have released a ASP.net website.
How to document it ?
Is there any tools available in VS2008?
How it can be achieved ? Please help?
Any automatically-generated documentation is useless, in my opinion. Unless you are ready to take your time and describe high-level decisions, structure, code organization and other issues personally, you can safely omit this part.
As it has mentiond good documentation can't be automated. So you can use MS Word. And for any kinds of diagrams I would use MS Visio.
I found this tool, they offer a free trial version. I never used it. Maybe it will help you.
http://www.innovasys.com/products/dx2008/overview.aspx
Quotes from the site:
"Document! X automates the process of creating and maintaining documentation for a wide range of solution elements."
"With Document! X, documentation can be automatically produced throughout design and development without requiring investment of developer resources, providing development teams with an accurate and up to date reference and allowing new developers to jump the learning curve of new components and schemas. Document! X makes producing documentation a natural and productive activity for developers and technical writers alike."
This is a quote from other site about the same tool:
"New features included in Document! X 2008 include compatibility with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, documentation of ASP.NET Ajax Javascript and new templates to replicate the fresh look and feel of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 documentation."
What do you need to document?
The design? You can use sandcastle to generate a code file from the XML comments in your source code. Providing a detailed description of design choices and architecture can't be automated and requires time to document. Provide workflows where necessary to explain processes. You might want to split this document into high level design and detailed design, providing an overview of functionality and then a detailed description of the design. Don't replicate or explain the actual code per se (i.e. "using an integer counter, loop through..."), that's what the source is for.
The application usage? Again, this is something that you will need to spend timing writing. Hopefully you already have a functional specification and use cases for the application and can leverage these to write a user document.
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I have a SQL Server Database. I would really like to quickly generate a middle-tier and a front-end from this database. I would prefer something that generates web forms if possible. I understand that no code-generator will be phenomenal. However, I just want something to get me up and running quickly that I can then customize as needed.
Can anybody recommend any code-generators?
Thank you!
There is ASP.NET Dynamic Data. If you can live with MVC, EF4 and MVC3 would be my choice above Dynamic Data.
I have a friend who is releasing a code generator very soon. You provide xslts based on the data model to create classes at any layer you want. Here is the site: Code Generator
Be sure to check out the sample project.
I have successfully used Code Smith (commercial product).
It is a popular templating engine and you will find many templates on the Internet for all kinds of architecture / data access frameworks.
I have also used plain T4 templates that you can use within Visual Studio without having to install anything (although I would recommend using something like Tangible T4 Editor to get color syntax).
If you have Visual Studio (2005 or greater) you might consider T4 templates. There's a good introductory video at DNRTV. T4 is a little known code generation facility that comes with all editions of Visual Studio (even Express I believe).
On some of my projects I have used MyGeneration, a free and open source code generator. This is also a good option.
You can use Entity Framework to generate objects from database schema, and then use the MVC Framework to generate stronly-typed views that use the said generated objects as models.
Here's a good post on that - http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first-development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx
I'd give SubSonic a try, especially the ActiveRecord version. It basically will generate an interface(with Linq) to an existing SQL Server database, For taking it to forms, I suspect you won't find a very good solution because there are so many implementation details that are commonly placed in webforms, such as XSS prevention, how things should look and behave, etc.
I suggest a tool that I have use for really rapid application development, is the asp.net maker. http://www.hkvstore.com/aspnetmaker/
I have used it for low budget projects, or where I need for a dirty quick solution, until the final gets ready. What I have did is that I create solution for the easy tables, and make code for the one that need too many thinks to be fix.
The pros is that have many future, its very easy and you do not need to know almost anything to make the interface, create from the database, all the environment that can edit it, have the opportunity to make a lot of adjustments, and what you get is a better page than the Scaffold can product.
The negative is that you stick with what this tool product, and you can not update the pages by your self to make some small changes, because is too complicates one, second if anything change, the pages changes, and even if you rename it and not overwrite it, it maybe not working.
You need to test it and see by your self.
Redbrook Technology has a great ASP.NET forms and code generator. It's also very cheap. Give it a try - ASP.NET Generator
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I am currently facing a situation where I as an advocate of test driven development have to compete with an advocate of model driven software development (MDSD) / model driven architecture (MDA).
In my opinion, code generation is a valuable tool in my toolbox and I make heavy use of templates and automation when needed. I also create diagrams in UML when I think this helps to understand the inner working or to discuss architecture on the white board. However, I strongly doubt that creating software via UML (creating statecharts and sequence diagrams to create working code not only skeletons of code) is more efficient for multi tier applications (database layer, business/domain layer and a Gui, maybe even distributed). It seems to me when it comes to MDSD, the CASE tooling suddenly isn't just a tool anymore but it is the thing to satisfy: As I see it, on the one hand, MDSDevelopers profit from the higher abstraction UML gives them but at the same time they are struggling with modifing the codegenerator/template/engine to fullfill their needs which might be easily implemented (and tested) if used another tool out of their toolbox (VisualStudio, Eclipse,...).
All this makes me wonder if there has been a success story (suceess being that the product was rolled out in time, within the budged and with only few bugs and parts of the software have been reused later on) for a real world application which fullfills this creteria and has been developed using a strict model driven approach:
it has nothing to do with the the Object Management Group (OMG) or with consultants related to MDSD/MDA/SOA/
the application is not related to Business Process Modelling and is not a CASE tool itself
the application is actively used by end user
it has at least three tiers, including a user interface which goes beyond displaying raw table values and is not one of the common MDA/MDSD examples ("how to model a coffee machine, traffic light, dishwasher").
A tiny, but nevertheless useful testimonial on the use of MDSD has been posted on the Model Driven Software Network:
http://www.modeldrivensoftware.net/profiles/blogs/viva-mdd-follow-up-building-a?xg_source=activity
It is a relatively small app being developed, but still a good example of MDSD in action.
More success stories are listed at Metacase's site (http://www.metacase.com/cases/index.html). Metacase sells MetaEdit+, which implements DSM (Domain-Specific Modeling). DSM is just a form of MDSD.
I am also developing ABSE (Atom-Based Software Engineering), another form of MDSD, very close to DSM. ABSE is outlined at http://www.abse.info.
I used MDA and code generation on an embedded system project using 4 processors connected via CAN. We had over 20 axes of motion and many, many sensors. The system was highly robust and maintainable as the mechanical components were evaluated and modified.
We worked in the models and generated code so the models were always up-to-date. We did a careful domain analysis to achieve subject matter isolation. The motor control required very high performance and so was not modeled or generated. Our network drivers were also hand-coded, and we wrote interfaces that allowed bridge services to send events to any service anywhere in the system as needed (although this was tightly controlled so as to minimize interprocessor dependencies).
Using the method took a bit of discipline, but having working models was great because they can be reviewed by non-software types.
Version control and differencing of the models was a bit of a challenge but we had a small, localized team so we were able to avoid merge issues.
The good people at Pathfinder Solutions (our tool vendor) can help mentor you through the project.
You could also take a look at the slides from previous Code Generation conferences. Several of these talks were from successful case studies e.g. http://www.codegeneration.net/cg2009/slides.php
I am working on one of the project for legacy modernization and its using MDA tool named Bluage. Its for a big healthcare organization and its in production so i could say that its successful. MDA is better in case of legacy modernization as it can generate KDM model from some technologies like pacbase which are going to be out of support.
I worked on a MDSD system that generated admin style web apps in Google Closure. I believe that your question is compelling. Too much complexity and your MDSD system is too hard to use. Too simple and you won't generate apps that are useful in the real world. Where MDSD really shines is in saving developer time typing lots of plumbing style code but how can MDSD remain effective over multiple releases? Requirements can go in many directions. That is the real challenge. I recently blogged about my MDSD lessons learned on that project.
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I'm looking for a visual regression testing tool for CSS refactoring and see whether or not there are any unintended cascading behavior in a website.
Ideally, the tool that can crawl a website (even locally) and grab snapshots of each page and store it in a single repository.
When run for the second time, it will show the pages that are visually different since the last time it was run.
Even better:
if it can show the overlapper XOR view of the 2 version of the page.
compare rendering results of different browsers (almost like an automated Microsoft Expression Web compare feature).
My current favorite is WebDriverCSS in combination with BrowserStack Automate API. This pair of tools allows for multi-platform, multi-browser regression testing across the very wide range of devices that BrowserStack supports. It requires writing code but is much more comprehensive than any solution bound to Phantom or Slimer.
If you are ok with an old WebKit being your only test UA, here's a great writeup on CSS regression testing using PhantomCSS. Their basic example provides exactly what the original question desired: visual diffs between two commits.
For a simpler tool that requires no coding (only YAML config), I point people towards Wraith more often than PhantomCSS. Give #ericcraio's answer a vote if you like Wraith and don't want to write Casper code.
I know this question has been posted for awhile but I wanted to mention about a new CSS regression tool called wraith by bbc-news.
http://github.com/bbc-news/wraith
It utilizes tools such as phantomJS and imagemagick.
http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/56884056177/wraith
Check out Browser Shots. This is a free service.
There are some restrictions on how many tests you can run each day as a free user. But unlike Litmus; you can run tests on all supported browsers--Litmus only allows free users to test their websites on Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.
I am developing a CSS regression testing tool which is called SUCCSS, it is a npm global, open source: https://github.com/B2F/Succss. Atm, you can read its full documentation there: http://succss.ifzenelse.net
Check out Litmus.
It'll crawl your site and take screen captures has damn near every browser you'd want.
In addition to the core functionality Litmus also allows you to to track bugs, log in to private sites, and allows you to publish compatibility reports from your tests.
What you've described is precisely what Mogotest does. We can log into your site, take screenshots for all the pages you've configured, and do automated comparison using the principles of Web Consistency Testing.
We also keep a full track of history so we can tell you exactly when something broke (and what your site looked at that time) and even cooler, we can detect when you've fixed something. And finally, we snapshot your code at each test run so we can show you exactly what changed for each issue.
Sorry for the self-promoting nature of this answer. I just wanted to be thorough in addressing what you're looking for.
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Where I work we've recently put together what we call the Development Standards Committee which is tasked with improving our procedures, processes, methodologies, tools, standards, and whatever we think would help us become a more effective team.
We've got a spreadsheet of items that we've ranked and are going to start tackling from the top down. We've got things such as better source control (currently on SourceSafe), implement a bug tracker (such as Mantis of FogBugz), peer code review, move to .Net 3.5, possibly move to some form of Agile, do more actual team development rather than single developer per project type stuff, and some other things...
What do you think are some key things that can make or break a development team? What should we add to this list?
Some additional information: We have about 12 people on our windows team, and about fifty in development if you include all platforms. We want to improve as much as possible for everyone, but we're our biggest focus is the Windows team. All of us have been here for a couple of years at least, so most of us know each other and work together pretty well.
The number of people on your team is actually really important here. There are basic things that every team should implement (source code control, bug tracking, etc), but there are things that are different base don team size. Code reviews on a very small team, for instance, can be more informal.
Moving to Agile is a good idea, unless you're particular development environment makes it a bad idea. Also, you'll not be able to do this without support from the people who are using your software.
Consider doing things to ensure that communication between the team is easier and with less roadblocks - do all your members know each other pretty well? Can you work with each other? Do you understand each other's idiosyncracies? Learning to work as a team is much more important than any random process improvements you can make.
Require comments when you check in code (it's great if you can tie commits back to your bug tracker)
Maybe Static Code analysis, like what's built into Visual Studio
Continuous Integration like CruiseControl
Development teams really need good people to start with, that work well together, but this isn't really an item to add to the list. It does however affect my first recommendation, be pragmatic. If you're not encouraging your developers to think about how they work and can drive them selves to improve, it's really hard to lay down a development environment that will do it for them.
Mentor and Training: If you can't do XP, then at least hook up your Juniors with Seniors whenever you can. Not only will you share knowledge but you'll share the context around your projects you own.
Some sort of Continous Integration and regular, tested, working "releases" make wonders for quality.
as better source control (currently on SourceSafe)
If this is Visual SourceSafe -- you need to change this immediately. Try cvs, svn or even something paid like Perforce.
There exists something called Rational Unified Process that deals with your problem (and much more).
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RPO 1.0 (Runtime Page Optimizer) is a recently (today?) released component for ASP and Sharepoint that compresses, combines and minifies (I can’t believe that is a real word) Javascript, CSS and other things.
What is interesting is that it was developed for ActionThis.com a NZ shop that saw at TechEd last year. They built a site that quickly needed to be trimmed down due to the deployment scale and this seems to be the result of some of that effort.
Anyone have any comments? Is it worthwhile evaluating this?
http://www.getrpo.com/Product/HowItWorks
Update
I downloaded this yesterday and gave it a whirl on our site. The site is large, complex and uses a lot of javascript, css, ajax, jquery etc as well as URL rewriters and so on. The installation was too easy to be true and I had to bang my head against it a few times to get it to work. The trick... entries in the correct place in the web.config and a close read through the AdvancedSetup.txt to flip settings manually. The site renders mostly correctly but there are a few issues which are probably due to the naming off css classed - it will require some close attention and a lot of testing to make sure that it fits, but so far it looks good and well worth the cost.
Second Update We are busy trying to get RPO hooked up. There are a couple of problems with character encoding and possibly with the composition of some of our scripts. I have to point out that the response and support from the vendor has been very positive and proactive
Third Update I went ahead and went ahead with the process of getting RPO integrated into the site that I was involved in. Although there were some hiccups, the RPO people were very helpful and put a lot of effort into improving the product and making it fit in our environment. It is definitely a no-brainer to use RPO - the cost for features means that it is simple to just go ahead and implement it. Job done. Move on to next task
I decided to answer this question again after evalutating it a little.
The image combining is really amazing
The CSS and Javascript is nicely minified
All files are cached on the server meaning that the server isn't cained every time it makes a request
The caching is performed at a browser level, meaning it will still work if you use an old (unsupported) browser because you'll just recieve the page un-compressed
You can see the difference youself Optimized vs Unoptimized
The price is as follows...
$499 until the end of september is a steal
$199 for an annual renewal is a steal
I love how RPO is plug and play.
It will take time to create a module like theirs and depending on work load can be worth the $750/year versus the development time it takes to re-create it.
I'm very excited about RPO and reviewing it's effect on my sites.
Something I used quite recently was page optimization module from I found on Darksider's blog. It it not nearly as intense as what RPO sets out to achieve, but a nice start block to building your own optimization module if that's what you're after.
Clarification on the RPO price. Launch price until end of September 2008 is $499 - and this discount is by voucher (email service#getrpo.com to get a voucher). This includes software assurrance for 12 months, after which you can choose to renew for $199 or not - the software still works.
The RPO automates 8 of Steve Souders/Yahoo's principles for High Performance Web Sites - the important thing for us was making a developer friendly tool - you can keep your resources in the format and structure that makes sense for development and the optimization happens at runtime.
I don't want to spam this forum with sales stuff, so just email me if you have any questions - ed.robinson#aptimize.net. Thanks for looking at the RPO.
Ed Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, Aptimize Ltd
I've been a user of the RPO since beta and have it deployed in anger on two of my sites:
http://www.syringe.net.nz (My blog) and
http://www.medrecruit.com (A company in which I have an interest)
I've done a longish winded blog post on the whole why not just turn on caching question here:
http://www.syringe.net.nz/2008/10/21/RuntimePageOptimizerWhyNotJustEnableCachingInIIS.aspx
The short summary version- Caching is a nice to have for people who aren't really geared up to turn it on in IIS (it's still not super easy in IIS6)... the real power is in combining resources as it's latency * request count that really kills your performance.
minifying and gzipping commonly called scripts and style sheets is totally worthwhile - the file size reduction speaks for itself. That's something that you can do through your webserver, without the help of another product.
However, merging scripts and styles and serving them together is an interesting idea from a general 'the fewer requests the better' standpoint.
It looks like interesting technology - I'd try it out. It almost certainly couldn't hurt.
Just had a little look, a lot of the things they offer you should be able to do yourself with a little palnning and foresight (combine all javascript files, combine all css, minify, enable GZip...
$750 a year seems a little steep, and theres no options.
(edit)
After speaking with the marketing bods, it's $499 until end of september, and renewing the liscence will be $199. That persuades me a lot more!
I'm going to give it a whirl and then see how much it improves our DEV server.
I personally have been using a product called PageBlaster by Snapsis that does caching, minification. It is primarily used in DotNetNuke applications, but if I recall correctly it can be used with any ASP.NET application, and the price is right.....