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Predictions for application development software for 2013

Kenny Abdiel — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 03:16:04 GMT

Based in a Article published by IDC the following are the 10 most important predictions for application development software for 2013:

Enlightened coexistence between Web and native device application platforms will prevail; native deployed applications will remain dominant; Web platform (HTML5) technologies will make significant inroads.
Embedded platforms will begin to align with major consumer device application platforms in order to leverage developer skill ecosystems.
Device frameworks for integrated multiscreen or second-screen applications will evolve to support new usage scenarios that better exploit the convergence between personal tablet devices and shared big-screen TVs.
Cloud IDEs will mature for a broader range of software development scenarios.
PaaS platforms will make inroads in the enterprise by offering private cloud options and stronger operational support capabilities; PaaS value extends beyond developers to engage IT operations in enterprises.
Multitenancy techniques in PaaS platforms will be the subject of experimentation as they are recognized as essential for providing efficiency and the required density to successful PaaS.
Developer clouds will evolve to offer a broader and richer set of developer services such as team collaboration, social interaction, project and code repositories, device and browser testing, and other services.
Schedule-based software release cycle management will become the dominant style of release cycle management, gradually displacing feature-oriented release cycle management approaches.
Mobile application platforms will show signs of diversification as Android exposes some weaknesses even as it dominates; new platforms will emerge and take hold if they have the right ingredients, focus, and execution.
Heterogeneous parallel processing will become more common as general-purpose (GP) applications take advantage of the parallel computation abilities offered by device GPUs.

Source

http://www.idc.com/

SSL Very Basic Good Video

Kenny Abdiel — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 17:55:00 GMT

I was navigating though YouTube and found a very well edited basic video about SSL and in order to not forget the 'Way of Making it' when I start creating my own videos, I wanted to put it in here.

I actually shared it with my family because being it so simple, anyone can understand this basic but fundamental 'Secure Socket Layer' concept

Enjoy it.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Team Explorer Everywhere

Kenny Abdiel — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 01:57:00 GMT

Your team can collaborate across platforms and improve the predictability of your development processes by using Team Explorer Everywhere, which provides the tools and plug-ins that you need to access Team Foundation Server from Eclipse-based environments and non-Windows platforms. Team Explorer Everywhere includes both the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse and the Cross-platform Command-Line Client for Team Foundation Server

The following diagram demonstrates that team members on different platforms can collaborate by using Team Foundation Server and Team Explorer Everywhere

Hyper-V and wireless adapter

Kenny Abdiel — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:43:00 GMT

For any of the error messages shown below when trying to use Wireless adapters on Hyper-V guest machines, my solution was to uninstall and then reinstall the wireless adapter. I did everything through the Device Manager and that is it!

Windows 8 Shortcuts

Kenny Abdiel — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:55:00 GMT

Here is a compiled list of Windows 8 Shortcuts, for fast review =)

Do Not Track - DNT:1

Kenny Abdiel — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:45:00 GMT

DNT (Do Not Track)

I´m wondering how many people (mostly advertisement companies) must be upset with this sounded header field (DNT)? I don't know but certainly the discussion goes around money (sometimes called User Privacy)

This matter is interesting to me and the “Online behavioral advertisers" seems not to be having right behavior as stated by Carnegie Mellon CyLab. http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/research/techreports/2011/tr_cylab11005.html

"Online behavioral advertisers track users across websites, often without users' knowledge. Over the last twelve years, the online behavioral advertising industry has responded to the resulting privacy concerns and pressure from the FTC by creating private self-regulatory bodies. These include the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and an umbrela organization known as the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). In this paper, we enumerate the DAA and NAI notice and choice requirements and check for
compliance with those requirements by examining NAI members' privacy policies and reviewing ads on the top 100 websites. We also test DAA and NAI opt-out mechanisms and categorize how their members define opting out. Our results show
that most members are in compliance with some of the notice and choice requirements, but two years after the DAA published its Self-Regulatory Principles, there are still numerous instances of non-compliance. Most examples
of non-compliance are related to the "enhanced notice" requirement, which requires advertisers to mark behavioral ads with a link to further information and a means of opting out. Revised October 7, 2011"

that make you think ?

Independently of what is really happening here, privacy and my browsing tendency is in the middle of all this, so thanks Microsoft and IE10 for bringing this to the surface to me throu DNT.

Now lets talk about IE10 DNT

As Wikipedia says the do not track header is a proposed HTTP header field that would request a web application, Robot, Marketing Site to disable either their tracking or their cross-site tracking (the ambiguity has not been resolved yet) of a user.

The header field name is "DNT" and it currently accepts three values:

1 in case the user does not wish to be tracked (opt out),

0 in case the user consents to being tracked (opt in),

Null (no header sent) if the user has not expressed a preference. The default behavior in Internet Explorer 10 is to not send the header (DNT:1), until the user chooses to enable the setting via their browser.

Using fiddler we can see the header field:

If you want to enable tracking of your navigation in IE10 (and I don´t know why would you like to do that) this is the place to do it:

Also Microsoft has this page where you can validate if your browser is being tracked =)

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/browser/donottrack/default.html

WinRT on Windows8

Kenny Abdiel — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:04:00 GMT

Windows 8 is simply fantastic it has been redesigned from the chipset and is a wonderful evolution from Windows 7 which, by the way, is already awesome.

A very important part of the new Windows 8 is the new API equivalent to Win32 called WinRT (Windows Runtime) API which is the foundation for the development of METRO style applications that make the development experience very smooth and fast for developers.

In this post I will write some interesting facts for me at the time I get immerse in the new Windows Store Style interface and applications development.

This is how the layers are stacked from the lower level (Kernel -Windows Core) to the higer level User Interface, see that WinRT is out new API to communicate between our chosen development language with the Windows Kernel routines

Some of the namespaces you will work with provided by WinRT are:

CALLISTO Library

Kenny Abdiel — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Callisto is a library for use in Windows 8 XAML applications (Metro style apps). The XAML framework in Windows.UI.Xaml is great, but has some functionality that isn't provided in-the-box in a few controls and APIs. Callisto serves to provided added functionality on top of the XAML UI framework for Windows.

What's In It?

So far Callisto includes:

Flyout - a primitive that includes positioning and 'light dismiss' logic
Menu - primarily to be used from AppBar, contains the base for providing, well, a Menu
MenuItem - an item for a menu, including separators and contains the command point for the menu item
SettingsFlyout - an item to create a custom settings pane UI
LiveTile - an in-app tile experience to give you animated or 'live' tiles
Tilt - an effect to provide the tilt experience when clicked on edges/corners
OAuth helpers - a set of helpers to create OAuth 1.0 signatures/headers for those sites that hate OAuth 2.0 Metro
BooleanToVisibilityConverter - a converter to well, convert boolean to visibility, very common use
LengthToBooleanConverter - a converter to examine a string length to convert to boolean (simple validation helper)
RelativeTimeConverter - a converter to show time as relative string, i.e., 'about an hour ago'
Extensions - some extension method helpers

So if you need some of this functionalities check it out on

Download it from here

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0526563b-7a48-4b17-a087-a35cea701052

404 Page Not Found and Similars

Kenny Abdiel — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 03:26:00 GMT

This page can´t be displayed - IE10

This is not exactly a 404 HTTP Status Code, this page comes from Internet Explorer 10 no from IIS so before start checking IIS look for most obvious things. Most of the time IE is interpreting the URL written on the address bar to something similar to “httpjdlskdjfosdf” so IE does not understand it.

This page is generated on the fly being its url: res://ieframe.dll/dnserror.htm#http://website

Start with these options to troubleshoot

Check for bad characters on URL.

Check if you can reach your DNS or check your Host file.

Check navigating using the server IP Address instead domain names.

Check if web site has been created as an application in IIS

Check the security zones.

The Proxy Server isn't responding - IE10

This page is generated on the fly being its url: res://ieframe.dll/proxyerror.htm#http://website

Start with these options to troubleshoot

Change your proxy settings on Internet option ~> Connections ~> LAN Settings

Workstation Visual Studio Load Test Basic

Kenny Abdiel — Sat, 05 May 2012 19:50:00 GMT

I recently performed a load test using visual studio and the experience was in some way smooth so I wanted to write it down for me to give a quick review when I need it. So first I will copy some theory from the MSDN to understand
the basic concepts and terminology related to Stress and load Test. To be a tester is a complete full job with many details.

Load tests consist of a series of Web performance tests or unit tests which operate under multiple simulated users over a period of time. Load tests are created with the New Load Test Wizard in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio2012. This Load Test Wizard comes with the Ultimate versión of Visual Studio (Nothing else needed) which is the version I used.

NOTE: If you are now running this test on you VS installation remember to enable the Internet Explorer Managed Add-On: Microsoft Web Test Recorder.

When you add Web performance tests to a load test, you simulate multiple users opening simultaneous connections to a server and making multiple HTTP requests. You can set properties on load tests that widely apply to the individual Web performance tests.

Load tests can be used in several different types of testing:

Type of Testing	Description
Smoke	How your application performs under light loads for short durations.
Stress	To determine if the application will run successfully for a sustained duration under heavy load.
Performance	To determine how responsive your application is.
Capacity Planning	How your application performs at various capacities.

About the think times concept:

Think times are used to simulate human behavior that causes people to wait between interactions with a Web site. Think times occur between requests in a Web performance test and between test iterations in a load test scenario. Using think times in a load test can be useful in creating more accurate load simulations. You can change whether think times are used or ignored in load tests. You change whether think times are used in your load tests in the Load Test Editor.

The think profile is a setting that applies to a scenario in a load test. The setting determines whether the think times that are saved in the individual Web performance tests are used during the load test. If you want to use think times in some Web performance tests but not in others, you must place them in different scenarios. For more information about scenarios, see Editing Load Test Scenarios Using the Load Test Editor.

Initially, you set whether you use think times in your load tests when you create the load test using the New Load Test Wizard. For more information, see How to: Create a Scenario Used to Model User Activities, Tests, Browsers and Networks Using the New Load Test Wizard.

The Think Profile options are described in the following list:

Off: Think times are ignored. Use this setting when you want to generate maximum load to heavily stress your Web server. Do not use it when you are trying to create more realistic user interactions with a Web server.
On: Think times are used exactly as they were recorded in the Web performance test. Simulates multiple users running the Web performance tests exactly as recorded. Because a load test simulates multiple users, using the same think time could create an unnatural load pattern of synchronized virtual users.

Using think times in a load test can be useful in creating more accurate load simulations. You can choose whether think times are used or ignored in load tests. To indicate that the think times in the Web performance tests should be used, change the think profile. The think profile applies to an entire scenario. If you want to use think times in some Web performance tests but not in others, you must add them to different scenarios. For more information about scenarios, see Editing Load Test Scenarios Using the Load Test Editor.

For more information about the settings, see Editing Think Times to Simulate Web Site Human Interaction Delays in Load Tests Scenarios

About Load Pattern

Constant: The constant load pattern is used to specify a user load that does not change during the load test. For example, when you run a smoke test on a Web application, you might want to set a light, constant load of 10 users.

Step: The step load pattern is used to specify a user load that increases with time up to a defined maximum user load. For stepping loads, you specify the Initial User Count, Maximum User Count, Step Duration (seconds), and Step User Count.

For example, a Step load with an Initial User count of one, Maximum User Count of 100, Step Duration (seconds) of 10, and a Step User Count of 1 creates a user load pattern that: starts at 1, and increases by 1 every 10 seconds until it reaches 100 Users.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd293540.aspx

About Text Mix Model

The test mix model specifies the probability of a virtual user running a given test in a load test scenario. This lets you simulate load more realistically. Instead of having just one workflow through your applications, you can have several workflows, which is a closer approximation of how end-users interact with your applications

To specify test mix model in the New Load Test Wizard

On the Test Mix Model page of the New Load Test Wizard, select the test mix model to use in your load test scenario. You can pick one of the following:
- Based on the total number of tests Determines which Web performance or unit test is run when a virtual user starts a test iteration. At the end of the load test, the number of times that a particular test was run matches the assigned test distribution. Use this test mix model when you are basing the test mix on transaction percentages in an IIS log or in production data.
- Based on the number of virtual users Determines the percentage of virtual users who will run a particular Web performance or unit test. At any point in the load test, the number of users who are running a particular test matches the assigned distribution. Use this test mix model when you are basing the test mix on the percentage of users who are running a particular test.
- Based on user pace Over the course of the load test, each Web performance test or unit test is run a specified number of times per users, per hour. Use this test mix model when you want virtual users to run test at a certain pace throughout the load test.
- Based on sequential order Each virtual user runs the Web performance or unit tests in the order that the tests are defined in the scenario. The virtual user continues cycling through the tests in this order until the load test is complete.

Performance Counter Sampling Interval Considerations

Choose a value for the Sample Rate property in the load test run settings based on the length of your load test. A smaller sample rate, such as the default value of five seconds, requires more space in the load test results database. For longer load tests, increasing the sample rate reduces the amount of data that you collect. For more information, see How to: Specify the Sample Rate for a Load Test Run Setting.

Here are some guidelines for sample rates:

Load Test Duration	Recommended Sample Rate
< 1 Hour	5 seconds
1 - 8 Hours	15 seconds
8 - 24 Hours	30 seconds
> 24 Hours	60 seconds

This is what I did

1. Create a Web Performance Test

2. Navigate the web site in order to record a web test case (Web Test Recorded add on from IE must be enabled)

7. It is needed to create a DataBase to store the results of the test, for this task you will need SQLServer (Express or not) and this SQLscript , located in your disk loadtestresultsrepository.sql

Check this link for details about how to Create a Load Test Results Repository Using SQL

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182600.aspx