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October 2007 - Posts

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 1:51 PM

What data type should I use?

In my previous posts, I kindof glossed over the different kinds of data types you might have in your application and when you might choose a specific type. I now seek to rectify that oversight, but first I need to talk about types in a more general sense:
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Monday, October 29, 2007 2:36 PM

HealthVault Data Types - a custom data type architecture

In my last post, I showed how to create custom data types, but there's an obvious problem with that approach. There's only one of them. That means that when you do a query for your custom type, you get all the custom types that meet your filter. If your
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Monday, October 29, 2007 1:01 PM

HealthVault Data Types - Custom Data Types

So, you're using the SDK, and it turns out that you need to store some data, and there isn't a built-in type that stores what you need. What do you do? The SDK provides a way for you to create your own custom type. There's an important limitation to this
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Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:28 PM

HealthVault Data Types - Weight, measurements, and display values...

In this post, I'd like to discuss a bit more about the HealthVault data types. The types all live in Microsoft.Health.ItemTypes. (as an aside, you may come across mention of "thing type" rather than "item type". They're the same thing) As an example,
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:05 PM

I apologize (again)...

Onslaught looks like another tower defense game, but has a few differences that make it very nice. Make sure to read the docs about "Combos" (actually the FAQ is a bit better).
Posted by ericgu | 0 Comments
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 3:28 PM

Spamalot

Last Saturday night, the three of us headed into Seattle (the Big City) to see Spamalot at the Paramount. Spamalot, if you haven't heard, is a broadway production (ie musical) that written by Python alum Eric Idle. Now, I like a good musical as much as
Posted by ericgu | 1 Comments
Friday, October 19, 2007 9:05 AM

Moving from "write no tests" to TDD

There was a post on an internal alias about moving a team that has not been creating any developer-written tests to one that does TDD. I wrote a reply that I think may be of more general interest... Developers are fluent in code. I think any time you
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Thursday, October 18, 2007 6:44 PM

Relationship news...

Today I took the day off to go to a Chemistry talk at the UW. This isn't something that I would normally do, but I know the speaker and the talk looked interesting. It turned out that the talk was a thesis defense. It's the first one of those that I've
Posted by ericgu | 4 Comments
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 3:22 PM

HealthVault Data Types: HealthRecordItem

The type system of HealthVault is a bit different from some of the others I've worked with, so I thought I'd write a few posts talking about it. The root type is HealthRecordItem . I'm going to talk about the more commonly-used properties, but there are
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Monday, October 15, 2007 3:44 PM

Threat Modeling

I've been reading a set of posts by Larry (who used to work just down the hall from me...) on threat modeling that I've been too lazy to link to, but now there's a summary post up there to reduce my effort. Threat Modeling
Posted by ericgu | 1 Comments
Monday, October 15, 2007 2:56 PM

Building Connection Center add-ins using WiX - part 4 (code signing)

The last step of this process is to sign the .msi file that you created, so that users won't get any messages from Windows when they download and install it. The signing technology that is used is known as Authenticode. Before I get into the mechanics
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Friday, October 12, 2007 4:36 PM

Building Connection Center add-ins using WiX - part 3 (your content)

Now, we'll figure out how to get your content into the If you go to your SDK installation, in the docs directory you'll find a file named "HealthVault Connection Center Extensibility.xps". That will explain the various graphical elements. For this example,
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Friday, October 12, 2007 4:18 PM

Building Connection Center add-ins using WiX - part 2

To actually get anything installed, we'll need a more reasonble WXS file. <?xml version="1.0"?> <Wix xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2003/01/wi "> <Product Name="Microsoft HealthVault Shortcut - Fabrikam WidgetTracker" Id="PUT-GUID-HERE"
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Friday, October 12, 2007 2:02 PM

Building Connection Center add-ins using WiX - part 1

I'm writing this specifically for developers who need to add links into HealthVault Connection Center, but I think the topic is of general interest to anyone who wants to create installer packages. We're going to be using the WiX (Windows Installer XML)
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Thursday, October 11, 2007 9:33 AM

Halo 3 review

A nice Halo 3 review
Posted by ericgu | 1 Comments
Tuesday, October 09, 2007 8:24 AM

Unit testing through the UI

One of my readers asked whether there were any UI unit testing tools. While I have seen some ASP.net tools like this, in general I'd expect that you would unit test a UI by making the UI a very thin layer (one that doesn't really need testing), and writing
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Monday, October 08, 2007 4:06 PM

HealthVault and certificates

One of the confusing parts about HealthVault development has to do with certificates. If you've never worked with certificates, you might want to read this . Under HealthVault, information is controlled based on three keys The user id The record id The
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Thursday, October 04, 2007 3:05 PM

First Light

Astronomers have a concept named "First Light". After years or even decades of work, a new telescope is finally ready for to be used. You point it someplace interesting, open up the shutters, and the first light enters the instrument. And you find out
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Wednesday, October 03, 2007 9:04 AM

Unit test framework syntax comparison

Here's a nice comparison of how different C# unit testing framework express their concepts - it should be useful if you are evaluating frameworks or need to move between them.
Posted by ericgu | 1 Comments
 
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