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Silverlight Process Designer in SharePoint WSS

1. Unit Test Run for CIT UnitTestProcessNavigation Test PassTest est run complete I Done fen a a Internet Us Figure 11 2 1 1 Running unit tests 11 2 2 Creating UI tests Using the Silverlight testing framework makes it is possible to simulate user activity by calling methods that triggers application logic There is a large set of functionality that can be tested within the Process Designer project To be able to test the Process Designer Tool which is located in a separate Silverlight project a reference has to be added to Process Designer project in the test project In addition any resources that are defined in the App xaml file have to be placed in the individual xaml files 44 where they are used This is because the resources will not be available to the test project being in a separate app file Moving the resources is easily done with Expression Blend by using the Resource tab in the upper right corner Since the Silverlight test framework is just another Silverlight application there is no possibility to do any UI automation tests like user initiated mouse clicks and key presses What can be tested is the code that is connected to for instance button events that the visual tree is updated and that the data source is correctly updated on invocation To be able to create more advanced Silverlight specific tests the SilverlightTest base class can be inherited which is located in the Microsoft Silverli
2. s Serialize writer prop writer Flush The code sample below is taken from the WCF service method which is called when loading the process model The file instance which is a SharePoint SPFile object is read into a Stream object as binary stream An instance of the XmlSerializer is then created which is customized to use the MainCanvasProp class By applying the Deserialize method the stream is converted into a MainCanvasProp object Stream stream file OpenBinaryStream StreamReader reader new StreamReader stream XmlSerializer s new XmlSerializer typeof MainCanvasProp MainCanvasProp prop prop MainCanvasProp s Deserialize reader reader Close 9 5 Error Handling WCF has the ability to throw exceptions on a service call The unfortunate thing is that Silverlight does not support it Any exception that is thrown will be translated by the browser into a 404 File Not Found error There are a couple of workarounds that can be used to overcome this issue One workaround is using an extra Error property to the data that is returned to the Silverlight application This solution is not optimal though It makes the simple return value more complicated and it mixes good and bad data in the same object and will therefore break the single responsibility rule A better solution is to use the ability to define a WCF service signature using the OUT parameter which can be accessed through the EventArgs on the event handler f
3. To be able to use the SharePoint SPContext object to get hold of the current site collection where the service is placed the aspNetCompatibilityEnabled flag has to be set to true in the configuration of the service Otherwise the object will return null 47 A proxy has to be generated by the application when the WCF services are used within the Silverlight application This is accomplished by the Add Service Reference feature in Visual Studio This will generate proxy code for doing asynchronous calls from Silverlight This feature has caused trouble in combination with deploying the service in IIS giving cryptic error messages To overcome it a clean development environment has been used where the solution has been added Reference 15 in the reference list gives an interesting approach using WCF in Silverlight without the proxy generation feature A general problem with the integration has been the possibility to debug code Once the Silverlight application is compressed in a XAP file and uploaded to the server it cannot be debugged when executed in the browser within the SharePoint site This is especially troublesome if the WCF service call fails By using a web debugging tool like fiddler the service calls and their responses can be monitored This helps locating the problem but if the problem is within the Silverlight code it can still not be debugged 48 13 Discussion Silverlight being a rather new technology on the market has
4. lt importErrorMessage gt Cannot import HelloWorld Web Part lt importErrorMessage gt lt metaData gt lt data gt lt properties gt lt property name Title type sString gt Silverlight Web Part lt property gt lt property name Description type string gt A sample lt property gt lt properties gt lt data gt lt webPart gt lt webParts gt 6 3 3 The Element Manifest File The WSP also contains an element manifest file for the Feature This XML file is executed when the Feature is activated It is constructed by two elements the module element which has information about where the destination library is located and the file element which has information about the actual file that is put in the Web Part gallery lt Elements Id d359c723 89b0 4224 8d30 ee4 72898c4E xmlns http schemas microsoft com sharepoint gt lt Module Name WebParts List 113 Url _catalogs wp gt lt File Path HelloWorld webpart Url HelloWorld webpart Type GhostableInLibrary gt lt Property Name Group Value Silverlight in SharePoint gt lt Property gt Kal 27File gt lt Module gt lt Elements gt 6 3 4 The Feature File The solution also contains a feature xml file which holds metadata regarding the Feature that is advertising the Web Part lt Feature Id d3432223 787e 461f 82df 2bca9882e3f4 Title Silverlight 2 Hello World Web Part Feature Description Sample Silverlig
5. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Silverlight Process Designer in SharePoint WSS Development of a Silverlight 2 0 Process Designer tool with integration in SharePoint WSS Master of Science Thesis in the Programme Software Engineering and Technology Wincent Papousek University of Gothenburg Department of Computer Science and Engineering Goteborg Sweden June 2009 The Author grants to Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg the non exclusive right to publish the Work electronically and in a non commercial purpose make it accessible on the Internet The Author warrants that he she is the author to the Work and warrants that the Work does not contain text pictures or other material that violates copyright law The Author shall when transferring the rights of the Work to a third party for example a publisher or a company acknowledge the third party about this agreement If the Author has signed a copyright agreement with a third party regarding the Work the Author warrants hereby that he she has obtained any necessary permission from this third party to let Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg store the Work electronically and make it accessible on the Internet Silverlight Process Designer in SharePoint WSS Development of a Silverlight 2 0 Process Designer tool with integration in SharePoint WSS Wincent Papousek Wincent Papousek June 2009 Examiner Jan Skansholm Department of
6. In addition two assemblies are needed which comes with the source code of the Silverlight controls These are the Microsoft VisualStudio TestTools UnitTesting Silverlight dll and the Microsoft Silverlight Testing dll 43 The metadata and assertion types are found in the Microsoft VisualStudio TestTools UnitTesting namespace And the tests are made up of test classes and test methods The code for a simple test class containing one test method can be seen below using System using Microsoft VisualStudio TestTools UnitTesting namespace CIT UnitTest ProcessDesigner TestClass public class Test TestMethod public void PassTest Assert IsTrue true When the test is run a web browser is shown This test is without any Silverlight control or interface therefore nothing will be shown on the plug in surface to the left The only thing that is shown is the log which is seen in Figure 11 2 1 1 The log consists of the test classes and the test methods that run Showing any classes or methods that fail and how many tests that ran Ak Successful Test Run Microsoft Internet Explorer lolx File Edit View Favorites Tools Help ay Pen Address ei or My Documents Visual Studio 2008 Projects SharePointListAccess CIT UnitTest ProcessNavigation Bin Debug TestPage html Y Go Links Microsoft Silverlight Testing H finished 1 Running 1 test took 260 ms 260 ms per test method on average
7. TargetType Button gt lt Setter Property HorizontalAlignment Value Right gt lt Setter Property Width Value 15 gt lt Setter Property Height Value 15 gt lt Setter Property Template gt lt Setter Value gt lt ControlTemplate gt lt Border x Name brd1 Width 14 Height 14 CornerRadius 15 gt lt Border Background gt lt RadialGradientBrush GradientOrigin 3 3 gt lt GradientStop Color FFF Offset 15 gt lt GradientStop Color 777 Offset 1 gt lt RadialGradientBrush gt lt Border Background gt lt TextBlock x Name txt1 Foreground 222 TextAlignment center Text r FontSize 9 VerticalAlignment center FontFamily Webdings gt lt Border gt lt ControlTemplate gt lt Setter Value gt lt Setter gt lt Style gt The button above is forced to display the letter r as a Webdings font which is a X representing close If the button was to be used as a general purpose button control template it wouldn t be a very useful because a new control template would have to be defined for each text that the button presents This issue is solved by using the TemplateBinding markup extension When using the TemplateBinding markup extension for a button a special class called the ContentPresenter has to be used This class makes it possible to display all kind of content that is possible for a button but also other controls Content property By changing the TextBlock tag abo
8. private void processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonUp object sender MouseButtonEventArgs e ProcessCanvas processCanvas sender as ProcessCanvas processCanvas ReleaseMouseCapture processCanvas MouseMove new MouseEventHandler processCanvas_MouseMove processCanvas MouseLeftButtonUp new MouseButtonEventHandler processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonuUp 8 4 Data Binding Connecting a data source to a user interface element such as a text block can be done in a one way or a two way fashion One way is simply to display data in the UI and two way is to reflect the user interaction in the underlying data source In general the data sources in Silverlight are objects or collections of objects with belonging properties that can be accessed The Binding markup extension can be accessed both from the code behind and the XAML markup The extension cannot be set directly a binding class has to be used The VersionHistoryListBoxItem class below is used for this purpose when binding data to the version history list box public class VersionHistoryListBoxItem public string Description get set public string Name get set The list box items consist of two text blocks for binding each of the properties of the class When wanting to bind the Description property in one of the TextBlocks the first step is to use the Binding extension in the XAML markup to the Text property lt TextBlock x Name Description Text
9. Appendix Ay User MET egene Eeer E ais ed Bee ee tees 53 Appendix Ba Web Configas citrate Ee aceasta ease Gilad baa the ae eed 59 1 Introduction Web users today have an increasing demand of using web applications with a richer experience and with a greater amount of functionality RIAs Rich Internet Applications are being used everywhere and is gradually replacing HTML applications Dynamic design in HTML is accomplished by integrating CSS Cascading Style Sheets and scripting languages However HTML does not offer any interactivity and compels multiple page refreshes making browsing time consuming RIA s on the other hand are more robust visually compelling and responsive Silverlight is a framework released by Microsoft for building RIAs Silverlight can run on a variety of devices and desktop operating systems within a browser When surfing to a page which contains Silverlight content the browser will download the Silverlight code and render the content to the designated place on the page Silverlight is supposed to offer the user a richer user experience than the traditional mixture of HTML and JavaScript The technique is not new the most successful browser plug in is Adobe Flash The benefits of Silverlight is the underlying maturity of the NET programming environment which Flash does not have having evolved from being a multimedia player to a programming tool SharePoint WSS Windows SharePoint Services is another technology rel
10. Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology SE 412 96 Goteborg Sweden Telephone 46 0 31 772 1000 Department of Computer Science and Engineering Goteborg Sweden June 2009 Abstract SharePoint WSS is an information portal from Microsoft It helps employees communicate and collaborate within the company SharePoint lets people share documents and files by storing them in a central site making cooperation within the company trouble free Silverlight is a technology for building Rich Internet Applications It uses a browser plug in that downloads and executes Silverlight code within the browser It is designed to offer the user a richer experience than the traditional mixture of HTML and scripting languages The Process Designer tool brings these two technologies together Completely developed in Silverlight the Process Designer tool takes advantage of out of the box functionality of SharePoint WSS In conjunction the Silverlight tool brings a visual user experience to SharePoint that the technology itself cannot accomplish Following a couple of integration steps Silverlight can be used within SharePoint By using Web Service technology communication between the two frameworks is established making them benefit from each other The focus of the thesis is the integration of Silverlight in SharePoint WSS evaluating the process and the Silverlight technology Integration and implementation issues will be outlined t
11. TestPanel Children Add page The test example below will use the instance of the Page to test the logic when a user clicks a process image which triggers displaying the name of the process in the bottom left corner of the process design surface 45 TestMethod public void ClickedProcessTextTest MainCanvas mainCanvas ProcessCanvas processCanvas null page mainCanvasDictionary TryGetValue 0 out mainCanvas foreach UIElement element in mainCanvas Children processCanvas element as ProcessCanvas break mainCanvas Prop IsCheckedOut false ClickOnProcessImage processCanvas Assert AreEqual page ClickedProcessTextBoxMain Text Selected TEST private void ClickOnProcessImage ProcessCanvas process page processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonDown process null The mainCanvasDictionary holds all information concerning the process model The mainCanvas with id 0 is the first level of the process model By iterating over its children foreach UIElement element in mainCanvas Children each process image can be reached which is within a ProcessCanvas object The helper method clickonProcessImage invokes the method which is triggered when a user clicks on a process image The last row performs the actual test The first process is mocked to have the value TEST By comparing the value of the object which displays the text and the expected string the test is completed The application inte
12. Testing a Silverlight Application When creating a Silverlight project a dynamically created HTML page can be included for testing purposes A TestPage html is created when the application is built The object tag communicates with the plug in and asks it to download and execute the XAP file defined with the source parameter 16 lt div id silverlightControlHost gt lt object data data application x silverlight type application x silverlight 2 width 100 height 100 gt lt param name source value HelloWorld xap gt lt param name onerror value onSilverlightError gt lt param name background value white gt lt a href http go microsoft com fwlink LinkID 115261 style text decoration none gt lt img src http go microsoft com fwlink LinkId 108181 alt Get Microsoft Silverlight style border style none gt eras lt object gt lt iframe style visibility hidden height 0 width 0 border 0px gt lt iframe gt lt div gt 14 5 Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation WCF is a set of APIs for creating distributed applications that can communicate with each other The same set of APIs is used when two different applications communicate on the same computer or over the Internet 5 1 Messaging and Endpoints WCF is based on communication with messages Therefore anything that can be formed as a message can be represented in the programming mo
13. across the network It interacts with the file system It can run at the same time as other unit tests The environment has to be re configured to run them 42 Tests that do the things listed above can easily be written using a testing framework But it is important to separate them from the real unit tests that can be run whenever and in a fast manner 27 It is of essence to be able to write unit test code that is easily decoupled from code that makes cross boundary calls Instead of making a test that interacts with a database the data has to be collected in some other mean by for instance using dependency injection or mocks A good practice when writing tests to a Silverlight application is to separate them into three separate categories e Unit Test Tests a single unit normally a method in a single class It should not do any cross boundary calls should run fast without any side effects e Integration Test This is testing how multiple classes integrate with each other or how the class integrates with the environment Le accessing data over a web service or accessing the data base e Smoke Test This is for testing how the user is interacting with the application This leads to cross boundary calls file system access etc These tests are usually automated by the user interface There are other kind of tests that can be done as well like performance acceptance and stress tests These are often written in other testing frame
14. back to the parent process level Pressing the back button that is integrated by the browser will not have any effect when navigating within the application This button will only lead the user to the previous html page By doing this any changes that have been made to the process hierarchy will be lost Area 2 This area is the interaction menu for adding new processes and navigating the process hierarchy Designer Tab Not applicable Viewer Tab In this tab a Tree view is to be seen The nodes in the tree represent each process that is available By selecting a node within the tree its sub process level is to be seen in Area 4 A node in the tree can be expanded or collapsed by pressing the arrow in front of the process name Area 3 This area is the properties area where properties to the current process level are to be seen Document Links Tab The document links tab is formed as a list box where all the documents connected to the current process level in view are listed Pressing a link within the list will open a new browser window where the links content is displayed Metadata Tab The metadata tab is for viewing textual information about a process level The metadata values are listed in a list box Version History Tab Not applicable 58 Area 4 This is the main design area where the figures of the process system are displayed Drag and Drop Not applicable Double Click Double clicking the process figure will show
15. language innovations The XDocument object that is created on the last line of code above is then converted to a string and passed the InitParams Converting the object to a string is done with the code shown below StringBuilder stringBuilder new StringBuilder XmlWriterSettings xmlWriteSettings new XmlWriterSettings using XmlWriter xmlWriter XmlWriter Create stringBuilder xmlWriteSettings document Save xmlWriter string xmlString stringBuilder ToString 8 2 2 Passing data with an XML Data Island Instead of passing an XML string directly with the InitParams method of the Silverlight control a LiteralControl can be used within this control an XML Data Island is created The id of the Data Island is then passed as a parameter to the Silverlight plug in via the InitParams 30 property The LiteralControl is added the same way as the Silverlight control is added to the HTML page Controls Add silverlightControl string xmlDataIsland lt XML id INIT_DATA gt 0 lt XML gt LiteralControl literalXMLIsland new LiteralControl string Format xmlDataIsland xmlString Controls Add literalXMLIsland The XML Data Island can be picked up by the Silverlight application by using the id that is passed with the control By working with the HtmlPage class Silverlight can access the HTML DOM Once the HtmlElement of the XML Data Island is found the XML can be extracted this is don
16. lifetime events and data binding support It is the direct base of the Panel and the Control class which are the base classes for most controls and for object positioning 13 4 6 4 Layout Controls Silverlight provides three layout controls for positioning visual objects and other controls on the user interface the Canvas the Grid and the StackPanel These controls all inherit from the Panel class The Canvas has the ability to place a child element to an absolute position The Grid uses a tabular configuration with rows and columns for placing the elements and the StackPanel places its child controls next to each other either horizontally or vertically Layout controls can be nested for example having a Grid within a Grid 21 4 7 Silverlight Application Architecture Two XAML files are by default part of a Silverlight project e App xaml which is used to define styles and resources The corresponding code behind file is used for initialization and cleanup code e Page xaml is the startup control that is shown when the plug in is loaded Here the user interface of the application is defined either by self created controls or Silverlight controls 4 7 1 The Silverlight XAP File The result of building a Silverlight project is a compressed file with the extension xap It contains compiled XAML and code behind an application manifest file and one or more assemblies containing Silverlight controls that are used by the application 4 7 2
17. processes and their activities Designer Viewer 4 Root Level Definition Measurment Target 4 Follow Up Analysis Retargeting Figure 2 1 2 The Tree View tab The bottom tab control shows properties to the process level in view Here there are three tabs the first tab is for handling document links connected to the model the second tab is for handling metadata values and the last tab shows earlier versions of the process level Within all tabs list box controls are being used for presenting the information Version Check In Date 0 1 2009 04 24 08 20 0 2 2009 04 24 08 22 1 0 2009 04 24 08 27 Links Metadata Version History Figure 2 1 3 The Version History tab On the main presentation area the processes are dragged and dropped On each corner process level relevant data is displayed In the top left corner the SharePoint user group is shown that is responsible for the process level On the top right the current version of the process level is shown On the bottom left corner the user is informed of which process that has been clicked and is currently in focus and on the last corner the process levels name is displayed 4 2 2 Functional Overview 2 2 1 User Group and Process Owners The Silverlight application makes use of the SharePoint user groups for dividing users in two main categories When a user belongs to the owner user group of a process level the user has designer rights otherwise navigat
18. rs r rr r rr rr ran 15 5 1 Mess ding and Endpoints dee ageet geed eet Get eege d boven gr nd sk 15 5 2 Services and RE eer ea a HER NR VS 15 S o Setin UP AS CIVICS ee sur var vse Ga bina vs Sens dess ba nr obs dags bid a eames ieee aoe 15 6 Integrating Silverlight in SharePOinDt ssssssersserrssrrresrresrrrsrrrssrrssrrrerrrrrrrrr rens rr rr rer rss rr deeg 18 6 1 Visual Studio Configuration E 18 6 2 SharePoint Runtime Configuration EE 18 6 3 Integrating Silverlight in a SharePoint Web Pat 19 e A ne Web Pant E 19 6 3 2 The W eb Part Feature iced rerne a aaa sd aO tiga RE a EEEO Ea s 19 6 3 3 The Element Manifest bie 20 ee Feature Piles egene Eer 20 6 3 5 The SharePoint Solution RU 20 6 3 6 Hosting Silverlight in the Web Part ee eege 21 6 4 Passing data from SharePoint to Silverlight sssessssrsssrereseresrrrrerrrsrrerrrrrrrrerrrerrrr rr rn nr 22 6 5 A SharePoint Custom Field Type interacting with Silhverlght 22 0 3 Th Feld Type O ASS n ade on ace vse sa et FU E EAE S d g bands aun a SNRA 23 6 3 2 Te Field COM OU DE 23 6 5 3 Deploying a Custom Field Type s ssssessssressrresrrrsrrresrresrrrrsrresrrrrrrresrrrrrr reser sr rr rer rn n ren 24 T Business Process TerminOl gys sisissssiovsaressisvssprdssvssssnisersnndersivasseassrbaddenesessderssngdedersnn es ense 25 TALBUSINESS TEEN 25 7 2 BUSINESS Process Managemeht ssssssersssrrssrrrerrresrresrrresrrrrrrrrrrresrr ds tela rer rr rr tayo rr rna 25 E RE EE 25
19. the role of HTML XAML lets one easily visualize elements in a hierarchal fashion and at the same time separating the content from code Separating the code is possible because each XAML element corresponds to a NEI type And each attribute to the element corresponds to a NET property The short example below illustrates this XAML lt TextBlock Text Hi there FontFamily Times New Roman gt C Visual Basic TextBlock tb new TextBlock Dim tbh as New TextBlock tb Text Hi there tb Text Hi there tb FontFamily Times New Roman tb FontFamily Verdana 11 The TextBlock element in the XAML code corresponds to an initialization statement in C or in Visual Basic Each time an element is created in XAML the default constructor is called behind the scenes 12 Every element in XAML maps to an instance of a Silverlight class The name of the element maps exactly to the name of the class For example the lt TextBlock gt element from the code above instructs Silverlight to create a TextBlock object As in XML XAML supports nesting of elements Having a Grid inside a Button is perfectly legal Nesting is though often used as containment where usually the case is having a Grid that has Buttons within it Attributes can be set to each element from the code example above Text and FontFamily are attributes to the TextBlock element 11 4 5 Code behind To each XAML page there is a belonging code behind page much like A
20. user can choose the size font style and color of the text Two expanders are available the Process Owner expander for specifying the process owner and the Visible for Groups expander for specifying what groups should be able to view the process In the list of the Visible for Groups expander multiple lines can be selected each line representing a toggle button In the list of the Process Owner only one item can be selected Figure 4 below shows how this is accomplished Are ess Definition Process Name Definition Process Name Definition Font Georg Weight Normal e Size 11 z Color Gray X ww Visible for Groups fy Process Owner Caneel Lol All Groups Home Owners Font Georg v Weight Normal D Size 11 x Color Gray v Visible for Groups Hierarchy Managers Home Members Nintex Revortina Administrators 4 nt sent Home Visitors http www sharepointdemo consignit se Definit Figure 4 Process Owner and Visible for Groups expanders 55 The user can navigate through the different figures by pressing the up and down arrows of the list box Viewer Tab In this tab a Tree view is to be seen The nodes in the tree represent each process that is available By selecting a node within the tree its sub process level is to be seen in Area 4 A node in the tree can be expanded or collapsed by pressing the arrow in front of the proce
21. 7 4 Business Process Modeling s cass cicaccissacvconstacdeinevasntecavevacoussacusnsdvesd noadspeteeaneviauiernsuertee 26 ge The Process D sisner LOO sosse sisise g r inedia o AE deeg ed Gerd 27 8 1 The SharePoint Object Modeleri niena a a 27 8 2 The Web Part ple mentariOn eege dg 30 8 2 1 Passing data to Eet eege 30 8 2 2 Passing data with an XML Data ISlanC ssssssessseressrrssrrrsrrresrresrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs rer e ronne rna 30 8 2 3 TRE Silyerlieht ut CT 31 ea aN DITO EE EE EE 31 S4 Data EE ee ee Es 33 SS USINE STYLES ee 34 6 0 Using Control Ke 35 SP VG ATU Silyerli Sht EE 37 9 1 Creating a Silverlight enabled Services ces eco Nac E Re eee sr rn erna 37 9 2 Consuming the E E 37 9 3 Calling the Web Services ee Ee dE ere eames Rania dere 37 9 4 WCE and the SharePoint Object Model 37 941 TCX Serial PZ er eege ee dee eet Eed dE see 38 9 5 Error Hang lio caiene a E E E T SAR RASA ANN UR NIA n a 39 9 6 Other Communication Patterns geseet ee EE 39 10 The Model View ViewModel Pattern ssmmmsssrsssrrssrrrrsrrrsrrrserrssrresrrrrrrrsrrrr rens ser r rr rr rens rr rr n nn 41 11 Silverlight Testing and Debugging sesmessessrresrrrerrresrresrrresrrrsrrrsnrresrrrrrrr rs rr ser abatotoncanentea rr nea 42 TT e Be TEE 42 11 2 The Silverlight ET 43 HD AC Te AUIS a simple testis se e gobs eE A E dean EAAS 43 1122 Creatin E EE 44 Eegeregie eecht 47 13 DISCUS SLO EE 49 TANG ONC MISIO E 50 MSE LCT ONC llth A lahat acti OE aa ti th atta aon 51
22. Binding Description gt The second step is to set the DataContext property to the VersionHistoryListBoxItem object The Binding markup provides three modes OneTime OneWay and TwoWay These modes control how the data is bound and how the data flow between the user interface and the data source e OneTime The binding is done once Any changes will not be seen in the UI e OneWay The data flows from the data source to the user interface When the data source changes the UI is updated e TwoWay The data flows in both directions Any changes in the UI are reflected in the data source and the other way around Below is a listing of valid syntax for the Binding Markup Extension 12 e Binding Most commonly used with item templates The mode of operation is one way 33 e Binding path Specifies what property that supplies the data Separating the properties with a dot for going deeper in the class hierarchy e Binding properties Provides the ability to set data binding configuration properties using name value syntax e Binding path properties A combination of the previous two allowing specifying which object property supplies the data and configuring it 8 5 Using Styles Styling in Silverlight is similar to how CSS properties work User interface elements can reuse fonts colors and sizes specified as styles to a FrameworkElement When developing larger applications styles are good for grouping properties and specific values that c
23. Module preCondition managedHandler type System web Handlers ScriptModule System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt modules gt lt handlers gt lt remove name WwebServiceHandlerFactory Integrated ZS lt remove name ScriptHandlerFactory gt lt remove name scriptHand erFactoryAppServices gt lt remove name ScriptResource gt lt add name ScriptHandlerFactory verbe path asmx preCcondition integratedMode type System web Script Services ScriptHandlerFactory System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt add name ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices verb path _AppService axd preCcondition integratedMode type System web Script Services ScriptHandlerFactory System Web Extensions version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt add name scriptResource precondition integratedMode verb GET HEAD path ScriptResource axd type System web Handlers ScriptResourceHandler System Web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt handlers gt lt system webServer gt lt configuration gt Wau 60
24. SP NET pages Having code behind pages is a good way to separate code from UI related code XAML code is stored in files with file suffix xaml and the code behind files with the suffix xaml cs The reference to the code behind file in the XAML file is through the x Class attribute The class definition is compiled and stored in an assembly and placed in a directory relative to the application called ClientBin The class definition is used for handling events that are triggered from the user interface which are defined in the XAML file As shown below the Loaded attribute has an event handler method specified for it The compiler will expect that there is a method with the same name in the code behind code 12 Page xaml lt UserControl x Class XAMLO0O1 Page xmlns http schemes microsoft com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns x http schemes microsoft com winfx 2006 xaml1 Loaded UserControl_Loaded Width 400 Height 300 gt lt Grid x Name LayoutRoot Background White gt lt Grid gt lt UserControl gt Page xaml cs using System Windows Controls namespace XAMLO1 public partial class Page UserControl public Page InitializeComponent private void UserControl_Loaded object sender RoutedEventArgs e 12 4 6 UI Class Hierarchy Silverlight has a set of standard controls e g list boxes check boxes text blocks and others These controls are for building user interfaces But how these are
25. ScriptHandlerFactory System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt 59 lt add verb path _AppService axd validate false type System web Script Services ScriptHandlerFactory System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt add verb GET HEAD path ScriptResource axd type System web Handlers ScriptResourceHandler System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 validate false gt lt httpHandlers gt lt httpModules gt lt add name ScriptModule type System web Handlers ScriptModule System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt httpModules gt lt globalization fileEncoding utf 8 gt lt compi lation batch false debug false gt lt assemblies gt lt add assembly System Core Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral Publ ickeyToken B77A5C561934E089 gt lt add assembly System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral Pub1icKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt add assembly System Data DataSetExtensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral Pub1ickKeyToken B77A5C561934E089 gt lt add assembly System xml Ling Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral Publ ickeyToken B77A5C561934E089 gt lt add assembly System web Silverlight Version 2 0 5 0 Culture neutral Pub1ickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt assemblies
26. Silverlight application is running as a local web application and this is a different domain as the web service The Process Designer tool overcomes this by using a debugging flag that tells the application to load static test data that is defined within the program instead of making the Web Service method The most important thing to keep in mind when developing Silverlight applications is to create code that is easy to maintain refactor and test The Model View ViewModel pattern presented in the thesis helps the developer to accomplish this The Silverlight programming model implies a tight integration between the user interface and the data that it works with This makes maintenance refactoring and testing more difficult The pattern separates the application in separate layers preventing one layer to have intimate knowledge of another layer During development of the Process Designer tool the Model View ViewModel pattern has not been applied this is because the tool has been used for evaluating and learning the technology of Silverlight It is recommended when any further development of the Process Designer is done that the pattern is applied A few unit tests have been written mainly for evaluating the Silverlight testing framework After applying the Model View ViewModel pattern more tests can be written adding assurance that the system works in a correct manner A future functionality recommendation to the Process Designer tool is to make it p
27. Solution is shown to the left EN 2 A od Solution HelloWorld 1 project BM clloworld Sa Properties Gj References HelloWorld c HelloWorld cs E Helloworld webpart 2 HelloWorld xml Gi HelloWorld manifest xml E HelloWorld feature xml E G HelloWorld HelloWorld xml HelloWorld HelloWorld webpart A WSP View a Solution Explorer a WSP View cy Solution Explorer Figure 6 3 1 Visual Studio WSP and Solution View 6 3 1 The Web Part Class Below is a sample web part class The web part has to inherit from the base WebPart class Here the code is located that is executed when the Web Part is activated and loaded in SharePoint namespace HelloWorld Guid d359c723 89b0 4224 8d30 ee4f72898c4 f public class HelloWorld System Web UI WebControls WebParts WebPart public HelloWorld 6 3 2 The Web Part Feature To advertise a Web Part a WSS Feature is used the Feature adds the Web Part to the SharePoint site collection The Feature is an xml file with the extension webpart that contains information regarding the class and the assembly that is needed to load the Web Part Below is asample XML file of a Feature 19 lt xml version 1 0 encoding utf 8 gt lt webParts gt lt webPart xmlns http schemas microsoft com WebPart v3 gt lt metaData gt lt type name d359c723 89b0 4224 8d30 ee4f72898c4 gt
28. The XmlSerializer The XmlSerializer lets the developer serialize and deserialize objects which provides a higher level alternative to just reading and writing individual pieces of data The XmlSerializer converts objects into a stream of bytes which can be pushed to any stream It can also do the reverse by reading a stream of bytes and convert into an object To be able to use this feature the System Xml Serialization dll has to be referenced within the project The XmlSerializer works with every class but have a couple of requirements e The class that wants to be serialized has to have a constructor with no arguments This class is used when the XmlSerializer is deserializing the byte stream e The class has to be built up by public settable properties By using reflection the XmilSerializer will read them for serializing an object and set them also using reflection when deserializing Private data is ignored as well as any validation 23 38 The code sample below is taken from the CheckIn WCF service method which is called when checking in a process level of the Process Designer tool It demonstrates how to serialize an object into a stream which can be saved to SharePoint document library The prop object is of type MainCanvasProp class which holds the information concerning a process level Stream documentStream new MemoryStream StreamWriter writer new StreamWriter documentStream XmlSerializer s new XmlSerializer prop GetType
29. a number of limitations but more features are added as new versions are released When being forced to use workarounds to accomplish features that are not yet supported is never good The Process Designer tool uses a WCE service At this point exceptions are not supported within Silverlight that are thrown from the service As a result an extra operation contract has to be specified where the error can be saved which can then be read in the Silverlight application All communication from within Silverlight is done asynchronously This includes making WCE service calls An event handler is created to handle the response when the call returns Because the Process Designer needs the response of the service calls to keep on working within the application a blocking element in the form of a process bar is used It is important to keep in mind when developing applications that run in a browser environment to keep the communication to the server side as limited as possible making server calls only when they are absolutely necessary Otherwise the application will become unresponsive and slow Keeping the amount of data that is sent between the client and the server at a minimum also helps making the calls quicker and therefore also more responsive The current version of the Process Designer tool has got some limitations Currently it is only possible to use one instance of the application within a SharePoint site collection This is due to the fact that it onl
30. an be reused Properties that are grouped into styles are from different Silverlight controls For example are the FontSize Foreground Margin and TextWrapping good properties to put into a style for TextBlocks When specifying a style it must be given a name as well as the target type where it will be applied The target type is the name of the class that will use the style The name has to match directly it will not automatically apply to descendents of a specified class making UI styling predictable Because styling can be applied to all the relevant controls they are placed in the application resource dictionary in the App xaml file lt Application xmlns http schemas microsoft com winfx 2006 xaml presentation xmlns x http schemas microsoft com winfx 2006 xaml x Class SilverlightNavigation App xmlns vsm clr namespace System Windows assembly System Windows xmlns d http schemas microsoft com expression blend 2008 xmlns mc http schemas openxmlformats org markup compatibility 2006 mc Ignorable d xmlns controls clr namespace Microsoft Windows Controls assembly Microsoft Windows Controls Se lt Application Resources gt lt Style x Key ContentDescription TargetType TextBlock gt lt Setter Property FontSize Value 12 gt lt Setter Property TextWrapping Value Wrap gt Style lt Application Resources gt lt Application gt Each style has an x Key that is the key of the resource whi
31. and major a workflow can be designed within SharePoint that is triggered when the designer of a process level decides to make his changes public by checking them in as a major version The workflow can be to send an email message to all users within the same user group that a major version has been created or to all other users within the portal that new processes can be viewed 2 2 4 Process Visibility The visibility of the processes and their activities are linked to both the versioning and the user groups Firstly a process is visible for any user that is part of the owner user group for that process The sub process level of the process can be made public and therefore visible for others by checking it in as a major version As long as it is a minor version it will only be seen by its owners An additional feature lets the designer select one or more groups that will see the processes when the level is checked in as a major version keeping it hidden for others As default all user groups will see the major version 3 Windows SharePoint Services Windows SharePoint Services WSS provides capabilities to meet business needs such as managing content and business processes This simplifies how people find and share information within a company 1 3 1 WSS and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MOSS 2007 is built on top of WSS 3 0 which is further built on top on services provided by Microsoft Windo
32. appealing graphical user interface where processes can be dragged around a designer surface where they can be edited Metadata and links to documents within SharePoint can be added to each process level The tool interacts closely with SharePoint functionality by using a document library where the built in feature for checking in and out of processes is used as well as being able to keep a history of the evolution of processes as they are developed over time To create a similar tool in an HTML environment of a browser is possible This would include using scripting languages integrated with the HTML for creating interactivity with the SharePoint object model on the server Using this approach would make development both time consuming and more complicated Silverlight makes it easier by using a subset version of the NET Common Language Runtime allowing the programmer to use CH when developing client side applications in exactly the same fashion as developing desktop applications Being able to work within one environment using object oriented code makes it not only easier but also more robust and reliable The Process Designer tool uses a number of built in controls for presenting information attached to processes and process levels The controls are delivered with the Silverlight SDK having a standard Windows like set of animations and styles The tool uses its own control templates to the controls resulting in a similar look and feel over the entire
33. application This increases the familiarity to the application from a user perspective A major point of the thesis has been the actual integration of the tool and how well it works within the SharePoint site The integration is accomplished by a set of predefined steps By following these steps the integration does not cause any major trouble The Process Designer tool has been integrated as a Web Part which is added from the Web Part gallery within SharePoint This makes it possible to add the application at any location within the SharePoint site collection The Visual Studio Extension template for WSS 3 0 makes development of the Web Part which hosts the ASP NET server side Silverlight control much easier The solution can be deployed to the server from Visual Studio instead of creating installation scripts manually Another integration issue is the placement of the Silverlight XAP file The Process Designer tool uses the layouts folder this makes the XAP file available over the entire web farm making it possible to use the application on several site collections When newer versions are available of the program code the XAP file can easily be replaced Client server interaction has been accomplished using Windows Communication Foundation The service implementation uses the SharePoint object model for interacting with SharePoint specific objects like document libraries and user group information Here most of the integration problems have occurred
34. as to be claimed By calling the CaptureMouse method of the UIElement this is accomplished private void processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonDown object sender MouseButtonEventArgs ei ProcessCanvas processCanvas sender as ProcessCanvas this processCanvas processCanvas startingDragPointImage e GetPosition processCanvas processCanvas CaptureMouse processCanvas MouseMove new MouseEventHandler processCanvas_MouseMove processCanvas MouseLeftButtonUp new MouseButtonEventHandler processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonuUp With this information the objects position can be programmatically changed using the MouseMove event which updates the position using the GetPosition method private void processCanvas_MouseMove object sender MouseEventArgs e ProcessCanvas processCanvas sender as ProcessCanvas MainCanvas mainCanvas processCanvas Parent as MainCanvas Point CanvasPoint e GetPosition mainCanvas Double xPoint CanvasPoint X startingDragPointImage xX Double yPoint CanvasPoint Y startingDragPointImage Y if xPoint gt 0 amp amp xPoint lt mainCanvas ActualWidth processCanvas Width Canvas SetLeft processCanvas xPoint if yPoint gt 0 amp amp yPoint lt mainCanvas ActualHeight processCanvas Height Canvas SetTop processCanvas yPoint 32 Dropping the object is done with the MouseLeftButtonUp event which restores the mouse related events 12
35. ation call its methods The web service will then perform any server side tasks that are necessary 9 1 Creating a Silverlight enabled Service Creating a WCF service in Visual Studio is pretty straight forward This is accomplished by right clicking on the ASP NET web site and under the Add New Item options choose Silverlight enabled WCF Service This will create a service endpoint file with the extension svc This file only contains one line of code that tells ASP NET where to find the web service code This will also create a corresponding cs file where the implementation of the service interface is placed 9 2 Consuming the Web Service Consuming a web service in Silverlight is much like consuming the service in any other NET application The first thing that has to be done is to create a proxy class by adding a Visual Studio web reference By choosing Add Service Reference on the Silverlight project and adding the URL to the svc file of the web service and clicking OK this will be accomplished This generates a proxy class that the Silverlight application uses to call the web service methods 9 3 Calling the Web Service All web service calls in Silverlight are asynchronous this means that a service call will not wait for an immediate response from the server Instead the call is done and other code can run in the mean time When the server is finished executing its part of the code it sends a response which the proxy class takes ca
36. aving time or saving costs 6 7 4 Business Process Modeling The purpose of this activity is to represent the processes of an organization These models can then be changed to improve the efficiency and quality of the process A graphical representation of business process information is an effective way for presenting the processes to business stakeholders The stakeholders are represented by the business analyst who creates and optimizes the processes the developer that implements the processes and the business manager who monitor and manage the processes For these visual languages such as the Business Process Modeling Notation and the Unified Modeling Language are used 5 26 8 The Process Designer Tool The Process Designer tool that has been developed and integrated in SharePoint uses the same basic integration steps that are described in a previous chapter with some minor modifications It is integrated as a Web Part that communicates with SharePoint WSS via a WCE service This chapter will describe the WCF communication pattern that has been used but also other approaches that can be used for the interaction between the client plug in of Silverlight and the server side of SharePoint The direct communication with SharePoint WSS is done through the WSS object model The object model is accessed in the implementation of the WCF service as well as in the Web Part class that initializes the Silverlight control Some basic issues when prog
37. ble to host Silverlight applications a couple of steps have to be taken e The NET 3 5 Framework has to be installed on the SharePoint Web front end e When hosting Silverlight in WSS Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 with service Pack 1 has to be installed If hosting the Silverlight application in MOSS MOSS 2007 Service Pack 1 has to be installed e The System Web Silverlight dll assembly has to be deployed in the GAC This dll is part of the Silverlight 2 SDK e The IIS hosting the SharePoint sites has to be extended This is done by registering the XAP MIME type in the IIS Manager e The web config file of the targeted Web application has to be extended with a number of configuration elements Please see Appendix A for the extensions that have to be made to the web config file 16 18 6 3 Integrating Silverlight in a SharePoint Web Part One way of creating a Web Part project for SharePoint is to use the Visual Studio Extension for Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 The extension contains a project template which has the initial infrastructure and a list of referenced assemblies It also contains a WSS 3 0 Feature for advertising the Web Part in a SharePoint site collection In addition a Web Part class is created and the possibility to edit the SharePoint solution WSP file which is generated when the project is built Figure 6 3 1 shows how the project template is structured in Visual Studio The WSP View is depicted on the right and the
38. c file The below line of code is added in the file which specifies the service implementation gae ServiceHost Service Contact Service PersonService gt In addition the service host in itself has to be configured It is done by declaring a service and adding it to the endpoint The declaration is done in the service web site s web config file The entire file looks as shown below lt xml version 1 0 encoding UTF 8 gt lt configuration gt lt system serviceModel gt lt services gt lt service name Contact Service PersonService gt lt endpoint address binding basicHttpBinding contract Contact Service IPersonService gt lt service gt lt services gt lt system serviceModel gt lt configuration gt The configuration says that there can be basicHttpBinding communication through the Contact Service PersonService at address Person sve to Contact Service PersonService 15 17 6 Integrating Silverlight in SharePoint 6 1 Visual Studio Configuration A couple of extensions have to be downloaded for Silverlight 2 0 to work properly in the development environment e Download and install the Silverlight 2 0 browser plug in e Download and install Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and NET Framework 3 5 Service Pack if not already installed on the system e Download and install Microsoft Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 6 2 SharePoint Runtime Configuration For SharePoint to be a
39. ch is applied to the user interface element When applying the style the StaticResource markup extension is used for the Style attribute lt TextBlock Style StaticResource ContentDescription gt A drawback with the styles in Silverlight is the lack of conditional styling and style inheritance which is supported in WPF Conditional styles are useful for applying styles to framework elements depending on certain conditions for example hovering over an element The second drawback is style inheritance A new style can be defined with a combination of new setters and inheriting setters from its parent 34 8 6 Using Control Templates Templates are for Control based classes and are used for changing how the controls are rendered visually This is possible because there is a separation in how they look and what they do Each control can have different states such as disabled A control template lets the developer define what the control looks like in each of its states It is a kind of changing the look and feel of the control because the visual appearance changes when the user interacts with it Every Control in Silverlight has a property Template which is located in the Control class By setting this property the developer is resetting the controls appearance From this reset state the look and feel can be adapted as wished The new appearance that is defined in the below code sample is a round close button lt Style x Key CloseButton
40. d file App xaml cs The data is then passed further to an instance of the Page class The parsing and passing code can be seen below 18 private void Application_Startup object sender StartupEventArgs e string siteurl null string weburl null if e InitParams null amp amp e InitParams Count gt 0 if e InitParams webURL null weburl e InitParams webURL if e InitParams siteURL null siteURL e InitParams siteURL this RootVisual new Page siteURL webURL 6 5 A SharePoint Custom Field Type interacting with Silverlight A SharePoint field type is used to define columns in lists and document libraries But can also be used when developing rich survey animations By using a hidden HTML input field Silverlight can communicate with the SharePoint field type The ID of the input field is passed to the Silverlight application using the InitParams property of the Silverlight control The HtmlPage class is used to access the hidden field Silverlight gets a reference to the HTML element by calling the GetElementByld passing it the ID of the element The sample code below shows how this is accomplished 22 private void SetValueInHiddencontrol O string valuestring this SelectedValue ToString cultureInfo Invariantculture HtmlElement element Htm Page Document GetElementById valueCcontrolId if element null element SetAttributeC value valuestring Simi
41. data and implementing logic for user input and interaction with event handlers Figure 10 1 represents this pattern A problem with the pattern is that it mixes application logic with the visual presentation This leads to an application that is harder to test It also effects the separation of the designers work and the work of the developer View XAML Code Bebund Event Handlers Figure 10 1 The code behind pattern 25 The M V VM pattern tries to separate the logic from the presentation The data that is displayed are implemented as properties of the ViewModel that the View gets via data binding Further on the ViewModel also have methods that have logic that is consumed by the View using commanding The key is that the ViewModel is independent from what controls that build up the View Figure 10 2 illustrates this pattern 25 41 View XAML L Code Behind Change I Notifications Databinding amp Commands 4 J ViewModel State a Guest Figure 10 2 The Model View ViewModel pattern 25 11 Silverlight Testing and Debugging Before integrating the Silverlight application in the SharePoint Web Part it is recommended that it works as much as possible This is most easily done in the Web Application project that is created in Visual Studio when developing the Silverlight application When the application is working within this environment it should be wrapped in a Web Part Once it is wrapped in th
42. del The communication model separates clients which initiate the communication and services which are waiting and responding to the client s request The client and service communicate using endpoints The service defines a set of endpoints which is all information that is necessary for exchanging messages The client will then generate an endpoint that is compatible with the service endpoint An endpoint is a standard description of how a message should be sent and how the message looks like This is done by letting the service expose metadata to the client 13 5 2 Services and Clients A service can be both local and remote and the client consuming the service can be literally anything a Windows Forms class an ASP NET page or another service All messages in WCE are SOAP messages The messages are independent of transport protocol unlike Web services WCF can communicate over a set of protocols not only HTTP Machine A Machine B Process 1 Process 2 Machine C WWW w Process 3 BE Figure 5 2 1 WCF proxy model 14 The client will never communicate with the service directly not even when run on the local machine instead a proxy is used to forward the call to the service The proxy exposes the same methods as of the service This programming model approach is good for making the location of the service transparent It enables the possibility to switch service location without affecting the cl
43. e SQL Server makes it easier for back up and restoring WSS sites when necessary 4 3 5 Internet Information Service WSS is built on Internet Information Service IIS and relies on IIS Web sites to handle incoming HTTP requests An IIS Web site is an entry point to the IIS Web server infrastructure The default web site that IIS creates listen to port 80 additional Web sites can be created that listen to other ports One important feature with IIS Web sites is that the security settings can be configured differently for different Web sites One Web site might use Basic Authentication and allowing anonymous access Another site may be used as an intranet site and can therefore be configured to require integrated Windows authentication and to disallow anonymous access 2 In WSS terms an IIS Web site is called a virtual server A virtual server has to be extended with WSS to be able to run WSS Web sites When installing WSS it automatically extends the default Web site listening to port 80 With SharePoint Central Administration other Web sites can be extended to support WSS Unlike ASP NET WSS does not configure each Web site using a Virtual directory WSS instead looks for all the configuration information in the configuration database and content database This means that when starting creating WSS sites they will not appear in the IIS metabase Therefore IIS will not know how many WSS Web sites it is hosting Because WSS does not need a
44. e Web Part no breaking points can be set for debugging in the Silverlight application When troubleshooting problems with the Silverlight application it is good to use a HTTP debugger Especially when the application uses Web Service calls When developing the Process Designer tool the web debugging program fiddler2 was used It gives a clear view of what data is sent to and from the web browser and the server where the Web Service is located and what calls fails It also tells if a cross domain file is being requested When the XAP file is downloaded from the server it is cached in the browser When new versions of the XAP file is available for download from the server the browser will still use the cached file It is therefore necessary to clear the browser cache before testing newer versions 24 11 1 Unit testing Testing is an important part of the development life cycle of software Software patterns like dependency injection and M V VM makes it easier to design code that is easier to test There is no Silverlight testing framework that is integrated with Silverlight itself The Silverlight testing framework is available with the release of the Silverlight control source 26 A rather common misperception is that every test written using a test framework is a unit test but there are a number of different tests that can be written to test code A test can be seen as not being unit test if It communicates with the database It communicates
45. e by using the GetProperty method asking for the value of the innerHTML as shown in the code sample below 19 public Page string controlid InitializeComponent il string xmlstring string Empty if controlid null HtmlElement ctl HtmlPage Document GetElementById controlid if ctl null xmlstring string ctl GetProperty innerHTML 8 2 3 The Silverlight Control The Silverlight control is created in the overridden CreateChildControls method of the Web Part base class Here information is set concerning where the Silverlight application can find the XAP file which is loaded and executed by the Silverlight plug in in the browser The size of the control is set using the Width and Height property and the appropriate parameters are passed to the InitParameters property protected override void CreateChildControls ctrl new Silverlight ctrl ID SilverlightNavigation ctrl Source _layouts NavigationWebPart SilverlightNavigation xap ctrl Width new System Web UI WebControls Unit 876 ctrl Height new System Web UI WebControls Unit 631 ctrl InitParameters initXml CreateXMLString Controls Add ctrl The XAP file is placed in the _layouts folder and not in a SharePoint document library This is to make Silverlight application available in any site collection that is hosted on the SharePoint server Having it in the _layouts folder is a good loca
46. e ee idee i E ENO eeegg 1 a Der 1 1225 Ee 2 1 3Delimitation vs oi cdnavasiescueeesecputs deet ie o a eebe RIGA SNS deeg DENNA deeg ie ege Ze 2 2 The Process Designer Tool an IntrodUCtiOl sesssersrorsssrersrrrsseresrrrrrrrrerrrerrresrrerrrr rer rrr rr nen 3 2 1 The Graphical User Interface nisasie S ch de oleae hi ees 3 DDE UMC UOT AL VEL VIEW einen EE 5 2 2 1 User Group and PROCESS REN 5 2 2 2 Checking in and Out EE 5 IIRA TS TOTTI egene poses 5 22 A Process E ee Ee 5 3 Windows Eet 6 3 1 WSS and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 sssmssssesserssrrrsrrrssrreserersrrrsrrrrrrrrnrr enn ren 6 EE ee E 6 33 Wi e DEE 6 3 4 EE TEE 6 2 5 Intemet Information TEE 7 3 0 Site and Site EE 7 ee o CG 8 A SUNY E 9 4 1 Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation s ssssrsssrerssererrrrrsrrrsrrrsnrresnrernrrerrrenn 9 4 2 Silverlight and HTML DOM ssssssosssrsersserssresresrresrrsrrsererrrsrrsererrrsrrser Eege 10 4 3 The Silverlight Object Model EE 11 E EE 11 4D Code bend 124426 EEN 12 SES EE Tass Keren 13 46 1 Depende yO D CE oA yac fesse re tes ke oe grees ven ese ae esse a ees 13 46 2 U TET M TA sheet Ste ac Sat Ah Saha dete lca 13 GEERT 13 AOA Layout LEE 14 4 7 Silverlight Application Architecture Seege NENNEN ENEE 14 4 7 A The Silverlight XAP Blees tei alanine wetness 14 4 7 2 Testing a Silverlight Application s ccscsncccusasass sac etadovan Sege geed bee Gade veedEE ge 14 5 Windows Communication Poundaton rer rrrr
47. eased by Microsoft It is an information portal that lets people and teams connect communicate and collaborate As companies grow it gets harder to manage the increasing amount of documents and files that are produced SharePoint overcomes this issue by allowing the company to store all documents and files in a central site Working today often means working on many different office locations even in other countries SharePoint lets employees connect and collaborate no matter where the individual is located Being able to develop interactive user rich and robust applications within a strict business environment which SharePoint offers has lead to the subject of this thesis The thesis will evaluate the benefits of Silverlight when integrated in SharePoint WSS Any surplus values will be evaluated in conjunction to what companies and customers gain from the technology The thesis will also describe in detail how the integration of Silverlight in SharePoint is accomplished and describing any problems and difficulties In conjunction to this report a Process Designer tool has been implemented and integrated in a SharePoint environment The tool has been integrated to get a practical approach to the integration and to be able to evaluate the technology of Silverlight 1 1 Background The thesis has been written at Consignit Consignit is a consultant company with main office in Gothenburg Consignit customers include Volvo Sweco and AstraZeneca Their ma
48. ecute the code and render the content to the designated place on the page Silverlight provides a richer user experience when used properly than the traditional mixture of HTML and JavaScript The technique is not unique similar technologies exist that use the same browser plug in concept Most successful of them all has been Adobe Flash Because Flash has just recently gone from being a multimedia player to a set of programming tools it lacks the mature programming environment like NET This is where Microsoft has seen the advantage in Silverlight offering cross platform support like Flash but also offering development in the mature environment of NET Silverlight has also architectural benefits to Flash the most significant one is that its base is a thinner version of NET s common language runtime This makes it possible for a developer to write Silverlight code using C or Visual Basic 10 4 1 Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation Silverlight uses the model WPF has for building client side user interfaces WPF is the successor of Windows Forms and is the next generation of creating Windows applications WPF was first introduced with NET 3 0 WPF not only makes development of Windows applications easier but also boosts performance by rendering everything through a DirectX pipeline Silverlight can t use all of the features available in WPF Many of WPP s features rely on Windows specific display drivers which makes them i
49. eleaseld 16420 DownloadId 416 10 August 2008 19 codeplex Sample 4 Custom Navigation http sl4sp codeplex com Release ProjectReleases aspx ReleaselId 16420 DownloadId 416 12 August 2008 20 codeplex Slider Control Source Code Project http sl4sp codeplex com Release ProjectReleases aspx Releaseld 19961 DownloadId 506 76 November 2008 21 Scanlon Accelerated Silverlight 2 Appress L P United States 2008 22 Microsoft MSDN Server and Site Architecture Object Model Overview http msdn microsoft com en us library ms473633 aspx 2009 51 23 Pae How We Did It LearingPoint for SharePoint http blogs msdn com sharepoint archive 2009 04 0 1 how we did it learningpoint for sharepoint aspx April 2009 24 Williams Tips for Writing Silverlight Web Parts in SharePoint Part 1 http www synergyonline com blog blog moss Lists Posts Post aspx ID 32 October 2008 25 Kothari ViewModel Pattern in Silverlight using Behaviors http www nikhilk net Silverlight ViewModel Pattern aspx June 2008 26 Follesoe Efficient testing in Silverlight 2 using tags http jonas follesoe no EfficientTestingInSilverlight2UsingTags aspx October 2008 27 Haack Unit Test Boundaries http haacked com archive 2008 07 22 unit test boundaries aspx July 2008 28 Wilcox Unit Testing with Silverlight 2 http www jeff wilcox name 2008 03 silverlight2 unit testing March 2008 52 Appendix A U
50. ep is to create a child control for the Web Part which will create an object tag that tells the Silverlight plug in to download and execute the XAP file By overriding the base class method CreateChildControls the Silverlight ASP NET control can be created The Source property specifies where the XAP file is located for download 17 21 protected override void CreateChildControls base CreateChildControls System Web UI SilverlightControls Silverlight ctrl new System Web UI SilverlightControls Silverlight ctrl ID HelloWorld ctrl Source SPContext Current Site Url XAPS HelloWorld xap ctrl Width new Unit 400 ctrl Width new Unit 300 Controls Add ctrl 6 4 Passing data from SharePoint to Silverlight When there is a need of passing data to the Silverlight application there is a possibility to do this by using the InitParameters property of the Silverlight ASP NET control Parameters are sent in comma delimited string of key value pairs The example below specifies two parameters System Web UI SilverlightControls Silverlight ctrl new System Web UI SilverlightControls Silverlight ctrl InitParameters webURL SPContext Current Web Url siteURL SPContext Current Site Url The parameters that are passed to Silverlight are processed in the start of the application The code for parsing the key value string is placed in the Application_Startup event handler in the code behin
51. ght Testing namespace This class has support for interacting with the root visual and the HTML DOM bridge In addition the class has a number of helper methods that can be used with the Asynchronous attribute which enables writing tests beyond the scope of the test method until the TestComplete method is called To be able to do UI tests on the Process Designer tool the Internals VisibleTo attribute has to be used which allows the test assembly to view internal types and methods This is done by adding the line below to the AssemblyInfo cs file in the Process Designer project assembly InternalsVisibleTo CIT UnitTest ProcessDesigner This lets the test project assembly call methods within the Process Designer project having the keyword internal To make the testing scenarios easier a TestInitialize method will be called before the TestMethod In this method a new instance of the Page is created and added to the TestPanel If the TestPanel is accessed in a test the content will be cleared before the next test is run This saves time when writing tests not having to do any manual cleanup of temporary visuals that are used within the test Below a sample code is shown which instantiates a Page with the parameter null By doing this a mock process model is loaded for testing purposes TestClass public class Test SilverlightTest private Page page TestInitialize public void PreparePage page new Page null
52. gt lt compi lation gt lt pages enableSessionState false enableviewState true enableviewStatemMac true validateRequest false pageParserFi IterType Microsoft SharePoint ApplicationRuntime SPPageParserFilter Microsoft SharePoint Version 12 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 71e9bce111e9429c asyncTimeout 7 gt lt controls gt lt add tagPrefix asp namespace System web UI assembly System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt add tagPrefix asp namespace System web UI webControls assembly System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral Pub1lickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt controls gt lt pages gt lt system web gt lt runtime gt lt assemblyBinding xmlns urn schemas microsoft com asm v1 gt lt dependentAssemb 1 y gt lt assemblyIdentity name System web Extensions publi ckeyToken 31bf3856ad364e35 Za lt bindingRedirect oldVersion 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 newversion 3 5 0 0 gt lt dependentAssembly gt lt dependentAssemb 1 y gt lt assemblyIdentity name System web Extensions Design publickeyToken 31bf3856ad364e35 gt lt bindingRedirect oldVersion 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 newversion 3 5 0 0 gt lt dependentAssemb1y gt lt assemb1yBinding gt lt runtime gt lt system webServer gt lt validation validateIntegratedmModeconfiguration false gt lt modules gt lt remove name ScriptModule gt lt add name Script
53. h But instead of communicating with the built in SharePoint Web services it talks to a self implemented service Figure 9 6 1 shows this approach 23 Figure 9 6 1 Communication pattern 23 40 10 The Model View ViewModel Pattern The Model View Control pattern is well known and commonly used when developing ASP NET applications with a request response style The M V VM Model View ViewModel pattern has not been discussed as much as a formal pattern However it works well for client applications that use interactive or dynamic user interfaces that are data bound This is the case when coming to Silverlight The pattern consists of three parts the Model DataModel View and the ViewModel e Model DataModel This part represents the data that the application is operating over as well as the data access mechanism Analogous to the Model in the MVC pattern e View The View is the user interface that displays the data and enables user interaction It is typically in a declarative language like XAML or HTML e ViewModel Also read as The View s Model this part is responsible to represent the data in a more suitable way for the view It also has operations that are performing work and that often change the data that the view is bound to The code behind pattern that is the natural approach to use when programming Silverlight applications uses a similar approach Having UI components that are associated with code behind that loads
54. hat helps development of future Silverlight applications Sammanfattning SharePoint WSS r en informationsportal fran Microsoft som hj lper anst llda att kollaborera och kommunicera inom f retaget SharePoint later m nniskor dela dokument och filer genom att spara dem p en central hemsida Detta underl ttar kommunikation inom f retaget Silverlight r en teknologi f r att bygga Rika Internet Applikationer Det anv nder sig av ett plugin i webl saren som laddar ner Silverlight kod och exekverar den Det r designat f r att erbjuda anv ndaren en rikare anv ndarerfarenhet n den traditionella blandningen av HTML och skriptspr k Process Design verktyget sammanf r dessa teknologier Verktyget r helt utvecklat i Silverlight och anv nder out of the box funktionalitet fr n SharePoint samtidigt som verktyget ger en rikare anv ndark nsla till SharePoint som inte kan skapas med SharePoint teknologi sj lvt Genom att f lja ett par integrationssteg s kan Silverlight anv ndas i SharePoint Med hj lp av Web Service teknologi s kan de b da ramverken kommunicera och dra f rdelar av varandra Fokus p rapporten r integreringen mellan Silverlight och SharePoint WSS Rapporten evaluerar integrationsprocessen samt Silverlight som teknologi Integrationen och implementationen kommer att beskrivas detta f r att underl tta utvecklingen av framtida Silverlight applikationer inom SharePoint Table of Contents Loterie ene
55. have the System Runtime Serialization DataContractAttribute attribute applied to them with one or more private or public data members DataContract Namespace Information Namespace Contact public class Person Guid DataMember public String Guid get set FirstName DataMember public String FirstName get set LastName DataMember public String LastName get set Above is an example of a Person data contract It is important to keep in mind only to specify as many members as is needed Because all information is sent over a wire the amount of data can affect performance When it comes to Silverlight this is even more important Firstly the information that is sent has to be delegated through a browser before the plug in can process it And secondly the more information that has to be sent over the wire the more unresponsive the Silverlight application gets 16 The second step is to create an implementation to the contract The implementation is put in an ordinary class as shown below using System namespace Contact Service public class PersonService Contact Service IPersonService GetPersonData public Person GetPersonData String personGuid return new Person Guid personGuid FirstName John LastName Doe Step three is to configure the host of the service with the corresponding endpoints This is done by creating a Person sv
56. ht Web Part for SharePoint Scope Site Version 1 0 0 0 Hidden FALSE DefaultResourceFile core xmlns http schemas microsoft com sharepoint gt E lt ElementManifests gt lt ElementManifest Location HelloWorld HelloWorld xml gt lt ElementFile Location HelloWorld HelloWorld webpart gt lt ElementManifests gt lt Feature gt 6 3 5 The SharePoint Solution File The actual deployment of the Web Part assembly and the Feature files is done by the SharePoint Solution file The file with the extension WSP is a CAB file which contains the folder structure with all the solution components that is needed to deploy the solution to the front end Web servers 20 lt Solution SolutionId 15c907cc 651b 4c52 86ac db5ec04097e3 xmlns http schemas microsoft com sharepoint gt lt FeatureManifests gt lt FeatureManifest Location HelloWorld feature xml gt lt FeatureManifests gt lt Assemblies gt lt Assembly Location HelloWorld dll Deployment Target GlobalAssemblyCache gt lt Assemblies gt SOo lutions 6 3 6 Hosting Silverlight in the Web Part To be able to host the Silverlight plug in in the Web Part a couple of steps have to be taken Two assemblies need to be referenced in the Web Part project Firstly the System Web Extensions dll contains ASP NET AJAX 1 0 extension layer And secondly System Web Silverlight dll which contains the Silverlight ser
57. ht to add SE delete or edit processes on the sub process level of the process Figure is an example of how the tool is seen by a designer he is a member of the Company Portal Members group which is the owner of the Root process level Versioning and Visibility The Process Designing tool is built upon a versioning feature that can be added to SharePoint document libraries Each document in a library can be checked in either as a minor or a major version In conjunction to this functionality each process level of the Process Designer tool has a version attached to it making it possible to decide when a process level is to be made public to Viewers If a process level is a minor version it is not seen by Viewers only major versions are In addition it is possible to blend out The Designer Area 1 This area is the toolbar area for interacting with individual processes and the whole process level Check in Button When finished designing new or editing existing processes the process level has to be checked in to save the changes Pressing the check in button the user is prompted with a popup window within the application The process level can be checked in as a major or a minor version An optional check in comment can moreover be submitted Check in Root level Verion Major Check in comment ssfully ch Figure 2 Check in Check out Button Before any alterations can be done to a process level i
58. ient but also simplifies the application programming model 14 5 3 Setting up a Service When setting up WCF for communication an address a binding and a contract is needed With this information either a service side endpoint can be created which the client will access or a client side channel which the client will use to communicate with the service 15 WCE services are setup in three steps First create a service contract with one or more service contracts Second create the service contract implementation Third configure the host with an endpoint to the service An example service contract with one operation contract is specified below The service contract is a NET interface with the System ServiceModel ServiceContractAttribute attribute applied to it The operation contracts are simple method signatures using System using System ServiceModel IIF namespace Contact Service ServiceContract Namespace Information Namespace Contact public interface IPersonService GetPersonData OperationContract Person GetPersonData String personGuid A good practice is to keep the WCF service interfaces short between 3 to 7 methods per contract The namespace property is for logically organizing services much like how the NET namespace works for separating classes and interfaces The GetPersonData operation contract has a Person as return value Person is a data contract Data contracts are classes which
59. in business is delivering solutions for Enterprise Content Management where SharePoint is their main area of expertise SharePoint is often used as the company s intranet portal where information is gathered in a central location Moreover companies often have standardized processes where a collection of connected activities for describing how to produce a service or product are depicted To these processes documents are connected holding detailed information how to accomplish the activities to the processes This information is often stored and managed within SharePoint making SharePoint a good location for central administration of the company s processes The process documents are often not stored in a single location but are rather spread around the portal making it hard for employees to get a visual picture of the processes as well as accessing the documents from a central place within the portal Consignit has thus seen the need for a tool integrated within SharePoint for designing process hierarchies that the process documents can be connected to In conjunction to this need Consignit is interested in evaluating any surplus values that Silverlight brings to SharePoint WSS and to analyze any difficulties and challenges occurring when doing the integration and the implementation of the Process Designer tool 1 2 Purpose The purpose of the thesis is to model visualize and implement a process navigation and designing tool in Silverlight a
60. ion rights The users having designer rights can add delete and edit processes Users with navigation rights can only navigate through the part of the processes hierarchy tree where he does not belong to the owners group of the process level By making use of the SharePoint user groups the management of these groups can be kept within SharePoint If a user needs to have designer rights to a certain process he can easily be added from the SharePoint user interface by a user with the right permission 2 2 2 Checking in and out of Processes The Silverlight tool makes use of a SharePoint document library for saving the process levels within the process hierarchy It therefore also inherits the SharePoint functionality of being able to check in and out process levels Before any changes can be made to the level it has to be checked out to make sure that no other user within the owner group is working with the processes When the user has finished editing the process level he can check in his work If not checked in it will be locked for all others for editing 2 2 3 Versioning In SharePoint an additional versioning feature can be added to any document library This is to keep a history of documents as they evolve over time The versioning is also used for triggering workflows The Process Designer tool makes use of the versioning by giving the designers the possibility to check in their work as a minor or major version With the separation of minor
61. ionGroup name webServices type System web Configuration ScriptingwebServicesSectionGroup System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt section name jsonSerialization type System web Configuration ScriptingJsonSerializationSection System web Extensions version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 requirePermission false allowDefinition Everywhere gt lt section name profileService type System web Configuration ScriptingProfileServiceSection System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 requirePermission false allowDefinition MachineToApplication gt lt section name authenticationService type System web Configuration ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection System web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 requirePermission false allowDefinition MachineToApplication fe lt section name roleService type System web Configuration ScriptingRoleServiceSection System Web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 requirePermission false Ee MachineToApplication gt lt sectionGroup gt lt sectionGroup gt lt sectionGroup gt lt configSections gt lt system web gt lt httpHandlers gt lt remove verb ath asmx i gt lt add verb path asmx validate false type System web Script Sere es
62. ioned within an existing Web application The site cannot exist on its own within the Web application Instead each site has to be inside the scope of a site collection A site collection works as a container for WSS sites Each site collection must have a top level site The collection can then further contain a hierarchy of child sites 2 r a Web Application s d 8 Top Level Site s Site s Site s Site Collection Figure 3 6 1 Site Hierarchy 9 3 7 Web Parts As mentioned earlier a Web Part makes it possible for a site owner to customize site pages with changes that is made visible for users A user can then personalize these Web Parts the changes made by the user will then only be seen by the individual user himself 2 The difference between an ordinary ASP NET page and a Web Part page is that ASP NET pages are stored as a text file in the file system of the Web server The parts needed for a Web Part are stored in multiple tables in the WSS content database This makes it possible to personalize and customize Web Parts for different sites and users A Web Part page has several Web Part Zones A Web Part is added to the page by placing it in a zone 8 4 Silverlight 2 0 Silverlight is a framework for building browser hosted applications that can run on several operating systems Silverlight runs as a browser plug in which means that when surfing to a page containing Silverlight content the browser will download ex
63. isplayed Major versions are displayed with syntax X 0 and minor versions as X X where X is representing a number e Top left corner The SharePoint user group is displayed that is the owner of the process level in view e Bottom left corner The process that has been clicked and therefore is in focus is displayed e Bottom right corner The name of the process level is displayed The Bottom left text block is also used to display status messages when interacting with the server These are displayed in a red color after a server call has been made The following status messages are currently available Could not find process in the document library Could not locate the process document library Process was successfully checked out Process was successfully checked in The process has already been checked out by userName 57 The process is checked out by userName Process and sub processes were successfully deleted The Viewer On a process level where the user does not belong to the owner user group he will be limited to only being able to view the levels properties and navigate to other levels Area 1 This area is the toolbar area for interacting with individual processes and the whole process level Check in Button Not applicable Check out Button Not applicable Delete Button Not applicable Back Button The back button is for navigation purposes Pressing the back button will lead the user
64. lar to developing the SharePoint Web Part a custom field type can be developed using the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 The SharePoint custom field type architecture consists of three files a core class for the custom field type an ASP NET server control class that is acting as a host container for the Silverlight application and an XML file which is the field type definition file that communicates to SharePoint that an extra field type exists 6 5 1 The Field Type Class The custom field type has to inherit from one of the built in field type classes or the SPField class which is the base class of them all In the sample below a number is stored it therefore inherits from the SPFieldNumber class public class SliderControlField SPFieldNumber public SliderControlField SPFieldCollection fields string fieldName base fields fieldName public SliderControlField SPFieldCollection fields string typeName string displayName base fields typeName displayName public override BaseFieldControl FieldRenderingControl SharePointPermission SecurityAction LinkDemand ObjectModel true get BaseFieldControl fieldControl new SliderFieldControl fieldControl FieldName this InternalName return fieldControl By overriding the FieldRenderingControl property of the base class an instance of the ASP NET server control is created This will tell ShareP
65. le row in the list 22 29 8 2 The Web Part Implementation The Process Designer has been integrated in SharePoint as a Web Part according to the Web Part integration chapter seen earlier In this chapter a couple of different approaches are shown how to use the InitParams and thereby showing the approach that is used by the Process Designer 8 2 1 Passing data to Silverlight In the chapter Integrating Silverlight in SharePoint the InitParams are described as a method to communicate with the Silverlight plug in at startup from the SharePoint Web Part Below is a piece of code from the Process Designer tool Instead of passing a string with comma separated key value pairs it uses XLing to create an XML string Collection lt XElement gt siteUserGroupElements new Collection lt XElement gt foreach SPGroup group in SPContext Current Web Groups XElement item new XElement SiteUserGroup new XElement Name group Name siteUserGroupElements Add item Collection lt XElement gt elements new Collection lt XElement gt XElement siteUserGroups new XElement SiteUserGroups siteUserGroupElements elements Add siteUserGroups XDocument document new XDocument new XElement Root elements XLingq is a lightweight XML programming API and is a member of the LINQ Project family XLingq is an in memory API designed to take advantage of the latest NET Framework
66. mpossible to use within Silverlight because of the fact that Silverlight is operating system independent But rather to invent a whole new model for Silverlight it uses a subset of the WPF features This makes them very similar to each other Here is a listing of some of the similarities e Defining a user interface is done in the markup language XAML e The same syntax can be used when binding data to controls e Silverlight uses the same basic controls as WPF e Style and template syntax are similar e Drawing 2D graphics In future releases even more of the features available in WPF will be found in Silverlight 11 4 2 Silverlight and HTML DOM The Silverlight plug in can be integrated with any new or existing web property The web property can be anything from a web page blog or intranet portal The Silverlight plug in can fill up the whole page or just parts of it It can be placed anywhere it is wanted within the web property This is possible because of its relationship with HTML DOM The Silverlight plug in is integrated with the DOM Once it is embedded the DOM application tree will expand as can be seen in Figure 4 2 1 Document Object Model lt title gt lt style gt Silverlight control host Silverlight control Silverlight Object Model Figure 4 2 1 Silverlight DOM model extension 12 Most of the available web browsers support the DOM variants supported by Silverlight It is therefore possible for Silve
67. ms Publishing United States 2001 7 Smith Fingar Business Process Management The Third Wave MK Press United States 2003 8 Masterman Pattison Use Windows SharePoint Services as a Platform for Building Collaborative Apps Part 2 http msdn microsoft com sv se magazine cc188713 en us aspx August 2004 9 Jamison Cardarelli Hanley Essential SharePoint 2007 Addison Wesley New York June 2007 10 MacDonald Silverlight 2 Visual Essentials Appress L P United States 2008 11 MacDonald Pro Silverlight 2 in CS 2008 Apress L P United States 2008 12 Campell Stockton Silverlight 2 in Action Manning Publications Co United States 2008 13 Microsoft MSDN Fundamental Windows Communication Foundation Concepts http msdn microsoft com en us library ms731079 aspx 2009 14 Lowy WCF Essentials http en csharp online net WCF_ Essentials 2007 15 Betz Understanding WCF Services in Silverlight 2 http www netfxharmonics com 2008 1 1 Understanding WCF Services in Silverlight 2 WCFSilverlightServiceSetup November 2008 16 Tisseghem Silverlight BluePrint Guidence http www u2u info Blogs Patrick Download Silverlight_BluePrint_SharePoint_Guidance zi p August 2008 17 codeplex Hello World Source Code Project http sl4sp codeplex com Release ProjectReleases aspx ReleaseId 19961 DownloadId 505 18 November 2008 18 codeplex Sample 2 Media Viewer http sl4sp codeplex com Release ProjectReleases aspx R
68. nd integrate it on a SharePoint site By this practical approach the Silverlight technology can be evaluated when it comes to any surplus values that it brings to user experience and also how well it cooperates with the SharePoint object model By a practical integration any difficulties can be evaluated for future development of other tools 1 3 Delimitation The thesis deals with two major areas Silverlight and SharePoint WSS Therefore an introduction of both technologies is given The tool that has been integrated is concerning the processes within a company and how these are structured a brief overview of different business process terminologies will hence be outlined WCF Windows Communication Foundation will be explained in combination with Silverlight for server client communication Other server client communication patterns will be briefly described as a supplement to using WCF The tool developed in conjunction to the report will be presented and how the integration of the tool is done within a SharePoint site Future improvements of the Process Designer tool will be discussed Implementation oriented improvements but also potential additions to the tools functionality and graphical user interface An introduction to the Model View ViewModel pattern is given that is often used implementing Silverlight It is used for decoupling responsibilities between application layers and for making unit testing easier The Silverlight te
69. new virtual directory for each Web site the scalability and maintenance is improved When WSS extends the virtual server it installs an ISAPI filter which intercepts each request and determines if it should be handled by IIS or WSS 4 3 6 Site and Site Collections A WSS site stores lists document libraries and child sites The site has securable entities which content is only visible for a set of defined users These set of users can be defined either on the site itself or be inherited from the parent site A set of groups and permissions can also be configured for the site which defines the level of accessibility on lists and documents libraries WSS relies on US and the ASP NET authentication provider infrastructure for user authentication When it comes to user authorization WSS provides user interface components that allow privileged users to configure authorization to different elements within a site A WSS site provides a fully customizable and extendable user interface The site administrator can create pages and customize them The administrator can even change the navigation structure using the browser A WSS site also uses Microsoft Web Part technology A site administrator can customize Web Part pages by configuring and adding Web Parts A user can then personalize the Web Parts by modifying them The data needed for showing the Web Parts in a customized manner is saved automatically in the content database A site has to be provis
70. o enable the web service to get a reference to SPContext the service has to be told to run within the ASP NET context This is done by adding the following line to the web config file of the web service lt system serviceModel gt lt serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled true gt lt system serviceModel gt The sample code below is taken from the Process Designer tool The call is made at the application startup to load the process model that has been saved in a Document Library The using statements are used when the developer wants to have supervision of when the resource allocated within it should be released This is good when handling with limited resources such as file handles and network connections The release of memory is otherwise done by the common language runtime which does this in a non deterministic manner Using the approach below it is possible to drill down in SharePoint object model and in this case ending up with the SPDocumentLibrary object where the files for loading the process model is located OperationContract public Collection lt MainCanvasProp gt GetMainCanvases Collection lt MainCanvasProp gt props new Collection lt MainCanvasProp gt using SPSite site new SPSite SPContext Current Site ID using SPWeb web site OpenWeb SPDocumentLibrary library SPDocumentLibrary web Lists Process Hierarchy if library null return props 9 4 1
71. odel for interacting with SharePoint document libraries and user groups and Silverlight specific implementation techniques 2 1 The Graphical User Interface The Silverlight Process Designer tool has been divided into four major presentation areas a top toolbar a tab control to the left a properties tab control on the bottom and a main presentation area in the middle where the processes can be dragged and dropped Process Navigator L tsch a Belete i Gg Designer Viewer Owner Company Portal Members Version 18 0 e B A LE gt Selected Follow Up Root level Description Document Link Process Overview Document http cab vpc moss0 1 silverlight ProcessOverview docx Getting started http cab vpc moss0 1 silverlight GettingStarted docx Links Metadata Version History C eat Gelert md Figure 2 1 1 The Process Designer tool The top toolbar consists of four buttons for interacting with the process model a delete button for deleting a process a check in and checkout button for checking in and checking out the process level in view and a back button to navigate backwards in the process hierarchy The left tab control consists of a Designer tab and a Viewer tab In the Designer tab a list box is used to show the available process figures that can be added to the process model The Viewer tab is for navigation purposes Here a tree control has been implemented that shows the hierarchy of
72. oint to display the Silverlight application using the custom field type 6 5 2 The Field Control The field control class is for rendering the ASP NET control when the user creates the column The user interface is created in the CreateChildControls method that is overridden form the base class 23 public class SliderFieldControl NumberField protected override void CreateChildControls Within the CreateChildControls method the Silverlight control is created in exactly the same manner as when overriding the same method in the Web Part class shown earlier Passing any needed parameters is done with the InitParams property of the control 6 5 3 Deploying a Custom Field Type The SharePoint field types are compiled in an assembly and deployed in the global assembly cache Using an XML file SharePoint is informed of the new type By using the generation functionality of Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 3 0 this file can be dynamically created The file is deployed under the 12 Template XML folder with the file prefix fldtypes 20 24 7 Business Process Terminology 7 1 Business Process A business process is a collection of connected activities that produce a service or product that meet the needs of a customer A business process is vital to any organization and generates revenue and represents a significant part of the cost for the company There are three kinds of business processes e Management processes These processe
73. or completing the call 12 WCF OperationContract SomeObject GetSomeData String someId out MyErrorObject myError Silverlight private void proxy_GetSomeDataCompleted object sender GetSomeDataCompletedEventArgs e if e Error null if e myError null fecit else EE 9 6 Other Communication Patterns The difference between a Silverlight Web Part and a normal SharePoint Web Part is that the Silverlight Web Part is executed in the browser and not on the Server Therefore the 39 Silverlight application will not have access to the SharePoint object model The goal is therefore to be able establish some kind of communication between the UI of Silverlight and the SharePoint server side to access objects and data The Process Designer tool uses one approach defining a server side web service which accesses the SharePoint object model This web service is then consumed and called from the Silverlight application There are other patterns that can be taken into account Here is a list of thinkable patterns e Using the Silverlight WebClient object to communicate with the SharePoint built in Web service e Create a client side adapter that is embedded in the Web Part The Silverlight application can then communicate with the adapter through the browser The adapter will then make AJAX style calls to a built in SharePoint Web service e The last thinkable solution is to use the above approac
74. ossible to add more instances of it within a SharePoint site collection This could be done by being able to configure the name of the image library and the document library it uses when the application is added for the first time on the site These configuration settings could be stored in a document library on the top level site Further on a skewing functionality could be added to the Process image title Skewing is supported by Silverlight and the extra parameter it causes can be saved in the document library together with the other properties that are saved The last issue that is good to be taken into consideration is the ability to be linked directly using an URL to the process level of interest 50 15 References 1 Microsoft MSDN Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 http msdn microsoft com sv se library bb93 1737 en us aspx 2009 2 Pattison Larson Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 Microsoft Press Redmond 2007 3 Pattison Discover Significant Developer Improvements in SharePoint Services http msdn microsoft com sv se magazine cc163578 en us aspx July 2006 4 Pattison Masterman Use Windows SharePoint Services as a Platform for Building Collaborative Applications http msdn microsoft com sv se magazine cc 163948 en us aspx July 2004 5 Dufresne Martin Process Modeling for E Business http mason gmu edu tdufresn paper doc March 2003 6 Burlton Business Process Management Profiting Process Sa
75. placed on the user interface is handled by the layout controls Panels There is a set of base functionality that every control in Silverlight offers Figure 4 6 1 shows a shortened class diagram with a subset of controls To be noticed is that not all elements are user interface controls Object DependencyObject UlElement FrameworkElement Ben Ee E ai Geen e S NS it ee a ZS KI Control Image TextBlock Panel TextBox ContentControl UserControl rn 4 T Canvas Grid Y BaseButton StackPanel a Si HyperlinkButton Button Figure 4 6 1 Silverlight control class hierarchy 21 4 6 1 DependencyObject The root of all visual elements is the DependencyObject class This gives the ability to interact with dependency properties The dependency properties are special types of properties that back the NET property The value of a dependency property depends on multiple sources and therefore the NET property is not enough Its value can come from data binding animation templates styles or local values 4 6 2 UlElement The UJElement represents a visual component and gives all elements that inherit from it the ability to draw themselves on a user interface The UIElement supports a number of methods properties and events 4 6 3 FrameworkElement The FrameworkElement adds additional features to the UTElement class like object
76. r Outside an HTTP context a constructor of the SPSite class has to be used to get specific site collections and objects within it Figure 8 1 1 shows the WSS server architecture in relation to the available objects of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration namespace 27 1 Farm SPFarm Web Service SPWebService Servers ge SPServer erv ces SPService Database Service Instance SPServicelnstance SPDatabaseServicelnstance Cameo q femmen K NNT a Koi DU D U U D DU U U U U U D kb ee we wm wn we 2 ee sn we D LETTET J d Web Applications SPWebApplication SPAdministrationWebApplication d Content Databases SPDatabase SPContentDatabase Site Collections SPSite Figure 8 1 1 WSS Server Architecture 22 1 The SPFarm object is located on the highest level of the WSS object model The Servers property gets a collection of all deployed servers and the Services property gets a collection of all the services Each SPServer object represents each server computer within the server farm The ServiceInstances property gets each service instance on the computer Each SPService object represents a service or application that is installed on the server farm SPWebService object provides access to configuration settings for a service or an application The SPDatabaseServiceInstance object represents a single instance of a database service running on the serve
77. r or application The SPWebApplication is representing each of the Web applications in the IIS it provides credentials and other server farm wide application settings The SPContentDatabase represents a database that contains data for the SharePoint Web Application The SPSiteCollection represents the site collection within the Web application 28 The WSS site architecture is shown in Figure 8 1 2 in relation to the objects of the Microsoft SharePoint namespace Site Collection Top level Web Site Subsites 37 Fields Itemi Se 5 Item 2 E Ge Item 3 E Item 4 eS ees Figure 8 1 2 Site Architecture and Object Model Overview 22 1 gt Each SPSite object represents a set of SPWeb objects Such a set is called a site collection but the SPSite object can do more than the SPWebCollection object having the ability to manage the site collection Each site has a number of SPWeb objects these are for managing a site For example by accessing files and folders on the site The Webs property returns the all the sub sites of a certain site The SPList object is for managing lists and accessing items within them The Fields property returns a SPFieldCollection object which represents all fields or columns in the list The Items property returns an object the represents all the items or rows in the list SPField has members that contain settings for the field SPListItem represents a sing
78. ramming against the object model for accessing lists document libraries and user group information will be taken into consideration Silverlight make use of some powerful implementation patterns for data binding and when using styles and templates By using styles the work of the GUI designer and the web logic programmer can be separated A number of out of the box controls are shipped with Silverlight the controls that have been used will be described 8 1 The SharePoint Object Model WSS consists of a server side object model that makes it easier for the developer to access objects that represent different items of a SharePoint Web site A hierarchy of objects is available which makes it easy to access objects on lower levels Depending on the application that is created different entry points to the object model can be used to start from For example when customizing administration and configuration for deployment the static ContentService property can be used to get the current Web service object and its collection of Web applications Or when modifying settings in the administrative Web application the AdministrationService property is used When developing a Web Part or Web application and within them working with site collections individual sites or lists the SPContext class can obtain this information When a Web application is created and put in the _layouts virtual directory the functionality is available to all sites on the Web serve
79. re of by triggering the corresponding proxy event which has the form MethodNameCompleted this is where the result has to be processed The sample code below is taken from the Process Designer tool for loading the process model at the startup of the application This is a typical way for calling the web service First an instance of the proxy class is created An event handler is attached to handle the completed event The web service call is then done with the form MethodNameAsync And finally the service is closed with the CloseAsync method ProcessNavigationClient proxy new ProcessNavigationClient proxy GetMainCanvasesCompleted new EventHandler lt GetMainCanvasesCompletedEventArgs gt proxy_GetMainCanvasesCompleted proxy GetMainCanvasesAsync j proxy CloseAsync To handle the result of the call the completed event and the corresponding EventArgs object has to be handled The proxy class will generate different EventArgs objects for each method The Result property is then typed to match the response data type 11 9 4 WCF and the SharePoint Object Model To use the SharePoint object model within the web service the Microsoft SharePoint namespace has to be added as a reference By default WCF works outside ASP NET and 37 because of that also outside SharePoint The scope of WCF is much larger than just ASP NET therefore this is reasonable To get the current site collection the static SPContext object is used T
80. rface is added to the TestPanel before each test is run and removed when the test is finished Because the tests run very fast it is possible to run thousand of tests with this browser experience Below is what the test would look like if the screen froze in the middle of the test The Selected TEST text is seen on the process design area which is triggered by the test 28 est ProcessNavigation Test R _ lojxi File gdt vew Favorites Tools Help r Or OR AP Arr OO ar OA Address C Documents and SettingslAdministrator My Documents Visual Studio 2008 Projects SharePointProcessDesigner CIT UnitTest ProcessDesigner Bin Debug TestPage html DEN Links Process Navigator Microsoft Silverlight Testing ClickedProcessT extTest Version Test 2 of 2 test methods complete Unit Test Run for CIT UnitTest ProcessNavigation Test AppWidthTest ClickedProcessTextTest Selected TEST Root level Description Document Link Links Metadata Version History Edit Delete fama Biome oe mers z Figure 11 2 2 1 The ClickedProcessTextTest test 46 12 Result The Silverlight tool developed in conjunction to this thesis report meets the purpose of thesis well Using Silverlight to develop more user friendly and interactive applications within SharePoint is a good way to meet customers ever increasing demands of having intuitive and user rich applications The Process Designer tool has an
81. rlight to be a platform independent plug in 10 4 3 The Silverlight Object Model The Silverlight Object Model is much like the tree structure of the HTML DOM model The tree is represented in a Silverlight XAML file Each file has child elements that represent the UL The rendering is done recursively in order from left to right The rendering is shown in Figure 4 3 1 lt Canvas sxlns http schemas microsoft com client 2007 Width 90 Height 90 Background White gt lt Canvas gt lt Rectangle Height 30 Width 85 Fill Gray gt lt Rectangle Height 20 Width 7S Fill Silver RadiusX S RadiusY S Canvas Left S Canvas Tope S gt lt Canvas gt lt TextBlock Text Silverlight Canvas Left 7 Canvas Top 6 lt Canvas gt lt Canvas Background White gt lt Rectangle Fill Silver lt Rectangle Fille Gray gt Figure 4 3 1 Silverlight Rendering order 12 The ordering of the rendering is important for in what order the elements are displayed Elements that are rendered later are shown on top of earlier rendered elements The Silverlight Object Model extends the HTML Document Object Model But it is not possible to access Silverlight elements from the DOM model This has to be done from within the Silverlight plug in 4 4 XAML Extensible Application Markup Language or short XAML is a markup language to instantiate NET objects in XML format Similar to
82. s oversee the operation of the system Typical management processes include Corporate Governance which is the set of processes policies laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed and administered Another management process is Strategic Management which is the ability to formulate implement and evaluate cross functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long term goals e Operational processes are processes that represent the core business Typical operational processes are Purchasing Manufacturing Sales and Marketing e Supporting processes These processes support the core processes I e Accounting Recruitment and Technical support A typical process starts with a customer need and ends with the fulfillment of this need A business process is often divided into sub processes which have their own attributes Analyzing business processes includes mapping sub processes belonging to a business process down to an activity level focusing only on the activities that are needed to accomplish the process 7 7 2 Business Process Management BPM was from the beginning mostly focusing on the automation of mechanistic business processes it has evolved and extended to integrate human driven processes in which humans interact with the mechanistic processes Normally steps in a business process that are performed by humans are assigned to the appropriate people of an organization similar to workflow sys
83. ser Manual Introduction The Process Designer is developed as a Web Part that can easily be added from the Web Part gallery in SharePoint The application makes it possible users with the appropriate user rights to design and navigate through a hierarchy of processes This is accomplished be using a list of process pictures that are loaded from a picture library in SharePoint The User Manual is separated in three parts The first part gives a conceptual overview concerning user groups and versioning The second part describes the user experience of the application from the perspective of using the tool as a process designer The third and last part will guide the user when using the tool for navigating the process hierarchy The Process Designing tool is separated into four areas as can be seen below Each of the areas will be described separately for each of the two user categories Version 18 0 Selected Follow Up Root level Figure 1 The Processes Designing tool and its areas Conceptual Overview User Group and Owner logic The Process Designing tool uses SharePoint user groups to divide users into two categories designers and viewers The viewer will only be able to navigate through the process hierarchy and the designer will have full editing rights To each process that is added to the process hierarchy a process owner is defined The process owner is a SharePoint user group All users within the specified group have the rig
84. ss name Area 3 This area is the properties area where properties to the current process level are to be seen Document Links Tab The document links tab is formed as a list box where all the documents connected to the current process level in view are listed Within the properties area three buttons are available for adding editing and deleting items within the list Pressing a link within the list will open a new browser window where the links content is displayed When pressing buttons add or edit a popup window is displayed Here a description can be filled in for the link and the link itself Important to notice is that the link has to have the syntax http www google com to work Not only www google com Description Document Link FAX kvittens htt harer em nsignit se iments FAX kvitte j Links Metadata Figure 5 Document link Metadata Tab The metadata tab is for adding textual information about a process level The metadata values are listed in a list box New items can be added edited or deleted using the buttons available in the properties area When pressing buttons add or edit a popup is prompted where the user can add a name and a description of the metadata Name Description Office location Stockholm branch HR Figure 6 MetaData Version History Tab The version history tab is for viewing earlier versions of the process level that is currently displayed The earliest version is listed on
85. sting framework is discussed with a couple of implementation examples from the Process Designer tool The report will briefly explain Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MOSS but will not dwell into any details concerning the extensions that MOSS is to WSS WSS is built on top of ASP NET the technology of ASP NET is beyond the scope of the thesis and is not included 2 The Process Designer Tool an Introduction Many companies have standardized processes for meeting customer needs The set of connected activities that belongs to these processes are often described in a number of documents In SharePoint WSS these documents are spread around the intranet portal in document libraries Keeping track of which document that belong to what process gets more and more complicated as companies grow and additional documents are added The Process Designer tool is meant to aid employees within the company to get a visual overview of the processes and which documents that are connected to them New processes and links to documents can be added as processes evolve The user is able to navigate through a hierarchy of sub processes to get a more detailed view of the building stones of a major process This chapter will give an introduction to the graphical user interface of the application A brief functionality overview is also presented A later chapter will dwell into deeper details concerning server communication with WCF working with the SharePoint object m
86. t has to be checked out This is to make sure that no other user is doing design work on the level and therefore risking overwriting each other s work Delete Button By pressing the delete button individual processes on the process level can be deleted The user is prompted with a popup window within the application The new window will list all sub processes that will consequently be deleted If any of the sub process levels are checked out the process cannot be deleted not until the sub process level has been checked in by the user having it checked out 54 The following processes will be deleted IM skickas FAX kvittens Ta fram IM Do you want to proceed Figure 3 Delete Back Button The back button is for navigation purposes Pressing the back button will lead the user back to the parent process level Pressing the back button that is integrated by the browser will not have any effect when navigating within the application This button will only lead the user to the previous html page By doing this any changes that have been made to the process hierarchy will be lost Area 2 This area is the interaction menu for adding new processes and navigating the process hierarchy Designer Tab This tab will list all the available process figures in a list box that can be added to a process level By clicking on a figure the user is prompted with a popup The popup lets the designer specify a heading to the process The
87. tems 7 3 BPM Life Cycle The BPM life cycle splits the activities in BPM in five categories design modeling execution monitoring and optimization e Design Identification of existing and future processes is an essential part in this life cycle category Here focus lies on representing the flow of the workflow and determining which actors are participating A good design is important for reducing the problems over the lifetime of the process e Modeling The modeling stage in the cycle takes the design into account and introduces a set of variables I e when there are changes in the cost of materials that can change how the process operates under different scenarios 25 e Execution Automating the process can be done by having a software system that executes all the steps in the process Human interaction can also be used though often resulting in more complicated system Software systems are available that lets the process be defined in a computer language The system will communicate via services to remote applications that perform business operations or when to complex ask for human interaction e Monitoring Here tracking of the running processes are done This to collect information of the processes state and statistics of the performance can be evaluated e Optimization Here information is collected from the monitoring step to identify the potential or actual bottlenecks which is then used to optimize processes in respect to s
88. the site provisioning engine it is easier to manage thousands of Web sites making them accessible to tens of thousands of users This is achieved with the Web farm architecture in mind making WSS very scalable The architecture is based on stateless front end Web server that relies on back end SQL Servers for storing content and configuration data 3 3 3 WSS Farm A farm is a set of one or more servers that provides WSS functionality to its clients In its simplest form it consists of a single computer that acts as both a front end Web server and an SQL Server managing WSS content A more complicated farm consists of dedicated SQL Servers and several front end servers Each farm has a configuration database that keeps track of important information concerning the farm environment E g what front end servers are associated with the farm and what users have administrative permissions on farm level 2 3 4 Databases WSS relies on two different kinds of databases one configuration database and content databases The configuration database holds deployment specific information for each Web server IIS server and WWS Web site The content database holds data associated with WSS Web sites Each content database stores information of one or more WSS Web sites The data is stored on a site by site basis with information concerning lists documents site customization and personalization The fact that the information concerning one site is stored on on
89. the sub process level of the process Information Text blocks On each corner of the design area status texts are visible e Top right corner The current version of the process level is displayed Major versions are displayed with syntax X 0 and minor versions as X X where X is representing a number e Top left corner The SharePoint user group is displayed that is the owner of the process level in view e Bottom left corner The process that has been clicked and therefore is in focus is displayed e Bottom right corner The name of the process level is displayed Appendix B Web Config The extensions that are needed to support Silverlight content on a site is listed below lt xml _version 1 0 encoding UTF 8 standalone yes gt lt configuration gt lt configSections gt sane one pup name system web extensions type System web Configuration SystemwebExtensionsSectionGroup System web Extensions version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt sectionGroup name sScripting type System web Configuration ScriptingSectionGroup System Web Extensions Version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 gt lt section name scriptResourceHandler type System web Configuration ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection System Web Extensions version 3 5 0 0 Culture neutral PublickeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35 requirePermission false allowDefinition machineToApplication gt lt sect
90. tion for making it globally accessible 8 3 Drag and Drop Silverlight support a number of mouse related events All these events can be handled by any element inheriting from the UIElement class Click handling events for the mouse are very 31 similar to key board events Click related mouse events associated with the mouse are MouseLeftButtonDown and MouseLeftButtonUp which are self explanatory When the left mouse button is selected its corresponding event handlers receive a MouseButtonEventArgs object It inherits from the MouseEventArgs class which gives information concerning the mouse when the event was triggered By calling the GetPosition method the location of the cursor in relation to a specific UIElement is received In addition Silverlight supports mouse movement related event handlers These are the MouseEnter the MouseMove and MouseLeave events which are triggered when the mouse enters moves within and leaves a UlElement These events are also passed a MouseEventArgs parameter so that the position of the element can be captured When implementing the drag and drop feature the first step to be taken is to listen to the MouseLeftButtonDown event processCanvas MouseLeftButtonDown new MouseButtonEventHandler processCanvas_MouseLeftButtonDown By doing this the original position of the mouse can be captured as well as the fact that the mouse is depressed To correctly respond to mouse events ownership over the mouse h
91. top and the newest version is the last item of the list box By selecting an earlier version it is displayed in Area 4 Important to notice is that it is not possible to navigate to sub process levels when an earlier version is displayed Therefore 56 the Viewer tab of the interaction menu will be blended out When wanting to navigate the process hierarchy the last version of the version history list box has to be re selected Version Check In Date 4 0 2009 04 27 21 05 E 5 0 2009 04 27 21 13 6 0 2009 04 27 21 14 7 0 2009 04 28 05 52 Links Metadata Version History Figure 7 Version History Area 4 This is the main design area where the figures of the process system are displayed and are added Drag and Drop Within the design area the process figures can be placed The figures can be dragged around this area and placed where is best suited The text within the process figure representing the name of the process can also be dragged and placed within the process figure Double Click When double clicking the text of a process it can be edited The same popup is then shown as when adding a new process to the design area See Area 2 gt Designer Tab for popup specific information Double clicking the process figure will show the sub process level of the process Information Text blocks On each corner of the design area status texts are visible e Top right corner The current version of the process level is d
92. ve by the one below this is accomplished lt ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment Center VerticalAlignment Center Content TemplateBinding Content gt The button control template above does not give the user any visual feedback reflecting the different visual states a Button control can have By using something called the Visual State Manager defining the different states is possible Each control has a set of visual state groups and visual states defined to them The states within the group are mutually exclusive but the 35 control can be in several states at the same time from the visual groups that is defined for it The Figure 8 6 1 shows two state groups and the visual states that are valid within them Common States Disabled Mouseover Pressed Focus States Figure 8 6 1 Visual State Groups and Visual States 21 When creating a control that supports the visual states and groups that are shown above these have to be defined on the Button class using attributes The control can then specify how it should act in each state this can be very troublesome when doing it in code By using Microsoft Expression Blend defining control templates and their states makes the life of the developer much easier 21 36 9 WCF and Silverlight The most effective way to communicate with server side code is using a web service The basic concept is to include a web service with an ASP NET web site and let the Silverlight applic
93. ver side ASP NET control A ScriptManager is required by the Silverlight ASP NET control to be able to access the ASP NET AJAX 1 0 script library There can only be one instance of the ScriptManager on the page therefore a check is done before creating it By overriding the OnLoad method of the base class the below piece of code adds the ScriptManager to the page protected override void OnLoad EventArgs e base OnLoad e ScriptManager sm ScriptManager GetCurrent this Page if sm null sm new ScriptManager Controls AddAt 0 sm The XAP file created when building a Silverlight project containing the files and assemblies that are needed to execute the Silverlight application within SharePoint can be downloaded from a number of different locations The example here uses a SharePoint document library named XAPS to store it By adding a Module element to the Element Manifest file SharePoint is told to place the XAP file in the XAPS library when the Feature is activated When any changes are being done to the Silverlight application the only thing that has to be exchanged is the XAP file which can be done in SharePoint itself The Feature doesn t have to be activated again Below is the module element that has to be added to accomplish this lt Module Url XAPS RootWebOnly TRUE gt lt File Path HelloWorld xap Url HelloWorld xap Type GhostableInLibrary gt lt File gt lt Module gt The last st
94. works It is good to keep the unit tests integration tests and the smoking tests separate Having the unit tests running as fast as possible which is easier to accomplish when they do not make cross boundary calls If tests become slow developers tend to not be running them A good way of keeping them separate is to create different projects for each test In the Silverlight testing framework the separation can be done using tags to test classes and test methods 26 11 2 The Silverlight testing framework The unit test framework for Silverlight was first released in conjunction with the release of the source code to the Silverlight controls It runs in the web browser both on PCs and Macs The Microsoft Silverlight Testing framework is easy to use and lets the developer create cross platform cross browser tests Using unit tests are useful the more tests the more confident the developer can be that the code is running correct The test projects are packaged like any other Silverlight application so no additional installation is needed to be able to run the tests 11 2 1 Creating a simple test The easiest way to start using the unit test framework for Silverlight is to use the two Visual Studio templates that have been created for the Silverlight testing framework The first template is for adding a Silverlight test application to a Visual Studio solution and the second template is an item template that adds a test class to the test project
95. ws Server 2003 The main platform use the Microsoft NET 2 0 Framework MOSS is provided by several technologies Internet Information Service for hosting Web applications ASP NET 2 x which support master pages content pages Web Parts and personalization 9 MOSS 2007 relies on WSS technology to provide a consistent familiar framework for lists and libraries site administration and site customization Any feature that is available in WSS is also available in MOSS MOSS offers additional features that are unavailable in WSS For example both MOSS and WSS include site templates for collaborating with colleagues and setting up meetings However MOSS includes a number of additional site templates related to enterprise and publishing scenarios 1 3 2 WSS Site Provisioning WSS was designed to create Web sites in a fast manner The architecture was designed to work in a Web farm environment Creating a site can be done by any person within the IT Department by filling out the required information needed in a web browser form and clicking OK There is no need for a system developer to create a website and no need for an administrator to copy any files to an application server The WSS provisioning engine cooperates with an integrated storage model that uses several SQL Servers to store content and configuration data 2 In this way users can easily design web sites with shared elements such as contact lists and document libraries Because of
96. y uses one static document library for storing the process model Specifying process names is limited to one line and there are a predefined set of colors and fonts that can be applied to the text of the process name These colors and fonts are available within the Silverlight framework There is also no possibility to skew the text within the process for making it fit better all kind of process image designs 49 14 Conclusion There are some important aspects when developing Silverlight applications and additionally some very useful things to keep in mind when the integration is made within SharePoint All web service calls in Silverlight are done asynchronously This architectural decision increases complexity but prevents the application from hanging Silverlight supports both old ASMX Web Services and the newer WCF standard Many of the out of the box ASMX Web Services offered by SharePoint cannot be used by Silverlight This is because these service methods return XMLNode sets which is not supported by Silverlight By using a wrapper Web Service the returning type of the Web Service calls can be transformed into something that is readable within the Silverlight application The Silverlight project within Visual Studio creates a test html page that enables the programmer to test the application during development If the application consumes a Web Service there is no possibility to test the application within Visual Studio This is because the

Silverlight Process Designer in SharePoint WSS

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