BUS ADM 740 Blog

Finally the emails for Visual Studio were sent out correctly. But things apparently changed on the MSDNAA Online Software System Web site and a couple of other issues came up ...

Visual Studio 2005 - Download or no download?

If you visit the MSDNAA Online Software System Web site (for the UWM Business School) there is a list of software products, including the Visual Studio .NET 2005 Professional - Full Install . And this is what students will need for this course. However, clicking on this link one only gets the option to order the CDs for $34.95. What happened to the free download? It turns out that it is still there, but well hidden.

Here is how to get there. Go to the main software page with the list of products. There is a drop down list for "Search product by titles". This list contains the items Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition - CD 1 (and another for CD 2). After selecting the item and clicking "Go" the option for free download appears.

Whether download or physical CDs, all the needed components are included. There should be no need to look for other components elsewhere. Also make sure it is Visual Studio 2005 not 2003.

How to deal with the downloaded ISO image?

The download file is an ISO image of the CD. This means a burning tool that can burn an ISO image to a CD is needed. This cannot be accomplished by using the out of the box functionality provided in Windows. Check if you have a CD/DVD burning tool (i.e., Roxio Easy CD Creator) on your machine. If not, there are free tools for download (i.e., CDBurnerXP) . There is also an option that circumvents the need to burn a physical CD. There are CD/DVD emulators such as Magic Disc that take the ISO image file directly and mimic a CD/DVD drive.

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The blogs seem to be working well. Quite a bit to read for the first week

I think there are a couple of things we should discuss in class, a few things we may talk about one-on-one during the lab session (i.e., login issues).

First, coding in teams of two is something we could consider for the project. The labs are very open and you are free to work with anyone you like. The key is that you understand the solution (and how you got to the solution) in the end. The assignments will be on an individual basis.

It seems that the ones that attempted the guided programming exercise in the book did well and even enjoyed working with Visual Studio. We will talk more about Visual Studio and how to work with it, including saving projects.

If you have been looking at the upcoming assignments already, you may have noticed some changes after the first class. I have inserted a different assignment as the first assignment. It is due earlier, but it is much easier and a "non-coding" assignment. I have removed the last assignment. So overall the assignments should be quite a bit easier than in the previous course. This should help people with little experience to succeed. The "pros" still have the opportunity to shine in the project.

Otherwise I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend. As you can see below, I did ...

MH

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Realizing the moving button involves a bit more than I wanted to show in a first example. But if you are interested, here is a solution. The solution is intentionally quite verbose. This could be written in a much more compact way. However, it is easier to understand if the code is broken up in several lines. This solution is still rather simplistic. For instance, the button just goes up and it does not take into account the boundaries of the form.

MH

Code below:

Private Sub btnDemo_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)Handles btnDemo.Click
Dim x As Integer
Dim y As Integer
Dim newY As Integer
Dim newLocation As System.Drawing.Point

'get X coordinate of current location
x = btnDemo.Location.X
'get Y coordinate of current location
y = btnDemo.Location.Y
'calculate new Y coordinate (20 pixels up)
newY = y - 20

'Set new Y coordinate
'This does not work as the Location.Y coordinate is read only
'Button1.Location.Y = newY

'But a new location point can be created and assigned as a whole
'create new point with new Y coordinate
newLocation = New System.Drawing.Point(x, newY)
'set new point as location of button
btnDemo.Location = newLocation
End Sub

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Welcome everyone to the first week of
Management Information Systems Concepts and Languages
(BUS ADM 740)

This is my (the instructors') blog. Every student in this class also has their own blog (see blogroll on the right).
The blogs allow students and instructors to reflect on the course, report on their personal progress and challenges, ask questions, and let others know about interesting things that may be relevant to the course.

Everyone is required to post to the blog at least once a week. Sometimes post may be short, but there will always be something happening in the course every week!

I look forward to an at times challenging, yet overall rewarding semester for everyone,

MH

So it is time to wrap your project and get it ready for a presentation next week. If there are any questions in the meantime send an email. ... You will have a chance to make some modifications for your final deliverable after the presentation.

In the end (or even prior to the presentation if possible) I would like to have a CAB file to deploy your projects onto my PDA.

Just in case you are curious, I put my survey application out on the g-drive (see surveyApplication.zip in code folder).

(For the survey guys: There is no expectation that your project looks anything like this. Keep on following your own approach.)

MH

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OK, I started out just trying to implement for the Smart Device application what I had in the sample Windows Forms calendar application ... but I got carried away a bit as you can see when you download the sample calendar application for the smart device.

First, and perhaps most important, how to get the bolded dates. There is no AddBoldedDates method for the MonthCalendar control in the .NET Compact Framework. The answer is the BoldedDates property that is available. An array of dates can be assigned to this property. So the trick is to first create an array of dates (i.e., Dim myDates As Date() ), fill this array with the relevant dates, and then assign the array to the BoldedDates property (i.e., MonthCalendar1.BoldedDates = myDates ) ... that's it!

I like to use the ArrayList as a flexible array container whenever I do not know the number of items that need to go into an array. So I fill the array list with my dates ( al.Add(thisDate ) and then turn the array list into an array of dates ( al.ToArray(GetType(Date)) ).

Then I thought, it would be nice if I could already see the calendar and work with the UI while my Web service is busy getting the calendar information from Google. So I went ahead and implemented an asynchronous Web service call. Rather than calling the getGoogleCalendar method I use the asynchronous BegingetGoogleCalendar method. This method does not return the calendar, instead it just kicks off the Web service. I now need an event handler that is executed when the Web service returns something. In the .NET Framework this is very convenient ... not so in the .NET Compact Framework.

On top of that I thought it might be nice to have progress bar show move along while the Web service is working. Again this involves a bit more work in the .NET Compact Framework. I need a timer and a timer tick event handler in which I update the progress bar.

And then I also needed to wrap the updating of the calendar and the stopping of the progress bar into an event handler and invoke the event handler ... but now it works!!!

There is no expectation that you use asynchronous Web service calls, but you at least know now how to get the bolded dates.

MH

BTW, the sample calendar application for the smart device is zipped up in the code folder on the g-drive.

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Here is the link to the Patient Management Service: http://www.531.sba.uwm.edu/mhaines/740/WebServices/PatientManagementService.asmx

To complete assignment #4 you can also use the service mentioned in lab #4.

MH

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