Create mobile apps with HTML5, JavaScript and Visual Studio

86 Pages·2013·17.89 MB·English

THE MICROSOFT JOURNAL FOR DEVELOPERS DECEMBER 2013 VOL 28 NO 12
magazine
Exploring
Entity Framework 6............20
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THE MICROSOFT JOURNAL FOR DEVELOPERS DECEMBER 2013 VOL 28 NO 12
magazine
Exploring
Entity Framework 6............20
Entity Framework 6: The Ninja Edition COLUMNS
Julie Lerman....................................................................20
WINDOWS AZURE INSIDER
Meet the Demands of Modern
CORS Support in ASP.NET Web API 2
Gaming with Windows Azure
Brock Allen .....................................................................30 Bruno Terkaly and
Ricardo Villalobos, page 6
Cross-Browser, Coded UI Testing
TEST RUN
with Visual Studio 2013
Radial Basis Function
Damian Zapart ................................................................40 Network Training
James McCaffrey, page 12
An Introduction to Model-Based Testing
THE WORKING
and Spec Explorer PROGRAMMER
Getting Started with Oak:
Yiming Cao and Sergio Mera .............................................48
A Different Approach
Ted Neward, page 66
Freedom of Information Act Data
MODERN APPS
at Your Fingertips
Everything You Need to
Vishwas Lele ....................................................................54 Know About the WinJS
ListView Control
Rendering PDF Content in
Rachel Appel, page 70
Windows Store Apps
DIRECTX FACTOR
Sridhar Poduri ................................................................................62 Character Outline
Geometries Gone Wild
Charles Petzold, page 74
DON’T GET ME STARTED
Original Sin?
David Platt, page 80
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Cross-
Device
Build standards-based, touch-enabled
HTML5 & jQuery experiences for desktop,
tablet, and mobile delivery, including multi-
device targeting with frameworks such as
PhoneGap and MVC.
UX
Prototyping
Explore design ideas through rapid, user-centered
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DECEMBER 2013 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 12
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-
E ’ N
r DITOR S OTE MICHAEL DESMOND
In Praise of Entity Framework 6
Th ere’s a reason that Julie Lerman’s Data Points column is consistently team is able to update independently of Visual Studio updates. You
among the most widely read in MSDN Magazine. In addition to can fi nd the project hosted on CodePlex at entityframework.codeplex.com.
being a whip-smart programmer with a keen sense for what devel- “I think one of the most important things about EF6 [Entity
opers need, Lerman covers that most core and enduring aspect of Framework 6] is the fact that it’s now completely open source,”
programming—managing data. Development platforms come and Lerman says, noting the contributions of developers like Unai
go, but the challenges of wrangling data always remain. Zorrilla, whose AddRange and RemoveRange APIs streamline the
Which is why this month’s issue of MSDN Magazine leads off addition and removal of multiple entities in Entity Framework 6.
with a feature on Entity Framework 6, the latest version of the Many developers are familiar with the major features of Entity
Microsoft -founded, object-relational mapping (ORM) framework. Framework 6, such as support for asynchronous querying and
Lerman took a break from her usual column-writing schedule to saving, and support for stored procedure mapping in Code First
pen the feature, titled “Entity Framework 6: The Ninja Edition” models. But Lerman says a host of smaller, less-publicized changes
(p. 20). As Lerman points out in the article, Entity Framework 6 can really impact development. Two examples she points out are
represents a major step forward from Entity Framework 5, boasting the ability to combine calls in a shared DbTransaction and the
improved performance, reduced complexity and features that ability to reuse opened database connections.
allow for more advanced development scenarios. “Some bigger features are getting a lot of airplay. But there are so
many other smaller ones that may not be used by as many developers
but will have a big impact for those who do use them,” Lerman says.
“Some bigger features are
While Entity Framework 6 has delivered many improvements,
Lerman says she’s looking forward to a few capabilities that didn’t
getting a lot of airplay. But there
make it into the latest version of the framework. Key among them
is better tooling for reverse engineering to Code First classes and
are so many other smaller ones
DbContext, which Lerman says will make it easier to start with
an existing database and create constrained models used with
that may not be used by as many
Domain-Driven Design (DDD) architectural patterns.
I asked Lerman to tell me why a developer wouldn’t want to consider
developers but will have a big
moving up to the latest version of Entity Framework. She was direct.
“As long as the Entity Framework provider you’re using has been
impact for those who do use them.”
updated to be compatible for EF6, I can’t think of one. Even if you’re
using .NET 4, EF4, EntityObject and ObjectContext, other than
some namespace changes, you really don’t change any code. You
Notably, the latest version of Entity Framework was developed can move to EF6 and benefi t from the faster view generation, and
under an open source development model and has been decoupled even take advantage of some of the new features like reusing open
from the long release cycles of the Microsoft .NET Framework. As DbConnections,” she explains. However, she cautions that devel-
Lerman reports, the Entity Framework APIs have been extracted opers should do some testing before jumping into that scenario.
from the .NET Framework, allowing timely updates and enabling Th ere’s a whole lot to like in Entity Framework 6, and Lerman’s
compatibility with both .NET Framework 4 and 4.5. Microsoft also feature on the new ORM tool is well worth a read for those hoping
disentangled the Entity Framework 6 Designer from Visual Studio, to take advantage of it.
casting it as a Visual Studio extension that the Entity Framework
Visit us at msdn.microsoft.com/magazine. Questions, comments or suggestions for MSDN Magazine? Send them to the editor: [email protected].
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4 msdn magazine
Untitled-2 1 9/5/13 4:50 PM
BRUNO TERKALY AND
W A I
INDOWS ZURE NSIDER
RICARDO VILLALOBOS
Meet the Demands of Modern Gaming
with Windows Azure
Online, mobile and social games have taken the world by storm, calls. Th ese frameworks require stateful interactions with clients,
with staggering numbers relating to concurrent players, time spent as well as access to local storage, making virtual machines (VMs)
playing and downloaded applications. Just recently, Facebook in Windows Azure the perfect choice for this component. Some
shared that one third of its global users (260 million out of 750 examples of these game server frameworks are pomelo (bit.ly/1i9heBe),
million) actively play games on its desktop and mobile sites. Th is Marauroa (bit.ly/am9MOi) and Photon Server (exitgames.com).
is just one indicator of the particular challenges game developers To deploy any of these frameworks to VMs, you can create
and publishing companies have to face—challenges that include instances from the Windows Azure image gallery in the manage-
users playing the same game on multiple platforms and devices, ment portal (bit.ly/197eXED), or directly create custom VM images
players expecting to receive instant notifi cations when the status as VHD (Hyper-V) fi les (bit.ly/PQso1a).
of their time-based game has changed, games going from startup
to viral in a matter of days, and trying to reach audiences in
Multiplayer game servers are
multiple locations around the world.
Th ankfully, the public cloud off ers a number of alternatives to deal
usually based on open source or
with these situations, allowing you to concentrate on developing your
game applications, and not on how to provision the infrastructure
licensed frameworks, acting as
to support authentication, computing, data or media requirements.
In this article, we’ll explore how to solve these and other common
the authoritative source of events
scenarios using the latest Windows Azure services and components.
Figure 1 shows a typical architecture for supporting multiplayer
for the clients connected to them.
games for mobile clients in the cloud, either for turn-based or
real-time scenarios. Th e diff erent components are assigned to the
most common tasks required to build a gaming back end, intro- Keep in mind that implementing a game server can turn into
ducing the concept of an orchestrator or proxy, which acts as the a complex process requiring you to come up with solutions for
gateway or traffic controller for all the client interactions with network-lag compensation and for properly using communication
multiple services. protocols (such as TCP or UDP) to optimize communication with
In the following paragraphs, we’ll take a closer look at each of the clients.
these components.
Gaming Orchestrator or Proxy
Multiplayer Game Servers (Infrastructure as (Platform as a Service Cloud Services)
a Service Virtual Machines) Th e heart of the solution is the gaming orchestrator or proxy, which
Multiplayer game servers are usually based on open source or provides multiple services, including the following:
licensed frameworks, acting as the authoritative source of events for 1. Authentication: Validating credentials sent by the clients
the clients connected to them and providing information about before players can connect to the game servers.
other players who have joined the same server via low-latency 2. Matchmaking: Assigning players with similar preferences
to the same game server. Th e decision could also be driven
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3. Data proxy: Serving in-game requests from the game servers
MSDN subscribers can quickly spin up a dev/test environment on
or the clients; interacting with the external storage; and
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4. Provisioning: Increasing or decreasing the number of
This article describes the Windows Azure Cache Service, which is in preview. VMs, using a scale-out approach based on the number
Information is subject to change.
of connected players.
6 msdn magazine