My latest publishing project, which I haven't talked about much on the blog, is a LiveLesson training DVD on WF. This product has now released and you can find all the details here:

http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321503139

It contains about 5 hours of video instruction on the breadth of WF, including sequential workflows, state machine workflows, showing how to use each of the base activity library activities, how to communicate with workflows, how to handle exceptions, custom activities, and much more. Because of the length of the instruction, it is more of a shallow dive into each of the topics to get you started, rather than being very deep in any one area. The content is mostly Camtasia screen capture while demonstrating the techniques being discussed.

There is also a sample lesson available through YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/livelessons

If you are getting started using WF, this would be a good way to get bootstrapped.

Spread the word!

I've been doing a lot of WPF work lately and recently read Adam Nathan's WPF Unleashed to brush up on a few of the more advanced topics that I had not yet spent a lot of time on.

I can't say enough about how fantastic this book is. Never mind that it is extremely well written, easy to read, flows nicely, and yet is very dense in content. The organization is excellent and he wastes no time on fluff but gets right to the meat of what is different about WPF from Windows Forms or ASP.NET right up front.

Then the clincher - the ENTIRE BOOK IS IN COLOR! Code snippets, figures, Tips and FAQ callouts, everything. Naturally you would want some color for something that is all about rich graphics like WPF, but it didn't even occur to me how wonderful it would be to have the whole book in color until I experienced it. Now, it is like my first taste of a color monitor after years of green screens and greyscales - wow. It was a whole different experience and I don't want to go back to those black and white paper thingies. Alas, I think it will be quite some time before all programming books are in color, but it will be a happy day when they are.

A plea to all publishers: Please at least offer a color variant. I'll pay more!! It is worth it!

A word to Adam: Thanks for this great book. You have raised the bar for the rest of us authors.

I back from my trip to visit family for Christmas to a nice little "gift" awaiting me when I got home - a first printing copy of my book. That means it should be shipping soon from retailers.

You can find more information about the book here:

http://www.softinsight.com/clickoncebook/default.aspx

They have been telling me for months it was going to show up there, I finally stopped checking because we are very close to going to print anyway. But if you want to get your hands on my ClickOnce book now, it is available on Rough Cuts at long last:

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0321197690

 

I recently put together a bunch of guidance topics for Microsoft Patterns and Practices for doing ClickOnce deployments of CAB-based applications. This guidance and the sample code is now available as a Community Resource Kit and will eventually be incorporated into a future release of SCSF.

The resource kit also includes something a lot of people have been asking for - an example of programming against the manifest APIs in the Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Deployment.ManifestUtilities namespace. I wrote a Manifest Manager Utility as part of that effort and included in the download code that makes common tasks such as updating application files a lot easier. It takes care of signing both manifests at one to make sure they are in sync, updates the deployment manifest reference to the app manifest and other things like that. If you need to go beyond what it does, then you now have sample code available to show you how to work with the APIs.

Another thing included in the kit is an example server side deployment repository provider that allows you to take over the process of serving up manifests and application files on the deployment server so that you could retrieve them from anywhere or even generate some of the files on the fly.

Enjoy!
Get it here!

I've created the home page for my new book Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce, which will be available in printed form in a couple of months. It should also soon be available on Safari Rough cuts. I'll blog an entry when that happens with a link, so stay tuned.

You can see the book page and get the samples here: http://www.softinsight.com/clickoncebook

Many of the samples may not make a lot of sense without the book to walk you through the process steps to use them for a particular ClickOnce deployment scenario, so make sure to pick up a copy.

It is already available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Client-Deployment-ClickOnce-Applications/dp/0321197690/sr=8-1/qid=1161618037/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0199676-4803377?ie=UTF8

I wrote a whitepaper on administering ClickOnce deployments earlier this year for the product team. It took a bit for it to get through the MSDN publishing process, but it is finally available.

 

You can check it out here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwinforms/html/admincodep.asp

This whitepaper covers handling tracking and authentication of users on the deployment server, as well as giving an explanation of what is going on under the covers during the publishing and deployment process.

Enjoy!

I'm very pleased to announce that my ClickOnce book is done. I still have to go through the production cycle, which involves reviewing and responding to changes and recommendations by the copy editors. But the content is done, tech reviewed, and ready to go other than that. The cover has been designed and is looking pretty sweet:

 

It was actually the publisher's idea to incorporate an aircraft on the cover, which I of course loved with my background flying F-14's. It actually makes a lot of sense if you know much about the mission of naval aviation. Our job was to deploy - deploy on the carrier to bring the military might of the US to wherever it was needed, and to deploy weapons on target. ClickOnce is about deploying a different kind of weapon (the smart client app you write) on target (the client desktop). But the metaphor fits in my mind.

The book should be up on Rough Cuts (http://my.safaribooksonline.com/roughcuts) in the very near future in case you want to get your hands on it sooner than when it comes out in print (probably January by the time we get through production).

There is nothing quite like the feeling of finishing a book after many months of having it hanging over your head as that thing you gotta find time for. Now I can tend to the many projects I have sidelined while trying to wrap this book up while maintaining a full consulting load. My wife Robin will be quite glad that I don't have "the book" as an excuse any more. :)

A couple people have suggested that I post the table of contents for my book to my blog since it is not yet available on Amazon.

Here it is:

Foreword xxi

Preface xxiii

Acknowledgments xxxv

About the Author xxxvii

Chapter 1: Building Data-Bound Applications with Windows Forms 1

What Is Data Binding? 2

Your First Data-Bound Windows Forms 2.0 Application 3

Data-Binding Landscape 14

Data Sources 15

Data Objects and Collections 16

DataSets or Not, That Is the Question... 18

Data-Bound Controls 20

Layered Application Architecture 21

What Is a Smart Client? 27

Where Are We? 28

Chapter 2: Working with Typed Data Sets and Table Adapters 31

A Quick Review of DataSets 31

The Quest for Type Safety 34

Typed Data Set Internals 37

Creating Typed Data Sets 41

Creating Typed Data Sets with the Data Set Designer 42

Typed Data Set-Generated Code 49

Introduction to Table Adapters 52

Filling and Updating a Typed Data Set with a Table Adapter 56

Connection Management 58

Adding Transaction Support to a Table Adapter 62

Adding Helper Data Access Methods 66

Basing Table Adapters on Stored Procedures or Views 67

Adding Queries to Table Adapters 69

Creating Typed Data Sets with Command Line Tools 77

Using Typed Data Sets in Your Code 78

Where Are We? 79

Chapter 3: Introducing Data Binding in Windows Forms 81

The 40,000-Foot View of Data Binding 81

Binding Data Collections to a Grid 86

Binding Data Collections to Multi-Valued Controls 88

Binding Data to Individual Controls on a Form 90

Data Paths Within Data Sources 92

Synchronizing Data Between Controls 96

Smarter Data Containment 97

Paging Through Data 99

Master-Details Data Binding 104

Updating Data Sources Through Data Binding 106

Where Are We? 108

Chapter 4: Binding Controls to Data Sources 111

Getting to Know the BindingSource Component 111

Simple Data Binding with Binding Sources 112

Chaining Binding Sources for Master-Details Data Binding 116

Navigating Data Through a Binding Source 121

Manipulating Data Through a Binding Source 122

Using a Binding Source as a Data Storage Container 124

Filling a Binding Source with a Data Reader 126

Sorting, Searching, and Filtering Presented Data with a Binding Source 128

Monitoring the Data with Events 131

Restricting Changes to the Data 133

Underneath the Covers of Data Binding for Complex Types 134

Binding an Image Column to a PictureBox Control 141

Binding a DateTime Column to a DateTimePicker 142

Binding a DateTime Column to a TextBox 144

Binding a Numeric Column to a TextBox 145

Automatic Formatting and Parsing Summary 147

Going Beyond Built-In Type Conversion with Binding Events 148

Handling the Format Event 154

Handling the Parse Event 156

Completing the Editing Process 157

Making the User’s Life Easier with AutoComplete 160

Data Binding Lifecycle 162

Smarter Child-Parent Data Binding 163

Binding to Multiple Copies of Data 165

Updating Parent Data-Bound Controls from Child Data-Bound Controls 168

Synchronizing Many-to-Many Related Collections 172

Where Are We? 176

Chapter 5: Generating Bound Controls with the Visual Studio Designer 177

Working with the Data Sources Window 177

Adding Data Sources to a Project 179

Choosing the Type of Data Source 180

Adding a Database Data Source 181

Adding a Web Service Data Source 185

Adding an Object Data Source 186

Generating Bound Controls from Data Sources 189

Selecting the Bound Control Type 196

Customizing the Bound Control Types 196

Binding Existing Controls to Data Sources 199

Behind the Scenes: Designer Code and Data Sources Files 202

Other Designer Data-Binding Code Generation 205

Setting Control Data Binding Through the Properties Window 206

Generating Data Bindings with Smart Tags 210

Generating Master-Details Data-Bound Controls with the Designer 214

Where Are We? 216

Chapter 6: Presenting Data with the DataGridView Control 217

DataGridView Overview 218

Basic Data Binding with the DataGridView 219

Controlling Modifications to Data in the Grid 221

Programmatic DataGridView Construction 222

Custom Column Content with Unbound Columns 226

Displaying Computed Data in Virtual Mode 233

Using the Built-In Column Types 241

Built-In Header Cells 255

Handling Grid Data Edits 256

Automatic Column Sizing 259

Column and Row Freezing 262

Using the Designer to Define Grids 263

Column Reordering 266

Defining Custom Column and Cell Types 269

Utilizing Cell-Oriented Grid Features 277

Formatting with Styles 281

Where Are We? 284

Chapter 7: Understanding Data-Binding Interfaces 285

What Does Data Binding Have to Do with Interfaces? 286

The IEnumerable and IEnumerator Interfaces: Supporting Iteration Through Collections 289

The ICollection Interface: Controlling Access to a Collection 295

The IList Interface: Enabling Data Binding 298

The IListSource Interface: Exposing Collections of Collections 303

Property Descriptors: Allowing Dynamic Data Item Information Discovery 305

The ITypedList Interface: Exposing Data-Binding Properties 307

The IBindingList Interface: Providing Rich Binding Support 310

The IBindingListView Interface: Supporting Advanced Sorting and Filtering 323

The ICancelAddNew Interface: Supporting Transactional Inserts in a Collection 325

The IRaiseItemChangedEvents Interface: Providing Item Modification Notifications on Collections 327

The IEditableObject Interface: Supporting Transactional Item Modifications 328

The INotifyPropertyChanged Interface: Publishing Item Change Notifications 329

The ICustomTypeDescriptor Interface: Exposing Custom Type Information 332

The ISupportInitialize Interface: Supporting Designer Initialization 334

The IDataErrorInfo Interface: Providing Error Information 330

The ISupportInitializeNotification Interface: Supporting Interdependent Component Initialization 337

The ICurrencyManagerProvider Interface: Exposing a Data Container’s CurrencyManager 341

Where Are We? 341

Chapter 8: Implementing Custom Data-Bound Controls 343

Extending Framework Data-Bound Controls 344

Creating a Grouped Column DataGridView 345

Using Custom Controls 350

The User Control Test Container 352

Developing Data-Bound Container Controls 353

Building a Filtered Grid Control 354

Adding Data-Binding Capability to a Custom Control 357

Supporting Designer Initialization of Data Binding 359

Specifying Binding Properties on a Control 360

Supporting Delayed Initialization with ISupportInitialize 362

Dynamically Determining the Properties of a Data Source 367

Autocompleting Input in a TextBox Control 371

Autosizing Columns in the Grid 375

Winding Up the Filtered Grid Example 376

Building a Custom Data-Bound Control from Scratch 379

Building a Data-Bound Charting Control for Decision Support 379

Coding a Data-Bound Custom Control 384

Adding Editing Support to a Custom Data Bound Control 391

Where Are We? 397

Chapter 9: Implementing Custom Data-Bound Business Objects and Collections 399

Defining and Working with Data-Bound Business Objects 400

Defining and Working with Data-Bound Business Object Collections 405

.NET Framework Generic Collection Classes 406

The CustomBusinessObjects Example 408

Setting the Textual Data-Binding Behavior of Custom Objects 415

Supporting Transacted Object Editing with IEditableObject 416

Supporting Object Edit Notifications with Property Change Events 420

Supporting Object Edit Notifications with INotifyPropertyChanged 423

Using BindingList<T> to Create Rich Object Collections 424

Creating a Custom Collection Type Based on BindingList<T> 426

Managing Transacted Additions to a Collection 439

Raising Item Changed Events 441

Adding IBindingListView Functionality 443

Binding to Business Objects Through the Data Sources Window 453

Where Are We? 455

Chapter 10: Validating Data Input and Handling Errors 457

Windows Forms Validation 458

Handling Validation Events 459

DataGridView Validation Events 462

Validation Up the Control Hierarchy 463

Displaying Validation Errors with the ErrorProvider Control 464

DataGridView Error Displays 467

DataGridView DataError Event 468

Controlling Validation Behavior with the AutoValidate Property 471

Validation down the Control Hierarchy 472

Extended Validation Controls 474

Capturing Data Errors on Data Sets 475

Providing Error Information from Custom Objects with IDataErrorInfo 479

Data Concurrency Resolution 483

Where Are We? 484

Appendix A: Binding to Data in ASP.NET 487

ASP.NET Page Processing Basics 489

Data Binding in ASP.NET 1.X 490

Data-Binding Overview in ASP.NET 2.0 498

Data Sources 499

Data-Binding Expressions 508

GridView Control 509

DetailsView Control 512

FormView Control 514

Master-Details Binding 515

Hierarchical Binding 518

Where Are We? 519

Appendix B: Binding Data in WinFx Applications 521

WinFx UI Programming and Capabilities Overview 522

Writing a Simple WinFx Application 525

WinFx Data Binding 101 532

Data Contexts and Data Sources 536

What About XAML? 537

Binding a Collection to a Grid with Templates 541

Control Styling in WinFx 543

Where Are We? 545

Appendix C: Programming Windows Forms Applications 547

Your First Windows Forms Data Application 548

Creating Windows Forms Applications with Visual Studio 554

Windows Forms Designer-Generated Code (New in 2.0) 563

A Brief Tour of the Windows Forms Architecture 567

The Dawn of .NET Execution—The Main Method 570

Handling Control Events 574

Displaying Other Forms 576

Containing Forms Within a Parent Form 577

Common Data Display Controls 578

Creating a Custom User Control 586

Laying Out Controls on a Form 589

Setting Tab Order 596

Command and Control of Your Windows Forms Applications (New in 2.0) 598

Where Are We? 600

Appendix D: Accessing Data with ADO.NET 601

Relational Data Access 603

The Ubiquitous DataSet 607

Loading Data Sets from a File 609

Creating a Data Set Programmatically 611

Loading Data Sets from a Database 613

Loading a DataTable with a DataReader 619

Master-Details DataSets 621

Retrieving Data with Stored Procedures 623

Updating the Database Using Data Sets 624

Handling Concurrency 628

Updating with Data Sets and Stored Procedures 632

Searching Data Sets 637

Merging Data from Multiple Data Sets 639

Working with Data Views 641

Working with Transactions 643

Scoping Transactions with System.Transactions 647

Client-Side Transactions 650

Data Set and Data Adapter Events 651

Reading Data into Business Objects 654

XML Data Access 658

Working with the XmlDataDocument Class 659

Working with the XPathDocument Class 663

Loading Data into an XPathDocument 664

Querying XML Data 665

Navigating an XML Document 667

Where Are We? 670

Index 671

It was a very cool feeling to have a box of my books delivered to me on Friday. After starting way too early on it and rewriting many of the chapters multiple times as the capabilities evolved in Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0, it felt very good to finish the writing a couple months ago. But having the finished product show up on my doorstep was very cool.

So stop reading this and go buy one dammit! :)

I posted all the sample code for my book Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0 on the book Web site at http://www.softinsight.com/databindingbook. The samples are available in both C# and VB, even though all the code in the book is in C#. The book should be hitting the shelves very soon and is already selling well on Amazon.

I also posted instructions for running the samples if you do not have a non-default instance of SQL Server or don't have Northwind on your machine yet, also how to run the samples with SQL Server 2005 Express, Visual C# 2005 Express and Visual Basic 2005 Express.

Happy Data Binding!

Phew! After a year and a half of trying to keep pace with the changing betas and writing the book on top of a full schedule of consulting, training, and speaking at conferences and user groups, I am finally done. I submitted the final manuscript to production on Friday. Now I just have to respond to any questions and reviews during the production phase, convert the code samples to VB for download, and I can call this one a wrap.

You can order the book here (available January 2006):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/032126892X/qid=1124482085/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/102-1031358-5664119

We will have a teaser chapter out at PDC that will also be available for download as a PDF containing part of the chapter on the DataGridView control. I'll put up a link to that as soon as it is available.

Now I am start devoting my attention to my next book, Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce, also part of the Addison Wesley .NET Development series. I hope to knock this one out in the next 6 months, so it should hit the shelves mid 2006.