Resharper 4.0 and Lambda Expressions

Now I'm fairly new to the wonderful world of Resharper, so barely a day goes by where I don't discover something new about it, or through it. But today I found a feature that just made me want to share about it straight away.

Let me set the scene.

I'm coding a Lambda expression for use as a predicate and when finished I notice the now familiar little light bulb. Hmmm I thought, now what could Resharper be wanting to tell me about my code?

(real code replaced throughout to protect the innocent)

That's right Resharper is offering to convert my Lambda to either an anonymous method or a statement! So let's see what it does to the code if I choose these options.

Well If I choose the option 'Lambda expression to statement it turns my code into this:

Note with this option I am given the choice to now convert on to an expression, or to an anonymous method.

If I choose the option 'To anonymous method' my code looks like this:

Note that it is offering to convert my code back to a lambda

If I choose the 'Lambda expression to anonymous method' option and place the caret in to the delegate keyword then I get a different option however.

This time the options include one to convert my anonymous method to a named method. Choosing this does what you will no doubt expect. It creates named method.

private static bool NewPredicate(Person p)
{ return p.Name == "Sue"; }

and changes my code to read:

Person sue = people.Find(NewPredicate);

Actually I added the prefix new, as Resharper just put Predicate, but you get the idea. Of course, Resharper now gives me the option to inline my Predicate as either an anonymous method, or as a Lambda.

Neat huh!

Choosing to inline as an anonymous method acts as I would expect, and puts the code back to be the same as the anonymous version above. Choosing to inline as a Lambda however a have a tiny, tiny gripe with.

As you can see above, Resharper has placed the target variable within brackets. Still, at least Resharper knows that it shouldn't have done this, as it offers to remove them!

What I really, really like most about this, and made me want to blog about it, it that it very neatly highlights some of the evolution of C# from version 1 with its' named delegates (though of course we didn't have delegate comparisons then), through version 2, with its' anonymous methods, through to the current version 3 with its' Lambda goodness.

NxtGenUG Fest '08

Just got back from an excellent day attending the NxtGenUG Fest '08 at Microsoft's campus at Reading.

Like all NxtGen related events everything was smooth and incredibly well put together. I enjoyed all of the talks and some of them have definitely inspired me to go and hit the computer for a play.

Mike Taulty's talk on ADO.NET Data Services was an excellent and engaging introduction to this feature that will be properly released with the forthcoming .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1. The technology seems very seductive, and I will try and find some time before long to have a play with it but it seems very data driven to me and the implications of this if the technology was to be deployed much beyond a simple demo app concerns me a little. Still, until I look into it properly that's just a gut reaction and may well be wrong.

Daniel Moth gave a short talk on Parallel Linq which looked very interesting and this is something that I will definitely be looking into before long.

Dave Morrow gave a really interesting talk on providing BI using SQL Analysis Services, Proclarity, MS Performance Point and SharePoint (WSS 3). The world of BI (business information) is not one that I know particularly, but this talk has really gotten me wanting to have a play with these tools. It'll stretch the limits of my hardware (even with VMs) to get the necessary environments setup to play around sensibly with this stuff but I think that I'll enjoy it and it'll be worth it. One thing that I wondered watching this demo was whether I could bring SPSS (a statistical analysis package I used during my MSc) to the party and get some even more interesting information out of this mix. No doubt I'll blog about this when I've looked into it, and had a good play, some.

The talk that most interested me however was Oliver Strum's talk on F#. I can't overstate how interesting and well delivered this presentation was in my opinion. I'd been wanting to look into F# for a few months now without ever getting around to it. Oliver's talk has made this (along with my continued playing with Spec#) the new big priority for my personal R&D time. I'd heard/read that F# would be a good tool for writing business rules engines, but had been leaning toward doing this with a Boo based DSL. This introduction to F# is making me think that I really need to look into this before I make that decision. I suspect also that, as an added benefit, a play in this space will do wonders for my use of Lambda expressions in C# too.

Of course the day was not just about the great speakers (they were all great, not just the ones that I've highlighted), but like any NxtGen event it was also about the pizza, the swag. I got, amongst other things, a free copy of the full DevExpress software (no that's not why I'm so full of praise for Olivers' fantastic talk), and some Microsoft 'Heroes' chocolates. Beyond all of that though the chance to meet and chat with former colleagues (great to see such a large number from Immediacy) and other NxtGeners (great to see so many from the Southampton branch) really made the day. Congratulations and thanks to Dave, Rich and John for another brilliantly hosted and put together event.

Now I just can't wait for DDD 7 (which, incidentally, I have just submitted a proposal for a Grok talk on Design by Contract and Spec# for).

Revisited: Insufficient Permissions on web.config when delegating administration of a web site to remote users in IIS 7

I have been meaning to return to this since I first posted on it and gave my talk about the remote management of IIS 7 at NxtGenUG Southampton. Well I've finally gotten around to it.

This error occurred when remote administration of an IIS 7 web site and/or application is delegated to an IIS 7 user, and that user attempts to alter a setting of the site/application from a remote machine. The solution that I originally posted was to grant the local Service account modify permissions on the web.config file in question. This always seemed unsatisfactory to me as it quite a sweeping grant that increases the surface area for security issues, breaking with the principal of least privilege as it does. However at the time I first looked into this it was already gone midnight and I had a big day the next day with work, a long drive, and then the talk to give, so I went to bed and decided to look into this again another day.

If you just want the solution then skip now to the bottom paragraph, if like me you believe that the journey is worth more than the destination (and if you've been struggling with this under pressure then I doubt you will) then here is also how I got there.

I finally got around to looking into this further last night (another post-midnight session). I ran procmon.exe (part of the Sysinternals suite) and replicated the issue on a new VM so that I could see what was going on 'under the hood'.

As the image above shows the wmsvc process was impersonating the NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE account when it was denied access the web.config file of the site. So it would seem that in giving this account permissions on the web.config file I did the correct thing (I didn't so keep reading).

Something about all of this still puzzled me however, when I look at those events logged in procmon that show the wmsvc process accessing (successfully) the applicationHost.exe process it too is impersonating the NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE account. Well you might think that makes sense, wmsvc is after all a service and that is the account that it is impersonating. The strange thing for me was this.

Looking at this what stands out to me are these two things. 1, there is no entry for NT AUTHORITY/LOCAL SERVICE. 2, there is an entry for something called WMSvc.

After a bit of Googling and reading around I have sussed what is going on, and why I couldn't work it out that evening.

With Windows Vista (and so of course Windows Server 2008) Microsoft looked to address the security risks that having services all running as the LOCAL SERVICE account poses. When I set the permissions on the web.config file to allow LOCAL SERVICE I am not just permitting the service that I am interested in (wmsvc) I am permitting any service that impersonates this user. This is after all what bothered me in the first place. Microsoft have introduced a feature termed Service Hardening that addresses this issue. What this means is that I can now give permissions that target a specific service only. Wow, that's a great (and necessary) improvement.

So the solution to the problem is this: give modify permissions to NT SERVICE\WMSvc. Do this and the remote delegated access will work like a dream, and the principal of least privelege will have been adhered to!

My only criticism of the new features in all of this is: why can't IIS Management do this setting of permission for me when I choose to delegate permissions to an IIS User for the management of a site or application? It would be a lot easier!

Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 Licensing Change

I'm looking into the licensing for TFS 2008 for my employers as my team are looking to migrate from VSS to TFS (hooray) and I have been asked to take the lead in this work. With TFS 2005 anyone who was going to raise issues (bugs, requests, and the like) in TFS, even if using the TeamPlain web client, had to have a valid CAL. This was a bit of an expensive pain and meant that at my last company (at least when I left) Gemini continued to be used by the Support team to raise and manage bugs, until someone (a ScrumMaster I think) moved them into an appropriate TFS project as a part of the project backlog.

Well with TFS 2008 this situation has changed. CALs are no longer required to raise bugs, add stories, and that sort of thing! This is fantastic news in my opinion as it should help encourage companies to move more wholeheartedly (and more fully) to TFS, a product which I really rate!

I can't wait to get it installed and get the new Conchango Scrum for TFS 2008 addin installed.

Check this blog for more on TFS 2008 licensing.

Looking for a good developer

Recently where I work we have been interviewing candidates for developer roles in our team. I have been involved in conducting some of these interviews and this has been causing me to reflect on other interviews I have been involved in, both as candidate and interviewer.

Most of the candidates that I have seen, both recently and over the years, have been fairly strong when it came to their knowledge of C#, SQL, and the .NET Framework. Where typically they fall down is in their understanding of the ways in which these tools can be used to create quality software.

An analogy that has been rolling around in my mind is that of the developer as a builder (I'm sure it's not original to me). Now I'm not a builder (as my g/f would happily attest I'm not even much good at DIY) but it strike me that a good builder has certain key areas of expertise.

A good builder will know the materials that are key to their trade. She will understand the differences between materials, such as between different types of wood, or cement, girders etc...

But there are another set of skills that are important for a builder to possess before you would want them to work for you. Beyond this knowledge of materials a good builder will also know the techniques required to build things from these materials that are fit for purpose.

To build a wall it's not enough to know about bricks and cement, its' important to also know at least some of the types of bond, that's to say the commonly accepted strategies for building the wall.

Of course, what I'm saying and the parallel is not new. The GoF design patterns were inspired by the work of Alexander in the field of architecture (not software). But it is, at least to my mind, a useful analogy. You wouldn't want a joiner (carpenter) that didn't know about types of joints, so why would you employ and trust a developer that didn't know (and couldn't discuss to some degree) some of the common design patterns, or fundamentals of object oriented development.

Using TextFieldParser objects and the My library in C# code

I read this article on InfoQ (a great site for information for those that don't know it) and saw that there might be some confusion about whether this useful class could be used in C# projects. The answer of course is yes. Just reference the Microsoft.VisualBasic dll in your project and away you go.

The My library is a little different it does a whole bunch of different things, providing both new methods, and a simplified model for accessing things that are both in the framework and that are specific to the project being worked in. For the new methods reflecting on the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly soon uncovers these, and from there they can then just be referenced as above (or fronted with a simple facade if you prefer - perhaps extension methods FileInfo.OpenTextFieldParser() anyone). For the simplified navigation of the framework, and project, feature I don't know how that can be done in C#, but why would you want to? You know the framework anyway, right?