How to create link/symbolic link/virtual folder in Windows 7

 

mklink command is helpful creating link folders.

C:\windows\system32>mklink

Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

/D Creates a directory symbolic link. Default is a file symbolic link.

/H Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.

/J Creates a Directory Junction.

Link specifies the new symbolic link name.

Target specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link refers to.

Navigate to destination folder and run the command. It will create the link folder there.

Team Explorer missing from Visual Studio 2008

 

Today I found that Team Explorer menu, tool button and pane was missing in my Visual Studio. It was looking like below screenshot:

I could not find the reason it got missed. I tried reinstalling the team explorer but it did not helped. (Even restarting machine did not helped).

I got it back by going through following steps:

1. Click on File menu and navigate to “Add Existing Team Project” (screenshot 1)
2. Click on “Add Existing Team Project”, it will open “Connect to Team Foundation Server” screen (screenshot 2)
3. Select your project and click on OK button
4. Team Explorer should appear in Visual Studio
5. The menu bar should look like screenshot 3

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

Screenshot 3:

Customer Care Accelerator

 

Microsoft have released a accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM called Customer Care Accelerator (CCA). This is to incorporate the concepts offered by Customer Care Framework (CCF). CCA is available for download at codeplex/cca site and it is free to download. It is available for CRM 4.0 on premise. It will be available for CRM 2011. The CCA R2 is suppose to be for CRM 2011 and should work with online and on premise installations. It should be available by around mid April. CCA R1 is for CRM 4.0.

Customer Care Accelerator (CCA) is consist of following major components:

• Application Integration Framework (AIF)
• Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT)
• User Interface Integration (UII)
• Date Driven Adapter (DDA)
• Integrated Agent Desktop (IAD)

It stores all its configuration in MSCRM. UII/HAT uses Windows workflow while writing the required automations.

Click here to see the demo (compiled by Simon Hutson).

?? Operator

 

?? operator is null-coalescing operator. It is used with nullable value types and reference types. It returns left hand operand if it is not null. If left hand is null and right hand is not null, it returns right hand operand. In case both the operands are null, it returns null. We can say that it just check for left hand side operand and returns anyway if left is null.

Equals and HashCode

If the objects are equal the hashcode of the objects should be same. If the hashcode of objects is same that does not mean that objects are equal.

WebMatrix web development tool released

 

Microsoft has released WebMatrix web development tool. Some of its features are:

• It is small
• It allows to publish websites
• It is optimized for search
• It is simple to code with it
• It connects you with free open source web applications

It supports PHP as well as ASP.NET development. It provides simple frontend for users to do web development and has extensive support for open source projects.

For overview and download details, click here.

ASP.NET MVC 3 RC Available

 

ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate is available for download. You can download it here. It is framework to develop web applications while leveraging the Model-View-Controller pattern. These applications are easily testable using TDD (Test Driven Development) approach. It is build on ASP.NET 4 hence all ASP.NET features like authentication, authorization, localization can be used while developing applications with MVC 3. One can find the discussions related to MVC at Model-View-Controller Forum.