Hi All, I'm a WCF newbie and am struggling with an issue that I'm sure has a solution. My problem is quite simple. I have one service that generates orders. I have a completely separate service that is doing things with orders. The second service has an operation that accepts a parameter of type "order" and has a Service Reference to the order generation service. In my client code it is not able to convert the type produced by the order service as the type expected as a parameter to the processing service. The error I get is: Value of type 'ConsoleApplication1.HCOPSVC.HCOPOrder' cannot be converted to 'ConsoleApplication1.LOCALSERVICE.HCOPOrder'. The conversion appears on the line that references the second service. I've tried to define a namespace for both services, hoping that would allow WCF to consider the two types equal; however, that has not worked. Is there anyway to allow objects to be passed to different services without proxy classes? Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thnx Sub Main() Dim oOrderSvc As New HCOPSVC.OrderWCFServiceClient() Dim oOrder As HCOPSVC.HCOPOrder Try oOrder = oOrderSvc.GetOrder(8817398, "BZ") Console.WriteLine("Order Retrieved") Dim oPassing As New LOCALSERVICE.OrderPassingProofClient() oPassing.ProcessOrder(**oOrder**) Catch ex As Exception Console.WriteLine("ERROR:" & ex.Message) Finally If oOrderSvc.State = ServiceModel.CommunicationState.Faulted Then oOrderSvc.Abort() Else oOrderSvc.Close() End If End Try Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit") Console.ReadLine() End Sub

Love this thread! I've had some pretty crummy office environments and one really good one. I'm currently sitting in a ridiculous workspace. We've got cubes about 4 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Running along the left of the cube is a desk about 18" deep, which leaves about 36" for an office chair and me. I can deal with the space. That's not a problem. The problem is noise. It's hard to get your head down, thinking deep into how to solve a complex coding challenge when all of the sudden my ears are pierced with someone scheduling a haircut for their dog, or the cellphone chirping as they receive a text message. Every sneeze or cough can break my concentration. The problem here might be that most of the time you can hear a pin drop. I think if there were more people making more noise, it would almost be easier. The best benchmark I can think of is how far away you can hear a telephone conversation. I don't need to hear a telephone conversation 30 feet away. If someone next to me is on the phone, I can understand that. Not much you can do when we're all sandwiched in here.

OpenProj is a free OpenSource knock-off of MS Project. I've never used it, but I have seen plenty of people talk about it and demo it. http://openproj.org/ Hope that helps, Wauna

" but I think if you can't do the basics of your job.." How do you know that I cannot do the basics of my job? Have you ever heard the statement "Two heads are better than one?" It's always beneficial to have people review your designs, whether you're a veteran or a rookie.

Wow..... you are really a mean and nasty person. Why do you want to insult me so much? What on earth do you have to gain by rubbing my face in the sand? You've made a lot of judgements about me with extremely little information. It's hard not to take it personal when someone says you are not good at the job you've been doing for over 10 years.

Wow Gary, That wasn't very nice. I was asking for help, not insults. Mental note to self... "Don't use this message board anymore"

Hi Everyone, So I'm stumbling my way through trying to design a system that I'm working on, and I realized that just as there are patterns that are often talked about in OO design there appears to be common questions asked when thinking through and validating the design. At this point, I'm not exactly sure what they all are, but it seems I'm asking the same questions over and over in order to make sure my design works. So... what questions do you ask yourself when reviewing a design?

Would anyone be willing to help me via email correspondance?

Actually, no...it is my day job. The company is Professional Hospitality. You can see more info here. http://www.prohospitality.com/staff[^] Since, you mentioned it though... I could see where people would take advantage of resources like this to help them solve their homework. ~Wauna?~

Hi Everyone, I have gotten myself into a project who's design is far beyond my abilities. I'm a rookie when it comes to good object oriented design. I understand the basics, but am not familiar with all of the patterns and such. I am the only programmer at my company and don't have anyone to bounce ideas off, so I'm posting here hoping for some coaching and guidance on a good class diagram. That being said, the project is a reporting system that allows spreadsheet entry via a website. The website is currently operational and used for other purposes. We are currently using FarPoint Spread for other spreadsheet data entry. We have a folder on our web server that is called forms and holds each report spreadsheet. I have identified what I think are the main objects. What I don't know how to handle is the validation and processing. I assume I would create a validation interface and a form processing interface, but I don't know how to lay that out. I've typed up a summary of this project: Abstract: Professional Hospitality, a hotel management company, has each hotel report back to the home office on a monthly basis. The current arrangement requires the manager to type up all of the information on spreadsheets. The spreadsheets are then printed and mailed via postal to the Home Office. The Home Office, then opens and sorts the mail and types in the data from the spreadsheets. The new spreadsheets are then printed and delivered to the appropriate regional managers around the home office. After the regional managers review the information, the printed spreadsheets are then sorted and filed in file cabinets. Problems: The current process involves large amounts of manual labor, postage, printing costs, filing costs, and data entry costs. The goal of this project is to reduce or eliminate these cost burdens and therefore increase company profitability. Professional Hospitality would like to be able to create other reports to be submitted on differing intervals. Current examples are a Sales month-end, bi-weekly rate reporting, or annual reports. Requirements: • Web based data entry that is similar to Excel spreadsheets • Templates (master spreadsheets) used to format each form and also ensure consistent entry • Enter data on multiple templates for each reporting period • Submit the entire group of spreadsheets when the period has lapsed • Ability to create multiple report periods. AKA, a monthly report, bi-weekly report etc. • Ability to setup validation r

I too, am in the process of trying to locate a UML tool. I have used tried Visio, StarUML and UMLPad. I have been trying a free tool called UMLPad. It's very basic, but does the basics pretty well. It's very portable, and does not require an install, and can convert to images for inserting into emails or design documents. To my knowledge, it does not do any reverse engineering, or code generation. It's really a step above pen and paper, but for some that is what is needed. I also tried StarUML for a bit. It is a step above UMLPad and offers many more features. To be honest, I'm the kind of person that just wants to get the job done and I found that with UMLPad I was faster. StarUML does have many more features though that might be a closer match for what you are looking for. I also used visio for a short time. I didn't pay for it though. When the time elapsed and I needed to shell out the money, I just couldn't do it. The free options just seemed to make more sense. Hope that helps, ~ Wauna? ~

Hi Everyone, Last week I saw a post regarding UML Tools, and I can't seem to find it. I've been using the old #2 and paper and would like to "upgrade" to a computer based UML tool. It seems I'm always blazing my own trail due to ignorance, so I'd like to know what UML tools you use? I'm developing in Visual Studio.NET. I know that Visio is an option, but when I look to purchase it, it's like 400 bucks. The promo material looks like it's for making ORG charts and other stuff. It doesn't seem like it's made exclusively for class diagrams. I've heard of a bunch of others like StarUML & UMLpad, but I just want to use what everyone else is using. So... chime in and tell me what UML tool do you use? Thanks! ~Wauna?~

On XP Sp2 with 2 Gigs installed, I'm seeing about 720-850 megs being used. Major consumers on my machine are: AVG - 70mb, IE - 50mb, svchost - 30mb, explorer - 22mb, searchindexer - 21mb, SQLServer - 15mb, iTunes - 11mb inetinfo - 8mb and then 44 smaller processes. This could be off topic, but the thing that I don't get, is the more ram you add, the larger the pagefile gets and the more disk usage right? That's the opposite of what I would expect.

In my search for information on how to design validation, I did find this as well. The only problem is that I'm working with VS 2003. I don't think I can do the .NET 3.0 stuff with that. Can I? If I cannot do the 3.0 stuff, I'm torn, because it doesn't make any sense to re-work what's already been done with the Application Blocks. I'm already using the older application blocks for data access, logging, and exception logging.

Hi Everyone, Thanks again for helping me so much. I have another silly design question. Is there a good way to validate object data? I know that lots of people use the front-end to validate their data, but I was hoping to also validate the object data, just in case the front end fails. Perhaps this is overkill, but I assume it's a pretty common task. I'd rather not do a million if/then's. It would be great if I could write the logic only once. Is there a design pattern that could facilitate this? Thanks! Chad

Hi Everyone, Thank you for all of your responses. It looks like there are lots of books and resources that would be good to review. I'm also going to try posting some of the basics here. Thanks again! Wauna

Ahhh.. the Gateway is the interface, not the Window. That makes more sense. So SQLServerWindowGateway would contain the Stored Proc calls. An instance of iWindowGateway would reside in the Window object. Then I suppose some parameter would need to be set to determine which Gateway to use (SQL vs Memory). I think I'm seeing the idea....Clever! We will have abstracted the Data reading and writing away from the core objects. The extra layer provides the flexibility to modify the db without interfering with the core objects. It makes sense. Thanks Steve!

Hi stavinski, Thanks for your input. I think I understood what you suggested. I reworked my class diagram. Here is the link. I'm not 100% certain that I've got the diagram relations correct, but I think I understand what you suggested. http://www.mxpreview.com/WindowClassDiagram2.jpg[^] So, to handle db operations I would create a concrete object, and pass it to the constructor as a parameter. Then I could call MyWindowDB.Insert() which would roll through the parameters and perform the update. The advantage to doing this is that a database change would not require me to modify the "Window" class. Does this seem correct? You mentioned testing, and I think I understood your logic on that. I wouldn't need to modify the database while testing validation and such. Are there any other reasons to use this type of structure? The CalculateCost() function would need to be in the interface. How would I keep that logic in one spot? I'm not sure if an interface can contain code like that function. I'm kind of new to this, so I apologize for the ignorance.

Hello, I'm learning and trying to improve my object design skills, so please excuse my ignorance. I've got a very basic app I'm working on that involves house windows. Each Window is composed of various options (frames, glass, screens etc). Each option has a unit mulitplier used to calculate prices. The window itself has size parameters height & width. I don't know how to post a diagram, so here is a URL to a diagram of how I would typically design it. http://www.mxpreview.com/ClassDiagram.pdf[^] In my example, I would create three classes (window, windows, windowoptions). The window class represents a single window. The window class has an arraylist propery of windowoption objects. In the window object I have a function that rolls through the windowoptions to calculate the cost of the window. The New() constructor is overloaded to accept an ID, which will load up the individual properties. The windowoption object represent the various options a window might have. There is really no action done by the windowoption object. It is just used to calculate price. The windows object is what I'd use to generate the various window objects. QUESTION: Am I headed the right direction? Is this a typical way of doing things? Is there any reason to make this more complex? Any guidance will be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Wauna

Hi Everyone, This is my first post on this board. I've been reading it for over a year now trying to soak up any information I can get. MY QUESTION: I need to learn better design skills, but I am a lone coder. Unfortunately, I work by myself so I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off or learn from. How can I take my design skills to the next level? What are your suggestions? MY BACKGROUND: Unfortunately, I have been programing for a career for over 10 years. I started with Basic on the Apple when I was a kid. I then began my career with VB, and have since moved onto VB.NET. I became MCSD certified in with Visual Studio 6. I have taken the MS classes on .NET, and have read a few books, but I don't feel like I've got the necessary knowledge to design good systems. I mean, my systems work, but I'm afraid if someone looked at them they'd say, "What the heck were you thinking?!?". I started to read a book on OO Design, that was based on the Martin Fowler book, but it used Bears, Zoo animals, and flowers as the examples. I didn't find the application of these to be to clear. Most of the time, it doesn't seem like my systems call for complex patterns, but without outside eyes how do I know? So is the answer reading the right book? Or is it seeking out skilled people to teach me? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Wauna