MCS UK Solution Development Team

The blog of the UK Solutions Development Team of Microsoft Consulting Services.

Federated Security: How to setup and call a WCF service secured by ADFS 2.0

In this blog post I am going to walkthrough the steps required to secure a WCF service with ADFS...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 08/17/2011

Writing a gesture service with the Kinect for Windows SDK

After further experimenting with the Kinect SDK, it became obvious what needed to come next. If you...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 08/08/2011

First Look at the Kinect for Windows SDK

The Kinect for Windows SDK has finally arrived, and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it! After...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 08/08/2011

F# Console Application Template

If you are like me and often use console applications for a variety of purposes you would have found...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/29/2011

Following on from my previous posts on html5 animation and reflection effects, I thought I'd put it...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/29/2011

FSharpChart and consuming within a WinForms application

In all the previous discussions around FSharpChart, samples have been shown within F# Interactive. I...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/24/2011

Adventures in TSQL: Adding date and time values

With the addition of the SQL Server date and time types, I have often found myself needing to create...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/19/2011

F# and Running Parallel Tasks

Recently I have been working a lot with the Task Parallel Libraries. In doing so, in F#,  you...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/14/2011

F# Parallel Processing and the Command Pattern

In a previous post I talked about a mechanism for Parallel Process Execution with Conditional...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/07/2011

HTML5 / JavaScript: Reflections and Skew Effects

In carousel and coverflow type controls, you often see a “reflection” type effect. This...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/06/2011

F#: An Array.Parallel Quicksort Implementation

As I mentioned in my previous post, Array.Parallel sort functions demonstrating a Merge Sort using...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/05/2011

Using mutual SSL and message security to secure a WCF service

Sometimes, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) can be tough going. Whilst things will often work...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 07/05/2011

The Windows Identity Foundation Configuration Editor

As a little exercise to teach myself WPF (argue amongst yourselves about how successful I was on...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/29/2011

HTML5 / JavaScript Canvas Animation

In this article, I will show how to create a basic animation using JavaScript and the HTML 5 Canvas...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/23/2011

FSharpChart new features and code drop availability

If you have been using FSharpChart you will undoubtedly have read Keith Battocchi’s posting,...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/22/2011

Workflow Foundation (WF4) – Custom Activity to Invoke XAML Based Child Workflows (Part 2)

This article is part of a series: Part 1 Part 2 Inside ExecuteXamlWorkflow In my last post I...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/20/2011

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) – Selectively Enable and Disable Activity Execution

In WF 3.5 it was possible to enable and disable activity execution by simply changing the Enabled...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/16/2011

F# Array.Parallel sort functions demonstrating a Merge Sort using Barrier

If you follow the excellent Parallel Programing with .Net blog, you will have read a recent post by...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/15/2011

Workflow Foundation (WF4) – Custom Activity to Invoke XAML Based Child Workflows (Part 1)

This article is part of a series: Part 1 Part 2 Overview Using the WF designer to compose workflows...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/10/2011

Workflow Foundation - Resizing the RuleSetDialog

If you've ever spent any time developing business rules in Windows Workflow Foundation using the...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/08/2011

F# Class Library Template

So, in my last post I said that the template would be the last for a while, but here is one more....

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/05/2011

F# Assembly Information File Template

So to round out the templates for a while, the final one I have created is an Item Template for...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 06/01/2011

F# Windows Application Template for Windows Service

Recently I created a posting outlining a project template for a WinForms application. This posting...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 05/31/2011

F# Windows Application Template for WinForms

Recently I have been doing some work with FSharp.Charting and found there was no simple template for...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 05/27/2011

F# Parallel Process Execution with Conditional Completion

In a previous posting, available here, I discussed a pattern for running long running processes...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 05/21/2011

Refactor boilerplate code with Actions and Funcs

I have seen quite a few projects where the code starts with the best of intentions in terms of...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 04/14/2011

Animated Panel layout transitions in WPF and Silverlight using Blend Behaviors

I wrote a blog article a few weeks ago about how to write animated panels. Another way of doing this...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 04/07/2011

IEnumerable Distinct through a Func extension method

In a recent posting, available here, I tried to explain why the IEnumerable Distinct() method...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 04/05/2011

LINQ Distinct and IEqualityComparer Implementation

As you may know when working with LINQ there is a method that allows one to return distinct elements...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 04/05/2011

SharePoint: Advanced Page Viewer Web Part

Pulling through specific web page content Recently I’ve been working on developing dashboard...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 04/04/2011

Write a custom security token and handler in Windows Identity Foundation

In this article I will demonstrate how to write a token handler for a custom token in Windows...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 03/25/2011

Code profiling IIS sites in deployed environments with Visual Studio code profiler

So, you’ve run a load test against your web site (you are performance testing your site, aren’t...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 03/25/2011

Parallel process execution with partial completion of processes

On a recent project I came across an interesting parallel processing problem that I could not find a...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 03/04/2011

Handling optional claims with the ADFS Claims Rule Language

It is a perfectly normal scenario for claims to be optional in a token. For example, a SAML...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/22/2011

Understanding and Using OData – Creating a Windows Phone OData Client (4 of 4)

This article is part of a series: Understanding and Using OData (1 of 4) OData Publication (2 of 4)...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/20/2011

Microsoft Consulting Services are expanding and you could be part of it

  Are you looking for your next career move?  Do you want to work with customers and...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/12/2011

Understanding and Using OData - Analysing OData Feeds (3 of 4)

This article is part of a series: Understanding and Using OData (1 of 4) OData Publication (2 of 4)...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/11/2011

Understanding and Using OData – OData Publication (2 of 4)

This article is part of a series: Understanding and Using OData (1 of 4) OData Publication (2 of 4)...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/07/2011

Understanding and Using OData (1 of 4)

The first time I came across the Open Data Protocol (OData) was an article about Project Astoria by...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 02/03/2011

An Animated Custom Panel base class for WPF and Silverlight

The full code base for this posting can be located here. If you have used XAML at all, you will have...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 01/12/2011

Workflow Services – Using Message Contracts

Overview When building workflow services, very often we need to leverage pre-existing contracts...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 12/06/2010

Generating Load Tests for WCF Services with the WCF Load Test Tool

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have just released a new version of the WCF Load Test tool. The tool...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 12/03/2010

Building a Windows Phone 7 game, with SharePoint communication

So, you’ve never made a game before for the Windows Phone 7 - you’ve opened up your brand new Visual...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 10/18/2010

Building and deploying an Outlook 2010 Add-in (part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this series, we went through the steps to create a simple Outlook 2010 add-in,...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 10/01/2010

Microsoft Online Cloud Conference: the TechDays team goes online

Don’t forget to check out the "Lap around App Fab" session by Santosh Benjamin....

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 09/22/2010

Windows Identity Foundation 101’s : WS-Federation Passive Requestor Profile (part 2 of 2)

In the previous post we saw how easy it is to get basic Relying Party (RP) and Identity Provider...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 09/22/2010

The Cool Wall is Back

For those of you who are fans of the BBC show Top Gear, you may remember the Cool Wall, and now you...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 09/22/2010

Adventures in TSQL: Using CTEs when performing UPDATE operations

In a recent post I discussed using CTEs for managing ordered DELETE operations. Adventures in TSQL:...

Author: MCS UK Solution Development Date: 09/13/2010

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