Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Paul Yuknewicz

Antoine Cote

Steven M Lasker

John Z Chen

John W Hart, Ii

Wenhui Zhu

Nikhil Kothari

Simon Calvert

Brian Keith Pepin

Bradley Bartz

Scott Michael Wiltamuth

Yun Dong

Anson Michael Horton

Tao Hu

Merwan Vishnu Hade

Michael R Harsh

John Joseph Rivard

Bulusu Krishna Mohan

Izydor Gryko

Jeffrey Thomas Chrisope

Andrew Cheng-min Lin

Fred W Balsiger

William Edwin Hiebert

Dennis Angeline

Lorenzo Minore

James Roy Schmelzer, Jr

Michael Eng

Scott Tucker

Meghan Rae Perez

Donna Wallace

Christopher Dias

Joseph F Kubiniec

Corrina Barber

Huan Guo

Taosheng Hu

Chen Ji

Mine Tanrinian Demir

Steven Michael Hoag

Baiju K Nair

Graeme Mott

Embodiments provide a viewer/editor for schema-less data, such as a NoSQL database. The data structures are displayed so that each entity type in the data uses a different color and variable column widths. This allows the user to identify relationships between entities. For a selected entity, only the properties applicable to that entity are displayed by the viewer/editor. The column width for each property is optimized to reduce confusion and to allow the user to focus on the selected data.

Detection and visualization of schema-less data

Development environments are commonly used to facilitate the development of user interfaces (e.g. windows forms, web forms, etc.). Drawing objects are components that may be used within the development environment to provide visual enhancements to the user interface. An effective method for drawing one or more drawing objects is disclosed herein to draw the drawing objects as windowless shapes within a shape container. The shape container may be configured to participate in a windows message loop (e.g. event handling system), wherein the windowless shapes do not participate in the windows message loop (e.g. lack a windows handle). The shape container listens, for example, within the windows message loop for operations pertaining to windowless shapes, and executes the operations upon the windowless shapes. Computer resources may be efficiently allocated, for example to the graphical user interface during runtime, instead of the windowless shapes consuming resources to participate in the windows message loop.

Windowless shape drawing

Form controls can be reused so that the control can be bound to large volumes of data without adverse performance issues because of a large number of controls. A maximum number of rows of data N that can appear in a form are calculated. A container in memory is created for N+2 rows. The additional two rows are used to store the row after the last displayed row and the row previous to the first displayed row. In response to a user scroll or tab operation, rows within the container are reused. Child controls are hosted by the control and are also reused when the data is scrolled out of view.

Rendering a customized list of controls

A system and method that facilitate data access in a software development environment is provided. The system generates strongly typed objects that encapsulate raw, untyped data access logic and groups together like database commands in a common data access component. The system provides a mapping between database types and common language runtime data types including the impedance mismatch of null representations. The system configures data access component(s) that are employed at design-time to facilitate access to data object(s) by application(s) and allows a user of the configured data access component(s) to improve developer productivity and/or reduce the quantity of runtime errors introduced into code. The data access component can be instanced on multiple forms components and/or with the developer's own class(es). Thus, change(s) to a query and/or interface are accomplished within the data access component and be available to the forms components and/or object(s) that utilize the data access component.

Data access layer design and code generation

A client or Web application assembly or group of assemblies is bound to a version of shared assemblies associated with a particular targeted execution environment. The targeted execution environment (and thus the version of shared assemblies associated with it) may be selected or detected. A file such as a configuration file is automatically modified. The selected or detected execution environment may be the same as or different than the local version. The client or Web assembly is automatically bound to the targeted shared assemblies. A user interface enables the selection of a particular execution environment. Alternatively, a user interface informs of the detected targeted execution environment and enables the reconfiguration of the Web assembly. This invention provides a mechanism and process for maintaining legacy software after a new software development tool is installed, without deploying a new version of shared assemblies.

Cross version customization of design environment

A mechanism for converting control types in a user interface (UI) development framework. The framework includes a UI generation component that facilitates the development of the UI in which control types will be employed and bound to data of a data source. In communication with the generation component is a conversion component that facilitates changing the default control choice immediately after creation, or for evaluating the UI, and later choosing to change the UI control choice. The conversion component employs a service to inspect all controls on a particular form in the designer, and advertises a 'Change To' or similar smart tag item for that control, if the control supports data binding and conversions. Selection of the control type or control group view creates the UI of the user's choice, and intelligently maps all control properties and data bindings across the conversion.

Architecture for converting control types in a data bound user interface

A system and method for a reentrant database object wizard is provided. The system provides the ability to compare a currently generated dataset to the objects of the underlying database. Columns and tables that are not common between both the dataset and the database are visually displayed for the user to make a decision on inclusion or exclusion. The system includes a comparison that provides comparison information based upon a comparison of a dataset to an associated database and a display component that displays the comparison information. The system further includes an input component which provides information associated with the user's decision on inclusion and/or exclusion of column(s) and/or table(s) to the system. The system is reentrant thus providing long-term value to the developer over the application development cycle.

Reentrant database object wizard

An interface may be provided that enables the user to select a parent list, to view a set of available child lists corresponding to the selected parent list, and to select a particular child list from the set of available child lists. The set of available child lists may be automatically compiled in response to the selection of the parent list. Another interface may be provided that enables the user to select a particular portion of the parent list for which to view corresponding child data. The corresponding child data may be automatically identified and displayed in a running application.

System and method for exposing a child list

A user interface is provided that exposes items such as developer tasks, commands, property settings, and other related information to a user. The user interface may be invoked in a number of development interfaces such as, for example, a designer or an editor. The user interface may be either an object bound interface or an action triggered interface. An object bound interface exposes a set of items that are associated with a corresponding object. An action triggered interface exposes a set of items that are associated with a corresponding triggering action. In addition to enumerating developer tasks, the user interface may provide a direct link to other interfaces that facilitate task execution.

System and method for exposing tasks in a development environment

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Paul Yuknewicz