Magenic Company Blog

The performance of Windows Store Apps is important to consider, especially when handling large collections of data. When displaying the collection, performance can be degraded. In part three , first steps were taken to alleviate the performance problems that can arise under heavy data usage. Part four will describe further performance improvements using UI virtualization.

By embracing the power and flexibility of JavaScript, a developer can create data templates that adapt to changing data structures and criteria by using data template functions. This was described in part two of this series. Taking the concept of data template functions a step further, part three will discuss asynchronous data template functions.

Recently, at the PASS Business Analytics Conference, Microsoft announced their new strategy for Business Intelligence. They summed it up with a single word – Simplicity. This was an exciting announcement as Business Intelligence has long been the wild west of development and often utterly chaotic.

We can’t test everything. It’s impossible. There are too many test cases, too many actions we could potentially perform, too many edge cases and things that our users will come up with that we can’t even imagine. At any given point of time, there are an infinite number of tasks we could perform. We need to choose our tasks to fit into the time we have available for testing, planning our tasks in advance to meet our deadlines.

In part one, nested data templates were introduced. Nested data templates provide a great way to enhance the flexibility of an app’s user interface. The issue with using nested templates is the simple fact that creating templates in HTML files can be a tedious process.

Magenic’s Chicago office was recently named as one of the 2013 Best Places to Work in Illinois! Located in Lombard, the office was recognized by The Daily Herald Business Ledger in partnership with the Human Resources Management Association of Chicago (HRMAC), the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, and the Workforce Boards of Metropolitan Chicago and managed by Best Companies Group.

The previous Magenic Blog post I wrote, “Introducing HTML & JS Data Templates for Metro Apps,” introduced data templates for Windows Store applications. This is a follow up article that will dive deeper with nested data templates where data templates will have data templates! Please read the introductory post if you are unfamiliar with data templates in Windows Store apps.

Master Data Management solutions provide a central repository within an organization for non-transactional data. In other words, it’s where you can centrally manage one single source of data that will feed the rest of your organization. Benefits include having one consistent source of data across organizational units, as well as providing a high level of data quality. This sounds like a tall order so let's take a look at how this can be accomplished.

2013 has been the year of Jason Bock. After scooping the very impressive “MVP of the Year” award in March, he was recently named one of the National Practice Leads at Magenic. In his new position, Jason will be responsible for developing Magenic’s thought leadership in the AppDev practice.

I’ve been doing database unit testing for some time now as part of my normal development process. I was even doing it before Microsoft first began to release tools for database unit testing in Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals. It has always been a second nature to me. However, this is not true for every developer and so I decided I should write about what database unit testing is and how can it add value to development.