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String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace new super useful method in .Net 4.0

.Net 4.0 got a useful method in String , which checks for Null value or blank or consists of only white space. This really helps developers who were used to check for Null or Empty using String.IsNullOrEmpty(value) and white space characters using trim value.Trim().Length.

String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value)

Here are more details on MSDN.

Sharing Microsoft Livelabs Pivot current view using URL

Microsoft LiveLabs Pivot users can share the URL with the filters they applied and the view selected on their Pivot. All these applied filters are stored in the URL as query string.

1. You can see the full URL in Pivot by pressing CTRL+ALT+U anytime.
2. You can open Pivot using command line with -showfulluri option.

In Silverlight Pivot Viewer,
1. There is a Property called ViewerState, which gives the current view with applied filters and view.
This viewerstate can be used while loading the collection to go that view directly.

pivotViewer.LoadCollection("http://MyServer/MyCollection.cxml", viewerState);

A great tool to design Microsoft LiveLabs Pivot Collection

For making Pivot collections, there are 2 great tools
1. Excel add-in -- for beginners
2. Command line tool -- for advanced users

But these tools cannot directly create collections from SQL Server database. We need to manually copy and paste or export the data to excel. Here is a third party tool by Sysgain Inc., to generate collections from SQL Server using large data sets.

Collection Designer for SQL
http://www.getpivotdesigner.com/

This is an efficient tool to generate Pivot collections in minutes including downloading images, converting them into deep zoom format and making collection.
Future versions are coming with ODBC data connectivity also.

There is an enterprise version of this tool, which comes with a windows service, which can scheduled simply to re-generate / update collections without human intervention daily/weekly/monthly.

Way to access current Item's facets in Microsoft LiveLabs Silverlight PivotViewer control

Here is the simple way to access PivotViewer's current selected item and its facets.

PivotItem pi = pivotViewer.GetItem(pivotViewer.CurrentItemId);

if (pi.Facets.ContainsKey("My facet name"))

        textBlock.Text = pi.Facets["My facet name"][0];
 
To Access Title,
            pi.Name

For Description, you need to use similar to facet.
             pi.Facets["Description"][0];

For URL or Href,

          pi.Href

Microsoft URL Rewriter

Here is the Microsoft URL Rewriter, a nice extension to IIS to create simple, user readable, understandable and search engine friendly URLs.
http://www.microsoft.com/web/spotlight/urlrewriter/

Just install this extension and you can see URL Rewrite in your site IIS options. You can specify any URL and choose the friendly name.

Microsoft Livelabs Sivlerlight PivotViewer

Microsoft Livelabs Sivlerlight PivotViewer control is avaialble today. Here is the learn and downlaod link.
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/pivotviewer/

Pivot is a great tool to visualize data and this Silverlight client tool makes the collections to be integrated in any website.