We have an requirement to integrate our WPF application and Windows Store app with some very old COM technology.
It requires us hosting a 3rd party web site in a browser control. That page does a GetObject call in VBScript to find a COM component that we will have had to add to the RunningObjectTable (ROT).
The 3rd party web site cannot be changed any time soon. This works currently in old VC++ app.
I am currently having and issue with the WPF app but will deal with that in a separate question.
I am guessing what we are considering doing is not going to work in a Windows Store app. I was hoping someone can confirm what I believe
The WebView control in Windows Store will not support VBScript running within it
A Windows Store app cannot target a .NET Framework dll (*Rather that NETCore) that is a wrapper around a COM interface
A store app would be using the EdgeHTML engine to host web pages, which has no VBScript support.
A store app would be using the appcontainer integrity level ROT, which is different than the medium integrity level ROT accessible from your old VC++ app (forget .Net wrapper of COM server if the COM server itself won't work).
Related
I realize that we cannot directly access SQL Server database from a UWP app, and have to use a WCF service as a mediator for this. (Which is totally stupid, since even competitors like MySQL provides API for Microsoft's runtime, while Microsoft's own RDBMS does not!)
I don't have any experience with WCF, but after going through some tutorials, I believe I can make a WCF service to communicate with my SQL Server (although I do not like making my simple application use a 3-tier architecture, which shouldn't be imposed on me). Anyways, I do not want to host this WCF service on my website, since I'm making this only for this UWP app. Is there a way I can bundle/pack this WCF service along with UWP app itself, such that service runs on client machine only when thhe start my app, and stops later when app is closed/suspended/minized.
The UWP app I'm developing, also have a WPF version and a web version (in ASP.NET), all of which were connected to MySQL database till now, and it worked flawless. Recently I decided to shift to SQL Server since I'm using Microsoft technologies for all my softwares and thought SQL Server will have better integration and support. But now I find it rather opposite, and thinking to switch back to MySQL database.
You can not bundle a WCF service (or REST api) with your Universal Windows app. UWP apps run in a sandbox environment on a different .NET runtime than your WCF service. You could run the WCF service in IIS, or even better create a self-hosted ASP.NET WebAPI project (so no need for IIS) to access your database. But this service will have to be installed separately from the app.
Note that because UWP apps run in a sandbox, some in-app databases like SQLite are inside this sandbox and can not be accessed by your other apps (WPF, website) by default (there are some hacks to bypass this).
So I think your best bet is to stick with MySQL and use the MySQL connector.
I'm trying to make my store app communication with desktop app through websockets.
I know we can make metro app as a client and do WinRT way of communicating over.
For the desktop server part, i'm planning to write a dll that will contain server code and receive metro texts being sent over.
Can someone please tell if this is possible and how to write server code in a dll and if so should we be using winhttp for wbesockets in server side ?
Windows Store (WInRT) apps are executing in a sandbox which isolates them from network communication with other applications on the local machine (localhost). That being said, this protection can be disabled using CheckNetIsolation.exe. Visual Studio automatically does the same for debugging purposes, allowing you to call e.g. a web service on your local machine during development.
As for the desktop side; to communicate with web sockets client, you can make advantage of WinHTTP. There's a working example on MSDN.
Keep in mind, though, that any application communicating with localhost will not be certified for Windows Store and will require several additional steps to install it:
The Windows Store application package will need to be sideloaded since it won't be published in Windows Store.
Any desktop component it communicates with will need to be installed separately the same way as any other desktop application.
Using CheckNetIsolation.exe loopback exemption will need to be added for the Windows Store app.
If you can avoid it, I definitely suggest you don't try communicating directly with a desktop application from you Windows Store app.
I need to integrate Skype deep into one of my Windows 8 Store application for Windows 8 Pro. We need to show the online status of the user and trace if the call was placed successfully.
We have tried to use Skype4COM but apparently, Win8 Store Apps can only access limited set of COM components.
I am not open to use to use Skype URIs as i would require to trace the status of the call also.
Any pointers or any help would be awesome!!!
At this time, the Skype API is not a Windows Runtime Component so it can't be used in a Windows Store app. Even though COM objects are similar, they don't work in Windows Store apps because they have a different interface, security model, etc.
Right now, Skype URIs are your only option for a Windows Store app. You can find more information on Skype URIs and Windows Store apps # http://dev.skype.com/skype-uri/skype-uri-tutorial-win8.
I have a traditional Win32 program which gets some data using WMI (and it cannot be fetched using API available to Metro apps). Now I want to make a tile with part of this information. As I've understood, it's impossible to simply send this data from Win32 program to the Metro application. What's the preferred way to do such thing?
There is no direct app to app communication method. What you want to do can be accomplished in several ways, however. Your Win32 app could write data to a location on the file system that a Metro style has access to. Also, you could synchronize your Win32 app with your Metro style app using the cloud. You need to be careful, however, as this might violate some of the app certification requirements.
If you are simply writing something for yourself (not concerned with publish your app), you might consider taking the functionality that currently have within your desktop app and encapsulating it within a wcf service running on localhost. Metro apps can call wcf services.
One option would be to have your Win32 program create the tile XML and deposit in Windows Azure storage (or really anything accessible via a URI) and then your Windows 8 Store application could subscribe to that tile via a Periodic Notification.
There are some constraints here which may or may not be relevant to your application - like the refresh rate of the tile (discrete periods from 30 minutes to 1 day) and the machine must be connected to the network when the poll from the URL is made.
You might be able to incorporate a background task to do something similar.
What is a better platform/language for developing Windows/desktop based application that can run offline (sometimes)? .NET (C#, ASP) or Java or any other development tool? This application requires to store data into a database(involves some GIS) and later Synch both ways with the main server (SQL/Oracle) during off hours or when initiated by a user or event or when online? ALso the tool/IDE recommended should allow us in the future to migrate this desktop application as a Web based application to the corporate server with less pain or re-work when internet/nw access is available to all of our remote sites/users. Any input/advice is appreciated.
If you are strictly doing Windows desktop application development, C# or VB.NET would be an excellent choice. There is a ton of documentation out there for .NET developers. Although the framework is a free download from Microsoft, any serious work is cumbersome and tedious without the IDE.
If you needed the potential to support your application on multiple operating systems besides Microsoft Windows, then I think it might be worth looking into Java.
For web solutions, in .NET you have ASP.NET, Java you have JSP and Tomcat.
You could try Adobe AIR. It seems like it would serve most of your desktop needs and it should be the easiest to migrate into a web app (Flex).
C#/WPF for desktop with Silverlight, XBAP or even ASP as the online options.
Since you mentioned the desire to web-enable this application at some point I'd look into Silverlight. Out-of-browser capabilities were introduced in Silverlight 3. That means that the app can run directly on the desktop, and the internet connection is optional. However, when the internet connection is available it has built-in support for auto-updating itself.
And now in Silverlight 4 it's possible to run an out-of-browser Silverlight app with elevated trust. Silverlight 4 also finally introduced things like right-click support, clipboard access, full keyboard support in fullscreen mode, etc. So if you're just now starting development, I'd most definitely use version 4.
You'll have to communicate with something like a WCF service for a lot of the database operations. But going with Silverlight should allow you to build something that'll work on the desktop and the web alike without having to manage two systems.
Going web-based after you already developed a desktop application is a really bad idea. There is no reason the desktop application cannot use a internet connection, and be updated from a server.
You could try Delphi. It's a rapid application development tool. Very different, but very quick to use. Well suited to Oracle integration. Data sync is probably going to need to be custom, unless you're using something like Sybase SQL Anywhere.