Capturing a user's signature in an XAF mobile application - UPDATE for v17.2.8+

Starting with v17.2.8, MobilePropertyEditor supports the Edit ViewEditMode. We updated our How to use a Signature Pad in XAF Mobile example and enabled SignatureAction in the Edit mode accordingly. This improvement saves end-users time not only for this particular scenario (they no longer require to switch views), but also when working with regular image properties.

To see the difference in action, refer to the GIF file below and compare it with the one from my previous post:

Your feedback is needed!
For early testing, we published a daily build. You can download it using the following link: DevExpressNETComponents-17.2.7.18099.exe. We look forward to hearing from you.

Updates to the new Rich Text Editor Module and ASPxGridLookup-based PropertyEditor in v18.1

Please do not miss the updates to the following KB articles from our team:

https://www.devexpress.com/go/XAF_Try_RichTextEditorModule_v18.1.aspx
We have moved further and added Mail Merge support to the new module. To enable this feature, set the MailMergeDataType property in RichEditWindowsFormsModule in Application Designer. Now it's also possible to work with multiple rich text editors in the Ribbon mode. You can open the content of the selected rich text editor in a popup window using the 'Show in Popup' context menu item. Also now you can view rich text content in a list view's columns.

https://www.devexpress.com/go/XAF_Try_ASPxGridLookupPropertyEditor_v18.1.aspx
ASPxGridLookupPropertyEditors provides the capability for creating/modifying objects via a popup window. The add and edit buttons open the popup window to create a new object or to modify a selected one. ClearButton allows clearing the editor value. 

Your feedback counts!
If you are an active Universal subscriber and would like to test these new features prior to the official release, download the DevExpress XAF v18.1 Preview installer. By providing early build access, we hope to find out whether our new features and solutions address your requirements and issues. Your testing efforts and your feedback help us deliver the best possible final implementation.

Old entries in the XPObjectType table - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!

I am reviewing the priority of a quite dated SC item on the subject and wanted to ask the community for help. The problem may occur when old business class libraries exist in the application folder. By default, XPO tries to load them by the XPObjectType info along with the new versions. This may lead to a conflict at runtime or startup performance degradation. In the latter case, assembly type resolution may come at a cost (see the point 3.5 under How to measure and improve the application's performance).

Why are we hesitating to remove old XPObjectType entries by default?

1. Removing old XPObjectType records affects other apps accessing this database and is serious. Outdated service table records may relate to business class records too (inheritance mapping is in use very often). So, deleting them will lead to foreign key constraint violation. Creating a sophisticated generic solution for this is not easy task.

Integrating UnitOfWork and XPObjectSpace descendants into an XAF app

We've made some code changes for v17.2.6+ as well as created two articles for advanced XAF developers who may need the subject for some low-level tuning:

How to customize the UnitOfWork behavior in XPO-based XAF applications

How to customize the Object Space behavior in XPO-based XAF applications

Sub-classing is itself easy.  The most interesting part comes for the two popular security configurations: the Integrated  mode and the Middle-Tier Application Server. Thankfully, this is rarely required for complex or specific scenarios only.  Here are several customer tickets for your reference:

    How to map a property to a calculated database column (implement a read-only persistent property)
    xpo and sql server identity fields
    Using inherited UnitOfWork object
    XAF: Create CreateCustomObjectSpaceProvider with parameters from login window
    SecurityStrategyComplex: How to modify objects/properties in code when the user does not have the permission?

To learn more about low-level options to control how your application saves data and where, check out the How to customize the underlying database provider options and data access behavior in XAF.

Your feedback is needed!
Finally, I am just curious: if you search your entire solution in Visual Studio (Control+Shift+F) for any of the ": UnitOfWork", ": XPObjectSpace", ": XPObjectSpaceProvider" strings or their VB.NET equivalents (e.g., Inherits UnitOfWork), how many occurrences  would you have and for what? Please let me know in the comments!

XAF WinForms v17.2.6 - Beware of missing icons in inactive tabs after restoring the Tabbed MDI layout

I want to draw your attention to the T611846: DocumentManager - TabbedView does not show images for documents issue already fixed in the XtraBars Suite and which XAF WinForms Tabbed MDI users might encounter after upgrading to v17.2.6. The number of users who already hit this exceeded a certain threshold, and the known issues section in the What's New documentation or manual searching the Support Center may not help effectively discover it yourself. So, I am posting this here to widely inform those who have not yet upgraded their XAF/WinForms projects to v17.2.6.

You can also download a hotfix build from here.

Please accept sincerely apologies from our XAF and XtraBars teams for all the inconvenience here.

Diagnostic tool for Security System - YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED!!!

Earlier we described the prototype of diagnostic tool. We created it to help a developer to understand why access to a certain object and its members is allowed or denied.  

  

We analyzed the feedback we got on this matter and provided the following improvements in v17.2.6:

 - To enable the security diagnostic tool, use the familiar EnableDiagnosticActions option.

 - You can select a type and a member you wish to analyze.

 - Results are presented in the XML format.

 - We provide more details on how the diagnostic tool calculates results.

 - There is a way to visualize criteria for easier analysis.

You can get more info about the tool from the KB article below:

                                     https://www.devexpress.com/kb=T589182.  

Your feedback is needed

Please test the tool and let us know whether it is useful in your development process and how you would change it. For instance, the more specific there are use cases of this tool where it was difficult to configure permissions for a user, the greater it is possible that we can arrive at technical solutions that will address them.

AccessViolationException at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsRegisterEditors.UnregisterEditor may occur in Visual Studio 2010, 2012

This sporadic design time error might go away in Visual Studio 2013, 2015, 2017 and newer.

Exception

Type: System.AccessViolationException
Message: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
StackTrace:
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsRegisterEditors.UnregisterEditor(UInt32 dwCookie)
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.Dispose(Boolean disposing)
   DevExpress.ExpressApp.Design.Core.XAFPackageV4.Dispose(Boolean disposing)
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsPackage.Close()

We have been tracking this error for years from XAF users using https://logify.devexpress.com. We also received a few tickets, but could never replicate this behavior for debugging. Our attempts to log diagnostic information about this error did not help either. Well, it does not seem to relate to the DevExpress.ExpressApp.Design.Core.XAFPackageV4.Dispose method itself. There are also many non-XAF reports devoted to the same error, but different packages on the Web. https://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsRegisterEditors.UnregisterEditor+accessviolationexception

From the Logify stats, we know that this error occurs only with these two old Visual Studio versions. It seems that something got fixed in newer IDE versions. If you are on Visual Studio 2010 or 2012 and encountered this error at design time, consider upgrading your IDE - it's 2018 after all:-)