News

We've completed the development of the software for the call center of Russian consular offices in the Spain.

For a long time phone operators was forced to use inconvenient text files and spreadsheets situated in a shared folder. Since now for data entry they will use special client application and the database. It greatly reduces requests registration time and minimizes the risk of data corruption. Authorized employees of consulate in Barcelona and consular office in Madrid will view and print attendance schedule right from the web site of the consulate.

Features:

• Fast entering of incoming requests and automatic validation;
• Support for any number of simultaneously working operators;
• Requests search facility;
• Flexible declaration of schedules for different departments;
• Automatic data publishing to the central server.

Let's consider the scheduling subsystem in more details. For a long years of operation, employees of consular offices elaborated complex rules of attendants receiving. The rules proclaims all possible questions, visiting days and hours, limitations for questions of certain type that can be solved on each day. Every department has its own set of rules.

To bring together those disembodied sets of rules and constraints, we've developed a format of schedule definition and the architecture of pluggable validation classes. Configurable validation process allows to check the schedule even with a most complex constraints set.

System has three main components: operator's workplace application, call center database, central database with web access. During the day client application works with call center database in local area network. At defined moments of time, specialized web-service is being contacted for publishing of the data to the central server. Control of employees' access to the data of central database is performed by ForceField.NET - user rights restriction system build into the site of the consulate.

Version 1.4 of sdf.XPath library has been released. This is the implementation of XPathNavigator class, which allows for working with arbitrary graph of an ordinary .NET objects in the same manner as with tree of XML elements.

Main features of the new version:

• New architecture significantly simplifies the creation of custom extensions;
• Improved compliance to the behavior of standard XmlSerializer class;
• Performance is several times better.

It should be said separately that central library classes were renamed: ObjectXPathNavigator (instead of XPathObjectNavigator) and ObjectXPathContext. It was done mainly to keep in line with navigators naming rules. Please notice that previous public version was marked as beta, so even serious changes may be considered legitimate. New version is marked as Release Candidate, so we hope in the future there will be no more breaking changes.

Library remains free and is distributed under friendly MIT-style license. Compiled binary file and documentation could be downloaded from this address, sources - from this. Documentation is also available online.

Detailed change log:

Version 1.4.0.0, March 04, 2005
RC1 version.

Features:

• Central objects renamed to ObjectXPathNavigator and ObjectXPathContext.
• Navigator is now must be created via ObjectXPathContext.CreateNavigator method.
• Introduced user-implementable INodePolicy instead of INode.
• Removed the Path concept in favor of specifying Parent at Node object.
• Node object caches responses from node policy, thus eliminating the need of custom caching mechanism in user's policy implementation.
• Support for inner XPathNavigators. If node's target object supports IXPathNavigable, then ObjectXPathNavigator gets the navigator and use it to descend into object.
• Removed node policy implementation for XmlNode objects in favor to inner navigators.
• Better compliance with standard XmlSerializer behavior. Added support for: XmlTextAttribute, XmlElementAttribute.IsNullable property, propagation of namespaces from XmlTypeAttribute and XmlRootAttribute. Inherited elements and attributes now goes first. Elements in lists and dictionaries now have names defined for their containers, not ther XmlRoot names.
• Supported inheritance of decorations from implemented interfaces.
• Null-valued nodes now has xsi:nil attribute.
• Null-valued attributes are skipped.
• New attribute TransparentAttribute controls the transparency of member node.
• New attribute SkipNavigableRootAttribute allows to explicitely make a root node of nested XPathNavigator transparent.
• New ObjectXPathContext.RegisterNodePolicy method allows to explicitely specify node policy for objects of desired type.

Fixes:

• Performance improved from 2.5 to 4 times in different scenarious.
• Fixed bug in GenericNodePolicy: attributes were reported as elements.
• Node policy type is now fully determined by TypeInfo.
• Fixed thread-safety issues in ObjectXPathContext.

Known issues:

• XSLT identity transform doesn't copy attributes with this command: <xsl:apply-templates select='@*|node()'/>. Two separate "apply-templates" produce correct result.

Acknowledgements:
Big thanks to Craig Neuwirt for helping us with this release.

Third version of the site of the YARFINVEST company has been recently published. Design of the new version was completely changed. Newly introduced SDF contents management system allows for publishing of new information by company's staff. Site's contents itself also bears significant changes. You can learn about this project in more details at the portfolio page.

First public beta of sdf.XPath library is released. This implementation of XPathNavigator allows for execution of XPath queries upon arbitrary graph of an ordinary .NET objects and for using this graph as a data source in XST transformations.

Features:

• Maps public properties as child elements or attributes;
• Possible to give a name and a namespace to the XML-representation of a class member or class instance;
• "Transparent" child elements are supported;
• Configuration is done via standard attributes from System.Xml.Serialization namespace;
• Exceptions that occur during resolution of member value are shown as XML-comment nodes;
• Custom proxies for user types;
• Configurable converters to format objects for text nodes and attributes.

Project is ideologically based on the Steve Saxon's article in MSDN and implementation of such navigator in Bamboo.Prevalence engine.

sdf.XPath component is released as open source project and along with its source code is available for free use. Classes documentation is also published at our site.

All comments and bug reports will be very appreciated.

Yaroslavl "Stroytechnica" (Construction technics) plant is a respectable enterprise with more than forty years of history. Plant manufactures different construction equipment, concrete mixers and their components, lines for goffered cardboard production, sauna heaters and other products. Many of those are unique for Russian market. The company constantly participates in different exhibitions of construction equipment. Its production was rewarded with several medals and diplomas. "Stroytechnica" is a member of "Soyuzupak" association.

The conception of site’s design is based on the official company’s logotype. Its shape is supported with background triangles in page header and footer. Main point of visitor’s interest - the catalogue of products - is immediately accessible from any page of the site.

Recently a new modernized version of the site of international marriage agency "Golden Wedding Ring" came out. New version significantly simplifies the process of purchasing. To achieve it, we thoroughly analyzed site visitors' behavior, pinpointed all unneeded operations, superfluous questions and confusing messages, and removed it without any regret.

Much labor put in textual content of the site. We are sure that now users will have fewer questions, while search engines will appreciate the selection of keywords as a true value.

Force-Field for Web is aimed to restrict unauthorized access to files published on a web server. It is based on our Force-Field component, though very simple to install and use at a individual .NET web site. You can use Force-Field for Web as a primer on Force-Field's capabilities and ideology.

Please check out the demo installation of the Force-Field for Web.

Version 4.2 of the lsd.Database library is available for downloading. New version carries the DbOpen class with extended functionality. It also looses some rare bugs. In particular, a problem, which could occur during big ASP.NET application workload, is solved.

We developed new version of Force-Field - 4.2.0.1. The component is intended to build a security scheme for an application.

In the new version we get rid of some minor bugs. We refused integration of documentation with Visual Studio, that enables us to reduce the size if installation file.

Download new version of Force-Field

Last 3 months we worked at GoldenWeddingRing.ru. Now this project is in the final stage. The marriage agency that offers its services also on Internet starts working.

At present we work at the content of web site’s catalogue: information on participants and their photos are added to the catalogue. In the near future users will be able to pay for web site’s services with credit cards. Cooperative work at the resource will be continued after the site goes online. As the result new services that will improve the usability of this web site will be developed.

Such offers you can find by the travel agency "Burrelco-Travelling" from Holland. On the web site of this company that is supported by «BYTE-force» one can find new tours for the year 2004.

Now web site’s visitors are able to select one of dozens tours to Russia or to other CIS states. From traditional journeys to Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, “Golden Ring” towns, to exotic ones – trough the whole Siberia, to Kamchatka or Kazakhstan.

The agency is ready to meet all the wishes of its customers and develop individual tours to everyone’s taste. To organize an exclusive tour web site’s visitors can select terms, transport, hotels and other elements for a tour.