Ranorex is a user interface test tool for Windows. If UI elements support Microsoft Active Accessiblity (MSAA) then it can retrieve rich information about the elements, which is very useful for writing test scripts.
We have a lot of legacy code in VB6, which does not support MSAA.
I am trying to add this support to some of our VB6 UserControls as follows.
I have created an ActiveX component in C++ using ATL. This contains a helper class which implements the interface IAccessible. It also contains an initialization function which can be called from VB6.
The VB6 UserControl creates the helper object and passes its Window Handle and name to the initialization function. The helper object subclasses the window and handles the WM_GETOBJECT message, to provide the IAccessible interface for the window.
I have debugged through the code and as far as I can tell, it is working. The Ranorex Spy tool gets the IAccessible interface and calls methods on the interface.
However, Ranorex does not actually show any of the information which it appears to have fetched via this interface.
I know this is a very specific problem, but does anybody have experience of implementing IAccessible for use in Ranorex, or in other similar test tools?
I would be happy to provide my code, but I think it is too much for a normal posting.
This doesn't ever seem to have been widely used. I have found a few breadcrumbs I can share, so perhaps these will be of some value?
First:
Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0 ships as a standard system component in Microsoft Windows XP...
This is from the MSAA20RDK\redist.txt and it goes on to talk about how it can be installed into Win2K and earlier. As far as I can determine the pieces and parts are included in XP and later so you probably don't need the RDK download, which has basically no info at all and mostly just the DLLs.
Here's a link though:
Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0 Redist
Something perhaps more useful, note that this is a "live" link to download the Word DOC:
Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0
I haven't found a "page" link at MS Downloads that discusses it. This is a larger document giving many details, almost entirely for C++ programmers. There is however a little bit on VB6.
That said it tells you little except:
Visual Basic Sample Programs
The book Advanced Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, 2nd Edition (Mandelbrot Set
International, Ltd.) includes a chapter that discusses Active
Accessibility. The chapter provides sample code that demonstrates how to
use key Active Accessibility APIs. (Microsoft Press, ISBN 1-57231-893-7)
There is a little more there but not much. The book cited could be pretty hard to find anymore, I only saw one in Italian on Amazon but dig around and a 3rd party might sell there or on eBay, etc.
At this link: Microsoft Active Accessibility the info from that Word DOC appears to be duplicated, though perhaps it is more current.
Friends...
Are there any good beginner tutorials for Bing Maps (Windows Mobile using Visual Studio)?
Part of a homework assignment includes developing a very simple app that uses the Bing Maps.
My idea is to fill a dropdown list with 3 values, "Aruba", "Botswana" and "Cape Verde". Upon selection, have the Map display the nation selected in the dropdown.
I'm not sure where to start and need a tutorial that will at least give me an overview of how to do this.
Thanks in advance
Windows Mobile is old. You can only develop applications for it under Visual Studio 2008 because Microsoft abandoned it with the release of VS2010.
You can do other mobile development under Visual Studio 2010 (Win7 Phone, Android, & others).
Bing is newer than VS2008, so even if you found a way to get it to work there would likely be limited functionality.
As for beginner tutorials, a Google search pulled up these two at the top:
http://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers/web.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd877180.aspx
Did you search for anything first or just ask here?
UPDATE:
Based on the new information kindly provided by Chris, here are a few other resources:
Use GPS And Web Maps For Location-Aware Apps
MapPoint on Windows Mobile Devices
MapForums: Windows Mobile Mapping Application
How to use Microsoft MapPoint: A Helpful MapPoint Tutorial
Perhaps some of that will translate over to Bing.
The following was exactly what I was after! I recommend it. Thanks Map helpers, whatever your location...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsphonetrainingcourse_usingbingmapslab_topic2.aspx
Update: Albert D. Kallal has kindly started the discussion off, and to get some more opinions I'm adding a bounty.
This is a nontrivial question about maintenance of a legacy application myself and two other developers support. We are not the original developers, and the code base is 300,000 lines of MFC and business logic tightly coupled together. We don't know every single line of code 100%.
We do know the code behind the major components, and we know that it's poorly written. Our objective is to refactor the application out of 1995 and into 2010. Between the three of us there is (in aggregate) enough experience in software architecture and database design for us to fix the components that are poorly architected in code or incorrectly modelled in the database, but we don't have a lot of experience with modern reporting systems. Thus my question (once you get to the end of it...) is about reporting systems.
For anybody who reads this entire post, I am appreciative of your time. For anybody who reads this post and replies with solutions, experience (or sympathy!), I am both appreciative and thankful.
At work I have inherited the maintenance of an Access 2003 database that contains approximately 250 reports (and thousands of supporting queries) that acts as a reporting engine for our application.
The reports all have swathes of VBA in them for particular formatting or pulling extra information into the report. For this reason we are entirely locked into the Access platform, we can't use tools like BIDS to import the Access report objects without messing around to make the report display the same without VBA.
So to get ourselves out of this Access solution we need to put some time in going over every single report. Which means we're looking to pick the best longterm solution, since we're going to have to redevelop every report regardless of the platform we choose.
Furthermore our customers have a choice of Microsoft Access or SQL Server as their database. This means that all our SQL has to be written with the lowest common denominator in mind - JET SQL. We've got some wiggle room to drop support for Microsoft Access, but we'd need to build a case for it. If the best reporting system we can identify has strong support for SQL Server but little or no support for Microsoft Access this will accelerate us dropping support for Microsoft Access as a database.
The overall implementation of the report system is quite mediocre, when we want to display reports in our application we start a Microsoft Access process, find its window and reparent it to our application, strip off its window styles and then use the Access.Application COM interface to invoke some VBA that creates linked tables to the database (either a Microsoft Access MDB or a SQL Server database) and then opens up the report we want. Probably the only supported part of the process is using the public COM interfaces, the rest is an ugly hack. The other components in the application are equally underwhelming.
To "fix" our application we've got a new development plan, with development of our application split into (approximately) three parts every year.
4 months upgrading our application to support the latest government legislation in our industry
4 months delivering a new major feature
4 months "consolidation" (fixing what is broken)
We're currently at #3 now (for this year), and we really want to take advantage of the downtime to fix up the application, refactoring the major components. We have three developers, and want AppName v5.0 out at the end of 2012 (it's currently AppName v4.12). This gives us 36 months of development effort to approportion between several components (user interface, underlying database structure, reporting, etc) over the three consolidation periods we will have before then. The sum of the components that we fix will give us v5.0.
We've scoped out what we'd like to do with most of the components except for our reporting engine, and I'm posting on SO in the hope of getting some good ideas, or at least a feel for the work that's required.
I have two ideas for improving our reporting system. Both of them involve a moderate amount of work, and there is one consideration that neither solution addresses completely: in addition to the reports that we develop, our customers also have the opportunity to request bespoke development of reports. They're customer-specific, we take their Access database, augment it with their report and give it back to the customer. There's hundreds of unique reports out there - unusable if we turned the old system off. (And we have to turn the old system off eventually - we don't know how much longer we're going to be able to mess around with the Microsoft Access window to make it look like an embedded report. We already have two distinct code paths for Access 2003 and 2007. What if we can't hack up a code path for Access 2010 and all our customers have to use Access 2007?)
For both ideas, the intention is to stop supporting our current reporting system and let it run for as long as it will without maintenance. Maybe we can hack in Access 2010 and Access 2014 support, and the customer reports that were developed keep putting along for 5 more years. Over time, we'd migrate the most commonly used reports from the old Access database into their new format.
Idea 1: Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms.ReportViewer
The first idea is to write a wrapper around the ReportViewer control as a replacement reporting engine.
We'd need to move the project to C++/CLI (already on the cards), and instead of having to launch an entire process each time we needed to view a report we could simply instantiate this control. A bonus of this that the RDLC files that contain the reports are much easier to version control in Subversion than the Access 2003 database we currently have (we use Visual SourceSafe because the tools to integrate SVN with Access don't work well with the size of our Access database). The visual designer for RDLC files is also nicely integrated into Visual Studio.
This is more of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary change to the way we do reports, the ReportViewer control will take an RDLC file that has the report layout, and our application will take care of querying the data. Because our database might be SQL Server or Microsoft Access, we still have to write simple JET SQL. We're gaining better reporting (drill down looks nice), stronger authoring tools and easier version control, but is this worth the effort?
Idea 2: SQL Server Reporting Services and SharePoint 2010 with Access Services
The second idea is to kill Access as a database platform and migrate all our customers to SQL Server (we have hosted instances of our application for those customers who don't have the skill set to set up their own SQL Server instances). Once they're migrated we would use SQL Server Reporting Services as the reporting engine, with the ReportViewer control in server rendering mode.
In addition to SQL Server Reporting Services, I am curious as to whether SharePoint 2010 with Access Services could be used to rapidly migrate existing Access reports into a more manageable format. We'd take the Access report that the customer uses, convert it to an Access Web Report then make it available for them on a SharePoint site. This would only be for our hosted customers, but if we find a way to deal quickly massage the VBA out of customer reports we could churn through the several hundred custom reports our customers have.
I'm also interested in the ability to use an Access Web Navigation Form to act as a portal to all our reports. We'd host a web browser control inside our application which would give customers access to their own reports and to our standard suite.
We'd get all the benefits of Idea #1 plus the ability to write in full Transact SQL, a reports portal, and (hopefully) a reasonable upgrade path for customer's proprietary reports.
So, my question is: am I going about this the right way? Are these viable solutions for modern reporting systems, or laughable? We have a strong preference for using the ReportViewer control either in client rendering mode where our application processes the data, or in server rendering mode in conjunction with SQL Server - but are there reporting systems like Crystal Reports which offer better reporting and better migration paths for our legacy Access reports?
If you had up to 36 months of developer time, how would you do this?
Well, ok, no one else jumping in, I give this a go.
Quite interesting how you talking about a report writer that 15+ years old. Back then the Access report writer was beyond state of the art. It was a country mile ahead of everything else in the industry. Even today a lot of competing report writers don't have the concept of sub reports that allows modeling of relational data without having to resort to code or even SQL. Then, throw in programmable VBA, then the result is something that's very unique and powerful.
For access 2007, the report writer received some more nice upgrades in terms of layout controls but that going to be of little help here.
And, for 2010 we can now display reports in a sub-form control. This feature was added to facilitate use of the new access navigation control. Access 2010 has a new web browser control (works in forms or reports), and there also a new navigation control. Your post hints that the new navigation control and the web control are somehow related to each other but they completely different features.
Both the new web browser control, and navigation control can be used in both web appliations or 100% client only applications. The navigation control is nice since you can build that nav contorl by drag and dropping reports onto the nav control to build up a up a list of reports to choose from (it is slick and easy and nice). And with this navigation control, we can actually build some nice drill down type of interfaces for reports.
As you noted for access 2010 we now have web publishing of access reports and this feature is based on SQL server reporting services (they are RDL reports). However, two important issues here is no VBA is allowed inside of the web reports. And, I also point out that there is no automatic conversion utility that is built into access that will convert existing reports into web based reports. So to build a report that's going to be designated and published to the web, you have to choose specifically to create a web report to accomplish this goal. So this answers and clears up one question of yours of will this help you convert existing reports to SQL server, and the answer is no. So, Access will not help you convert existing reports to web based RDL reports (As noted, Access uses RDL and sql reporting for those web reports - those reports also render in the access client side without conversion).
Access has a great path for web based reports via SharePoint and also Access Web is coming to Office 365. However, keep in mind this ability is not going to help much with the existing reports that you have.
In fact one of the things I would be looking at if you're going to use winforms report viewer is the change in where that existing VBA report code will be moved to? You not really mentioned this issue. As noted one really interesting and great feature of those reports is that imbedded VBA code. Often that VBA will have been used because SQL and something like RDL will NOT work because neither of those languages (sql, and RDL) are procedural code.
I can't stress how important this concept is. So, this quite much means any report writer replacements means that code will now have to be OUTSIDE of the reports and moved into your application. So, keep this issue in mind as now when you issue new reports, you also be issuing new procedural code that NOT be contained in those reports. This code will have to become part of your application (so, to issue new reports, you will thus also be issusing a new version of your software).
You are not likely to find much that allows procedural code to be imbedded inside the report like you can with access. So, that report code and logic will now have to be built and maintained within your main application and outside of the reports.
At the end of the day, I should point out the old adage if it ain't broke, then don't change it. Access been around for a very long time, but we seen significant investments from the folks in Redmond into this product during the last few years, so it shows no signs of dying anytime soon.
So, one possible suggestion is to keep the status quo, and continue going the way it works now. I mean you stated that you have to continue supporting JET for this anyway so you not getting away from having to use a major part of Access anyway. So, you continue to have to use JET engine anyway. So, you just dumping the report side and you still have use the JET data engine anyway.
However, assuming this decision's been made, I can't really suggest what report writer you should replace the access one with. Obviously considerations for the next report writer should have a seamless path to web even if they are NOW going to be rendered on the desktop. It makes no sense to make a large investment today without web considerations in some fashion.
I do think SQL server reporting services is a good choice due to the web ability. And, as an access developer we also have the option to create web based reports but they also render perfect in the access client on the desktop side (and this works when you have no server and no conversion issues exist when publishing these reports to the web, or using them local on the client). So, even if you don't use access, do choose something that allows reports to render both desktop and web like access 2010 allows.
I would consider building the report system around some .net tools. This would likely not play too well as an embedded report system inside of your existing application, but it would allow you to issue new reports, and you would not have to touch your existing code base for each new report issued. This issuing of new reports that have procedural code needs to be resolved. You likely can now issue new reports without having to modify the main application because those reports can contain code inside. I would be looking to use something that would allow new reports to be built and issued but you not having to issue new edition of your main software. You might not embeed the code in the reports anymore, but you need to palce it somewhere, and hopefully outside of your main application.
Wow, this is a great question and Albert has given you a teriffic answer.
Unfortunately I do not believe there are any magic bullets to solve your problem. I have used Microsoft Access since it's first version, and always felt it's strongest feature was as a report generator, particulary when used with SQL Server. As you undoubtably know, one can often have issues with corrupted Access databases in a multi-user environment and SQL Server addresses that issue very nicely.
To my way of thinking the biggest problem with Access is that Microsoft brought out managed code (.Net) ten years ago now but Access is still a native application. In an ideal world Microsoft would rewrite Access in C# using all the latest features such as improved support for multiple processors etc. Unfortunately I do not expect this to happen any time soon.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) was definately far abead of "state of the art" when it was introduced, but today I believe most would agree that coding in VB.Net with Visual Studio is much more productive than continuing to develop in VBA.
SInce the selection of a new report generator is something you will need to live with for several years, perhaps it would be helpful to consider what an "ideal" report generator for the next ten years should look like?
Personally I would want:
1) All the great graphics and ease of skinning and branding that Silverlight provides.
2) Great multiprocessor support (you must have noticed how the UI thread in Access often appears "unresponsive" when running long queries or reports).
3) Support for lots of devices such as cellphones, iPads etc. While today the desktop and web dominate, these are becoming increasingly important (unless for some particular reason they are not important to your customers going forward).
4) Support for modern programming practices such as test driven development, dependency injection etc.
Please do let us know what you decide upon.
This is a long shot, but is there a possibility of using Access to generate a saved PDF and displaying that in your app in a PDF-viewing control that is part of your app, rather than external? Or export to XML or something (I haven't a clue what XML export options are available for reports in recent versions of Access, if any)?
The point is that you'd not have to rewrite the Access reporting logic, but you'd have eliminated the fake embedding and replaced it with something that's really embedded in your application.
What you'd be giving up is the perhaps the options that the Access UI gives the user, but I'm not sure how useful that is (I'd tend to not want those options available!).
Also, you'd be persisting the reports to disk, but I'm not sure this is much of any kind of significant issue, either, but it would entirely depend on the context (I'm assuming you have no 1000-page reports with heavy graphics, etc.).
You could take a look at ActiveReports by Data Dynamics. We use it within our apps for paperwork type reports (eg, invoices) and it's extremely flexible, far more so than what you can achieve with the MS reporting tools. For reports that are genuine reports rather than paperwork we use reporting services. It's been a while since I had to port an access report to active reports, but there is little or nothing you could do in access that you can't do in active reports. I'm also fairly certain that it has a decent tool for import access reports. There's a fully functional evaluation version available for download, which, unless they've changed things, just printes a watermark in the report footer rather than expires after a fixed evaluation period. Well worth a look, I'd say - Here's a link to their site
I won't get into any specifics since I'm not a Microsoft developer, but I can answer on how to integrate a legacy product into the current or new product. As for the 36-month question, see the end of this answer.
Usage Requirements - how do you intend to use the legacy code in the context of your new code?
Identify Use Cases - drill down into usage and create a use case for each transaction between the new and old code.
Identify I/O - drill down into each use case and identify I/O requirements
Write Tests - for each I/O pair, write tests to determine the best way to handle that I/O pair.
Reuse - reuse your tests to create a wrapper/API for the legacy code.
Future - as you replace legacy code with new code, let it match your wrapper/API so you can keep refactoring to a minimum.
If I had 36 months of development time to spend, I would spend 3-6 months writing a wrapper/API and then replace each unit tested I/O pair with new code every 7-10 days utilizing sprints (scrum/agile).
For the data store, I would absolutely move from Access to some SQL server product and prioritize that requirement for the new code.
I've used Crystal, Access (2 - 2007), SQL Reporting and now DevExpress and am very happy with DevExpress's reporting engine. It is specific to .net, but can be utilized by Windows Forms, ASP.net Web pages, WPF and Silverlight. If you are willing to utilize some .net controls, I highly recomend it. It can use just about anything as a datasource and is very flexible. My current projects aren't as complex as some things I have done in the past, but I would venture to say that I would rather do complex reports using the DX engine over any other I have used.
They have an End User designer that includes scripting capabiliities and DX is actively adding functionality.
I would recommend taking a look at: http://devexpress.com/Products/Index/Reporting.xml
Can anyone suggest good Gauge controls to use in application using C++.
The Gauges will be used in application monitoring Temperature, Pressure or Flow devices.
Please let me know about any commercial or free libraries that works on pure C++, without any dependency on .Net framework
Thanks,
For wxWidgets there are the (free) wxIndustrial controls. Update 11/2015: last updated in 2007, no downloads but source code still available here
Also you'll find more controls at wxCode.
I suggest you to give a look to National Instrument's Measurement Studio.
I am adding the link: NI-Measurement Studio
The title might be a bit confusing since it says: NI Measurement Studio
for Unmanaged Visual C++ .NET but Measurement Studio 2009 (and previous) also has C++ libraries that do not depend upon the .NET framework. They are MFC controls.
In that same page, you can actually clic the link to try it and decide for yourself.
QWT is an extension to the Qt GUI library. You can use this library to create Dials, Compasses, Knobs, Wheels, Sliders, Thermos etc.
Also check QGauge
You may try BeauGauge Instrumentation Suite.
Preview of Gauges
http://www.beaugauge.com/en/gallery.html
Demo Download
http://www.beaugauge.com/en/downloads.html
Here you go. It is completely free but for commercial use you should probably pay license fee.
http://www.mitov.com/html/instrumentlab.html
You may try ChartFX Gauges COM: http://www.softwarefx.com/sfxComProducts/cfxForCom/
I have recently completed a detailed investigation regarding GP functional test automation possibilities with QTP, TestComplete, and other GUI recognition/interaction tools.
In short, none of the tools acted well. Mentioned above did best but still featured a lot of hard-coding in recorded sample scripts. QTP did significantly better though.
Some of the GUI were recognized under .NET (swf... in QTP) and handled well. Some other were recognized as swfObject only but accessing native methods and properties allowed performing required interaction.
Finally, object internally named "Microsoft.Dexterity.Shell.DexDialogHost" renders objects that seem don't have Windows Handle and thus unrecognizable by QTP. I haven't found any detailed documentation on those objects family (like class reference to find out names of methods).
So I was wondering if someone could share experience automating GP and what tools / approach were used.
Thanks.
If QTP doesn't recognise some controls you can extend the set of controls it supports by using .NET Extensibility. This allows you to add new functionality which is relevant for these controls but is not supported out of the box by QTP. Note that some .NET programming is required.
The documentation for .NET Extensibility is available at Start > Programs > QuickTest Professional > Extensibility > Documentation > .NET Add-in Windows Forms Extensibility Help
Fact of the day: The SWF in .NET objects' names in QTP stands for System Windows Forms.
With regards to the objects that were partially successful, the ones you noted were recognized as SwfObject - if these logically map to a standard class, you can configure QTP to treat it as a standard class. For example, if you have an SwfObject that behaves like a button, you can configure QTP to record and replay as if it is a standard button.
[removed suggested keystroke+clipbaord work-around as it is inappropriate for this situation given further information that there are multiple Dexterity dialogs, each with many objects]
It took a while for me to conduct a research, and then practically prove the concept.
I started series of posts about Great Plains automation success story where I put all the details and steps of my investigation along with sample code.
http://automation-beyond.com/2009/08/24/great-plains-automation/
http://automation-beyond.com/2009/08/26/dynamics-great-plains-gui/
http://automation-beyond.com/2009/09/01/gp-automation-utilizing-com/
(to be continued)
Here's the summary.
Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains has its own completely independent GUI/Event system (Dexterity) that makes it cross-platform product. The same thing makes it almost completely "black box" not accessible from outside.
Platform-specific engine supports COM Automation and various integration models for Windows platform. All these are gathered under Continuum Integration Library name.
What is especially useful for Test Automation needs, Continuum provides high-level methods to simulate user inputs for the GUI thus acting the same way as Test Automation Tool does.
Wherever Continuum doesn't cover Test Automation needs, direct calls of sanScript (Dexterity's internal scripting language) could be executed in real-time.
With all the above, I created custom "Dexterity GUI" component for Quick Test Professional enabling functional test automation of Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains application. Of course, without any use of keyboard/mouse hard-coded workarounds.
Thank you.
You can download the .NET Add-In from hp.
link text