Microsoft Silverlight 5 · Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards by Snyder, Todd -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Microsoft Silverlight 5: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards

Microsoft Silverlight 5: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards Credits About the Authors About the Reviewers www.PacktPub.com

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Preface

What this book covers What you need for this book Who this book is for Conventions Reader feedback Customer support

Downloading the example code Errata Piracy Questions

1. The Silverlight Technology

What benefit does Silverlight bring to the table?

XAML as a declarative programming model Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)

View First versus ViewModel First

Dependency Injection (DI) Silverlight as a Web technology Asynchronous programming in Silverlight Silverlight features

Client-side application development Reduced server load Client-side state Cross-browser development simplified Putting the pieces together Summary

2. Overview of Dashboards and Silverlight

What are dashboards Purpose of dashboards Problems dashboards solve Current state of building dashboards When good just isn't good enough Why should we use Silverlight? Summary

3. Silverlight Design and Development Tools

Blend strengths and weaknesses Visual Studio strengths and weaknesses

Visual States Storyboards Sample Data Templates

Visual Studio

Debugging Developing for Silverlight Project Management

Summary

4. Building a Basic Dashboard

Creating a Silverlight Dashboard Application What is the MVVM pattern Building the Dashboard

Setting up the Data Source Defining the View-Model and Model classes Laying out XAML and Data Binding

Customizing the UI Summary

5. Dashboard Types and User Needs

Different dashboards for different needs

Strategic Analytical Operational

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly — typical dashboard charts and graphs

Bar chart

Pros Cons

Stacked bar chart

Pros Cons

Line graph

Pros Cons

Scatterplot

Pros Cons

Bullet graph

Pros Cons

Sparkline

Pros Cons

Small multiples

Pros Cons

Pie chart

Pros Cons

Focusing on needs, not technology

Representing and communicating user experience User-centered design User research

Personas Scenarios Requirements Storyboards Sketches Wireframes Prototypes High-fidelity mockups

Scenario-based requirements and design

Example scenarios for dashboard design

Summary

6. Designing for Insight

Interaction aesthetics versus visual aesthetics

Pre-attentive processing

Applying pre-attentive processing to dashboard design Warnings about using pre-attentive attributes

Mixing too many attributes Visual distractors

Scenario-based design of our dashboard

Our initial overall dashboard wireframe

Requirement 1 Requirement 2 Requirement 3 Requirement 4 Requirement 5 Requirement 6

Summary

7. Designing your Dashboard

Knowing your tools

Blend basics

Assets Data Design View (Artboard) Objects and Timeline Parts Projects Properties Resources Results States

Styling in Silverlight

Referencing resources Implementing resources

Creating a Button

Exploring a Button's Control Template

Creating a Custom Button Control Template

Adding Visual States (Visual State Manager)

MouseOver State Adding transistions to the MouseOver State Pressed State

Converting Brushes to Resources Creating Resource Dictionaries

Getting started with styling our Dashboard

Creating a custom User Control in Blend Styling the Grid and Chart

Summary

8. Building an End-to-End Solution

Dashboard prerequisites Dashboard requirements Designing the solution

Describing an N-Tier application design Sample project structure

Setting up the Data Source

Reviewing the database schema Stored procedures

spTopUsInternetProducts spTopUsInternetCustomers spSalesByRegion spFinanceData

Building the server components

Domain Model (Shared Between Client and Server) Data Access Layer Building the WCF service

Defining the presentation layer

View and controls View Model Service Layer

Summary

9. Data Access Strategies

Data access overview

Core networking classes Working with WebClient Using Fiddler

Understanding network security Building services with Windows Communication Foundation

Working with WCF

The data access layer

Building a SOAP service Building a REST service

Exploring OData data services

Building an OData service Consuming an external service

Summary

10. Building Dashboards in SharePoint and Silverlight

Overview of SharePoint

Setting up SharePoint

Building a Silverlight web part

Using the Client Object Model

Building a SharePoint Silverlight dashboard

Setting up our data source Building our dashboard

SharePoint Data Access Strategies Summary

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