It’s refreshing to know that I've been working on .NET 3.0 for the last year! It's amazing and I love the new name, which is now much easier to explain. If you think about it, the switch makes perfect sense because the CLR is solid and does not require much in terms of core language feature development anymore. By naming new extended libraries the ".NET Framework 3.0", developers and users get a clear picture on where we are in terms of the core API and the adoption rate goes through the roof. This is going to make life much simpler.

If you havn't seen many of the cool features in WPF yet and would like to take an in depth look at a WPF application, check out this presentation from my colleague Darren David.

Very wise move MS!!! Here is the original post sent to me from Craig Jaris and Karsten Januszewski, via Fluid's Chief Experience Officer seen in this interview

On the left is Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz.  I'm on the right.  The store to the right is the store that just opened in San Antonio.

In turn, he answered some of my questions, like how he got his start in creating one of the largest and most profitable Global corporations. He has written a book on the story and says that he had been able to gather capital for the first Starbucks from money he raised at the JCC and his basketball chums. Although his idea was a success, he continues to in turn lend funds and be a Philanthropist and friend to the Jewish Community. Being entrepreneurial myself, I see the value in the lessons he shared that day.

The Hear Music Media Bar is a great vision that brings something new to retail.  The Miami store opens next week, according to sources at Starbucks ;-).  Look for more stores in places like New York.  I think solutions like this which use vector based UI with a web services backend will continue to be the trend in kiosk solutions.

Acknowlegements:  A big thank you goes out to Michael Aarsvold, an employee for EA games, for helping to fix a couple bugs in the Maya To XAML exporter and for providing this cool bug model in this tutorial.  Also, thanks to Brian Buchmann for helping me with some bugs in the Maya To XAML exporter.

This article illustrates the Maya To XAML plug-in, emphasing successful export of model data with textures.  Please note that the plug-in is still in the development beta and still requires a small amount of cleanup before you have the ability to export model and textures.  Future releases will incorporate settings which will allow you to specify these options during the export.

Why export Maya to XAML? This will allow for 3 dimensional interactive user interfaces.  It will not be long before all applications incorporate XAML in one aspect or another.  This tool provides the designer with a bridge to the developer.  

The Original Model:
The example below is a screenshot of the Character created in Maya.  The left screen is the inverse kinematics and mesh (polygon) data.  The right hand screen shows the skin of the object in open GL.


Preparing for your Export
There are a few parts to this model that will need attention before the export.  You will first need to modify your source model.  I recommend that you save a copy of your scene as the clean version used for exporting.  In the scene above, skeleton transforms of the skin must be baked.  Select the top level object group node, in this case "Bug", and choose the Skin > Detach Skin Options Button.  Choose the settings shown below and click detach:

You can delete your models skeleton after you've baked the skin.

You might notice from the picture above, that the right and left side of the bug's body are identical.  Instances of the left side objects were used for the right side of the body.  That is to say, the same polygon point data is used for the right side as is on the left.  The instances must be made into their own polygon points in order to be recognized.  To do this, select the instanced node, duplicate the node, and then delete the instance.  The Maya To XAML plugin does not currently capture instanced nodes, so only one side of the mesh will get exported, unless the instances are turned into their own mesh data, as mentioned above.

Because the mesh instances were exact mirrors of their parent instance, their scale is -1 and their normals are flipped.  The scale needs to be frozen on both groups and objects.  To freeze the scale, select the groups and objects in the outliner and go to Modify > Freeze Transforms Options button.  Choose the settings shown below and click freeze transforms:


After the transforms are frozen, you can either leave the "opposite" attribute checked for automatic normal flipping, which will have the Maya To XAML exporter automatically flip the normals.  This is located in the Shape Node>Render Stats>"opposite", or you can reverse the normals of the uninstanced, frozen mesh, by going to Modeling>Edit Polygons>Normals>Reverse.

Before you export the model, you will need to go to Edit>Delete All By Type>History.  This ensures that no extra mesh objects or other data is exported.  Once you've deleted the history, you can choose "export all" from the file menu and specify XAML.  Exportable scene data is saved to the xaml file.

To view the xaml file, you can try installing the WinFX SDK September CTP, which comes with a presentation host, for viewing xaml files directly in Internet Explorer.  Checkout the xaml version of the mesh below:


As refinements are made to this plug-in, some of these tasks will be automatically handled by the exporter.  In the meantime, I thank you for testing my product and I hope you enjoy.  You can download the latest plugin at Highend3d.com Send any feedback or screenshots of cool stuff you've done or errors you've encountered.

Glossary of Terms

• Mesh - The goemetry and polygon data of the 3D model.  Each polygon contains a set of triangles and vertices.
• Texture- In this tutorial, texture refers to the image or graphic applied to a material on the mesh surface.
• Skin- The mesh of the model that is bound to a skeleton structure ( joints and bones ).
• Bake- To make static and permanent or make a set of nodes that contain their own values into a single representation, with the previous nodes values making up the final result.
• Polygon- A representation of a surface containing a set of vertices, triangles, texture coordinates, and normals.
• Normal- The point of an edge, vertices, or surface that determines which direction in (x,y,z) it faces.
• Scene- The space in which all data related to the model is represented.

• Extract the contents of the compressed file.
• Copy the correct version of the [MayaVersion]/MayaToXAML.mll file to your bin/plug-ins directory.
• Copy the scripts/ExportXAML.mel to the Alias/Maya/scripts directory.
• Launch Maya > and go to the Window Menu > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager...
• In the Plug-in Manager > Click loaded and auto load next to MayaToXAML.mll

Using Maya To XAML

• Open or create a new mesh file: File > New Scene or Open Scene...

Note:  If your mesh is NURBS, you will need to convert it to polygons.  To convert to polygons, go to the Modeling view and select the mesh.  In the Edit NURBS menu, click the Rebuild Surface Options button icon.  Choose the Polygons option, in the Output Geometry section and click Rebuild.  You can optionally combine all meshes in your scene, before exporting.  This is suggested, for this version of the exporter, since models are not translated to new XAML scene locations during export.  However if you need to apply materials to each object separately, you can translate the models in Visual Studio .net after exporting.

To export the mesh data, go to the File menu and click the Export All Options icon.  Choose the XAML file type.  The only export items supported in this version are objects, object instances.  Click the Export All button and enter the file name.  The mesh file is exported as a .xaml file to the specified location. Note:  You must place the scene in a new XAML window in order to use it in a xaml application.

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge	Click to enlarge
The final export output in a XAML window with a single light and camera.  MayaToXAML applies a default light, default materials, and a default camera.
Click to enlarge	Click to enlarge

New Features

• Materials, textures, transformations(rotate,translate,scale).

Future Features

• Lights, Cameras, Action!(animation).
• Tutorial on game character with baked textures.
• Real time XAML preview in Maya.
• Mac OS X Version.  This is entirely unmanaged C++, so it should be a smooth port.

Known Issues

• Scene cameras and lights are not exported. A default camera and set of lights are exported instead.
• Scenes with a very large landscape will have culling issues. To resolve this issue, turn the farplane distance up in the exported camera object.
• Scenes with some group types do not export. Removing the groups will resolve this issue.
• Export options do not actually do anything at the moment. All exportable scene data is exported.

A Quick History of Maya and XAML/WPF
Incorporation of 3D design in video production, computer generated animation, and graphics has created a sea change in the entertainment and media industry with the evolution of faster computers and more accessible broadband information access.  At the advent of designing in 3D in the digital space, people could envision the advantages and features that this type of design could have in desktop applications and the internet.  However it was difficult and time consuming to implement.  Resultingly it took some time for this technology to get a foothold in the market.

In the mid to late 1990's companies such as Silicon Graphics (SGI) first explored the possibilities of 3D to enhance the user experience.  SGI broke ground with the first 3D chat and web player called "Cosmo Player".  This application was comprised of basic 3D modeling tools that could create realistic environments where people could meet online in a virtual space.  They could assign themselves a selected Avatar and put that object into an Open GL rendered scene along with other individuals in the same virtual space.  This scenario has become more practical and realistic in more recent times with faster processors and broader technology access.

There were detractors to this setup.  SGI hardware was costly and they realized that they needed to stay on top of their competitors like Max and Lightwave on the Windows platform. Competitors, such as  Alias, released a version of Maya for both Mac and Windows.  Like Apple Mac OS of today, Alias Wavefront was able to develop the software to run on a cheaper Intel chip.  The goal to have entirely real-time photorealistic 3D on desktops by 2010 had been set by most software companies in the graphics sector. 2010- what a revolutionary year that could be when the best in graphics is available to the common PC not just industrial computers.

SGI's commercial assets were Softimage and Alias, software applications.  SGI announced a spin off of Alias | Wavefront into a separate company and Microsoft purchased Softimage.  They both believed there was a future lay in developing these applications.  Meanwhile, SGI banked their future on high end hardware and the Irix OS that is used in medical fields and large government organizations.

Another player in this field was an upstart company based in San Francisco, Macromedia.  They developed a vector based UI called Flash.  Their attempts at creating a desktop application platform were not as successful.  They ran a quick launch with Macromedia Flex but ran into cost issues and Flashes downfall being no windows integration and no propagation into the offline user experience.  This tool was not as attractive to desktop developers because it lacked the integration with core operating system functionality and the desktop development tools.  Arguably, they tried to fix these shortcomings with jGenerator, later known as Lazlo, and Flex.  Flash was developed as a web platform and pushed into the desktop and kiosk markets.  They looked at it from the top down instead of bottom up and pushed a web product as a desktop development tool, vs. a desktop development tool as a web product.  Flash will remain a widely popular platform for the web and will always be the cross platform leader in vector UI.

Maya went from IRIX (SGI) to running on Windows (the same is true for Softimage), and Alias was just acquired by Autodesk.  Alias won an academy award for Mental Ray, "a highly programmable computer-graphics renderer incorporating ray tracing and global illumination to realistically simulate the behavior of light in computer-generated imagery." Alias|Wavefront's Maya received highest honor the Academy can bestow - an Oscar® statuette for "... the development of a 3D animation, dynamics, modeling, and rendering production tool known as Maya.  With its significant and dominant impact on the motion picture industry, the Maya software package offers a robust and widely used commercial visual effects tool with a rich infrastructure for extension and customization.",  so photo realistic that it has changed special effects in the motion picture industry.  Download a free version of Maya Personal Learning Edition at www.alias.com.

Better graphics is the singlemost important feature of a compelling UI, and upstart companies such as Wavefront and Apple realized this.  Enter a surprising player in this field, Microsoft.  Microsoft applications have not been known for their compelling user experience.  Windows is a form meets function application, having none of the aqueous design like Mac OS X, for example.  The dark horse in this race, Microsoft made a non- headline-making purchase of Softimage.  Was this a peek into what they hoped to add to their user experience?  I can only imagine that Microsoft's rationale for this was to fill the gaps with Avalon, their next highly anticipated Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Forms predecessor.

• sp_linkedservers lists linked servers
• If you want different passwords between linked servers, you have to map the usernames by creating a user account on each server and then calling sp_addlinkedsrvlogin (nameofserver, currentcredentials, localloginname, remoteloginname, loginpassword on remote server).
• Use fully qualified name of remote server to query.
• Must drop username links before dropping linked servers.

• UPDATE T1 SET Column2 = 25, Column3 = 250, WHERE Column1 = 2
• Must specify table names in updates with ambigous columns from 2 tables or table in from or where clause.
• After aliasing a table name you cannot use the table name.
• You can specify table aliases in FROM statement

Inserts

• If you use a different number of columns for an insert than the table contains you must specify the columns.
• INSERT Table1 SELECT * FROM Table2 only works for direct column type mappings or int to character.  You can also optionally specify columns to insert from destination and source.
• INSERT INTO with SELECT only used for small queries Simple Query
• Use BCP for large text file imports.  Export from source to text, insert to destination from text.  Cannot delete rows if they are used in foreign key relationships.

• Forward only, fast forward only, Scrollable, Dynamic, Sensitive
• Changes made outside the cursor are visible
• Supports positioned updates and deletions, unless  defined as read-only

Concurrency Control

• Read-only cursors do not lock the rows from outside changes
• Optimistic checks if a row is modified (important not to lock data but only one transaction can succeed)
• Client refreshes the cursor if cursor is modified

(TWO METHODS FOR CHECKING CONCURRENCY) 

• Row Versioning, timestamp column, columns must include the rowversion data type
• With Values, checks the row checksum

Pessemistic (guaranteed transaction) ... All changes will succeed

• Cursor Implementations
• Client Cursors (Default rowset is returned to client)
• Server Cursors (T-SQL or API based)

Database APIs

• OLE DB
• ODBC
• DB-LIBARY - Legacy only supports up to 6.5, Still support SQL 7.0 but can not use new SQL server features.
•  ADO - High level API used with any programming language that supports Active X.  Encapsulates OLE DB and ODBC.    Limits some of their inherited functionality.
• Client Cursors (Cached Rows on client)
  • Implemented internally by ODBC, DB-Library, or ADO.
  • Are not available in T-SQL- DB returns full resultset for each query
  • Increased memory requirements on clients
  • Supports forward only and static, NOT Dynamic
  • Support all select statements
• Server Cursors
  • Can be defined by DECLARE CURSOR statements (can fetch only one row at a time)
  • Can be defined by using DB APIs (can fetch multiple rows at a time)
  • No multiple rowsets
  • Do not support COMPUTE, COMPUTE BY, FOR BROWSE, INTO
  • Do NOT mix T-SQL (DECLARE CURSOR) and API cursors (DB-Libarary, ODBC, OLE DB)
  • OPEN cursor always starts before first row.  Must use FETCH NEXT to start at the first
  • OPEN cursor is default forward only.
  • Free cursor resources using DEALLOCATE [cursorname]
  • DECLARE [cursorname] CURSOR SCROLL to declare a scrollable cursor
  • FETCH to retrieve rows in specific positions ABSOLUTE
  • FETCH relative grabs a row relative to the cursor's current position
  • DELETE [cursorname] WHERE CURRENT OF [cursorname]

When to use default resultset vs. cursors

• when using full resultset
• when it is not necessary to visually analyze data in order to target specific rows
• use client cursor to scroll through large result sets (static forward only, support all select statements)
• use server cursor to perform positioned updates after visually analyzing the returned rows
• use API cursors to fetch multiple rows
• dynamic cursors open faster
• keyset-driven and static cursors usually work faster in joins
• use optimistic concurrency control to maintain high concurrency
• use pessimistic concurrency control to ensure that each attempted update succeeds

Working with XML
 Note:  FOR XML must be added to select statement
 RAW

• each row is presented as an element with 'row' as the identifier
• tabular
• rows appear in the same order as the select list
• all elements are at the same level
• IE requires that there is a top level element
• you can specify the root node as part of the param using root word

AUTO

• Each table is represented by an element
• corresponding attributes are columns
• tables are nested in the order in which they are selected with the columns listed
• specify with elements so that the nodes are in elements rather than attributes

EXPLICIT

• use this to specify the format of the XML in the query
• use column names and attribute names in the query in order to markup the schema
• specify element in the column to specify element based output in XML rather than attribute based output
• used for full control of XML outputs

Extracting relational data

• OPENXML
     DECLARE @idoc int, @doc nvarchar (1000)
     **EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument [@docout] OUTPUT, [@docinput]
   SELECT * FROM OPENXML (@idoc, 'Root/Customers')
• Schemas must be matching to specify schema using WITH [schemaname]
• Remove the internal document sp_xml_removedocument
• schemas on the fly must specify each node after WITH statement ([columnname int '../@xmlattributename]), <<xpath
• XPATH is case sensitive
• flags are used for element centric data, must specify schemas or else values will be null

Programming Business Logic Transactions

• A logically complete unit of work
• all data in logically consistent state
• changes to data must be permanent during system failures
• Concurrent transaction are isolated from others
• Programmers are responsible for the logical consistency
• SQL Server is responsible for the physical integrity of data

Transaction Modes

• Autocommit - each T-SQL statement is a separate transaction
• compile time errors do not build transaction plans but table"runtime"errors do execute
• Explicit - a user explicitly starts and ends transactions (auto rollbacks on failure) constraint violations must   correctly be rolled back by users
• must specify rollback when failure occurs and all changes will be rolled back.
• the only reason SQL will rollback automatically is if a connection failure has occured
• if commit is called even if the transaction threw an exception, then data will be corrupted
• Implicit will automatically rollback

> SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONs ON will prompt you to commit transaction when disconnect occurs
 
 Isolation Levels (ordered by increasing isolation)

• READ UNCOMMITTED - allows dirty, or uncommitted, data to be read
• READ COMMITTED - allows only committed data to be read (locks data from being read)
• REPEATABLE READ - prevents other users from updating or deleting selected data
• SERIALIZABLE - prevents other users from making any changes to selectable, reduced concurrency, must release locks

 Deadlocks

• Occurs when one transaction is attempting to change data when another transaction has already performed a lock.
• Error 1205 will occur if they both lock the data.  The second transaction is the deadlock victim
• Deadlock is lifted when first transaction finishes