Develop Reference

Is Workflow Manager 1.0 Viable?

The company I've been working on will develop a new project and in this project, Windows Workflow Foundation 4.5(we can't change it) will be used for process flow system which will be consumed by a web UI.
Our main use case is order payment which has multiple steps in UI and in every state transition, UI will notify workflow instance that if provided values are valid. If it is, it will persisted and so on. (like http://examples.donnywals.com/angular-splitform/)
It is designed as workflows will be hosted on IIS and every operation can be done about workflow(upload, delete, managing instances) should be accesible by a REST API. Also, workflow xaml files should be stored in database. Versioning, tracking and tracing and this kind of base operations should be supported too.
While searching about how to achieve this goals easily, I encountered Workflow Manager 1.0. I would like to use WF 1.0 but;
It lacks of documentation. For example, I don't know how to consume it's pre build REST API without WorkflowManagerClient and no documentation has provided. Where can I find good documentation about it?
Last update in WM 1.0 was provided in 2014 and it looks like no one is paying attention about it. Where can I find a roadmap?
It seems like no one is using Workflow Manager 1.0 without Sharepoint 2013. Has anyone been using it without SP 2013 and did you satisfied with the result?
I need to update previous versions of workflows instances to the latest if possible but I couldn't find a solution about this in WM 1.0. Only possible choise is terminating previous version's instances or previous version's instances is allowed to work in previous version of that workflow, not the latest. Hasn't it provided or only it's not documented?
Activities for WM 1.0(such as HttpSend, GetConfigurationValue etc.) which was accessible from Workflow Designer in Visual Studio 2012 is not supported in VS 2013 and VS 2015. We use VS 2015 and I don't think that we could use VS 2012, isn't there a way to use that WM 1.0 specific activities?
If I shouldn't be using WM 1.0, it seems like I can't use WorkflowServiceHost either because of AppFabric servers will not be supported after 2016. Is my only option is WorkflowApplication?
Every piece of information is welcomed, thank you.

we are using WFM without SP for a product the we are developing and deploying within Azure. What I can say is that you have to work a lot to target your needs with WFM, we are working on it from more than 2 years and still today we are facing problems to get results out from a wf! by the way I try to answer to your questions:
There is no documentation about consuming Rest Api without WFM Client; times ago I directly asked to WFM team without an answer...so we use the client...
There was an update this year ;) Cumulative Update 3
Yes, me!
It is possible to let previous version to run till their end. Next "start" request (both whit .Start or .PublishNotification methods) will start the new version
No way to use with version higher of VS2012...you need (like us) to build your own editor. There are a lot of examples like this
The reason why I choose WFM is that I didn't want to use WorkflowApplication and do everything by myself...that is (I think) the only option you have (of course WFM has also a lot of advantage other than "simple" persistence)
Hope to be helpful.

Facebook C# SDK with MVC

I m working on a facebook ap with Facebook C# SDK and MVC 3.
One of the problem I m having is: multiple versions of Facebook SDK API with several inconsistent versions. Almost every version there is a change in the API and something that works in one version doesnt work in another. There are also major changes between API versions.
I m using the latest version. (6.0.12). I cant find any documentation on how to use the API.
API website has lot of TODO pages. (http://csharpsdk.org/) and documentation is not concise.
Should I use another SDK ? What do you recommend? or are there any samples I can use for this version?
Thanks.

I'm much in the same boat as you.
I've followed the blog posts from the members of the Facebook c# SDK team, and their reasoning behind doing the latest major re-work of the API. I'm optimistic and think it's a healthy decision, leveraging the majority of the work from the server to the client instead.
In the end, I think it will benefit our applications with a much more scalable and performant solution than before with the earlier SDK. A good thing if your application gets viral.
The earlier versions had good and plenty samples and documentation, I only hope that in time the team will be able to provide that with the newer version as well.
For me, I currently have a v5.0x solution in prod, and I'm very eager to jump on the newer SDK, but I'm holding on for good samples as well, hoping for some magic during the upcoming months.
It's really a question on how long you can wait, I think it's the best SDK out there at this point.

If anyone is having problems with FB breaking old versions like I did, here is a small and brief tutorial I created
http://theocdcoder.com/tutorial-integrating-facebook-authentication-asp-net-mvc-3/

Choosing CMS vs Portal vs MVC+Components?

I need some help figuring out whether it'd be a good idea to use a CMS or portal solution for my latest project, which is (currently) an ASP.NET MVC application that must serve multiple customers (being a company or some other entity with a list of users) from a single installation (that is, a SaaS solution).
In addition to the core functionality, which includes document management/publishing, I also need to provide basic social features (such as blog, forum, gallery, polls, etc.). However, it is imperative that content is only visible for the customer to which it belongs, and my evaluation of a bunch of CMS and portal solutions has shed little light on whether they support this. They're pretty focused on single-user installations, and documentation on how to integrate with an existing MVC solution is pretty thin.
Essentially I'm looking for some guidance to help me discard dead-end options (the product does not meet requirements, imposes too many restrictions, is not mature, etc.) and find unexplored options before getting too far ahead with the project.
My requirements for the architecture include:
Multi-site support (using a single domain for hosting)
Watertight separation of content between customers
Full integration across components/features
SSO (single-sign-on)
Single-site experience (shared header/footer, unified navigation, unified tags, etc.)
Ease of development and deployment
Custom logic will be written using C# and ASP.NET MVC and any products should support this
I want to stay in control
Solution should offer features but otherwise stay out of the way (for example, not force stupid idioms on me, like insisting on GUIDs for primary keys)
Active development community
No single-man efforts
Recent source control activity
Reasonable levels of documentation and maturity
Does not have to be open source
I have spent a fair amount of time evaluating products and components, which I'll briefly share here:
Umbraco
Does not support ASP.NET MVC (yet, as someone is bound to otherwise comment)
Great community support, active development
Seems to be lots of work to get started
Kooboo
No source activity (no updates for almost two months)
GPL licensed? (need something that allows for closed source applications)
N2CMS
Partial ASP.NET MVC support
Every customer must have a separate domain
Limited source activity (not dead but not vibrant either)
Orchard
Microsoft-sponsored (which means it's likely to be over-architected, code-bloated and slow, although it does have some well known and respected contributors/leads)
Built using ASP.NET MVC
Looks promising feature-wise (but is unlikely to be stable at this stage)
AtomSite
Feels reasonably mature and has decent documentation, albeit with holes
Built using ASP.NET MVC
Limited source activity, single developer
MojoPortal
Looks good for a portal, but probably requires custom logic to be built as modules around the product (I was hoping to avoid that kind of lock-in if possible)
DotNetNuke (DNN), CommunityServer and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Definitely not my cup of tea ;)
BlogEngine.NET
Mature and feature-complete
No ASP.NET MVC support
Integration possible but not without lots of Web.config voodoo
Not sure if it supports customer separation
Given the list above I'm leaning towards AtomSite, N2CMS, Orchard or BlogEngine.NET. If I go with the latter I'll be using jitbit AspNetForum, which is a great match for my needs.
I'd probably prefer to use a custom ASP.NET MVC solution and individual components as this is likely to give me the greatest amount of control, but on the other hand, it'll make site theming and integration harder. What combinations have you tried, what worked well and what didn't? Anything important I'm leaving out of my evaluation? Any other relevant advice?
I'd appreciate it if the answers were not simply endorsements of your favorite product or way of doing things, but something that would help me choose or eliminate solution candidates given the requirements outlined above.

With the level of requirements you've specified, I'm personally going to have to lean towards the custom approach. You can hire someone to do the design (view) portion of the site for you, or you can buy a theme off the internet from site designers and customize it to your liking. (Sometimes just having somewhere to start is enough for intermediate level customization).
Multi-site support (using a single domain for hosting)
You're probably going to want to have control of your hosting environment, either a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or a dedicated box. This is still possible on shared hosting but not reccomended.
Watertight separation of content between customers
You'd probably have to spawn a unique app-pool for each customer with thier own services user for 100% seperation.
Full integration across components/features / SSO (single-sign-on) /Single-site experience (shared header/footer, unified navigation, unified tags, etc.)
This is going to be the tricky part. This Example may have some useful insight for you in the development process, but you're going to want a unified login service and have all sites use it or link to it.
Ease of development and deployment
This is where it gets tricky. Development ease comes from your background I think. MVC is definately the right choice in this respect then, knowing a lot about the right ways of going about building a site in MVC will aid in this process. Keep up to date by reading community blogs and listening to podcasts like Hanselminutes or DotNetRocks will help keep you in touch with the newest and greatest tools/technologies for making your site get off the ground quickly and effectively.
Deployment is the tricky spot. MSDeploy still isn't quite there. But if you can you probably will want to come up with a Dev -> Staging -> Release publish structure so you can test your code in a staging (mimiced production) environment.
Custom logic will be written using C# and MVC and any products should support this
I want to stay in control
If you develop the site in ASP.NET-MVC, you'll be able to build common libraries that you can use not just in your site, but also in your custom tooling. This will greatly reduce your code duplication and helps make sure operational unity is achieved. (Everything works the same way).
Solution should offer features but otherwise stay out of the way (e.g. not force stupid idioms on me, like insisting on GUIDs for primary keys)
While you'll have control in this situation, I'd strongly reccomend GUID Primary Keys. This allows Merge Replication, which can help you easily restore backups or use failover DB servers when things go awry.
Active development community
.NET has a great community out there, (including this one) and you should get lots of support if you ask for it politely.
No single-man efforts
Not sure what you mean here, You'd be the Single-Man unless you hire help, but even 2 people can do great things given a little time. Even one-man can do great things, but the framework you're running on here is backed by a commercially funded huge team.
Recent source control activity
Doesn't really apply to .NET, but a lot of the libraries that you may use (NHibernate, MVC Contrib, AutoFac, Etc...) will have lots of activity and constantly being improved.
Reasonable levels of documentation and maturity
.NET and most of the production level libraries developed for .NET (Mentioned above) actually have a pretty good degree of documentation. There's multiple paid & non-paid sources of information for .NET alone, and most libraries (are well supported by the community and known on StackOverflow)
Does not have to be open source
Look for support libraries that are LGPL (i.e. you can use it in commercial software, but if you modify the library you have to release the new library code if you release the binary.) You're pretty safe here, your site dosen't have to be open source if you use these libraries to support your development.
Well, that's my 2cents. The project you've described is no small job, you're looking at a considerable amount of work even if you go with a pre-built solution (mainly hacking it to work the way you want). I imagine your biggest hangups would be SSO & Security for the pre-done solutions. Not to say it's impossible, just tricky and the end result may not be exactly what you're looking for.
Also, look into OpenID, it may be the best solution for linking all your sites together and most pre-built systems can easily be ported to use it.

Take another look at MojoPortal. The CMS is awesome and the main developer , Joe Audette, is very responsive. I'm have several installations of the CMS running single and multiple sites.

I would lean towards a CMS based solution. Having a tested and production ready software not only reduces the development time but also helps in continuous upgrade and reduced bug count.
If you go down this route, you may want to also consider Sitefinity. Not only does it support all the features required by you, but also is built on .NET and supports MVC development. The product is built by Telerik, the makers of UX tools.
Disclaimer: I am employed by Telerik.

I've recently come across phpFox which is a social networking/forums/community site CMS. This may be of use to you and is fairly inexpensive.

The solution for the site of our company has become EBIZ CMS: full-featured site that includes social networking, online store, features a presentation, a forum, create HTML pages and much more, including the maintenance of professional technical support, so we do not even need help for installing by a programmer, and it is only US$ 9/month!

What is the "official" place for community support for the Mere Mortals .NET framework?

My team is using the Mere Mortals .NET framework from Oak Leaf. Being used to working with primarily open source software, I found it excruciatingly painful to find ANY community support for MM.NET. When I asked if there was any, the only place I was given to look for support was Universal Thread, which is a site which requires a membership for search on archived questions. It seems like a third party, pay-for site should not be the primary source of support for anything like this, especially MM.NET which costs $700 per developer. It doesn't seem to me like an entire community around MM.NET would choose to all pay on top of the license just to use a forum. If not Universal Thread, then what is the "official" place to find support for the Mere Mortals .NET framework?

I would suggest investigating this stuff before you invest, the only problem worse than trying to get support now, is trying to get support in a few years time.
Having said that, if they're taking money for the product they should be giving you direct support via email or otherwise, you shouldn't have to find "community support".

I just found in the MM.NET Developer's Guide that Universal Thread is the "official" community support site.

Coding Standard Wiki

At my place of work I've been put in charge of creating a coding standards document. Generally we follow what FxCop and StyleCop tools report to some degree but what we really require is document that will explain when to use a convention, why and maybe even a simple example.
This could be extended in the future for other purposes as well.
The first thing that came to my mind is to have an internal wiki site that we could build up and change easily over time but I've never used a wiki-based engine before and would like some recommendations.
If possible the engine should be in C# so we're able to tweak it to our needs if required.
If you think a wiki solution is the wrong way to go about this then please give an alternative :)
Update
I've just been informed, although we do have a php server it wont be staying, so I'm afraid php-based wiki ideas are off the table.
Update 2
Could you also (if possible) let me know if any of these solutions work with Active Directory?
Cheers
Tony

ScrewTurn Wiki is an free and open-source wiki made in C# and ASP.Net. Different database back-ends can be used, like MSSQL and MySQL, but also works without any database. It has several plugins to work with Active Directory.

Mindtouch Deki
Great wiki and it's built on C# and PHP, so you can use it on Mono or .NET
It also has Active Directory integration.
Download their ready-to-use VMware image. It started using it on my own PC then moved it to the company's VMware server when they had it ready.

We keep an internal wiki at my shop that has almost all of our documentation (not just coding standards). We didn't really see the need to roll our own so we just used MediaWiki...

We use JAMWiki and love it.
It is a solid application, we have had nothing but good interaction with both the application and the developers.
The guy you maintains the code does a great job answering questions and helping users out.

Brad Abrams has published an online set of C# coding standrds:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/361363.aspx
If you go to the starter kits section of the Microsoft ASP.NET site, you will find several wikis to download such as ScrewTurn and Flexwiki. A wiki would be ideal for your needs by the sound of it :-)

I second MediaWiki. It's not C#, but it can be a nice excuse to sneak some free software in through the backdoor.
If you guys are a Microsoft shop, though, and are using Sharepoint, it has some built-in wiki-esque functionality.

In one project that I develop, I set up one MediaWiki wiki for development documentation, and one for online help.
I even generate part of the development documentation right from source code and database.

At the shop I'm at they use a commercial package which is really good: Confluence. What's especially nice is that it integrates with LDAP/AD so that you don't need a seperate login and it's build especially with business use in mind and has lots of free plugins. We couldn't live without it.

I am confused by what you mean when you say you don't have a php server. It runs on every platform known to man. I am noticing most Visual Studio Developers don't know that PHP runs on IIS.
I would go with mediawiki It has the biggest feature set and most add-ons developed for it in case you ever need to port your data elsewhere. If you need to modify your wiki you are doing it wrong.