Pivot Adventure Works Database Collections
For the collections you need to open the Pivot Collection links in Pivot for them to work or you can download the zip files of the collections.
Collection with only the products that have an image other than "No Image" (place holder image in adventure works) (Pivot Collection) (Zip)
Collection with all products from the Adventure Works Database including the ones that have the "No Image" (Pivot Collection) (Zip)
SQL Saturday #34 Boston – Presentation Materials
Also for those of you that are instrested in Pivot check out http://pivotcollectiontools.codeplex.com/ & http://pivotcollectionmaker.codeplex.com/.
Pivot Collection Maker
Computer Guy and I have been exchanging emails for a few weeks about Pivot and how to move forward with releasing a new tool to the general .Net community to make Pivot easy to work with. And thanks to a lot of hard work by Guy we now have the Pivot Collection Maker. Check out the source which is very well documented for the updated Pivot Collection Tools that is now using XmlWriter and classes based off the XSD files from the Pivot Team.
Pivot Collection SDK (Beta) Release
I have just posted the first fully functional Pivot Collection Tools release over at CodePlex. This tool provides a great deal of automation. All you need to do on your end is mark your class with the attributes as demonstrated in the sample app provided. Then, populate a List and tell the tool to start building.
That’s right, it really is that simple!
Facebook Collection Builder – Independent Demo
Manan from beingmanan.com was treated an early preview of my Collection Builder Tool. He was kind enough to put together an informative post about the app. If you would like to see Facebook Friends Collection in action, feel free to check out Manan's post, which also contains a video of the app in action.
Facebook Friends Live Collection
Yesterday, I presented you with a demo video of my Facebook Friends Collection for Pivot. Today, I have a live collection for you to play with. (Please note that Pivot is required)
Improved Facebook Friend Demo (I can't seem to get it to run on IIS as GoDaddy has it configured. This is most likely due to the inability to add MIME types. On the plus side, kudos to the Pivot team for this, as it makes it so a LAMP environment can easily serve it up.)
To make the application work, I have developed an easy-to-use method for turning almost any class in to a collection. This method was utilized in the example below, which shows the inner workings of Facebook Friends.
{
private List _books = new List();
private List _activities= new List();
private List _interests = new List();
private List _movies= new List();
private List _music = new List();
private List _tv= new List();
[PivotItem(IsName = true)]
public string Name { get; set; }
[PivotItem(IsDescription = true)]
public string Desc { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Books", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true,IsCollection = true)]
public List Books
{
get { return _books; }
set { _books = value; }
}
[PivotItem( IsImage = true)]
public string Image { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Gender", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true)]
public string Sex { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Relationship Status", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true)]
public string RelationshipStatus { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Political Views", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true)]
public string PoliticalViews { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Birth Date", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true)]
public string BirthDate { get; set; }
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Activities", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true, IsCollection = true)]
public List Activities
{
get { return _activities; }
set { _activities = value; }
}
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "TV Shows", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true, IsCollection = true)]
public List Tv
{
get { return _tv; }
set { _tv = value; }
}
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Music", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true, IsCollection = true)]
public List Music
{
get { return _music; }
set { _music = value; }
}
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Movies", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true, IsCollection = true)]
public List Movies
{
get { return _movies; }
set { _movies = value; }
}
[PivotItem(FacetDisplayName = "Intrests", FacetType = FacetTypes.String, IsFacet = true, IsCollection = true)]
public List Interests
{
get { return _interests; }
set { _interests = value; }
}
}
In order to populate the collection, I do something like this:
<span>// </span>In this space, there are about forty (40) lines of code that pull the data out of the Facebook API from CodePlex
<span>// and put it in to an instance of the above class. Then I add the data to the collection as follows:</span>
friends.Items.Add(facebookUserInstance);
friends.CollectionName = "Facebook Friends";
friends.WriteCollectionToFileSystem("test1.cxml");
<span>// </span><span>Next, I run the two command line tools for converting my friends' pictures into deep-zoom images and voila! It is done!</span>
I will be posting the Project for how the above works once the source code is cleaned up a bit and I am able to provide better documentation.
If you would like a copy of it before then, feel free to ask. I would be happy to send it to you if you post a comment requesting it.
Pivot – Facebook Friends
Today, I finished up a simple example of what you can do with Pivot from Microsoft's Live Labs. The concept is simple: Using the powerful data visualization tool that is Pivot, it is possible to visualize the wide range of information that Facebook tracks about all of its users and what is available to you regarding your Facebook friends. This demo is just the tip of the iceberg. Currently, it displays your friends’ places of employment, colleges, sex, wall post counts, “About Me,” name, profile picture, and birth date. I intend to have this app display much more information. I will be working on it over the next week or so in order to expand its potential.






































