We have installed some applications on Pepper each of which have some dialog scripts associated with it. The issue is that every time Naoqi starts, these dialogs are seen as running in the Robot Applications window even though the behaviours associated with these dialogs is not running.
Is anyone else facing the same issue? Our Naoqi version is 2.5.10.7. We have contacted the customer support but did not receive any satisfactory response.
These dialogues are probably flagged as being "collaborative dialogue". This means that when the robot is in Autonomous Life, all collaborative dialogues will be loaded simultaneously (which is good - that allows you to use conversation topics and vocal triggers from all applications on the robot).
Related
We have a wpf application, which we have deployed using Microsoft's Click Once approach...manifest and application files are available in a web server.
If the application is already running on a client machine...and if I update the manifest and application files(in web server)...how do we notify the user about the changes ?
Is there anyway that we can display some kind of text to the user...that application has modified ..and he has to get latest ?
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks
ClickOnce does not provide you with an out-of-box means of alerting the end-users to an update.
In the company I worked at, it was good enough to walk around the end-users desks and making sure they weren't using the application before I updated it. Obviously, this doesn't scale too well.
If I had to implement a solution for this, I would include a message broadcast system that made sure the users were notified BEFORE the update was deployed.
If this was a client-server system, and updates to the server means that any out-of-date clients can't communicate with the server, then the end-users risk losing their work.
I just heard that a company I do work for may be bringing in the Pyxis Mobile application development system. When I google it most of what I find is from the company's web site and that is not very informative from a geek perspective. Can any one shed some light on what sort of programming environment it is and what programing language is involved (please let there be a text based language). Any additional information would be great.
Note: the company/product changed their name to Verivo in January.
Full Disclosure - I work as an engineer at Pyxis Mobile. However, I have been in the mobile space for 7+ years and have evaluated several approaches to mobile so hopefully this is helpful.
Pyxis Mobile provides a set of tools and components to build cross platform mobile applications. Let me outline them first.
1. Application Studio - All application development, backend integration, user provisioning and application maintenance/debugging is done w/in this tool. Application Studio (for now) is a Windows based desktop app.
2. Application Clients - Pyxis Mobile provides native client runtimes for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Android devices. These runtimes get branded for the customer through a build service and are primed to point to a specific Application Server URL.
3. Application Server - Pyxis Mobile App Server runs on the .NET stack (on IIS). All client communication is proxied via this server. This server is able to connect to varied of backend systems (via the Plugin Framework listed below) and respond to the client in a mobile optimized manner. This server needs a SQL Server (2005 or newer) for configuration access, session management, logging and more.
4. Plugin Framework - The Plugin Framework is a backend component that provides system specific pre-built access to several of the enterprise and cloud based systems (Oracle, Siebel, SAP, Salesforce.com, social feeds, REST/SOAP web services, etc.) and also offers an API layer in .NET and Python (using IronPython) to allow even further customization. A plugin is essentially comprised of one or more DLLs or a Python file. These assets are then dynamically loaded to normalize communication between Pyxis Mobile and the customers' backend systems.
5. Push Services - This provides a cross-platform push layer that can poll a backend system for change and alert a mobile device via BlackBerry Push, Apple Push Notification Services (APNS) or Android's Cloud to Deice Messaging (C2DM).
6. OverWatch Analytics - This is an optional (but included) component to track users/devices and provide integrated analytics on what the users are using and what kind of devices and locales makes up your users.
The application itself is "coded" via configuration that is build in App Studio. Pyxis Mobile abstracts away from the code so that you can work at a higher level without having to worry about the wide array of device variances (GPS, touch screens, camera, accelerometer, push, screen resolution, etc.). You can drag fields onto a from, connect screens via menus or buttons, set up caching rules and more in this graphical utility. This configuration (essentially think of an XML like document) is interpreted by the native client layer to produce a rich application. There is also a scripting layer in Lua that allows to really customize behavior via code.
The real value of Pyxis Mobile comes up when you have change to make. The clients check for new configuration at app startup or if the server forces the client to get new configuration. This gives you great agility. Lets say once your application is deployed you want start using the swipe gesture to go next/prev through a set of records. This change on other platforms would mean writing some platform specific code to trap and interpret the swipe to perform a navigation (you couldn't trap a swipe on a non-touch screen). However, in Pyxis Mobile this is a simple configuration change that can be quickly deployed to the App Server and the clients automatically download and use the new configuration. No compilation, no redeployment or re-download for the end users.
I could keep going, but hope this provides some level of guidance.
Beware of Pyxis Mobile. While many of the things they say do work, there are some serious platform issues (as a geek) which I've experienced.
1) No version control system process. The Application studio can basically only be developed on by one person at a time or you risk having your changes overwritten by a fellow developer. The "principle of last save" is very much in play.
2) No unit test coverage. This isn't the biggest issue for a lot of people, but it's a concern for anyone who wants to work in the Enterprise world.
3) The middleware server gets you some value, but it's also a PITA to work with. There is no concept of "client side storage" unless you consider the middleware server the client side. If your phone goes out of coverage, your app won't work. Again, this might not be an issue for you.
4) The application has no true scripting language to work with. The middleware server allows you to intercept requests and responses and modify what you're doing there, but it's not the most elegant solution considering that a native application can have something as simple as "if this then X else Y." This can be accomplished with Pyxis, but the whole process is convoluted and more complicated than one would think it needs to be.
5) Lack of documentation. There's some training guides and the GUI is easy enough to get around for simple apps; however, when you need to do something with guts, you're left relying on Pyxis professional services. There's really no developer community to pose questions to.
I have more complaints, but they are more opinion oriented than Q/A oriented.
I just got note about the most recent comments. I don't want to turn this into a thread of back and forth, but did want to throw a couple of quick notes.
Regarding the points on version control and documentation/developer community - no big contest there. We are definitely working on these shortcommings. We have some basic pieces in place, but we have big plans to focus on this.
Regarding unit testing - we provide a very open interface to our middleware and backend components and they can be very easily unit tested with a bit of instrumentation. We run a ton of unit and integration tests internally. However, mobile unit testing is extremely difficult to get right. We'll investigate this further.
Regarding #4 around middleware and offline capabilities - things are a lot different now. With version 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 our products have increasing become more capabale offline and now features a secure local database if necessary. I can provide more details as necessary, but you can certainly login and operate the app even if you are out of coverage for weeks at a time!
Regarding #5, we've had a scripting engine for over 2 years. Its Lua based and its actually quite powerful and fast. It was BlackBerry only till the most recent release. Given Apple's change of stance on allowing scripting we now allow scripting on BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone and Android as well now!
#RockMeetHardplace - feel free to reach out to me directly and I'll be happy to give you more detailed live demos of our latest platform. I am at - arunSPAMNOTatpyxismobiledotcom (drop the "SPAMNOT" and replace the at and dot). I happen to be the Director of Software and interested in knowing more about the issues you had.
I've seen several posts that essentially state that UI components shouldn't run as a service. I understand the rational that no one can respond to UI events etc. But the fact remains that are are many automation tasks that are only possible with Windows forms.
Here is a couple of great examples:
I would like to build a url crawler
service that makes thumbnails of
webpages. Currently the only way I
see to achieve this is to try and
automate the .Net WebBroswer
component.
Automate the printing of MS-Word
docs.
Pre-Vista there was some tricks to get around this, but now there is none. My question is why is this the case, and what alternatives does one really have?
Lookup Shatter Attacks and Session 0 Isolation Feature.
Basically if two processes (of different users) share the same desktop, one process can potentially execute whatever code it wants in the other process by sending windows messages, and this was called a Shatter Attack.
There was a lot of discussion whether this was a design bug or not, and post Vista, Microsoft decided to remove any interactive desktop support for services as that was a potential security hole.
As an alternative, you can consider, running your image generation/printing code as a logged in user, who has access to an interactive desktop.
Like Moron said best thing to do is not run it as a service.
But perhaps you're stuck running it from a service anyway, because there is an existing framework of some sort that you're needing to run your code from.
So the workaround to that would be to write a server program that runs as a logged in user. You will hit that server program from your code the must be in a service. The server will do the work and return the results.
You can communicate between the 2 using WCF over named pipes as the transport, or whatever works. If that doesn't, you can use bare named pipes, or, tcp/ip on the localhost. Judging from your website in your userprofile, you should know all about localhost!
Technically, UI components requires started Windows Message Queue to work. You can run it from windows service (may be with allowed Interaction with Desktop, as far as I know this feature is disabled in Windows Vista and higher).
But things you are talking about is not UI components, it is COM components, and you can use it. At least MS Office, but it is not recommended by Microsoft, because memory leaks are possible. Latest MS Office has server edition, that can be used in application without user interface.
I am interesting in hearing if others have addressed release management for Silverlight applications.
I have a business application that is to be released shortly andam concerned about how to "release" updates to this application. Typically this application's users will leave the application open all day (and potentially all night) without reloading it.
What if there is is need to release an change that includes an web service interface change? How can this be deployed w/o causing errors on the client side?
We have grown so used to deploying ASP.Net apps by just dropping the latest code on the server. My only idea currently involves a client version number and a periodic timer on to check for updates.
I would love to know what others have done before implementing this.
Thanks,
Mike
I just answered a question on how to make sure that .xap files are not cached by the browser, which might be of some help:
Prevent Silverlight xap from being cached by proxy server
But that's no use if the users never reload your application. In my own application this is not a problem since users will be automatically thrown out whenever we deploy an update to the web service. But I like your idea with the timer, I would go with that.
Stating the obvious but don't do anything to annoy your users. E.g. could they spend twenty minutes entering data, nip off to the coffee machine and return to click Submit to find the timer has expired, noticed an update and their work is lost due to a forced restart?
If so, and I admit this hasn't had a lot of thought, if e.g. you have to make changes to the web service that break the current release, could you have the new web service version side-by-side such that users don't get thrown out until the timer has expired and the unit of work is complete? Or is this also stating the obvious?
For server code, i.e. endpoints just do as per normal. for the xap's I think you have a few options depending upon how you handle communications. You could have request contain a version number and if the server has been updated then force some code to reload the client, bit lame, messy but do-able. Perhaps a cleaner solution would be to control the clients session, which presumably is part and parcel with requests to the backedn. When you deploy a new version you could invalidate the client session, perhaps forcing a page refresh with custom logic. If your protocol is push base you could send a command to the client to do what ever you want, for many systems that are on all day its likely that this infrastructure would exist (if u've build it nicely :)). For instance our service layer is abstracted away from the repositories models and view models, in our case we'd could send a logout or perhaps a specific command to kick in some custom logic on the client informing the application is being updated and to refresh your browser when done. Our shell is light weight so our modules (basically other xap's) can be updated in time for the refresh.
I would recommend you to use a solution like mentioned in App Arch Guide:
The Guide Chapter I mean see Deployment considerations.
Divide the application into logical
modules that can be cached
separately, and that can be replaced
easily without requiring the user to
download the entire application
again.
Version your components.
Have you considered keeping a WCF polling duplex channel going that alerts the app when it needs to reload? In addition, you can have your WCF calls direct to a virtual directory that contains 'interfaced' calls. For example:
Silverlight app hosted at "x.x.x.x\Default.aspx"
Silverlight talks to WCF at "x.x.x.x\Version2\DataPortal.svc"
DataPortal.svc talks to a GAC (or otherwise base) assembly that can identify what version can handle what calls.
This way, if you upgrade to "x.x.x.x\Version3\DataPortal.svc", you can still make calls against Version2, assuming those calls have code to convert them to a Version3 concept.
This helps in cases where your line of business app has dynamic xap downloading ('main', 'customer', 'inventory', etc.) and you want to release them independently.
Apart from the fact people get to view the app in a browser which may be familiar. Is there any actual compelling reason to use the XBAP model in WPF rather than a straightfoward stand alone WPF app.
All I can see are potential security issues and restrictions but no benefits. Am I missing something?
I have used an XBAP, once.
We needed full-trust, and we needed the application to act as if it were browser hosted. XBAP was the only real option we had, and I'm glad it was there.
Outside of this tiny nitch, Silverlight & Click Once are better all around options.
In practice No and No would be the answers to your questions. I have never actually seen them used in production nor is there ever really a justified reason to use them.
As Kent mentioned Silverlight or Click Once is almost always a better option.
One could argue, in a full trust Windows only environment, XBAPS gives you the ability to leverage the full WPF framework with the flexibility of web deployment. Of course that is what Click once is for. However, in my experience ClickOnce is a nightmare for anything more then a simple, single application install so you might argue in favor of XBAP to avoid ClickOnce headaches.
But again, my response would be, Silverlight is likely a better choice.
We use it to have a single sourced solution for an application that can run in a browser but also as a desktop application. Both full trust.
Actually a modular designed app consisting of xbap(s) communicating via webservice is very efficient. This type of scenario would allow for execution of the modular pieces to run concurrent and in separate memory spaces. This benefits the user and the application's developer(s).
The app would not run in an ie but rather a custom browser shell to control the flow and execution of the application itself. It does seem like a lot of work when everything could simply run with in a single or multiple projects but this type of solution would be pertinent in large enterprise app(s). The application Programmer(s) will be able to work on segments or distinct parts of the app which contain distinct functions, utilities, and capabilities. The user never knows or realizes that each part is actually running independently because it appears seamless. The partial trust issue is eliminated because the shell is not an xbap and has full permission. Now to the good stuff ... if there happens to be a fault (that never happens right?) other parts of the application continue to execute without failure. Try-catch-finally work great until you miss one... Last but not least no more complicate background thread processing it's in a browser and by default is async. Most systems will have multiple windows open at a time each window simply contains a browser running an xbap. Unique...Yes...Useful...Yes... It is a different approach but it is clean and simple.
Life is a race ... When you reach the finish line who will be there cheering for you and will you be proud of the race that was run?
XBAPs using Partial Trust are useful if you have a requirement that the WPF client should be run without requiring admin privileges and without installing anything on the clients machine (disregarding the user's profile cache that is)
I was thinking the same thing, here is my takeaway.
The main reason is the user experience, WPF apps are more powerful and easier to write than Silverlight. People will click on a web site, but will think twice about installing an application. An XBAP is very close to a website experience, and can out perform Click Once and Silverlight.
However since it only works for a very narrow user base, it would probably be best for intranet applications.
WPF, XBAP, Silverlight - What do I use?