Importing MS Project Plan (.mpp) Data in ASP.NET

If you are struggling with Native libraries to import mpp (MSProject Plan) file data, this article is for you. This is written after my personal experience.

In the beginning , I used MSProject (InterOp) assemblies and a demo version of MSProject for my development. The problem I faced is the license. Like my other Office Automation Efforts(not recommended by MS because of its inconsistency), this assembly demands a MS Project Installation and a license in my machine.

So, I was placed in a chance to search of alternative methods. I got MPXJ, a Java-based Free Open Source library which has extensive collections of methods and utilities in it to read enough an mpp data. This pack also comes with JVM library as it needs for its compilation.

Functions,shown below, are the some of the useful things and will return a List object.
task.getResourceNames()
resource.getTaskAssignments()
resourceassignment.getPeakUnits()

Download MPXJ: http://mpxj.sourceforge.net/

Happy Programming !!!

A Great Spark from Microsoft - WebsiteSpark

Microsoft announces WebsiteSpark for Web Portal Owners !!!

With every offer announced by other commercial products, there may be little

* Condition Apply tag appear to declare a Win-Lose chance in which usually customer is the loser. But MS announces a Win-Win chance for website owners to make their portals still in .NET environment.

When more and more open source software users increased, it is Microsoft's turn to bring back the Website Owners and Deployers to Microsoft's Native Platform for their commercial portals and corporate sites.

What a .NET developer would prefer to develop and deploy portals in .NET Technologies, a Website Owner would prefer to use Open Source Database such as MySQL, etc, as it costs nothing.

So, actually what is WebsiteSpark?

Last Month, ScottGu of MS announces the WebsiteSpark program, which holds a couple of free development and production licenses in the .NET Platform for the three years.

The free licenses include:

• 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
• 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
• 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
• 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
• DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

MS believes giving them at no cost encourages the use of .NET deployment environment

What happens after the 3 years?

Still there is no compulsion to continue with the same licenses. But if the user would like to continue, then he has to pay a minimum amount of about Rs.10000/Yr.

For more details:
http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx