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Introduction to Service Component Architecture Development Learn about SCA and how it can simplify the design and integration of business applications built using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). »   SCA Application Development—SCA Client and Implementation Model for Java Learn how SCA components are implemented using Java, and how a component implementation can act as a client to other services. »   The Business Value Proposition of SCA The Service Component Architecture (SCA) is an effort by a number of major software vendors to simplify building Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). The companies have founded the Open Service Oriented Architecture organization (osoa.org) to host the specifications for SCA. Learn more. »   Futureproofing with SCA Read this article to learn how SCA can help you build systems that are easy to fit with existing infrastructure and extend in the future. »   Java SCA Invocation Styles This article from IBM developerWorks offers an overview of Java usage within the Service Component Architecture's (SCA) Plain Old Java Object (POJO) component and the data flow in and out of POJO components. Learn more. »   Using PHP's SDO and SCA Extensions—PHP Web Services Made Easy This article shows developers how to create a Web service using the PHP SCA extension, and how the Web service data is represented using SDOs. »

IMPORTANT NOTE:
To compile this sample you must be running Windows 2000 and the latest WIN32 API which you can download from Microsoft.
This program will only run under Windows 2000. It makes use of the new features of the OS.

The purpose of this example is to enable the new Alpha Blending features of Microsoft Windows 2000. It is very easy to do and hardly needs a whole class to do it, but I felt a little cheesy just posting two function calls. :)

To use, add the CAlphaBlend class to your project. Modify the StdAfx.h file to contain the following lines right above the #define VC_EXTRALEAN:

#define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0500
#define WINVER 0x0500

These lines will tell the compiler that it is for Windows NT 5.0 (better known as Windows 2000). They are critical and only work if you have the newest Win32 API.

Then add the following lines of code before you display your window (or after you display it):

// assuming we are about to ShowWindow() in the MyApp.cpp of an SDI
CAlphaBlend ab(m_pMainWnd);
ab.SetTransparent();

This code can be called before or after a window is displayed. You can adjust the opacity (amount of transparency) with the constructor, or the following function:

// valid ranges are 0-255, 255-being totally opaque (not transparent)
ab.SetOpacity(125);

// I found 220 does about the best blend.

One final note. The alpha blending in Windows 2000 is very slow. I have tried many different ways to optimize it and could never get it any faster than it is. The only way I can think of is to handle the algorithm and thus the Alpha Blending myself. I don't really want to tackle that at the moment, so any optimizations any of you could make would be cool. Please let me know.

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