I took the certification exam for 70-528 - Web-based Client Development recently and passed it with a score of 785. Passing score is 700. I prepared from the "MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-528): Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0—Web-based Client Development" book. So I am a MCTS now. I am think of whether to take 70-529 Distributed applications or whether to become a MCPD. Technorati Tags: MCTS,70-528,.Net,Microsoft...
We have a table with ntext type of field in sql server database, that actually contains text data. ntext is used to store the unicode type of data that that takes 2 times storage size in bytes, is two times the number of characters entered. Now the scenario is we would like to replace all occurances of a paricular string from the data with another string. It is very simple to do with Replace command in Sql Server, but the constraint is it only takes varchar/nvarchar type of parameter i.e. we can...
Note to doctors: No, I don't really mean that title. I use provocative titles to get attention and capture an attitude. What? What are you doing? You're going to stick that thermometer where? Doctors are the stupidest users. If you've ever had to write software for doctors, you've discovered this: the phrase "RTFM" was made for doctors. They just can't be bothered to read even the simplest help docs. They can't bother to learn even simple tools that a bright grade-schooler can master. OK, that's...
The basis for much growth in science has been the sharing of ideas. Ideas get passed around, question, examined, peer reviewed and eventually built on. This system has worked for centuries, taking man from the discovery of fire - to the moon and back. Computer software is much the same. Ideas thought up, built on and improved - this has taken computing from machines requiring a legion of white clad acolytes and air conditioned offices to something I can slip into my shirt pocket, read emails, send...
Wow, this stuff really works...
I have recently implemented a solution that uses SQL 2000 Replication; before going into production we would setup replication and check to ensure it was running sweetly before we went into production. However, after a couple of days replication would die with one of the following error messages: "The row was not found at the Subscriber when applying the replicated command." or The DELETE statement conflicted with the REFERENCE constraint "FK_CONSTRAINT_NAME". I would then reinitialize replication...
I have spent the last 2 days trying to figure out why a Page_Load event in a user control (.ascx) hosted in a (.aspx) file was posting back twice to the server. After reading and Googling for all sorts of suggestions (most are for when projects are upgraded from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0 and the events are set to AutoEventWireUp="true". I tried this and a host of other stuff, in the end it turned out to be an ASP.NET Image control that I was using for the AJAX Control Toolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender...
So people are always asking me how do I get Silverlight to work in SharePoint? Then Paul Galvin and some other people told me why not post the steps. So here is what you want to do: Get Visual Studio 2008 and download SP1 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en. The installer may stick at one part and may take an hour or two, so make sure you leave tons of time to spare. Get the Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio...
Ok. I have dealt with mismatched version numbers between servers countless times in both SharePoint 2003 and 2007 when transferring data between two environments. What I had not run into (until today) was the fact that WSS 2.0 can be updated (SP3) while Sharepoint Portal Services was bone-stock-out-of-the-box. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on. I was attempting to restore a 2003 site into a test environment but was getting the dreaded "Your backup is from a different version of Windows...
I've done a good bit of thinking about cloud computing and its potential impact on the way software is written. I think that i "get" cloud computing. As i've stated previously, the fact that cloud computer levels the playing field so dramatically makes it a disruptive technology. What I haven't figure out yet is this: What can we do with cloud computer that we couldn't do before? We could always store data off the box. We could always do processing off the box. Now it's just more massive. Have I...
I've been so busy with writing my chapters for the DotNetNuke 5 book that I missed the last meeting. I'll be there tonight! David Bayer will speak about innovative uses of the DNN technology and share his story of how to leverage rapid site deployment and skinning to build a network of owned and operated sites, and how DNN is ideal for this. There may also be some discussion around implementing search friendly architecture and url structure within the DNN framework. Hope to see you there...
Well so far so good. I downloaded the New Xbox Experience last night (all in all there isn't much choice). I was a bit apprehensive with NT 4.0 SP5 flashbacks coming to mind. But it downloaded fairly quickly in maybe 3 minutes or so on my 5Mb FIOS service and a few minutes to install. I setup my little Mii with legs avatar and went about figuring out the new layout. I did not find anything really that much better albeit the layout is different than the blades. There is a bit more scrolling than before...
Just a quick reminder that the November 2008 meeting is tonight from 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM (ET) at the Microsoft office. We are very pleased to be holding this meeting in cooperation with the Central Florida BizTalk User Group. Since this is a joint meeting, please be sure to register so we have a good idea of how much pizza to order. Our speaker tonight is Danny Del Rio, a Senior Applications Architect specializing in enterprise integration. He brings extensive experience in various fields including...
Here I am slogging my guts out, trying to get TFS Sticky Buddy v2.0 out the door and bang goes the TFS server :( This is tfs05 on the Codeplex environment. All the others seem to be running OK, but juts my luck the one I am using is the one that is affected, and nothing on the Outage page! its been 3 hours and nothing. I have emailed them and reported it on the Discussions page. Now, although I am, I am not really complaining as they have provided a fantastic service over the last, what… two years!...
Sheri and I are going to see TSO for the third time tonight. If you've not seen them, you oughta. We managed to get third row seats this year, and we've never been closer. This is something I hope will become a holiday tradition for us (it may already if 3 times counts as a tradition). I can hardly wait...
Today the most important thing is Coffee! When you take this course (not if *grin*) you definitely need to get coffee after lunch. Some things of note today: Group Interaction There is a lot more group interaction with tasks and the tasks are getting to a point where they take quite a bit lot longer to complete. Group dynamics has definitely picked up and come into play a lot more because by the third day you are much more comfortable with everyone. I am seeing personalities coming out as we get...
For anyone who is interested in learning LINQ, there is a great tool available called LINQPad. It comes pre-loaded with over 200 examples to make learning easier. It is really useful for testing your LINQ queries. And best of all, it is FREE! Download it here...
I'll admit it. At first I didn't get it. Microsoft's cloud computer platform Azure levels the playing field in an incredible way. Think about it: You have a great idea for a company but getting it it up and running is going to require a huge financial investment in server hardware to get the thing to a reasonable scale. You can't afford that, so maybe you try to get venture capital (how's that going to work out in this economy?) With Azure you can build your app and deploy it on Microsoft's infrastructure....
I received an interesting question from an Engineer today. It read like this: "I have an issue that has cropped up with using Platform Builder 6.0. I installed a newer version of a CE BSP on my system and now Platform Builder will not open my old project nor create a new one. When creating a new project I get an error message on the status bar that only says “…project creation failed”. If I restore the old BSP I can create new projects so I think the problem is somehow related to the new BSP. " So...
In addition to learning WWF (that's Windows Workflow Foundation, Paul) I'm also reading a book given to me at the client, titled: eXtreme Project Management. I haven't read any PM books before, and I've only just started this one. The intent is for me to read, discuss and learn, so I figure why not open it up to a broader audience and see what you think too... 1) Have any of you read this book? It's by Doug DeCarlo, published in 2004. 2) If you have, what did you think? 3) Whether you have or not,...
If you're in the Kansas City area and you haven't heard about Kansas City Day of .NET (or KCDODN) then you're missing out. KCDODN is Saturday, December 6th at the Centriq Training center. (Go here to register...) Looks like 4 tracks of .NET Developer goodness, including a session by yours truly. GWB'ers Jeff and John will be there as well... so come say hi if you're there. Kansas City Day of Dot Net Development Architecture SharePoint Special Interest 8:00am - 9:00am Registration & Breakfast...
I've been pretty quiet the last week and a half (at least in my blog... I'm still twittering plenty.) The reason for this is that I've started a new gig with Magenic and I've been really, really busy. This new gig has me traveling from Minneapolis to a smallish town named Mitchell, SD and back each week. Between work and travel (and spending most of my nights getting up to speed on new stuff and new concepts) I haven't had much time to blog regularly. So, I'm going to try to make a conscious effort...
Here's the complete list of sessions from PDC and my personal favorites. You can find all the recordings of these sessions at www.microsoftpdc.com. Here's my personal favorites: Windows Azure (Hosted ASP, Workflow, Silverlight, RAW / Azure Storage) A Lap Around Windows Azure (ES16) - 0:46 Slides | WMV-HQ | WMV | Zune A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform (BB01) - 1:12 Slides | WMV-HQ | WMV | Zune Live and Mesh (Sync, Feeds, Resources, Contacts, etc.) A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services...
I was talking to Richard Giles at Idera today and he made me realize that I’d never blogged about running PowerShell commands from my secondary Linux desktop, and from the iPhone. Here are the pictures, I posted them on Flickr a while back. This is done by using /nsoftware’s PowerShell Server (currently awaiting v2 release scheduled for the end of November!) on the Windows machine. More on PowerShell Server to come on this blog in the near future! In the meantime, if you have questions, let me know....
I was horrible about blogging from PDC2008. I did twitter and facebook a lot though, so I think I'm not too bad. I just found out about Microsoft's BizSpark program though. It's a lot like their Empower program in that it provides startups free development tools and MSDN subscriptions, however it's free to enter ($100 to get out though). Information can be found here. There are limits as to how long you can be in the program and how much your company can make, but it's supposed to be very easy to...
We’re bringing the PDC to you! For just $99 you’ll get the best of the PDC in your own backyard and hear all of the exciting announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7. Other sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, Surface, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh, and more. Register today to stay current in an ever-competitive job market, enhance your skills and gain access to the next generation of tools and technology. Speakers include: Shannon Braun, Scott Colestock,...
In this issue: Bart Czernicki, Martin Mihaylov, Katrien De Graeve, Silverlight SDK, Arturo Toledo, crocusgirl, John Papa, Andy Beaulieu, Jeff Wilcox, Justin Angel, Corey Schuman, and Jesse Liberty. Wow -- I did NOT miss yesterday and I have 12 solid links for today... everyone's been *really* busy :) Also: David Anson reports an update to his LayoutTransformControl: An unexceptional layout improvement [Two LayoutTransformControl fixes for Silverlight 2!], and you can now set both ScaleX and ScaleY...
UPDATE: My word, what a lot of typos! I blame the bright sunlight and the glare it created on my Tablet PC. And I wasn't gonna move, because bright sunlight in Michigan is a rare treat right now. Fixed! In our last Episode, The UML Guy and Geek Girl explored how State Diagrams help you to model the rich range of flow in a user interface. Today, The UML Guy has an announcement. (Click picture for a larger image.) To this point, the Lounge has been somewhat random and piecemeal. (In other shocking...
One of the timeless articles among the lists of "must reads" for programmers, The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond, was written to expose how the open source community can succeed. The article exposed commercial software construction as an unyielding entity that is structured and secretive, where only those closely involved understood the inner workings. Similarly, open source was associated with the bazaar, as a thriving community where everyone is involved, and the internal structure...
TeamBuild is such a powerful tool. We use it to run our unit tests and publish our apps using ClickOnce. Recently we started using it to publish a web service. This code depends on MSBuildTasks from Tigris. <PropertyGroup> <DeploymentFolder>**SHARED FOLDER ON WEB SERVER**</DeploymentFolder> <DeployServerName>**WEB SERVER NAME**</DeployServerName> <ApplicationPoolName>ReportingWS</ApplicationPoolName> <VirtualDirectory>ReportingWS</VirtualDirectory>...
If, like me, you are interested in using all the new fangled controls produced by every man and his dog, you will probably have come across the Infragistics WPF control. My mission, that I stupidly accepted, was to update the TFS Sticky Buddy application with their XamRibbon and XamDockManager controls, and anything else I can stuff in there. The “anything else” I decided to use was the Composite WPF guidance. This is a newer WPF version of the Client Application Block (CAB) packages provided by...
On your keyboard you'll see the function 8 key (F8). This is the key that controls flip-flopping between lcd/crt. You'll also see another key near the control key [Ctrl] called FN. FN is the function key. Try this key sequence to invoke the second/external monior: FN + F8 (click these at the same time). This should wake up the monitor...
I am always forgetting the format for using DATEADD and DATEPART functions to get just part of a SQL Server datetime (e.g. just the date), so I am posting it here so I’ll always know where to find it. declare @date datetime set @date = getdate() select @date, dateadd(day, datediff(day, 0, @date), 0)...
I'll give a sample in TSQL: Here is the TSQL statement for getting a Case object that was Xml serialized: DECLARE @xmlCase XMLSET @xmlCase = '<case xsi="<a href=">http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance</a>"><id>3b98cf5a-6faa-dd11-9299-001e0b8014eb</id><court> <id>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</id> <courtregionid>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</courtregionid> </court><createdon>2008-11-07T13:54:44.727+02:00</createdon><assignedon...
Lets follow each other! Add me up: http://twitter.com/steffi87 and leave me your twitter link here for me to add you :-) Lets keep in touch and update everyone on what we're up to...
Recently I wrote a cheat sheet for pinvoking in .NET. Shortly after I got a question in comments about how to deal with variable arguments, when it's more, then one parameter. Also what to do if those arguments are heterogeneous? Let's say, that we have following method in C: int VarSum(int nargs, ...){ va_list argp; va_start( argp, nargs ); int sum = 0; for( int i = 0 ; i < nargs; i++ ) { int arg = va_arg( argp, int ); sum += arg; } va_end( argp ); return sum; } We can expose this method to C#...
It seams that Microsoft is making an attempt to integrate with OpenID. With the announcement that “Windows Live ID commits to support of OpenID” I thought a little investigation would be in order. You need to setup a new Live ID on the Live-INT service, you can use any email, but make sure that you do not use your production password! Go to https://login.live-INT.com/ and use the sign-up button to set up a Windows Live ID test account in the INT environment. Go to https://login.live-int.com/beta/ManageOpenID.srf...
One of the things that I've missed during my tenure here at Microsoft is speaking at some of the independent national conferences such as VSLive. But if you look through the speaker's list at VSLive Dallas you'll find a fellow named Josh Holmes... Woot! More on my blog at Speaking at VSLive! Dallas 2008...
In AJAX based applications its common that user might end up breaking your AJAX calls by clicking on numerous places in very short interval of time. Let us assume there is a page where there are several of hyperlinks which make WebService calls and do some stuffs on callback. If user clicks on five hyperlinks being impatient or may be just for fun, there will be five different WebService calls made. All of those calls had the same parameters or UI state while they were invoked. But on completion...
During a recent trip to Redmond, I was interviewed by Ron Jacobs for his Endpoint.TV series. I had just been shown a bunch of new things, was full of excitement, and we had a great chat about models, clouds, workflow... all my current hot-buttons :) http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Endpoint/endpointtv-WCF-and-WF-40-First-Look-with-Brian-Loesgen/ Enjoy! Technorati Tags: Oslo,Cloud Computing,WF,Workflow...
Ok I had to do it. This is a lot of fun and can be used to pass some time. Check out ElfYourself.com, and Elf Yourself :) Send your own ElfYourself eCards...
When you are writing automated tests for your application, it is important that the tests do not rely on the file system or external services. The only problem is that when you write applications using WCF, you are writing code that relies on external services. It is very tempting to create service references in your test DLL and test against them, but please refrain. There is a better way, I promise! This series will focus on testing every part of your application -- including round-trip functional...
We had out November Bartlesville .NET User Group Meeting on 11/14/2008. It was an amazing meeting! We had 55 people in attendance. There were 48 developers and 7 recruiters. This was an amazing turnout. I was actually a bit nervous going into the meeting as only 25 people had RSVP'd. However, I knew with the reminders and the marketing I put out the weeks before the meeting that we would have a great turnout. And we did!! It was an amazing presentation by Raymond Lewallen on Behavior Driven Development....
Being a user group leader (Bartlesville .NET User Group) I get a lot of messages for recruiters looking for jobs. Given the current market situation I like to pass these on. This one looks pretty interesting. If you are interested give Darbi a call and let him know I sent you: Know anyone (maybe you) who might be interested in the following position? It is located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is a direct hire position with a great company. If you are interested or know someone who is, send me a...
Today has been awesome! More of what we learned yesterday, plus more. We got more in depth into certain patterns and have had a huge helping of BDD all day long. The format has been that JP has written the specs and we get the tests to pass. The format looks like it will start to shift to JP doing less and less code and us doing more and more of it. Three Project Solution So one thing I immediately picked up on is the 3 project solution. One of the projects holds all of the automation and automated...
Manning Publications Co. has some great books. Ever since I first heard that MVC was coming to ASP.NET I was extremely excited. I have always preferred the MVC pattern over the MVP pattern that ASP.NET used. Most of the information on MVC for ASP.NET is limited or not as in depth as I would like. I have created multiple MVC applications just by using Reflector to learn more about the runtimes. However, being a book junky, and one that really enjoys the early access program at Manning Publications...
I received the following email the other day: Jason, We would like to extend our thanks for your participation in the INETA Community Champion program and your commitment to the developer community. You faced some challenging competition yet your accomplishments speak for themselves. The Community Champion team is thrilled to inform you that you are one of our top ten winners for Q3 2008. Congratulations Jason! INETA will be announcing the winners this week in our November INETA Newsletter as well...
I recently updated my web hosting from MaximumASP to Mosso. This was primarily because MaximumASP does not allow MySQL on their virtual dedicated servers, and I cannot afford a full dedicated server. MaximumASP always provided great service, and I still use them for my websites that requires solutions such as Windows Sharepoint Services, or other packages that must be installed via Remote Desktop. However, for the majority of my sites I have moved them on to Mosso and I will not look back. Mosso...
Another thing that took me far too long to find today... there's a lot of links to Steve Dunn's tool, including the CodePlex version, which hasn't been updated since 2006. And, since it doesn't have an installer or the DLLs readily available, you'll waste a lot of time looking for that too. You might consider trying this tool. Looks pretty good to m