Chris B's Blog

Weekend Linkage

Christopher Berg — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:37:00 GMT

I wanted to direct everyone to some links that came up over the weekend.

The first is a link from Scott Gu's blog. SSW has released some pretty extensive coding standards. Check them out here. I consider myself a good developer, but I know I have a lot to learn, as does a good portion of the industry.

Second, there has been some news about Microsoft releasing their internal documentation compiler, Sandcastle. Check out their MSDN Blog and download the first CTP.

Also, I'm working on a test skin for DotNetNuke based on a page over at Open Source Web Designs. Hopefully it'll be done and posted later today!

Enjoy!

Technorati : .NET, Coding Standards, Documentation, SSW

Linkage

Christopher Berg — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:19:00 GMT

Things have been a bit crazy the last couple of days (my wife is pregnant and there have been a few complications), but I wanted to share some links I've come across the last couple of days:

Video - Visual Studio 2005 for Database Professionals (MS Channel 9)

Implementing Role Based Security with ASP.NET using Windows Authentication and SQL Server (From ScottGu's Blog)

Free web site templates - Open Source Web Designs

Chris

Technorati : .NET, ASP.NET, Database Professionals, Microsoft, Open Source, SQL Server, Web Design, Windows Authentication

DNN Project Status

Christopher Berg — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:05:00 GMT

So I've been fooling around with DNN for a few days now. Overall I'm very impressed with the product. Like anything else, it has its limitations, but at least I can change things if I need to which I wouldn't have with a lot of other products.

However, one of the things that I've found troubling is the lack of documentation. I'm depending on the events module very heavily and there is no documentation that I can find that explains how to use the module. I poked around with the module settings enough to find what I wanted, but it would be nice if there was information on using it, especially since I'll be responsible for training people how to use it.

The other thing that I've had issues with is the Blog module. Blogs are bound to the user who created them and by default, a page with the blog modules on it will display any blog on the portal. It would be nice to be able to create a blog and tie it to a user, not just the person who created it. I may not necessarily want a person to be able to add modules to a page, so how do I create their blog? How do I tie a specific blog to a page? Well, I figured out a way to take care of this:

Creating a user specific blog without logging in as them

Although this is not the nicest way to handle the problem and requires you to go through the database, it still works. Just change the UserID to the ID of the login it should be associated with (Get this from the Users table).

Setting up a Personal Blog page

If you want to create a page that only shows one blog, go into the Module Options on the blog item list. Then change the value of "Personal Blog Page". This will set up the blogging module to only display that specific blog.

Now even though I am complaining a bit, I do realize that the people who work on this project aren't getting paid to do it. The fact that the modules have all of the features that I've looked for so far is incredible. I just hope they'll concentrate more on documentation a bit down the road.

Technorati : DotNetNuke

SQL Server Tip - updating data from disparate databases

Christopher Berg — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:46:00 GMT

I'm not a DTS wizard by any means. I don't use it a whole lot, and always consider writing a program to move data around instead (Although I rarely do since DTS is usually quicker and can be set up pretty quickly) since I don't find it very intuitive. When I needed to move a list of users from one database to another, either inserting if they didn't exist, or updating information if they did, I wanted to see if DTS had a simple solution.

Now I had to do a lot of searching online before I figured out how to do what I wanted, but I found a decent solution that was fairly simple - the Data Driven Query task. Here are the steps that I used for my specific solution:

Specify your source table
- this is where you'll get the information to feed to the destination table
Specify your binding table
- This is usually your destination table, but represents the data that you'll be transforming from your source and using to drive your Insert/Update queries
Create a lookup
- Since I needed to look in my destination database to see if an insert or update was necessary, I created a lookup for the destionation based on a unique field
Transformation
- Here is where the majority of the magic happens. As you would in a normal transformation, specify your source and destination fields. Note that this doesn't actually insert data as it normally would, but provides you with the information to feed to your update/insert queries.
- Execute your lookup to see if the record already exists in the destination table. If it does, use the DTSTransformstat_UpdateQuery status instead of DTSTransformstat_InsertQuery.
Specify your queries
- Specify your Insert/Update queries. For any values that will be coming from the source database, use a ? in place of the value. If you typed it manually, click on the Parse/Show Parameters button.
- Once your parameters are showing, specify the field the value will be coming from.

And there you have it!

BTW, I'm sure this would still work in SQL Server 2005, but I'm stuck in 2000 for the meantime. I hope the task is a bit less confusing in 2005 also.

Technorati : DTS, Microsoft, Sql Server

Article - Launching a desktop application from ASP.NET using Remoting – An Experiment

Christopher Berg — Mon, 22 May 2006 16:45:00 GMT

I just finished another article - Launching a desktop application from ASP.NET using Remoting – An Experiment. It's an app I wrote a while back as a “Proof of Concept” project. I hope everyone enjoys it!

Chris

Interest in my article - Only4Gurus.com

Christopher Berg — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:07:00 GMT

As you may know, I recently finished an article - Sending an Email in Visual Studio 2005 – The System.Net.Mail.MailMessage class. Well, the people over at Only4Gurus.com happened to read about it and decided they wanted to include it in their next newsletter! I'll make sure to post when the newsletter is out.

Chris

Example - Exporting data to CSV

Christopher Berg — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:04:00 GMT

I've just finished an example on Exporting data to CSV and included a small application that I wrote. Enjoy!

Chris

New Article - Sending an Email in Visual Studio 2005

Christopher Berg — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:25:00 GMT

Once again, the article took much less time than I anticipated. Enjoy!

Sending an Email in Visual Studio 2005 – The System.Net.Mail.MailMessage class

Chris

Update

Christopher Berg — Wed, 17 May 2006 11:49:00 GMT

I finished orientation for my new job yesterday. I'll be starting Hanover County Public Schools on their first big .NET project. It'll be my first exposure with IBM DB2, but hopefully that will eventually go away to be replaced with SQL Server or Oracle.

In other news, I've seen almost 180 hits on my articles that I published last week! That's certainly better than I expected. No feedback yet, so I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

I've started work on my next article, sending email in .NET 2.0. Hopefully it'll be ready in the next day or so!

Chris

Part 3 is ready!

Christopher Berg — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:56:00 GMT

Phew, it's been a slow day at work (I only have a little over a week before I start my new job) and I managed to finish the 3rd article. Enjoy!

Inserting into SQL Server, without the Designer - Part 3 – Executing the Insert

Chris

Part 2 is Ready!

Christopher Berg — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:25:00 GMT

I've just wrapped up the second part of my articles on Inserting into SQL Server without the VS Designer. This is only my second article, so comments are welcome!

Inserting into SQL Server, without the Designer - Part 2 - Creating a Connection

And if you haven't read part 1, you can find it here:

Inserting into SQL Server, without the Designer - Part 1 – Creating a Stored Procedure

Chris

First Article!

Christopher Berg — Wed, 10 May 2006 14:57:00 GMT

I've posted my first article, the first in a set of 3. Please check it out! I expect to have part 2 done by Friday.

Inserting into SQL Server, without the Designer - Part 1 – Creating a Stored Procedure

Chris

My new Blog!

Christopher Berg — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:38:00 GMT

As much as I've enjoyed MSN spaces over the last month, I've decided to slowly get this blog ready and eventually move everything here. I'll be testing and changing a few things around here, but I thought it would be good to join a “techy” blogging site rather than a general site like MSN Spaces.

Check back every once in a while, I plan to post a few articles on this site shortly.

Chris