Doug Butscher

Announcing a Kansas City "Day of .NET"

Doug Butscher — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:50:30 GMT

The Kansas City .NET User Group will be hosting a Day of .NET on Saturday, December 6th from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
It will be held at the Centriq Training Center in Leawood, KS (map). The day's training will consist of three main tracks:

Developer
Architect
SharePoint

Feel free to mix and match, attend half a session, or whatever suits you.

Breakfast and Lunch will be provided during the day, and door prizes will be awarded following the last session. The cost of a day of .NET training? Absolutely FREE. The entire cost of the day will be covered by our sponsors.

Go to the Kansas City .NET User Group site for more information.

Technorati Tags: Day of .NET,KC .NET User Group,Centriq

Senate Bill 1738 | Protect Our Children Act | As seen on Oprah

Doug Butscher — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:44:57 GMT

Just watched an episode of Oprah (my wife was watching it because it was about catching child predators), and Oprah was asking all viewers to contact their local senators to support Senate Bill 1738 - Protect Our Children Act.

She said that this is not a partisan issue, that it is only a bill to protect our children. I don't subscribe to the idea that I should contact my senator to pass a bill that I know nothing about, especially if a celebrity endorses it.

So... I did some research. I found an article on www.senate.gov that says that this bill is loaded with additional unrelated bills (earmarks?) that have nothing to do with protecting children.
Author? Joe Biden. Supported by? Barack Obama.

To separate the intent of this bill with the earmarks associated with it, another child exploitation bill was written (S. 3344) that pairs the important parts of S. 1738 with the SAFE (Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online) Act of 2007. This measure is strongly supported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This measure passed the House 409-2. It didn't pass the Senate. Know why? Because the people that voted against it didn't think the credit belonged to the person who authored the SAFE Act of 2007.

Who authored the SAFE Act of 2007? John McCain.

Non-partisan my ass, Oprah. Bury your agenda somewhere else. Americans aren't ignorant.

Please read the comments below. They provide a great cross-reference of information. Make up your own mind!

References:

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=LatestNews.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=677267e2-802a-23ad-4698-dbe39b99ec24

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=2a1252b8-1541-4894-b8c3-c6fb76a5d73b

http://biden.senate.gov/press/press_releases/release/?id=F42657D4-AE1C-4B5D-A175-D196A3C80736

The statements and opinions in this article are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of GeeksWithBlogs.

Software Development Meme

Doug Butscher — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:31:53 GMT

Clint Edmonson called me out on this trip down memory lane and, since I want to use up as much of his Google juice as I can, I thought I would jump in.Initially, this very much reminded me of those "Surveys" that go around in chain e-mails and (gasp!) MySpace pages, but this idea quickly caught my interest.

Here is the current link(ed) list:

Michael Eaton (post) —> Sarah Dutkiewicz (post) —> Jeff Blankenburg (post) —> Josh Holmes (post) —> Larry Clarkin (post) —> Brian Moore (post) —> Denny Boynton (post) —> Clint Edmonson (post) —> me

How older were you when you started programming?

I must have been 9 or 10. Like most people in this chain, I started off programming BASIC on the Commodores, VIC-20, C-64, and the C-128. I remember typing in, number-for-number, all of those DATA lines on the last 30-or-so pages of BYTE magazine that was supposed to yield this amazing game. I think the best app was Lemonade Stand, which I promptly saved to my cassette tape (comma-8, comma-1) since the Commodores had no storage capability.

What was your first language?

BASIC - I can't even describe the feeling of my first Hello World! application. The door was open. This is what I was going to do.

What was the first real program you wrote?

Gosh, I wrote a LOT of code as a kid, but nothing that lasted longer than my C-64 could keep in it's memory. I tried several times to write my own video games, but so many of those times the games ended up looking like a pixelated Jackson Pollock.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

My first passion (and nemesis) was Borland C++, which quickly transitioned into Microsoft Visual C++, sitting on top of MFC, using COM/DCOM methodologies. I used to scoff at VB programmers, calling it a "prototyping" language, until VB6 came around and I realized the glory of it all. VB6 became VB.NET with the introduction of the .NET framework, and C# came pretty far behind. I still prefer VB over C# any day, and I'm sure the commenters to this blog will voice their opposition and ridicule. Bring it on.

What was your first professional programming gig?

Wow. I guess I was in college was when that went down. I was asked to build an Access database for an auction that was taking place in my town. I had to design the database schema, build the UI's, code some business logic, and generate reports for printing receipts at the auction. Results: crash and burn. I forgot to configure the database to allow more than one user, so the other 5 "checkout" stations at the auction locked up, and we were forced to funnel all 500 auction attendees through one terminal. That is the first time (and certainly not the last) I wept over an implementation gone wrong. I hope this admission doesn't affect any future job opportunities.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

You betcha! I love problem-solving. That's what keeps me going every day. I love looking at a problem, designing a solution, and tackling it head on (apply directly to the forehead).

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

"Run away!" Just kidding. Seriously, it would be "plan ahead". Without a design plan for your implementation, your code will get way out of control very quickly. It's one thing to just sit down and start renegade-coding, but without a thorough plan of attack, you'll be lost in the weeds. This is advice that I still have to remind myself to follow to this day.

What's the most fun you've ever had... programming?

Most recently, I would have to say it was our April Coders 4 Charities event in Kansas City. We spent a weekend providing free software implementations for local non-profit organizations. There was a ton of food, a ton of Rock Band, and a ton of coding.

Who am I calling out?

Kansas City .NET User Group

Doug Butscher — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:57:35 GMT

Very happy to announce that the KC .Net User Group site is live!
The site is intended to announce upcoming meetings and presenters at the User Group, and to promote the adoption and use of the Microsoft .NET framework and related technologies to the Kansas City community.
It will be evolving as future needs arise, but I think it's a great starting point for keeping local developers in touch with all things .NET!

So... what are you waiting for? Check it out now! Register! Post a thread on the forum!

Doug

Technorati Tags: Kansas City .NET User Group,web site

WCF vs. Web Services

Doug Butscher — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:20:31 GMT

Last night (July 22, 2008) I presented on Windows Communication Foundation vs. Web Services at the Kansas City .NET User Group.
I talked about Web Services, and how they existed in the .NET 2.0 Framework, and compared them to the new WCF framework in .NET 3.0 and 3.5.
There was a turnout of 57 developers, and Modis brought Gates BBQ!

I've uploaded the presentation to my SkyDrive here.
Many thanks to everyone who showed up to hear me ramble!

Technorati Tags: Windows Communication Foundation,WCF,Web Services,Kansas City .NET User Group,Modis IT

My Zune Card

Doug Butscher — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:41:22 GMT

YouTube Annotations + Camtasia Studio = Cool stuff!

Doug Butscher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:28:36 GMT

YouTube has recently released a new feature they're calling Annotations - the ability to embed speech bubbles, notes, and spotlights into YouTube videos, with ability to follow a hyperlink when any of those objects are clicked. I remember there were books I read as a kid where you could choose your own adventure. Does anyone remember those? You would get to a part in the book where it would say: "Should Johnny go home and study? Turn to Page 32. Should he hang out and play Rock Band with his friends? Turn to Page 68." Anyway, it was awesome. This is what YouTube just put out there. The ability to create a pop-up video of the used-to-be-mundane.

Couple this with Camtasia Studio, which is a screen recording application that allows you to make video demonstrations, how-to's, or training videos (among many other applications), and you've got one heck of a rich and compelling video.

For a while now, I've been wanting to create some training videos for a .NET-based web site I built a couple years ago called VFW eMembership. This site allows VFW members and officers to perform tasks that were previously reserved for the post office. Renewing annual dues, changing addresses, applying for new membership, replacing a lost membership card -- these are just some of the things that can be done on the site. However, I'm not a UI guy (and no budget for a UI guy), so some of this stuff is hard to figure out. You've got to jump through a bunch of hoops to even register (especially for an officer account).

I've used Camtasia and YouTube's annotations to create some rough videos that take advantage of the zoom-n-pan functionality in Camtasia, as well as the speech bubbles and spotlights in Annotations. Like I said, it's a rough draft, but hopefully enough to pitch to upper-management.

This is the main video that links to 2 other videos (or you can go see my videos here):

Technorati Tags: YouTube Annotations,Camtasia Studio,eMembership

Coders4Charities | Event wrap-up

Doug Butscher — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:20:39 GMT

Well, it was a great weekend! 25 developers showed up to help out 5 charities, and each charity ended up with an awesome implementation. I've already written the main C4C Event Wrap-Up on the C4C site, as well as wrap-ups for each of the charities.

The event write-up, as well as the write-ups for each charity can be found on the news page of the C4C site.

The 5 charities who were helped this weekend are:

Boy Scouts Troop 813
- Event Write-up
Berean Bible Church
- Event write-up
Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
- Event write-up
- Existing (and soon to-be-new) web site
Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
- Event write-up
- Existing (and soon to-be-new) web site
Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
- Event write-up
- Existing web site
- New web site

Many thanks (again!) to all those who showed up to develop, volunteer, and donate their time to this amazing event!

Technorati Tags: Coders4Charities,Boy Scouts,Berean Bible Church,Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault,MOCSA,Missouri Pit Bull Rescue,MPR,Task Force Omega,C4C

Coders4Charities | The Teams

Doug Butscher — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:06:37 GMT

These are the final teams who volunteered this weekend at the Coders4Charities event.

Many thanks to all who showed up to help!

Charity Name: Boy Scout Troop 813
Needs: A basic website to announce activities, give information, and promote Scouting. We would like to be able to update it remotely by authorized users. We must follow BSA guidelines to ensure we protect the identity of our Scouts.

Team Lead: Lee Brandt
Team Members:

Becky Isserman
Blake Theiss
Joe Loux
Timothy Wright

Charity Name: Berean Bible Church
Needs: The Berean Bible Church would like to have a membership tracking web application built to be able to keep an up-to-date list of members and regular attendees of the church and relevant information about each member.

Team Lead: Steven Hildreth
Team Members:

Jill Kirkpatrick
Joseph Cook
Jim Heavey
Kevin Shaffer

Charity Name: Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
Needs: MOCSA would like their web site to be enhanced. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.

Team Lead: Patrick Herrington
Team Members:

David Rogers
Buck Sommerkamp
Alex Sommerkamp
Cody Inman
Rashid Hoda

Charity Name: Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
Needs: Needs: MPR would like a new look for their web, more professional-looking, and easy maintenance. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.
Team Lead: Tim Hibbard
Team Members:

Hong Chen
James Clemons
Yuriy Lyeshchenko

Charity Name: Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
Needs: New web site. They currently have a MySpace page. Need to support eCommerce functionality for online donations.

Team Lead: Shawn Mannen
Team Members:

Jason Atcheson
Jacob Dubin
Joe Seaman
Mary Stayton

Technorati Tags: Coders4Charities,Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault,Missouri Pit Bull Rescue,Task Force Omega,Boy Scouts,Berean Bible Church

Coders4Charities | Under Way!

Doug Butscher — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:41:41 GMT

It is day one (well, night one) of Coders4Charities, and the teams are off and running. We had a few no-shows, but we managed to do some last-minute re-arranging and load balancing, and it seems that every team is equally loaded. At last check, they were all involved in requirements gathering, and they're trying to determine what solutions will work for them.

The charities that are here tonight are:

Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault
Boy Scout Troop 813
Berean Bible Church
Missouri Pit Bull Rescue
Task Force Omega

Technorati Tags: Coders4Charities,non-profit,Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault,Boy Scouts,Berean Bible Church,Missouri Pit Bull Rescue,Task Force Omega

How to query a stored procedure for input parameters in .NET

Doug Butscher — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:19:21 GMT

I have a stored procedure that I want to call from my VB.net code. The problem is that the stored procedure input parameters may change. Rather than recompiling the stored procedure, and recompiling the assembly that calls the stored procedure, I want my VB.net assembly to query the stored procedure for its parameters, and return them back to me in a list.

I've done some blog searches for this, and I couldn't find anything that did anything like this (or my search terms were not explicit enough).

UPDATE (thanks to Bill Minton): below, I mention using the sp_helptext functionality in SQL, which is a pain. I've left the original code at the end of this post for posterity. Bill left a comment on this post that uses the following SQL functionality: select parameter_name from information_schema.parameters where specific_name = 'YourProcName'

Below is the code that uses this functionality to get back a List(Of String) with the parameters. I just coded it without testing it, so you may need to work on it a bit (I'm working on something else higher priority at the moment).

        1: Public Shared Function GetStoredProcParams(ByVal spName As String, ByVal dataAction As Aptify.Framework.DataServices.DataAction) As List(Of String)

       2:     Dim reader As SqlDataReader

       3:     Dim params As New List(Of String)

       4:  

       5:     ' build the SQL query

       6:     Dim sql As String = String.Format("select parameter_name from information_schema.parameters where specific_name = '{0}'", spName)

       7:     Try

       8:         reader = dataAction.ExecuteDataReader(sql)

       9:         While reader.Read

      10:             params.Add(reader.GetString(0))

      11:         End While

      12:         reader.Close

      13:     Catch ex As Exception

      14:         Return Nothing

      15:     End Try

      16:  

      17:     Return params

      18: End Function

Thanks again to Bill!

Old way:

I've written VB.net solution to this, which pretty much makes a call to SQL's sp_helptext stored procedure, and parses through the parameter list until it reaches [what it thinks is] the end.

This code works for my needs, but there may be a few bugs for single-parameter stored procs or different stored procedure definitions. My goal is to give a starting point to anyone else out there who is in the same boat as me, but doesn't want to spend the hour or two doing the proof-of-concept.

That being said... here's the code... Let me know if you have any questions. Note that I didn't code out the SQL connection info; you'll need to code that yourself.

       1: Public Shared Function GetStoredProcParams(ByVal spName As String) As List(Of String)

       2:     Dim sql As String = String.Format("sp_helptext {0}", spName)

       3:     Dim ds As DataSet = dataAction.GetDataSet(sql)

       4:     ' get the first two rows from the DataSet

       5:     ' (you can keep appending more rows to the spText string if you have a lot of input parms)

       6:     Dim spText As String = ds.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item(0)

       7:     spText += ds.Tables(0).Rows(1).Item(0)

       8:  

       9:     ' we should have the sp definition, with all of the input parameters

    ' pull out the create proc statement

    spText = spText.Replace(String.Format("CREATE PROC {0}", spName), "")

  

    ' now we need to parse out the params themselves

    Dim startIndex As Integer, endIndex As Integer

    Dim params As New List(Of String)

    Dim param As String

  

    While True

        ' find the @

        startIndex = spText.IndexOf("@")

        If startIndex <= 0 Then

            Exit While

        End If

        ' trim away anything to the left of the @

        spText = spText.Substring(startIndex, spText.Length - startIndex)

        ' find the space after the param

        endIndex = spText.IndexOf(" ")

        ' get the param name

        param = spText.Substring(0, endIndex)

        ' add to list

        params.Add(param)

        ' rip out that param we just found

        spText = spText.Substring(endIndex, spText.Length - endIndex)

        ' look for the next @, to see if it's a param, or just sql code down stream

        startIndex = spText.IndexOf("@")

        ' look for a comma, to see if there are more params listed

        endIndex = spText.IndexOf(",")

        ' if the comma comes after the param, this is the last param

        If endIndex > startIndex Then

            ' this is the last parm left

            Exit While

        End If

  

    End While

  

    Return params

End Function

Technorati Tags: SQL stored procedure,input parameters,how to,.net

Let's go, developers! | Geeks Giving Back

Doug Butscher — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:54:30 GMT

Software developers! Graphic designers! Database developers! We need you! There is one month left until Coders 4 Charities happens! We've got the charities, we've got the sponsors... we need more developers! We had an excellent turnout at the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here event yesterday, March 25, 2008, and we hope that we reached a lot of developers during the day. If we spoke to you, and you want to accept the challenge, register now for the event!!

What is Coders4Charities? It is a 3-day charity event that pairs charities and local software developers. Charities often do not have the funds to implement a new web site, intranet or database solution. Software developers often do not volunteer for charities because their skills do not apply. This event is the perfect marriage of these two needs; software developers accepting the challenge by volunteering their time to help charities, who in turn can better serve their community though the latest technology!

Technorati Tags: Coders 4 Charities,volunteer,charity

Coders For Charities | Call Out for Coders

Doug Butscher — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:34:08 GMT

Calling out to all coders in the Greater Kansas City area! We need you! We're looking for software developers, graphics designers and DBAs in the area who are willing to step up to the challenge by taking on a website, intranet or database implementation. We're hosting an event called Coders For Charities, taking place in late April 2008, that will capitalize on the mad skills and passion of geeks in Kansas City, and focus their efforts to benefit a local KC Charity. We've got the venue. We've got the sponsors. We've got the charities. We need geeks. It's your turn. Step up. Even better, challenge your friends and co-workers to GEEK UP to the challenge.

Register for the event now!

Technorati Tags: Coder Call Out,Coders For Charities,Challenge,GEEK UP

JibJab Breakin'

Doug Butscher — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:55:58 GMT

Don't send a lame Starring You! eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

JibJab Square Dance

Doug Butscher — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:41:44 GMT

Don't send a lame Starring You! eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!