.NET
There are 43 entries for the tag .NET
I noticed this post on the GWB main feed regarding one person's complaints with health insurance in Arizona. I'm facing similar issues and I'm going to name the culprits. For several years (2000-2007) I was co-owner of a small, regional consulting firm which at our peak had 10 full-time and 1 part-time employees on the payroll. We peaked out paying over 10K per month for health through Anthem BCBS in NH for a PPO plan and dental through Northeast Delta Dental, also in NH. A family health plan cost...
After setting up my Dell PowerEdge 2900 with Windows Server 2008 x64 and Hyper-V, I began the steps of creating virtual environments for things I work on. I already had a virtual SQL Server 2005 which was underutilized - 768 MB allocated RAM and one processor for my various development projects. I wanted to set up Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) as a "mostly" single server install with the exception that I wanted to use the existing SQL Server 2005 installation instead of the embedded SQL...
Just about a year ago I blogged that I had made some big changes professionally. Specifically that I and my business partner had negotiated the absorption our our small consultancy into a much larger software company. My partner had already been off "doing his own thing" with his own contract for 2+ years so it was a logical and smart way to unwind things and give everyone a home. Last July 1st I and five engineers joined another company. At the time I agreed to stay on for a year and...guess what?...
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. Views are probably the easiest artifact for smart client developers to understand and build. The fact that views are implemented as user controls and that there are recipes for generating them only lend to their ease of use. Finally, there is a lot of documentation and good diagrams about...
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. Work Items are one of the SCSF/CAB artifacts that causes angst amongst smart client developers. Part of the problem lies with the early whitepaper Architecting Composite Smart Clients Using CAB and SCSF and the early CAB examples reflecting the thinking of the p&p team at that time....
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. The Members module is typical of SCSF business modules - it encapsulates the presentation and UI logic of a related set of business functionality. For the membership application I'm building this means: People Households Contact Info (phone, email, etc.) Addresses Relationships between...
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. Several years ago I developed a .NET code generation tool based on XSLT. It evolved over time and even had a front-end GUI to enable selection of various templates as well as database schema browsing. I had to hack my way through the INFORMATION_SCHEMA output of databases and developed...
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. The membership application is primarily about tracking and managing memberships in an organization such as a church or synagogue, small club or user group, sports team or league, etc. In the case of our church we need to track both individual persons and households. People may give us cell...
This post is part of a series which discusses the journey I took building a smart client membership application using Microsoft's Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). You can navigate the entire series from here. My first approach was to fire up trusty old MS Access to build a single database even though I knew that sharing information wouldn't be easy yet is possible. I've used Access off and on since it was first introduced and even resurrected some screen shots (here, here, and here) using Virtual...
I am building a smart client application using free tools from Microsoft's patterns & practices team. The primary toolset is the Smart Client Software Factory, referred to as "SCSF", which is an integrated set of architecture guidance, templates and Visual Studio 2005 "recipes" that both makes the job easier (perhaps an oxymoron as you'll see) and gives you a solid framework to build a robust, scalable, professional-quality application. My aim is to document and share key points along the way....
Late last year I blogged about trying to use CentOS under Virtual PC. After several attempts, I basically gave up. There's something to be said for marketing and "mind share" - which Ubuntu has plenty of. Earlier this year I took a stab at using Ubuntu with Virtual PC (and Virtual Server) and got a lot further. In fact, I managed to get a full working version for a developer environment. I also got a version going for an Oracle server, a WebSphere/DB2 server and even a streaming media server. Things...
Somehow this topic seems so common place and yet no where have I been able to find it spelled out clearly and simply. This reminds me of the joke about a helicopter pilot who's lost in the fog near Seattle, asks where he is and then is able to quickly navigate from there. When asked how he did that, he replied that the person in the window held up a sign saying "You're in a helicopter" which is such a typical engineer's response (accurate and truthful but not helpful or useful) so the pilot knew...
This little utility grew out of need. I'm offering it up for free because it's so rough around the edges - no documentation, brute force approach, hardcoding, assumptions, etc. - you get what you paid for! It consists of a command script, a VBScript and an Xsl file - you can download it here. To use it, you also need another little utility I built which will generate a nested Xml directory listing that you can find here. It will take an Xml directory file (from this previous utility) and generate...
Back in August, Jeff Julian posted a detailed explaination of how to configure Live Writer for posting to GWB here. I had to hunt to find it again so I could install it on Vista RC2 so I figured this was worth a "link" here
I found out while trying to make a COM+ installation that WiX3 doesn't yet support this. I was working on it originally with the latest WiX2 drop and ran into some difficulties (my own doing it turns out). While troubleshooting, I thought I'd give the latest 3.0 drop a try just in case some bugs had been fixed. After backing up my *.wxs files and running them through the new wixcop using the -f switch to upgrade the schemas I received compile errors around the pubca extensions. Looking around, I...
Dave Burke (a.k.a "davebu") has Murray and Julie has her dogs, but down here in NH I've got Fritz and a flock of wild turkeys. ...
This weekend I upgraded our hosted church site to the current release of DotNetNuke v4.3.5. Here's a quick summary of the steps I took and some observations. Steps to upgrade: Unzip the install package to a local directory. Copy release.config to web.config in the install root directory (local machine). Update the web.config: replace machine key with ours; comment out the SQL Express connection strings and uncomment the SQL standard strings; put in correct connecting string settings for the hosted...
I manage a DNN site which is currently running on DNN 3.1.1 hosted at WebHost4Life. I have a local backup of the site on my home server running on Win2003 and SQL 2005. I tried to upgrade the local copy to the current release 4.3.5 using the xxx_Install.zip and on the first try I received the infamous "Could not load type 'DotNetNuke.Common.Global'" error. I'm referring to it as infamous because there are a lot of howls posted over at the DNN forums site with very few real suggestions of getting...
This is an obscure problem which took a lot of digging. It was finally Roger Bjärevall's post here that lead to the answer. Roger is the developer of Minq Software's DB-Visualizer which is a great utility for connecting to a variety of databases as I often do. The bottom line is you can't use Type 4 drivers to connect to DB2 7.1 so this one won't work. You have to configure the connection using the one installed with DB2 (\SQLLIB\java\db2java.zip). I got that far pretty easily. However, you...
Last winter I decided to upgrade my 6-yr old Dell 733 Mhz figuring it was long overdue. What got me started was a Christmas wish list over on ExtremeTech. Here's the specs: Antec Anodized Aluminum Mid-Tower (P160) Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (nVidia 4) motherboard AMD Athalon 64-bit X2 dual core (4200) Twin nVidia GEForce 6600GT cards 4 Gb memory Two Seagate Barracuda 250 Gb IDE drives (still can add a pair of SATA 3/Gbs drives with dual RAID) Dell 20-in flat panel HD monitor It turned into a long afternoon/evening...
When upgrading from 4.3.1 to 4.3.2 I encountered the above error. A few posts in the DNN Forums suggested there were problems with the portals defined. In my case, I had one portal defined with id of zero (0) yet there was also a portal id one (1) called “My Website” with most other columns null. I started the 4.x journey with 4.0.2 and checking there I found only one row in Portals. So....perhaps the upgrade to 4.3.1 did something? Anyway, I had just tried my cookbook approach to upgrading...
I've got a pretty simple “cookbook” way to upgrade (or test upgrade) a DNN site which I thought I'd share. I'm using 4.x which means SQL Server 2005 and VS.NET 2005. Unzip the download to a new directory Make the new directory a virtual web share Copy/paste either development.config or release.config and rename to web.config Compare the old web.config to the new web.config (using a tool like WinMerge) and copy over the database connection string (edit to use new database name from step...
I posted here how easy it was to get Virtual PC running on Vista. I figured it was a great way to tryout Vista (my office/email/messaging desktop) while still being productive with VMs containing specific development environments. However, after about a week of use, I've decided I'm better off booting into XP to run VMs. I've been experiencing “lockups” of up to 1 minute or more which make effective work impossible. For example, clicking down through directories on the C:\ drive and suddenly...
After testing Vista Beta 2 running inside Virtual PC and then on an older machine, I decided the next step was to take the plunge and setup my main laptop for dual boot. At this point, it “hovered” on my mental to-do list until I saw this article on Lifehacker. What really caught my eye was Gina's mention of a comment posted regarding GParted - an open source partition manager. After reading the article here I headed over to the project workspace and downloaded it. Bottom line - it works...
While trying out various things on the Beta 2 (Build 5384) I ran into a missing msvcr71.dll while trying to use Password Safe. Since I was dual booting with XP on another partition, I copied over the file from \Windows\System32 on the XP partition. My super scientific methodology was to try launching again. Next it was msvcp70.dll and then finally msvcp71.dll. After that the application came up fine. Soooo...if you're missing any of these three, grab a copy of them from an XP installation and just...
As I previously mentioned, I've got fiber running into our home now. One of the issues I discovered was that, unlike Comcast, the IP address changes frequently and the DNS name is built dynamically from the IP address. If you have a need to get to your machine then a "dynamic DNS" service is one way to go. There are several out there which offer free services - I choose DynDNS. Here's a few things I discovered... After signing up for an account, you can create a dynamic DNS using one of their 25+...
We're finally on fiber at my house, na-na! Dan Bricklin has a long article with lots of photos on his blog so here's some random points I've discovered since the install. Earlier in the week the fiber line was brought down from the pole to the outside of the building in preparation.The install really does take 4+ hours.The final connection into the "ONT" was made from the feed left earlier using a portable splicer that melts/fuses the glass fibers togetherThe glass really is about the size of a human...
Here are my initial impressions on the released version of VS2005. I attended PDC 03 and played with both Longhorn and Whidbey but as time went on I found it hard to keep up with the releases and all the nuances of the near "black magic" it seemed it took to get the CTPs, betas, and release candidates installed correctly and working. Being on a full-time project with deadlines and trying to develop a software product on the side meant I had to be careful about my focus. Installation Having worked...
As the title says, it doesn't get better with 2006. I went through my first round of non-admin security issues with QuickBooks 2004 for my own company. Later, I had to implement Susan's recommendations for QuickBooks 2005 when my wife needed help setting up a computer for doing our church's books. Now, according to Susan it still needs these hacks for the 2006 version. Here's the link to the posting how to fix it up...
Mohammad Azam posted Searching in the DataSet to save a Database trip showing a simple technique for searching a DataSet. As he said "Then I asked myself why not search the DataSet instead of going to the Database." however the technique he showed was a hand-crafted, walk the rows approach that compared the column value in each row and, if they matched, he copied the row into a new DataTable instance. In the end he'd have a DataTable containing the matching rows. He may not be aware that DataTables...
We live less than a mile from Robert Frost's farm. At this time of the year when the leaves begin to change you can see where things like yellow wood were inspired. Just into the woods behind our house is “West Running Brook“ seen below. I managed to catch my wife walking the dog, a miniature schnauzer. ...
Apparently Mohammad Azam has recently discovered using XSLT for code generation. One of the issues he's learned is that when using XSLT to generate code you have to be aware of where you are in the list of nodes that's currently being traversed. The particular problem he's got is that looping through a list of fields and tacking on a comma afterwards leaves one stray comma on the end of the list. The way I solved this problem was a combination of a “switch” statement and using the built-in...
After reading several good things regarding Subversion and TortoiseSVN I decided to give it a try. The “final straw” came while looking into Ajax.NET which is housed in SVN and required installing TortoiseSVN to obtain the source. The process was so smooth and easy I decided it was worth a shot. The scm options facing my little company are very typical: Continue using VSS with it's warts - extremely slow client, requires either VPN access to servers in office or a 3rd party product such...
Although I've never met them personally, I blame Dave Burke and Ben Armstrong for my little jaunt down memory lane this past weekend. It all started when I was cleaning out the basement...I came to a box on one of the shelves that was still sealed up from when we moved in five years ago. Since this box had come from the garage at the old house, it must have really been "useless" stuff. When I opened it, I found two boxed sets of Lotus 1-2-3: 2.0 and 2.01 (still sealed in shrink wrap!) as well as...
I am a Gauntlet Adventurer.I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly. What Video Game Character Are You...
I first started teaching technical classes in 1992 when I joined a software company. At that time, NT 3.51 was just coming out and our mainstream software product was written in Cobol for the VAX and AS/400. I had experience in both Cobol and RPG at the time and taught the same material to two different audiences. Over the last 13 years, I've developed materials and delivered training for VB (and ASP), C++, Java, .NET (C# and ASP.NET) and even taught part-time evenings and weekends at UNH for several...
Ah, now that I have your attention, please let me elaborate :) I just read a post by Russ Nemhauser, Virtual PC - Beyond the Basics, and it reminded me of some caveats I had picked up in my trials. I too thought differencing disks were the way to go and in fact set up several “base” installs to test it out. One of my early reasonings was simply because each .vhd image had about 1 - 2 gigs of duplicate information - that is, a base OS plus tools and assorted service packs. I figured I...
Once again, I needed a short simple answer but found either examples that didn't match exactly or newsgroup posts that were cryptic. In my case, the target system I was feeding data to required me to specify a filename that included the month and day of posting as well as the next sequential number. Thus the format is MyOutputFile_mmdd-nnn.out where mm is the month, dd is the day and nnn is the next sequential number (in the case of multiple runs during the same day). To do this, within the message...
Alan Smith asked about the steps to take to change a VPC computer name when distributing the same preloaded VPC image to multiple developers...”We have network problems if two or more images with the same computer name are started with network access (to SourceSafe). So I attempted to change the computer name in an image.” While the BizTalk reload steps are painful, Megan Davis put together notes on sysprepping the VPC image before distributing so that it will do a “mini-install”...
Scott has a major update to his award winning BizTalk deployment script
We had our first storm of the season today. The morning news show had a rolling list of school delays and cancellations and the morning commute took longer than usual. By the end of the day, my truck was covered with a sheet of ice and freezing rain was falling steadily. The ride home took twice as long as usual and the roads were slushy. So why would someone want to live in this? A couple of reasons come to mind - the kids are settled in at great schools and we don't want to disrupt them. And this:...
I've been reading blogs for almost 18 months now and find them both fascinating and a valuable source of information. I've responded to other's blogs when I felt compelled but never felt the urge to start my own. After seeing many friends jumping on the bandwagon, seeing the “live” posts at Chris Sells' Applied XML conference while attending, and talking with Chris Pels, Jeff Julian, DonXML and others I decided to take the plunge. As for my background, I started programming on the Apple...
The Boston .NET User Group grew out of a core group of individuals who had been active in the Visual Basic Professionals User Group. We wanted “more” in terms of moving into distributed computing and internet-based programming. In addition, we all felt that .NET would be the future of Microsoft-based programming so we wanted to get started as early as possible. My own personal involvement began when I worked for a software company called CODA Finanacials. Some local folks, including Pat...