I just ported the first assembly of RapidDB over to .NET 2.0 in VS.NET 2005, and with gritted teeth hit the Build menu and ran Code Analysis. Having run FxCop on previous .NET 1.1 projects, I was ready for the list of warnings, some of which I really wouldn't agree with, and which I'd have to exclude within the FxCop project file. No need, the exclusion of messages on specific code blocks is now handled by attributes so you can easily spot what is being skipped right in the source code itself. In...

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Ever developed an application that at a client's site required a specific drive letter, or you don't want to be editing an application's configuration file all the time (and accidently 'releasing' the development version)? Although you can personally map a drive letter to a share for use in Windows applications, an ASP.NET application or a Windows service won't have access to your drive letters as they do not run in your user session. What you need is a new volume at a system level available to all...

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After installing a much larger hard drive in my laptop (to preserve a .NET 1.1 pristine partiion) I just nearly two days installing the mountain of software that is a programmer's development system. Here's my top tips for making this easy (or rather, easier); 1. For each machine you own keep a record in Excel of everything you install on the system (add/remove programs isn't good enough). Include serial numbers and the location of the software if you can, i.e. Software Serial No Install On Uninstall...

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Another polished event from Microsoft to support the launch of SQL Server 2005, VS.NET 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. I attended the second day (in Hammersmith, London) which according to the speakers appeared to have more technically orientated delegates than the first day. Although I was only registered for the main 'technical track' due to my late registration, I managed to switch three of the four slots to Chalk 'n' Talk (Deep Dive) sessions. These were in much smaller rooms, with a higher technical...

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Not wanting to fiddle with my main corporate web site hosted by brinkster.com by bouncing it to ASP.NET 2.0 (it's currently running ASP.NET 1.1), I decided to do some research into 2.0 hosting. I was genuinely surprised at how little it cost to get a development site up and running. I registered a '.co.uk' domain for just over £6 (US$10 or so) with www.123-reg.co.uk, and then setup my hosting with DiscountASP net (try the promotion code http://www.discountasp.net/... to get free setup...

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The free C# ZIP library (http://www.icsharpcode.net... is great for reading and creating ZIP files. However, I came across a problem with ZIP files created using the samples in their help file when opening them under Windows XP SP2. Windows XP refuses to view the files and wants you to 'unblock' them, but when you follow the instructions the 'unblock' option is not available. I found out it was a simple fix, documented in the help file but not actually used in the...

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Just wanted to get an idea of how many people might use VistaDB and whether we should consider a database library in the RapidDB system for VistaDB? Let me know if you are using it already or are planning to use it in the future. Normally getting a database into RapidDB takes around 2 days of work, if the database system doesn't have significant exceptions to the norm (such as Oracle). Oh, and of course, I get a free copy of the system for developing the layer if I include the following press release...

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A nice little problem with cultures. An XML file within my RapidDB development system could not be loaded outside the en-GB culture (it probably worked in en-US too). This was kindly pointed out to me by Sergey Koshcheyev, the guy behind NHibernate. Not surprisingly he runs with a default Russian culture. My first guess was date formats, but I was wrong. It was the use of decimal points in values being loaded from the XML file. Whereas UK and US would write 51.34, Russian, in common with many other...

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