gwbarchive

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Since MVC has been released I have observed much confusion about how best to construct view models. Sometimes this confusion is not without good reason since there does not seem to be a ton of info…

The .NET Base Class Library (BCL) has a wide array of collection classes at your disposal which make it easy to manage collections of objects. While it’s great to have so many classes available, it…

At the recent Calgary Tech Days event I did a presentation on building composite applications with WPF and Silverlight. One question that I get asked frequently when I get to the part of explaining…

I have been looking for a good first layer of validating an url to see if it is valid.

Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#. Today we will be looking at two set implementations in the System.Collections.Generic namespace: HashSet<T> and SortedSet…

Making ASP.NET AJAX calls to web services has become increasingly popular these days. This approach not only provides a good separation of concerns but also makes it possible to create a truly ajax…

In the web application I work on we sometimes need to create PDF documents based on some user input. In most cases, these documents are fairly simple and quick to create, allowing us to create the …

This handy MSDN blog post already details 8 (yes EIGHT) different ways to backup your SQL Azure Database. But the easiest technique of all, by scheduling a job using Windows Azure Mobile Services, …

I was sad to find out the “codingwithoutcomments” site was taken down. For the sake of a specific post from there, I went to waybackmachine.com and got that post, and I’m pasting it here.

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Here is another early release of the MVVM Light Toolkit V3 (Alpha 2). I decided to release gradually and early as soon as a new part of this new version is ready, to allow advanced users to install…

IIS Express is a new web server that replaces the old Visual Studio web server (aka Cassini). IIS Express provides a number of benefits which you can read about here and they key aspect is that it …

The SQL Azure Federation had been publically launched several weeks ago and this is one of the most existing features I’m looking forward. This might be the first post of SQL Azure Federation, and …

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C# is a wonderful language for modern programming. While everything in C# has a reason and a place, occasionally there are things that can be confusing for a developer who isn’t aware of what is ha…

If you’re debugging Web service calls, you may want to capture incoming requests so you can see exactly what’s reaching the service. If BizTalk’s hosting the Web service, it’s a simple process of a…

\[South African Specific\]

Scott Hanselman has a post on his weblog about getting a shared network printer to work in DOS. That’s not really all that tough and actually got me thinking about a similar experience I had recently.

When creating my unit tests, I’ve been a big believer in the Object Mother pattern for creating state for my immutable value objects. Basically, I need to put the objects in a valid state in the co…

To download the source code please click here

There is a well-known issue with WPF RadioButton controls with data binding: when a radio button is unchecked the data binding is not undone. For example, suppose you have the following two radio b…

By default, when a stand-alone instance of Microsoft SQL Server exists in a cluster environment, the SQL Server-based instance is set to start automatically. If the host node is rebooted, you may r…

I’d recently searched around for some good-quality JavaScript snippets to determine the cursor position within an HTML TextArea, but haven’t had any luck. So, like any fellow geek would do, I came …

The hosts file of Windows, by default located in %SystemRoot%\\System32\\drivers\\etc, can be a bitch to edit, so it seems.

Technorati Tags: ClickOnce,MAGE,Microsoft,.net 3.5

One of the good things about LINQ to SQL is that it gives the developer flexibility to choose the specified columns of a table from a database. Let’s say I have table Forums and Posts and I need to…

A customer recently contacted me because after installing an SDK it didn’t show up in Visual Studio 2008.

.NET Reflection can be quite handy to transform one object to another, and specially when the target data structure varies a lot. Lets say, a “source party” has a stable Source data structure. But …

Hi,

Localization is a common issue when we develop a world wide web application. The key point of making your application localizable is to separate the page content from your logic implementation. Tha…

In contrary to what I initially stated in this post, Moles is not only available as part of the Pex framework, but also stand-alone on Visual Studio Gallery, and this is completely free (no MSDN su…

\Update Oct ‘09 In response to a number of comments on this post regarding problems with this approach, I’ve added a new [blog entry with more details. Check it out.\]

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If you can find the control panel for DEP, you will find there is not an option to turn it off. This is not a terrible thing unless you are trying to troubleshoot a problem. Then you want to elimin…

This week is my final entry in my Little Wonders series (posts one and two are here and here). These are those little tips and tricks in .NET (and in particular C#) that may not seem like much, but…

We all have those little wonders in our .NET code, those small tips and tricks that make code just that much more concise, maintainable, or performant. Many of you probably already know of some of …

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my pa…

Ok, so I needed to convert .docx files to .pdf files on the fly, but none of the free php libraries that were available let me do it on my server (a webservice was not good enough).

If you visit Asp.net Ajax Forum, you will find hundreds of request on File Upload Control that it does not give Ajax version of the page when it is placed in an UpdatePanel. Certainly, it is not po…

Here’s a list of sources of information for the different elements that comprise the 70-480 exam:

One of the common queries I get across my sessions is that, the File Upload control doesnt work inside an Update panel. All of us would like to implement a Gmail File Upload kind of interface and w…

\[v.2.9.0 2015-08-19\]

The Joel test is intended to gauge the quality of a software development organization. Ten years later, it is in need of an update. Below is a possible “New Joel Test”, updated for 2010.

I’m in the process of evaluating how my team will upgrade our product from .NET 3.5 SP1 to .NET 4. I expected the upgrade to be pretty smooth with very few, if any, upgrade issues. To my delight, t…

Yes, this is possibly the simplest app ever written and was cooked up as a lunch bet between myself (@sundriedcoder) and David Justice (@davidjustice) while waiting on our TFS server to be rebuilt.…

By default, if you try to modify your hosts file in Vista, it will not let you save it. It tells you that you don’t have permission. To successfully modify the hosts file, run notepad.exe as an adm…

Moved to http://www.michaelflanakin.com/articles/CompareWebTrackers.aspx

The IODA Architecture to me is fundamental. But as many fundamental notions it might be a bit abstract. That’s why I want to provide an example of how to design and implement software based on it. …

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The forthcoming release of Visual Studio Foundation Server will include two methodology templates for the next version of MSF (the Microsoft Solution Framework). These are MSF for Agile Software De…

I recently profiled a sproc that makes heavy use of the TSQL SUBSTRING function (hundreds of thousands of times) to see how it performs on a SQL 2005 database compared to a SQL 2000 database. Much …

While Microsoft continues to add features to WCF with each version, they are also adding features that simplify working with WCF services as well. Historically WCF has been somewhat intimidating to…

In C#, Visual Basic .NET, C++/CLI, J# – the list goes on – we’re freed from having to worry about our memory management. Objects take care of themselves, and when the CLR garbage collector detects …

I’m posting this blog mostly to remind myself how to fix this if ever I run into it again, but if anyone else benefits from it, then awesome.

Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,TFS Power Tools,UnShelve

The problem

For sometime now I have been working on a few papers on the subject of SOA. This is the first, my definitive definition of what is SOA Governance.

Man, oh, man! Setting this thing up was a pain in the arse. It took up most of my day! Anyway, hopefully, I can save someone else the heardache.

I had someone ask today how to format a date in xslt 1.0. I thought it was worth posting the answer I gave. I hope you find it useful. It’s amazing how many lines of code it takes for this, but it’…

Our free extension to Visual Studio , the folder based Build Explorer Version 1.1 has now been released, and uploaded to the Visual Studio Gallery and Codeplex. We have collected up a few changes a…

Recently, I was trying to delete a windows service. Normally it should not be necessary to manually delete a service. Uninstalling an application should remove its associated service (if any).

Click here for a Video version of this Article

<table><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2009/11/22/136473.aspx">Automatic Null Checks</a><a href="https://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/Default.aspx">Alois Kraus</a>&…

Today (well, yesterday now) was Thanksgiving here in the U.S. In addition to doing my traditional family things (making and eating a large, Turkey-centered dinner), I found some time to pop on to t…

Overview of SFTP, FTPS, SCP and FTP:

Over the last year or so I have noticed a disturbing trend brought about by the idea of “brining programming to the masses”. Last April, according to Microsoft, there was a “growing community of 18…

Just ran across an issue where the miniport devices were accidently removed from a system. Not having these installed caused the system to have network driver installation and connectivity issues.

This time I would like to show you the most important changes in the System.Configuration namespace with .NET 2.0. I have looked at my blog referrer statistics and saw about 20 hits/day by Google. …

Credits due: look at the second post on http://searchvb.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid8\gci932171,00.html

Drag and drop support in a web application always get some attention. I used drag and drop support in one of my applications and I have to admit that it involved a lot of JavaScript code. You can c…

The other day, I posted about a feature request submitted to Microsoft Connect. Well, it ended up getting 21 votes before Microsoft closed it as “Closed (Won’t Fix)”. The comment they left was

Today, Somasegar announced that Visual Studio 2015 will be released on July 20th, 2015. This release will also include C# 6.0. This is the first in a series of posts on the new features of C# 6.0 a…

I seem to be spending a lot of time lately trying to convince clients that a single Team Project for the entire Enterprise is the way to go. To most people this seems counter-intuitive. They tend t…

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You may get this error when trying to browse an asp.net application.

I will explain how to develop a simple application in ASP.NET using a three-tier architecture.

I found it hard to find a definitive list on the internet for what ports needed opening for Active Directory to replication between Firewalls. Here are my findings and all is working so, hope this …

Update: There is an existing .Net Framework method Page.GetPostBackEventReference that emits client-side script that initiates postback and also provides a reference to the control that initiated t…

I like Code Metrics. They give a certain “objective” evaluation of a piece of code. You can use it for yourself just to make it pinpoint potential trouble areas, or just some code where you were a …

I was thinking about the level of programming abilities lately, as we are starting to interview for an open position. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if programmers came in version numbers like sof…

Finding handle leaks in all processes at once for all handle types without a debugger is no longer impossible. Since Windows 8.1 (0?) each handle creation and close call is instrumented with an ETW…

A while back, I blogged about using the Enterprise Library Validation Application Block (VAB) with ASP.NET MVC. As MVC has matured as a framework, this scenario has becoming simpler. In early relea…

In this blog post, I will provide an introduction to DocumentDB by showing you how to create a collection (a collection is a container that stores your data), and how to connect to your collection …

For a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a C# editor (almost an IDE, but with only the features that I need). Clearly the hardest part of this task would be getting some form of ed…

Currently I’m working on a data synchronization tool in which I have finally had the need to use reflection. I’ll admit that I’m not an expert when it comes to reflection, but it isn’t that hard to…

After reading Tim Anderson’s blog article (here) on his installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 I glibly added a comment that R2 now includes PowerShell 2.0 for local management of virtual machines …

UPDATE: 5th January 2012

\Source: [https://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman\]

NTRUDUCTION

The ListView control has a flicker issue. The problem appears to be that the control’s Update overload is improperly implemented such that it acts like a Refresh. An Update should cause the control…

The reluctance of seamen to sail on a Friday reached such epic proportions, that in the 1800s the British Government decided to take strong measures to prove the fallacy of the superstition. They l…

All of us have probably written code like this:

Friday, August 07, 2009 11:56 AM

For the last newsletter I wrote a brief article describing what design patterns were and the educational benefits that they can have as they are generalized knowledge. I hope atleast a few of the m…

Ever needed to reinstall your PC and could not recover your product key from that ‘safe storage’ you were supposed to use? It is no secret that if your system is still running you can recover the k…

For Issue 900, I wanted to do another “best of” and it’s a little tricky. I can’t do best of from 800 to 900 because it will be heavily weighted to the early posts.

In my last post I stated that the only guideline for writing good software is to make it simple. There are a number of very specific code analyses that can be applied during a code review that help…

Get ready for a cool event on June 7th. Register to watch live (starting at 1PM PDT): here – The event will be presented by Scott Guthrie. To keep updated on this event follow the twitter conversat…

Here is something interesting that came up a newsgroup thread a little while ago, that I though merited some more explanation.

You can reach this page anytime at http://tools.michaelcrump.net

I’m currently working on broadening the content in the Windows Azure Service Bus Developer Guide. One of the features I have been looking at over the past week is the support for transactional mess…

A reader Shawn asks :

The Simple Little Registry Editor can be downloaded from:

Some of you may have come across this helpful blog post recently, discussing when the garbage collector (a/k/a the GC) runs on Windows Phone 7 devices. Anyone who has programmed in XNA for the Xbox…

Well I’ve seen so many 10 reasons to date a geek that I thought I would go with the opposite, having dated a few in the past! Share the knowledge so to speak! Bear in mind that I am also a geek so …

After taking a lot of time with C# fundamentals, I decided to go down a different road this week and talk about some of the differences in C# that can be troublesome to people who are used to C++ d…

This was one of the most uncomfortable articles that I read this year:

Due to an upgrade from .Net 2, 3.0 or 3.5 to .Net 4.0 or you are starting a new .Net 4.0 project, you may run into this message:

Well, I’m posting this because during the last week three different people in three completly different environments asked me why is Bluetooth called “Bluetooth”. Why not Goldentooth? 🙂 Why not Bl…

Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my pa…

When working with your new version of Windows Vista, after you install your Cisco VPN Client software – which I did – you might get the error:

The post Creating different CSS style selector definitions for different browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and IE 6.0) with subsequent comments desribes that

It seems that there are a few developers out there that are trying to petition Microsoft to keep VB6 alive.

When you are calling DirectorySearcher.FindAll() and there is a chance to have more than 1000 records back, you must set PageSize to non-zero value, preferably 1000. Otherwise only the first 1000 r…

Things have been busy and it’s been a while since my last post, so I decided to write up a post today related to something I have been working on recently where in I needed a way to associate an at…

Chris Webb and Matt Mason have both blogged about formulas for generating a date table using PowerQuery, but both of these posts focus on the standard year-month-day calendar. I’ve been doing a lit…

Possible Cause:- When you install IIS AFTER .NET 2.0 framework, the rights of the ASPNET user had not been set correctly.

\[16th Dec 2009 – have spotted a small final missing } in the Office XML sample code. Will get that updated with any other changes \]

\[The official announcement is in this Wednesdays MSDN Flash – but why wait!\]

For those of you working with LINUX/UNIX and you’ve typed:

While working on a Data Form in an ASP.Net application you might want to get a value from the user that corresponds to the Enum you created in your Business Layer. Since Enum types are not strings …

This post gives a little info about how to repair an LCD projector that has a washed-out and yellowing image, which results from the blue LCD panel weakening over time. I would have to guess that a…

One of the first things you will want to do after installing visual studio is to set it up to automatically pull down the correct symbols for system components when debugging. You do this by config…

I recently bought a bigger 80 gig hard drive for my laptop, and wanted to copy the contents of my existing 30 gig disk with an XP install over to it. I didn’t want to go buy any drive copying tools…

SQL Server has a built-in data type that automatically marks changes to rows. This data type is “rowversion”. Formerly this data type was named “timestamp”, and Microsoft recommends you start using…

To write object-oriented programs we need objects, and likely lots of them.

Kanban (pronounced kahn-bahn) is a Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing technique that minimizes inventory and increases throughput. This is done by signaling. A production station has a bin or loading…

If you are looking for a great introductory article on Log4Net, I would recommend reading the Log4Net tutorial by Tim Corey.

In the previous post I had described the steps to secure your Windows Azure tokens and get the necessary Visual Studio templates as well as making your web application Azure ready by adding the clo…

I wanted to use String.Format with parameters that can be null. Firstly i decided to put some conditional code like if(arg1!=null) but then desided to check, if it is handled automatically. And fro…

Over the past few months I’ve had 2 customers that have run into an scenario where the SharePoint 2013 web analytics usage reports have no data (all zeroes) in the reports. While working with some …

Updated: June 12, 2006 – I had some debug code in there, basically a sleep for a second statement – doh! – I’ve removed it and Zip file updated

For those who are familiar with the VirtualPC, vmWare and VirtualBox environments will be quite irritated to find out, in Hyper-V, there is no direct way to share files from the Host machine to the…

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 has been released yesterday, you can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=bc247d88-ddb6-4d4a-a595-8eee3556fe46 O…

You may see this error – more than once – when working with your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 deployment. This animal / error generally shows itself after you have applied an upgr…

Recruit Officer: Have you given any thought to your future, son? Forrest Gump: “Thought”?

I was thinking a little ‘tongue in cheek’ when I came up with the title for this one. To add to the growing number of “Seven Habits” resources, I’ll add one on BizTalk. I wouldn’t say I was a “High…

Media Type Formatters in the WCF Web API provide a way for the consumer of your service to not only specify the format they want for their response, but also specify the format they are using on th…

So on a lark, I threw my hat into the ring for Portland Code Camp 2.0, I didn’t expect to get accepted, there were already a few sessions on unit testing and nunit but I figured, what the heck, let…

If you work with any kind of healthcare data, then odds are you’ll deal with NPI (National Provider Identifier) numbers. The NPI is a 10-digit number consisting of 9 digits (with the first digit be…

IntroductionI’ve been asked a few times how the performance of WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) Rules compares with that of the Microsoft Business Rules Engine (MS BRE). Having done no testing, I c…

Some applications are just bent on seeing what appears to be the pristine original Default Web Site that is created when IIS is first installed. For instance, when setting up Microsoft’s own Report…

One of the features that has been available since the Vista days and is also contained in the Windows 7 release is Microsoft’s Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets have become quite the popular set of little t…

\[Original Post Date: 9th October 2005\]I just finished implementing WIVisualizer, a WindowsIdentity debugger visualizer for Visual Studio 2005. It displays important details like:

In May 2004, Microsoft published a whitepaper entitled ‘Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Characteristics’ (MBTS-PC04)[\[1\]](https://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/admin/EditArticles.aspx#ftn1)…