DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by findmecool

LINQ and SQLCLR

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:50:58 GMT

One of the requests/questions that I heard a few times at TechEd Europe was "When can we use LINQ inside of SQL Server?". I must admit that I hadn't really thought about this very much because I tend to think of writing SQL Server procedures, functions, etc. as largely being done in T-SQL. I know that there are cases when CLR makes sense but I think of it as happening a lot less frequently than the T-SQL case.

Extend ASP.NET AJAX Client-Side Function

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:33:47 GMT

In this article the author examines the different ways to extend ASP.NET AJAX client-side function from the server- side with the help of sample applications.

Performance Improvements in Visual C++

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:04:25 GMT

Hi, my name is Jim Springfield, and I'm an architect on the Visual C++ team. I recently spent two months working on some core improvements to how VC deals with Intellisense as well as overall UI responsiveness. We observed a strong correlation between the severity of these performance issues and the size of the projects and solutions exhibiting these problems. As a result, we worked closely with some large ISV customers who were reporting problems with our IDE. These customers typically had solutions with over a hundred projects comprising thousands of files. While I can't identify them by full name, I

Introducing JavaScript Functions and Loops

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:01:02 GMT

Today, you will learn about functions from a man who can barely function, because it is 8:48 in the morning and my soda has yet to kick in. I would say wait for it, but I know you are so excited to read the rest of this article that you can't function. And if you can't function, and I can't function, how is JavaScript gonna function? Well, you'll have to keep reading to find out.

Flexible and Efficient HTML/CSS Form Layout

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:58:38 GMT

HTML 4's fieldset, legend, and label tags took longer to find their way into my toolbox than I'd care to admit. In fact, it took Dreamweaver's use of them for form design a few years back to bring them to my attention. Since then I've combined several useful tips from experts to create my own standard form layout style sheet. I'll share my thoughts behind my form style sheet, basic usage examples, and the HTML and CSS source for you to download and try.

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:50:58 GMT

In the Seattle area on November 29 and looking for something to do? Why not join a Silverlight workshop at Microsoft Redmond?

Microsoft Access is Still Extremely Useful

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:46:41 GMT

Its refreshing to jump into Access, create a couple tables or import data from Excel, run the form creation wizard and your done.

5 Truths of On Call

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:46:21 GMT

5 things that seem to happen when you are on call

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:46:02 GMT

To improve impressions of mainstream software development - which, presumably, should be based upon the foundations of computer science - it comes upon the shoulders of each developer to educate him or herself with the knowledge necessary to give this discipline proper attention. Developers cannot push off this responsibility to management or "the priority setters." It is up to each of us to give software development the respect it deserves and educate those around us, accordingly.

Lambdas and Closures and Currying. Oh my! (Part 1)

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:46:02 GMT

Part 1 of an n part article on functional programming in C# 3.0, from the viewpoint of a functional programming novice!

CodeDOM in C# 2.0

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:16:02 GMT

CodeDOM is a very powerful Application Programming Interface (API) that is available with Microsoft .NET 2.0. This API can do wonders for you by generating code on the fly. This article takes a look at this technology and explains it with code examples wherever appropriate.

10 cool web development related articles in 2007

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:58:11 GMT

Here's a list of 10 cool ASP.NET, AJAX and web development related articles and blog posts that I have written this year that you might want to take a look:

Path Finding Using A* in C# 3.0, Part

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:37:14 GMT

In order to make the A* algorithm work we need to get the lowest-estimated-cost-path-discovered-so-far out of the list of paths under consideration. The standard data structure for doing so is called a "priority queue". Priority queues are so-called because they are typically used to store a list of jobs where each job has an associated priority.

Is your UserControl sluggish at loading?

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:36:49 GMT

Here's an interesting story about performance I had the chance to work on over the last couple of weeks. The object of the call was a UserControl embedded in Internet Explorer, which was very slow to load the first time you browsed the page, but then was performing quite well after that long delay (around 60 seconds); unfortunately closing and reopening the browser caused another 60 seconds delay, which was quite bothering if not frustrating for end users... As you can imagine the control needs to be downloaded, JIT compiled and loaded which of course requires some time depending on how big is the control, how fast (or slow) the Internet connection, how powerful the client etc..., but those 60 seconds where definitely too much. Moreover on Vista we were prompted to run csc.exe and under some circumstances (usually if IE was not run as Administrator) we got a FileNotFoundException.

Ten CSS tricks you may not know | evolt.org

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:16:03 GMT

Much better! Just a couple of words of warning: This CSS shorthand version will only work if you're specifying both the font-size and the font-family. Also, if you don't specify the font-weight, font-style, or font-varient then these values will automatically default to a

.NET framework VS the CLR

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:03:39 GMT

The .NET Framework has been RTM'ed in November 2006 (almost 1 year!), but there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the Framework. A lot of people still don't realise that the .NET Framework still uses the 2.0 version of the Common Language Runtime (CLR). Since this additive release to the .NET Framework, the CLR version number is no longer coupled to the .NET Framework version number. As a result, the 3.0 Framework is completely backward compatible with the earlier version and your 2.0 based applications will continue to run without modifications.

Notify Icon in System Tray With Context Menu using C#

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:02:55 GMT

Using NotifyIcon Components we can put our application icon on Sysytem Tray and ConextMenuStrip will use to control the menu in System Tray

A YUI DataTable Styled GridView

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:02:16 GMT

Lately I have been spending more and more time browsing through the YUI Developer pages. I have worked exclusively with Microsoft's .Net Framework for the past 5 years, but I find it interesting to learn about other competing technologies as well (I even went so far to get certified on Sun's Java platform). I don't know if it is boredom or curiosity, but I generally find it interesting to see what tools,

Microsoft's MVC Framework for ASP.NET

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:59:49 GMT

Scott Guthrie announced last weekend at the ALT.NET Conference that an ASP.NET Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework is in the works. Some of the planned features reported:

Silverlight's niche, and its missing pie

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:45:37 GMT

As it stands, I don't see Silverlight as a Flash-killer. Flash is mature and still actively developed; Adobe recently opened up Flex (Flash development framework) as an open source project - perhaps intended to keep an edge over Silverlight in developers' minds. That said, I want to make the claim that Silverlight 1.1 has the capability to outshine Flash/Flex for a certain class of CPU-intensive web applications, of which Fluxify is an example. For starters, you need to check out Alexey Gavrilov's BubbleMark. The site compares Flash, Silverlight, and a bunch of different web platforms in terms of their performance at displaying some bouncing bubbles.

Properly Abstracted List APIs (in C#)

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:44:51 GMT

We frequently encounter APIs that take lists of objects as parameters. The code behind the API will likely want to know something about those objects. It might sort them or extract some metadata and then process them. It may return a list of the objects with additional data. The question at hand is: how should the API get the data it needs about those objects?

Building AJAX Enabled File Uploading System with Progress Bar Using AS

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:41:15 GMT

Uploading files using ASP.NET Framework 1.0 / 2.0 / 3.0 is pretty easy. Without much error handling, all we need is a couple of lines of code to upload a file to the web server. Read my article which explains how to upload files using ASP.NET which was written four years back. AJAX is playing a greater role these days in every webpage that pops up. Uploading files using ASP.NET AJAX is not a straight forward one. Those who do know about AJAX, it is used to update some portions/sections of a web page without affecting other sections. In other words, if you do want to refresh your web page on a button click but you still want to update the content of your web page, then you should use AJAX.

Deferred execution in Linq pitfall(s)

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:59:40 GMT

Say you have this query in Linq to Sql What order is fetched: 10254 or 10255? That's right, 10255! The 'id' used in the query is added as a member access node to the expression tree. As Linq expression trees are converted to Sql when they're executed, it means that at that time, the value of id is evaluated and used inside the query.

Eliminating the jump to top of page behavior of the Ajax Toolkit's Rat

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:01:02 GMT

The Ajax Control Toolkit provides a number of Ajax-enabled server controls and extenders that make it very easy to add Ajax functionality to any ASP.NET driven site. One of these controls is the Rating control. One issue with the rating control is that when clicked, the user experiences a jump to top of page behavior. This article examines how to eliminate this issue.

5 Tips for Working With BugTracker.NET

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:52:14 GMT

Recently I downloaded BugTracker.NET, an excellent ASP.NET/C#/Sql Server open-source bug tracker developed by Corey Trager. Set up was very simple - just read the README file! I really like how flexible BugTracker.NET is. Below are 5 of the simple changes I made, to make the product better suit my needs.