DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by gregbeech

Integrating StructureMap with WCF

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:46:45 GMT

Details of how to create custom service hosts & behaviours to integrate StructureMap with WCF. It would be much the same approach for any other service container.

Tips & Tricks: Use DebuggerDisplayAttribute for easier debugging

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:01:02 GMT

When debugging, it's common to hover over an object to get a quick view of what its properties are. This is where DebuggerDisplayAttribute comes in. The format string looks similar to normal .NET format strings in that the values to replace are between curly braces, but instead of being told what to substitute the debugger treats these values as expressions and attempts to evaluate them using the current context.

Optimised IP address to country code mapping

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:04:08 GMT

Investigates the most efficient way to look up country codes from an IP address. Are Patricia tries really the best way to do it...?

ObservableServiceHost - An InstanceContext aware WCF ServiceHost

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:01:11 GMT

ObservableServiceHost is a custom WCF ServiceHost that adds an event when a new serice InstanceContext is created. This can be a useful addition to some, but hopefully the it will help demonstrate the flexibility of the extension mechanisms in WCF.

Software development dogmata - good practices gone bad

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:46:03 GMT

Many practices in the software development world are widely accepted at some moment in time as the "true way". The trouble starts when the "true way" is forced down the throats of people who need a "new way". Usually popular practices follow a similar path between the moment somebody discovers/creates them and until they get massively popular.

Dynamic sorting and paging in SQL Server with the CASE expression

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:12:23 GMT

Demonstrates how to write T-SQL queries that implement dynamic sorting and paging without using dynamic SQL, and which have the same performance characteristics as statically sorted queries. I bet you didn't know you could use the CASE expression like this...

Immediate deadlock notifications without changing existing code

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:00:36 GMT

In my previous post about immediate deadlock notifications in SQL Server 2005 I've shown a way to use a try catch block to get the deadlock error. The con of this method, although it uses best practice for error handling in SQL Server 2005, is that you have to change existing code and it doesn't work for non stored procedure code. And that IS a pretty BIG con! So here's a solution to this con.

Creating NullableT When You Don't Know T

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:14:15 GMT

Is it possible that you simply can't create Nullable<T> programmatically for an arbitrary T? Is Nullable<T> a Heisenberg-Type, where observing it changes it fundamentally?

Why System.Linq.Enumerable doesn't have a ForEach extension method

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:14:43 GMT

Lots of people suggest a ForEach method would be a good addition to the base class framework. This is why I don't think it would be, even though our core library has an implementation of it.

Code Generation with C# 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:33:05 GMT

This article covers the new features in C# 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008 that make complex code generation tasks easy. It explores the techniques by implementing a state machine.

Mapping datareader to objects using Reflection.Emit

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:33:41 GMT

I've previously written of how to automatically map a DataTable into a strongly typed collection of objects. There's a problem though, it's not fast... I wanted to improve on it, and this is what I ended up with.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, People

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:46:13 GMT

A brief discussion of the Rob Conery TDD backlash, and what it says about open-source on .NET, and the community at large.