DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by hockman

Currently learning Microsoft Expression Blend

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:46:17 GMT

Hi there, After passing Microsoft exam 70-551, I've found some time to learn some more about WPF, Silverlight and the Expression Studio programs. I was cleaning up my suitcase and I found a Microsoft Expression DVD that was given away for free at the beginning of this year. So I decided to put it in my dvd player and I've found a true treasure of Microsoft Expression video materials. It was actually this DVD: http://blogs.microsoft.nl/ux/archive/2007/12/01/designer-training-dvd.aspx But unfortunately Microsoft isn't giving them away anymore. but he...at least i've got a copy of my own. On the DVD there were three free training materials of Lynda.com videotrainings. Since I still hadn't checked out Microsoft Expression Blend myself, I thought it was about time to check it out. So currently I'm checking out the following video training:

Interview Questions Every Developer should ask an Employer

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:36:18 GMT

If you're like me and have been in the IT industry for 5+ years (me 10), you start to realize that the grass is not always greener on the other side in a lot of shops out there. Before I get to the interview questions, I want to start by outlining the general types of shops and types of problems one can encounter in development shops. Characteristics of when the grass may NOT be greener:

Funny how Sitecore's HelloWorldProvider made it to production!

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:25:22 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently developing a custom provider that does some handling with external data in a SQL Server database, which I want to be able to see in a seperate Sitecore database. Because of that I ofcourse went to the SDN5 network and ofcourse followed and downloaded the example of the HelloWorldProvider, which can be found here: HelloWorldProvider Sitecore example A great tutorial, but still it's realy heavy to build your own custom provider, that's what I'm currently finding out, especially getting the parent-child relation good. A lot of trail-and-error is happening right now. Amyway, that is not what this post is about, it's about how certain things always make it into production Other examples of Sitecore providers can be found here:

70-551 is the wrong upgrade path because it is hard!

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:50:41 GMT

Hi there, I've planned my 70-551-UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework for next friday, but today I've found something that got me al little bit worried and confused Frown. Gerry O'Brien writes the following: Initially, we had a path from MCAD to MCPD Web or MCPD Windows, but we found that the fail rate was rather high. A part of that reason revolves around what I think, in that the MCAD is not qualified to be an MCPD yet. We are restructuring the exam story and recommending a different upgrade path depending on whether you are an MCAD or and MCPD. These are the requirements anyway for the 70-551 exam according to Satish: Exam is divided into 3 section and totally contains 88 questions and need to score 700 to pass. Failing in one section will result in failing all sections! 70-536 (Section 1) 30 questions 70-528 (Section 2) 28 questions 70-547 (Section 3) 30 questions This is one of the tough paper to pass and the passing rate is very low. Gerry O'Brien also states at http://blogs.msdn.com/gerryo/archive/2008/07/24/mcad-new-paths-to-certification.aspx the following: So, does this mean that exams 70-551 and 70-552 are going away? Absolutely not. If you are an MCAD and you want to attempt these exams, by all means feel free to do so. We recommend that MCSD candidates take these exams but that MCAD candidates concentrate on the 70-558 or 70-559 exams. Part of the reason for this change is to help make these certifications a little more clear. The original upgrade story appeared to be a somewhat limiting. Also, keep in mind that the MCAD and MCSD certifications will have their requisite exams retired in March of 2009. That means you will no longer be able to acquire the MCAD or MCSD credential. If you don't have it already, or maybe you are part way there but ready to give up and just go the "start my 2.0/3.5 from scratch" route, reconsider that and look at these upgrade exams. This could help shorten your certification path.

SqlParameter initalization problem

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:38:58 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently rewriting some database logic. On the project I use a SQL Server 2005 database and make use of Enterpise Library 3.1. Look at the following code: public void InsertItem(Item item) { try { string sqlCommand = "INSERT INTO Items (Id, Name, subject, CreateDate, Message, ParentId) VALUES (@Id, @Name, @Subject, @CreateDate, @Message, @ParentId)"; DBCommand dbCommand = database.GetSqlStringCommand(sqlCommand) ; AddParameters(dbCommand, item); database.ExecuteNonQuery(dbCommand); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } private void AddParameters(DbCommand dbCommand, Item item) { dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Id", SqlDbType.UniqueIdentifier).Value = item.Id ); dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Name", SqlDbType.NChar, 50).Value = item.Naam); dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Subject", SqlDbType.NChar, 50).Value = item.Onderwerp); dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@CreateDate", SqlDbType.DateTime).Value = item.Datum); dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Message", SqlDbType.NText).Value = item.Bericht); dbCommand.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@ParentId", SqlDbType.UniqueIdentifier).Value = item.Id); }

Cleaning up deprecated class System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:37:57 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently in between two releases and I decided that is was time for some good-old-clean-up-of-the-code. I've recently looked at the warnings that Visual Studio 2005 generates. And I've found out that I got the following warning: 'System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform' is obsolete: 'This class has been deprecated. Please use System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform instead. On MSDN there's great article on how to migrate this deprecated class from 1.1 to .NET 2.0: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/66f54faw(VS.80).aspx This ultimately resulted in my following solution, where url is an url to an XML document and writer is an HtmlTextWriter that will do the rendering: XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform(); xslt.Load(Server.MapPath("/xsl/google_results.xslt")); xslt.Transform(new XPathDocument(url), null, writer);

Unspecified error, come on Microsoft!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:09:45 GMT

Hi there, I recently got a Microsoft Visual SourceSafe error in Visual Studio .NET 2005 that really says nothing: Unexpected error encountered. It is recommended that you restart the application as soon as possible. Error: Unspecified error Come on Microsoft: What can I do with 'Unspecified error'??? Tongue out The error was shown when I pressed the check-in button directly in the solution or on the pending check-ins tab (which didn't show anything at all even though files where checked out). So after doing a little bit of Googling I've found this post where people have had this problem before:

The New Iteration when working with WPF

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:55:01 GMT

After one month of no posts, mainly because I was on a holiday and have become a dad for the second time, I thought it is time to write some posts again. In my vacation I've found a really cool article (actually it is a whitepaper) that is calles 'The New Iteration': How XAML transforms the collaboration between Designer and Developers in Windows Presentation Foundation. It is an extremely important whitepaper for discisionmakers, it'll give you an overview of what XAML is, how the whole workflow process and roles work so designers and developers can work together and make up a far more efficient workflow. This line I especially liked, cause I've seen it far to many times: 'There is no sitting over the shoulder of the developer explaining the vision and making sure she is re-creating it in the code.' Oh yeah, also really inportant is the following: 'It is worth noting that, for both the designer and developer, there is an upfront cost of learning the tools and the platform. Without this investment, much of the efficiencies to be gained in the workflow will be lost.'

Review of elearning clinic Introducing WCF using .Net Framework 3.5

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:16:16 GMT

Last week, I took the two hour clinic: Clinic 6264: Introducing Windows Communication Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008 from the Microsoft eLearning site. It's a free clinic, so if your new to WCF, it's well worth a study. It's a self-paced course and took me actually some more time than two hours, since I had to make notes for this review on things I found interesting to talk about. And a couple of hours for me writing this post last weekend Wink Anyway, you will learn about Windows Communication Foundation, the next generation technology for developing service oriented applications. Within the clinic you will learn about WCF Architecture, how to create WCF Services and Clients, and enhancing WCF services with security and reliability.

ActiveDirectory permission exception through a network share

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:19:02 GMT

Hi there, Today I recieved the following error when starting a .NET application from a network share: .NET 2.0 error: Request for the permission of type 'System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesPermission, System.DirectoryServices, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' failed. This error occurred when trying to run code that accessed the System.DirectoryServices namespace. Thanks to Tim Huffam I was being able to fix this within seconds! To work around this, just open up your .NET 2.0 security: 1. Start the .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration tool (from Administrative Tools). 2. Expand Runtime Security Policy. 3. Expand User - Code Groups and right-click on All_Code and select Properties. 4. On the Membership Condition tab make sure All Code is selected in the dropdownlist. 5. On the Permission Set tab make sure FullTrust is selected in the dropdownlist. 6. Click OK 7. Under Runtime Security Policy, expand Machine - Code Groups and right-click on All_Code and select Properties. 8. Perform steps 4 - 6.

BindingListView .NET library for Winforms

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:53:06 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently developing a Winforms project where we want to be able to sort, filter, bind business objects to datagrid views. And I've found a .NET Library that just does everything I need, instead of using dataviews it just binds the business object to the datagridview. The BindingListView .NET library provides a type-safe, sortable, filterable, data-bindable view of one or more lists of objects. It is the business objects equivalent of using a DataView on a DataTable in ADO.NET. If you have a list of objects to display on a Windows Forms UI (e.g. in a DataGridView) and want to allow your user to sort and filter, then this is the library to use!

Sitecore 6 Content Management System is released and handy links!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:56:55 GMT

Hi there, Sitecore 6 was released yesterday! Yeah.....Smile Last week I already got a sneak peak of it from a collegue of mine, when Alex de Groot visited us. It was a sneak peak of the Nicam Sitecore 6 demo site. The thing I really like is being able to search in many many places within the Client. Being able to validate your content, the wait cursor notification when you click on an item in the content editor, the validation notifiers on the right hand side, the Placeholder Settings folder and ofcourse the icon preview of an image in the Media Library. Really necessary stuff. I'm looking forward to the first Migration projects from Sitecore 5.3 to Sitecore 6, since they really reduced the databases. In Sitecore 6 we now have only the Web, the Master and the Core databases, instead of Sitecore 5.3 which has additional databases like Extranet, Security, Archive and Recycle Bin.

Dev Days 2008 presentations for download!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:22:02 GMT

Hi there, I just wanted to let you guys know that everyone is being able to download the Dev Days 2008 presentations! You can download them here: http://www.devdays.nl/powerpoints/index2.html

Visual inheritance DataGridView, where is it at design time?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:09:41 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently working on a Visual Studio .NET 2005 Winforms project, where i've got multiple forms which have a DataGridView on it. So I decided, for maintenance sake, that I had to create a baseform, since alle the forms really must look-a-like. In the baseform I've set the modifier of the, to be inherited, control to public or protected. Nice job you would think! But guess again, cause visual inheritance on 2.0 controls, that can hold a collection, like the DataGridView is not possible. So you can throw away all your good meanings and efforts! This is what Microsoft has to say about it: "We disabled this scenario intentionally. We chose to not make the engineering effort it would have required to enable this scenario for Whidbey. This decision was not make lightly and we understand customers would like this functionality, but the existing visual inheritance architecture in combination with collection based controls makes it extremely costly to address. We hope to enable this in future versions".

XML serialization does not support circular references

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:06:59 GMT

On a .NET 2.0 project I'm currently working on, where I'm getting my data from a webservice, I was getting the following error: System.InvalidOperationException: Er is een fout opgetreden bij het genereren van het XML-document. ---> System.InvalidOperationException: Er is een kringverwijzing aangetroffen tijdens het toepassen van serialisatie op een object van het type BusinessObjects.Domein. In English the error was: System.InvalidOperationException: A circular reference was detected while serializing an object of type BusinessObjects.Domein. I've found out that one of my objects must hold onto another object that is higher up in the chain which resulted into a circular reference. Yes indeed, this is true, but now it seems that xml serialization can't handle it. My business object has a logical parent-child tree structure and that's exactly how I want to have my business objects.

ReSharper 4.0 is now available!

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:06:24 GMT

Wow, Resharper 4.0 is now available. It now has full support for C# 3.0 and LINQ, Comprehensive Insight into .NET Framework, Solution-Wide Analysis, Code Cleanup, New Refactorings, Multiple New Productivity Features (such as Complete Statement, CamelHumps in Code Completion, Live Templates Editor & Manager, Recent Edits), ASP.NET Speedup. Today I received the following email:

Choosing a string comparison method is simple!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:34:06 GMT

Choosing a string comparison method is simple!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:29:45 GMT

In a lot of projects different users use different string comparison methods. I've seen a lot of code where there is a lot of ToLowers(), Equals, equality == operators, string.compare, string.CompareTo, and so on used for comparing strings. All different usages, sometimes for different purposes, but 99% of the time for the same purpose. Since .NET 2.0 however, Microsoft has new recommendations, and I think it is really a must to read. A link to the new Microsoft recommendations can be found at the end of this article. There are two very important things to ask yourself when comparing string: * Should my string be treated as a symbolic set of bytes (an ordinal interpretation)? * Should my string vary over culture (a culture-sensitive interpretation)? If the string data, that is designed to be culture-agnostic and linguistically irrelevant, start using the StringComparison overloads, using either the StringComparison.Ordinal or StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase. These two overloads enforce a byte-by-byte comparison similar to strcmp that not only avoids bugs from linguistic interpretation of essentially symbolic strings, but provides better performance!

My Dev Days 2008 impression

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:05:08 GMT

Hi there, I would have liked to talk about this a little bit sooner, but couldn't find the time. Anyways, I had a great time may 22nd at the Dev Days 2008 in Amsterdam! An exciting day full of new stuff and quality presentations. The first session, or actually keynote, I visited was a presentation by David Platt on 'Why software sucks'. David was verry funny (especially his comment that nobody would like to use a stick anymore in a car Wink ). Anyways, his overall thought was, 'know thy user for he is not thee'! If you would like to know what it was all about, you can read more about it here on tweakers: Softwaregoeroe Microsoft: programmeurs weten niet wat gebruikers willen (Dutch article) or here on computable.nl (also in Dutch). After this keynote session, i went to the Introduction to Silverlight 2 presentation by Daniel Moth. Wow, what can this guy talk! What a great presentation on topics within silverlight as, 'Getting Started aka Hello World', 'Intro to XAML inc. developer-designer interaction using Blend', 'HTML Bridge', 'Networking' You can even download this presentation on his blog: http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2008/05/my-silverlight-session.html.

Free eBook - Best of Simple Talk ASP.NET

Fri, 30 May 2008 06:04:02 GMT

Hi there, Dan Wahlin already blogged about this really incredible and handy 'Best of Simple Talk ASP.NET' eBook, which included the following topics: * ASP.NET Master Pages Tips and Tricks * Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0 * Implementing Waiting Pages in ASP.NET * Token Replacement in ASP.NET * Regular Expression Based Token Replacement in ASP.NET * A Complete URL Rewriting Solution for ASP.NET 2.0 * Take Row-Level Control of Your GridView * Enhance Your Website with ASP.NET AJAX Extensions * Calling Cross-Domain Web Services in AJAX * Using Web Services with ASP.NET * Gathering RSS Feeds using Visual Studio and RSS.NET * Getting Started with XAML * Silverlight Skinnable User Interfaces You can download the eBook here: http://www.red-gate.com/products/ants_profiler/JitnRun.pdf Hope this is usefull! and thanks Dan! gr, Robbert

My final Dev Days 2008 sessions!

Wed, 21 May 2008 07:12:40 GMT

Next thursday, I will be there, at the Dev Days 2008. I changed my plans, in agreement with a collegue of mine. I'll be visiting the sessions that are more Silverlight, WPF oriented, since we're not using the technology right now and I really am interested in this new technology.

Sitecore XPath Query vs Children.ToArray()

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:44:30 GMT

Sorting is one of the important features that are nearly always required in each project. Recently I've run into a major problem on a Sitecore / .NET project, when displaying a set of data that was sorted. Actually the sorting wasn't any problem, no it was the differende between the two ways that the data was retrieved. In this article I show you the difference between using the Children.ToArray() statement and using a Xpath Query.

Preparing for the Microsoft exam 70-551, where to begin?

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:20:29 GMT

I'm currently preparing to upgrade my MCAD.NET status to Visual Studio 2005 Certifications (yeah I know I've been lame Laughing). As an MCAD or an MCSD, you are eligible to upgrade your credential-to reflect your expertise using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005-with one or two exams.

C# 3.0 Extension Methods are beautiful!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:13:50 GMT

Microsoft had made some language enhancements and with the introduction of C# 3.0, which was released together with the Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 en with the release of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008 last february, we can now use them. And the one I really digg is Extension Methods.

Visual Studio 2008 MCTS Exams Available Now

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:11:47 GMT

Hi There, Today I received a notification from Microsoft: As of today, the three Visual Server 2008 MCTS exams are available in English for registration worldwide: * Exam 70-502 TS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Presentation Foundation Application Development * Exam 70-503 TS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Communication Foundation Application Development * Exam 70-504 TS: .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Workflow Foundation Application Development Passing any of these three exams earns credit toward a corresponding MCTS certification-verifying your deep technical skills in key Visual Studio 2008 technologies. You must also pass Exam 70-536 TS: .NET Framework, Application Development Foundation in order to complete the requirements for the certification.