DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by oazabir

Delete entity or collection in Linq to SQL without getting them

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:16:15 GMT

In order to delete an entity or a collection of entity in Linq to SQL, you have to first get them and then delete them. This requires additional database roundtrip. Here's a strongly typed maintenance free way to delete entities directly using their primary key.

How to convince developers and management to use automated unit test f

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 07:01:51 GMT

Introducing automated unit testing in the middle of your product development is hard, especially when you have a live product without thousands of features and being sold to customers. It's incredibly hard to take some break in development and invest the time in building automated unit test where everyone is so forced to build new features only. This article tells you about some ways to convince Developers and then senior Management to take the time to write automated unit tests for a better future.

Solving common problems with Compiled Queries in Linq to Sql for high

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:01:02 GMT

If you are using Linq to SQL, instead of writing regular Linq Queries, you should be using Compiled Queries. if you are building an ASP.NET web application that's going to get thousands of hits per hour, the execution overhead of Linq queries is going to consume too much CPU and make your site slow. There's a runtime cost associated with each and every Linq Query you write.

How to convince developers and management to use automated unit test

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:30:46 GMT

Automating unit test for AJAX websites is hard, especially when you already have a product live or sold at customer. The initial investment is just way too high to see past it and realize the benefits of automated unit test. This article is tells you how to sell automated unit test to your engineering lead and then sell it to management in order to reduce manual QA load and deliver new features faster.

Json.NET 3.5 Beta 1 - Big performance gains, Compact Framework support

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:46:04 GMT

New in this beta release of Json.NET 3.5 are big performance improvements (400%), Compact Framework support and lots more.

Tips and Tricks to rescue overdue project

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:24:36 GMT

One of my friends, who runs his own offshore development shop, was having nightmare situation with one of his customers. He's way overdue on a release, the customer is screaming everyday, he's paying his team from his own pocket, customer is sending an ever increasing list of changes and so on. Here's how we discussed some ideas to get out of such a situation and make sure it does not repeat in future

An Agile Developer's workflow when SCRUM is used

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:05:11 GMT

If you are planning to start SCRUM at your company, you might need to train developers and QA to get into the mindset of an Agile developer. SCRUM is only successful when the developers and QA get into the habit of following the principles of SCRUM by heart. So, sometimes you need to offer training or do trial sprints to give some room to your developers how to get used to the working fashion of SCRUM. Giving them a handy workflow diagram that shows how they should work helps soothe the steep learning curve required for non-super star developers. I made such a workflow while I was teaching SCRUM at my friend's company. The following diagram was printed and hung over the desk of each and every developer to help them grasp the culture of SCRUM quickly.

ASP.NET website Continuous Integration+Deployment using CruiseControl.

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:31:04 GMT

You can setup continuous integration and automated deployment for your web application using CruiseControl.NET, Subversion, MSBuild and Robocopy. I will show you how you can automatically build the entire solution, email build report to developers and QA, deploy latest code in IIS all using CruiseControl.NET every N minutes.

Best practices for creating websites in IIS 6

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:46:02 GMT

A list of steps that I always take while creating ASP.NET websites in IIS 6. It ensures better performance maintainability, and scalability of your application.

Organize ASP.MVC Controllers in Namespace and specific Urls

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:11:55 GMT

Distribute your ASP.NET MVC controllers in namespaces and subfolders and ensure the controllers can only be access from specific subfolder. For example, controllers that belong to MvcWebAPI.Admin.User can only be accessed from /MvcWebAPI/Admin/User not from /MvcWebAPI/User.

Create REST API using ASP.NET MVC that speaks both Json and Xml

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:06:52 GMT

MvcWebAPI is a collection of library that helps creating RESTful Web API for your website. You can directly return objects or collections from controllers. The library takes care of property serializing them into Json or plain Xml. The library also allows Action methods to consume objects or collections directly as it takes care of underlying deserialization from Json or Xml.

HTTP handler to combine multiple files, cache and deliver compressed

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:18:27 GMT

An HTTP handler that combines multiple CSS, Javascript or URL into one response for faster page load. It can combine, compress and cache response which results in faster page load and better scalability of web application

Loading static content in ASP.NET pages from different domain for fast

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:20:41 GMT

Generally we put static content (images, css, js) of our website inside the same web project. Thus they get downloaded from the same domain like www.dropthings.com. As browser can only open two concurrent connections, all of these download only two at once. If you move the static content to a separate domain, browser can download more content in parallel and thus load the page faster. This HttpFilter parses the page output and automatically moves all static content links to a different domain as specified.

Open Source ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Portal - new and improved

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:46:03 GMT

A new release of Dropthings, open source ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX portal. Features many performance and scalability techniques and a new design. Showcases: - 10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets. - Fast ASP.NET page rendering by deferred script loading. - Load large amount of Javascripts in batch and thus load AJAX sites a lot faster. - Fast Streaming AJAX proxy that solves double downloading problems and continuously streams content from external domain. - Making best use of cache for high performance website. - On-demand UI loading on AJAX websites.

Deploy ASP.NET MVC on IIS 6, solve 404, compression and performance pr

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:35:23 GMT

Load dynamic pages 5 to 20 times faster by compressing response on the fly. Serve static files (js, html, css) 10 to 100 times faster by compressing and caching their content. Improve repeated site load time by maximizing caching on browser.

Ensure - load javascript and html snippet on-demand

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:14:34 GMT

A tiny javascript library that provides a handy function "ensure" which allows you to load Javascript, HTML, CSS on-demand and then execute your code. Ensure ensures that relevent Javascript and HTML snippets are already in the browser DOM before executing your code that uses them.

Flickr web app with MVC preview 3

Sat, 31 May 2008 07:46:25 GMT

In previous release of ASP.net MVC you had RenderView, which is lets you render your UI right from the controller and controller classes are with void return type, now with new release this is slightly changed. In case of the FLickrViewer app, I have a PhotoController, where I did the following changes...

UFRAME: goodness of UpdatePanel and IFRAME combined

Mon, 26 May 2008 16:16:03 GMT

UFrame simulates the behavior of IFRAME on a DIV. Any page can be loaded inside a DIV and hyperlink navigation and form posts happen within the DIV. As a result, a regular page can start providing AJAX features without ever writing any AJAX code. ASP.NET MVC websites can now use UFrame instead of UpdatePanel.

Fast web page loading by defering and combining multiple javascripts

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:01:12 GMT

A web page can load a lot faster and feel faster if the Javascripts files referenced on the page can be loaded after the visible content has been loaded and multiple Javascripts files can be batched into one download. This handy technique combines external javascripts references into one script tag and serves multiple javascripts using a Http Handler.

Basic WPF: Stylize standard tabs into Aqua Gel

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:01:02 GMT

A graphical guide to chaning the basic look ot tab control using WPF styles.

Fast page loading by moving ASP.NET AJAX scripts after visible content

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:54:23 GMT

Learn how to move all scripts on a page at the end of the body content so that page content is displayed much faster and the scripts download behind the scene without blocking browser rendering. Get a fast loading website with this simple ASP.NET Response Filter.

Reduce website download time by heavily compressing PNG and JPEG

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:14:22 GMT

Use some advance compression tools like OptiPNG, AdvPNG and jpegtran to compress PNG and JPEG on your site and save 30% to 50% download time. See some handy powershell scripts than can run these tools on all your png and jpeg files and compress them all at once.

Reduce website download time by heavily compressing PNG and JPEG

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:39:28 GMT

10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:31:02 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 has many secrets, when revealed, can give you big performance and scalability boost. For instance, there are secret bottlenecks in Membership and Profile provider which can be solved easily to make authentication and authorization faster. Furthermore, ASP.NET Http pipeline can be tweaked to avoid executing unnecessary code that gets hit on each and every request...

Book: Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:16:03 GMT

If you think you're well versed in ASP.NET, think again. This exceptional guide gives you a master class in site building with this framework. You learn how to develop rock-solid web portal applications similar to My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Pageflakes using ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Workflow Foundation, LINQ, and .NET 3.5, along with ASP.NET 3.5 -- sites that can withstand millions of hits every day while surviving scalability and security pressures.