DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by yesthatmcgurk

Creating Custom Activities in Windows Workflow Foundation

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:06:48 GMT

Activities are basic units in workflow execution. Activities are two types basic activities and composite activities. Basic activities are steps in the workflow and composite activities can contain other activities. Base activities are comes with Workflow Foundation and these can be used by dragging it from visual studio toolbox. We can also create custom activities that appear in the visual studio toolbox.

Code Elegance pt 1 of 2

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:04:02 GMT

The basics of Code elegance. In this two part story we'll discuss simple ways to make your code more efficient, readable, simple, and beautiful.

Where is the Enum Generic Constraint??

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:27:37 GMT

An implementation to constain enum types using generics.

Debugging Using Assertions in C#

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:11:59 GMT

Often, when debugging software, a problem manifested at one location in the code is caused much earlier, potentially making it difficult to isolate. By adding assertions to the code, assumptions can be checked and warnings issues when they are incorrect.

WPF Record Navigator (VCR) Control

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:48:18 GMT

A WPF Record Navigator (VCR) Control

Regular Expressions In MS SQL Server using CLR

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:59:36 GMT

In this post I'll show just how easy it is to make your SQL Server 2005 database support Regular Expressions through what is known as SQL CLR

Expression Tree vs Reflection.

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:46:11 GMT

Expression Trees can be used to avoid Reflection poor performance when you need to invoke methods in object that you deos not know at runtime. In this post I show you how you can access to property of objects building and compiling an expression tree.

Common Service Locator Library

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:23:11 GMT

The post describe the new Common Service Locator library which was lunched in codeplex two days ago.

Windows Workflow Foundation Key Concepts with example

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:52:24 GMT

This post discusses the key concepts of workflow foundation, authoring the sequential workflow using the visual studio 2008 designer for WF and debugging the workflows using visual studio 2008 designer.

What's new in .NET Framework 4.0?

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:59:25 GMT

Good question. There are a few things we know about Microsoft's managed application runtime and class library: There will be major updates to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Workflow Foundation (WF). According to this announcement along with this post by Steven Martin we are going to see "better support for Web 2.0 technologies like REST, POX and ATOM" and a 10x performance increase in WF.

My MVC Starter Template

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:31:05 GMT

I've been toying around with reorganizing the default MVC template and thought I would share it with people. I like the way it's come together.

A Web Based Sequence Diagram Editor

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:16:13 GMT

After I published a post about SDEdit which is a free desktop sequence diagram editor, I received a mail from Steve Hanov who wanted to introduce me with a very impressive alternative to SDEdit. Steve has created a web service that creates renditions of sequence diagrams, it is completely online and...

Regionerate Beta 2 Released

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:55:01 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of Regionerate Beta 2. The first public beta was released more than a year ago and since then, thanks to great community participation in the forums and thanks to submitted patches, many bugs were fixed and many new features were introduced. I would like to thank everyone for their great help over the past year, and I hope Regionerate will continue to evolve and grow towards a super-stable and feature-rich v1.0.

jQuery and Visual Studio

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:08:08 GMT

jQuery is a lightweight open source JavaScript library (only 15kb in size) that in a relatively short span of time has become one of the most popular

Getting Intrigued by Entity Framework

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:16:21 GMT

A demonstration of an advantage of Entity Framework over LINQ to SQL

Asp.net MVC more Form post scenarios and Ajax

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:58:06 GMT

In the flickr explorer app made with Asp.net MVC and Athena, I was trying out some form post scenarios. In this post, I will add few things regarding mvc form post and Ajax that is common to FlickrXplorer but can be used in general. Now, Asp.net MVC has some new Ajax features, one of this is the Ajax form post. With this, you can easily make your web app actions Ajax enabled. The syntax is pretty simple....

Installing an Event Log Source in .NET

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:53:29 GMT

A brief tutorial on how to write a custom installer action to register an event source and some tips on event logging in C# programs.

LINQ Farm: LINQ to XML and Line Numbers

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:41:38 GMT

There are times when it is helpful to know the line number of a node in an XML file. Reporting the line number of a node can be a helpful to users, particularly if you want to report an error. It can also be convenient to search for a node by line number, but that can, of course, be a very risky endeavor, as documents can be modified accidentally, and their line numbers changed without notice.

What is this Managed Extensibility Framework thing all about ?

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:31:12 GMT

Another IoC Container From Microsoft ? Add-in Framework ? What the heck is it ? Sidar tries to answer.

Handling Events by Executing Commands in WPF

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:44:49 GMT

Shows how to hook up a Command in a View-Model so that it is executed when an event is raised in a WPF View.

SQL - Step By Step Installation of SQL Server 2008

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:01:04 GMT

Step by step installation of Microsoft SQL server 2008.

Searching for files using LINQ

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:16:05 GMT

An LINQ example

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:

That Agile Thing

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:59:35 GMT

Agile introduction is an interesting problem. One that I have learned to avoid. I am not feeling comfortable standing up to a business owner and saying (paraphrased, of course), "if you will do it my way, your life will be better". At least, not about development methodologies, I have no problem saying that about techniques, design or tools. The reason that I don't feel comfortable saying that is that there are too many issues surrounding agile introduction to talk confidently about the benefits.

Simulate a Windows Service Using ASP.NET to Run Scheduled Jobs

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:46:02 GMT

Back in 2005 Omar Al Zabir (Co-founder and CTO of PageFlakes) posted an article on the CodeProject web site Simulate a Windows Service using ASP.NET to run scheduled jobs that many of you have probably seen. If you liked the idea at the time but didn't do anything with it, you may want to take another look now. In the comments, dselkirk provided an alternative that really cleans things up that Erichero then improved upon slightly and converted to C#.