Category · 113 posts
Cool Articles
2006
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CLR Generics Vs. C++ Templates - some good links
An interesting question in last night's talk triggered lost links I had about an interesting subject: What are the main differences between CLR Generics and C++ Templates? Here are some good links:…
2005
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[Article] Unit Testing Tips - Write Maintainable Unit Tests That Will Save You Time And Tears
My latest MSDN Magazine article titled " Unit Testing Tips - Write Maintainable Unit Tests That Will Save You Time And Tears " is out in the online January Issue here. It's based on real issues, guidelines I've…
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Nice article on ordering code construction tasks by Jeremy Miller
Jeremy Miller has some sound advice and an interesting read on the order of code construction (a nice "Where should I start building my project, and how do I continue to implement the various pieces of the…
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Nice article: Agile Top-Down
"There's a recent thread on the Scrum list about how an executive or highly-placed manager could get Agile going. I've been one of those guys, and I know a bit about Agile, and here's how I'd proceed. First, focus…
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Fixing MSDN's bad DPAPI examples (And what's DPAPI anyway?)
DPAPI (Data Protection API) is something that most developers still don't know enough about. The good news is that working with it is much easier with .NET 2.0 and VS 2005, but in the meantime, if you want to work with…
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Great article on Reflection and Performance on MSDN Mag
Joel Pobar (master of all things dynamic) wrote a great piece on reflection in this month’s MSDN Mag.. Reflection: Dodge Common Performance Pitfalls to Craft Speedy Applications [via Brad Abrams ] Just skimming this…
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[Article]Simplify Data Layer Unit Testing using Enterprise Services
My first MSDN Magazine article is (finally!) up: Simplify Data Layer Unit Testing using Enterprise Services "Despite all the hype surrounding unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) many developers don't see them…
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SQL Injection Attacks by Example
This nice article details a step by step approach of what the author needed to do to try and hack some intranet site (by request). It then details all the mitigation steps needed to make sure something like that can…
2004
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Comparing C++ unit testing frameworks
Noel Llopis writes on the TDD mailing list: I just had to choose a unit-testing framework for a new project at work, so I went ahead and evaluated some of the major contenders for C++: CppUnit, Boost.Test, CppUnitLite,…
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The Meta Programming System - The next paradigm?
I don't even know where to begin after reading this very thought provoking article by Sergey Dmitriev , one of the fathers of IntelliJ IDEA (one of my favorite IDEs). The article talks about the "Meta Programming…
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Article: Continuous Database Integration by Peter Hancock
Peter Hancock has written a very interesting and real world article about his way of creating an automated database deployment task. It's not a simple thing, but it's possible with a bit of work. He's using NAnt,…
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Mitigating malicious plug-ins in your application
Plugins and security - interesting topic. barely touched. Peter shows and explains very nicely the some of the reasons and ways malicious add-ins could tamer with your application, and some very good ways of mitigating…
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Solving Team Development with web projects hell
I've been inspired by this article to change the way one of the teams at work has been handling a large solution. We had a big problem with a large solution (over 100 projects) that had many web services and asp.net…
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Paper: Developing Identity-Aware ASP.NET Applications
via Ohad's blog: “The Microsoft Solutions for Security (MSS) team is proud to announce the release and availability of Developing Identity-Aware ASP.NET Applications , a new paper in the Microsoft Identity and Access…
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Omer is doing some serious blogging
Just wanted to give a shout out and “Re-spect!” for Omer Van Kloeten , who, during the past few weeks has been able to come up with some real serious and deep stuff in his weblog. Here's a partial list of the stuff he's…
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The Regulator featured on MSDN Magazine, and some version updates coming
MSDN Magazine has an article by James Avery called : Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now . I was very flattered to learn that my little adventure into regular expressions, The Regulator , is named in…
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Add Support for "Set" Collections to .NET
One of the missing collection classes in .Net is one that's not as often used, but when you need it, boy, it's really missing, is the Set . You know - Set theory (”Group Theory”) and all, including Intesect, join and so…
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Wintellect Web-exclusive articles
From Dino's blog , it looks like the guys at Wintellect have started their own set of exclusive articles publishing from employees.There is a very good starting set over there already. Now, if they'd only publish an RSS…
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Missed the Google lecture, but here's a short summary
I didn't get to go to the Google lecture like I wanted to, but I hear it was really good! here's a blurb from the Google Blog about this lecture: Ido Kenan, NRG Maariv has filed a story about Google's ethics committee .…
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[Google Lecture] Finding needles in a 20 TB haystack, 200 million times per day
Finding needles in a 20 TB haystack, 200 million times per day. Dr Eran Gabber, Google Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Monday - 17/5/2004, 12:00 - 14:00, Schreiber - 309 Abstract: Google faces two large technical…
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Good article about ReaderWriterLock and Multi Threading
MultiThreading in .Net is an important issue. Sebastien writes a good article about multithreading using C# examples, mainly talking about the benefits of the ReaderWriterLock object and using the “ Dispose ” pattern.…
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Code DOM articles galore
Omer has posted a set of articles regarding the Code DOM (the set of classes that allow you to dynamically write and generate code on the fly using the .Net framework for the .Net framework) Some good stuff in there. I…
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A .Net LDAP library + article
Oh, this should come in handy in one of my upcoming things, I think: Novell has a .Net C# LDAP library with an article that explains how to do the important stuff with it. I still can't find the download link for said…
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True Binary Serialization and Compression of Datasets
Scott Galloway points, in the a comment to this post, to an article that explains how to do binary serialization and compression of Datasets , which can come in handy when you're looking for something like that..
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Very good intro article to Test Driven Development, but lots more needed
Just discovered this very good article that explains what Test Driven Development is all about and gives a good first glimpse and overview, including simple exercises to try yourself, on the whole matter. Very good read…
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SQL Server 2000 replication white paper
This white paper is especially helpful for users who are new to SQL Server 2000 replication. Instead of providing answers to the most common replication errors, this white paper: Introduces important replication…
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Article: Troubleshooting Stored Procedure Recompilation
Josh posted about recompilation problems he had when using #temp tables in his sprocs. He then got a great comment from Roman referring to this article : Troubleshooting Stored Procedure Recompilation One more little…
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Crypto for everyone
Although I've used the Crypto classes a bit before, it was a bit of a steep learning curve for me. This nice and simple article (+code!) seems to be just what I was looking for at that time: Crypto for everyone (via…
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Interesting stuff I missed this week
I need to remind myself : I need to check out the outlook search plugin P/Invoke Interop Headers for C# - Every tried to write a P/Invoke signature by hand? It can be challenging for some parts of the Win32 API.…
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Getting a little closer to SOA
Fabrice has written a very good and informative article about what SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is all about. Getting a little closer to SOA If you're not sure what SOA really means, but you keep hearing this…
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2 new articles
Steve Maine just got his first MSDNAA article published: Introduction to Anonymous Methods and Higher-Order Procedures in C# In other news, MSDNAA was cool enough to re-publish one of my old articles: Winforms Data…
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My article on Microsoft.com!
Quick, before it disappears! My Log file to XML article is appearing on www.microsoft.com ! (Thanks for the tip, Darren )
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Scheduling games
Found this one on my referrer list: Scheduled Games , people post about their experiences about scheduling games withing a project. Very familiar stuff in there, and my story was put there as one of the last points to…
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The humble programmer
Reading the ACM Turing award lectures really opened my jaw the other day. In his lecture, " The Humble Programmer ", Edsger W Dijkstra is promoting the kind of ideas that even today a lot of developers that I know don't…
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The RSA encryption algorithm - step by step
This very cool site shows you, step by step, how the RSA encryption algorithm works. While I've read about the algorithm, it's great to see such a simple example that explains so much so easily. (link via Michael )
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Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness
Speaking of bad designs (well, I'm sure somewhere in the world someone just mentioned it): Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness [via This is broken ]
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From VB6 to VB.Net - important webcasts
Quoting Duncan MacKenzie A series of 15 webcasts & lab exercises for the VB6 programmer... (see the full list here) MSDN Webcast: Program Execution in the 21st Century - Level 200 2/3/2004 1:00 PM - 2/3/2004 2:30 PM…
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[Tool] Easier log parsing with Log Parser
Speaking of parsing log files , There's a little known tool called LogParser , and it's from the Microsoft IIS team. This very powerful parser can easily parse various kinds of log files and you can actually query…
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New MSDN article: Turn Your Log Files into Searchable Data Using Regex and the XML Classes
Thanks to Kent , another article of mine has just been published on MSDN: Turn Your Log Files into Searchable Data Using Regex and the XML Classes This is one of my favorites, as it shows a real life example of…
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Debugging Unit tests using the VS.net debugger
[ Update : Bah ! how silly am I? Turns out you can do the same thing I outline here only much much easier using the amazing NUnit-Addin. It has a "Test with Debugger" command that allows you to do just what I explain…
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SOA reading list
Great. Now I have a whole lot of reading to do on SOA , courtesy of Darrell .
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Some cool links
While I promised myself I would not go down the linky road that Mike Gunderloy has managed to turn into an art form, here I go just the same. Jon Galloway points to useful classes and libraries posted by the C# team on…
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Query Analyzer Tricks
Here are some small cool tips from SQLServerCentral : Query Analyzer Tricks (note: you need to register on the site, but registration is free)
2003
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Jan does cool stuff: nice article and cool extension to the winform data grid
Jan is on a role. First, his Object Spaces article got published on MSDN, then he releases the Extended Winforms DataGrid . Great work.
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Another article of mine published on MSDN: Search Dynamically for Plug-Ins
Search Dynamically for Plug-Ins Summery: "This article is an extension to my previous article about plug-ins . I encourage you to take a look at that before diving into this article. That said, my main goal in this…
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Risk Management
Darrel points to the MSF Risk Management Discipline . Indeed, this is something I believe to be very important, however, I did not put my money where my mouth is, and although I've read about it , I never got the chance…
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more SQL optimization resources and a bonus tip
Michal suggests a few more SQL optimization links in return for my optimization experience : sql-server-performance.com SQL Server 2000 Performance Tuning Tools Performance Category on SQLTeam.com Performance Tuning…
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My First *real* SQL optimization (and some good resources)
Yeah, I know how to design a database and normalize tables, but this is some optimization stuff I never had to do. It was fun! We recently encountered the task of optimizing a stored procedure that was taking very long…
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Good stuff: New book, Remoting for imbeciles,CodeSmith 2.5 RC1, and OMG 0.2
Julia Lerman points to a hearty recommendation for this book: Code Generation in .Net and I agree. It seems pretty cool. I'll add it to my "really wish we celebrated Xmas" list :) Leon Bambrick writes the Quick and…
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Good Article: Strong Names and Security in the .NET Framework
Sam gentile has recommended all those who feel a bit "lacking" when it comes to assembly security and strong names (me included) to read this fine article on the subject: Security Briefs: Strong Names and Security in…
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Resources: how to move data between application tiers
I'm faced with this question, and was also asked about it. Here are three articles from Ms that show different sides of the same story: Recommendations for Data Access Strategies This one explains in detail how to store…
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Homesick, EIF and a session state FAQ
I dropped of the Mrs. this morning at the airport going back home to Israel. Will see her in a month and a half. Boy was that hard. Luckily it was a pretty swift goodbye since we were almost late for the plane. While…
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My first MSDN article is out: Creating a plugin framework
Update : If you can't find the source code in the article to download, you can also get it from here . It took a looong time and some pretty heavy paperwork, but my first ever MSDN article is up and about on the ASP.Net…
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Good advice for presentations, scholarly and otherwise
A helpful essay by William Germano, "The Scholarly Lecture: How to Stand and Deliver," from The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i14/14b01501.htm -- Edward Tufte , November 27, 2003
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Step by step:an asynchronous sockets terminal client Vb.Net
Carl Franklin (of .Net Rocks fame) has made available a Sockets with .Net training video. “ This is a step-by-step how-to video that shows you how to create an asynchronous sockets terminal client program in VB.NET 2003…
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Technical writing - The complete idiot's guide
Leon Bambrick was probably in a really good mood, because he read my previous rant about how hard it is to write technical help docs and decided he would write a short guide in the comments to that post. It turned out…
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[Article X 2] 2 more of mine published on MSDNAA
Two more articles posted on MSDNAA : Introduction to Test-driven Development with NUnit and the NUnit Add-in This article explores Test-Driven development (TDD) techniques. Fun with Unit Tests–Testing Abstract Classes…
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[Article/Code]: Easy Proxy handling through the ProxyFactory and ProxyInfo classes
I had to make The Regulator support Proxy servers, so I dug in to how the WebProxy class works, and with a little help from Darren , I managed to get it up and running. In the process, I wrote a little helper class that…
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[Article] on MSDNAA: Creating a Generic Site-To-Rss Tool
My Site-To-Rss article was just published on MSDNAA : Creating a Generic Site-To-Rss Tool
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Describing and evaluating API usability at Microsoft
BradA (wouldn't it be cool to just write “Brabrams“?:) posts about Describing and evaluating API usability at Microsoft . It's a power point presentation that describes just what you should be thinking about when…
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Excellent TDD articles, and a Code Kata
"TANSTAAFL! - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." I liked this acronym so much I had to post it. I ran across it in one of a group of amazing articles that depict working in test driven development: Test Driven…
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Getting a focus on performance - some new pages
Brad Adams's performance team just posted their own page on GotDotNet . Very cool. That page also points to the MSDN performance center , which currently has lots more information. It's great to see performance focused…
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The "Don box" of windows installer?
Rob Mensching has been working at MS, primarily on the Office Setup/Deployment team, for the past 4 years or so; It figures that when he has something to say about Installer Merge Modules , it's wise to sit down and…
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Skype Rocks!
I just realized something - Skype totally and utterly rocks! It would be really cool to get to talk with some of the people I've been IM'ing with for the past few months. So if you'd like to voice me, feel free. My User…
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Real Progress Bars in Web Application
I was fighting with this a while ago and I think I found at article right to the point on the subject: Real Progress Bars in Web Application “The key thing for creating Progress Bar in a web application, is the…
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The Exception Model
Without even skimming through it first I'm letting you know that Chris brumme posted another “post”: The Exception Model Just a little something to read in bed. Oh, I forgot to mention. It's 11,200 words, by the way.…
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Unit Test Your .NET Data Access Layer: Where are the Mocks?
I was real excited to see an article up on MSDN that discusses Test Driven development (via Ashutosh Nilkanth ). Not only that, it discusses the issue of testing database related code inside your unit tests - a messy…
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Creating Doc-Centric Apps in WinForms, part 1 of 3
Chris Chris Sells wrote a 3 -part series titled “ Creating Doc-Centric Apps in WinForms “: This 3-part series really belonged as a chapter in my WinForms book, but after doubling the estimated size of the book (not to…
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Engineering Notebook: An Extreme Programming Episode
In order to demonstrate XP (eXtreme Programming) practices, Bob Koss (RSK) and Bob Martin (RCM) will pair program a simple application while you watch like a fly on the wall. We will use test first design and a lot of…
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[New article]: Creating a generic Site-To-RSS tool (site scraping)
It's been a long and very interesting week for me. I know it's weird hearing that the week I start looking for a new job, but it's true. I've been getting lots of interesting offers from people, especially from the…
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HOW TO: Encrypt the settings in your web.config
We're currently looking into this subject matter, and this article was a big leap forward in our efforts: HOW TO: Use the ASP.NET Utility to Encrypt Credentials and Session State Connection Strings
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Sharing ASP.NET user controls accross projects
We recently published a How-To on support.microsoft.com for how to share user controls across projects. In talking with customers, one of the things they would like to do is have a common set of reusable web UI, say a…
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[Article] Introduction to Test-driven development with NUnit and the NUnit-Add-in
It's been a while since my last article, but this one has been lurking inside me for the past month or so. It's the first of a series I plan to write about Unit-Testing in .Net (well, maybe just another one down the…
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Asp.Net error handling
Here' are two ways to incorporate global error handling in ASP.NET: Implement IHttpHandler Use the HttpApplication.Error event And here's a more in-depth article about this subject (also points to…
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.Net resources abound at ARK 3.0
Benjamin J. J. Voigt posts what seems to be a very valuable .net resource: ARK 3.0 . Lots of cool and interesting articles in there, including presentations and other goodies. In first glance I really liked these…
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I'm in the "contributor spotlight" on MSDNAA
Looks like one of my articles on MSDN-AA just made the contributor spotlight section on the front page! Check it out, it's down there on the right lower corner. I'm am honored :)
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More geeky streaming lectures
After I posted about the NerdTV , another gem occurred on my path. In a comment to that post, Michael Favro wrote: “Then you'll love the Multi-University/Research Laboratory Seminar Series at…
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NerdTV
There's nothing like a good techie streamed presentation to get me going in the late hours of the night. Yes.My name is Roy and I'm a geek. And this looks to be one of my favorite sites in the near future: University of…
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Issues and solutions with Process and Request Identity in ASP.NET
Just found a great KB article that explains how deal with all kinds of permission and identity issues when doing stuff from ASP.NET. I've highlighted the sections so you can see all the tasks that could use…
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SQL Server Professional: System-Supplied Trace UDFs
Most of you have probably created your own SQL Server user-defined functions (UDFs), but did you know that Microsoft ships a fair number of its own UDFs, especially in the most recent SP3? In this article, Baya…
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The Hyperlinked Organization
A post on the Xtreme Programming mailing list pointed to this article: The Hyperlinked Organization (David Weinberger) It's a wonderful read. Here's a quote: .. Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with…
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Service-Oriented Architecture and Programming
Just finished watching these two MSDN TV shows: SOAP: Service-Oriented Architecture and Programming, Pt. 1 SOAP: Service-Oriented Architecture and Programming, Pt. 2 which are just the same lecture by Don box split in…
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Unit testing links, and NUnit Add-in rocks
While browsing around Jamie's weblog , I noticed two very interesting links concerning Unit testing: Test-Driven Development In .NET Unit Testing and Test-First Development Next week I'm planning on opening the first of…
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MSDN could have had me
The upcoming MSDN magazine will feature this article: Plug-Ins : Let Users Add Functionality to Your .NET Applications with Macros and Plug-Ins by Jason Clark Damn. Sounds like my two articles about plug-ins in .Net…
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Showing the "Browse For Folder" dialog
Another one from Derek Stone . Boy this guy seems to have all the answers for me today. This time it's a simple class that shows the “Browse for folder” dialog in VB.Net. It uses the…
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A good introduction to IT blogging and blogs in general
For a while now I've been looking for a way to introduce people(mainly other developers) to weblogging and RSS feeds, but could not find a good intro that “gets” it. Now I think I've come across just that: Blogs:…
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Hosting the CLR - the native approach
A while ago I posted about a user group session which involved explanations about CLR hosting, among others. Hosting can be done either through COM interfaces or through native C or C++. Although the lecturer talked…
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Writing a product review
Mike has more writer's advice. This time about writing a product review . “ Today I want to talk a bit about writing product reviews. Having spent quite a while as the Product Editor for MCP Magazine , this is an area…
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MSDE - The missing piece
Thanks to Mike Gunderloy for pointing out this great article on MSDE. It should have been entitled : Everything you wanted to ask about MSDE
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ASP.Net dialog hell - a little easier..?
Jesse helps ASP.Net developers save themselves from dialog hell by posting some base classes that can be used to more easily create web-based dialogs. That's worth like a medal or something.
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Advice for article writers - part II
Mike Gunderloy has put together part II of his advice for newbie article writers . A must read if you have ever wanted to publish an article and didn't know where to start.
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Developing Software in Visual Studio .NET with Non-Administrative Privileges
There was a big discussion not long ago in the .Net community whether it is feasible to actually do Dev work as a non-admin. While the benefits are very big for the end user, a lot of people insisted that it is just too…
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Make your app support plugins
Another one of mine made MSDNAA - Make your app support plugins .
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It's so hardcore you could say it's CLR Porn
Chris brumme managed to create yet another brain killer “post” (at 9,000+ words it's hardly that). Go drench your thirst for knowledge . Highly recommended.
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Coding tips and tricks by Eric Gunnerson
Here is a nice article by Eric Gunnerson with various tips and tricks. I really liked the first one : “What is the difference between a Windows Forms project and a Console Application project? The somewhat surprising…
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Server.Transfer vs. Response.Redirect
I was recently faced with this question: What is the difference between Server.Transfer() and Response.Redirect()? I didn't really know the answer, because I'm more of a winforms kinda guy. However, my wife pointed me…
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Resolving DataSet Conflicts
One last one before I go to sleep. Resolving DataSet Conflicts Discusses working with data in a disconnected state and provides one possible solution for correcting DataSet conflicts. [ MSDN- Visual Basic .NET ]
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Broken window theory
Everyone should know about the Broken window theory . "Researchers studying urban decay wanted to find out why some neighborhoods escape the ravages of the inner city, and others right next door—with the same…
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Debugging in Visual Basic .NET
If you're a VB 6.0 developer who recently moved(or is planning to move) to VB.Net, the IDE and debugger are a much stroger and meaner beast than ever before. Debugging in Visual Basic .NET is a nice intro to all the…
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Asynchronous Execution in Visual Basic .NET
Nice MSDN article: Asynchronous Execution in Visual Basic .NET besides the obvious "How can my secondary thread talk to the GUI without hanging the application", there is a wide discussion on threads, ProcessThread,…
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My article on MSDNAA
One of my articles just made the MSDNAA site. Using Regular Expressions and XML Classes to Parse Your Log Files I'm totally flattered.
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Log4net How-To
If you want to start instrumenting your application for tracing and debugging, log4net is a good tool. This article explains how to take your first steps to implement it inyour applications. Very nice.
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BitVector32 in the real world
A little known(and little documented) class in the framework is the System.Collections.Specialized.BitVector32 . It allows working easily with 32 bit integers, which are used extensively in optimized environments as a…
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Nice performance counters article
I was going to write an article about performance counters and their use in .Net, but then I found this very nice article on the subject.
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User Interface Design For Programmers
Just discovered this gem on Joel's site: User Interface Design For Programmers It's a full book, and its very very good an entertaining. Recommended!
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Data Binding Woes - A Simple Solution
Wooho! Found the solution to the Data Binding problem I was having . I got it from this free book chapter: How to use Data Views from this book . I'll explain the problem and then the solution. Problem : How do you get…
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AppDomains Reloaded
Oh man . Reading Chris Brumme’s Post/Book Chapter about AppDomains was a bit like the first Matrix Movie. I figured I was in for a ride, but I never knew just how in-depth it was going to be. After the beginning, I kept…
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Nice DataBinding In Winforms Article
A nice article about Data-Binding in Winforms: http://www.akadia.com/services/dotnet_databinding.html Among other things, it explains about the Currency Manager, BindingContext,Master-Detail displays - all the stuff…
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[New Article] Using Regex and The XML Classes To Parse Your Log Files
Phew. My new article is up. It's my first one for the O'Reilly network, and my first "real" article ever. You could say I'm a bit excited :) " Summery : Most systems these days can generate log files to store data about…
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.Net Thread Pool Article
Jeffrey Richter has an interesting article about the .Net Thread Pool.
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Another Cool Dynamic Loading Article
Following my two plug-in articles( this , that ) , I found another interesting article that deals with the subject of dynamically loading stuff from unreferenced assemblies: Loading Classes On The Fly It shows some more…
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Articles, Articles, Articles!
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