Articles filed in category 'Tips'

Ken Getz' .Finalize() column.

Ken Getz Finalize Column Jan/Feb 2006

Ken Getz - May/June 2005 Finalize column

Ken Getz finalize column - July/Aug 06

Ken Getz Mar/Apr 05 Finalize COlumn

Ken Getz Nov/Dec 05 Finalize Column

Since the first announcements of Microsoft's new .NET platform, ActiveX control developers and tool vendors have been scrambling to adjust their products and their marketing strategies. This article reports on the changing component market and points you to many of the newly announced .NET Developer Tools.Since the first announcements of Microsoft's new .NET platform, ActiveX control developers and tool vendors have been scrambling to adjust their products and their mark...eting strategies. This article reports on the changing component market and points you to many of the newly announced .NET Developer Tools.Since the first announcements of Microsoft's new .NET platform, ActiveX control developers and tool vendors have been scrambling to adjust their products and their marketing strategies.This article reports on the changing component market and points you to many of the newly announced .NET Developer Tools.Since the first announcements of Microsoft's new .NET platform, ActiveX control developers and tool vendors have been scrambling to adjust their products and their marketing strategies.This article reports on the changing component market and points you to many of the newly announced .NET Developer Tools.See More

This page is dedicated to non-technical aspects of our lives as developers.Look here in each issue for commentary and insight into the struggles and joys of balancing life and logic.

ADO.NET has a strong and powerful disconnected model.It allows programmers to build a web of in-memory objects and relate contents coming from different tables and even from different data sources. When inter-related tables are involved with the process of query and update, code strategies are important to preserve scalability and maintain high performance. Sometimes compound queries can be more effectively accomplished splitting queries; sometimes not. Submitting change...s in batch mode, exploiting the DataSet and its disconnected model, often appears as the perfect solution. However, what if you need to move dozens of MB? The serialization mechanism of the DataSet would increase that by a factor. Tradeoffs is the magic word.See More

Do you want to save keystrokes?Do you want to ease maintenance? Do you want inline information about the code structures that you're working with? How about statement completion? Are you interested in increasing the potential for code reuse? Do you want your applications to run faster and require less memory? Do you prefer to have users find bugs or do you prefer to find them yourself?

Jan/Feb 2011 Doc Detective

Rod Paddock Editorial Article November December 04 Issue

Take a look at third-party applications and code before sitting down to develop because the tools you need to build your masterpiece might already be available. Jason shows us some clever shortcuts as he builds a weather app.

One of the very many cool new features in Visual Studio 2005 is the debugger visualizer.With debugger visualizers, developers are able to define what information they would like to see about a particular .NET class or even one of their own classes during debug mode. And as the name suggests, you can also choose how you would like to visualize these details.

Software developers live and breathe debugging. It’s an essential and integral part of our day-to-day job. Whenever we are confronted with any bug in code, our typical first question is, “How can I reproduce this issue?” Any problems that cannot be reproduced are generally considered tricky to resolve. In order to really understand the challenges with debugging hard to reproduce issues, let’s walk through a few scenarios here.

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Tips and Tricks from the Doc Detective

Visual Studio 2005 will ship some great new controls, but suppose you want your own control to play in the Data Sources Window?In this article, I'll explain how the Data Sources Window in Visual Studio 2005 will enable you to extend the list of controls supported for Drag Once Databinding. I'll show you how to create a PhoneBox control and an AddressBlock UserControl.

How MS-DOS nearly ended Rod's software career before it had even begun...

Do you test your software before you release it? Of course you do, but are you testing it as effectively as you could be? When do you start testing? How do you know when you have tested it enough? Who does the testing? This article will explore the various strategies of creating a comprehensive testing process for your software development project.

In my book “eXtreme .NET” I introduce a team of developers who are learning how to improve their ability to deliver great software. They’re learn how to use XP (eXtreme Programming) techniques to improve the way they deliver software. In this article, we’ll continue to follow this team as they learn about Resharper, a tool they are considering using to help with refactoring their code.

This is the first in a series of what I hope will be one of your favorite columns for years to come! I am the host of a talk show on the Internet called .NET Rocks! (see advert), in which I interview the movers and shakers in the .NET community.

Free. Marketing professionals have known for years the positive results that this word produces. They use the word free to lure you in so that they can sell you something else. Luckily for you, that will not be the case in this article. All of the goodies, resources, tools, and utilities I mention are all free. They won't cost you a dime.In this article, I will share with you the results of my search for zero-cost resources for the ASP.NET developer. Space restrictions l...imit the depth to which I can discuss each item that I've found, but my descriptions should be enough for you decide if you would like to research the material further.See More

March/April 08 Finalize() article by Ken Getz

Using code snippets can make it quick to add common code pieces to your application. Creating your own snippets allows you to create a library of custom code pieces and share them with other developers.

.NET Rocks Carl Franklin Column Sep/Oct 05

One of the important features of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) is drag and drop.Using a mouse you can drag and drop a file from one location to another or you may drag a file and drop it onto an application to launch it.

May/June 2008 MVP Corner by Jean-Paul S. BoodhooSo you have researched agile development techniques, and are all fired up to put them into practice.Armed with this drive and passion to learn, what are some steps that you as an individual can take to incrementally grow your knowledge and practice of agile development techniques?

Extend your knowledge of inheritance to more easily extend your applications.

As we compete in the global economy, companies are increasingly developing applications for the world audience. Part of the challenges in globalizing is in understanding the language and culture of the local audience. An application written for the American market may not be useable in the Asian market. Hence, special considerations must be factored in when designing your application for the world market; in essence-you need to localize your application.As we compete in ...the global economy, companies are increasingly developing applications for the world audience.Part of the challenges in globalizing is in understanding the language and culture of the local audience. An application written for the American market may not be useable in the Asian market. Hence, special considerations must be factored in when designing your application for the world market; in essence?you need to localize your application.See More

You can create your own Windows Forms, Web Forms, or class templates to reuse code and maximize your productivity in Visual Studio 2003.

November/December 06 MVP Corner

Gaining the full potential of object binding requires more than just dragging and dropping your properties onto forms. In this article I’ll present a few tricks you need to know to get the most from your object binding.

Rick Strahl discusses Rest-Based Ajax Services.

Retaining a single set of user settings for your application is easy.Retaining multiple sets of user settings is much more challenging.

In my previous article, I talked about 10 things you wish you knew before you started your SharePoint project.The first five things were focused more towards the architecture and management of the project. In this article, I will follow up with five things targeted specifically for the SharePoint developer.

Automate high-friction, unpredictable tasks in your environment to regain sanity and achieve a rapid, sustainable pace.Every environment has them: The dreaded manual tasks that drain productivity from the team and adds instability to the processes. We usually only dedicate half our brain power and never enough time to deal with them, which only compounds the problem. What if you could easily automate out the most painful tasks and gain a huge boost in productivity and speed of delivery?

Software development is a lot more than just writing lines of code.You need to think about project management, prototyping, database design, software architecture, framework usage and a whole host of other factors. In this article you will learn one approach to developing software applications from start to finish.This approach has been used successfully to develop hundreds of applications by a software development company that has been around since 1991.

Are you moving a Windows desktop application to the browser, and sweating bullets, or perhaps just not quite sure about how all the new Web and data tools work together?With each passing year, Microsoft offers newer and more powerful tools for building rich database applications on the Web. So many and so frequently, in fact, that it can be hard to keep up with the new tools and still meet the requirements of your job! This article will show you how to get the most out o...f the new features in ASP.NET 3.5. The article will also show how you can use features in LINQ, even if you only use stored procedures for data access. And finally, since most applications use reporting, I’ll throw in a few nuggets on using SQL Server Reporting Services.See More

Recent polls show that nearly fifty percent of applications with reporting functionality use Crystal Reports, and about twenty percent use SQL Server Reporting Services. This article will cover some of the major reporting tasks that developers face, and how the two reporting tools (Crystal and SQL Server Reporting Services) handle the tasks. Finally, I’ll provide a sneak preview at the next scheduled releases of both products (the next version of Crystal Reports and SQL ...Server Reporting Services 2008).See More

A skilled database developer might find it difficult to accept that other tools can increase productivity. When Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS 2005), I did not think that any tool could possibly make me more productive than the C# and T-SQL code I was writing by hand. After some reconsideration (and subtle persuasion from peers), I discovered that SSIS 2005 contained many features that indeed reduced my development time - WITHOUT sacrificin...g flexibility. Microsoft added new functionality in SSIS 2008 to make a strong product even better. In this article, I’ll present 13 different examples that demonstrate the power of Integration Services.See More

This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” presents a variety of tips and techniques to become productive with data handling techniques using ADO.NET 2.0 in Visual Studio 2005. ADO.NET 2.0 is faster than the first version of ADO.NET; in some instances, significantly faster. While many view ADO.NET 2.0 as more evolutionary than revolutionary, it provides many functions to give developers greater control over data access and data manipulation. It also leverages the new databa...se capabilities in SQL Server 2005. In addition, ADO.NET 2.0 simplifies the creation of multiple-database solutions.See More

This installment of the Baker’s Dozen presents an introduction to remoting and remoting interfaces.

I know what you’re thinking: an article in CODE Magazine about Excel and PowerPivot? Yes, that’s correct; this installment of the “Baker’s Dozen” covers an important new tool to come out of Redmond: Microsoft PowerPivot. In a nutshell, PowerPivot provides some of the business intelligence capabilities that developers are accustomed to seeing in OLAP tools like Microsoft Analysis Services. So why should you and I care? Because these “end-user” tools still require some pro...gramming and configuration. So in this article, I’ll cover the installation of PowerPivot, a brief example of how to use it in Excel - and of course, since this IS CODE Magazine, I’ll show some DAX formula expressions to get the most out of PowerPivot. See More

Scorecards, test results, report cards, summaries-nearly everyone wants to skip past the details and see the bottom line. Whether it is “pass or fail”, “go or no go”, managers evaluate professional efforts based on performance. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence tools provide developers and power users with the tools and methodologies to produce scorecards and other summaries that graphically represent performance. This article will create a Web-based Dashboard using seve...ral Microsoft products, including the newest product in the BI stack, PerformancePoint Server.See More

Even with all the new features in the Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI), sometimes the only way to accomplish a task is with good old fashioned T-SQL code. (Fortunately, “code” is the acronym for this great magazine!) In this latest installment of The Baker’s Dozen, I’ll present 13 T-SQL programming tips that could help you accomplish different database tasks.

This article will present a crash-course in the basics of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF is one of the exciting new capabilities in the .NET 3.0 Framework. It provides a unified and uniform programming model for building distributed applications. Those who previously built multiple code bases to deal with Web services and .NET remoting will surely come to appreciate the power standardization that WCF offers. WCF, like any other new technology, requires resea...rch and experimentation to become productive. This article will assume no prior experience with WCF, and will walk you through some basic exercises and steps to show WCF’s capabilities.See More

How many software tasks DON’T involve reading through data? Answer: very few. Developers work all the time with database data, XML data, DataSets, collections, lists, and arrays-all with different syntax and functionality for each one. Developers who write T-SQL code often covet set-based language statements when they work against other types of data. Additionally, developers who have coded against strongly-typed custom collections wish they could write SQL database quer...ies with IntelliSense. Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a set of extensions to the .NET Framework for the next version of Visual Studio codename “Orcas”, brings the promise of integrated and uniform query capabilities to increase developer productivity when working with different types of data. While LINQ is a large topic worthy of books, this edition of The Baker’s Dozen will provide a crash course to learn what’s under the LINQ hood.See More

Many application developers face the challenges of working with SQL Server 2000.These challenges include retrieving and grouping large amounts of data, building result sets, and tracking changes to data. All require professional strategies that hold water against a seemingly endless number of possibilities. This installment of "The Baker's Dozen" presents a variety of real-world database situations and how you can use Transact-SQL and SQL-92 to tackle these issues.

New developers often struggle with the .NET DataGrid when trying to replicate grid functionality from other platforms.More experienced developers lament the deficiencies of the .NET DataGrid to address end user requirements. Consequently, many developers seek sophisticated third-party alternatives. In this article, I'll present a set of classes for the DataGrid to help address some of the more common struggles. Although third-party tools always offer more capabilities th...an a native control, this article also demonstrates how it's possible for you to implement some of the functions found in these third-party tools.See More

Why is it that over time, any machine you buy just seems to get slower and slower?Why is it that over time, any machine you buy just seems to get slower and slower?

If you want to develop code that’s flexible, extensible, maintainable, and testable, you’ll want to read Paul’s article about some basic things to keep in mind before you start.

Microsoft .NET brings many important advances to the software engineering world.We believe that Windows developers everywhere have reason to celebrate the arrival of .NET, but Visual Basic developers should be the most ecstatic. We get true inheritance, structured exception handling, and a state-of-the-art IDE?but, perhaps the coolest thing .NET provides us as VB developers is the Framework Class Library (FCL). To commemorate the release of .NET, we thought we would pres...ent what we consider to be the top ten most useful, utterly awesome (and coolest) classes bundled inside the .NET FCL.See More

SQL Server 2000 is packed full of useful system stored procedures there for its own use that you can use as well.This article will explore a couple dozen of the most useful hidden gems you can use to more easily manage your databases, improve the applications that use the data, and provide new ways to impress potential mates at parties. You'll learn when to use these system stored procedures, explore when to use them, and see lots of code.

Continuing on our odyssey exploring the features of Visual Studio 2010, we turn our attention to the New Project dialog box. You noticed a difference no doubt, but may not be aware of just <i>how much </i>it has changed. Sit back, relax, open up Visual Studio 2010 and follow along as we dive into the details.

Some of the early adopters of VFP 8 have contributed tips for some of the new features of this exciting release.Check out their ideas, then jump into the product and try some of the new stuff. You'll find that there is much more than meets the eye, with hundreds of additions, changes, and improvements.

As a .NET architect and developer I cannot imagine my everyday work without Visual Studio. I was always in a strange excitement when waiting for a new CTP, Beta or RTM of Visual Studio because I always expected some great new features with every release. During the years I have bought a few third-party add-ins and utilities for Visual Studio to make my development tasks easier and even created small add-ins to produce some useful piece of code. I knew that Visual Studio ...was extensible; I downloaded the SDKs and tried to get familiar with those hundreds of extensibility interfaces. However, due to lack of good documentation I often got frustrated. See More

Knowing the flaws in Web server controls and how to work around them before you use them can save you hours of time.

If you have been a hardcore VB6 programmer and you've hesitated about switching to Visual Basic .NET, Visual Basic 2005 will change your mind and you'll want to take the leap forward to move to .NET.The common complaint that people who have made this leap already often hear from programmers who are reluctant to move to VB .NET is that it is not VB-like, and moving to .NET means you have to unlearn many of the things you have painstakingly mastered in VB6.