Issue: 2001 - Issue 1

Issue 1 2001 Editorial Article

With the functionality provided by the .NET runtime, building data access components with C# (pronounced "c-sharp") is not difficult.In this article, we discuss how to access data stored in a SQL Server database. We will then review the steps necessary to build a Dynamic Link Library and an Executable file in C# to query a table and display the results.

Imagine the potential of accessing your database without needing to know any specifics about how that data is stored.Imagine the possibility of allowing your DBA the freedom to change the database structure without affecting your software code. Impossible? Not with XPath Queries and XDR Schemas. Using these two methods, practically any developer can write a program to access data in SQL Server 2000, just by knowing the structure of the XML documents returned by the server.

Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) is a COM-based set of interfaces that allow you to interact with and manipulate directory service interfaces.That means it's a cool way for scripts and code to add users, change passwords, create network groups, control IIS programmatically, and start and stop services. In this article, I'll cover the basic ADSI syntax and give you some example code to use in your own applications.

Imagine that you need some specific information in your application, such as a shipping rate. You now go to a special "service" search engine and look up the type of service you need over the Web.Now, imagine that you can get this information easily from the service and simply plug it directly into your application. Sound too good to be true? Believe it or not, the technologies to make this possible are available today. Web Services provide this functionality by bringing... to application development the same interlinked mechanisms that have made the Web so popular for Web browsing. By sharing data over the Web in standard formats, "Web Services" is becoming the new industry buzzword. Microsoft is talking about Web Services as the second life of the Internet. Web Services will tie together applications, just as the Web Browser and URL links have tied together Web pages. "The Web At Your Service" is the new mantra. In this article, Rick discusses SOAP and Web Services, then creates a sample Web Service and integrates it into an application.See More

In this day and age, Web applications have become the norm. We've even come to the point where many development projects involve Web applications that must be installed on multiple servers.But even if you don't build vertical Web applications, it's useful to have a configuration utility that can recreate a configuration via code. This might be for backup purposes, or for high volume environments like load balancing, where multiple servers need to be configured.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking and its associated Developer's Suite provide everything you need for speech recognition:stable ActiveX controls, quality documentation, and end-user "hand-holding" tools for installation and configuration issues.

HTML and XML have made the Internet what it is today, but both technologies are not necessarily tied to the Internet.Quite the contrary! Using HTML in regular Windows applications has always been a great alternative. Paired with XML and XSL, this technique is more powerful than ever, since there are a growing number of XML sources, such as SQL Server, Web Services, and XML-enabled Business Objects.

Everything you wanted to know about customers but were too busy coding to ask.Our last column covered negotiating a contract.Assuming you got the contract, it's now time for the analysis phase, part of which is requirements gathering.