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	*Category: .NET Framework*
	91 Articles found and displayed in this view. Log Users in to Your Web Application with OpenID or OAuth Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2013 Jan/Feb Release Date: Monday, December 10, 2012 Quick ID: 1301081 Users already have many usernames and passwords for different popular online services, and with OpenID and OAuth, you can leverage those. Why burden users with yet another set of credentials for your site if they can use their Google or Facebook account, or any other OpenID or OAuth account? In this article, I will show you how to do this with ASP.NET 4.5, but more importantly help you understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Reengineering .NET: Injecting Quality, Testability, and Architecture into Existing Systems - Chapter 3: Unit Testing Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Monday, November 19, 2012 Quick ID: 1211073 This excerpt is from Reengineering .NET: Injecting Quality, Testability, and Architecture into Existing Systems, by Bradley Irby, Published Oct 24, 2012 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the Microsoft Windows Development Series series. Copyright 2013, ISBN-10: 0-321-82145-9. To Purchase this book go to: http://www.informit.com/store/reengineering-.net-injecting-quality-testability-and-9780321821454 . Tasks and Parallelism: The New Wave of Multithreading Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2012 Nov/Dec Release Date: Thursday, October 04, 2012 Quick ID: 1211071 Since the beginning of .NET, developers have been able to take advantage of multithreading when developing applications. In fact we’ve been given more than one programming model to accommodate just about any requirement that might come across. There’s the Thread class, the Thread Pool, the Async Pattern, and the Background Worker. Well, as if that isn’t enough, we now have a couple of more patterns that bring with them another genre - parallel programming. Smashing the Myth: Why You Must Learn F# - Even If You Aren’t Writing Rocket Science Apps Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2012 Mar/Apr Release Date: Saturday, February 18, 2012 Quick ID: 1203081 If you are a .NET software developer, you have heard of F#. You may have read an article, seen a talk at a user group, or otherwise heard the buzz. However, if those means of reaching you have failed, at the very least, you have noticed it conspicuously appear in the list of languages you can base a solution on in Visual Studio 2010. If you write code on the .NET Framework, you would have to be living under a rock to have not heard of F#. 101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume I: Developing Apps 1-50- Chapter 2 Flashlight - Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 Quick ID: 1109113 This excerpt is from the new book, ‘101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume I: Developing Apps 1-50’, authored by Adam Nathan, published April 2011, ISBN 0672335522, Copyright 2011. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672335522 Visual Studio Unleashed - Chapter 2 - The Visual Studio IDE Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 Quick ID: 1109103 This excerpt is from the new book, ‘Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Unleashed’, authored by Mike Snell and Lars Powers, published in the Sams Unleashed Series, August 2010, ISBN 0672330814, Copyright 2010. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672330814 Objects - Chapter 1 Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 Quick ID: 1107073 “This excerpt is from the book, ‘Windows 7 Device Driver’ by Ronald D. Reeves, Published Nov 16, 2010 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of theAddison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series series.l, ISBN 139780321670212, Copyright 2011. For more info please visit the publisher site: http://www.informit.com/title/0321670213 2 - Making Software a Service Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Monday, June 20, 2011 Quick ID: 1105063 “This excerpt is from the book, ‘Building Applications in the Cloud: Concepts, Patterns, and Projects’ by Christopher Moyer. (Pearson/Addison-Wesley Professional, April 2011, ISBN 0321720202, Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. For more information, please visit the publisher site: www.informit.com/title/0321720202) Chapter 2: Creating Versatile Types Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Sunday, March 21, 2010 Quick ID: 100083 Whenever you create your own classes, you need to consider the circumstances under which they could be used. For example, will two instances of your Item struct ever be compared for equality? Will your Person class need to be serializable, or sortable? A Practical Use of Indexers Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2010 Mar/Apr Release Date: Friday, February 12, 2010 Quick ID: 1003121 Consider this hypothetical: You need to track different ways it is permissible to contact a customer.Or perhaps there are multiple attributes you wish to attach to an entity. Further, perhaps you want to define new attributes that can vary from entity to entity. From a database perspective, this can present a thorny problem. Fortunately, indexers in C# provide an elegant solution to the problem. In this article, I will show you how to use indexers to expand an organization’s data and at the same time, have minimal impact on an organization’s database structure. I will also show you how to incorporate this technique with NHibernate and how to verify your results with the MBUnit and TestDriven.net unit testing frameworks. Reinventing Error Handling Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2010 Jan/Feb Release Date: Friday, December 11, 2009 Quick ID: 1001081 Ned introduces the most significant advance in error handling since exceptions and he shows you a new way to look at errors.This article introduces the most significant advance in error handling since exceptions.You get improved tools for today and a glimpse of radical possibilities for tomorrow. You get a framework which supports more expressive error handlers and gives them equal access to error context information. You get a roadmap for adding improved error handling capabilities, including class-level error handlers and the ability to fix errors at run time. Above all, you get a new way to look at errors. What’s New in Entity Framework 4? Part 1: API Changes Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 Sep/Oct Release Date: Monday, August 17, 2009 Quick ID: 0909081 If you have been working with the ADO.NET Entity Framework, you have probably been extremely eager to get your hands on the next version that is now part of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. Long referred to as “EF Version 2,” this version is now called Entity Framework 4 or EF4, to align with the .NET Framework 4.0 version. 8 Entity Framework Gotchas Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 Jul/Aug Release Date: Friday, June 26, 2009 Quick ID: 0907071 As a developer, it is no surprise to encounter unexpected behavior when working with a new technology.Microsoft added the Entity Framework (EF) to ADO.NET with the .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 released in 2008 enabling developers to incorporate a data model directly in their application and interact with their data through the model rather than working directly against the database. For background on EF, see my previous article, “Introducing ADO.NET Entity Framework” in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of CODE Magazine. Using jQuery with ASP.NET Part 2: Making an AJAX Callback to ASP.NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 May/Jun Release Date: Monday, April 27, 2009 Quick ID: 0906031 This time around I’ll expand on these concepts and show you how you can use jQuery in combination with ASP.NET as an AJAX backend to retrieve data. I’ll also discuss how you can create ASP.NET controls and otherwise interact with jQuery content from ASP.NET pages in Web Forms. Meet the Monkey: A .NET Programmer’s Introduction to Mono Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 May/Jun Release Date: Monday, April 27, 2009 Quick ID: 0906041 Are you curious about cross-platform .NET applications?Do you have a need or an interest in how to write .NET applications that will run on OS X? Do you need to deploy your application to a nix box? If you’ve answered “Yes” to one of these last two questions or are curious about running .NET code on nix, then read on. Programming Twittering with Visual Basic Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2009 Mar/Apr Release Date: Friday, February 27, 2009 Quick ID: 0903071 Social networking has reached critical mass. One unique social networking platform, Twitter, launched in March of 2006 and took the world by storm with its social networking and microblogging platform.The developers of Twitter had the forethought to provide a REST -based API. Numerous developers have used the REST-based API to build Twitter clients on dozens of different platforms. In this article I’ll demonstrate how to access Twitter using the .NET platform. Visual Studio Platform and Extensibility Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Quick ID: 080043 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. Heard on .NET Rocks! Don Demsak on LINQ to XML Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 Jan/Feb Release Date: Friday, December 28, 2007 Quick ID: 0801091 In episode #271 of .NET Rocks! (www.dotnetrocks.com) Richard and I spoke with Don Demsak about LINQ to XML. Here’s an excerpt from that interview. Visual Basic and Respect Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2008 Jan/Feb Release Date: Friday, December 28, 2007 Quick ID: 0801111 Ken Getz Jan/Feb 08 FInalize article. Creating Web Sites with ASP.NET 2.0 Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 Sep/Oct Release Date: Sunday, August 12, 2007 Quick ID: 0709061 “Web application development has come a long way in a fairly short period of time.” A quote like that surely won’t send anyone into shock anytime soon because it’s accepted as fact. From basic, static HTML pages to totally data-driven and data-centric Web applications, the demands on a Web developer are much more complex and demanding than they were just a few years ago. The advent of social networking sites like MySpace, which is written in ASP.NET 2.0, interactive mapping sites, and sites streaming full motion video has required the Web developer to adapt and change with the times. One of the best tools to use to build these types of Web applications is Microsoft’s ASP.NET 2.0. In this article I am going to delve into some of the more interesting features of ASP.NET 2.0 and show you how you can begin using ASP.NET 2.0 on your next Web project. Introducing XNA Game Studio Express Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 Sep/Oct Release Date: Friday, August 10, 2007 Quick ID: 0709051 What does XNA stand for? It’s a recursive acronym that stands for “XNA’s Not Acronymed”. Aren’t developers fun? Create a Custom DataGridView Column Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jul/Aug Release Date: Friday, June 29, 2007 Quick ID: 0707061 Creating custom column types for the DataGridView control isn’t nearly as tricky as it once was.In this article, you’ll learn how to take advantage of inheritance to create your own bar graph column in a grid cell. The Baker’s Dozen: A 13-Step Crash Course for Using LINQ Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jul/Aug Release Date: Friday, June 29, 2007 Quick ID: 0707051 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 queries 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. Adding Smart Tags to Windows Forms Controls Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Jul/Aug Release Date: Friday, June 29, 2007 Quick ID: 0707081 One new features in Visual Studio 2005 is the support for smart tags. A smart tag is a panel that displays next to a control and contains a list of commonly used properties. How to Be Where Your Customer Wants to Be Magazine/Issue: CoDe Focus Magazine, 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 2 - Mobility Release Date: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Quick ID: 0704032 We all know that applications have evolved, and not just towards Web deployment, .NET Framework development, and mash-up functionality. Everyday Use of Generics Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2007 - Mar/Apr Release Date: Friday, March 02, 2007 Quick ID: 0703061 You may think of generics as a Ferrari that you only take out for special occasions; but they are better compared to your trusty pickup, perfectly suited for everyday use. Chapter 1: Introducing .NET Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Book Excerpts Release Date: Monday, February 19, 2007 Quick ID: 070013 From the book Understanding .NET by David Chappell, published by Addison Wesley Microsoft's .NET is revolutionizing Windows-based software development. Since its initial release in 2002, .NET has changed significantly, becoming the foundation for a new generation of Windows applications. The .NET Framework and Visual Studio, the two core aspects of this initiative, provide a multilanguage environment in which developers can create Web services, graphical user interfaces, and other kinds of applications. Taken as a whole, the .NET technologies have changed the way nearly every Windows application is built. Now fully updated for version 2.0 of the .NET Framework and Visual Basic 2005, Understanding .NET, Second Edition, is a concise guide to the landscape of Windows development. Margin notes, detailed diagrams, and lucid writing make this book easy to read and navigate, while analysis sections explore controversial issues and address common concerns. David Chappell's independent perspective and straightforward descriptions clarify both how the .NET technologies work and how they can be used. Coverage includes: An overview of .NET and its goals The Common Language Runtime (CLR) The .NET languages, including C#, Visual Basic, and C++ The .NET Framework class library Building Web Applications with ASP.NET Accessing Data with ADO.NET .NET framework integration with SQL Server 2005 The key to using a new technology is to understand the fundamentals. This book provides the robust foundation developers and technical managers need to make the right decisions and maximize the potential of this revolutionary framework. A Look at Windows Vista from a Developer Perspective Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, The Web View Release Date: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 Quick ID: 060053 Rick Strahl discusses Windows Vista for developers. How Many Threads Do You Need? Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Monday, May 29, 2006 Quick ID: 060033 Markus Egger discusses the need to create multi-threaded applications. Ask the Doc Detective Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - May/Jun Release Date: Friday, April 21, 2006 Quick ID: 0605101 .Finalize(): Try and Ye Shall Succeed Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - May/Jun Release Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Quick ID: 0605111 May/June 06 Finalize Column WCF Essentials-A Developer’s Primer Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - May/Jun Release Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Quick ID: 0605051 Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides a run-time environment for your services, enabling you to expose CLR types as services and to consume services as CLR types.Although in theory you can build services without it, in practice, WCF significantly simplifies this task. WCF is Microsoft’s implementation of a set of industry standards defining service interactions, type conversion, marshaling, and various protocols’ management. Because of that, WCF provides interoperability between services, and it promotes productivity, including the essential off-the-shelf plumbing required by almost any application. This article describes the essential concepts and building blocks of WCF and its architecture, enabling you to build simple services. Future articles in this series will address specific aspects, such as transaction management and security. Object Binding Tips and Tricks Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Mar/Apr Release Date: Friday, February 17, 2006 Quick ID: 0603011 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. LINQ Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Mar/Apr Release Date: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 Quick ID: 0603021 At PDC 2005, Microsoft introduced brand new technology known as LINQ, which stands for “Language Integrated Query.”The feature-set hiding behind this acronym is truly mind-boggling and worthy of a lot of attention. In short, LINQ introduces a query language similar to SQL Server’s T-SQL, in C# and VB.NET. Imagine that you could issue something like a “select * from customers” statement within C# or VB.NET. This sounds somewhat intriguing, but it doesn’t begin to communicate the power of LINQ. ClickOnce: Bringing Ease and Reliability to Smart Client Deployment Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Sunday, January 01, 2006 Quick ID: 0601041 Who said client deployment has to be difficult?Many developers would love to leverage the rich UI, high performance, and offline capability offered by smart client applications; however, they’ve been turned off by the high TCO caused by client deployment headaches. The advent of ClickOnce client deployment technology in the .NET Framework 2.0 heralds a new era where client deployment takes on the ease and reliability of Web deployment. Multimedia Control Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2006 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Sunday, January 01, 2006 Quick ID: 0601051 If you've ever tried to find classes in the .NET Framework that allow you to play audio and video, you may have noticed the gaping hole where this functionality should be.If you think Microsoft has finally gotten around to fixing this glaring omission in version 2 of the framework, you’re only partially correct. While some basic audio capabilities will be provided (as described later in this article,) they still leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand, the free MediaPlayer component provided with this article demonstrates a more feature-rich solution to your multimedia needs-and it’s compatible with all versions of the .NET Framework. Using the CMAB for Enterprise, Client, and User Settings Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - May/Jun Release Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 Quick ID: 0505071 Applications use many forms of configuration data, storing settings that are used in applications, enterprise, client computers, and user settings.The Configuration Management Application Block (CMAB) is typically used for application settings, but it can be enhanced to support more complicated settings as well. Pest Control Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Monday, February 07, 2005 Quick ID: 050033 Brian Kernighan [1] once said, "Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." This quote gets a little giggle out of most developers, but on the serious side, there is a lot of truth in it. Writing code that does cool or useful things certainly is much easier than writing code that does cool or useful things reliably. Great Reasons to Ring In 2005! Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Thursday, January 06, 2005 Quick ID: 050013 Wow, another year has gone by, and as you read this, you are probably returning to the office after a few more or less relaxing holiday time spent with friends and family and a New Year's celebration. Interesting things have happened in our industry in the last 12 months, but I predict that the next 12 months will be quite a bit more interesting! Seldom before have I been as excited about new technologies and developments as I am now. Sorting Custom Collections Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2005 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Monday, December 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0501051 Have you ever wanted to use a strongly-typed collection to bind your data presentation controls to, only to find that you have very limited sorting capabilities, if any at all?If you are trying to stick to good object-oriented design and shrink the amount of data that you keep in memory, transfer from your data source, or serialize to clients, you likely have run into this situation because you are using strongly-typed collections of your domain objects. So what do you do if you need to sort those collections for presentation or faster searching? The Importance of the Managed Platform Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 Quick ID: 040073 .Net is a maturing platform. The first .NET alphas and betas went to a selected group of people years and years ago. At this point, we are approaching the third major installment of Visual Studio .NET (now called "Visual Studio 2005"). Surely at this point, nobody has to explain what .NET and the Managed Platform is. Or do we? Building a Better Configuration Settings Class Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - July/August Release Date: Sunday, June 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0407081 Configuration settings make it possible for users and administrators to configure an application before it is run for the first time and while it runs..NET provides a good rudimentary mechanism for storing and retrieving configuration settings in the application's .config file with the ConfigurationSettings class, but this mechanism is missing a number of essential features. This article describes how to improve on the base functionality using a class that provides strong typing, allows for writing of keys, and provides optional encryption of keys. Software Configuration and Management Using Visual SourceSafe and VS .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - May/June Release Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0405071 Every company has some form of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) process?whether it is formal or informal. An SDLC includes people, processes, and tools that span the design, build, and support of your information systems. Async-Up Your Objects Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - May/June Release Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0405051 Encapsulate asynchronous functionality directly into your business objects.The .NET Framework facilitates calling object methods asynchronously through the use of delegates. You may already know how to do this using helper code, but there is a cleaner and much cooler way of packaging this kind of functionality right inside your business objects. Publishing Performance Data From Your .NET Applications Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - March/April Release Date: Friday, February 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0403041 You always want the software you write to have great performance.The reason isn't shocking?users look to software to quickly and efficiently handle their workload. Often times, meeting this performance requirement (whether it is explicit or implied), can be a difficult, even daunting task. Tuning an application to perform at its peak level involves a thorough understanding of the architecture and environment into which you will deploy your application. However, you can't truly begin to optimize an application's performance if you don't understand how to empirically measure that performance. From this perspective, your application must emit enough data to enable real time performance monitoring. Managing Processes in .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - March/April Release Date: Friday, February 20, 2004 Quick ID: 0403051 The Process class allows you to gain full control over system processes.You can start and stop processes and retrieve information about running processes such as the list of loaded modules and the characteristics of the memory occupied. The class also features handy methods to know whether a process is responding or has just exited and with which return code. Programmers also have full control over the style of the window the process runs in. After an overview of the capabilities of the Process class, this article demonstrates how to hide running console processes, monitor their execution, and capture any output. I'll use this strategy to create a sample Compression class to use with WinZip and gzip (popular tools for compressing data). An Introduction to Visual Studio .NET Whidbey Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - January/February Release Date: Monday, January 05, 2004 Quick ID: 0303022 When I was asked to write a few pages on what's coming in the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (code named Whidbey), the biggest issue I had was how to limit this article to a few pages.I opted to list a few categories and drill down into each. I'm not going to cover everything, just some key items in each area. Please note that not all of these changes are implemented in the PDC build that attendees are receiving, and that some of these features are still in the planning stages. That said, here are the categories that I'd like to discuss: The Mind of an Angry Coder: Waiting to Inhale Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - January/February Release Date: Monday, January 05, 2004 Quick ID: 0401031 The recent Professional Developer Conference (PDC) fostered great excitement about the power of the .NET Framework v2.0. Unfortunately, it is going to be well into next year before most developers even get a whiff of all things Whidbey; and that's only in beta form. Some important .NET language and framework enhancements are in a big holding pattern, though, and I don't think that's right. Exploring New WinForm Controls in VS .NET Whidbey Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2004 - January/February Release Date: Monday, January 05, 2004 Quick ID: 0303032 Catering to the strength of the third-party .NET component market and the power of the .NET Framework itself, Microsoft includes several powerful new WinForm controls in the Base Class Libraries for Windows application development.The WinForm controls provided by the .NET Framework 1.1 are extremely useful, and the framework for developing new custom controls provided in 1.1 is very strong, but sometimes the development community expects more out-of-the box. Many needs of the development community are satisfied by the basic collection of WinForm controls while some developers have voiced their need for more functionality. Microsoft appears ready to rise to the occasion with the inclusion of many new WinForm controls. Deconstructing Add-In Architecture in Visual Studio .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - November/December Release Date: Monday, October 27, 2003 Quick ID: 0311081 Visual Studio .NET provides an incredible leap forward from its predecessor in terms of functionality, but eventually, every developer finds a sought-after feature that just seems overlooked. VS.NET provides great features and capabilities, from intelligent wizards to very useful drag-and-drop functionality such as that provided by the Server Explorer tool window. If there's a problem, it could be one of too much success. A simple stroll through the IDE reveals feature after productivity-inducing feature, providing the developer with a high set of expectations. Eventually, you may find that an expected feature is missing. Fortunately, Microsoft included a very powerful extensibility model, allowing integration of new, custom features directly into the IDE. The Enterprise Instrumentation Framework Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - November/December Release Date: Monday, October 27, 2003 Quick ID: 0311091 We've all faced those irritable questions about our applications running in production. Typically a system administrator will spring one on you on a Friday afternoon just when you're finishing out the week with a game of foosball. Why did this request fail? What is causing so many disk IO spikes? What requests are failing as a result of this error? Why is the application running so slowly? Why are all the resources being gobbled up on the Web server? These questions often make us stare blankly for a while, mumble something, and then scramble back to our cave (or server room) for hours on end trying to provide answers, The Mind of an Angry Coder: I Take Exception to That Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - November/December Release Date: Monday, October 27, 2003 Quick ID: 0311031 Many products are taking advantage of the enhanced exception management features that the .NET Framework provides, yet very few are going the extra mile to provide instant solutions. .NET and Oracle Java Stored Procedures - Bridging the Gap with XML Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - November/December Release Date: Monday, October 27, 2003 Quick ID: 0311071 Using Oracle as your database in the .NET environment is relatively simple, except when returning JDBC ResultSets from Java stored procedures. The Microsoft and Oracle .NET data provider drivers allow for easy access to data from SQL queries and PL/SQL stored procedures. There is not, however, a simple interface to return ResultSet data from a Java stored procedure to a .NET client. Working with .NET Threads Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - September/October Release Date: Friday, August 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0309071 The .NET class Thread defined in the System.Threading namespace represents a managed thread.The Thread class provides various methods and properties to control the managed thread. Unfortunately, there is a significant potential for abusing these mechanisms, and most developers may not even realize they are doing anything wrong. This article describes the dos and don'ts of the Thread class, and then presents a wrapper class that simplifies starting a thread, correctly terminates a thread, and offers a more consistent class interface than that of the raw Thread class. .Finalize() - What I've Learned: Airline Lavatories and Strings Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - September/October Release Date: Friday, August 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0309121 .Finalize() Column Errors In Your ASP.NET Code? Don't Throw a Fit, Throw an Exception! Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0307081 Error handling?everyone's favorite topic right?Even the best designed applications need to handle and properly manage errors the errors you can plan for and those you cannot.In this article, you'll learn error handling techniques in ASP.NET. Topics will range from handling common errors with the Try...Catch syntax to logging unhandled errors into the Windows Event Log. Mobile CoDe.NET: Microsoft Mobility 101 Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0307091 Mobility is one of those fields which everybody knows is a definite part of our future, in 5 to 10 years or so. Think again.Amber steps out of her client's office, enters her car, pulls out her mobile phone and dials the number to her main office. She's calling Martin?her internal sales representative to inform him that she finally closed a deal with her client. She needs him to place an internal order at the warehouse. There are many items on that order, including 500 units of product X, configuration A. After a quick query in the central inventory management system, Martin informs her that there are only 250 units left of that configuration, but there are more than plenty for her order if the client would be willing to switch to configuration B. Amber now needs to call her client back and save the deal. The client will be very disappointed, the whole thing will have to be negotiated over the phone, and Amber will probably have to cut her margins or else she'll lose everything. Cryptography the .NET Way Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Sunday, June 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0307051 In real-world applications you just can't do without encryption.The problem with cryptography, though, is that sometimes it may make you use an overly complex API. The .NET Framework classes for cryptography don't require you to become an expert mathematician or a cryptography guru. In the .NET Framework you'll find symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic providers as well as hash providers. Some of these provider classes end up calling into the unmanaged CryptoAPI library while other parts of the .NET cryptography solution are purely managed code. Defining and Using Custom Attribute Classes in C# Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Sunday, June 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0307041 The complex, component-style development that businesses expect out of modern software developers requires greater design flexibility than the design methodologies of the past. Microsoft's .NET Framework makes extensive use of attributes to provide added functionality through what is known as "declarative" programming. Attributes enhance flexibility in software systems because they promote loose coupling of functionality. Because you can create your own custom attribute classes and then act upon them, you can leverage the loose coupling power of attributes for your own purposes. Auto-Deploying Windows Forms .NET Applications: The Revenge of the Fat Client Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Sunday, June 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0307061 .NET provides new tools to make deployment of fat client .NET applications easier.This article describes the basics of .NET Auto-Deployment technology and the security mechanism that prevents users from inadvertently running code distributed by hackers and virus writers. .NET Web Services Security Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - July/August Release Date: Sunday, June 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0307071 Web services are all about connecting businesses in a standard and secure manner.For a real-life Web service, security is intrinsic to every facet of operation and no party would ever agree to interact with a non-secure Web service. Unfortunately, Web services security is still in its infancy; standards such as WS-I are just emerging and there is no built-in support in the development tools for them. That being said, there are quite a few programming techniques you can use today in .NET 1.1 to secure your Web services, and do so in a way that will ease the transition to future standards and protocols. Using GDI+ in ASP.NET Web Applications, Part 1 Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - May/June Release Date: Thursday, May 01, 2003 Quick ID: 03050801 GDI+ is a technology that developers generally associate with Windows Forms applications because they use it to draw anything on the screen from custom controls to diagrams.However, you can also use GDI+ in ASP.NET Web applications whenever you want to serve up dynamic images. You can use GDI+ to create dynamic banners, photo albums, graphs, diagrams, and more. Getting Started With Regular Expressions Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - May/June Release Date: Thursday, May 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0305041 Regular expressions, also referred to as "regex" in the developer community, is an extremely powerful tool used in pattern matching and substitution.In this article, Jim will introduce you to regular expressions, what they are, why you would want to use them, and finally, how you can begin putting them to work in Visual Studio .NET. The .NET File System Object Model Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - May/June Release Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0305051 The .NET Framework doesn't change the structure of the file system, nor does it build a new layer on top of it.More simply, but also more effectively for developers, it supplies a new object model for file system-related operations. A managed application can work with files and directories using high-level methods rather than low level understanding of the file system. This article provides an overview of methods and classes contained in the System.IO namespace. Asynchronous Calls in .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - May/June Release Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0305071 When you make a method call on an object, typically you must block the client while the object executes the call, and control returns to the client only when the method completes execution and returns.However, there are quite a few cases where you want to call methods asynchronously?that is, you want control to return immediately to the client while the object executes the called method in the background, and then somehow let the client know when the method execution is completed. Such an execution mode is called asynchronous method invocation and the action is an asynchronous call. Asynchronous calls allow you to improve availability, increase throughput and performance, and make your applications more scalable. Dynamically Adding Wired Controls to Web Forms Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - May/June Release Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0305101 The task of creating dynamic ASP.NET Web Forms whose behavior is based upon user interaction and depends upon the purpose and intended goal of the Web Form.Web Forms that require only controls and functionality provided by the built-in ASP.NET Web server controls are easy to create. But creating Web Forms that require or are designed with extended controls and functionality can be a challenge. What's New in Visual Studio .NET 1.1? Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - March/April Release Date: Saturday, March 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0303121 Visual Studio .NET provides a new set of features designed to improve and enhance the development experience. Most of these changes have to do with user ergonomics and are typical of a minor release of a Visual Studio product. Only a few of the changes are related to the underlying platform. This article assumes you are familiar with Visual Studio .NET 1.0 and it presents only the new features of the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of Visual Studio .NET 1.1, for both C# and Visual Basic .NET. J# is not discussed because it was not part of Visual Studio .NET 1.0. In the interest of space, some minor cosmetic changes (such as reorganization of the Start page) are not listed. A Not-So-Quick Tour of the Web DataGrid Control Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - March/April Release Date: Saturday, March 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0303091 Data-bound controls play a key role in the development of ASP.NET applications. Data-driven controls allow you to associate their whole interface, or individual properties, with one or more columns of a .NET-compliant data source. In this article, I'll delve into the depths of an extremely versatile data-bound control that is a fixed resence in any real-world ASP.NET application - the DataGrid control. I'll focus on the key programming aspects of the control, including data binding, column mapping, paging, and sorting. Using the ASP.NET Runtime to Extend Desktop Applications with HTML Scripts Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - March/April Release Date: Saturday, February 15, 2003 Quick ID: 0303131 People often think of HTML as the sole domain for Web applications.But HTML's versatile display attributes are also very useful for handling data display of all sorts in desktop applications. The Visual Studio .NET start page is a good example. Coupled with a scripting/template mechanism you can build highly extendable applications that would be very difficult to build using standard Windows controls. In this article, Rick introduces how to host the ASP.NET runtime in desktop applications and utilize this technology in a completely client-side application using the Web Browser control. Shaped .NET Windows Forms Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 Quick ID: 0301061 Since the earliest versions of the Windows operating system, all Windows have been rectangular.However, the number of applications that break out of this boring mold is rising. Even Microsoft, the king of rectangularity, is starting to create applications that use shaped windows, such as Media Player. Unfortunately, creating shaped forms has always been quite tricky. Until now that is! The .NET Framework and the Windows Forms package in particular make it easy to produce forms that have rather sophisticated shapes. Remote Object Models In .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Sunday, December 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0301091 Modern applications are no longer isolated, stand-alone applications, limited to a single process or machine. Distributed applications allow you to put components in close proximity to the resources they use, allow multiple users to access the application, enable scalability and throughput, and increase overall availability and fault isolation. Component-oriented programming is especially geared towards distribution because it is all about breaking the application into a set of interacting components, which you can then distribute to different locations. .NET has a vast infrastructure supporting distributed applications and remote calls. This article focuses on just a single aspect of .NET remoting: the different object activation models available to a distributed application. Working with Extender Classes Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Sunday, December 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0301041 Extender classes do just that; they allow you to extend the functionality of a .NET control class. The Error Provider and Tooltip classes are two examples of extender classes in the .NET Framework. The Tooltip class represents a significant departure from how tooltips were implemented in earlier versions of Visual Studio. The Error Provider class provides a new way to inform users about invalid input. Although each class serves a different purpose, their implementation is quite similar. This article introduces these two classes and gives a brief, yet comprehensive primer on how to use them Reflection Part 2: Emit Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2003 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Sunday, December 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0301051 In our previous article, Reflection Part 1: Discovery and Execution, we introduced the System.Reflection namespace and its classes which allow developers to view assembly metadata, query for and discover types, and invoke code?all at run-time. In this article we will examine reflection emit?the ability to dynamically generate code at run-time. Threading Support in the .NET Framework Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Friday, November 01, 2002 Quick ID: 0211141 This article explains in depth how to implement multi-threading in your .NET applications. Dynamically Executing Code in .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0211081 This article demonstrates the techniques for compiling dynamic code in your .NET applications. Threat Modeling Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0211091 The first step in securing your application is to understand threats. This article discusses how to understand where your application may be threatened. Stateful Network-Deployable .NET Components Use Isolated Storage Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0211111 Sometimes an application needs to keep its data in its own secure "sandbox". This article demonstrates creating these isolated applications in .NET. Microsoft Exception Management Application Blocks Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0211131 A new feature of .NET is its ability to handle exceptions. This article demonstrates implementing Microsoft's Exception Management Application Blocks. Reflection Part 1: Discovery and Execution Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Nov/Dec Release Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0211161 One feature of the .NET environment is the ability to read meta-data from classes and namespaces created in .NET. This article demonstrates accessing this data. ADO.NET in Visual Studio .NET: Part 1 Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - July/Aug Release Date: Saturday, June 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0207061 By now, you have been exposed to a lot of information about Visual Studio .NET.Of all the new technologies associated with .NET, perhaps no other technology is more mysterious than ADO.NET. The purpose of this article, the first in a series, is to give you a brief overview of ADO.NET and how it is implemented in Visual Studio .NET. Future articles will expand on the material presented here. After reading this article, you will be able to understand how the various ADO.NET objects and generated code work to provide data for your applications. Ask the Doc Detective Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - July/Aug Release Date: Saturday, June 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0207111 With over 45,000 topics, finding what you need in the Visual Studio .NET documentation can be a daunting task. The Doc Detective is here to help, utilizing his investigative skills to probe the depths of the documentation. End DLL Hell with .NET Version Control and Code Sharing Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - July/Aug Release Date: Saturday, June 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0207071 Component-oriented programming must allow for clients and components to evolve separately.Component developers should be able to deploy new versions (or just defect fixes) of existing components without affecting existing client applications. Client developers should be able to deploy new versions of the client application and expect it to work with older component versions. As a component technology, .NET must enforce version control, allowing for separate evolution paths and for side-by-side deployment of different versions of the same component. .NET should also detect incompatibility as soon as possible and alert the client. .NET Tools Round-Up Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - May/June Release Date: Monday, April 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0205021 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.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. .NET Tools Round-Up Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - May/June Release Date: Monday, April 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0205031 May June 2002 Product News Retrieving HTTP content in .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - May/June Release Date: Monday, April 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0205081 HTTP content retrieval is an important component for applications these days.Although .NET reduces the need to explicitly retrieve content from the Web through built-in mechanisms in the Web Services framework, ADO.NET and the XML classes, there are still many needs to retrieve Web content directly and manipulate it as text or data downloaded into files. In this article, I will describe the functionality of the HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse classes and provide an easy to use wrapper class. The class simplifies the HTTP access and provides most of the common features in a single interface while still providing full access to the base functionality of the HttpWebRequest class. In the process, I will describe some sticky issues like string encoding and Cookie handling and some related topics like implementing events and running multiple threads to service Web requests. COM Interop in Visual Studio .NET Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - March/April Release Date: Friday, March 01, 2002 Quick ID: 0203031 The .NET Framework presents exciting new opportunities for developers. By now, you may have heard that .NET represents a departure from COM, the focal point of Windows development for the past several years. Because of the investments in COM, it is quite likely you will want to implement COM in VS .NET. Conversely, the .NET Framework has a number of nice features that you will want to implement in COM-based applications. This article illustrates how COM and the .NET Framework can work together. Top 10 .NET Framework Classes Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - March/April Release Date: Friday, February 15, 2002 Quick ID: 0203061 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 present what we consider to be the top ten most useful, utterly awesome (and coolest) classes bundled inside the .NET FCL. Passing Data Over .NET Web Services Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Saturday, December 15, 2001 Quick ID: 0201041 Web Services is a powerful technology, even in its basic form.However, with .NET, you can easily couple Web Services with .NET's new data services to provide a powerful data delivery mechanism that works over the Web, making it possible to build distributed applications that work easily without a local data store. In this article, Rick describes various ways you can use Web Services and ADO.NET DataSets to pass data between client and server applications to build truly disconnected applications. Custom .NET Windows Forms Controls Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2002 - Jan/Feb Release Date: Saturday, December 15, 2001 Quick ID: 0201081 The .Net framework provides two base classes for controls; one for Windows forms and the other for ASP.NET server controls.We can extend the existing controls by adding specific functionality to them or develop our own controls from scratch. Such controls are called custom controls. We can also group controls together and create another control, such as an address box, that contains couple of textboxes and labels. Controls that are grouped together and are based on System.Winforms.UserControl are called user controls. This article explains the process of creating a user control and demonstrates how we can extend the functionality of the framework's DateTimePicker control. Building Data Access Components in C# Magazine/Issue: CoDe Magazine, 2001 - Issue 1 Release Date: Monday, January 15, 2001 Quick ID: 0101021 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. Extending Your Development Experience with the Visual Studio Gallery Magazine/Issue: Online CoDe Magazine, Publisher's Point Release Date: Monday, January 01, 1753 Quick ID: 99080053 There are some big, exciting changes happening around Visual Studio! Microsoft is shifting the focus of VS from being just a developer tool to being an entire platform. As part of that shift, the Visual Studio Gallery web site went live on Feb 27, 2008. The site is your one-stop resource for cool productivity tools called Visual Studio extensions. An addition to CodePlex’s repository of collaborative projects and CodeGallery’s place to find sample apps and code snippets, Visual Studio Gallery is THE place to find extensions targeted at Visual Studio. Extensions can be anything from macros to item, project or solution templates to add-ins to full-blown extensibility packages. You’ll find both free and paid extensions built by both professional companies and community members.