ASP.NET performance: is it all about the database?
by Michaela Murray | 25 January 2012
If you just assume that your application's slowness is the fault of the database, then that is a quick route to a smug DBA if it later turns out you’re wrong. Far better to know for sure how much of your applications time is spent waiting around for the database to do something, and how many round-trips to and from the database it makes.
Can desktop software be Lean?
by benc | 24 January 2012
We're currently trying to build a service that lets developers silently update their application. We want desktop developers to enjoy all the same advantages as those who code for web. Desktop software shouldn't become a second class citizen just because it's too slow to adapt.
Managing ItemUpdating and ItemUpdated Events Firing Twice in a SharePoint Item Event Receiver
by Damon Armstrong | 17 January 2012
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3 comments | 
Developing a Sharepoint application would have all the fun of a video game, if only you had infinite lives. Dangers lurk hidden out there which, if you run into them, can be a blow to your project and waste a great deal of time. Damon gives just one example of a poisoned dagger in the game of Sharepoint Development: The Item Event Receiver.
Chuck Moore on the Lost Art of Keeping It Simple
by Richard Morris | 18 January 2012
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Chuck Moore is still the radical thinker of Information Technology, After an astonishing career designing languages (e.g. FORTH), browser-based computers, CAD systems and CPUs, he is now energetically designing extremely low-powered 'green' multi-processor chips for embedded systems. Behind everything he does is a radical message: 'Embrace the entire problem, Keep it simple'.
Inside the ConcurrentCollections: ConcurrentQueue
by Simon Cooper | 24 January 2012
ConcurrentQueue is, like ConcurrentStack, a lockless collection, in that it is implemented without using any locks at all. However, the semantics required for a queue impose a quite different approach; unlike ConcurrentStack, which has a single point of concurrent contention, a queue can be changed at both the head and tail.
Educational Programming
by Dave Convery | 20 January 2012
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At last, we’ve woken up to the worrying fact that there just aren’t enough good programmers to go around. Instead of aiming to get a generation of students interested in building their own software, education has instead been compelled by national governments to focus on stultifying vocational work geared to office skills.
Great SQL Server Debates: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio
by Jonathan Kehayias | 18 January 2012
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One of the more popular counters used by DBAs to monitor SQL Server performance, the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio, is useless as a predictor of imminent performance problems. Worse, it can be misleading. Jonathan Kehayias demonstrates this convincingly with some simple tests.
Indexing - take the hint and leave it to the experts
by fatherjack | 10 January 2012
| 3 comments 
Leave Query Hints to extreme cases and apply them with advice from an index expert. Going it alone means you could be making hard work of your data access. Do you hate your servers that much?
TortoiseSVN and Subversion Cookbook Part 3: In, Out, and Around
by Michael Sorens | 16 January 2012
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Subversion doesn't have to be difficult, especially if you have Michael Sorens's guide at hand. After dealing in previous articles with checkouts and commits in Subversion, and covering the various file-manipulation operations that are required for Subversion, Michael now deals in this article with file macro-management, the operations such as putting things in, and taking things out, that deal with repositories and projects.
It always works on my machine.
by Brian Donahue | 18 January 2012
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Probably the most common question that the Red Gate developer tools support gets is "Does your X work with Y?" where X is your bit of software and Y is a bit of software made by a different company. This is probably the least answerable question in the known universe.
