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Michael Sorens TortoiseSVN and Subversion Cookbook Part 3: In, Out, and Around
by Michael Sorens | 16 January 2012 |  1 comment |
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,... Read more...
Tom Fischer Unit Testing Myths and Practices
by Tom Fischer | 05 January 2012 |  65 comments |
We all understand the value of Unit Testing, but how come so few organisations maintain unit tests for their in-house applications? We can no longer pretend that unit testing is a universal panacea for ensuring less-buggy applications. Instead, we should be... Read more...
Simone Chiaretta ASP.NET MVC Routing Extensibility
by Simone Chiaretta | 09 December 2011 |  13 comments |
You develop an ASP.NET MVC application by extending it; customising any default logic that you wish to change with your own implementation. Simone starts a tour of the extensibility points of ASP.NET MVC, by looking at the beginning of the pipeline, the Routing... Read more...
Michael Sorens TortoiseSVN and Subversion Cookbook Part 2: File Operations and Subversion Filtering
by Michael Sorens | 21 November 2011 |  5 comments |
The second part of Michael's series of articles gives more recipes for Subversion Source Control. This time he explains how to add files, highlights tools and techniques for determining what to include in source control and shows how to quickly and efficiently... Read more...
Michael McLaughlin 5 Tips for Understanding Managed-Unmanaged Interoperability in .NET
by Michael McLaughlin | 14 November 2011 |
Interop doesn't have to be taxing. Interoperability between managed and unmanaged code happens under the hood in .NET. When you are doing Interop in your .NET applications, there are a few things to beware of, and Michael McLaughlin gives a brief introduction of... Read more...
Michael Sorens Subversion and TortoiseSVN Cookbook Part 1- The Basics
by Michael Sorens | 03 November 2011 |
If you have more than zero developers in your team, then you need Source Control. In this article Michael starts a series that aims to provide clear and complete recipes for using Subversion, mainly through its simple, elegant, graphical interface: TortoiseSVN. Read more...
Michael McLaughlin 5 Tips and Techniques for Avoiding Automatic GC Collections
by Michael McLaughlin | 31 October 2011 |  2 comments |
Automatic memory management isn't new, but it’s a wonderful thing for programmers. We bring you some tips and techniques to .help you understand a bit more about how .NET’s memory management works, can help you to ensure that you write high-performance .NET code. Read more...
Jonathan Medd Adding a Graphical Front End to your PowerShell Scripts
by Jonathan Medd | 10 October 2011 |  1 comment |
Even if you know PowerShell inside and out, there will be those times where you won’t be the end user for your script, even within your organisation. You need a straightforward GUI. Thankfully, Jonathan Medd has provided workthoughs for three tools - PowerGUI,... Read more...
Matteo Slaviero TLS/SSL and .NET Framework 4.0
by Matteo Slaviero | 28 September 2011 |  2 comments |
The Secure Socket Layer is now essential for the secure exchange of digital data, and is most generally used within the HTTPS protocol. .NET now provides the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to implement secure communications directly. Matteo explains the... Read more...
Simone Chiaretta An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC Extensibility
by Simone Chiaretta | 21 September 2011 |  20 comments |
Because ASP.NET MVC has been designed with extensibility as its design principle; almost every logical step of the processing pipeline can be replaced with your own implementation. In fact, the best way to develop applications with ASP.NET MVC is to extend the... Read more...
Clay Burch Stock Market Technical Analysis
by Clay Burch | 07 September 2011 |  12 comments |
Although the technical approach to stock market analysis has been around since the 1800s, some improvements have obviously been made over time. With the introduction of computers, and specifically .NET libraries geared towards statistical analysis, huge, complex... Read more...
Michael Williamson Writing Maintainable Code
by Michael Williamson | 06 September 2011 |  9 comments |
Writing maintainable code is hard. It must be understandable, testable and readable. Any one of these can be tricky, and together they seem pretty daunting. Thankfully, Michael Williamson makes it look easy to become a code craftsman. Read more...
David Berry Designing C# Software With Interfaces
by David Berry | 24 August 2011 |  13 comments |
The best way to understand how interfaces improve software design is to see a familiar problem solved using interfaces. First, take a tightly-coupled system design without interfaces, spot its deficiencies and then walk-through a solution of the problem with a... Read more...
Phil Factor Making HTML tables easier on the eye- CSS Structural Pseudo-classes
by Phil Factor | 11 August 2011 |  5 comments |
We asked Phil why his PowerShell tabular reports looked so nice. 'CSS structural pseudo-classes' he muttered mystically. Later on, without any further warning, he popped up with this article that explains for anyone who has missed them, how to go about doing... Read more...
Hima Bindu Vejella Entity Framework 4.0 - Learn to Create Databases from the Model
by Hima Bindu Vejella | 14 July 2011 |  34 comments |
For application developers focusing on the needs of their code, rather than worrying about the complexities of data representation, the Entity Framework’s abstractions are essential. But eventually a database needs to be created, and Hima is here to show us how it’s... Read more...
Richard Costall Elevated Trust in Silverlight 4
by Richard Costall | 01 June 2011 |
Richard Costall brought us up to speed on getting Silverlight to run beyond the browser, and now he's giving us a crash course in how to use the new Elevated Trust mode available in Silverlight 4 to give your application even more customisations and permissions on... Read more...
Michael Sorens XPath, CSS, DOM and Selenium: The Rosetta Stone
by Michael Sorens | 04 April 2011 |  5 comments |
Some programming conventions are best represented in a chart. Nobody will claim that XPath or CSS are entirely intuitive, as they are terse, economical ways of identifying elements in a hierarchy. However, a chart with recipes and examples is a different matter.... Read more...
Patrick Smacchia Defining .NET Components with Namespaces
by Patrick Smacchia | 14 March 2011 |  3 comments |
A .NET software component is a compiled set of classes that provide a programmable interface that is used by consumer applications for a service. As a component is no more than a logical grouping of classes, what then is the best way to define the boundaries of a... Read more...
Joydip Kanjilal EntityDataSource Control Basics
by Joydip Kanjilal | 03 March 2011 |  1 comment |
The Entity Framework can be easily used to create websites based on ASP.NET. The EntityDataSource control, which is one of a set of Web Server Datasource controls, can be used to to bind an Entity Data Model (EDM) to data-bound controls on the page. Thse controls... Read more...
Jonathan Evans Capturing Screenshots for Automated Error-Reporting
by Jonathan Evans | 01 March 2011 |  3 comments |
So often, a screendump will explain a great deal about a bug, and prevent much frustration in the process of error-reporting. For EAP testing or user-acceptance testing, it can speed up the whole process dramatically. Including a screendump with an automated... Read more...
Richard Costall Silverlight Beyond the Browser: The Basics
by Richard Costall | 14 February 2011 |  1 comment |
Silverlight can now be used to write a complete business application that can be run outside the browser. Such an application will probably need to automatically check, and react to, changes to the network status, as well as automatically download and install... Read more...
Patrick Smacchia Partitioning Your Code Base Through .NET Assemblies and Visual Studio Projects
by Patrick Smacchia | 10 February 2011 |  22 comments |
Should every Visual Studio project really be in its own assembly? And what does 'Copy Local=True' really mean? Patrick Smacchia is no stranger to large .NET projects, and is well placed to lay a few myths to rest, and gives some advice that promises up to a tenfold... Read more...
Jeremy Jarrell Hitting the Ground Running with Parallel Extensions in .NET 4.0
by Jeremy Jarrell | 01 February 2011 |  8 comments |
With the arrival of Parallel Extensions in .NET 4.0, the concurrent programming powers traditional reserved for the most elite of developers are now available to all of us. With multi-core processors increasingly becoming the norm, this is good news, and Jeremy... Read more...
Michael Sorens LINQ Lycanthropy: Transformations into LINQ
by Michael Sorens | 05 January 2011 |
LINQ is one of the few technologies that you can start to use without a lot of preliminary learning. Also, it lends itself to learning by trying out examples. With Michael's help, you can watch as your conventional C# code changes to ravenous LINQ before your very... Read more...
Zenon Ochal Dynamic Language Integration in a C# World
by Zenon Ochal | 04 December 2010 |  4 comments |
.NET 4.0 introduced the Dynamic keyword in C#4.0, making it simple to have your .NET code smoothly interact with dynamic languages. To find out just how easy it was, Zenon Ochal used C# and IronPython to build a very efficient mathematical expression plotter in... Read more...
Michael Sorens LINQ Secrets Revealed: Chaining and Debugging
by Michael Sorens | 01 December 2010 |  3 comments |
LINQ has the capabilities of providing a great productivity boost. LINQ Chaining is particularly powerful magic, giving your code greater clarity and brevity. Using it, and debugging it, can be tricky without the right tools and techniques, but Michael is on hand... Read more...
Nick Harrison Some NHibernate Best-Practices
by Nick Harrison | 25 November 2010 |  5 comments |
NHibernate can help to build a project more quickly if the database it connects to is sound. Otherwise, there are bound to be problems, but they are not problems of NHibernate's making. Nick Harrison gives some advice, and suggests some 'best-practices' for using... Read more...
Michael Sorens Creating Tray Applications in .NET: A Practical Guide
by Michael Sorens | 04 November 2010 |  15 comments |
It isn’t widely known that you can use both WPF and Winforms with VS2010 to create a system tray application in .NET. Michael gives you a practical guide, illustrated by an example that is so effective it can be put to immediate practical use. HostSwitcher comes... Read more...
Leidago !Noabeb Using Table Valued Parameters with VB.NET
by Leidago !Noabeb | 03 November 2010 |  6 comments |
SQL Server's Table-Valued Parameters are useful, and easy to use, but you should be aware that something that looks loke a table, and seems to behave like a table, can't necessarily be used just like any other table. Leidago gives a developer's guide on how, and... Read more...
Khawar Yunus One application in both WPF and Silverlight
by Khawar Yunus | 05 October 2010 |  11 comments |
Because Silverlight is a development of Windows Presentation Foundation, and the technologies are so interlinked, it would seem obvious that there would besuch a high degree of code compatibility that one could then develop an application for both platforms from a... Read more...
Matteo Slaviero Code Access Security in ASP.NET 4.0
by Matteo Slaviero | 14 September 2010 |  5 comments |
In the third, and final article that introduces Code Access Security in .NET Framework 4.0, Matteo explains, with examples, how the Level2 Security Transparent Model works within a hosted ASP.NET environment. Read more...
Dave McMahon SharePoint 2010 Visio Services
by Dave McMahon | 12 August 2010 |  2 comments |
Even if you’ve heard of SharePoint, you may not know about Visio Services, which is making Data-Driven visualizations easier to create than ever before. Dave McMahon has generously provided an excellent introduction to get us up to speed, complete with a... Read more...
Vladimir Bodurov Using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio with Lego Mindstorms NXT Robot
by Vladimir Bodurov | 10 August 2010 |  3 comments |
A good way to learn about Robotics is to build a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot and to control it using Visual Studio and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Although the results will hardly do the washing up for you, you'll gain valuable insights into thread... Read more...
Michael Sorens Mixing WPF and WinForms
by Michael Sorens | 10 August 2010 |  2 comments |
You can embed WPF controls in a WinForms application or WinForms controls in a WPF application, using a simple adapter. Because of this inherent symmetry, you can build hybrid applications, mixing controls from the other platform. Michael Sorens gives a practical... Read more...
Djonatas Tenfen Building an Airport Status Mashup with Silverlight and Bing Maps
by Djonatas Tenfen | 15 July 2010 |  14 comments |
Djonatas Tenfen demonstrates in fine detail how to quickly and easily build a mashup Silverlight application to consume and manipulate multiple data sources, and plot airports' realtime status onto a map. Read more...
Eli Arbel Reflectoron in Prism: a WPF MVVM tutorial
by Eli Arbel | 14 July 2010 |  4 comments |
When Eli was writing a WPF MVVM tutorial, he decided to use .NET Reflector as his sample, and created a WPF UI for .NET Reflector using its public interface, mimicking the original. A WPF/Prism version of Reflector? Eli explains what he did, and supplies the... Read more...
Matteo Slaviero What's New in Code Access Security in .NET Framework 4.0 - Part 2
by Matteo Slaviero | 13 July 2010 |  3 comments |
Having introduced us to the basics of the new Code Access Security Model available in .NET Framework 4.0, Matteo Slaviero explains how to use this powerful new system to implement fine-grained code security in ways where have never before been possible. Read more...
Nick Harrison Back to Basics: Wiring up a Web Application
by Nick Harrison | 18 June 2010 |
In the third of a series on Web Application design, Nick turns his attention to the Model part of the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern, and discusses what a well-behaved model might look like Read more...
Matteo Slaviero What's New in Code Access Security in .NET Framework 4.0 - Part I
by Matteo Slaviero | 15 June 2010 |  5 comments |
The Code Access Security model has been completely redesigned in the .NET Framework 4.0, to the point where CAS policies have been completely removed, and everything now works through Level2 Security Transparency. Confused? Not for long. Matteo Slaviero, a .NET... Read more...
Phil Factor The Cobra Programming Language
by Phil Factor | 26 April 2010 |  2 comments |
There are suddenly a number of strong alternatives to C# or VB. F#, IronPython and Iron Ruby are now joined by an open-source alternative called Cobra. Phil is taken by surprise at a language that is so intuitive to use that it is almost like pseudocode. Read more...
Nick Harrison Back to Basics: Converting a Web Page to a Web Form View
by Nick Harrison | 20 April 2010 |  10 comments |
ASP.NET developers can learn a lot from MVC practices. This article shows you how to structure a WebPage in an ASP.Net web application so that it is behaves like an MVC View, and suggests a number of ways to increase the quality, and portability, of ASP.NET... Read more...
Charles Lee How to Create Features for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
by Charles Lee | 14 April 2010 |
To customise a SharePoint (WSS 3.0) site, you'll need to understand 'Features'. The 'Feature' framework has become the recommended method of customising a SharePoint site, because it allows the ultimate flexibility, extensibility and scalability for you... Read more...
Edward Elliott Investigating .NET Memory Management and Garbage Collection
by Edward Elliott | 24 March 2010 |  2 comments |
Investigating a subtle memory leak can be tricky business, but things are made easier by using The .NET framework's tool SOS (Son of Strike) which is a debugger extension for debugging managed code, used in collaboration with the Windows debugger. Read more...
Michael Sorens From WinForm to WPF: A Quick Reference Guide
by Michael Sorens | 23 March 2010 |  5 comments |
Michael Sorens provides a handy wallchart to help migration between WinForm / WPF, VS 2008 / 2010, and .NET 3.5 / 4.0. this can be downloaded for free from the speech-bubble at the head of the article. He also describes the current weaknesses in WPF, and the most ... Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Developing your Data Access Layer with ADO.NET Entity Framework 4
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 23 March 2010 |  8 comments |
Entity Framework has evolved in the light of feedback. ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 is now better able to accommodate different development methodologies. A welcome improvement is the way that, the application designer now has a range of options in the way that... Read more...
James Johnson Hands-on Entity Framework
by James Johnson | 23 February 2010 |  14 comments |
People keep saying that Entity Framework is simple to learn. Simple? Well, finally, we're going to be forced to agree, thanks to James Johnson's new series on learning EF the hands-on way. Read more...
Charles Lee How to Create Event Receivers for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
by Charles Lee | 28 January 2010 |  3 comments |
You'll be surprised how often that you'll use event receivers instead of Workflow in order to implement functionality in Sharepoint; And who better to get you started with a simple guide to using them than Charles Lee? Read more...
Michael Sorens Using LINQ Lambda Expressions to Design Customizable Generic Components
by Michael Sorens | 27 January 2010 |  2 comments |
LINQ makes code easier to write and maintain by abstracting the data source. It provides a uniform way to handle widely diverse data structures within an application. LINQ’s Lambda syntax is clever enough even to allow you to create generic building blocks with... Read more...
Matteo Slaviero Symmetric Encryption
by Matteo Slaviero | 04 January 2010 |  4 comments |
Cryptography is an increasing requirement for applications, so it is great that it is part of the .NET framework. Matteo builds on his first article that explained Asymmetric Cryptography and Digital Signatures, and tackles Symmetric Encryption and how to... Read more...
Damon Armstrong .NET Developer Basics - Recursive Algorithms
by Damon Armstrong | 24 December 2009 |  11 comments |
Recursion can be a powerful programming technique when used wisely. Some data structures such as tree structures lend themselves far more easily to manipulation by recursive techniques. As it is also a classic Computer Science problem, it is often used in technical... Read more...
Edward Elliott A Look at Exceptions in .NET Applications
by Edward Elliott | 03 December 2009 |  1 comment |
Memory dumps are a wonderful way of finding out what caused an exception in a managed .NET application, particularly if it is happening in a production application. It is when tracking exceptions in applications where you can't use Visual Studio that the techniques... Read more...
Michael Sorens Using Three Flavors of LINQ To Populate a TreeView
by Michael Sorens | 02 December 2009 |
LINQ is a valuable technology. LINQ to XML, LINQ to Objects and LINQ to XSD, in particular, can save valuable time for developers and produce more maintainable code. Michael describes how he used three different flavours of LINQ to map XML to a Treeview component... Read more...
Phil Factor Connection Strings, an Overview
by Phil Factor | 26 November 2009 |  17 comments |
We asked Phil to come up with a simple explanation of connection strings. We somehow weren't expecting a 'quote of the day' for your database, or a C# application to gather data from the internet. However, sometimes the oblique approach is the best, especially when... Read more...
Edward Elliott .Net Debugging? Don't give me none of your VS
by Edward Elliott | 14 October 2009 |  8 comments |
Visual Studio is fine for most debugging purposes. Just occasionally, it isn't practicable, or there are other quicker ways of doing it with a user-mode debugger. Edward argues that debugging in MSIL or assembly language is a strangely liberating experience and can... Read more...
Matteo Slaviero Beginning with Digital Signatures in .NET Framework
by Matteo Slaviero | 07 October 2009 |  25 comments |
Digital Signatures aren't the most intuitive software devices to explain, but Matteo boldly gives a quick-start account of Asymmetric Cryptography and Digital Signatures before demonstrating how simple it can be to perform a signature using an X509 certificate and... Read more...
Nick Harrison .NET Reflector meets the CodeDom
by Nick Harrison | 02 October 2009 |  6 comments |
.NET Reflector was the first .NET tool to allow assemblies to be disassembled back into the high level language that produced them. Moreover, it has a plug-in architecture that allows you to disassemble to any language for which you have a plug-in, or are prepared... Read more...
Jeremy Jarrell We needed to find the source of the memory leak, and fast
by Jeremy Jarrell | 29 September 2009 |
At any time, memory leaks in a commercial application have to be fixed; but when your application is being deployed via virtualized desktops using platforms such as Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services or Citrix XenDesktop, then it becomes... Read more...
William Brewer Calling Stored Procedures from .NET Applications
by William Brewer | 11 September 2009 |  5 comments |
Everybody knows how to call stored procedures from a .NET application. Right? But then, how often do you see stored procedures used to their full advantage in database applications? William Brewer goes through some of the basics, but uses PowerShell and IronPython... Read more...
Andrew Hunter Object Overhead: The Hidden .NET Memory Allocation Cost
by Andrew Hunter | 09 September 2009 |  16 comments |
When developing a .NET application, one of the least visible sources of memory consumption is the overhead required by an object simply to exist. In applications that create a lot of small objects, this overhead can be a major or even a dominant factor in the total... Read more...
Nick Harrison A Defense of Reflection in .NET
by Nick Harrison | 13 August 2009 |  16 comments |
The trouble with making general rules about programming practices is that one can miss out on many benefits of of a framework by following them too literally in every context. Everyone knows that one should watch for performance problems and security issues with... Read more...
Charles Lee How to Create Custom Lists in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
by Charles Lee | 04 August 2009 |
In the first of a series of articles about Sharepoint, Charles Lee shows how easy it is to create custom lists that can then be used with Workflows, custom columns, lookup columns, and calculated fields. He then demonstrates how several lists can be used together to... Read more...
Nick Harrison Code Deodorants for Code Smells
by Nick Harrison | 09 July 2009 |  17 comments |
Code Smells have become an established way of talking about indications that things may be wrong with your code. Nick Harrison extends the idea with the concept of 'code deodorants' and shows how the code smell of 'inappropriate intimacy' can be cured by means of ... Read more...
Andrew Hunter Understanding Garbage Collection in .NET
by Andrew Hunter | 17 June 2009 |  3 comments |
Once you understand how .NET's garbage collector works, then the reasons for some of the more mysterious problems that can hit a .NET application become much clearer. NET may have promised the end to explicit memory management, but it is still necessary to profile ... Read more...
Nick Harrison A Gentle Introduction to .NET Code Generation
by Nick Harrison | 28 May 2009 |  12 comments |
Code-generation has been used throughout the age of the digital computer. The use of code to generate code might, at first glance, seem an odd thing to want to do, but the technique is alive and well, and is widely used in .NET. Nick Harrison explains, and... Read more...
Nick Harrison Exploring Smelly Code
by Nick Harrison | 27 April 2009 |  8 comments |
Bad Code Smells are similar in concept to Development-level Antipatterns. They don't describe bad programming aesthetics and you can't sniff them out precisely with code metrics. They describe code in need of refactoring in rich language such as 'Speculative... Read more...
Ben Hall Embedding IronRuby and the DLR into SQL Data Generator
by Ben Hall | 23 April 2009 |  2 comments |
You can embed DLR-based languages such as IronPython and IronRuby into applications. This gives you instant scripting, and with it, the potential for greatly simplifying the development process. You can even take advantage of existing applications that have a... Read more...
Andrew Hunter When to Run and When to Block
by Andrew Hunter | 21 April 2009 |  2 comments |
When you are developing a multi-threaded application, you will need to understand how the operating system decides which threads are to be blocked, and which should run. Performance comes from running the optimum number of threads at all times, getting the maximum... Read more...
Andrew Hunter The Dangers of the Large Object Heap
by Andrew Hunter | 19 March 2009 |  17 comments |
You'd have thought that memory leaks were a thing of the past now that we use .NET. True, but we can still hit problems. We can, for example, prevent memory from being recycled if we inadvertently hold references to objects that we are no longer using. However,... Read more...
John Papa Using Silverlight to Build a Guitar Chord Calculator
by John Papa | 12 March 2009 |  6 comments |
Silverlight is so versatile that it is easy to move beyond conventional browser-based applications and even write games. John Papa celebrates the launch of his new book by bringing you a simple Silverlight guitar Chord Calculator to demonstrate features of... Read more...
Gayani Devapriya Designing A Data Access Layer in LINQ to SQL
by Gayani Devapriya | 21 February 2009 |  14 comments |
Gayani provides the complete source code for a sample Data Access Layer for LINQ to SQL, using the Northwind Database, and explains how it all works and how to get good performance. She shows how easy it is to use stored procedure and views as well as queries to... Read more...
Vladimir Bodurov Building a Simple 3D Engine with Silverlight
by Vladimir Bodurov | 09 February 2009 |  11 comments |
Even if you intend only to use existing 3D engines in your applications, it always helps to understand how they work. Vlad hopes that you 'take the red pill', and learn how to render three-dimensional objects with C# without the use of any pre-existing 3D engine. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Some Data with your Application Take-away, Sir?
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 09 December 2008 |  5 comments |
Prasanna is reminded of pizza in cardboard boxes when he explores the possibilities of Synchronization Services for ADO.NET. Data applications are becoming increasingly mobile, and often disconnected, and data is often wrapped up to be consumed later. Miccrosoft's... Read more...
Gayani Devapriya Dynamic Data Templates in ASP.NET 3.5
by Gayani Devapriya | 17 November 2008 |  22 comments |
Gayani gives an introduction to Dynamic Data Templates in ASP.NET 3.5 and explains how one can save a great deal of time and effort when building data-driven web sites by using them Read more...
Chris Massey Mysteries of the NET Framework: The Challenge
by Chris Massey | 22 September 2008 |  1 comment |
We're very aware that some of the brightest NET programmers want to use ANTS 4, but are on tight budgets. Have no fear, as we have ten copies to give away to those who can illuminate the dark mysteries of the NET Framework. Read more...
Robert Chipperfield Exceptionally Mysterious
by Robert Chipperfield | 11 September 2008 |  3 comments |
If you are adept in puzzling over the cryptic messages in your stack trace, when a .NET exception is thrown, you may be surprised when they start talking complete nonsense. Is it really possible that two threads could build the stack trace on the same exception... Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Creating Service-Orientated Data-Access Layers
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 30 July 2008 |
The ADO.Net Data Services framework enables you to provide data services to Web applications that are simple to integrate with them. The data services use URIs to point to pieces of data, and use standards such as JSON and XML to transfer that data. ADO.NET Data... Read more...
Heather Fielding Embedding Help so it will be used
by Heather Fielding | 17 July 2008 |  5 comments |
It is not good enough to make assumptions about the way that users go about getting help when they use your application. Heather Fielding describes how she was able to test the effectiveness of various different ways of providing embedded help in an application. By... Read more...
Vladimir Bodurov Dynamically generating typed objects in .NET
by Vladimir Bodurov | 14 July 2008 |  11 comments |
When you are binding Data to DataGrid in .NET, this has to be done at design-time. That's fine if you know what the form of the data is at design time: but what if you don't? Vlad Bodurov looks at some of the options and demonstrates an unusual dynamic technique... Read more...
John Papa Data and Silverlight 2: Data Binding
by John Papa | 05 June 2008 |  2 comments |
Silverlight 2 is far more versatile than Silverlight 1. It can handle data-sources with some subtlety. John Papa tackles the whole subject of data-binding with Silverlight. This article is a partial excerpt from John Papa's upcoming book Data Access with Silverlight... Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Entity Framework: The Cribsheet
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 26 May 2008 |  13 comments |
Prasanna Amirthalingam provides an overview of Entity Framework and how it can be used. He shows that it can provide an excellent interface between the Object-oriented model and the relational. The Entity Framework allows developers to work with data in the form... Read more...
Dan Archer Sid: Vicious
by Dan Archer | 22 April 2008 |  2 comments |
Dan Archer documents his epic struggle with an apparently simple task of authenticating user credentials. For some reason, a task that should be performed by a simple API call leads to a great deal of head-scratching and googling. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna .NET Collection Management with C# 3.0
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 25 February 2008 |  19 comments |
Generics in C#, enable you to define classes, interfaces, delegates or methods with placeholders for parameterized types used within. This allows you to define classes that use a generic type, and define the type at the time of instantiation or method calls. This... Read more...
John Bower Silverlight Skinnable User Interfaces
by John Bower | 05 February 2008 |  2 comments |
John Bower demonstrates more of the features of Silverlight, and Expression Blend, and shows how one might write an application that avoids UI pitfalls by placing your design responsibility squarely on your users’ shoulders. If it looks bad, it’s their fault! Read more...
Steven R. McCabe Taking Exceptions
by Steven R. McCabe | 19 January 2008 |  7 comments |
Steve looks at the requirements that are usually in force for the support of a team-based 'production System' and suggests a way that exception-handling in C# can be used to provide robust error reporting Read more...
John Bower Silverlight-Speed Loop
by John Bower | 18 January 2008 |  3 comments |
John Bower steps up a gear, produces a Lamborghini, and examines the process of using a high-speed function loop to create a fast-paced Silverlight application. Read more...
John Bower Let there be Silverlight
by John Bower | 05 January 2008 |  9 comments |
John Bower stays calm, and so will you, whilst guiding you to producing your first Silverlight application. It may just be 'Hello World' but soon... Read more...
James Moore Integrating with WMI
by James Moore | 17 October 2007 |  9 comments |
James shows how to add a simple WMI provider to a service so that you can monitor it, and make changes to it, remotely across the network Read more...
John Papa .NET 3.5 Language Enhancements
by John Papa | 25 July 2007 |  56 comments |
LINQ may be getting the most attention in the forthcoming .NET 3.5, but there are also several new language features that add functionality and make life easier for the programmer. John Papa explains more... Read more...
Francis Norton Implementing Real-World Data Input Validation using Regular Expressions
by Francis Norton | 14 May 2007 |  17 comments |
Francis Norton shows how to use regular expressions to fulfil some real world data validation requirements, demonstrating techniques ranging from simple number format checks, to complex string validation that requires use of regex's powerful "lookahead" feature. Read more...
Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz Getting Started with XAML
by Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz | 16 March 2007 |  3 comments |
See for yourself the flexibility of XAML, as Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz show you how to create an interactive Windows application declaratively, in .NET 3.0. Read more...
Jeff Hewitt Building Active Directory Wrappers in .NET
by Jeff Hewitt | 09 February 2007 |  13 comments |
The ability to authenticate .NET application users against Active Directory is a common requirement. Here, Jeff Hewitt demonstrates how to build wrapper classes in Visual Basic that can convert AD data types into ones that can be used in a .NET application. Read more...
Damon Armstrong .NET Application Architecture: Logging SQL Exceptions in the Data Access Layer
by Damon Armstrong | 11 September 2006 |  9 comments |
Damon Armstrong demonstrates an efficient way to capture and manage SQL exceptions in your .NET application, by adding a SQL logger to your data access layer. Read more...
Julian Skinner Asynchronous Processing in .NET Part 2
by Julian Skinner | 18 August 2006 |  10 comments |
Julian Skinner presents an in-depth tutorial on thread synchronization in .NET, covering the most important Synchronization objects and including a full worked example. Read more...
Damon Armstrong .NET Application Architecture: the Data Access Layer
by Damon Armstrong | 11 July 2006 |  159 comments |
Find out how to design a robust data access layer for your .NET applications. Read more...
Phil Wilson Simple COM server registration
by Phil Wilson | 09 March 2006 |  2 comments |
Looking at COM activation context on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Working with manifest files and XML. Exposing .NET COM class libraries using interop. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna .NET Collection Management
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 08 December 2005 |  24 comments |
This article focuses on managing a collection of objects using generics, an important addition to the .NET Framework 2.0, and examines the capabilities provided by the generic list. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna ADO.NET 2.0 Factory Classes
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 25 October 2005 |  17 comments |
This article explains how to use .NET 2.0’s data provider factory classes to develop a pluggable data layer that is independent of database type and ADO.NET data provider. Read more...
Steve Joubert Does your app need an independent data layer?
by Steve Joubert | 03 October 2005 |  9 comments |
This article looks at the benefits and drawbacks of building an independent data layer into your application. Read more...
Steve Joubert Data Synchronization
by Steve Joubert | 01 October 2005 |  9 comments |
Making your smart client application work in a disconnected environment - considering data loading and return synchronization. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Custom Events in VB.NET 2005
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 26 September 2005 |  27 comments |
Visual Basic .NET is well known for its event-driven programming capabilities. VB.NET 2005 adds new functionality for custom events that provides flexibility in handling and controlling events. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Schema and metadata retrieval using ADO.NET
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 02 August 2005 |  7 comments |
How to obtain different types of information from your SQL Server 2000 database using ADO.NET 2.0, part of VS.NET 2005 and .NET 2.0. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Using partial classes to make intelligent datasets
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 13 July 2005 |  3 comments |
This article looks at how partial classes can be used to implement business logic into datasets so that they are more business aware and intelligent. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna .NET 2.0 transaction model
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 22 June 2005 |  28 comments |
.NET 2.0 introduces a new System.Transactions namespace that brings in a lightweight, simplified transaction model. Read more...
Douglas Reilly Should you use ADO.NET DataReader or DataSet?
by Douglas Reilly | 10 June 2005 |  25 comments |
In the beginning, there was the recordset, a central feature of classic ADO. In ADO.NET it was gone. Read more...
Amirthalingam Prasanna Visual Basic.NET 2005
by Amirthalingam Prasanna | 06 May 2005 |  5 comments |
Discover some of the new features in Visual Basic.NET 2005 such as partial classes, generics, operator overloading and using block Read more...
Neil Davidson Extending the save file dialog class in .NET
by Neil Davidson | 25 August 2004 |
The jigsaw with the missing piece - using the GetSaveFileName function to extend the Save File dialog class. Read more...
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recommended site pinvoke

PInvoke.net is a user-driven wiki which provides .NET developers with native method signatures, so they don't have to spend time writing them from scratch.




Phil Factor Using XML to pass lists as parameters in SQL Server
 (Updated 14th Jan 2012, and again 26th Jan 2012)Every so often, the question comes up on forums of how to pass a...  Read more...


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A Complete URL Rewriting Solution for ASP.NET 2.0
 Ever wondered whether it's possible to create neater URLS, free of bulky Query String parameters?... Read more...

Visual Studio Setup - projects and custom actions
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.NET Application Architecture: the Data Access Layer
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Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0
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Configuring Forms Authentication in SharePoint 2007
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