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VS.Net Compile Hangs...
I'm curious if any of you have run into this and can maybe offer some advice.
I have a fairly large ASP.Net app that I regularly work on (it has a bunch of dependencies, read “sub projects that support it”). I try to keep the stuff I'm not actively working on out of the picture as much as I can; among other things I have a base project that a bunch of other things derive from. Anyway, I load all this up into a single solution and include the projects so that when I compile I grab everything. I switched from release...
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Latest DNR episode...
Before I start into this one (and there is a small rant), I have to make sure that you, the reader, know about my blind spot. Juval Löwy is on the latest episode of Dot Net Rocks. Now Juval is a smart guy (I've been told by a friend who read one of his books that his book is really good); but he offended me way back when he wrote an editorial back in VSM a couple years ago. If you know what I'm talking about, great; if you don't, don't worry about it, just be aware of the fact that I'm...
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My "religious" discussion with Rory..
[Warning: slightly religious post coming... this is mainly for the Christians who read my blog and for Rory]I just wanted to throw some things out...
In this post, Rory says “a fireside conversation with Jay Kimble and Melissa Sells about the kind of difficulties someone faces when choosing to adopt a personal belief system based on Christianity.“
I just wanted to say that I got to tell Rory in person some of the stuff I wanted to say when he got attacked by the “used Jesus salesman.” The main point that I wanted him to see was that you don't have...
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When to use XML...
My friend Tim asked me on Saturday night about XML. He actually asked me a question that I had asked DonXML at the Sells DevCon on Wednesday afternoon.
Tim's question was this: I don't know much about XML and after reading all that you wrote about the conference, I'm starting to wonder if I should know more; when should I consider using XML?
My question to Don went something like this: I know XSLT and I know XML, but I find that I rarely use it; when should I use it.
Now Don is a pretty smart guy (otherwise I would have found someone...
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Final Thoughts on DevCon V
Here are my final thoughts about XML DevCon V. We have our issues with the tools sometimes because they are not totally where we want them; we want the standards to be better; but despite all this some really cool things are being done with XML and will continue to be done.
Now I'm going to spend sometime with my wife and son... later
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After Day 2 thoughts/messages
I think the message of Day 2 is this. Despite the problems, despite the complaining, we're building cool stuff with what we have. I'm on overload with everything that was shown. Today was very much about practical uses of XML technology. Tim E. started it out telling that despite his complaints he likes the tools we have. He can do stuff with it, and while it's not always optimal, it works. He mentioned that his brother could make a house with 2 tools: a saw and an axe (I think). Need I say more…
We had a couple great examples of...
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In the airport (or after the love has gone...)
I know I'm trying to be cutesy with the title, but it feels that way. I'm currently sitting in Portland Airport at about 10:00pm (my flight will leave in a little less than 2 hours). The reason I'm here so early is that I volunteered to save Adam Kinney a little bit of cash and I drove over to the airport a little early because his flight is an hour earlier than mine. Adam's plane will be boarding probably in the next 20 minutes or so…
But I'm not writing because I'm bored or that I want to tell you...
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The end of the conference...
It went out wth a bang... Don Box came in singing “Give SOAP a chance” which Tim Bray turned into “give Sun a chance.” There was much fun and revelry and I have it all recorded. The Plural Site/former-developmentor guys have lived up to their billing...
They are the craziest and most entertaining speakers (not just tech speakers) that I have ever seen. I'll be doing one or two more posts to finish off the day.
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Keith Brown: Top 10 Security Tips for Web Service Developer
“One man's new feature is another man's new exploit.”
Who's job is it to make things secure? Everyone [I say we should take pride in what we due and be diligent].
1) Less is more (Less privilege) - minimal permissions... who runs on their laptop as a non-admin? very few [I plan on doing it at some point soon]. You want the platform to take care of your security by integrating with the platform (on windows integrate with ActiveDirectory). Also, secrets are problematic because you have to hide them.
2) Newer is often not better - proven methods for security are better than...
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Blair Schneider McKay: Using XML to take the headaches out of EDI processing
Another practitioner talk (which is cool).
EDI sucks! I've seen it tried to comprehend it. Like Blair I feel sorry for anyone who has had to look at it or work with it.
[I'm eating a weird combination of nuts and jelly belly jelly beans.]XML ---> EDI (you trade single-use tools for generic XML ... sorry I missed the rest of the slide) EDI lets you do spaghetti logic in a document. He built his own utility to convert EDI docs to XML.
So he built an EDI to generic XML. He then uses XSLT to to create a more readable version of the...
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Neetu Rajpal: XML in Visual Studio 2005
Great... I lost this entire post.
Here's the deal.
1) XML is faster in VS 2005.2) XSLT gets compiled!3) XSD schemas are now validated4) The editor for XML features schema validation and inellisense5) XSLT can now be debugged6) The XSLT debugger will invoke while stepping through the regular code(if you set to produce debug symbols)
Additional things learned -1) Don Box is excited about this2) Doug Purdy controls serialization and is also excited about this3) Neetu is not to be messed with... she shut Don Box up twice (once she un-derailed the side conversation, andthen she embarassed Don by mentioning that he hadn't read an...
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Jeff Barr- Amazon Web Services: A Year in Review
“Feel free to blog about this” [I will].
This is another practitioners talk. In other words, my team did this, ain't it cool? [Yes, it is].
Web services let them build a “programmable web site.” It also decouples the data and presentation layers (you get that my OOP readers). Public web services lure developers to your platform, and they'll find cool ways to use your platform.
What does Amazon Web Services offer?Access to all Amazon's data and technology:- Product Information (including reviews)- 3rd party seller info- customer created content- Amazon's shopping cart
They started small and simple in 2002. There now in version 4...
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XML DevCon V: Content...
I wonder... do you think any of the speakers would be upset if I stole their whole presentation, so that I can start doing user group presentations?
I think I could maybe try to pull off Don Box's presentation... OK, maybe not...
One of the goals for me doing this blogging thing was that I want to eventually present. Maybe this is the time. I know I can probably present locally at the Florida .Net user's group in Tampa which is where I should start. I wish I had the talented code monkeys that others have... oh well...
I guess I'm just...
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Doug Purdy: Web Services Versioning
Doug is Joe Java in he Lab Eye for the Dev. Guy... That's what is shown before the talk... you need to hear the audio... nothing more to be said... [I wish I had time to read blogs... I can't wait to see what Rory has been saying today].
Subtitle “or how I learned to stop worrying and love UPA.”
“Close your eyes... obey the bald guru in the front... think of a car? What car was it? was it your own?” Versioning is all about updating something that already lives in the wild...
[It's Doug's birthday today... Happy Birthday, Doug!]
BTW, I should...
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Rich Salz: Protecting XML/WS Servers at the Network Level
Buzz word = XML-aware network. Provide security, performance, manageability for XML that exists in your IP network.
Lot's of challenges in application software. [This is starting to feel like a commercial... I hope it picks up].
Ahh... now I see what his product does... it's a cool piece for work to be aware of. F5 strips off SSL from HTTP headers and takes care of that at a device level (reducing the work that a web server has... it also is a webserver load balancer, andmore). With XML we're starting to add keys and encryption back into the app layer.
We...
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Tim Ewald: WS-Hope
I can't say that this stuff doesn't work... it clearly does, because they let bloggers into the conventions so that they could post RSS. Reporter asked a blogger “what are you doing?” And, the blogger said I'm sending XML messages to the world.
Ebay has had an XML service that lets people add listings via XML messages since 2000. They get a large portion of their listings this way.
Ebay and Amazon are the standards... they are the 800 lb gorilla. XML over HTTP are being used by lots of companies.
So how do you do security over this? Don discussed a...
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Before Day 2...
Ok, so I have a couple of things to blog about before the first session.
Rob, I talked to Don Box and got the answer to your question about Indigo.[The question: I heard a rumor that you (Don Box) are working like a crazy man, so that you can ship Indigo with Whidbey]Don's Answer: Yes and no. It's true that I'm working like a maniac. But the plan has always been to deliver with Longhorn.
It's been very cool to hang out with DonXML, Rory, Jeff (Julian), Daniel Cazzulino, Rich, and Steve (Maine) -- just to name a few. It's way fun...
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XML DevCon day1 summary (final thoughts before heading to bed)
So the day is over and I'm laying in bed blogging (I'm such a geek!) Anyway, I wanted to blog about the Q&A session after dinner; unfortunately, I lost my notes, but I think I can do it from memory anyway.
Before the session Jeff Julian, Budge, and DonXML advised me against learning XML Schema... a waste of your time. After what ensued later, I think I understand.
Pro Wrestling is less violent than what I saw! I never thought a geek argument could end in death, but it did (Ok, I'm kidding).
Anyway, a couple questions were thrown out that managed to...
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Kurt Cagle: XSLT2 on .Net
XSLT is different from API programming (very true). XSLT exists in virtually every language.
He's talking about problems with XSLT v1... ugh! I'm having painful flashbacks. Poor string handling, recursion,... ouch!
Saxon (6.5)Most compliant XSLT 1 compliant. Java based...
In case you haven't heard EXSLT is an extended XSLT that adds some new functions... it became the basis for the XSLT 1.1 pseudo-spec (it ended up being recalled because it became apparent that they should build a new spec v2). It's definitely a stop gap.
XSLT 2.0Expected in a year or more. Spec probably won't change much...
Here's the problem... “to understand a...
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Daniel Cazzulino: All about Schematron
Schematron started out as a java project; there is now a .Net implementation. This talk is all about this project. Schematron is an XML validation engine (as far as I can tell).
It validates schema with what appears to be more complex rules. It can perform validation as well as reporting against an XML document (and I assume using an XML Schema... I missed a little bit).
The rules engine looks to be very flexible; rules can be prioritized. Rules can be grouped into patterns.
It specifies namespaces via a ns (namespace tag); Daniel doesn't like this since XML already has its...
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Sam Ruby- Atom in Depth: XML is an attractive nuisance
He starts by refuting a previous session from a few years ago. Old message “learn XML by looking at the source.” He now knows more about the complexity. He compares 'a' to 'a', and 'a' to 'A.' UTF8 issues. Encodings are mostly ignored. He compared capital A to capital alpha (looks identical to A). Several different encodings use different values (unicode value, xml unicode value, ascii, for instance). Lot's of stuff along this line. People use the default encoding values... some agreggators just slap together pieces of rss from all over the web.
He's beating on MS over windows-1252 encoding... <groan /> I'm recording this too......
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Whit Kemmey : Using XML for Navy Missile Systems
We use XML in weapons systems?? Lot's of cool pictures... also 8-< didn't get Don recorded... although I should be able to get the rest.
Due to the nature of this talk, I'm not recording it... I'm afraid of terrorists getting my blog and doing something bad with it... as if there's anything useful for terrorism in my blog.
Lot's of cool submarine pictures...
Not an actual submarine
Pretty cool stuff; not much that I feel like blogging though. An interesting discussion ensued regarding why you did it this way (with XML). Answer: XML let's us create documentation. Using XML as a scripting language......
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Don Box: WS-Why AKA WS-DesertIsland
Which 5 ws-* specs would I take with me to a desert island. (XML or Lisp are interchangeable in Don's mind... Tim Bray can't explain why Lisp wasn't chosen)
The data outlives the code (almost always).
soap - It has proven itself. 1.1 tried to limit XML too much, but they've fixed it. Soap gives as a few minimal things, but what those things are have been pretty good.
ws-addressing - soap doesn't impose policy. Contains the policy stuff that they wanted to put in soap. With soap you lose the security on both ends. ws-addressing gives you the from too. They...
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Patrick Cauldwell/Scott Hanselman - Bringing Strongly-typed Bus. Objs to Fin Systems w/ XML Schema
[Way too long of a title]
So they've started talking about the original Corrillian Voyager Architecture... It's very loosely typed. Scott says that it is so loosely typed that you can't tell if anything happened. It does scale to massive heights - 70,000 users and a bazillion transactions a second (I missed the actual number). They were brought in because the voyager works, but the UI is messed up. The main problem was that it used a shared dictionary (this string is passed to next process which returns another string). It used Sax's VB scripting, so not only was the data...
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Chris Anderson - Why developers hate XML
[This stuff may seem a little disjointed... I'm taking notes... I think it may be valuable to you though... I'm actually logged into MSN Messenger -- email me on the right for my ID]
Chris promises to offend everyone (see title of the session)
Chris disagrees with Tim. Chris says that the data is what is important... not the actual markup.
Tim Bray compares the .Net API versus XML (CLR Type vs. loose types).
XML is the intregation framework (the apps are important).
Don Box asks “aren't all apps integration.” Don is playing devils advocate. Technorati doesn't have a lot of code... it's mostly data. Tim...
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Trying to catch up...
Rory has already blogged about the first two speakers.
The conference started with some fun and thank yous.
Then Tim Bray came and pretty much offended every MS developer. He talked about RSS vs. Atom. He took issue with some of the ws-* specs because they are building specs without real world experience (his opinion).
He mentions a really cool concept “YAGNI” which means “you ain't gonna need it.” (see http://www.softwarequotes.com/ShowQuotes.asp?ID=612&Name=Gall,_John&Type=Q)
Chris Anderson is now up.
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Arrival
So I am way behind on posting... I'll try to blog more on this later. I'm here at the conference. I survived the trip. I got here about 2 am (which would be 5 am east coast time).
I landed at about 12:03 am PST, I made it past the incoherent worker at the Hertz counter (he was worse than me)... A number of times he offered to upsize me to something that I couldn't quite comprehend.
I made it here.
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Chris Sells XMl DevCon V...
Like Rory mentions, I will also be blogging about the XML DevCon V. I'm hoping to catch a fair amount of audio (video would be cool, but I don't have time to set all that up). If you can't go, I'll be blogging about as many sessions as I can.
The biggies for me are Chris Anderson's “Developer's Hate SQL”, and Don Box's “WS-Why.” (that's the short list I also can't wait for a bunch of the others (too numerous to talk about).
I'm arriving in Portland at 11:55 pm (Portland time), and then driving 40 minutes to the hotel... since I'm on...
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TabletPC Day 3
so the day is almost over and I decided to go ahead and blog a little bit. I'm currently using tablet mode to write this post I know it's part of the novelty of the tablet, but this is way cool. I've had make maybe 10 changes, but it's been relatively easy to do art it's required minimal time. Needless to say I'm very impressed! I'm using the tablet PC 2oo5'S ink anywhere feature. I bet I could code with this mode... Probably not. Still it's pretty cool.
Anyway, I've tested the graphics with a playstation emulator (pcsx) . Plenty of...
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Tablet PC Day 2
[Read Day 1's entry here]
Ok, so yesterday was day 2. I've installed everything under the sun (and still going). I have Virtual PC running with Windows 2003 server and VS 2005 beta 1 (I have joined the ranks of futuritis... hurray!)
I've also installed VS 2003 on the non-Virtual Pc; I'm trying out CodeRush and it appears to be fairly cool (but $270) is a lot more money than I personally want to fork over. I'm also Morisson Schwartz's Sharp Tools. I've actually come close to creating a refactoring tool for VB (and may build one yet). If I do this...
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Pictures of me...
Ok, I posted some pictures of me. This is because I'm going to the Chris Sells XML DevCon V, and I would like to meet a few people there. Since I'm a little on the shy side, I thought that I would post my picture up on this site that way I can possibly meet a few people who I know, but I don't know that I know (blogging is weird). If you're going to the conference, come up and introduce yourself.
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Announcement...
For those of you who regularly read... I just wanted you all to know that last week my wife and I went in for the ultra-sound. You know which one I'm talking about. The one where you find out the sex of the child...
We're having -- another boy(if you care to read then highlight the previous text... OK, I know it's a dumb trick...).
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Tablet PC Day -5 to Day 1...
[NOTE: I'm now on Day 2 with my Tablet]
I've been reading Scoble and listening to Rory rave about Tablets for some time now; I've really been wanting to replace my laptop and PDA with a device like OQO's, but decided that it would be difficult to code on OQO's device...
So 2 Wednesdays ago, I decided to take the plunge and buy a TabletPC; I chose an Averatec AV3500. I had read a number of user reviews which were mostly mixed. One of the scarier reviews mentioned that the guy had returned 3 units and was not getting another one. The...
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Misc Crap...
Sorry it's been so long since I've written, I haven't had much to blog about lately. I did buy a TabletPC last week. It will be here today! I'm totally psyched. I intend to play with it for a couple days before I blog about it. I did this because of both Rory's and Scoble's advice. Beyond that my friend D.Code (I'll leave his real name out in case he doesn't want to be identified) pointed me to a really cool development app that sent me over the top (btw, I don't plan on running that app, but I may...
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Politics
I've been monitoring http://www.electoral-vote.com for some time now (I think I first learned about it from Miquel de Icaza's blog). Anyway, I have installed on the left (for those of you viewing this from the web... if you're in an aggregator, you'll need to come here to see it) the latest projected electoral vote count based on the latest polls (with Bush and Kerry being the only names listed).
I'm really not trying to start a political discussion here, but I am trying to be a little more politically active with this election.
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Buying a new tablet...
I have about $1000 to buy a new notebook. I'm considering buying a refurbed TabletPC, and was curious if anyone out there has any suggestions. I was thinking about buying a Toshiba Portege 3505, since I've found it on Amazon for $999. I can spend a little more, but don't want to go beyond this number more than a couple hundred bucks (I would love to buy a Portege M205, and almost did until I turned up what I think must have been a scammer on Amazon).
If you help me, I would be more than happy to reward you with 1...
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The Bush - Hurricane Theory...
At work we have somewhat been joking about a tie between the hurricanes and bush's election in 2000. The theory is that God is punishing Florida for putting Bush in the White House. I may have made an off the cuff remark about this (I can't seem to find it).
Ken Courtney (a former co-worker) posted the following map in my blog yesterday. Being that as I have known Ken he has always been a staunch atheist it really lends credence to the theory(I almost titled this “Ken C. finds God??“).; of course it appears from the copyright that Ken didn't build the image...
If your a...