February 2005 Blog Posts
Where have I been? I've been working like a madman on the local install version of Easy Assets .NET!
Have you ever really gone back and reviewed code you've wrtten long ago? I've been working on Easy Assets .NET for quite some time and the hosted version works great! I'm happy with the performance etc. When I started working on the local install/open source version though I realized just how far my skill with .NET has come along in the last year+ and so I've decided to refactor the entire project so that the local install / open source versions will...
There are some big changes in the pipeline for my ISV product, Easy Assets .NET, the biggest of which being a version for local install and a source included version. I'm going to be looking for a few small to midsized companies to "eat my dogfood" i.e. test some of the new features and functionality.
What's in it for you? You get access to your own Easy Assets .NET database for free! When the release comes your company will be awarded 5 free licenses for the local install version or a significant discount on the hosted version.
If you're interested just send...
One of the most popular posts I had last year as far as hits and feedback involved my comparison of Active Reports to SQL Reporting services where I concluded that even though Reporting Services was free, there were some factors and situations which made Active Reports a much better choice for a development team that wasn't highly constrained by budget.
After posting that review, I received several emails from developers who told me I should check out a product called Xtra Reports from Developer Express. I've been meaning to do just that for a while now and finally had the chance...
Sahil made me think of this little tibit.
When I attended the VB Roadshow earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be invited to an earlier session that set down the "best and brightest" local developers with members of the Microsoft VB team. When asked if it was a good idea to re-write old VB 6.0 code into VB .NET code the answer given by the teams was NO.
The idea here is that a strict re-write doesn't gain you much at all. If you are refactoring or re-writing the code for another reason fine, but rewriting just to be able...
I have recently been tasked with creating a 1,000 ft overview of Object Oriented concepts in the VB .NET world for a development staff whose experience is mostly in old school ASP and VB 6.0
Much credit to The Book of Visual Studio .NET, ISBN 1-886411-69-7 from No Starch Press written by Robert B. Dunaway which I used as a template for the document and borrowed some examples from.
What is an object?
In its most basic form, an object simply is an entity that exposes properties, methods, and events. Objects provide abstraction and encapsulation to make our job as programmers easier by...
I'm looking for something that is fairly lightweight and easy to use. It needs to be able to do outlook style calendar functions (show appointments etc). It needs to be an ASP .NET Control.
Today I accepted an offer from School One so I'm no longer available for contract work.
They are a relatively small software shop that offers online applications to schools. The majority of their products are written in old ASP and they're looking to start moving over to ASP .NET. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to get into a growing company that will utilize the 3 years of experience I have built in ASP .NET to continue to grow their staff's skillset and continue in creating excellent products.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my previous looking for work post. It seems the...
Mike Lorengo and I are having a fantastic dialogue about complex objects and handling the display of their information in grids. I do recommend you read his post before continuing here. Don't mind me... I'll wait...
Ok now that you're back I'd like to explain a little deeper on my preference for domain queries that return data tables to populate grids instead of the other methods Mike goes into. Yes, my main gripe with such a method is the performance concern. Mike's post, and the feedback he's received the main concern has been about executing many calls instead of one call.
Mike...
Mike Lorengo has an interesting post about binding gridviews in ASP .NET 2.0 to “complex” objects. I have already posted a short reply to his blog and wish to elaborate upon it here.
To start with, let me say that I am a huge fan of using objects inherited from CollectionBase over datasets. Objects to me are simply more flexible and make more sense. However, it is very easy to get caught up in the ease and "neatness" factor of databinding your complex objects.
Consider the following scenario. You have two objects called Category and Subcategory. A category is a top level...
Anyone who is new to the world of ASP .NET, or new to the concepts of inheritence in general probably is missing out on a great way to organize their ASP .NET application. When you first create a webform and switch to code view you are faced with the following statement (c#):
public class YourPage : System.Web.UI.Page
What many new coders do not realize is that they can create class files that inherit System.Web.UI.Page and embed common functionality into those pages. Shown here is a sample of a new class BasePage that inherits System.Web.UI.Page. Notice that it exposes a property called connectstring...