The EF Code-First Library is a very cool feature of the Visual Studio 2010 tools that will allow developers to get their applications running quickly – a full persistent data entity model can be created without having to configure a database, run any tools, configure any XML files, or define any base data entity classes. One of the coolest things is the way the database model can be changed automatically when changes to the entity model are made and the automatic creation of the primary keys and relationships between the tables. This should be a real time saver to developers.
Read full article
I’ve recently gained my motor bike licence after professing for years that I would never ride and expressing surprise with those friends and family who pursued the same avenue. I’ve got to say it is VERY addictive!
Read full article
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 officially released today. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/04/12/visual-studio-2010-and-net-4-released.aspx Enjoy!
Read full article
With the pending release of Visual Studio 2010 (scheduled for 13 April 2010), Scott Guthrie (Corp VP of Microsoft Developer Division) has been writing a serious of blog posts about the changes coming with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.
Read full article
I love the way the .NET web.config file allows the appSettings and connectionStrings sections to reference another file. It provides easy support for differing deployment environments as the settings for each environment are kept in their own files and can be switched in out by changing the configSource attributes, as per the example below: <appSettings [...]
Read full article
I searched around the web high and low and could only find limited information on the OziExplorer tracklog file format that is stored in the .plt files.
OziExplorer has PC and Windows Mobile versions making it a great tool for tracking/logging and planning your travels. Tracklogs save your tracks as you travel: saving on your portable mobile device saves space in your vehicle (or even in your pocket!) and allows you to copy the tracklog files to your PC for viewing on the big screen later.
On our recent trip around Australia, we saved all of our treks using OziExplorer.
My analysis has determined the following from two versions v2.1 and v2.0
Read full article
Anyone that knows me well will know that I am a scuba diver, so this little gem really pleased me.
The Courier Mail reports about Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) that have been deployed on the Great Barrier Reef to bring live video to viewers. This one was a little short lived when a tiger shark decides it’d make a great meal after spitting out a sea snake.
Links to the video can be seen by opening the full article.
Read full article
Here’s my official order for next Xmas…
Ten things to do with your new friend PALRO.
I wonder if I can get it to write software, was the car, sweep the floors?
Enjoy!
Read full article
When using Web Parts in an ASP.NET application, if personalization is enabled (which is the best reason for using Web Parts), the personalization is stored in a SQL database.
This article details the steps to set this up or to change the default location. The default is the sql express instance on a development machine – my preference is for the SQL 2008 database on my network, but you will also need to specify the database to use when deploying your application.
The database used by the WebPart, or more precisely the WebPartManager, is the same one used by the membership and role providers. To create the database on either SQL2005 or SQL2008, run aspnet_regsql from the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder. This will run a wizard allowing you to specify where you would like the database created – you will need an instance of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 installed before doing this.
Read full article
This article details a neat little (trivial) undocumented feature of Windows you may find useful.
Read full article
This article details the steps to get open source PBX/IVR platform FreeSWITCH working on a Windows platform without the need to know how FreeSWITCH works. It is a simple introduction to get it working out of the box with iiNet.
FreeSWITCH is an open source VOIP platform. FreeSWITCH has a pretty lousy user interface – just the console I/O. There’s not much available out on the web either.
I found information available on the FreeSWITCH Wiki to be vague and lacking a step-by-step approach.
Read full article
Windows 7 and Vista 64 bit application modes bring some new challenges with applications that use the registry to store settings for program use during run time.
If using the registry, software applications typically store their settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE within a registry key created for the specific application, e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MyApplication
When installing a 32 bit application on a 64 bit version of these operating systems, Windows doesn’t clutter these registry keys with the 64 bit applications instead places them in their own ‘special’ area.
Read full article
When installing a new version of Windows 7 (64 bit), I came across this error when attempting to run one of my web services:
Retrieving COM class factory failed due to the following error: 80040154
No real explaination on what component was causing the problem, but stepping into the code, there is a dependency on a third party COM DLL to communicate with a remote server. The COM component is 32 bit – getting it to run in the 64 bit environment is the issue.
Read full article
Setting up a new Windows 7 machine had me challenged remembering all of the things that need to be done to get my .NET applications all working again, especially ones that use any kind of integrated windows security with IIS, and connect to a database and web services.
The main one that gets me thinking everytime is the impersonation account if a Windows’ account is setup to connect to a database. This would typical be needed when connecting to a web service that connects to a database. One way to achieve this is to use SQL security to maintain the account and store the user/password in the web.config but this has some security concerns in that the password is stored in clear text. This also requires the password to maintained in multiple places, which is not desirable.
Read full article
When attempting to get a new machine running, I have come across an issue getting IIS hosted WCF services to instantiate.
The error is typically something like the following:
Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException: The remote server returned an unexpected response: (405) Method not allowed.
This can occur if ASP.NET isn’t installed or the .svc file is not mapped to the aspnet_isapi.dll
Read full article
After installing VS2008 on Vista and attempting to fire up a WCF application built with a .NET framework I built a couple of years ago now, I found the WCF channel was failing with no hint as to the problem. This issue also applies for running on Windows 7.
The framework architecture hosts the WCF service in IIS. When opening the solution with VS2008, I was presented with the need to run VS as an administrator. That problem is sorted easily enough, but is a bit intrusive.
Read full article
Often when .NET WinForms applications are created, developers do not consider the various deployment options available and panic when it comes time for deployment and default to using ClickOnce. This is not a good strategy as the architecture of the application is not well considered with this in mind and limits the deployment options.
Read full article
I’ve been meaning to setup a technical blog for sometime now to write my technical thoughts and share my learnings with fellow developers.
Some of the first posts will be based on info I have put away some time ago but have now finally put it up.
I hope you get some value from my posts. If you do, please dig it or add a comment
Read full article
Comments (0) 
Themocracy