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| SQL Response: The dim sum interview |
(Tue, 30 Sep 2008)
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| Richard Morris met David and Nigel of the SQL Response team, in a dim sum Restaurant in Cambridge. They had just finished a new Red-Gate product called SQL Response. Away from the office, they described the fourteen month software project that had been dominating their lives; and they were still able to say that they loved writing software. |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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| Mysteries of the NET Framework: The Challenge |
(Mon, 22 Sep 2008)
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| 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. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Exceptionally Mysterious |
(Thu, 11 Sep 2008)
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| 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 object at the same time? |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Software Tool Design: Remote User Testing |
(Mon, 18 Aug 2008)
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| If you are developing a software product, you'll know that the sooner you can get feedback from the users, the better. But, what sort of feedback, which users, and how? If your users have to test your software within their own development environment and workplace, you are presented with a challenge. Stephen explains a practical solution |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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| Software Tool Design: Design by Sketching |
(Wed, 06 Aug 2008)
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| Developers can get so used to relying on computers for everything that they can forget how useful it can be in the design process to elicit and refine ideas whilst working in groups, using a sketchbook, pencils and crayons. Sometimes we all need a jolt to force us to take a different approach to solving software design problems. |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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| Creating Service-Orientated Data-Access Layers |
(Wed, 30 Jul 2008)
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| 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 Services uses the Entity Framework, which allows an easy translation from a Database layer based on Stored procedures, to an object-orientated Application layer. It all seems surprisingly sensible. Prasanna explains all, as usual. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Software Tool design: The Three Rs |
(Mon, 21 Jul 2008)
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| To understand the full extent of the requirements of your users when you are redesigning a software tool, you have to talk to them, and observe how they are currently using the package. For this sort of research, there is no established rule-book, but there certainly are pitfalls and rewards. Stephen Chambers offers his advice and tells of some experiences. |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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| Embedding Help so it will be used |
(Thu, 17 Jul 2008)
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| 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 changing the design, she discovered, you can greatly increase the users willingness to use such help to make the task easier. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Dynamically generating typed objects in .NET |
(Mon, 14 Jul 2008)
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| 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 that transforms IDictionary into a typed object |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Data and Silverlight 2: Data Binding |
(Thu, 05 Jun 2008)
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| 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 2 by O'Reilly, due to be released in December 2008. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Entity Framework: The Cribsheet |
(Mon, 26 May 2008)
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| 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 objects and properties without having to concern themselves directly with either the stored procedures or functions of the defined interface, or the the underlying database tables and columns where this data is stored. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| The Why and How of .NET Profiling |
(Mon, 12 May 2008)
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| Amirthalingam Prasanna gives a simple and practical guide about why you need to profile your .NET applications and how you would go about doing it. |
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Category: Performance |
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| NET Performance Cribsheet |
(Sun, 11 May 2008)
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| Robyn and Phil tackle the topic of how to make .NET applications perform well. As usual, they try to take a terse, practical approach to the mysteries of JIT, CLR and GC. After giving many performance tips, they come to the conclusion that rules and tips are less useful than rolling up your sleeves and measuring or profiling everything possible, to see what's really happening with your application. |
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Category: Performance |
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| Sid: Vicious |
(Tue, 22 Apr 2008)
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| 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. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Testing Times Ahead: Extending NUnit |
(Fri, 14 Mar 2008)
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| If you want to get serious with Unit Testing, then you'll need to understand how to extend the NUnit framework in different ways for your own particular test requirements and how to tailor test behaviour. Test Expert Ben Hall, of the SQL Generator team, shows how it is done, with special reference to the art of testing SQL code. |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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| .NET Collection Management with C# 3.0 |
(Mon, 25 Feb 2008)
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| 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 makes your code strongly typed, but makes maintenance easier.
Prasanna describes the improvements in .NET v3.5
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Silverlight Skinnable User Interfaces |
(Tue, 05 Feb 2008)
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| 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!
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Taking Exceptions |
(Sat, 19 Jan 2008)
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| 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
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| Silverlight-Speed Loop |
(Fri, 18 Jan 2008)
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| 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. |
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Category: .Net Framework |
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| The Waffle Generator |
(Wed, 16 Jan 2008)
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| Sometimes, silly programs have a less obvious useful purpose. Andrew Clarke takes his classic 'Waffle Generator', and provides it in various forms, including a CSS Stylesheet tester, and as a Generator for SQL Data Generator. The Waffle Generator puts text into your test database! |
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Category: .Net Tools |
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