vipin cherukara

Convert string to Enum instance

2011-12-30T02:00:00.001-08:00

public void EnumInstanceFromString()
{
   // The .NET Framework contains an Enum called DayOfWeek.
   // Let's generate some Enum instances from strings.

   DayOfWeek wednesday = 
      (DayOfWeek)Enum.Parse(typeof(DayOfWeek), "Wednesday");
   DayOfWeek sunday = 
      (DayOfWeek)Enum.Parse(typeof(DayOfWeek), "sunday", true);
   DayOfWeek tgif = 
      (DayOfWeek)Enum.Parse(typeof(DayOfWeek), "FRIDAY", true);

   lblOutput.Text = wednesday.ToString() 
      + ".  Int value = " + ((int)wednesday).ToString() + "
";
   lblOutput.Text += sunday.ToString() 
      + ".  Int value = " + ((int)sunday).ToString() + "
";
   lblOutput.Text += tgif.ToString() 
      + ".  Int value = " + ((int)tgif).ToString() + "
";

}

The Enum.Parse method takes two or three arguments. The first is the 
type of the enum you want to create as output. The second field is the 
string you want to parse. Without a third input, the case of the input 
string must match an enum instance or the conversion fails. But the 
third input indicates whether to ignore case. If true, than wEdNEsDAy 
will still get converted successfully.

Example: Output

Wednesday. Int value = 3
Sunday. Int value = 0
Friday. Int value = 5

Cannot load the X.509 certificate identity specified in the configuration

2011-12-30T01:58:00.001-08:00

You have a WCF application and trying to run it but it would not start.
In application event log you see Error event logged with Event ID 0:
2011-02-02 13:46:52 [(null)] [ApplicationName] [FATAL] -
— Exception data associated with the Log entry —System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot load the X.509 certificate identity specified in the configuration.
at System.ServiceModel.Description.ConfigLoader.LoadIdentity(IdentityElement element)
at System.ServiceModel.Description.ConfigLoader.LoadChannelBehaviors(ServiceEndpoint serviceEndpoint, String configurationName)
at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory.InitializeEndpoint(String configurationName, EndpointAddress address)
at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory`1..ctor(String endpointConfigurationName, EndpointAddress remoteAddress)
at System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactory`1..ctor(String endpointConfigurationName)
at System.ServiceModel.EndpointTrait`1.CreateSimplexFactory()
at System.ServiceModel.EndpointTrait`1.CreateChannelFactory()
at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1.CreateChannelFactoryRef(EndpointTrait`1 endpointTrait)
at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1.InitializeChannelFactoryRef()
at System.ServiceModel.ClientBase`1..ctor()

Obviously the problem is with the certificate but the question is which one.
If application was developed by someone else it might be the case that developers were using certificates that don’t exist on your system, so you need to identify them.
WCF applications come with config file which are plain text. Usually they are in the same location as the application itself but with config extension. So if your WCF application name is ApplicationName.exethe config file should be ApplicationName.exe.config.

Open that file in notepad and look for
If the application is looking for the certificate or certificates then you should see something like:

In this line the certificate that the application is looking is called *.certificate.local. There might be more than one line like this but with different certificate names. Open management console and see if that certificate or certificates exists on your computer and are valid. If the certificate is not on the computer there are 2 posible option that you can try:
First: locate and install the missing certificate
Second: delete the line in the config file that is looking for the certificate. When deleting toy need to delete not only that one line but also before and after the line.
Also you could try to change the name of the certificate in config file to the one that exists on your system and is valid but I have not tried this option.

C# : get the Data Source Value in Connection string

2011-12-30T01:57:00.000-08:00

return new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(Settings.Default.OperatorsConnectionString).DataSource;

Exposing a WCF Service With Multiple Bindings and Endpoints

2011-12-30T01:55:00.000-08:00

Windows Communication Foundation (henceforth abbreviated as WCF) supports multiple bindings that allows developers to expose their services in a variety of ways. What this means is a developer can create a service once and then expose it to support net.tcp:// or http:// and various versions of http:// (Soap1.1, Soap1.2, WS*, JSON, etc). This can be useful if a service crosses boundaries between intranet and extranet applications for example. This article walks through the steps to configure a service to support multiple bindings with Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net 3.5 framework. For those that want to jump directly to the sample solution it can be found at the end of this article.

Setting Up The Test Solution

Below you will find the steps used to create the sample solution. I’ll explain a few WCF concepts along the way but probably not all of them. I will however link to relevant documentation where applicable. To get started, within Visual Studio 2008 create a new WCF Service Application project. This template can be found within the web section of Visual Studio 2008 as seen here.

After the project is initialized modify it so it contains four files, note this will require deleting the default files: IMyService.cs, Service.cs, Service.svc, and Web.Config. Once you have cleaned up the default template, it should look like this:

Creating Our Service Contract
The IMyService.cs file will contain our service contract. In old ASMX services, in order to expose a method as a service one would attribute the method with the attribute of [WebMethod]. In WCF, everything is tied to a Service Contract. By defining our service contract as an interface, any class that implements that interface can be exposed as a WCF service. In order to achieve this a ServiceContract attribute will be placed on the interface and an OperationContract attribute will be placed on the method we want to expose for our service. Our interface is going to be simple and will just contain one method to add two numbers. Here is the sample.

[ServiceContract(Namespace="http://keithelder.net/Learn/WCF")]

    public interface IMyService

    {

        [OperationContract]

        int AddTwoNumbers(int x, int y);

    }

Implementing The Contract
The Service.cs file will contain the implementation of the IMyService interface. Again, since we defined our contract as an interface our service class doesn’t need or have any attributes on it. Here is the code:

    public class Service : IMyService    {        public int AddTwoNumbers(int x, int y)        {            return x + y;        }    }

Creating The Service Host
The file Service.svc will provide the endpoint for our URL that will be exposed by IIS. Within this file, we only need one line which identifies the class that contains our service using the ServiceHost directive. Here is the code for this file.

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="WcfService1.Service" CodeBehind="Service.cs" %>

Now that we have the contract specified and implemented along with an endpoint to host the service everything from here on out is just configuration. This is the beauty of WCF. How we want the service to be exposed is stored within the web.config file. There a lot of options in WCF and those just learning WCF are typically overwhelmed at the amount of options. Luckily Microsoft has a tool to help us along. The upside to this approach is we do not have to code how our service is secured as we did in older ASMX services.

Setting Up Basic Http Binding

Before we add multiple bindings to our single service, let’s focus on adding one binding. In order to configure our service we are going to use the Microsoft Service Configuration Editor. This editor allows us to configure our WCF service and can be launched right from Visual Studio. To launch the editor, right click on the web.config file. An option should be in the menu that says “Edit WCF Configuration”. If it doesn’t don’t worry, sometimes, Visual Studio doesn’t pickup this option. A trick is to go to the tools menu in Visual Studio and select the editor from there. After the editor is launched it will then show up in the menu when you right click the web.config file.

For this example I have removed everything from the web.config file before launching so I can configure the service completely from scratch. Opening the web.config with the editor shows a blank configuration as follows.

Follow the steps to initialize the configuration.

Step 1
Make sure your solution builds.

Step 2
Click “Create a New Service” in the right panel of the editor.

Step 3
Browse to the bin directory and select the WcfService1.dll (if the file doesn’t show up, go back to step 1)

Double click this file and select your service implementation.

Step 4
The service type should be displayed on the previous screen. Press Next->.

Step 5
Select the contract. This should automatically be selected to WcfService1.IMyService. Press Next->.

Step 6
Since we are using IIS to host our service select the HTTP option for the communication mode.

Step 7
Select the basic web services interoperability. We’ll come back later on and add advance web services interoperability.

Step 8
Delete the “http://” from the address field. Since we are developing we don’t know which port this will get assigned as of yet.

Press Next->. A dialog will appear. Select Yes.

Press Finish on the next screen.

At this point we have an almost configured service. If you drill down into the Services folder within the tool down to the end point the configuration should look something like this.

Step 9
Let’s clean up our configuration. In the screen shot above in the configuration section. Give this endpoint a name of “Basic”. This will let us know later on this endpoint is our BasicHttpBinding configuration which supports the SOAP1.1 protocol.

Step 10
Click on the “Services” folder in the editor.

Step 11
Next to the binding configuration there is a link that says “Click to Create”. Click this link to create a binding configuration. While this isn’t necessary in all instances it is a good practice to have a binding configuration. This gives you more control over how your binding is configured and is a good practice to initialize early on.

Clicking this link will create a new binding. In the name field under the configuration section, give it a name of “Basic”. The defaults for this example are fine.

Note: Clicking on the Security tab in the above screen the Mode should be set to None.

At this point you should be able to save your configuration and press F5 in Visual Studio to launch your service in debug mode. You should be presented with a web page that looks like the following:

Exposing Our Service’s WSDL

Unlike previous ASMX services, the WSDL (web service definition language) for WCF services is not automatically generated. The previous image even tells us that “Metadata publishing for this service is currently disabled.”. This is because we haven’t configured our service to expose any meta data about it. To expose a WSDL for a service we need to configure our service to provide meta information. Note: The mexHttpBinding is also used to share meta information about a service. While the name isn’t very “gump” it stands for Meta Data Exchange. To get started configuring the service to expose the WSDL follow the following steps.

Step 1
Under the Advanced folder in the editor, select the “Service Behaviors”.

Click the “New Service Behavior Configuration” link in the right pane.

Step 2
Name the behavior “ServiceBehavior”. In the bottom section press the add button and select the “serviceMetaData” option and press Add.

The end result should look like the following.

Step 3
Under the “Service Behaviors” folder, select the newly created “ServiceBehavior” option and then the “serviceMetadata” option underneath that. In the right pane change the HttpGetEnabled to True.

Step 4
Select the service under the Services folder and apply the new service behavior to the service.

Step 5
Save the configuration and reload the service in the browser. The page should be changed to the following:

Clicking on the link should display the WSDL for the service.

At this point our service is configured to support the SOAP1.1 protocol through the BasicHttpBinding and is also exposing the WSDL for the service. What if we want to also expose the service with the SOAP1.2 protocol and support secure and non-secure messages? No problem. We can expose the service all of those ways without touching any code only the configuration.

Adding More Bindings and Endpoints To Our Service

Now that we have the basic binding working let’s expose two additional endpoints for our service which support the WS* protocol but are configured differently. We’ll expose a plain SOAP1.2 protocol message using the wsHttpBinding that is a plain message as well as a secured message using the wsHttpBinding.

Step 1
Under the Services folder select the EndPoints folder for the service and add a new service endpoint. Give it a name of WsPlain. This endpoint will serve as a standard SOAP1.2 message that isn’t encrypted. Change the binding to wsHttpBinding. In the address field, copy the address from your browser. In my case, my project used the address of http://localhost:5606/Service.svc. Paste this into the address field and add /WsPlain to the end of it so it looks like the following:

http://localhost:5606/Service.svc/WsPlain

Each binding for each endpoint has to have a separate address. Doing it this way allows us to keep our one service file and offer it up in various configurations. In the contract option browse to the DLL in the bin directory and select the contract used previously. The end result should look similar to this:

Step 2
Just as we did previously, click on the Services folder and create a binding configuration for this endpoint. Refer to step 10 and 11 above.

Provide a name of WsPlain for the new binding. In the security tab change the mode to “None” and set all other options to false or none. This is setting up our binding so there is no security on our message. By default the binding is configured to be secure.

The final settings for the WsPlain endpoint should be similar to this.

Step 3
To configure a secure binding using wsHttpBinding follow these same steps above but leave the default values in the security tab of the binding configuration. Call this end point and binding WsSecured. The new endpoint should look like this:

That’s it, our service is now configured three different ways and is configured to support SOAP1.1, SOAP1.2 and WS*. Pretty cool huh?

Testing Our Service

Now that our service is configured with three different bindings, let’s look at the messages as they go back and forth across the wire. In order to do this we are going to borrow knowledge from a previous article I did called “How to Get Around WCF’s Lack of a Preview Web Page and Viewing WCF Messages“. From this article we are going to borrow the MessageViewerInspector class and build a small windows application to view our messages.

If you are still following along, add a new project of type Windows Application to the existing solution and then copy the MessageViewerInspector class from the referenced article and add it to the project.

If you have been following along you may have noticed that we only have one WSDL. The WSDL contains all of our endpoints. Even though we have three endpoints, we still only have one WSDL. In testing with some third party clients my experience has been that clients only generate proxies for the endpoints they understand. Add a service reference to the service to the windows application.

For the user interface I decided to use several split panels and create a three panel layout. Here is what it looks like.

The idea is simple. When I click on each button I want it to invoke my service and then display the request and response messages the service is using. To do this I created one service method called CallService which is passed the end point name the service is to invoke.

        private void CallService(string endPoint)        {            MessageViewerInspector inspector = new MessageViewerInspector();

            ServiceReference1.MyServiceClient proxy = new WindowsFormsApplication1.ServiceReference1.MyServiceClient(endPoint);

            proxy.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(inspector);            proxy.AddTwoNumbers(12332, 12323);            proxy.Close();

            richTextBox1.Text = inspector.RequestMessage;            richTextBox2.Text = inspector.ResponseMessage;        }

The endpoint is the name of the endpoint we specified in our configuration. For example to invoke the secure wsHttpBinding it is called like this.

CallService("WsSecured");

The first thing created is create the inspector so messages can be viewed coming in and out of the proxy class. Once the proxy method is called we can then grab the messages and put them into the RichTextBox control on the form. Here are screen shots of each call to the service.

BasicHttpBinding – SOAP1.1

WsHttpBinding – SOAP1.2 Plain / Unsecured

WsHttpBinding – SOAP1.2 Secured

Conclusion

WCF services are powerful as you have just seen. It is possible to expose a single service in more ways than just one. This allows developers to support things like net.tcp binary messages and SOAP messages from the same service. If you are an enterprise developer supporting multiple clients this is a blessing since it means .Net consumers of your service can use TCP while other consumers use WS*. The nice thing is the developer doesn’t have to code it, just declaratively express how he wants the service configured.

Intellisense not working in Visual Studio

2011-12-30T01:54:00.000-08:00

"IntelliSense is Microsoft's implementation of autocompletion, best known for its use in the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment. In addition to completing the symbol names the programmer is typing, IntelliSense serves as documentation and disambiguation for variable names, functions and methods using metadata-based reflection." (Wikipedia)

So, I can't quite remember when exactly Intellisense stopped working for me in Visual Studio 2008, but I know I have been without (automatic) Intellisense for quite a while.When typing a dot after an object or method, it used to just show up automatically... I could however have it come up by pressing and eventually got in the habit of just doing that when I needed it, without attempting to find out exactly why it was broken in the first place...
So, several months later, I stumble upon an entry by Richard Fennell, who explains how to fix it. I thought I'd post it for when it breaks again, I know where to find the answer...

In Visual Studio 2008, select Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages. Ensure that the checkboxes in the Statement Completion section are actively checked (not grayed out).

That is it!. Click Ok and try it.

Fly Vision is priced at Rs 7,299.

2011-10-17T05:03:00.000-07:00

Fly Vision

NEW DELHI: It seems the market for budget tablets is growing by each passing day. Close on the heels of India launching its cheapest $35 tablet, Fly Mobiles has launched its first low-cost Android tab, Fly Vision.

Measuring 195x120x12mm, Vision weighs 350 grams. Sporting a 7-inch TFT LCD touchscreen with 800x480 pixels resolution, the tablet will run on Android 2.2 Froyo OS.

Powered by 600 MHz Rockchip 2818 chipset processor, the tablet has 256MB RAM and a 1.3 megapixel camera. The company claims Vision will offer 6 hours of battery life. The tablet also has an external memory slot which can house 16GB micro SD card.

For connectivity, the tablet will offer support for Bluetooth, USB 2.0, WiFi, 3G and standard 3.5mm audiojack. The tablet will also come pre-installed with applications like Microsoft Office Suite and Google applications like Google Talk, Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube. There's also a SIM card slot to make voice calls.

Fly Vision is priced at Rs 7,299.

Top 9 Suspence/Thriller Movies

2011-10-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

3101 7.7 8.6

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Biased by nostalgia I put this movie in first place. An achievement in sci-fi, action and overall movie making.

Veed's rating:

2123 8.1 8.7

2. The Usual Suspects (1995)

My favorite movie ever? No. Best movie ever made? Probably not. The best movie I have ever watched? I might consider it.

One cannot understand this movie with words, it must be seen and rewatched totally focused to understand the masterpiece behind it. The ending is shocking, and don't come saying you already saw it coming from miles away. And we are actually continually being hinted at the "truth", I admit that.

Veed's rating:

1051 8.5 8.9

3. 12 Angry Men (1957)

One of the most amazingly well-crafted and most interesting movies I have ever had the pleasure to watch. What a thrilling ride, what a simple story, what groundbreaking performances from 12 men, what perfect direction.

Veed's rating:

1471 8.2 8.5

4. Vertigo (1958)

WOW! One of the most surprising twists in one of the most well-directed thrillers with one of the most unexpected endings I've ever seen. Simply fantastic movie, among my favorites list.

This movie makes it official, Sir Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart are now my favorite Director/Actor partnership of all time.

Veed's rating:

2785 8.1 8.3

5. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Once again Tarantino's crazy ideas work. Bending comedy with war tragedy, Inglorious Basterds is a masterfully directed movie that makes suspense movies and horror villains look like Sesame Street and the Cookie Monster, respectively.

Veed's rating:

1866 7.8 8.5

6. Aliens (1986)

Another sequel that raised the bar. Transformed a sweating and suspenseful story into a thrilling and desperate action ride.

Veed's rating:

3855 8.1 8.7

7. Seven (1995)

The perfect example of perfect story telling, suspense and brutal crime scenes investigation. Also with outstanding performances.

Veed's rating:

761 8.6 8.6

8. M (1931)

With no doubt the greatest Fritz' cinematic masterpiece. A thriller with a very powerful theme and with such a heavy and disturbing atmosphere that will surprise and shock you.

Veed's rating:

3208 7.3 8.1

9. The Terminator (1984)

A true classic, a thrilling fear-inducing experience.

Veed's rating:

Tata Docomo GPRS Settings and PC Suite Connect

2011-10-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

TATA DOCOMO already announced the launch of two unlimited gprs packages for its prepaid subscribers tagged as Rs 15 GPRS pack and Rs 95 GPRS pack.

Rs 15 GPRS pack comes with 3 days validity offering unlimited GPRS access whereas Rs 95 GPRS pack is valid of 30days which can also be used on PC and laptop, on both the pack you will be charged 10paisa for 10KB while on roaming.

Read full plan about : TATA DOCOMO launches Unlimited GPRS Packs

All you have to do is visit the nearest retailer and recharge your account with Rs 15 or Rs 95 GPRS pack when you are done with it you to have SMS INTERNET 52270 to retrieve the GPRS settings save it as the default settings and start surfing.

And if you want to do manually setting then follow below given step:

On Nokia phones these settings can be added by going to “Settings >> Configurations >> New Access point”.

Connection Name : Docomo {or name it anything!}

Data Bearer : GPRS

Access Point Name : TATA.DOCOMO.INTERNET

Username :

Password :

Homepage :

Connection Security : Off

Session Mode : Permanent

Browsing the Internet on PC and Laptop

TATA DOCOMO INTERNET works with any PC or Laptop that has Bluetooth or USB port for the cable. So after getting the settings save them and start browsing on your phone for free. But if you want to connect your computer to Tata Docomo internet Gprs, you willl have to follow the given procedures.

Connect your phone to computer either via Bluetooth or Data cable
Bluetooth

Install the PC suite software.
Pair mobile handset with your PC or Laptop via the Bluetooth program
Click on “Connect to the Internet” icon from the PC Suite programs.

Cable:

Install the PC suite software.
Connect mobile handset with your PC or Laptop via the USB cable.
Click on “Connect to the Internet” icon from the PC Suite Program.

And if you want to do manual PC configuration, create a new connection using the “Make a new connection” wizard on your PC / laptop. Once a dialer is configured, leave the UserName and password blank. Enter the access number *99# .You are now ready to start browsing using the Tata Docomo free unlimited Gprs plan.

The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Basic realm="Spring Security Application

2011-09-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Basic realm="Spring Security Application

We mostly get this error when trying to consume an authenticated webservice or a WCF service. I have a workaround for that. This worked for me so I believe it would be useful for you too. In the web.config file conside the SECURITY node. below is a sample.

<security mode="Transport">
                        <transport clientCredentialType="Basic" proxyCredentialType="None" realm=""/>
                        <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default"/>
                    </security>

Try changing the "clientCredentialType" for the "transport" node from "None" to "Basic". It should work.

Happy coding to all............

Nester

2011-09-05T03:30:00.001-07:00

Nester is a free tool for mutation testing of your C# source code in order to measure the adequacy of your unit tests. It involves modification of programs to see if existing tests can distinguish the original program from the modified program.

Current version of Nester (0.3 Alpha) supports only C# programs for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. At the moment only NUnit framework is supported.

ZaneBug

2011-09-05T03:24:00.001-07:00

Zanebug is an advanced tool for comprehensive unit and integration testing. Features include:
    * Full NUnit 2.1 and 2.2 Compatability
          o Use your existing NUnit tests with absolutely no changes
          o No need to recompile for differences between NUnit 2.1 and 2.2 (problem w/ the NUnit 2.2 release)
          o Harness the full capabilities and professional GUI of Zanebug
    * VS.NET 2003 Integration
          o Run inside of VS.NET
          o Command bar add-in
          o Right-click context menu
          o Results displayed in output box
    * Comprehensive Results
          o Exception Messages and Stack Traces
          o Breakdown of Passed / Failed / Ignored results
          o Console Output
          o Console.Error Output
          o Debug Output
          o Trace Output
          o List of loaded Assemblies, versions and locations
          o Thread #
          o Iteration Id
          o Test Category
          o Result Filtering for detailed comparisons
    * Detailed Performance Metrics
          o Test Duration
          o Avg Test Duration (average of all iterations)
          o % of overall Duration
          o Operations per second
          o Memory consumed
          o Exception Messages and Stack Trace
          o Real-time Perfmon Integration
    * Advanced Testing Capabilities
          o Run-time editing of Test behavior (repeat count, ignore tests, category, etc.)
          o Test categorization for result grouping
          o Test specific SetUp and TearDown
          o Pass/Fail tests based on performance metrics
          o Iterations tests for advanced metrics
    * Feature-Rich Reporting Capabilities
          o Export Results to Xml
          o Export Results to well-formatted text
          o Performance Graphing
          o % Passed
    * Command Line Version
    * Full Documentation
    * Full Source Code

Go to http://www.adapdev.com/zanebug/

mb.unit (Generative unit test framework)

2011-09-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

The framework was first created by Jonathan 'Peli' de Halleux as a hobby project while studying for his PhD. Later Peli and Jamie Cansdale added support for MbUnit to Jamie's NUnitAddin (later it would become the TestDriven.NET addin). After Peli's departure to Microsoft in 2005 (working first as a SDET on the CLR and more recently in the Foundations for Software Engineering group in Microsoft Research) the project was opensourced under Andy Stopford.

The current lead of MbUnit, Jeff Brown, also leads the Gallio Project. Since Gallio is the foundation of MbUnit v3, many MbUnit committers also work on Gallio and vice-versa.

The projects regular commit members are listed here and here.

These are just a few projects and companies who are currently using MbUnit:

The Need of Unit Testing

2011-09-05T03:17:00.001-07:00

The developers in your company do not believe in testing their code or doing unit testing. How do you tackle this problem and explain them the need of unit testing?

The Need of Unit Testing:

a) Unit testing gives programmers measurable confidence in the source code they produce.

b) Unit testing uncovers defects in source code shortly after it is written, which saves valuable time and resources, sometimes by orders of magnitude.

c) Unit testing significantly reduces the amount of debugging necessary by avoiding defects in the first place and by catching those that do occur while they are relatively easy to detect and fix.

d) Unit testing avoids the practice of testing everything at once when it is significantly more expensive in terms of cost, development team morale, and customer satisfaction.

e) Unit testing helps you focus on exactly what is important for a module so that when all of your tests run successfully, you can be reasonably sure that your module has no major defects.

Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now

2011-09-05T03:04:00.000-07:00

Contents

Snippet Compiler
Regulator
CodeSmith
Building a Custom Template
NUnit
Writing an NUnit Test
FxCop
Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector
NDoc
NAnt
NAnt in Action
Switch Tools
Conclusion

You cannot expect to build a first-class application unless you use the best available tools. Besides well-known tools such as Visual Studio® .NET, there are a multitude of small, lesser-known tools available from the .NET community. In this article, I'm going to introduce you to some of the best free tools available today that target .NET development. I'll walk you through a quick tutorial of how to use each of them, some of which will save you a minute here and there, while others may completely change the way that you write code. Because I am squeezing so many different tools into this single article, I will not be able to cover each of them extensively, but you should learn enough about each to decide which tools are useful for your projects.

Snippet Compiler

The Snippet Compiler is a small Windows®-based application that allows you to write, compile, and run code. This tool is useful if you have small pieces of code for which you don't want to create an entire Visual Studio .NET project (along with all the files that come with it).

As an example, let's say that I wanted to show you how to launch another application from the Microsoft® .NET Framework. In the Snippet Compiler I would start by creating a new file which creates a small console application. The snippet can be created inside the Main method of the console application, which is what I will do here. The following code snippet demonstrates how to create an instance of Notepad from the .NET Framework:

System.Diagnostics.Process proc = new System.Diagnostics.Process(); proc.StartInfo.FileName= "notepad.exe"; proc.Start(); proc.WaitForExit();

Of course this snippet would not compile by itself, but that is where Snippet Compiler comes into play. Figure 1 shows this code sample in Snippet Compiler.

Figure 1 Snippet Compiler

To test this snippet, just press the play button (green triangle), and it will run in debug mode. The snippet will generate a console application popup, and Notepad will appear. When you close Notepad, the console application will close as well.

Personally, I have found Snippet Compiler to be invaluable when trying to create a small example for someone who has asked me for help, when normally I would have to create a project, make sure everything compiles, send them the code snippet, and then delete the project. Snippet Compiler makes this process much easier and much more pleasant.

Snippet Compiler was written by Jeff Key and can be downloaded from http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/SnippetCompiler.

Regulator

Regulator is the most recent addition to my top tools list. It is a full-featured tool that makes it easy to build and test regular expressions. There is a renewed interest in regular expressions because of the excellent support for them in the .NET Framework. Regular expressions are used to define patterns in strings based on characters, frequency, and character order. They are most commonly used as a means to validate user input or as a way to find a string of characters inside a larger string—for instance, when looking for a URL or e-mail address on a Web page.

Regulator allows you to enter a regular expression and some input against which you would be running this expression. This way you can see how the regular expression will act and what kind of matches it will return before implementing it in your application. Figure 2 shows Regulator with a simple regular expression.

Figure 2 Regulator

The document contains the regular expression, in this example it is [0-9]* which should match any number of digits in a row. The box in the bottom-right contains the input for this regular expression, and the box on the bottom-left shows the matches that this regular expression finds in the input. The ability to write and test regular expressions in a separate application like this is much easier than trying to work with them in your app.

One of the best features in Regulator is the ability to search the online regular expressions library at regexlib.com. For example, if you enter the string "phone" in the search box, you will find more than 20 different regular expressions that will match various phone numbers, including expressions for UK, Australian, and many other phone numbers.

Regulator was written by Roy Osherove and can be downloaded at http://osherove.com/tools.

CodeSmith

CodeSmith is a template-based code-generation tool that uses a syntax similar to ASP.NET to generate any type of code or text. Unlike many other code-generation tools, CodeSmith does not require you to subscribe to a particular application design or architecture. Using CodeSmith, you can generate anything from a simple, strongly typed collection to an entire application.

When you are building an application, you will often find yourself repeating certain tasks, whether it's writing data access code or building custom collections. CodeSmith is particularly useful at such times because you can write templates to automate those tasks and not only improve your productivity but also automate the tasks that are the most tedious to perform.

CodeSmith ships with a number of templates, including ones for all the .NET collection types as well as ones to generate stored procedures, but the real power of this tool comes from being able to create custom templates. To get you started, I'll provide a quick introduction to building a custom template.

Building a Custom Template

CodeSmith templates are simply text files which you can create in any text editor. Their only requirement is that they be saved with the .cst file extension. The sample template that I'm going to build will accept a string and then build a class based on that string. The first step to creating a template is to add the template header, which declares the language of the template, the target language, and a brief description of the template:

<%@ CodeTemplate Language="C#" TargetLanguage="C#" Description="Car Template" %>

The next part of the template is the property declarations, where you declare the properties that will be specified each time the template is run. With this template, the single property that I'm going to use is just a string, so the property declaration looks like this:

<%@ Property Name="ClassName" Type="String" Category="Context" Description="Class Name" %>

[Editor's Update - 6/16/2004: The code in Figure 3 has been updated to be safe for multithreaded operations.]

Figure 3 Class Generation

Custom Template

public sealed class <%= ClassName %> { private static volatile <%= ClassName %> _instance; private <%= ClassName %>() {} private static readonly object _syncRoot = new object(); public static <%= ClassName %> Value { get { if (_instance == null) { lock(_syncRoot) { if (_instance == null) { _instance = new <%= ClassName %>(); } } } return _instance; } } }

SingletonClass

public sealed class SingletonClass { private static volatile SingletonClass _instance; private SingletonClass() {} private static readonly object _syncRoot = new object(); public static SingletonClass Value { get { if (_instance == null) { lock(_syncRoot) { if (_instance == null) { _instance = new SingletonClass(); } } } return _instance; } } }

As you can see, the template will take the string input and generate a singleton class using that class name. In the template body, the same opening and closing tags are used as in ASP.NET. In this template, I am simply inserting the property value, but you can also use any type of .NET code inside these tags. Once the template is complete, you load it into CodeSmith by either double-clicking or opening it from the CodeSmith application. Figure 4 shows this template loaded into CodeSmith.

Figure 4 CodeSmith Template

You can see that the property on the left is the one I declared in the template. If I enter "SingletonClass" as the class name and click the Generate button, the class shown in the bottom part of Figure 3 will be generated.

CodeSmith is relatively easy to use and can produce some incredible results if applied correctly. One of the most common sections of an application that is targeted for code generation is the data access layer. CodeSmith includes a special assembly called the SchemaExplorer which can be used to generate templates from tables, stored procedures, or almost any other SQL Server™ object.

CodeSmith was written by Eric J. Smith and is available for download at http://www.ericjsmith.net/codesmith.

NUnit

NUnit is an open source unit testing framework built for the .NET Framework. NUnit allows you to write tests in the language of your choice to test a specific function of your application. Unit tests are an excellent way to test the functionality of your code when you first write it, and also to provide a method for regression testing of your application. The NUnit application provides a framework for writing unit tests, as well as a graphical interface to run these tests and view the results.

Writing an NUnit Test

As an example, I'm going to test the functionality of the Hashtable class in the .NET Framework to determine if two objects can be added and then retrieved. My first step will be to add a reference to the NUnit.Framework assembly, which will give me access to the attributes and methods of the NUnit framework. Next I'll create a class and mark it with the TestFixture attribute. This attribute lets NUnit know that this class contains NUnit tests:

using System; using System.Collections; using NUnit.Framework; namespace NUnitExample { [TestFixture] public class HashtableTest { public HashtableTest() { } } }

Next I'll create a method and mark it with the [Test] attribute so that NUnit knows that this method is a test. Then I'll set up a Hashtable and add two values to it, then use the Assert.AreEqual method to see if I can retrieve the same values that I added to the Hashtable, as shown in the following:

[Test] public void HashtableAddTest() { Hashtable ht = new Hashtable(); ht.Add("Key1", "Value1"); ht.Add("Key2", "Value2"); Assert.AreEqual("Value1", ht["Key1"], "Wrong object returned!"); Assert.AreEqual("Value2", ht["Key2"], "Wrong object returned!"); }

This will confirm that I can add and then retrieve values from the Hashtable—a simple test, but one that showcases the capabilities of NUnit. There are a number of test types, as well as various Assert methods, that can be used to test every part of your code.

To run this test, I'll need to build the project, open the generated assembly in the NUnit application, and then click the Run button. Figure 5 shows the results. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I see that big green bar because it lets me know that the test passed. This simple example shows how easy and powerful NUnit and unit testing can be. Being able to write a unit test that can be saved and rerun whenever you change code not only makes it easier for you to detect defects in your code, but the result is that you can deliver better applications.

Figure 5 NUnit

NUnit is an open-source project that is available for download from http://www.nunit.org. There is also an excellent NUnit Visual Studio .NET add-in which allows you to run unit tests directly from Visual Studio. This can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/nunitaddin. For more information on NUnit and its place in test-driven development, see the article "Test-Driven C#: Improve the Design and Flexibility of Your Project with Extreme Programming Techniques" in the April 2004 issue of MSDN® Magazine.

FxCop

The .NET Framework is very powerful, which means there is great potential to create excellent applications, but there is equal opportunity to create poor programs. FxCop is one of the tools that can be used to help create better applications by enabling you to examine an assembly and check it for compliance using a number of different rules. FxCop comes with a set number of rules created by Microsoft, but you can also create and include your own rules. For instance, if you decided that all classes should have a default constructor that takes no arguments, you could write a rule that checks for a constructor on each class of an assembly. This way, no matter who writes the code, you will have a certain level of consistency. If you want more information on creating custom rules, see John Robbins' Bugslayer column on the subject in the June 2004 issue of MSDN Magazine.

So let's take a look at FxCop in action and see what it finds wrong with the NUnitExample assembly that I have been working with. When you open FxCop you first need to create an FxCop project and then add to it the assembly that you want to test. Once the assembly is added to the project, you can press Analyze, and FxCop will examine the assembly. The errors and warning found in this assembly are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Errors and Warning Found by FxCop

FxCop found a couple of problems with my assembly. You can double-click on an error to see the details, including a description of the rule and where you can find more information. (Something you can do for fun is run FxCop on the Framework assemblies and see what turns up.)

FxCop can help you create better, more consistent code, but it cannot make up for poor application design or just plain poor programming. FxCop is also not a replacement for peer code review, but because it can catch a lot of errors before code review, more time can be spent on serious issues rather than having to worry about naming conventions.

FxCop was developed by Microsoft and is available for download from http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/fxcop.

Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector

The next essential tool is called .NET Reflector, which is a class browser and decompiler that can examine an assembly and show you just about all of its secrets. The .NET Framework introduced reflection which can be used to examine any .NET-based code, whether it is a single class or an entire assembly. Reflection can also be used to retrieve information about the various classes, methods, and properties included in a particular assembly. Using .NET Reflector, you can browse the classes and methods of an assembly, you can examine the Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) generated by these classes and methods, and you can decompile the classes and methods and see the equivalent in C# or Visual Basic® .NET.

To demonstrate the workings of .NET Reflector, I am going to load and examine the NUnitExample assembly already shown. Figure 7 shows this assembly loaded in .NET Reflector.

Figure 7 NUnitExample Assembly

Inside of .NET Reflector there are various tools that you can use to examine this assembly further. To view the MSIL that makes up a method, click on the method and select Disassembler from the menu.

In addition to being able to view the MSIL, you can also view the method as C# by selecting Decompiler under the Tools menu. You could also view this method decompiled to Visual Basic .NET or Delphi by changing your selection under the Languages menu. Here is the code that .NET Reflector generated:

public void HashtableAddTest() { Hashtable hashtable1; hashtable1 = new Hashtable(); hashtable1.Add("Key1", "Value1"); hashtable1.Add("Key2", "Value2"); Assert.AreEqual("Value1", hashtable1["Key1"], "Wrong object returned!"); Assert.AreEqual("Value2", hashtable1["Key2"], "Wrong object returned!"); }

The previous code looks very much like the code I actually wrote for this method. Here is the actual code from this assembly:

public void HashtableAddTest() { Hashtable ht = new Hashtable(); ht.Add("Key1", "Value1"); ht.Add("Key2", "Value2"); Assert.AreEqual("Value1", ht["Key1"], "Wrong object returned!"); Assert.AreEqual("Value2", ht["Key2"], "Wrong object returned!"); }

Although there are some minor differences with the code, they are functionally identical.

While this example was a good way to show actual code versus decompiled code, it does not represent what I consider to be the best use of .NET Reflector, which is to examine .NET Framework assemblies and methods. The .NET Framework offers many different ways to perform similar operations. For example, if you need to read a set of data from XML, there are a variety of different ways to do this using XmlDocument, XPathNavigator, or XmlReader. By using .NET Reflector, you can see what Microsoft used when writing the ReadXml method of the DataSet, or what they did when reading data from the configuration files. .NET Reflector is also an excellent way to see the best practices for creating objects like HttpHandlers or configuration handlers because you get to see how the team at Microsoft actually built those objects in the Framework.

.NET Reflector was written by Lutz Roeder and can be downloaded from http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet.

NDoc

Code documentation is almost always a dreaded task. I am not talking about the early design documents, or even the more detailed design documents; I am talking about documenting individual methods and properties on classes. The NDoc tool will automatically generate documentation for your code using reflection to examine the assembly and using the XML generated from your C# XML comments. XML comments are only available for C#, but there is a Visual Studio .NET Power Toy called VBCommenter which will do something similar for Visual Basic .NET. In addition, the next release of Visual Studio will support XML comments for more languages.

With NDoc you are technically still documenting your code, but you are documenting as you write it (in the XML comments), which is much easier to swallow. The first step when using NDoc is to turn on XML comments generation for your assembly. Right-click the project and select Properties | Configuration Properties | Build, then enter a path in which to save the XML file in the XML Documentation File option. When the project is built, an XML file will be created with all of the XML comments included. Here is a look at a method from the NUnit example documented with XML:

///  /// This test adds a number of values to the Hashtable collection /// and then retrieves those values and checks if they match. /// 
 [Test] public void HashtableAddTest() { //Method Body Here }

The XML documentation on this method will be extracted and saved in the XML file, shown here:

 This test adds a number of values to the Hashtable collection and then retrieves those values and checks if they match.

NDoc uses reflection to look at your assembly, then reads the XML in this document, and matches them up. NDoc uses this data to create any number of different documentation formats, including HTML help files (CHMs). After generating the XML file, the next step is to load the assembly and the XML file into NDoc so they can be processed. This is done simply by opening NDoc and clicking the Add button.

Once the assembly and XML file are loaded into NDoc and after you customize the output using the range of properties available, clicking on the Generate button will start the process of generating the documentation. Using the default properties, NDoc generates some very attractive and functional .html and .chm files, thereby automating in a quick and efficient manner what would otherwise be a tedious task.

NDoc is an open source project and can be downloaded from http://ndoc.sourceforge.net.

NAnt

NAnt is a .NET-based build tool that, unlike the current version of Visual Studio .NET, makes it easy to create a build process for your project. When you have a large number of developers working on a single project, you can't rely on the build from a single user's box. You also do not want to have to build the project manually on a regular basis. Instead, you create an automated build process that runs every night. NAnt allows you to build your solution, copy files, run NUnit tests, send e-mail, and much more. Unfortunately, NAnt is lacking a nice looking graphical interface, but it does have a console application and XML files that specify which tasks should be completed during the build process. Note that MSBuild, the new build platform that's part of Visual Studio 2005, provides for very robust build scenarios and is similarly driven by XML-based project files.

NAnt in Action

In this example I am going to create an NAnt build file for the NUnitExample solution that I created earlier. First I need to create an XML file with the .build extension, place it in the root of my project, and then add an XML declaration to the top of the file. The first tag I need to add to the file is the project tag:

  The NUnit Example Project

The project tag is also used to set the name of the project, the default target, and the base directory. The description tag is used to set a brief description of this project.

Next, I'll add the property tag, which can be used to store a setting in a single location that can then be accessed from anywhere in the file. In this case, I am going to create a property called debug, which I can then set to true or false, reflecting whether or not I want the project to be compiled in the debug configuration. (In the end, this particular property does not actually affect how the project will be built; it is simply a variable that you set and which will be read from later when you are actually determining how to build the project.)

Next, I need to create a target tag. A project can contain multiple targets which can be specified when NAnt is run. If no target is specified, the default is used, which I set in the project element. In this example, the default target is build. Let's take a look at the target element, which will contain the majority of the build info:

Inside the target element, I am going to set the name of the target to build and create a description of what this target will do. I'll also create a csc element, which is used to specify what should be passed to the csc C# compiler. Let's take a look at the csc element:

First, I have to set the target of the csc element. In this case I will be creating a .dll file so I set the target to library. Next, I have to set the output of the csc element, which is where the .dll file will be created. Finally, I need to set the debug property, which determines whether the project will be compiled in debug. Since I created a property earlier to store this value, I can use the following string to access the value of that property: ${debug}. The csc element also contains a number of sub-elements. I need to create two elements: the references element will tell NAnt which assemblies I need to reference for this project, and the sources element will tell NAnt which files to include in the build. In this example, I reference the NUnit.Framework.dll assembly and include the HashtableTest.cs file. The complete build file is shown in Figure 8. (You would normally also create a clean target that would be used to delete the generated files, but I have omitted it for the sake of brevity.)

Figure 8 NAnt Build File

  The NUnit Example Project

To build this file I need to go to the root directory of my project, where the build file is located, and execute nant.exe from that location. If the build is successful, you can find the .dll and .pdb file in the bin directory of this application. While using NAnt is definitely not as easy as clicking Build in Visual Studio, it is a very powerful tool for developing a build process that runs on an automated schedule. NAnt also includes helpful features such as the ability to run unit tests or copy additional files (features that are not supported by the current Visual Studio build process).

NAnt is an open source project and can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/nant.

Switch Tools

I have lumped together two separate tools under the heading Switch Tools. These two tools are rather simple, but can be extremely useful. The first is the ASP.NET Version Switcher, which can be used to switch the version of ASP.NET that a virtual directory is running under. The second tool is the Visual Studio Converter, which can be used to switch a project file from Visual Studio .NET 2002 to Visual Studio .NET 2003.

When IIS handles a request, it looks at the extension of the file that is being requested, and then based on the extension mappings for that Web site or virtual directory, it either delegates the request to an ISAPI extension or handles it itself. This is how ASP.NET works; extension mappings are registered for all of the ASP.NET extensions and directs them to the aspnet_isapi.dll. This works flawlessly until you install ASP.NET 1.1, which upgrades the extension mapping to the new version of aspnet_isapi.dll. This causes errors when an application built on ASP.NET 1.0 tries to run with version 1.1. To fix this, you can switch all of the extension mappings back to the 1.0 version of aspnet_isapi.dll, but with 18 extension mappings it is not a lot of fun to do this by hand. This is where the ASP.NET Version Switcher becomes useful. This small utility can be used to switch the version of the .NET Framework that any single ASP.NET application is using.

Figure 9 ASP.NET Version Switcher

Figure 9 shows the ASP.NET Version Switcher in action. Using it is as simple as selecting the application and then selecting the version of the .NET Framework that you would like the application to use. The tool then uses the aspnet_regiis.exe command-line tool to switch the application to the selected version of the Framework. This tool will become even more useful as future versions of ASP.NET and the .NET Framework are released.

ASP.NET Version Switcher was written by Denis Bauer and is available for download from http://www.denisbauer.com/NETTools/ASPNETVersionSwitcher.aspx.

The Visual Studio .NET Project Converter (see Figure 10) is very similar to the ASP.NET Version Switcher, except that it is used to switch the version of a Visual Studio project file. Even though there is only a small difference between versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the .NET Framework, once a project file from Visual Studio .NET 2002 is converted to Visual Studio .NET 2003, it cannot be converted back. While this might not be an issue most of the time (since there are few breaking changes between the .NET Framework versions 1.0 and 1.1), at some point you may need to switch a project back. This converter can convert any solution or project file from Visual Studio 7.1 (Visual Studio .NET 2003) to Visual Studio 7.0 (Visual Studio .NET 2002), and back if necessary.

Figure 10 Visual Studio .NET Project Converter

The Visual Studio .NET Project Converter was written by Dacris Software. It is available for download from http://www.codeproject.com/macro/vsconvert.asp.

ASP.NET 4.0 Features

2011-09-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

ASP.NET v4 is released with Visual studio 2010. Web developers are presented with a bewildering range of new features and so Ludmal De Silva has described what he considers to be the most important new features in ASP.NET V4

The focus of Microsoft’s latest ASP.NET 4has mainly been on improving the performance and Search-engine Optimization (SEO). In this article, I'll be taking a look at what I think are the most important new features in ASP.NET 4.

Output cache extensibility
Session state compression
View state mode for individual control
Page.MetaKeyword and Page.MetaDescription properties
Response.RedirectPermanent method
Routing in ASP.NET
Increase the URL character length
New syntax for Html Encode
Predictable Client IDs
Web.config file refactoring
Auto-Start ASP.NET applications
Improvements on Microsoft Ajax Library

I’ll describe the details of each of these features in the following sections.

Output Cache extensibility

Output caching, or Page-Level Caching, caches the entire rendered markup of an ASP.NET web page for a specific time-period. This has always been one of the essential features for ASP.NET that is used extensively to increase application performance. However there have been some limitations on the feasible extent of caching, because cached content always had to be stored in-memory.

But with ASP.NET 4.0 developers can extend their caching by using Output-cache providers. Developers can now create ‘output-cache providers’ that store the cache contents to any persistence mechanism such as databases, disks, cloud storage and distributed cache engines.

To create a custom output-cache provider, a class which derived from System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheProvider has to be created in ASP.NET 4.0. There are four public methods which you have to override in order to provide your own implementation for add, remove, retrieve and update functionality. Also, the output-cache provider has to be registered in the web.config file as shown in the following screen capture.

You can also set this custom output-cache provider as your default cache mechanism. So once you add the page cache directives all of your contents will be stored using the custom output-cache provider.

Moreover, developers can also dynamically configure which output-cache Provider is used. For example you might want to cache the frequently access pages in the memory for faster access and less frequent pages on disk. By overriding the GetOutputCacheProviderName() method you can configure which output cache provider to use for different requests. These additions to the output-cache can enable developers to write extensible and more efficient cache mechanisms to their web application and thereby improve its responsiveness.

Session State compression

The ASP.NET session state is a mechanism to maintain session-specific data through subsequent requests. In some instances, you may wish to store your session state data in a session-state server or in Microsoft SQL server. However, these two options require you to store data out of the web application’s worker process. To send across to the relevant sources, (State server or Microsoft SQL Server), session-state data has to be serialized. This can take a significant time if the size of the data to be serialized grows significantly. This will increase the latency of the application.

This latency can be reduced if the size of the data is lessened by compression. ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new mechanism to compress your session state data for both Session-state server and Microsoft SQL server. Compression can be enabled by setting the compressionEnable to true in the web.config file. In this example, the session-state data will be serialized/desterilized using System.IO.Compression.GZipStream.

mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=DB;Initial Catalog=LudmalDB" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true"/>

With this compression feature, developers can often reduce the time it takes for a web application to respond by reducing the size of session data.

View State mode for Individual Controls

View state is a mechanism to maintain page controls’ state on subsequent post backs. ASP.NET stores the view state data for controls that are in the page, even if it’s not necessary. Since the view state data is stored in the pages’ html, the size of the request object will be increased, and make performance worse.

In ASP.NET 4.0, each web control will include a ViewStateMode property which lets developers disable view-state by default, and enable it just for the controls for which a persistence of state is required. ViewStateMode has the following three values;

Enabled – enables the view state for this control and any child control.
Disabled – disable the view state.
Inherits – this specify the control uses the settings from its parent control.

By setting these values in page controls accordingly, a significant performance improvement can be gained in response-time.

Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties

To increase the relevance of pages in searches, developers should include relevant “keyword” and “description” meta tags in the html section. Unfortunately, it takes some time to add these tags for each and every page, and the alternative of adding these tags programmatically was difficult.

But with ASP.NET 4.0, there are two new properties in the code behind file;

Page.MetaDescription – equivalent to meta name “description”
Page.MetaKeywords – equivalent to meta name “keywords”

This will enable developers to easily and programmatically add the relevant keywords and description.

This will even be useful for Master pages—where you only have to add these properties in the master page. In addition to “keywords” and “description” settings in the code behind, developers can also set these values within the @Page directive.

Response.RedirectPermanent Method

ASP.NET 4.0 has improved SEO (Search-engine Optimization) facilities. Typically developers use Response.Redirect(string url) to handle requests for old URLs. However, this leads to an extra round trip to access the old URLs and so will negatively affect your page-ranking in search-engines.

ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Response.RedirectPermanent(string url) helper method to be used as HTTP 301 (Moved permanently) to handle requests. This will enable search-engines to index URLs and content efficiently and thus improve the page rankings.

Routing in ASP.NET

Routing will let developers serve meaningful URLs to users and map them with the actual physical files. This URL-rewriting mechanism enables developers to write high ranking, search-engine optimized web applications. For example, URL for a page which displays an actual product might look like the following;

http://www.ludmal.net/showproducts.aspx?prodId=24

By using routing the URL will look like the following

http://www.ludmal.net/products/ipod

In this way, the URLs will be more easily remembered by users. It will also significantly improve the search-engine page rankings of the web site.

The following example shows how to implement routing behavior in ASP.NET 4 using new MapPageRoute in Route class.

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication { void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute("ProductsRoute", "product/{prodId}", "~/products.aspx"); } }

Increase the URL character length

In previous versions of ASP.NET, URLs were limited to 260 characters in length. But in ASP.NET 4.0 developers have the option of increasing or decreasing the length of URLs by using the new maxRequestPathLength and maxQueryStringLength. I’ll illustrate this in an example.

In previous versions of ASP.NET you were limited to a fixed set of characters but in v4, developers can also validate the invalid characters by specifying values in the requestPathInvalidChars attribute.

New syntax for Html Encode

Html Encode method encodes a particular string to be displayed in a browser. It is important to encode strings prior it’s rendering in the page, mainly to avoid cross-site script injection (XSS) and HTML injection attacks. However, developers so often forget to call the encode function.

In previous .NET versions, Server.HtmlEncode() or HttpUtility.Encode() methods has been used for string encoding as shown in the following example.

ASP.NET 4.0 introduced new code expression syntax for encoding a particular string. While the syntax will render the output it also encodes the relevant string as shown below. Note “:” character after opening tag (“<%”).

The new encoding syntax provides an easy and concise way of encoding a particular string.

Predictable Client IDs

ASP.NET 4 now supports a new ClientIDMode property for server control. This property indicates how the Client ID should be generated to a particular control when they render. Client ID has been an important property of the server controls recently—especially with the success of jQuery and other Ajax scripting technologies. The ClientIDMode property has four values;

AutoID – This renders the output as it was before (example: ctl00_ContentPlaceholder1_ListView1_ctrl0_Label1)
Predictable (Default)– Trims all “ctl00” strings in the Client Id property.
Static – Full control over the Client ID (developer can set the Client Id and it will not be changed after the control renders)
Inherit – Allow control to inherit the behavior from its parent control

Client ID property can be set in three different ways;

Directly on individual control
On the container control. (All the child controls will inherit the settings from parent/container control)
Page or User Control level using <%@ Page%> or <%@ Control %> directives.
Directly in the web.config file. All the controls within the web application will inherit the settings.

New ClientIDRowSuffix property on databound controls also gives a similar functionality when rendering an each data item. Once you set the relevant databound property to ClientIDRowSuffix, the value will be added as a suffix to individual row elements.

After the control renders the “State” value will be added as a suffix to each data row element.

Web.config refactoring

Over the past few years web.config file has grown significantly as ASP.NET has used it for more and more features such as routing, Ajax, IIS 7 and version compatibility. This has made it trickier to maintain even with the Visual Studio environment.

With ASP.NET 4, most of the major elements have been moved to the machine.config file. This has enabled developers to maintain a cleaner, less cluttered, web.config file. The new web.config file is either empty, or includes just the .NET framework version details as shown in the following example.

Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications

Most application requires initial data load or caching operations to be done before serving the client requests. Typical this happens only when the first user request a page. However, often developers and web administrators write fake requests to keep the application alive to increase the response time. To overcome this issue, ASP.NET 4 introduce new Auto-Start feature. Auto-start feature available with IIS 7.5 and it initialize the ASP.NET application to accept requests.

To configure the Auto-start, you need to configure the “Application pool” worker process by setting the startMode attribute to “AlwaysRunning” in the applicationHost.config file. (C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config)

As soon you save the applicationHost.config file the worker process will start and initialize the required application operations before the first user has been served.

Improvements on Microsoft Ajax Library

Microsoft Ajax library is client side library which includes high performance server –based user controls and asynchronous page rendering controls. Ajax Library enables developers to easily and quickly write responsive database-driven applications.

There are some significant improvements in the Ajax Library in the ASP.NET 4. of which the most important seem to be...

Scrip Loader – the new script loader control enable developers to load all the required scripts only once, thereby eliminating the unnecessary subsequent requests to the server. It supports the ‘lazy load’ pattern which loads scripts only when necessary, and loads scripts in combination, in order to increase the performance of loading a page. It also supports the jQuery script and custom scripts.
JQuery Integration – JQuery is very popular third party javascript library. ASP.NET 4 extensively supports the integration for jQuery by mixing the jQuery and Ajax plug-ins seamlessly.
Client Data Access – by using pre-defined client controls inside the Ajax Library, developers can easily build asynchronous data-driven applications. For example client DataView control will display one or more records by consuming a WCF service. All the relevant time-consuming operations will be handled by the Ajax library asynchronously.

Conclusion

ASP.NET 4 includes plethora of new features which will enable developers to write high performance, search-engine friendly web application quickly. The features I’ve mentioned seem to be the most important of all the new features in ASP.NET 4. By upgrading your existing web applications to up-coming ASP.NET 4, you are likely to see an improvement in performance and search-engine optimization.

Future of PHP

2011-09-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

PHP is already popular, used in millions of domains (according to Netcraft), supported by most ISPs and used by household-name Web companies like Yahoo! The upcoming versions of PHP aim to add to this success by introducing new features that make PHP more usable in some cases and more secure in others. Are you ready for PHP V6? If you were upgrading tomorrow, would your scripts execute just fine or would you have work to do? This article focuses on the changes for PHP V6 — some of them back-ported to versions PHP V5.x — that could require some tweaks to your current scripts.
If you're not using PHP yet and have been thinking about it, take a look at its latest features. These features, from Unicode to core support for XML, make it even easier for you to write feature-filled PHP applications.

New PHP V6 features

PHP V6 is currently available as a developer snapshot, so you can download and try out many of the features and changes listed in this article. For features that have been implemented in the current snapshot, see Resources.
Improved Unicode support
Much improved for PHP V6 is support for Unicode strings in many of the core functions. This new feature has a big impact because it will allow PHP to support a broader set of characters for international support. So, if you're a developer or architect using a different language, such as the Java™ programming language, because it has better internationalization (i18n) support than PHP, it'll be time to take another look at PHP when the support improves.
Because you can download and use a developer's version of PHP V6 today, you will see some functions already supporting Unicode strings. For a list of functions that have been tested and verified to handle Unicode, see Resources.

What is Unicode?

Unicode is an industry-standard set of characters, character encoding, and encoding methodologies primarily aimed at enabling i18n and localization (i10n). The Unicode Transformation Format (UTF) specifies a way to encode characters for Unicode. For more information about Unicode and UTF, see Resources.

Namespaces
Namespaces are a way of avoiding name collisions between functions and classes without using prefixes in naming conventions that make the names of your methods and classes unreadable. So by using namespaces, you can have class names that someone else might use, but now you don't have to worry about running into any problems. Listing 1 provides an example of a namespace in PHP.
You won't have to update or change anything in your code because any PHP code you write that doesn't include namespaces will run just fine. Because the namespaces feature appears to be back-ported to V5.3 of PHP, when it becomes available, you can start to introduce namespaces into your own PHP applications.

Listing 1. Example of a namespace

Web 2.0 features
Depending on how you use PHP and what your scripts look like now, the language and syntax differences in PHP V6 may or may not affect you as much as the next features, which are those that directly allow you to introduce Web 2.0 features into your PHP application.
SOAP
SOAP is one of the protocols that Web services "speak" and is supported in quite a few other languages, such as the Java programming language and Microsoft® .NET. Although there are other ways to consume and expose Web services, such as Representational State Transfer (REST), SOAP remains a common way of allowing different platforms to have interoperability. In addition to SOAP modules in the PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) library, a SOAP extension to PHP was introduced in V5. This extension wasn't enabled by default, so you have to enable the extension or hope your ISP did. In addition, PEAR packages are available that allow you to build SOAP clients and servers, such as the SOAP package.
Unless you change the default, the SOAP extension will be enabled for you in V6. These extensions provide an easy way to implement SOAP clients and SOAP servers, allowing you to build PHP applications that consume and provide Web services.
If SOAP extensions are on by default, that means you won't have to configure them in PHP. If you develop PHP applications and publish them to an ISP, you may need to check with your ISP to verify that SOAP extensions will be enabled for you when they upgrade.
XML
As of PHP V5.1, XMLReader and XMLWriter have been part of the core of PHP, which makes it easier for you to work with XML in your PHP applications. Like the SOAP extensions, this can be good news if you use SOAP or XML because PHP V6 will be a better fit for you than V4 out of the box.
The XMLWriter and XMLReader are stream-based object-oriented classes that allow you to read and write XML without having to worry about the XML details.

Things removed
In addition to having new features, PHP V6 will not have some other functions and features that have been in previous versions. Most of these things, such as register_globals and safe_mode, are widely considered "broken" in current PHP, as they may expose security risks. In an effort to clean up PHP, the functions and features listed in the next section will be removed, or deprecated, from PHP. Opponents of this removal will most likely cite issues with existing scripts breaking after ISPs or enterprises upgrade to PHP V6, but proponents of this cleanup effort will be happy that the PHP team is sewing up some holes and providing a cleaner, safer implementation.
Features that will be removed from the PHP version include:

magic_quotes
register_globals
register_long_arrays
safe_mode

magic_quotes
Citing portability, performance, and inconvenience, the PHP documentation discourages the use of magic_quotes. It's so discouraged that it's being removed from PHP V6 altogether, so before upgrading to PHP V6, make sure that all your code avoids using magic_quotes. If you're using magic_quotes to escape strings for database calls, use your database implementation's parameterized queries, if they're supported. If not, use your database implementation's escape function, such as mysql_escape_string for MySQL or pg_escape_string for PostgreSQL. Listing 2 shows an example of magic_quotes use.

Listing 2. Using magic_quotes (discouraged)

After preparing your PHP code for the new versions of PHP, your code should look like that in Listing 3.

Listing 3. Using parameterized queries (recommended)

prepare("INSERT INTO USERS (USERNAME) VALUES ?");

$statement->execute(array($_GET['username']));

?>

Now that support for magic_quotes will be completely removed, the get_magic_quotes_gpc() function will no longer be available. This may affect some of the older PHP scripts, so before updating, make sure you fix any locations in which this functions exists.
register_globals
The register_globals configuration key was already defaulted to off in PHP V4.2, which was controversial at the time. When register_globals is turned on, it was easy to use variables that could be injected with values from HTML forms. These variables don't really require initialization in your scripts, so it's easy to write scripts with gaping security holes. The register_globals documentation (see Resources) provides much more information about register_globals. See Listing 4 for an example of using register_globals.

Listing 4. Using register_globals (discouraged)

If your PHP code uses global variables, you should update it. If you don't update your code to get prepared for newer versions of PHP, consider updating it for security reasons. When you're finished, your code should look like Listing 5.

Listing 5. Being specific instead (recommended)

register_long_arrays
The register_long_arrays setting, when turned on, registers the $HTTP_*_VARS predefined variables. If you're using the longer variables, update now to use the shorter variables. This setting was introduced in PHP V5 — presumably for backward-compatibility — and the PHP folks recommend turning it off for performance reasons. Listing 6 shows an example of register_long-arrays use.

Listing 6. Using deprecated registered arrays (discouraged)

If your PHP code looks like that shown in Listing 6, update it to look like that in Listing 7. Shut off the register_long_arrays setting if it's on and test your scripts again.

Listing 7. Using $_GET (recommended)

safe_mode
The safe_mode configuration key, when turned on, ensures that the owner of a file being operated on matches the owner of the script that is executing. It was originally a way to attempt to handle security when operating in a shared server environment, like many ISPs would have. (For a link to a list of the functions affected by this safe_mode change, see Resources.) Your PHP code will be unaffected by this change, but it's good to be aware of it in case you're setting up PHP in the future or counting on safe_mode in your scripts.
PHP tags
Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP)-style tags — the shorter version of the PHP tags — are no longer supported. To make sure this is not an issue for your scripts, verify that you aren't using the <% or %> tags in your PHP files. Replace them with and ?>.

             FreeType 1 and GD 1
The PHP team is removing support for both FreeType 1 and GD 1, citing the age and lack   of ongoing developments of  both libraries as the reason. Newer versions of both of   these libraries are available that provide better  functionality. For more information   about FreeType and  GD, see Resources. 
                 ereg             
The ereg extension, which supports Portable Operating System   Interface (POSIX) regular expressions, is being removed from core PHP support. If you   are using any of the POSIX  regex functions, this change will affect you unless you   include the ereg functionality. If you're using POSIX regex   today, consider taking the  time to update your regex functions to use the   Perl-Compatible Regular Expression  (PCRE) functions because they give you more features   and perform better. Table  1 provides a list of the POSIX regex functions that will not be available after   ereg is removed. Their PCRE replacements are also shown. 

Table 1. ereg() functions and their PCRE equivalents

ereg() function	Similar preg() function
`ereg()`, `eregi()`	`preg_match()`
`ereg_replace()`, `ereg_replacei()`	`preg_replace()`

PHP V5.3
Some of the features mentioned here have also been ported to PHP V5.3, which   is scheduled to be  released during the first quarter of 2008. You may want to upgrade   to V5.3 and start using these features now, so that when you move to V6 of PHP, it'll be   less of a jump. The following  list of features have been   back-ported to V5.3: 
Namespaces
XMLReader and XMLWriter in core by default

CMS : Content Management Systems

2011-09-02T07:01:00.001-07:00

I have created this article, to introduce top three CMS tools for creating websites, blogs, forums and online stores. Following is the list of the CMS tools:

1. For Creating Websites:

There are lots of CMS tools for creating a new website, but few of them are really useful and worth using. It also helps you to save your time in developing your site, and you can update your pages easily.

2. For Creating Blog:

If you are willing to have your own blog then wordpress is the best choice for you, as its already search engine optimized and you can use lot of plugin to enhance your blogging experience.

3. For Creating Forums:

Create forums is now easier with the CMS that currently exist. The following are various CMS themes and addons available and are the best there is to create forums:

4. For Creating Online Stores:

You can also create online stores using the CMS tools. The best CMS that exist to create online stores are:

If you know any more CMS tool then dont forgot to share with us. We will love to hear your comments regarding Content Management Systems.

Joomla 1.6 Installation

2011-09-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

How to Manually Install Joomla 1.6

In order to complete the manual Joomla 1.6 installation, follow the steps listed below:

Step 1. Create a MySQL database from cPanel->MySQL Databases and add a user to it. If you are not using cPanel, you can check the MySQL manual for more details on the database and user setup.

Step 2. Download the archive file with the latest stable version of Joomla 1.6 from the official web site. Store it in a folder on your local computer and extract the archive.

Step 3. Upload all the content from this local folder to the directory on the server where Joomla 1.6 will be stored. The easiest way to upload the files and the folders is through an FTP client. Detailed instructions about this are available in our FTP tutorial.

Step 4. Open the URL of the newly-uploaded Joomla script. If the content is uploaded in the main web directory, use http://yourdomainname.com. In case you have uploaded it in a subdirectory, open http://yourdomainname.com/example. Replace the domain and the directory names with the corresponding ones for your web site.

Step 5. The Joomla installation page will be loaded:

There you can select the language for the installation. It will be valid only during the installation. Once completed Joomla will be switched back to English.

In order to follow easier the next steps of the tutorial it is recommended that you choose "English".

Step 6. On the next page Joomla will check whether the system requirements are met on the server. If one or more are not met, a corresponding message will be shown.

SiteGround servers are fully compatible with Joomla 1.6:

Step 7. After you make sure that all system requirements are met, proceed by clicking on the Next button from the top right menu. On the next page you should read and accept Joomla's license.

Again, click Next to continue.

Step 8. Here you have to enter the MySQL details for the new Joomla 1.6 installation. Use the ones set in Step 1.

In the following screenshot you can find example entries and explanations for these fields:

Step 9. Next, you can set your File Transfer Protocol (FTP) configuration. Keep the default settings and click Next to proceed.

Step 10. On the current page the main Joomla 1.6 configuration should be defined. Specify your site name, meta description and keywords, admin user, email and password.

Click on Next to proceed.

Important: In this example we will not use the Install Sample Data feature because it may cause confusion and require time to remove all the data populated later.

Step 11. In the last page of the installation wizard you will receive a confirmation that Joomla 1.6 has been successfully installed.

In order to access your new Joomla 1.6 web site you must delete the installation directory. This can be done with your FTP client.

Well done! Your Joomla website is now installed.

Joomla Tutorial

2011-09-02T06:56:00.000-07:00

What is Joomla!™ CMS

Joomla! CMS is a multi functional Open Source application for creating websites. It is free to use and has a great community support.
This Joomla tutorial is dedicated to showing you the basics of the Joomla 1.5 and the older Joomla 1.0 CMS. After reading it, you will be able to create a fully-functional website with Joomla in just a few minutes. If you don't have a Joomla website yet, you can sign up here for a Joomla hosting account and get a free Joomla installation. If you need to change your Joomla hosting provider, we offer free website files and database transfer. On this page you will find listed all topics from our Joomla 1.0 Tutorial, our Joomla 1.5 Tutorial and our Joomla 1.6 Tutorial.

Joomla! main benefits:

Multiuser and Multilevel environment - many users can interact and contribute to the development of a Joomla-based site. Users can be assigned to different groups with different privileges;
WYSIWYG editor - the intuitive What You See Is What You Get editor allows for easy editing of the content online;
Additional components / modules - the Joomla system can be easily enhanced with additional functionalities from integrating a forum to installing an E-commerce solution;
Templates - there are numerous free designs including Joomla 1.6 templates on the net and Siteground is proud to offer some of the best ones!

Joomla 1.6 Tutorial

This Joomla!™ 1.6 tutorial is divided into several parts and we recommend you following it in the order below:

Joomla 1.6 Installation - how to install manually Joomla 1.6 from its source files
First steps in Joomla 1.6 - logging in the admin area and creating content
Linking articles in Joomla 1.6 - how to manage your menu and link articles to it
Joomla 1.6 Contact Us Page - create easily the page almost every site needs
Extending Joomla 1.6 - once you have set the base of your site it is time to extend
Managing Joomla 1.6 Extensions - how to manage your extensions
Joomla 1.6 Redirect Manager - a new feature in Joomla 1.6 which will help your SEO
Joomla 1.6 Global Configuration - the basic configuration options of Joomla 1.6
Finding Help for Joomla 1.6 - how to find help outside this tutorial

Joomla 1.5 Tutorial

This Joomla 1.5 tutorial covers the following topics:

Joomla!™ 1.0 Tutorial

This Joomla 1.0 tutorial covers the following topics:

How do I start?

To start a Joomla website, you will need to open a hosting account first and have Joomla installed there. SiteGround has been supporting and hosting Joomla sites from the very beginning of Joomla! back in 2005. Through the years we have proven to be the best Joomla host, providing services such as free Joomla installation, Joomla-optimized servers, hundreds of free templates, fast and efficient support. For users, who need to change their Joomla host, we offer free website files and database transfer.

10 Free powerful Content Management Systems

2011-09-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

Content Management Systems help web developers create, manage and publish quickly blogs, portal or social collaboration websites. Probably you know the most popular CMS tools such as WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla!, Mambo but there are a lot of similar CMS tools for all needs.

This list suggest you some interesting alternatives you have to try. Please add a link if you want to suggest a CMS tool not included in this list.

1. Frog CMS
Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.

Frog requires PHP5, a MySQL database or SQLite 3 with PDO, and a web server (Apache with mod_rewrite is highly recommended).

2. SilverStripe
SilverStripe open source content management system and framework intuitive and user-friendly, fast, flexible, and free, to build powerful websites quickly.

3. Liferay
Liferay is a leading provider of open source enterprise portal and social collaboration software. Liferay Portal is all about choice. It gives you over 60 portlets and the most innovative technologies to let you do everything from web publishing, to building an intranet, to simply getting the right documents and applications to the right people.

4. miaCMS
MiaCMS is a powerful, flexible, and easy to use open source content management system. It can be used to build websites of all shapes, sizes, and scenarios. MiaCMS features simple installation, graphical (WYSIWYG) HTML editors, RSS content syndication, a powerful 3rd party extension system, flexible theming capabilities, site search, RESTful content access, user management, multilingual capabilities, plus much more.

5. MoinMoin
MoinMoin is an advanced, easy to use and extensible WikiEngine with a large community of users. Said in a few words, it is about collaboration on easily editable web pages.

6. ImpressCMS
ImpressCMS is a community developed Content Management System for easily building and maintaining a dynamic web site. Keep your web site up to date with this easy to use, secure and flexible system. It is the ideal tool for a wide range of users: from business to community users, from large enterprises to people who want a simple, easy to use blogging tool.

7. MODx
MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child's play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts – hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging "Web 2.0" sites today, with its pre-integrated MooTools, Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries.

8. Textpattern
Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system PHP-based. It is both free and open source.

9. Radiant
Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams. Main features: elegant user interface, flexible templating with layouts, snippets, page parts, and a custom tagging language, first-class extension/plugin system, simple user management and permissions. Platform: Ruby.

10. CMS Made Simple
If you are an experienced web developer, and know how to do the things you need to do, to get a site up with CMS Made Simple is just that, simple. For those with more advanced ambitions there are plenty of addons to download. And there is an excellent community always at your service.

Watch IPL 2011 : Live Streaming

2011-05-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

http://us.ipl.indiatimes.com/

Table Variables In T-SQL

2010-05-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Microsoft introduced table variables with SQL Server 2000 as an alternative to using temporary tables. In many cases a table variable can outperform a solution using a temporary table, although we will need to review the strengths and weaknesses of each in this article.

Table variables store a set of records, so naturally the declaration syntax looks very similar to a CREATE TABLE statement, as you can see in the following example:

DECLARE @ProductTotals TABLE

(

ProductID int,

Revenue money

)

While connected to the Northwind data-base, we could write the following SELECT statement to populate the table variable.

INSERT INTO @ProductTotals (ProductID, Revenue)

SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice * Quantity)

FROM [Order Details]

GROUP BY ProductID

You can use table variables in batches, stored procedures, and user-defined functions (UDFs). We can UPDATE records in our table variable as well as DELETE records.

UPDATE @ProductTotals

SET Revenue = Revenue * 1.15

WHERE ProductID = 62

DELETE FROM @ProductTotals

WHERE ProductID = 60

SELECT TOP 5 *

FROM @ProductTotals

ORDER BY Revenue DESC

You might think table variables work just like temporary tables (CREATE TABLE #ProductTotals), but there are some differences.

Scope

Unlike the majority of the other data types in SQL Server, you cannot use a table variable as an input or an output parameter. In fact, a table variable is scoped to the stored procedure, batch, or user-defined function just like any local variable you create with a DECLARE statement. The variable will no longer exist after the procedure exits - there will be no table to clean up with a DROP statement.

Although you cannot use a table variable as an input or output parameter, you can return a table variable from a user-defined function – we will see an example later in this article. However, because you can’t pass a table variable to another stored procedure as input – there still are scenarios where you’ll be required to use a temporary table when using calling stored procedures from inside other stored procedures and sharing table results.
The restricted scope of a table variable gives SQL Server some liberty to perform optimizations.

Performance

Because of the well-defined scope, a table variable will generally use fewer resources than a temporary table. Transactions touching table variables only last for the duration of the update on the table variable, so there is less locking and logging overhead.
Using a temporary table inside of a stored procedure may result in additional re-compilations of the stored procedure. Table variables can often avoid this recompilation hit. For more information on why stored procedures may recompile, look at Microsoft knowledge base article 243586 (INF: Troubleshooting Stored Procedure Recompilation).

Other Features

Constraints are an excellent way to ensure the data in a table meets specific requirements, and you can use constraints with table variables. The following example ensures ProductID values in the table will be unique, and all prices are less then 10.0.

DECLARE @MyTable TABLE

(

ProductID int UNIQUE,

Price money CHECK(Price < 10.0)

)

You can also declare primary keys. identity columns, and default values.

DECLARE @MyTable TABLE

(

ProductID int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,

Name varchar(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT('Unknown')

)

So far it seems that table variables can do anything temporary tables can do within the scope of a stored procedure, batch, or UDF), but there are some drawbacks.

Restrictions

You cannot create a non-clustered index on a table variable, unless the index is a side effect of a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE constraint on the table (SQL Server enforces any UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY constraints using an index).
Also, SQL Server does not maintain statistics on a table variable, and statistics are used heavily by the query optimizer to determine the best method to execute a query. Neither of these restrictions should be a problem, however, as table variables generally exist for a specific purpose and aren’t used for a wide range of ad-hoc queries.
The table definition of a table variable cannot change after the DECLARE statement. Any ALTER TABLE query attempting to alter a table variable will fail with a syntax error. Along the same lines, you cannot use a table variable with SELECT INTO or INSERT EXEC queries. f you are using a table variable in a join, you will need to alias the table in order to execute the query.

SELECT ProductName, Revenue

FROM Products P

INNER JOIN @ProductTotals PT ON P.ProductID = PT.ProductID

You can use a table variable with dynamic SQL, but you must declare the table inside the dynamic SQL itself. The following query will fail with the error “Must declare the variable '@MyTable'.”

DECLARE @MyTable TABLE

(

ProductID int ,

Name varchar(10)

)

EXEC sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM @MyTable'

It’s also important to note how table variables do not participate in transaction rollbacks. Although this can be a performance benefit, it can also catch you off guard if you are not aware of the behavior. To demonstrate, the following query batch will return a count of 77 records even though the INSERT took place inside a transaction with ROLLBACK.

DECLARE @ProductTotals TABLE

(

ProductID int ,

Revenue money

)

BEGIN TRANSACTION

INSERT INTO @ProductTotals (ProductID, Revenue)

SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice * Quantity)

FROM [Order Details]

GROUP BY ProductID

ROLLBACK TRANSACTION

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM @ProductTotals

Choosing Between Temporary Tables and Table Variables

Now you’ve come to a stored procedure that needs temporary resultset storage. Knowing what we have learned so far, how do you decide on using a table variable or a temporary table?

First, we know there are situations that which demand the use of a temporary table. This in-cludes calling nested stored procedures which use the resultset, certain scenarios using dy-namic SQL, and cases where you need transaction rollback support.

Secondly, the size of the resultset will determine which solution to choose. If the table stores a resultset so large you require indexes to improve query performance, you’ll need to stick to a temporary table. In some borderline cases try some performance benchmark testing to see which approach offers the best performance. If the resultset is small, the table variable is always the optimum choice.

ICC T20 World Cup Schedule

2010-05-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

The second biggest event by International Cricket Council (ICC) is about to start with only 4 days to go for the ICC T20 World Cup. This is the third time when ICC has Organised T20 World Cup. Previously the to Champions of ICC T20 World Cup are India in 2008, Pakistan in 2009 and let see who taken the T20 World Cup this time?

In the previous years T-20 World Cups India beat Pakistan in 2007 and Pakistan beat Sri Lanka in 2009. The ICC has now decided to schedule T20 World cup every year.

This time total 12 teams are playing T20 World Cup with Afghanistan a new team being introduced this time. The T20 World is scheduled to be from 30th April, 2010 to 16th May, 2010.

This time T20 World Cup is fixed to be held in West Indies with teams divided in 4 groups viz Group A,B,C,D.

The Group Teams Line up is as follows:-

Group A – Pakistan (A1), Bangladesh (A2) and Australia
Group B – Sri Lanka (B1), New Zealand (B2) and Zimbabwe
Group C – South Africa (C1), India (C2) and Afghanistan
Group D – West Indies (D1), England (D2) and Ireland

The Top 2 Teams from each group will head to Super 8 Matches and from there 4 teams will head to Semi Finals. There would be total of 27 matches to be played between 12 teams in 17 days at 3 Venue i.e. Beausejour Stadium, Gros Islet, St Lucia, Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados and Providence Stadium, Guyana.

The Super Eight Line will be among top 2 teams from each group. The Two groups will be formed such as :-

Group E	Group F
A1	B1
B2	A2
C1	C2
D2	D1

ICC Twenty20 World Cup Schedule

Apr-2010
Tue 27 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	Warm-up – Pakistan v Windward Islands Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Tue 27 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – Australia v Zimbabwe Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Tue 27 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – Barbados v Bangladesh Kensington Oval, Barbados

Tue 27 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – Ireland v New Zealand Providence Stadium, Guyana

Tue 27 21:00 GMT, 17:00 local	Warm-up – West Indies v Afghanistan Providence Stadium, Guyana

Wed 28 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	Warm-up – South Africa v Sri Lanka Kensington Oval, Barbados

Wed 28 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – Bangladesh v England Kensington Oval, Barbados

Wed 28 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – Afghanistan v Ireland Providence Stadium, Guyana

Wed 28 21:00 GMT, 17:00 local	Warm-up – West Indies v New Zealand Providence Stadium, Guyana

Thu 29 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	Warm-up – England v South Africa Kensington Oval, Barbados

Thu 29 17:30 GMT, 09:30 local	Warm-up – Windward Islands v Australia Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Fri 30 17:00 GMT, 13:00 local	1st Match, Group B – Sri Lanka v New Zealand Providence Stadium, Guyana

Fri 30 21:00 GMT, 17:00 local	2nd Match, Group D – West Indies v Ireland Providence Stadium, Guyana
May-2010
Sat 01 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	3rd Match, Group C – India v Afghanistan Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Sat 01 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	4th Match, Group A – Pakistan v Bangladesh Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Sun 02 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	5th Match, Group C – India v South Africa Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Sun 02 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	6th Match, Group A – Pakistan v Australia Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Mon 03 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	7th Match, Group B – Zimbabwe v Sri Lanka Providence Stadium, Guyana

Mon 03 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	8th Match, Group D – West Indies v England Providence Stadium, Guyana

Tue 04 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	9th Match, Group B – New Zealand v Zimbabwe Providence Stadium, Guyana

Tue 04 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	10th Match, Group D – England v Ireland Providence Stadium, Guyana

Wed 05 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	11th Match, Group A – Australia v Bangladesh Kensington Oval, Barbados

Wed 05 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	11th Match, Group C – South Africa v Afghanistan Kensington Oval, Barbados

Thu 06 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	13th Match – A1 v D2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Thu 06 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	14th Match – C1 v B2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Fri 07 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	15th Match – A2 v C2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Fri 07 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	16th Match – B1 v D1 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Sat 08 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	17th Match – C1 v D2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Sat 08 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	18th Match – A1 v B2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Sun 09 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	19th Match – C2 v D1 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Sun 09 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	20th Match – B1 v A2 Kensington Oval, Barbados

Mon 10 13:30 GMT, 09:30 local	21st Match – B2 v D2 Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Mon 10 17:30 GMT, 13:30 local	22nd Match – A1 v C1 Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Tue 11 17:00 GMT, 13:00 local	23rd Match – B1 v C2 Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Tue 11 21:00 GMT, 17:00 local	24th Match – D1 v A2 Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Thu 13 15:30 GMT, 11:30 local	1st Semi-Final – TBC v TBC Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Fri 14 15:30 GMT, 11:30 local	2nd Semi-Final – TBC v TBC Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Sun 16 15:30 GMT, 11:30 local	The Final – TBC v TBC Kensington Oval, Barbados

CHM file(book) error, not displaying content

2010-05-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

Sometime when you download a chm help file or chm book from internet, or copy it from any usb drive it does not open or when open does not show any content.
this is actually security problem. Windows does not allow chm files to open.

Solution: right click the file->properties. at bottom of proper you will see a button unblock. click that button. it means windows will now not block the opening of the file. User marked it safe for opening.

Secondly: copy it to another folder/another drive or desktop and then try to open, sometimes it works.

C# 2005 three ebooks

2010-05-07T03:31:00.000-07:00

In this page, I am giving information regarding three C# 2005 books. You can download ebooks of this three books.

Beginning C# 2005 Databases: From Novice to Professional
Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step
Visual C# 2005 How to Program

Beginning C# 2005 Databases: From Novice to Professional

This C# book is written by James Huddleston, Ranga Raghuram, Syed Fahad Gilani, Jacob Hammer Pedersen and Jon Reid. This book helps you to install C#, learning SQL, C# programming constructs and ADO.Net database Connectivity, etc. Moreover there are good examples and C# source code in this book.
Read More/Download

Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step

This C# book is written by John Sharp. This is a step by step reference book to learn C# programming. Companion CD of this C# book helps you with C# examples and source code. Moreover you can learn C# client server web based applications.
Read More/Download

Visual C# 2005 How to Program

This C# book is written by H.M. Deitel and P.J. Deitel. You can learn OOP with C#, XML Services in C#, database application development in C# and UML case studies, etc.
Read More/Download

Related C# Programming Ebooks

Top 7 reasons C# is better than VB.NET

2010-05-07T03:29:00.001-07:00

In C# the line ends when I type the semicolon. Allowing you to write all your code on one line of the need is required
Features for VB.NET such as MVC are written and available in C# first then VB.
Most third party control libraries that supply source code are in C# so any bug fixes you need to make will require C# coding
Comments in C# are just better. Its easier to read them when not using Visual Studio
Microsoft codes a majority of their stuff in C#
You can more easily access the API from C#. No need for Declare statements
Most C# developers can code VB but less VB developers can code C#.

top 10 c# sites

2010-05-07T03:27:00.001-07:00

Finding what version of dlls an exe is referencing

2010-05-07T03:26:00.002-07:00

If you are getting an error about a version of a dll not matching when you run the exe then you need to get the right version of the dll. The way to find the dll version is to use an application like:

http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

Detecting an Ajax Async PostBack on page_load

2010-05-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

if(!ScriptManager.GetCurrent(this).IsInAsyncPostBack)
{
//code when it is a sync postback
}
else
{
//code when it is an async postback
}

Web Acronyms

2010-05-07T03:24:00.001-07:00

ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange
AJAX – Asynchronous Javascript
ASP – Active Server Pages
CGI – Common Gateway Interface
CF – Cold Fusion
CFM – Cold Fusion
CFML – Cold Fusion
CSS – Cascading Style Sheet
DB – Database
DHTML – Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language
DMX – Dreamweaver MX
DOM – Document Object Model
DTD – Document Type Definition
DW – Dreamweaver
FF – Firefox
FE – Front-end
FEE – Front-end Engineer
FH – Freehand
FL – Flash
FP – Fireworks
FTP – File Transfer Protocol
FW – Fireworks
GIF – Graphic interchange Format
GUI – Graphical User Interface
HDML – Handheld Device Markup Language
HTML – Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPS – Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
IDE – Integrated Development/Design Environment
IE – Internet Explorer
IP – Internet Protocol
IRI – Internationalized Resource Identifier
JPG/JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group
JS – Javascript
JSP – JavaServer Pages
LAMP – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python
MIME – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MM – Macromedia
MOZ – Mozilla
MSIE – Microsoft Internet Explorer
NN – Netscape Navigator
PERL – Practical Extraction/Expansion and Report Language
PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor
PNG – Portable Network Graphics
POP – Post Office Protocol
PS – Photoshop
RDF – Resource Description Framework
REST – Representational State Transfer
RPC – Remote Procedure Call
RS – Recordset
RTSP – Realtime Streaming Protocol
SB – Server Behavior
SGML – Standard Generalized Markup Language
SMIL – Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
SQL – Structured Query Language
SRGS – Speech Recognition Grammar Specification
SSI – Server Side Includes
SSML – Speech Synthesis Markup Language
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics
TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol
TLS – Transport Layer Security
UCS – Universal Character Set
UI – User Interface
URI – Uniform Resource Identifier
URL – Uniform Resource Locator
UTF – Unicode Transformation Format
W3C – World Wide Web Consortium
WAI – Web Accessibility Initiative
WASP – Windows, Apache, SQL, PHP
WML – Wireless Markup Language
WSDL – Web Services Description Language
WWW – World Wide Web
WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get
XHTML – Extensible HyperText Markup Language
XML – Extensible Markup Language
XPATH – XML Path Language
XRI – Extensible Resource Identifier
XSL – Extensible Stylesheet Language
XSLT – Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations

Debugging a windows service

2010-05-07T03:23:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to find this again. If you place this line of code in your onstart event then it will launch the prompt to debug and you can run your service in visual studio.

System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()

Hope this helps you as well.

JavaScript: How To Force Page To Reload

2010-05-07T03:21:00.001-07:00

When you want to load a page on a browser, you would normally click the Refresh / Reload button or press F5 or CTRL-R on your keyboard. If you set your browser to cache previously viewed pages, doing a normal page reload will cause the browser to fetch the requested page from cache unless otherwise instructed by a script or meta tag in the page. When this happens, images and css will be read from cache and form fields will also retain their values (this included text, textarea, radio button and checkbox).

In order to completely force a page to reload, which means, instructing the browser to skip the cached data and re-fetch everything from the server, you need to press CTRL-F5 on IE and Firefox or Command-R on Mac-Safari.

In JavaScript, there are also different ways to reload a page. Here are the methods for a normal page reload:

window.location.assign(url);
Loads the page at the the provided URL.

window.location.replace(url);
Same as assign() method except that when replace() is used, the current page will not be saved in the session history as it was replaced by the provided URL.

document.location = url;
Technically, location is a read-only property of the document. But some browsers allow you to assign a URL to it, which causes the page to reload. The reason for this is because whenever the location property is modified, a page will reload with the new assigned URL. I recommend using window.location for browser compatibility.

window.location.href = url;
Same as document.location

The other properties of location that when modified will reload the page are hash, host, hostname, pathname, port, protocol and search.

What if you want to completely force a page to reload? Say, you want to clear all entered values in a form or maybe you have modified your CSS and you want to make sure that the page will pickup the new changes. In order to do so, you can do the following:

window.location.reload(true);

The reload method accepts a boolean value, which, when it is true, causes the page to always fetch document from the server. When none is specified, it defaults to false, which may reload the page from its cache.

As you can see, the methods for forcing a page to reload has their own purposes. If you simply want to reload the page and do not care about displaying fresh data, you should not always force it to reload from the server to avoid making http requests, which is an expensive call and a waste of bandwidth. You are not only calling the page itself but you maybe reloading an external CSS page too.

C# : Remove HTML from string

2010-04-27T05:11:00.001-07:00

public string RemoveHTML(string strSource)
{            
  //Here strSource is string containing HTML Code
  return  Server.HtmlDecode(Regex.Replace(strSource, "<(.|\n)*?>", ""));
}

Convert Word Document to HTML, PDF, and other formats

2010-04-27T05:08:00.000-07:00

Convert Word Document to HTML, PDF, and other formats

You can convert word document to PDF, HTML and many other formats with google document it is simple and free service.

I have created a sample document for conversion

Convert Word Document in PDF Format

Word document in PDF format with all the formatting available.

Word Document converted in HTML Format

Create PDF Document on Fly in C# using iTextSharp

2010-04-27T05:06:00.001-07:00

Create PDF Document on Fly in C# and VB.Net using iTextSharp

Step 1: Download iTextSharp DLL Files

Step 2: Follow instruction from article which explains step by step approach to create PDF Document on Fly in C#.

Function Execution in SQL Server 2005

2010-04-27T05:05:00.000-07:00

In this article you will learn, everything about using Function Execution in SQL Server 2005

String Functions
Date and Time Functions
Mathematical Functions

String FunctionsString Functions are used for manipulating string expression. Note: string expression should be passed within single quote.

Len('') - Returns length of string.

Example: select Len("Shri Ganesh") will return 11

Lower('') - Convert all characters to lowercase characters.

Example: select Lower('Shri Ganesh') will return shri ganesh

Upper('') - Convert all characters to uppercase characters.

Example: select Upper('Shri Ganesh') will return SHRI GANESH

LTrim('') - Removes spaces from given character strings on left.

Example: select LTrim(' Shri Ganesh') will return Shri Ganesh

Note: It doesn't removes tab or line feed character.

RTrim('') - Removes space from given character strings on right.

Example: select LTrim('Shri Ganesh ') will return Shri Ganesh
Note: It doesn't removes tab or line feed character.

Trim('') - Removes spaces from given character strings from both left and right.

Example: select LTrim(' Shri Ganesh ') will return Shri Ganesh
Note: It doesn't removes tab or line feed character.

SubString('') - Returns a part of string from original string.

SubString(character_expression, position, length)

position - specifies where the substring begins.

length - specifies the length of the substring as number of characters.

Example: select SubString('Shri Ganesh',6,7) where in
6 - Starting position of sub string from given string.
6 - It is no. of characters to be extract from given string, starting from 6.
That is it will return "Ganesh" As ganesh start from 6th character upto 6 characters.

Replace('') - Replace the desired string within the original string.

Replace(character_expression, searchstring, replacementstring)

SearchString - string which you want to replace.
ReplaceString - new string which you want to replace with

Example: select replace('Think High To Achieve High','High','Low')
here, function search for every occurrence of High and replace it with Low.
Original - Think High To Achieve High
Result - Think Low To Achieve Low

Right('') - extract particular characters from right part of given string expression.

Example: select right('Think High To Achieve High',15) will return "To Achieve High"
This function will be helpful when you want particular characters from right part.
Example: Let say i have social security nos. and i want to extract last 4 digit of it.

select right('111-11-1111',4) will return 1111
select right('222-22-2222',4) will return 2222
select right('333-33-3333',4) will return 3333
select right('444-44-4444',4) will return 4444

Date and Time FunctionsDate and Time Functions are used for manipulating Date and Time expression.

GetDate() - Returns current date and time of a system.

Example: select GetDate() will return something like "2007-10-10 15:34:37.287"

GetUTCDate() - Returns current date and time information as per UTC (Universal Time Coordinate or Greenwich Mean Time)

Example: select GetDate() will return something like "2007-10-10 15:34:37.287"

DatePart and Abbrevation, which we will be using with DatePart, DateADD, DateDIFF function.

Datepart	Abbreviations
Year	yy, yyyy
Quarter	qq, q
Month	mm, m
Dayofyear	dy, y
Day	dd, d
Week	wk, ww
Weekday	dw, w
Hour	Hh
Minute	mi, n
Second	ss, s
Millisecond	Ms

DatePart() - Returns an integer representing a datepart of a date.

Note: Example are based on considering "2007-10-10 15:34:37.287" as GetDate()

Example:

select DatePart("day",GetDate()) will return 10.
select DatePart("hour",GetDate()) will return 16.
select DatePart("dayofyear",GetDate()) will return 283. And so on...

DateADD() - Returns adds a date or time interval to a specified date.

Syntax: DateADD(Abbrevation, number to be added, date)
Example:

select DateAdd("day",7,GetDate()) will return 2007-10-17 16:09:18.280
select DateAdd("month",20,GetDate()) will return 2009-06-10 16:10:02.643
And so on...

DateDIFF() - Returns difference between two specified dates.

Syntax: DateDIFF(Abbrevation, startdate, enddate)
Note: If the end date is earlier than the start date, the function returns a negative number. If the start and end dates are equal or fall within the same interval, the function returns zero.
Example:

select DATEDIFF("mm", Getdate()-500,GETDATE()) will return 17
You must pass valid start and end date otherwise you will receive error.

Mathematical Functions
Mathematical Functions are used for manipulating Mathematical expression.

ABS() - Returns positive value of numeric expression.

Example: In following example both statement will return 3.14

select ABS(3.14)
select ABS(-3.14)

Ceiling() - Returns the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to a numeric expression.

Example:

select Ceiling(3.14) will return 4
select Ceiling(-3.14) will return 3.

Floor() -Returns the largest integer that is less than or equal to a numeric expression.

Example:

select Floor(3.14) will return 3
select Floor(-3.14) will return 4

Round() - Returns a numeric expression that is rounded to the specified length or precision.

Example:

select Round(3.14, 1) will return 3.10
select Round(-3.17, 1) will return -3.20
select Round(3.12345, 4) will return 3.12350
select Round(3.12345, 3) will return 3.12300

Power() - POWER(numeric_expression, power)

Example: select power(2,3) will return 8

Free Database Compare Software for SQL Server

2010-04-27T05:04:00.001-07:00

@ Colleague Thanks for providing useful information.

Free Database Compare Software for SQL Server , MY SQL and MS Access. It will also allow you to create snapshots of a database and compare a live database to a snapshot. A database structure viewer is included. You can filter the comparison results by type of object and you can also choose to exclude the comparison of constraints and fields.

Download Now

Minus Keyword in SQL Server

2010-04-27T05:03:00.001-07:00

Minus Keyword in

Oracle supports "Minus" Keyword, but today suddenly when i tried to execute same in SQL Server it won't work.

So, I have found out Alternate way to use "Minus" in SQL Server

Alternate Way for "Minus" Keyword in SQL Server is used "Except" Keyword

Example:

Select City, State
from Employee
Minus
Select City, State
from Customer

This will work fine with Oracle, but won't work with SQL Server.

So alternate way to use "Minus" Keyword in SQL Server

Select City, State
from Employee
Except
Select City, State
from Customer

InStr Function in SQL Server

2010-04-27T05:02:00.001-07:00

Visual basic support “InStr” Function, which Returns the starting position of the specified expression in a character string.

To perform same task in SQL Server used CHARINDEX Function.

“CharIndex” Function is equivalent to “InStr” Function of SQL Server.

Example 1:

select Phone,charindex('-',Phone) from customers

Result

030-0074321	4
(5) 555-4729	8
(5) 555-3932	8
(171) 555-7788	10
0921-12 34 65	5
0621-08460	5
88.60.15.31	0

You can also specify start position

Example 2:

select Phone,charindex('-',Phone,5) from customers

here start position is 5.

Result

030-0074321	0
(5) 555-4729	8
(5) 555-3932	8
(171) 555-7788	10
0921-12 34 65	5
0621-08460	5
88.60.15.31	0

SQL Server Utility Functions for Searching String in SQL Server 2005

2010-04-27T05:01:00.001-07:00

Set of Utility Function for SQL Server 2005

AT(): Returns the beginning numeric position of the nth occurrence of a character expression within another character expression, counting from the leftmost character.
RAT(): Returns the numeric position of the last (rightmost) occurrence of a character string within another character string.
OCCURS(): Returns the number of times a character expression occurs within another character expression (including overlaps).
OCCURS2(): Returns the number of times a character expression occurs within another character expression (excluding overlaps).
PADL(): Returns a string from an expression, padded with spaces or characters to a specified length on the left side.
PADR(): Returns a string from an expression, padded with spaces or characters to a specified length on the right side.
PADC(): Returns a string from an expression, padded with spaces or characters to a specified length on the both sides.
CHRTRAN(): Replaces each character in a character expression that matches a character in a second character expression with the corresponding character in a third character expression.
STRTRAN(): Searches a character expression for occurrences of a second character expression, and then replaces each occurrence with a third character expression. Unlike a built-in function Replace, STRTRAN has three additional parameters.
STRFILTER(): Removes all characters from a string except those specified.
GETWORDCOUNT(): Counts the words in a string.
GETWORDNUM(): Returns a specified word from a string.
GETNUMWORD(): Returns the index position of a word in a string.
GETALLWORDS(): Inserts the words from a string into the table.
PROPER(): Returns from a character expression a string capitalized as appropriate for proper names.
RCHARINDEX(): Similar to the Transact-SQL function Charindex, with a Right search.
ARABTOROMAN(): Returns the character Roman numeral equivalent of a specified numeric expression (from 1 to 3999).
ROMANTOARAB(): Returns the number equivalent of a specified character Roman numeral expression (from I to MMMCMXCIX).

You can get code from this web link for each of this functions http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/User-Defined_string_Functions_MS_SQL_Server_2005_Transact-SQL_SQLCLR

Space Used by Database and Table SQL Server Command

2010-04-27T05:00:00.001-07:00

How to know how much space is consumed by your database.

Exec sp_spaceused

Output

database_name database_size unallocated space

------------------------------------------------ ---

Northwind 58.38 MB 8.23 MB

reserved data index_size unused

------------------ ------------------ --------------

12056 KB 10464 KB 1104 KB 488 KB

How to know how much space is consumed by each table in your database

EXEC sp_MSforeachtable @command1="EXEC sp_spaceused '?'"

Well i cannot display output information but you can certainly try it SQL Analyzer and see the useful information about your database to control its size and remove unnecessary data.

All About Web Service in .Net

2010-04-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

This article will explain you everything about Web Services in .Net, so lets get started with Web Service

What is Web Service?

Web Service is an application that is designed to interact directly with other applications over the internet. In simple sense, Web Services are means for interacting with objects over the Internet.
Web Service is

Language Independent
Protocol Independent
Platform Independent
It assumes a stateless service architecture.

We will discuss more on web service as the article proceed. Before that lets understand bit on how web service comes into picture.

History of Web Service or How Web Service comes into existence?

As i have mention before that Web Service is nothing but means for Interacting with objects over the Internet.
1. Initially Object - Oriented Language comes which allow us to interact with two object within same application.
2. Than comes Component Object Model (COM) which allows to interact two objects on the same computer, but in different applications.
3. Than comes Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) which allows to interact two objects on different computers, but within same local network.
4. And finally the web services, which allows two object to interact internet. That is it allows to interact between two object on different computers and even not within same local network.

Example of Web Service

Weather Reporting: You can use Weather Reporting web service to display weather information in your personal website.
Stock Quote: You can display latest update of Share market with Stock Quote on your web site.
News Headline: You can display latest news update by using News Headline Web Service in your website.
In summary you can any use any web service which is available to use. You can make your own web service and let others use it. Example you can make Free SMS Sending Service with footer with your companies advertisement, so whosoever use this service indirectly advertise your company... You can apply your ideas in N no. of ways to take advantage of it.

Web Service Communication
Web Services communicate by using standard web protocols and data formats, such as

HTTP
XML
SOAP

Advantages of Web Service Communication
Web Service messages are formatted as XML, a standard way for communication between two incompatible system. And this message is sent via HTTP, so that they can reach to any machine on the internet without being blocked by firewall.

Terms which are frequently used with web services

What is SOAP?

SOAP are remote function calls that invokes method and execute them on Remote machine and translate the object communication into XML format. In short, SOAP are way by which method calls are translate into XML format and sent via HTTP.

What is WSDL?

WSDL stands for Web Service Description Language, a standard by which a web service can tell clients what messages it accepts and which results it will return.
WSDL contains every details regarding using web service

Method and Properties provided by web service
URLs from which those method can be accessed.
Data Types used.
Communication Protocol used.

What is UDDI?

UDDI allows you to find web services by connecting to a directory.

What is Discovery or .Disco Files?

Discovery files are used to group common services together on a web server.
Discovery files .Disco and .VsDisco are XML based files that contains link in the form of URLs to resources that provides discovery information for a web service.
.Disco File (static)

.Disco File contains

URL for the WSDL
URL for the documentation
URL to which SOAP messages should be sent.

A static discovery file is an XML document that contains links to other resources that describe web services.

.VsDisco File (dynamic)

A dynamic discovery files are dynamic discovery document that are automatically generated by VS.Net during the development phase of a web service.

What is difference between Disco and UDDI?

Disco is Microsoft's Standard format for discovery documents which contains information about Web Services, while UDDI is a multi-vendor standard for discovery documents which contains information about Web Services.

What is Web Service Discovery Tool (disco.exe) ?

The Web Services Discovery Tool (disco.exe) can retrieve discovery information from a server that exposes a web service.

What is Proxy Class?

A proxy class is code that looks exactly like the class it meant to represent; however the proxy class doesn't contain any of the application logic. Instead, the proxy class contains marshalling and transport logic.
A proxy class object allows a client to access a web service as if it were a local COM object.
The Proxy must be on the computer that has the web application.

What is Web Service Description Language Tool (wsdl.exe)?

This tool can take a WSDL file and generate a corresponding proxy class that you can use to invoke the web service.
Alternate of generating Proxy class through WSDL.exe is you can use web reference. Web Reference automatically generate a proxy classes for a web service by setting a web reference to point to the web service.
Advantage of using Web Reference as compare to using WSDL.exe Tool is you can update changes done in web service class easily by updating web reference, which is more tedious task with WSDL.exe tool.

Testing a Web Service?

You can test web service without building an entire client application.

With Asp.net you can simply run the application and test the method by entering valid input paramters.
You can also use .Net Web Service Studio Tool comes from Microsoft.

Example of Creating Web Service in .Net
This Web Service will retrieve CustomerList Country Wise and return as dataset to client application for display.

Step1: Create a Web Service Application by File > New > Web Site > Asp.net Web Services
Named the web service, for example here i have choosen name "WSGetCustomerCountryWise"

Step2: Rename the default Service.asmx file to proper name, you also need to switch design view and change the class name with the same name you use to rename the service.asmx.
For example, "WSGetCustomerCountryWise.asmx" and switch to design view and change the class="Service" to class="WSGetCustomerCountryWise"

Step3: Rename the Service.CS File to proper name, you need to change the class name and constructor name too.
For example, "WSGetCustomerCountryWise.CS" and switch to code view and change the class and constructor name to "WSGetCustomerCountryWise"

After three steps your solution explorer looks as shown in figure

Step4: Create a Logic for Web Service

Create a Method "GetCustomerCountryWise"
Note: You need to specify [WebMethod] before method definition, if you want it to be accessible public, otherwise the method would not be accessible remotely.
Specify proper argument and return type for method in web service.
It is also good practise to specify the use "Description" attribute to tell what method is meant for.

For example, here i need to access data of northwind customers and want to return customer list country wise, so add namespace for

using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Configuration;

[WebMethod(Description="It will generate Customer List, Country Wise")] public System.Xml.XmlElement GetCustomerCountryWise(string sCountry)
{
string sConn = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["connStr"].ToString();

string sSQL = "select CustomerId, CompanyName, ContactTitle, City " +
" from Customers where country = '" + sCountry + "'";

SqlConnection connCustomer = new SqlConnection(sConn);

DataSet dsCustomer = new DataSet();

SqlDataAdapter daCustomer = new SqlDataAdapter(sSQL, sConn);

daCustomer.Fill(dsCustomer,"Customers");

//Known bug while return "DataSet" is "Data source is an invalid type.
It must be either an IListSource, IEnumerable, or IDataSource."
//For more details on Error: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317340

//So to access data we need to make use of XmlElement.

// Return the DataSet as an XmlElement.
System.Xml.XmlDataDocument xdd = new System.Xml.XmlDataDocument(dsCustomer);
System.Xml.XmlElement docElem = xdd.DocumentElement;
return docElem;
}

Step5: Build Web Service and Run the Web Service for testing by pressing F5 function key.

By pressing "Invoke" button will generate XML File.

So you are done creating web service application.

Example of Testing Web Service in .Net
This Web Service will display the information which had been retrieved from Remote computer by accessing public method "GetCustomerCountryWise".
Step1: Create a Test Web Site by File > New > Web Site > Asp.net Web Site
Named the web site, for example here i have choosen name "TestGetCustomerCountryWise"

Step2: Displaying data in gridview, so drag the gridview on to the form.

Step3: Right Click Solution Explorer and Choose "Add Web Reference"

Step4: Choose the option Web Service on the local machine or you can enter the .WSDL File address directly in URL space and press Go button.

Step5: Press "Add Reference button"

Step6: Writing Code for Displaying data in GridView
Here note: I have Pass "USA" as parameter in Country Field.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
//Create object of WSGetCustomerCountryWise Object
localhost.WSGetCustomerCountryWise objGetCustomerCountryWise
= new localhost.WSGetCustomerCountryWise();

DataSet dsCustomer = new DataSet();

// Get the data from Webservice.
XmlElement elem = objGetCustomerCountryWise.GetCustomerCountryWise("USA");

// Load the XML to the Typed DataSet that you want.
XmlNodeReader nodeReader = new XmlNodeReader(elem);
dsCustomer.ReadXml(nodeReader, XmlReadMode.Auto);

GridView1.DataSource = dsCustomer;

GridView1.DataBind();
}
}

Step7: Output as data displayed in GridView.

Few Facts about Web Service in .Net

Each Response from web service is a new object, with a new state.
Web Service are asynchronous because the request object from the client application and the response object from the web service are unique SOAP envelopes that do not require shared connection.
This allow client application and the web service to continue processing while the interaction is ongoing.
Instead of a user interface, it provides a standard defined interface called a contract.

Random Password Generation

2010-04-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

    public static string GetRandomPassword(int length)
    {
        char[] chars = "$%#@!*abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890?;:ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ^&".ToCharArray();
        string password = string.Empty;
        Random random = new Random();

        for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
        {
            int x = random.Next(1,chars.Length);
            //Don't Allow Repetation of Characters
            if (!password.Contains(chars.GetValue(x).ToString()))
                password += chars.GetValue(x);
            else
                i--;
        }      
        return password;
    }

Its a simple logic instead by generating a random number between 1 and Length of characters. It also checks that same character is not repeated in generated password and finally return the randomly generated password string of desired length.

Finding Distance based on Zipcode or City Name for USA

2010-04-27T04:54:00.001-07:00

Finding Distance based on Zipcode or City Name for USA
A really good article sharing how to find distance between two zip codes or cities of USA.

For whom this article is useful

It finds distance in miles between two zipcodes of USA.
It finds distance in miles between two cities of USA.
Finding County based on city or zipcode name.
Free Zipcode database of USA
Article is written in C#

Finding Distance based on Zipcode or City Name for USA

Note: When you will download the Zipcode of USA Cities and Import to SQL Server, it append inverted comma to data, to remove that you might need to run following update cursor script. Remember you need to change name of column as mentioned in script.


DECLARE c1 CURSOR READ_ONLY
FOR
select ZipCode,Latitude,Longitude,City,State,County,ZipClass from Zip_Codes

declare @ZipCodeOriginal varchar(50)
declare @ZipCode varchar(50)
declare @Latitude varchar(50)
declare @Longitude varchar(50)
declare @City varchar(50)
declare @State varchar(50)
declare @County varchar(50)
declare @ZipClass varchar(50)

open c1
FETCH NEXT FROM c1
Into @ZipCode,@Latitude,@Longitude,@City,@State,@County,@ZipClass
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN
set @ZipCodeOriginal = @ZipCode
set @ZipCode = substring(@ZipCode,2,len(@ZipCode) - 2)
set @Latitude = substring(@Latitude,2,len(@Latitude) - 2)
set @Longitude = substring(@Longitude,2,len(@Longitude) - 2)
set @City = substring(@City,2,len(@City) - 2)
set @State = substring(@State,2,len(@State) - 2)
set @County = substring(@County,2,len(@County) - 2)
set @ZipClass = substring(@ZipClass,2,len(@ZipClass) - 2)


--Update
update Zip_Codes
set ZipCode=@ZipCode,
    Latitude = @Latitude,
    Longitude = @Longitude,
    City = @City,
    State = @State,
    County = @County,
    ZipClass = @ZipClass
where
--Uniqueness Checking
ZipCode = @ZipCodeOriginal


FETCH NEXT FROM c1
Into @ZipCode,@Latitude,@Longitude,@City,@State,@County,@ZipClass
END
CLOSE c1
DEALLOCATE c1

C++ to C# Converter Utility

2010-04-27T04:53:00.001-07:00

C++ to C# Converter Utility

For migration project from C++ to C# Converter, a online utility might be helpful for getting startup stuff ready.

Check out C++ to C# Converter

Assemblies Concept in .Net

2010-04-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

Understanding Assemblies Concept in .Net

What is Assemblies in .Net?

Assembly is a logical collection of smallest unit in .Net Framework.
Example: .DLL File contains the application code, the .aspx file, .ascx user controls, .gif, .bmp, .ico file and other files like Resource file (.resx), etc.
In summary, Assemblies is a basic fundamental unit of application development and deployment in the .Net Framework
An assembly contains the MSIL code, which the common language runtime executes, and the type metadata.
An assembly also contains an assembly manifest that contains the assembly metadata. This metadata contains information about the assembly version, its security identity, the resources required by the assembly, and the scope of the assembly.
Assemblies are the smallest units to which the .NET Framework grants permissions. They provide security boundaries within the .NET Framework. You specify the permission required by your application while building assemblies. When the assembly is loaded into the runtime, the assembly sends a request to the runtime to grant the permission.

So now, lets Get Started with Assemblies .Net and understand concept of Assemblies in .Net by easy step by step explanation.

What is Assembly Manifest?

Assembly Manifest contains the metadata for the assembly.
Example, Assembly Manifest contains

Name and Version Information of Assembly.
Files (or Resource) that are made up the assembly.
Set of permissions required for the assembly to run properly.
And few other details depends on assembly.

How Assembly Manifest is useful?
When the Common Language Runtime (CLR) loads an assembly, it first reads the manifest to get the information regarding assembly.

Benefits of Assemblies?

It is used in Versioning
For Type Identification
For Security
For Deployment
For Referencing.
Improving Application Performance
Better Code Management and Maintenance

What is "DLL Hell" Problem?
"DLL Hell" problem occurs due to version incompatibility of dll's.

DLL HELL is the problem that occures when an installation of a newer application might break or hinder other application as newer DLLs are copied into the system and the older application do not support or not compatible with them. .net overcomes this problem by supporting multiple versions of an assembly at any given time.this is called side-by-side component versioning.

More on "DLL Hell" Problem.
"DLL Hell" is a problem occurs when multiple applications attempt to share a common component like a dynamic link library (DLL) or a Component Object Model (COM) class. In the most typical case, one application will install a new version of the shared component that is not backward compatible with the version already on the machine. Although the application that has just been installed works well, existing applications that depended on a previous version of the shared component might no longer work.

How Assembly used in Avoiding "DLL Hell" Problem?"DLL Hell" Problem is solved in .Net using Assembly.

Each assembly has a version number. All the types and resources in an assembly share the same version number to make it easy for applications to refer to the correct version of files and avoid problem of "DLL Hell". Thus assemblies allows the execution of multiple versions of the same assembly on the same machine. The side-by-side execution of assemblies overcomes the problem known as "DLL hell," which is one of the major problems associated with COM applications.

How Assembly can Improve Application Performance?
CLR is place where .Net Application codes gets compiled. Whenever you made an request to ASP.NET page, the page gets compiled first and then is transferred to the user. The compilation process is also completed in two steps.

1. An IL (Intermediate Language) is generated and then this is handed over for JIT
2. JIT (Just In Time) compilation which produces the machine code and our pages get displayed with their dynamic content.

The performance of our web application can be improved by creating pre-compiled libraries of IL which can then be handed over to JIT directly without having the inclusion of an extra process to make the conversion. This method is called componentization. Components are pre-compiled set of classes that have been developed in the form of DLL files and can then be included within our projects. This is also known as an assembly.

How Assembly can be used for Better Code Management and Maintenance
As we use Componentization(refer above description), if a code change require you need to change the component code compile it, so you do not require to change all the reference of code for minor change. For better understanding understand the example of component given below.

Types of Assemblies in .Net

Static and Dynamic Assemblies
Single-File and Multifile Assemblies
Private and Shared Assemblies
Satellite and Resource-only Assemblies

What is Static Assembly?
A static assembly is created when you compile the program using any of the .NET language compilers. A static assembly contains the types, interfaces, and various resources required by the assembly. A static assembly is stored on the hard disk in the form of a portable executable (.exe or .dll) file. In a simple term, when you compile through VS.Net it generates files which are physically stored on the disk, this files are called static assembly.

What is Dynamic Assembly?
Assemblies which are created and execute on the fly are called dynamic assembly. You can create dynamic assembly through System.Reflection.Emit namespace.

What is Single-File Assembly?
A single-file assembly consists of a single .exe or .dll file.
Example of Single File Assembly
In the example the Shape.dll generated is a Single File Assembly.

What is Multifile Assembly?

A multifile assembly is an assembly that can include multiple file, but it should contain atleast one .dll or .exe file.
Assembly manifest in multifile assembly can be attached to any assembly file or can be created seperately just the manifest.

What is Satellite Assembly?
Resource-only assemblies are assembly's that stores only resource and no code. example, Image. Resource-only assemblies that store the culture-specific information are known as satellite assemblies.

What is Private Assembly?

When you deploy an assembly which can be use by single application, than this assembly is called a private assembly.
Private assemblies can be used by only one application they are deployed with.
Private assemblies are deployed in the directory where the main application is installed.

What is Shared Assembly?

When you deploy an assembly which can be used by several application, than this assembly is called shared assembly.
Shared assemblies are stored in a special folder called Global Assembly Cache (GAC), which is accessible by all applications.
Shared assemblies must have a strong name. A strong name consists of an assembly name, a version number, a culture, a public key and an optional digital signature.
GAC is capable of maintaining multiple copies of an assembly with the same name but different versions.

How to assign strong name to assembly?
You can use strong name tool sn.exe tool to assign strong name to assembly. It provides

Name
Version
Integrity Protection.

How to provide High Security to assembly?
You can provide high security to assembly with the help of File Signing Tool, signcode.exe. It attach a publisher's digital signature to assembly. You can sign an assembly with both Strong Name Tool and the File Signing Tool, but when you use both make sure that you use Strong Name Tool before you use the File Signing Tool.

How to view content of GAC?
To view content of GAC open explorer and go to c:\Windows\assembly.

Native Assembly Vs JIT-Compiled Assembly
Assemblies store code in the MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) Format. When a method is invoked for the first time, the CLR just-in-time (JIT) compiles that method into native machine code. The native code is stored in memory and directly used for subsequent calls to this method. In the JIT compilation mode, a method is slow when it is called for the first time because an additional step of compilation is invoked, but any subsequent calls to that method will run as fast as native code itself.
When you view the GAC, note that some assemblies have their type marked as native images, meaning that these assemblies were precompiled in native code before they were installed in the native image cache. The advangate of using a native image is that even the first call of any method in an assembly will be as fast as its subsequent calls. You too can create a native image for your assembly by using the Native Image Generator Tool, ngen.exe, which is installed as part of .net framework.

New Features in Visual Studio 2008

2010-04-27T04:49:00.000-07:00

Useful links for Visual Studio 2008

Topic	Location
.NET Compact Framework Version 3.5	.NET Compact Framework
.NET Framework Version 3.5	Understanding the .NET Framework
What's New in ADO.NET	Accessing Data with ADO.NET
What's New in Architecture Edition	Visual Studio Enterprise - User Interface
What's New in Data	Data Access in Visual Studio
What's New in Deployment	Deployment in Visual Studio
What's New in Smart Device Projects	Smart Device Projects
What's New in the Visual Basic Language	Visual Basic Language Reference
What's New in the Visual Studio Debugger	Debugging with Visual Studio
What's New in Visual Basic	Visual Basic Concepts
What's New in Visual C#	C# Programmer's Reference
What's New in Visual C++ 2008	Getting Started with Visual C++
What's New in Visual Studio Team System	Visual Studio Team System Help
What's New in Visual Studio Tools for Office	Visual Studio Tools for Office Concepts

More About What's New in Languages and Technologies
Topic Location
.NET Compact Framework Version 3.5 .NET Compact Framework
.NET Framework Version 3.5 Understanding the .NET Framework
What's New in ADO.NET Accessing Data with ADO.NET
What's New in Architecture Edition Visual Studio Enterprise - User Interface
What's New in Data Data Access in Visual Studio
What's New in Deployment Deployment in Visual Studio
What's New in Smart Device Projects Smart Device Projects
What's New in the Visual Basic Language Visual Basic Language Reference
What's New in the Visual Studio Debugger Debugging with Visual Studio
What's New in Visual Basic Visual Basic Concepts
What's New in Visual C# C# Programmer's Reference
What's New in Visual C++ 2008 Getting Started with Visual C++
What's New in Visual Studio Team System Visual Studio Team System Help
What's New in Visual Studio Tools for Office Visual Studio Tools for Office Concepts

What is XML DOM (Document Object Model)

2010-04-27T04:47:00.001-07:00

Why is XML DOM?
XML is a standard by which two incompatible system can communicate. XML DOM works with XML data in your application. It is used to read, write and modify XML document programatically.

Understanding Nodes in XML Document

Node type	Description
Root	This node type is the container for all the nodes and is also known as the document root.
Element	This node type represents element nodes.
Attribute	This node type represents the attributes of an element node.
Text	This node type represents the text that belongs to a particular node or to an attribute.

Example of XML Document, employee.xml

Ajay
Thakur
08/09/1968
04/01/1992

2010 Stanley Dr., Charlotte, NJ 08830

2100
HR Manager
12

Ganesh
Patil
01/12/1972
06/01/2000

7862 Freepoint Pkwy, Tampa, NJ 08820

1400
Software Professional
4

Understanding XML Document

Every XML Document contains a single root element that contains all other nodes of the XML Document. Here is a root element.
XML Element is a Record which contains information. Here
XML Element Attribute further describe the Record details. Here etc are XML Element Attributes.

What is XML Document Object?
XMLDocument provides an in-memory representation of and XML document.

Example of XML DocumentCreate a Asp.net Website
Create a XML Document and name it employee.xml

Loading of XML DocumentYou can load xml document using XMLDocument object's load method

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
XmlDocument EmpXMLDoc = new XmlDocument();
string XMLDocPath = Server.MapPath("Employee.xml");
EmpXMLDoc.Load(XMLDocPath);
Response.Write(EmpXMLDoc.InnerText.ToString());
}
}

Saving XML DocumentYou can save XML Document with XMLDocument.Save method
Example: XMLDocument.Save("Employee.xml");

Read XML Document and display on WebPage
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
XmlDocument EmpXMLDoc = new XmlDocument();
string XMLDocPath = Server.MapPath("Employee.xml");
EmpXMLDoc.Load(XMLDocPath);

//Read XML Document //Note: Begin for ChildNode[1] foreach (XmlNode node1 in EmpXMLDoc.ChildNodes[1])
{
foreach (XmlNode node2 in node1.ChildNodes)
{
Response.Write("" + node2.Name + ": " + node2.InnerText + " ");
}
Response.Write("
");
}
}
}

//Output

FAQ for Assemblies in .Net

2010-04-27T04:45:00.001-07:00

Complete Information on .Net Assemblies working in the form of FAQ.

Free Web Services in .Net

2010-04-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

List of Free Web Services in .Net, this are some basic utility web services.

Stock Quote Web Service in .Net
Currency Convertor Web Service
Weather Forecast Web Service
Find Country based on User IP Web Service
Translation Web Service (Translate data from one language to another)
Free SMS Sending Web Service

vipin cherukara

Convert string to Enum instance

Example: Output

Cannot load the X.509 certificate identity specified in the configuration

C# : get the Data Source Value in Connection string

Exposing a WCF Service With Multiple Bindings and Endpoints

Setting Up The Test Solution

Setting Up Basic Http Binding

Exposing Our Service’s WSDL

Adding More Bindings and Endpoints To Our Service

Testing Our Service

Conclusion

Intellisense not working in Visual Studio

Fly Vision is priced at Rs 7,299.

Top 9 Suspence/Thriller Movies

Tata Docomo GPRS Settings and PC Suite Connect

The HTTP request is unauthorized with client authentication scheme 'Anonymous'. The authentication header received from the server was 'Basic realm="Spring Security Application

Nester

ZaneBug

mb.unit (Generative unit test framework)

The Need of Unit Testing

Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now

ASP.NET 4.0 Features

Output Cache extensibility

Session State compression

View State mode for Individual Controls

Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties

Response.RedirectPermanent Method

Routing in ASP.NET

Increase the URL character length

New syntax for Html Encode

Predictable Client IDs

Web.config refactoring

Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications

Improvements on Microsoft Ajax Library

Conclusion

Future of PHP

What is Unicode?

Top 12 Free Content Management Systems (CMS)

So, What Exactly Is A Content Management System?

WordPress ↓

Joomla ↓

Drupal ↓

SilverStripe ↓

Cushy CMS ↓

Frog CMS ↓

MODx ↓

TYPOlight ↓

dotCMS ↓

Expression Engine ↓

Radiant CMS ↓

concrete5 ↓

Learn to build your own CMS with PHP ↓

CMS : Content Management Systems

Joomla 1.6 Installation

How to Manually Install Joomla 1.6

Joomla Tutorial

What is Joomla!™ CMS

Joomla! main benefits:

Joomla 1.6 Tutorial

Joomla 1.5 Tutorial

Joomla!™ 1.0 Tutorial

How do I start?

10 Free powerful Content Management Systems

Watch IPL 2011 : Live Streaming

Table Variables In T-SQL

Scope

Performance

Other Features

Restrictions

Choosing Between Temporary Tables and Table Variables

ICC T20 World Cup Schedule

ICC Twenty20 World Cup Schedule

CHM file(book) error, not displaying content

C# 2005 three ebooks

Top 7 reasons C# is better than VB.NET

top 10 c# sites

Finding what version of dlls an exe is referencing

Detecting an Ajax Async PostBack on page_load

Web Acronyms