Visual LINQ Query Builder

For the beginners writing LINQ queries is not so easy as it is a different way of writing .net code. It need lot of practice and developers need to remember the syntax of the query like which statement comes first and which one next also the operators that needs to be used. There is free tool available which will work as an add- in to visual studio 2008 IDE that will help you visually build LINQ to SQL queries.

Visit http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vlinq to learn more about this tool.

Namastee !

LINQ : IEnumerable and IQueryable

IEnumerable and IQueryable are the two most used interfaces in . What I am trying to do here is that I am trying to differentiate the two interfaces depending on their behavior. In LINQ we generally have few providers available within .NET Framework, like LINQ to Object, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML.

All the LINQ query statement returns an object of type IEnumerable.This holds good for LINQ to Object and LINQ to XML.But LINQ to SQL is something different as the query statement will be convered toa SQL statement internally while execution.So LINQ to SQL queries return object of type IQueryable which is again inherited from IEnumerable.

To check what are the different methods and properties this interface have, visit the following URL.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.linq.iqueryable_members.aspx

Namastee !

Pragmatic Programmer, The: From Journeyman to Master

For all my developer friends I have book recommendation.

“Pragmatic Programmer, the: From Journeyman to Master” by Andrew Hunt David Thomas.

It’s a very nice book which covers everything that you need to know to become a good programmer. Authors explained each Tip extensively with short stories which really helps in understanding the importance of the Tip. It is not a technical book; it explains what a programmer should do besides talk in programming languages.

Namastee!

Framework Design Studio

Framework Design Studio is a nice free tool that can be used by Architect/Designer/Developers to compare two versions of the .NET Assembly and check the differences.

It has following features.

• Listing APIs exposed from a managed code assembly
• Comparing APIs in two versions of an assembly
• Reviewing APIs, commenting on API design, and filing review bugs to a defect database (through a configurable plug-in)
• Exporting API review comments to a Microsoft Word document

You can download this tool from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/fds

Namastee!

Windows Azure: New Operating System for Cloud Computing

The cloud computing space is now really heating up with competing platform plays from Google’s AppEngine and Amazon’s recent EC2 announcements.Microsoft has also joined the race.Ray Ozzie announced the New operating System for Cloude computing named WINDOWS AZURE in PDC 2008.

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.The major features it provids are Automated Service Management, Powerful Service hosting environment, Scalable , avilable cloude storage and a Rich familier developer experience.

So visit http://www.microsoft.com/azure/windowsazure.mspx. Download the SDK, register yourslf to try it out today .

To watch the PDC2008 Keynotes on Windows Azure visit http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN01/

Namastee!

Error in Application : ASP.NET application not able to access a file from a shared folder.

Problem: I am running an ASP.NET 2.0 application in IIS 6.0 which is trying to access a file available in a shared folder. All though the fie is available in the folder file.IsExist () method returns false. But same method works fine when trying to access another file available in a shared folder in a different Machine. The major difference between these two machines that I found initially is, first machine is running in a VMware environment. When trying to access the same file from a client side code it works fine for both the servers.

Solution: This problem was due to date time difference between the file server where file exists and the web server where the web application is running. It is working fine when accessing the file from client side code because it uses NT LAN Manager (NTLM) where as when accessing the file from server side code it uses Kerberos. The Kerberos client on the local computer encrypts a timestamp inside the authenticator and then sends it to the Key Distribution Center (KDC). If the KDC verifies that the time it decrypts from the authenticator is within a specified amount of the local time on the KDC (the default is five minutes), the system can assume that the credentials presented are genuine. SO if you synchronize the clock between two servers it will work.

There is another solution to this problem. You can change the value of the Maximum tolerance for computer clock synchronization setting to a higher value. Use the steps mentioned in the following URL to configure this setting.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc780011.aspx

Namastee!

DevLabs: Microsofts new initiative to bring software innovations for the developer community

Microsoft has release a new sites named DEVLab for reaching out to broad developer audiences with new, developer-focused technologies well before they are officially released. The labs are structured to help the developer community to evaluate these new technologies and discuss them through the microsoft forums with the developer community and Microsoft product groups. Currently there are only 4 projects added to this Lab, Microsoft Popfly,Small Basic,Pex – Automated White Box Testing for .NET and CHESS – Finding and Reproducing Heisenbugs in Concurrent Programs.

To participate in this initiative visit the following URL.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/devlabs

Namastee !

Microsoft Announces Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft has announced Visual Studio 2010 with .NET framework 4.0 which is expected to release in 2010.To know more details about the new features visit following URL.
http://www.cio.com/article/451622/Microsoft_Announces_Visual_Studio_._Developers_Respond.

Namastee!

Microsoft's Sphere display in action

After months of rumors, Microsoft researchers are taking the wraps off a prototype that uses an internal projection and vision system to bring a spherical computer display to life. People can touch the surface with multiple fingers and hands to manipulate photos, play games, spin a virtual globe, or watch 360-degree videos.

Check this Video

नमस्ते!

Google Chrome : A killer for Internet Explorer

Today a new player enters the browser wars and it represents the biggest change to the field since the day that Microsoft decided to take on Netscape. With the surprise launch of the beta of Google Chrome, the Web and search giant has already changed the current browser landscape and is poised to potentially change the future of the Web.

Yesterday I downloaded Chrome Beta and spend some time to check different features.

When launching Google Chrome, which currently is only available for Windows systems, the browser walks users through some of the interface features, such as the integrated search and address bar (the default search engine is Google but users can change it to competing search sites) and the new tab features, which are pretty much lifted completely from Opera's speed dial feature.

As one surfs using Google Chrome, more of the features start to take shape. Clicking a new tab shows thumbnails of frequently visited sites and links to bookmarks. I liked this feature although I would have preferred if it let users customize the thumbnailed sites rather than only using the most visited sites.

Like Internet Explorer 8, Chrome has a private browsing mode, which is called incognito mode. A new window can be launched in this mode or you can choose to launch a window from a link directly into incognito mode. In this mode no traces of a Web surfing session (such as cookies) are saved, and users know when they are in incognito mode by the spy figure shown in the upper left-hand corner of the browser.

The address bar in Chrome combines both search and standard URL entry. This took a little getting used to but once I got the hang of it I liked this single-box method of using a browser address bar.

Another interesting feature of Google Chrome is its integrated use of Google Gears. Called application shortcuts in the browser, this feature lets users take any Web application and save it as a desktop-based Web application, with its own launch icons in the Start menu, Quick Launch and desktop.

Those wanting to try out the Google Chrome beta can find it at www.google.com/chrome.
A nice eBook also can be found at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Namastee!

HelloSecureWorld.com : A nice resource to learn Security

Microsoft has developed a new site http://www.hellosecureworld.com/ which provides a powerful experience for promoting security awareness and education in the developer community by surfacing existing content as well as new.

If you like learning while having FUN then hellosecureworld.com is the resource for you. It brings non traditional ways to provide security awareness and education among the developer community - Virtual lab environment, hands on labs, tutorials, videos, play attack defender games and much more.

Happy Learning !!

Namastee !

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Microsoft has released the long waited Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. This service pack includes lot of new features like Entity Framework,SQL Server 2008 support etc. and some major performance enhancements.

Visit the following URL to know more details and downlaod the VS.NET 2008 SP1.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

Namastee !

StyleCop : A New Source Code Analysis Tool From Microsoft

Recently Microsoft has released a Source code analysis tool.This tool is known internally within Microsoft as StyleCop, and has been used for many years now

StyleCop is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while StyleCop analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, FxCop focuses more on the design of the code, while StyleCop focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.The ultimate goal of StyleCop is to allow you to produce elegant, consistent code that your team members and others who view your code will find highly readable. In order to accomplish this, StyleCop does not allow its rules to be very configurable. StyleCop takes a one-size-fits-all approach to code style, layout, and readability rules. It is highly likely that you will not agree with all of the rules and may even find some of the rules annoying at first! However, the majority of teams using this tool within Microsoft have found that after a short adjustment period, they came to appreciate the rules enforced by StyleCop, and even began to find it difficult to read code not written in this style.

StyleCop comes with a set of default rules analyzers covering approximately 200 best practice rules. These rules are full compatible with the default layout settings in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

Specifically, these rules cover the following, in no particular order:

• Layout of elements, statements, expressions, and query clauses


• Placement of curly brackets, parenthesis, square brackets, etc


• Spacing around keywords and operator symbols Line spacing


• Placement of method parameters within method declarations or method calls


• Standard ordering of elements within a class


• Formatting of documentation within element headers and file headers


• Naming of elements, fields and variables


• Use of the built-in types


• Use of access modifiers


• Allowed contents of files


• Debugging text

After installation, StyleCop can be run from within the Visual Studio IDE, and can also be integrated into MSBuild-based command line builds.
StyleCop can be downloaded here:
https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=sourceanalysis
Namastee!

Installing shared assembly in GAC using deployment project

If You are using any shared assembly in you project and using deployment project to deploy it, by defult the assembly will be deployed in BIN folder although it is a shared assembly.To deploy it in GAC you need to follow following steps.

• Open the Setup Project.
• Open File System Editor From View->Editor->File System
• File System will have various folders like Application folder, User desktop etc. Right click on the file system you will find Add Special folder context menu and different special folder will be displayed.
• Select Global Assmbly Cache folder, which will add this folder to the File System .
• Now add the shared assemblies to this and build it.

Namastee !

Creating a C# library and use it as custom function in Crystal Report

You can write your own functions in any .NET language like C# , vb.net and use it in crystal report as user defined fuction.
Here are the steps you need to follow:-

1. Create a User Function Library .TheUser Function Libraries must be prefixed with CRUFL to be recognized by the embedded Crystal Reports Designer
2. In the project property Build/Compile window select Register for COM Interop.Register for COM Interop" causes the assembly to be automatically registered by the regasm.exe utility, when the project is compiled. So, you do not need to run regasm.exe manually from the command prompt.
3. Create an interface class with COM attributes.Above the interface declaration, create an attribute with three values: ComVisible, InterfaceType, and Guid (in C#).Create all the method signature.This method signature will become the name of the function that is exposed in the embedded Crystal Reports Designer.
4. Create a Class and implement this interface.Above the class declaration, create an attribute with three values: ComVisible, ClassInterface and Guid (in C#).
5. Create a strong name and attach it to the class library projcet to make this assembly as shared assembly.
6. Install this assembly in GAC
7. Now you can go to the Formula Workshop window and in side function -> Additional Functions ->Visual Basic UFLs (u2lcomm.dll) , you will find the functions defined in the assmbly.

Namastee !

World Wide Web got bigger

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) unanimously approved the new guidelines to permit the introduction of thousands of new Internet domain names to join ".com," ,on the final day of weeklong meetings in Paris.Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.ICANN is working towards accepting the first applications in the second quarter of 2009.

For details visit ICANN site.

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-26jun08-en.htm

Namaste!

Unity Dependency Injection Container in Enterprise Library 4.0

Microsoft has added the Dependency Injection Application Block as the part of Enterprise Application Block 4.0 which will be released on mid April.The CTP version will be released on March 15.The name of this application block is Unity.Unity will be released in two forms - 1) a standalone container, and 2) an application block in Enterprise Library 4.0 with the existing application blocks refactored to take advantage of Unity

A short description of Unity is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container.

To know more about Dependency Injection please visit following URL.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/09/DesignPatterns/
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973811.aspx

Namastee

Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Microsoft Live Labs has released a CTP version of new web development tool named "Volta" which uses existing tools available in .NET framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Also, thanks to a shared programming model across multiple-tiers, Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

To Know more about Volta please visit the following URL.

http://labs.live.com/volta/

Are you Excited ? I am . Visual Studio 2008 RTM Released !

On November 19th Microsoft has released VS 2008 RTM which is available for download by MSDN subscribers.

To know more about the release visit Soma's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-shipped.aspx

You can download a free copy of Visual Web Developer 2008 from following site and try it out yourself.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/

To know more about what are the features VWD 2008 does not supports you can visit Mikhail's Blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/06/26/647516.aspx

Also available is the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training kit. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7602397 (120MB). This includes presentations, hands-on labs and demos -- and is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

There are lots of training materials on all the new features like Multi-targeting Support, LINQ, JavaScript Debugging and Intellisense, new CSS editor, WCF Support for RSS, JSON, POX and Partial Trust etc. are available in following path.

http://www.asp.net/downloads/vs2008/


Happy Learning.

F# : New generation Functional Programming Language from Microsoft

Functional programming is the best approach to solving many thorny computing problems,but pure FP isn’t suitable for general-purpose programming. So, FP languages have gradually embraced aspects of the imperative and OO paradigms, remaining true to the FP paradigm but incorporating features needed to easily write any kind of program. Some of the most popular functional languages, including OCaml, Haskell, Lisp, and Scheme, have traditionally been implemented using custom runtimes, which leads to problems such as lack of interoperability.

F# is a general-purpose programming language for .NET, a general-purpose runtime. F# smoothly integrates all three major programming paradigms.With F#, you can choose which ever paradigm works best to solve problems in the most effective way. You can do pure FP, if you’re a purist, but you can easily combine functional, imperative, and object-oriented styles in the same program and exploit the strengths of each paradigm. Like other typed functional languages, F# is strongly typed but also uses inferred typing, so programmers don’t need to spend time explicitly specifying types unless an ambiguity exists. Further, F# seamlessly integrates with the .NET Framework base class library (BCL).Using the BCL in F# is as simple as using it in C# or Visual Basic (and maybe even simpler).F# was modeled on Objective Caml (OCaml), a successful object-oriented FP language, and then tweaked and extended to mesh well technically and philosophically with .NET. It fully embraces .NET and enables users to do everything that .NET allows. The F# compiler can compile for all implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), it supports .NET generics without changing any code, and it even provides for inline Intermediate Language(IL) code. The F# compiler not only produces executables for any CLI but can also runon any environment that has a CLI, which means F# is not limited to Windows but can run on Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and OpenBSD. The F# compiler can be integrated into Visual Studio, supporting IntelliSense expression completion and automatic expression checking. It also gives tooltips to show what types have been inferred for expressions. Programmers often comment that this really helps bring the language to life.

F# was invented by Dr. Don Syme and is now the product of a small but highly dedicatedteam he heads at Microsoft Research (MSR) in Cambridge, England. However, F# is not just aresearch or academic language. It is used for a wide variety of real-world applications, whosenumber is growing rapidly.Although other FP languages run on .NET, F# has established itself as the de facto .NET functional programming language because of the quality of its implementation and its superb integration with .NET and Visual Studio.

To know more details on F# and to download visit the following site.

http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx