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Add Some Spark to Your OData: Creating and Consuming Data Services with Visual Studio and Excel 2010
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - September/October
The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open REST-ful protocol for exposing and consuming data on the web. Also known as Astoria, ADO.NET Data Services, now officially called WCF Data Services in the .NET Framework. There are also SDKs available for other platforms like JavaScript and PHP. Visit the OData site at www.odata.org.
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Creating Self-Scaling Applications with Azure Services
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - March/April
Microsoft’s Azure platform has finally been released into production. This new entry into the cloud computing market provides .NET developers with a scalable, robust platform for developing applications.After over a year in CTP, Azure is finally ready for prime time. At PDC 2009, Microsoft announced the release of new components, such as the management API, that make Azure worth considering for use in production environments. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to use the different components of Azure Services to build a self-scaling application.
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Using the Amazon Web Service SDK for .NET
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - March/April
The richest set of cloud computing services comes from a little e-commerce company known as Amazon.com. Developers can access the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform using numerous tools including the .NET platform.Amazon.com is a major player in the cloud computing space and has numerous services available to developers. In late 2009, Amazon released the AWS SDK for .NET. This article will demonstrate using the AWS SDK to create a custom backup service using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
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Post Mortem Web Project
Last updated: Thursday, December 16, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - January/February
First Premier Bankcard (www.firstpremier.com) is the 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the United States.First Premier employs multiple thousands of people spread across the state of South Dakota. A major percentage of the employees at First Premier work in call-center operations helping people apply for credit cards.
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Practical Uses of Lambdas
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2010 - January/February
Deborah covers many of the different ways you can use lambda expressions to work with your lists and make your code easier to read and write.Lambdas provide shortcuts for sorting, filtering, finding and working with information in lists, making your code easier to read and write.
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Get Ready for Visual Basic 10
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2009 - November/December
Check out the new features in Visual Basic 10, the latest version of VB coming out with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0.
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Programming Twittering with Visual Basic
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2009 - March/April
Social networking has reached critical mass. One unique social networking platform, Twitter, launched in March of 2006 and took the world by storm with its social networking and microblogging platform.The developers of Twitter had the forethought to provide a REST -based API. Numerous developers have used the REST-based API to build Twitter clients on dozens of different platforms. In this article I’ll demonstrate how to access Twitter using the .NET platform.
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From Delegate to Lambda
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - September/October
The key to understanding lambda expressions is understanding delegates. Delegates play a tremendously important role in developing applications for the .NET Framework, especially when using C# or Visual Basic. Events, a special application of delegates, are used all over the framework. And the application and possibilities of delegates has only grown over time. C# 2.0 introduced the concept of anonymous methods and C# 3.0 and VB 9 take anonymous methods to the next level with lambda expressions. This article reviews the evolution of delegates and examines possibilities and syntax of delegates and lambdas in .NET 3.5.
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From the CODE Magazine Mailbag
Last updated: Friday, February 22, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - September/October
Ken Getz .Finalize() column for September/October 2008
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Languages Re-Unleashed
Last updated: Saturday, December 18, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - September/October
Sept/Oct 08 Editorial by Rod Paddock
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Polyglot Programming: Building Solutions by Composing Languages
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - September/October
Polyglot programming refers to leveraging existing platforms by solving problems via solutions that compose special purpose languages.This concept leverages the multi-language nature of the CLR to create simpler solutions to vexing problems. This article delves into the motivation, benefits, and challenges of writing applications in this style.
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Beyond the Reach
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - July/August
July August 2008 .Finalize(): column by Ken Getz.
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MVP Corner: A Baker’s Dozen of Reflections
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - July/August
July August 2008 MVP Corner by Kevin S. Goff
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Sharpening Your Axis with Visual Basic 9
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - July/August
Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008 has a new set of language features that allows developers to work with XML in a much more productive way using a new API called LINQ to XML. LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to write queries for things like objects, databases, and XML in a standard way. Visual Basic provides deep support for LINQ to XML through what’s called XML literals and XML axis properties. These features allow you to use a familiar, convenient syntax for working with XML in your Visual Basic code. LINQ to XML is a new, in-memory XML programming API specifically designed to leverage the LINQ framework. Even though you can call the LINQ APIs directly, only Visual Basic allows you to declare XML literals and directly access XML axis properties. This article will help you master these new features for working with XML in Visual Basic.
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Implementing Drag and Drop in Your Windows Application
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - March/April
One of the important features of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) is drag and drop.Using a mouse you can drag and drop a file from one location to another or you may drag a file and drop it onto an application to launch it.
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Visual Basic and Respect
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - January/February
Ken Getz Jan/Feb 08 FInalize article.
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Guilty Pleasures and LINQ
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2007 - November/December
Nov/Dec 2007 .Finalize Column() Ken Getz
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Microsoft XNA: Ready for Prime Time?
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2007 - September/October
Microsoft opened the doors of game development to the .NET developer community in December 2006 with the first release of XNA Game Studio Express.No longer constrained to enterprise systems, database-driven applications or Web service layers, .NET developers can now spread their digital wings and let their pixelized imagination run wild as their favorite development platform and language now enable them to explore new worlds and new challenges of their own making, all in full high definition (HD) at 60 frames per second! But who is XNA for? Is it a serious enough initiative, platform, and set of tools for professional game developers in the gaming industry? Eager to answer those questions, I (virtually) sat down with a number of professional game designers, studio directors, and developers for a chat in order to find out: Is Microsoft XNA ready for prime time?
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Printing Envelopes, and Lambda Expressions
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2007 - September/October
.Finalize() column for Sept/Oct 2007
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Create a Custom DataGridView Column
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2007 - July/August
Creating custom column types for the DataGridView control isn’t nearly as tricky as it once was.In this article, you’ll learn how to take advantage of inheritance to create your own bar graph column in a grid cell.
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Everyday Use of Generics
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2007 - March/April
You may think of generics as a Ferrari that you only take out for special occasions; but they are better compared to your trusty pickup, perfectly suited for everyday use.
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Objects - Chapter 1
Last updated: Saturday, January 18, 2020
Published in: Book Excerpts
“This excerpt is from the book, ‘Windows 7 Device Driver’ by Ronald D. Reeves, Published Nov 16, 2010 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of theAddison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series series.l, ISBN 139780321670212, Copyright 2011. For more info please visit the publisher site: http://www.informit.com/title/0321670213
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Generating PowerPoint Presentations
Last updated: Saturday, January 18, 2020
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2006 - November/December
This installment of “The Baker’s Dozen” finds the Baker expanding from pastries to eye candy: generating PowerPoint output. Many power users build presentations using data from Excel or other data sources. This article shows how to automate Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 from within a Visual Studio 2005 application. The article presents a class called GenPPT, which creates several different types of slides, including slides that integrate tables and charts. GenPPT is written in Visual Basic 2005, and the demo program that calls it is written in C#: this demonstrates using multiple .NET languages in a solution.
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.NET Data Access with LINQ: A VFP Perspective
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech, LINQExperts.com Papers
For Visual FoxPro developers, data access represents the daily bread and butter. Data access is a core feature of Visual FoxPro (which after all is an xBase descendent) and nobody gives much thought to the ability to run a select-statement right within a VFP program.Most languages however (including .NET languages such as C# or Visual Basic .NET) are not as data centric and thus do not support data manipulation as a core language concept. At least until now. But all this is about to change with the introduction of LINQ.
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Data Binding in Windows Forms 2.0
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2006 - January/February
Using Visual Studio 2005, create a new Windows application by choosing New Project from the File menu. Click on the Visual Basic (Windows) project type, and select the Windows Application template. Call the new app something like Databinding, and click OK.
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.Finalize(): What Does That Beep Mean?
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - November/December
Ken Getz Nov/Dec 05 Finalize Column
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LINQx
Last updated: Monday, May 8, 2023
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - November/December, VFP Conversion Papers
Microsoft demonstrated a new technology at PDC called LINQ (Language Integrated Query). The following note from Alan Griver, a member of the LINQ team at Microsoft, offers some details related to the LINQ project. In future issues of CoDe Magazine we will have more details on LINQ.Microsoft demonstrated a new technology at PDC called LINQ (Language Integrated Query). The following note from Alan Griver, a member of the LINQ team at Microsoft, offers some details related to the LINQ project. In future issues of CoDe Magazine we will have more details on LINQ.
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.Finalize() - The Living Language-Visual Basic 2005
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - July/August
Ken Getz - Finalize Column - July/August 2005
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Ask the Doc Detective
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - July/August
Doc Detective - July/August 05
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Heard on .NET Rocks!: Indy Racing League
Last updated: Friday, February 22, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - July/August
In episode #109 Matt Mannion from Clarity Consulting talks about the application his company developed with and for the Indy Racing League in Indianapolis, IN. Using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and VB.NET they were able to develop a great application for managing real-time racing data and reporting.Matt Mannion is an Engagement Manager for Clarity Consulting Inc., a Chicago-based technology consulting firm and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Matt has delivered many large-scale, WinForm and WebForm systems for a variety of industries, including retail, financial services, publishing, and banking. Contact Matt at mannion@claritycon.com.
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.Finalize(): Are We There Yet?
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - May/June
Ken Getz - May/June 2005 Finalize column
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Inheritance 101
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - May/June
Extend your knowledge of inheritance to more easily extend your applications.
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Using the CMAB for Enterprise, Client, and User Settings
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - May/June
Applications use many forms of configuration data, storing settings that are used in applications, enterprise, client computers, and user settings.The Configuration Management Application Block (CMAB) is typically used for application settings, but it can be enhanced to support more complicated settings as well.
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What's New in Visual Basic 2005?
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - May/June
If you have been a hardcore VB6 programmer and you've hesitated about switching to Visual Basic .NET, Visual Basic 2005 will change your mind and you'll want to take the leap forward to move to .NET.The common complaint that people who have made this leap already often hear from programmers who are reluctant to move to VB .NET is that it is not VB-like, and moving to .NET means you have to unlearn many of the things you have painstakingly mastered in VB6.
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Windows Forms Secrets
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - May/June
In this article, Karl uncovers a bundle of nifty Windows Form tricks.
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.Finalize(): Stay Put. Understand Your Space
Last updated: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - March/April
Ken Getz Mar/Apr 05 Finalize COlumn
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What You Need to Know about Web Controls
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - March/April
Knowing the flaws in Web server controls and how to work around them before you use them can save you hours of time.
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Heard on .NET Rocks: Jay Roxe
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2005 - January/February
Carl Franklin - Jan/Feb 05 .NET Rocks Column
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.Finalize() - Making Sausages
Last updated: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - November/December
Ken Getz' .Finalize() column.
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Data Validation Using .NET and External Metadata
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - September/October
Using .NET reflection and external metadata makes it easy to add data validation to your objects.Nearly every application that collects data, whether from a Windows- or Web-based form or from a file, needs to validate that the data is in the correct format.
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Drag-Once Databinding
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - September/October
Using the new Data Sources Window in Visual Studio 2005, developers can now drag columns of their typed DataSets or properties of their own business objects directly to their form. Visual Studio 2005 will create, name, and label controls for each bound property. For those that prefer to lay out the forms with the toolbox, developers can use "Connect the Dots DataBinding" to drag and drop from the Data Sources Window onto their existing controls.
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'For-Each' Of My Own
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - September/October
The .NET Framework provides many new collection classes that you can iterate (for-each) through.But did you know that you can also iterate through values in any of your classes, not just those that use or inherit from collections?
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Oh My!! - A Look at the My Namespace in Visual Basic 2005
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - September/October
Productivity is one of the major goals of Visual Basic 2005 and with "My" Microsoft may just have hit a home run.Although Visual Basic .NET is just as powerful as C# for building business applications, it did not get the initial push that C# did back at PDC 2000 when Microsoft unveiled .NET. This was not meant to slight Visual Basic and Visual Basic developers, but rather represented the state of the Visual Basic .NET language which was not as far along in the development process as C#. Opponents to the Basic syntax took this and ran with it. Microsoft has tried to attack this misconception but has also caused some of the problem, initially by pushing .NET for Web services development so hard that many developers and managers incorrectly got idea that .NET was primarily for Web services. With Visual Basic 2005 the power of the .NET Framework is fully exposed and the true power of Visual Basic is once again starting to take form and that power is productivity. Whereas C# is about language first and foremost Visual Basic is about language and tools to make the development process faster.
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DotNetNuke 2.0
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - July/August
DotNetNuke 2.0 is the latest version of the increasingly popular, open-source, content management portal. It was originally released as an open source project on Dec 24, 2002. In the past fifteen months it has grown to over 50,000 lines of managed code. One thing is for sure, you won't be alone using it! The DotNetNuke support forum is one of the most active and dynamic forums on the www.asp.net Web site. There are currently over 45,000 registered users on the official DotNetNuke Web site and membership continues to grow at an exponential rate.In this article, Jim will cover some of the new features in DNN 2.0 as well as discuss upgrading portals from prior DNN versions. He also explores the new data access methodology and walks you through the steps involved in developing custom DNN 2.0 modules.
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Enable Your Windows Forms Applications to Drag-and-Drop Data Objects
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - July/August
If you want to capture your users' imaginations, enable drag-and-drop.Drag-and-drop doesn't fulfill requirements, but it contributes to making your application appear more professional and easy to use. In Windows Forms applications, drag-and-drop operations consist mostly of handling a series of events. By accomplishing a few mandatory steps and working with the information available in the event arguments, you can easily facilitate dragging and dropping files, text, and any other sort of serializable data objects. This article demonstrates how to import files from the Windows shell and how to enhance some UI controls to make them accept input via drag-and-drop. Notable examples are the TextBox and the PictureBox controls.
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A Not-So-Quick Tour of the Web DataGrid Control
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - March/April, VFP Conversion Papers
Data-bound controls play a key role in the development of ASP.NET applications. Data-driven controls allow you to associate their whole interface, or individual properties, with one or more columns of a .NET-compliant data source. In this article, I'll delve into the depths of an extremely versatile data-bound control that is a fixed resence in any real-world ASP.NET application - the DataGrid control. I'll focus on the key programming aspects of the control, including data binding, column mapping, paging, and sorting.
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Creating User-Defined Data Types in Yukon
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - January/February, CODE Focus Magazine: 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 3 - Whidbey and Yukon PDC Special, VFP Conversion Papers
The next version of SQL Server (code name Yukon) has extensive support of the Common Language Runtime (CLR).Previous versions of SQL Server (2000 and earlier) had a mechanism for creating custom data types. These data types were nothing more than aliases to system data types. In Yukon, you can create your own fully functional custom data types.
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Errors In Your ASP.NET Code? Don't Throw a Fit, Throw an Exception!
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - July/August, VFP Conversion Papers
Error handling?everyone's favorite topic right?Even the best designed applications need to handle and properly manage errors the errors you can plan for and those you cannot.In this article, you'll learn error handling techniques in ASP.NET. Topics will range from handling common errors with the Try...Catch syntax to logging unhandled errors into the Windows Event Log.
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Getting Started with ASP.NET
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - March/April, VFP Conversion Papers
ASP.NET represents a significant leap forward from traditional Active Server Pages (ASP) development. In this article, I'll show you what it takes to begin building ASP.NET Websites with Visual Studio .NET. This article will provide you with the knowledge you need to jumpstart your foray into the world of ASP.NET development.
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Getting Started With Regular Expressions
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - May/June, VFP Conversion Papers
Regular expressions, also referred to as "regex" in the developer community, is an extremely powerful tool used in pattern matching and substitution.In this article, Jim will introduce you to regular expressions, what they are, why you would want to use them, and finally, how you can begin putting them to work in Visual Studio .NET.
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Great Reasons to Ring In 2005!
Last updated: Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Published in: Publisher's Point, VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Wow, another year has gone by, and as you read this, you are probably returning to the office after a few more or less relaxing holiday time spent with friends and family and a New Year's celebration. Interesting things have happened in our industry in the last 12 months, but I predict that the next 12 months will be quite a bit more interesting! Seldom before have I been as excited about new technologies and developments as I am now.
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Modern Application Development: Visual FoxPro and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Markus Egger discusses the current state of development (2004) and how Visual Studio .NET and Visual FoxPro fit in.
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What's New in Visual Studio .NET 1.1?
Last updated: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - March/April, VFP Conversion Papers
Visual Studio .NET provides a new set of features designed to improve and enhance the development experience. Most of these changes have to do with user ergonomics and are typical of a minor release of a Visual Studio product. Only a few of the changes are related to the underlying platform. This article assumes you are familiar with Visual Studio .NET 1.0 and it presents only the new features of the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of Visual Studio .NET 1.1, for both C# and Visual Basic .NET. J# is not discussed because it was not part of Visual Studio .NET 1.0. In the interest of space, some minor cosmetic changes (such as reorganization of the Start page) are not listed.
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.Finalize() - Comparing Things
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - May/June
Ken Getz' .Finalize() column.
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Async-Up Your Objects
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - May/June
Encapsulate asynchronous functionality directly into your business objects.The .NET Framework facilitates calling object methods asynchronously through the use of delegates. You may already know how to do this using helper code, but there is a cleaner and much cooler way of packaging this kind of functionality right inside your business objects.
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Showing Some MVP Love
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - May/June
Jonathan Goodyear (the Angry Coder) discusses MVPs and ASP.NET.
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Use Generics to Create an Audit Trail
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - May/June
Building an audit trail into your application provides a mechanism for tracking who updated what when, and the new generics feature in Whidbey helps you build that trail.The Whidbey release of .NET will include a new Common Language Runtime (CLR) feature called generics. Generics allow you to use a variable to represent a desired data type, and thereby create very generic code (hence the name) that works with any data type.You define the data type for the generic variable at run time and the CLR substitutes that data type for the variable everywhere in the code that it is used; basically providing you with strongly typed generic code.
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Building Wiki Web Sites with ASP.NET and SQL Server.
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - March/April
Wiki Web sites (Wikis) are great collaboration tools that you can easily create with ASP.NET. This article describes some of the advantages that Wiki Web sites provide and how you can use ASP.NET and SQL Server to create your own Wiki. You'll learn how to write powerful parsers using the .NET regular expressions class and you'll discover how to add sophisticated search functionality to your Web sites by using SQL Server's Full-Text Search service.
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Give Your Forms a Base
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - March/April
Create a base form class to ensure that all of the forms in your application behave consistently. This technique minimizes the amount of repetitive code you need to write to manage the user's interaction with your forms.
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Managing Processes in .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - March/April
The Process class allows you to gain full control over system processes.You can start and stop processes and retrieve information about running processes such as the list of loaded modules and the characteristics of the memory occupied. The class also features handy methods to know whether a process is responding or has just exited and with which return code. Programmers also have full control over the style of the window the process runs in. After an overview of the capabilities of the Process class, this article demonstrates how to hide running console processes, monitor their execution, and capture any output. I'll use this strategy to create a sample Compression class to use with WinZip and gzip (popular tools for compressing data).
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Dynamically Adding Controls
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - January/February
This article will demonstrate how you can design and build flexibility into your ASP.NET pages by adding controls dynamically at runtime.You'll learn to add simple controls to a page, progress to adding a user control into a Placeholder control, and then advance to using multiple Placeholder controls to build a template page that is flexible and easy to use.
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Touring Base Class Library Enhancements
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2004 - January/February, CODE Focus Magazine: 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 3 - Whidbey and Yukon PDC Special
As the core API set underpinning managed application development in .NET, the Base Class Libraries, receive several long-awaited and notable additions in the Whidbey release.The Base Class Libraries (BCL) provide a standardized set of managed APIs to accomplish all of the common and most widely executed application tasks. BCL enhancements surface in as performance-based improvements, class-oriented feature additions, and the introduction of previously missing functionality through entirely new classes.
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Creating Tablet PC Applications with VS .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - September/October, Markus Egger Talks Tech
In the Fall of 2002, Microsoft introduced Tablet PCs based on the popular Windows XP operating system.By default, this new platform includes applications with special Tablet PC features enabled, such as Ink Input and Pen-based operation. In order for this platform to become truly popular, third-party vendors will also have to ink-enable their applications. Luckily, this is a pretty straightforward task.
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Pest Control
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: Publisher's Point, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Brian Kernighan [1] once said, "Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." This quote gets a little giggle out of most developers, but on the serious side, there is a lot of truth in it. Writing code that does cool or useful things certainly is much easier than writing code that does cool or useful things reliably.
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Shaped .NET Windows Forms
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Since the earliest versions of the Windows operating system, all Windows have been rectangular.However, the number of applications that break out of this boring mold is rising. Even Microsoft, the king of rectangularity, is starting to create applications that use shaped windows, such as Media Player. Unfortunately, creating shaped forms has always been quite tricky. Until now that is! The .NET Framework and the Windows Forms package in particular make it easy to produce forms that have rather sophisticated shapes.
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The "Basics" of Inheritance
Last updated: Thursday, December 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2000 - Summer, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Microsoft has recently announced that the next version of Visual Basic will support inheritance.Visual FoxPro has had inheritance for the past 5 years, since Version 3.0, and Visual C++ has always had it. This article will take a closer look at what inheritance is and what it will mean for Visual Basic 7.
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The Basics of GDI
Last updated: Friday, July 2, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - May/June, Markus Egger Talks Tech
In graphical user interfaces such as Microsoft Windows, drawing on the screen is an important task.Everything displayed on the screen is based on simple drawing operations. Often, environments such as Visual Basic abstract those drawing operations away from the developer. However, the same drawing operations still take place under the hood. In Visual Studio .NET, developers have easy access to that drawing functionality whenever they need it through a technology called GDI+. Using GDI+, developers can easily perform drawing operations such as generating graphs or building custom controls.
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Threading Support in the .NET Framework
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - November/December, Markus Egger Talks Tech
This article explains in depth how to implement multi-threading in your .NET applications.
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Using GDI in ASP.NET Web Applications, Part 1
Last updated: Friday, July 2, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - May/June, Markus Egger Talks Tech
GDI+ is a technology that developers generally associate with Windows Forms applications because they use it to draw anything on the screen from custom controls to diagrams.However, you can also use GDI+ in ASP.NET Web applications whenever you want to serve up dynamic images. You can use GDI+ to create dynamic banners, photo albums, graphs, diagrams, and more.
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XML, XSL and HTML in Windows Applications
Last updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2001 - Issue 1, Markus Egger Talks Tech
HTML and XML have made the Internet what it is today, but both technologies are not necessarily tied to the Internet.Quite the contrary! Using HTML in regular Windows applications has always been a great alternative. Paired with XML and XSL, this technique is more powerful than ever, since there are a growing number of XML sources, such as SQL Server, Web Services, and XML-enabled Business Objects.
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.Finalize() - What I've Learned: Airline Lavatories and Strings
Last updated: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - September/October
.Finalize() Column
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Mobile CoDe.NET: Exploring the .NET Compact Framework
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - September/October
Windows or Web? A question you've asked and have been asked countless numbers of times for the past five years.And yet, when it comes to the mobile field and building business applications for smart devices, many are surprised when they realize the same question needs to be answered. The question is slightly dissimilar but the answers are entirely different. "Windows CE or Mobile Web?" you might ask. As for the answer, the .NET world can steer you in two very opposite directions: .NET Compact Framework or ASP.NET Mobile Controls.
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.Finalize() - Inheritance Is a Wonderful Thing
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - July/August
.Finalize() Column
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Dynamically Adding Wired Controls to Web Forms
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - May/June
The task of creating dynamic ASP.NET Web Forms whose behavior is based upon user interaction and depends upon the purpose and intended goal of the Web Form.Web Forms that require only controls and functionality provided by the built-in ASP.NET Web server controls are easy to create. But creating Web Forms that require or are designed with extended controls and functionality can be a challenge.
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Using Stored Procedures in Conjunction with the SqlDataAdapter
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - March/April
A well-designed application that uses a relational database management system in the backend should make extensive use of stored procedures.A stored procedure is a named collection of SQL statements that you store in a database. To the client, a stored procedure acts similar to a function. You call the stored procedure by name, you can pass it parameter values, and it can return parameter values back to your client.
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Casting Reference Types in Visual Basic .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February
Casting, or converting the value of a token from one type of data to another is common to most (if not all) programming languages. Visual Basic has long had a series of casting functions, such as CStr, CInt, Clong, etc. to allow conversion of one type of variable to another. While the idea of casting is simple and familiar when discussed in the context of a simple variable containing a value (.NET value types), the meaning and behavior of a cast is less clear when discussed in the context of objects.
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Customize the Windows Forms DataGrid Control
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February
When I first met the ASP.NET DataGrid control, it was love at first sight. Together we built several applications, taught dozens of classes, published countless articles and tips; we even wrote a book. I can say with no fear of lying that we have an intimate knowledge of each other. When I need the Web DataGrid to perform some rather odd task, I only have to cast a glance (or two, if the task is quite complicated.) With this in mind, I enthusiastically accepted a proposal from one of my clients: Build a Windows Forms application with grid functionalities. Although at the time I had no serious experience with the Windows Forms DataGrid control, I took the gig because I thought a Windows DataGrid works more or less the same as an ASP.NET DataGrid. Next, hardly containing some genuine enthusiasm, I optimistically conjectured it could have been even easier smart controls are handiest compared to HTML markup.
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Reflection Part 2: Emit
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February
In our previous article, Reflection Part 1: Discovery and Execution, we introduced the System.Reflection namespace and its classes which allow developers to view assembly metadata, query for and discover types, and invoke code?all at run-time. In this article we will examine reflection emit?the ability to dynamically generate code at run-time.
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Working with Extender Classes
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2003 - January/February
Extender classes do just that; they allow you to extend the functionality of a .NET control class. The Error Provider and Tooltip classes are two examples of extender classes in the .NET Framework. The Tooltip class represents a significant departure from how tooltips were implemented in earlier versions of Visual Studio. The Error Provider class provides a new way to inform users about invalid input. Although each class serves a different purpose, their implementation is quite similar. This article introduces these two classes and gives a brief, yet comprehensive primer on how to use them
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Microsoft Exception Management Application Blocks
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - November/December
A new feature of .NET is its ability to handle exceptions. This article demonstrates implementing Microsoft's Exception Management Application Blocks.
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Reflection Part 1: Discovery and Execution
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - November/December
One feature of the .NET environment is the ability to read meta-data from classes and namespaces created in .NET. This article demonstrates accessing this data.
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Stateful Network-Deployable .NET Components Use Isolated Storage
Last updated: Thursday, February 21, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - November/December
Sometimes an application needs to keep its data in its own secure "sandbox". This article demonstrates creating these isolated applications in .NET.
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ADO.NET: Building Your First Data-Aware Form
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - September/October
The first article in this series detailed how to build data-aware forms in Visual Studio .NET using the Data Form Wizard. It demonstrated how easy it is to build forms using a point-and-click interface. You also learned that the generated form was especially suited to production development. This article continues where that article left off and introduces you to techniques to improve data-aware forms created with the Data Form Wizard.
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Visual Basic .NET: A Punch of a Tool
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - September/October
The newest version of Visual Basic now has support for full object-oriented programming, provides access to the .NET Framework and use power and flexibility of the Common Language Runtime. Never have there been more reason for VB developers to consider making the move to Visual Basic .NET. Yet, amidst the excitement surrounding the .NET platform, some major productivity features have been lost in the shuffle.
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ADO.NET in Visual Studio .NET: Part 1
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - July/August
By now, you have been exposed to a lot of information about Visual Studio .NET.Of all the new technologies associated with .NET, perhaps no other technology is more mysterious than ADO.NET. The purpose of this article, the first in a series, is to give you a brief overview of ADO.NET and how it is implemented in Visual Studio .NET. Future articles will expand on the material presented here. After reading this article, you will be able to understand how the various ADO.NET objects and generated code work to provide data for your applications.
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Embedded Visual Basic and your Pocket PC
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - July/August
Pocket PC devices, such as the Compaq iPaq, present both an opportunity and a challenge for software developers.While there are many standard applications available, what tools can you use to develop custom applications? Don't despair, because the Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools Development Kit will get you off to a great start.
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Some Pitfalls of Inheritance
Last updated: Thursday, December 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2000 - Summer
Inheritance is one of the fundamental facets of object-oriented programming. In this article,Steve looks at inheritance, and in particular some of the mistakes that many developers make when applying inheritance.