| |
|
Books Written by Brian Nantz |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Web Services without IIS! |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/22/2003
|
|
|
|
One of the biggest advantages of the MS Pub Summit was the direct contact with the MS engineers, or program managers or whatever they call them these days! J While sitting around discussing the possibility of an XML .Net book, Dare Obasanjo (Program Manager - WebData XML) made a funny comment about so many web standards. His favorite one (fictitious of course – well I think anyway J ) is WS-LetsGoOutToLunch. I thought he was being a little extreme after all I could probably count on my hands the number of Web Service Standards. After reading this MSDN article I see what he means! I hadn’t been to the WS-I web site recently. I remember hearing Yasser and Scott talking at the Web Services Devcon East about securing the domain name and now look at it!
I guess Bill Gates and Steve Mills gave a symbolic demo of a Federated transaction. I was first introduced to this concept at RSA 2002 when a similar sounding demo was showing federation with just the XML Security Standards. This is where I saw the p
|
 |
|
|
More...
|
|
|
More on Application Blocks |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/21/2003
|
|
|
|
At the MS Pub Summit, the MS Patterns & Practices team gave a talk. It was very interesting as I have already blogged about their Application Blocks. What I found was that they desire community input on the Application Block on GotDotNet. I thought this comes as close as MS has come to an Open Source mindset. Hopefully these blocks will form a stable base for .Net development that I can point people to.
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
Whats new in version 2! |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/16/2003
|
|
|
|
Yesterday’s presentations were all over the board. I think seeing so many presentations will help me with my upcoming training class. The stuff coming up in Yukon SQL Server is amazing. I have some Bits but I had no idea what I was looking at! There are some great VS.Net features and long needed enhancements to ADO.Net and System.Xml all coming in version 2.0. But by far the big story is Yukon.
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
.Net 2.0 is the answer. |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/16/2003
|
|
|
|
I was a little skeptical of a 3 hour presentation on ASP.Net 2.0 this morning. All I can say is WOW! 3 hours was not enough. Scott Guthrie and the ASP.Net team have taken ASP.Net farther than I ever dreamed possible.
The rest of the day was an overview of C#, VB.Net and C++.Net. In .Net 1.0 & 1.1, C# and VB.Net were almost identical in syntax and feature set and C++ went through some sort of a mid-life crisis. With .Net 2.0, the languages are getting their personalities back with killer features that make a language choice something to seriously think about. I developed mainly in C++ until I started UI’s and I switch into a lot of VB and since the tech preview of .Net I have been exclusively using C#. So I saw major benefits to each language and I am going to have to adopt a multi-personality type approach to .Net 2.0 development to explore all of the innovative functionality.
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
First day @ the Microsoft Publisher Conference |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/15/2003
|
|
|
|
Yesterday at the Microsoft Publisher Conference I met several interesting authors and programmers. I spent most of the day with Christolph Wille from Austria. He is the project manager for the excellent SharpDevlop project. He introduced me to the new SQL Reporting Services and a ton of new features soon to be in #develop like language conversion, nprof & refactoring. I introduced him to Vanilla Coke, which apparently is not widely available in Europe yet. As much as I like Vanilla Coke, I think I got the better end of the deal.
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
BarcodeXML anyone? |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/11/2003
|
|
|
|
As part of an Identification Badge program that I was asked to write here at Security International, I needed to support printing both Magnetic Stripes and Barcodes on an ID card. I wanted a Barcode library that was written entirely in C#, came with source, no runtime license of course and not too expensive. Sound Impossible? Well I found one that I liked at Mabry that met all of those conditions! I haven’t tried compiling it on any other CLI implementation yet, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work on say the SSCLI. I reworked the code a little bit adding a number of things including XML serialization. This made me wonder why there is no standard for XML Barcodes. I did some searching and found Krysalis a Java based Open Source project that confirmed I was of course not the first to think XML Barcodes would be useful. If there are specific standards for things like MathML, then I think BarcodeXML is certainly not outlandish and probably more useful.
Think of the usefulness of Barcode
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
Cool Development Tools |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/10/2003
|
|
|
|
Well here goes the second try. I posted a list of useful development tools and it somehow disappeared. I believe that these tools are necessities to developing software. Some are .Net specific but most are not. Some are Open Source (I actually prefer this), but give highest preference to the tools that are the best ones for the job. I would consider purchasing these tools even if the company you work for does not reimburse you.
· Allocation Profiler / NProf / nProfiler – Tools for profiling .Net applications
· FXCop – Checks .Net assemblies for a number of common problems.
· Windows Application Verifier – Checks Windows programs for a number of common problems.
· Adam Nathan's CLRSPY – A great tool from tracking down CLR related problems.
· Lutz's Reflector – A great decompiler that allows plugins and supports multiple language targets.
· XmlSpy – It is worth every penny!
· SharpReader – The blog reader of choice!
·
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
Presentations are Anxiety |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
9/9/2003
|
|
|
|
I am excited to give my first presentation regarding .Net! It is C# and .Net training for a division of the company I work for. Having worked for a number of large corporations, I am no stranger to a presentation. One company I worked for had a unofficial slogan of “You don’t really understand something until you create a Powerpoint for it!” As I began to create slides, I wanted to ensure that the attendees didn’t fall prey to Dilbert’s fictitious Powerpoint Poisoning. After completing the slides to give an idea of what information would be covered, I set off to find ways to improve the presentation. I ran across Scott’s suggestions and they were very helpful. I also found the book Presenting to Win to be very helpful. Here is what I learned in a nutshell.
Tips:
· Keep it simple and keep your audience in mind – What’s in it for them.
· Practice taping with audio and video to see the audience’s perspective.
· You presentation should not be able to be emaile
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
UI Development |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
8/24/2003
|
|
|
|
UI development is probably the most challenging aspect of programming I have run into yet. Yes, creating a useful Webservice or middle tier data api gives a great feeling of accomplishment. I personally find a framework like Apache’s Avalon or Microsoft’s Application Blocks to be incredibly useful. However, to a user the only thing that matters is how easy and intuitive the UI is to use. The look and feel of a program certainly improves it in the perspective of the user, unfortunately, what comprises a good UI is as individual as the users themselves. But nothing compares to the experience of creating a UI that you and all your experimental users like. I find that most people can not explain how to create a good UI, “It just comes with experience.” But there are a lot of examples to tell you what NOT to do in a UI. There are a few good organizations like Usability Net and User Interface Engineering that I have found useful. IBM has some good stuff on their site about user design. I especially like t
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
A common type system! |
|
Right To Left
|
By host on
8/20/2003
|
|
|
|
One of the great training sessions I got at Camtronics was Essential .Net from Developmentor. The instructor and team participated in trying to name all the different ways to do a string in VC++, MFC, ATL, COM, etc.. We came up with 42 I think. Here are the ones I can remember:
"I'm so sad"
L"I'm so sad"
W"I'm so sad"
OLESTR("I'm so sad")
SysAllocString(L"I'm so sad")
_T("I'm so sad")
_TEXT("I'm so sad")
char *
wchar_t *
BSTR
CAtlString
CAtlStringA
CAtlStringW
CComBSTR
CSimpleStringT
CString
CStringA
CStringT
CStringW
DBTYPE_BSTR
DBTYPE_STR
DBTYPE_WSTR
LPCSTR
LPCTSTR
LPCWSTR
LPOLESTR
LPSTR
LPTSTR
LPWSTR
OLECHAR
System::String
TCHAR
_bstr_t
std::basic_string
std::basic_string
std::string
std::wstring
Are they Initalized?? Are they dynamic? Can I covert between them? I really like the common type system in .Net.
|
|
|
|
|
More...
|
|
|
|
|
|
You must be logged in and have permission to create or edit a blog.
|
|
|