A British Geek in Texas Pontificates
Enterprise Library 5 is out!
Hopefully all you application Developers know about Enterprise Library, and how it can save you...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/21/2010
Photosynth rocks!
I'm an avid shutterbug and had the opportunity to explore some of Delhi, India's points of interest...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 11/13/2009
A new way to avoid writing boring code
Those who know me will be familiar with my quest to avoid writing boring code using any tool that...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 02/20/2009
Using Custom Performance Counters to measure multi-threaded operation durations
When building WCF Services it's very useful to know how long the individual operations within it's...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 12/04/2008
Leveraging multi-threading when calling Web Services or SQL Server
If you need to make more than one call to one or more web services in your code in a single request,...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 10/15/2008
Terrarium is back!
"Terrarium" is a project Microsoft created with .NET 1.0 that allowed devs to write a bug or plant...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 09/08/2008
Distributed Caching in .NET
Saw this today and thought this intesting: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645013.aspx...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/10/2008
Aspiring Architects Webcasts this Month
I saw these Webcasts coming up this month and think they might be of interest to a lot of folks (all...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/06/2008
.NET: What's coming down the Pike
Today there a bunch of new bits to play with that have up until now been a collection of individual...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 05/12/2008
Enterprise Library and WCF
If you're creating Web Services using WCF (or ASMX, for that matter) then you are, of course, using...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 05/12/2008
An easier way to Create SharePoint Feature Solutions
If you're developing Features for SharePoint then you will have discovered what a laborious process...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 02/22/2008
Entity Framework beta 3 Released
If you like tools that make creating your data layers easier (like NHibernate or code generation...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 12/06/2007
Interesting Discovery: a book on the CAB & SCSF!
I learned today that there was a book published a few months ago on two of my favourite...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 10/31/2007
Progammatically Adding Folders to a SharePoint List
This took me longer than it should have to get working as the things I tried first compiled but did...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/30/2007
Updated MOSS SDK
If you're a MOSS guy like me then you'll know all about the MOSS Software Development Kit - and how...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/23/2007
The Repository Factory
As you might know, the Web Service Software Factory includes a Data Access Guidance Package that can...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/22/2007
Making and reading ZIP Files in .NET
So you want to use the zip file format in your .NET 2/3/3.5 application? There is a compression...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/10/2007
More Acropolis Goodness
If you're testing out all the new features of VS 2008 (now in beta 2) then you might want to play...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/08/2007
Learning ASP.NET & WCF by Example: .NET Trader
If you're like me, then you like figuring out how something is supposed to be done by looking at a...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 08/07/2007
More Acropolis for you XAML Form-based Application Writers
Happy July 4th! As a Brit, I kindov don't celebrate July 4th in the US, so much... :-) However did...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 07/04/2007
The CAB + WPF Designer → Visual Studio = “Acropolis”
If you're writing winforms ("smart client") apps, then hopefully you're aware of the Smart Client...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/05/2007
Handy Office Developer Map
Hello, Just published to MSDN: a handy little WPF app that places in one place lots of the resources...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/04/2007
Developers: Learning While Commuting
Most of us still have to commute to the office, and some of us have to travel a fair bit, and a...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/18/2007
Caching in Winforms / SmartClient Apps
Caching frequently-accessed data is often desirable in Winforms/Smart Client applications in order...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/16/2007
Creating Compelling browser-based applications: WPF/e
I thought you might be interested in quickly learning the essentials of the upcoming Microsoft...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/10/2007
Synchronizing data from disparate sources over two-tier, N-tier, and service-based architectures
We recently published a CTP of a technology used to sync various (even non-MS) online and offline...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/01/2007
Scripting SQL Server Database Data
There have been many times when I've needed to script the creation of SQL Server database data;...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 01/24/2007
"Web Client" Best Practices...
The patterns and practices team come out with some fabulous stuff that I have used many times over...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 10/27/2006
Avoid writing boring code using the Web Service Factory
One thing about the ongoing releases of the Web Service Factory (WSF) that I think may have escaped...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 10/13/2006
Building Web Services the Easy Way
Regular Readers will know that I prefer to avoid writing boring code if at all possible, and use...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 07/31/2006
Even very experienced ASP.NET Developers can learn something from this...
I've done a lot of developemnt on the Microsoft platform over the last 11 years and there were still...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 07/19/2006
Program Robots using the new "Microsoft Robotics Studio"
The robotics platform that really interests me is the Lego MindStorm range; these are really cool,...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/22/2006
Configuring the SharePoint 3.0 RSS Reader to use a Proxy Server
Here's a problem I hit today - I was setting up an instance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 06/13/2006
How to Dynamically Generate Word Documents from a Web Site
On my most recent project, an ASP.NET 2.0 web site, we thought it would be useful if we offered...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 05/26/2006
Very Excited about... Custom Search Providers in IE 7
I tried running IE 7 beta 1 but gave up as it had one critical bug that prevented me from developing...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 05/11/2006
Increasing my Productivity With Virtual Server R2 on Windows XP
I learned recently that not only was Virtual Server now free, but that it worked on Windows XP....
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/28/2006
ASP.NET: Exporting a report to Excel, with HTTP Compression
I often find myself asked to code a page to display data from a database in a format users of a...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/11/2006
How to determine if a .NET Assembly was compiled in Debug Mode
A colleague asked this question in an email and as often happens I didn't know the answer. However...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 04/05/2006
Passing Session Data down through the Tiers
So here's a conundrum that my customer and I worked through yesterday. We have an ASP.NET site, with...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/31/2006
Connecting to SQL Server on a non-default Port
Here's a little tid-bit that threw me today. How to connect to SQL Server (using SQL Management...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/23/2006
If you are unable to select a block of text in IE 6...
We hit an interesting conundrum yesterday which had me stumped for a while; an erstwhile colleague...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/16/2006
.NetTiers: Avoiding Typing Boring Code
Perhaps, like me, you often perform the role of .NET developer and you hate typing boring code. One...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/02/2006
Adventures with VS2005 Team Test Load Agent And Controller
I've been using VS2005 Team Test on an ASP.NET project I am currently on to hammer the code we've...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 03/01/2006
Now running Office 12 on my Main Machine
Well I took the plunge this weekend and upgraded to the beta 1 of Office 12. I was nervous that it...
Author: Adam Hems Date: 02/27/2006