AppDev: Something You Should Know by Irena Kennedy

NUMA stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access or Non-Uniform Memory Architecture. NUMA is a computer memory design used in multiprocessors, where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor. Under NUMA, a processor...

There are a few keywords one should be aware of: The as operator is similar to a cast but on any conversion failure null is returned as oppose to raising an exception. Note: it will not do the conversion (cast != data type conversion)! Personally...

In SQL 2000, there was a feature many of us loved and used heavily – ability to script all database objects one per file. This allowed the scripts to be stored in a source control tool for versioning purposes. Unfortunately, this feature is missing from...

If you create or view a lot of sample projects or demos, you’d love this. While there is no GUI for this, all the recently opened projects are stored in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ProjectMRUList key...

The other day, I accidentally discovered an easy way to move a line (or number of selected lines) up or down in your Word document… Say, you had a bullet point or a paragraph (or any other selected text) that you wanted to move up or down within...

Did you know that hash join is most efficient when one of the tables is significantly different in size than another one? Want to know why? Then read on… SQL Server uses different kinds of join operations – e.g. nested loop join, merge join, hash...

So, you hear all the time – Hashtable, hash value, etc. You’ve seen GetHashCode method in Object type. But what is hashing? Hashing is a process of applying one of many hash algorithms. It’s frequently used to create/use hash tables, which significantly...

Say you want to return the name of the stored procedure where an error occurred… How can you do that without hardcoding the stored proc name? The answer is simple – by using the system variable @@ProcID and converting it to name. Execute the following...

You may want to save this one off and put it in your personal toolbox… The MaskedTextBox that comes with .NET has a few limitations – it does not automatically shift your digits. For example, if I enter a mask of 0000.00, and enter number 12, I...

In SYSK 7, I discussed a tool created by Lutz Roder that can be used to decompile and analyze .NET assemblies. The tool is available at http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ . This tool disassembles the raw assembly and translates the binary information...

As was announced yesterday by Rick LaPlante, the Team Foundation Server has been released to manufacture (RTM). The bits should be available to customers for download via Microsoft’s Developer Network (MSDN) within a few days. And did you know that...

Ever wondered where shared assemblies actually are stored, and how “side-by-side” is made possible? Well, the secret is about to be revealed…. Ok, so it’s somewhere in the file system… But where exactly? You’ll need to open the console command...

Like StringBuilder (see SYSK 16), ArrayList, Queue and SortedList double the buffer when the existing capacity is exceeded and a new element must be inserted. Try it for yourself – create an ArrayList and call its Capacity property. By default, it initializes...

As many of you may know, .NET framework 2.0 contains a built in support for compressing the file or any generic stream such as FileStream, MemoryStream, TextWriter, XmlWriter, NetworkStream, etc So, now, you can compress/decompress using GZip algorithm...

In essence, file-compression programs simply get rid of the redundancy. Instead of listing a piece of information over and over again, a file-compression program lists that information once and then refers back to it whenever it appears in the original...

If you’re a keyboard person, try this combination to comment out selected lines (works in both, SQL and Visual Studio) – press Ctrl-K, keep pressing Ctrl key and hit key C (Ctrl-K Ctrl-C). To uncomment selection, use Ctrl-K Ctrl-U.

The left anti semi join is a logical operator (read: you’ll see it referred to in the execution plan, but there is no explicit T-SQL equivalent) which returns each row from the first (top) input when there is no matching row in the second (bottom) input...

Ok, so you want to do error handling, not just error logging… So, you catch exception, examine it’s type and contents and try to resolve the problem… Then what? Then you want to retry the logic that failed before. So, in many cases, you call yourself...

As many of you may know, on Feb. 26 Microsoft has released Microsoft Application Security Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library. The download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9A2B9C92-7AD9-496C-9A89-AF08DE2E5982&displaylang...

If memory consumption happens in the unmanaged code called by your managed code, GC has no way of knowing that your small managed object has big memory footprint. For example, your code might call some legacy API, which allocates memory, and your object...

With public access points available across town in coffee shops, restaurants, libraries, hotels, and airports, web access on the road is both abundant and convenient. But there's a big problem with all this openness: there's no way of knowing how secure...

The new System.Security.SecureString type (introduced in .NET 2.0) uses DPAPI to help ensure that sensitive data stored in string form is not exposed to memory or disk-sniffing attacks. The data is held in memory in the encrypted format, and is only decrypted...

When you create an application scoped setting, the allowExeDefinition attribute on the <section> element is omitted. For user setting, it’s added by VS and set to value “MachineToLocalUser”. The valid values for this setting are: - MachineOnly...