Consider the following scenario: you get a comma separated values (CSV) file from your business partner via a file upload feature available on your B2B web site. For this file to be processed, you need to convert it to a relational format (e.g. data table...

AJAX.NET has two methods for incrementally updating user interface of a web page – UpdatePanel and .asmx/.svc programming model. So, which should you choose when? If you need to have access to the view state of your server side controls, including...

Imagine this: you type in a table name in SQL Server Management Studio, press Ctrl+9 and get all rows from that table displayed in the results pane. Or you press Ctrl+8 and instead of data rows, you get metadata about columns of that table. No more...

Did you ever need a calendar control that allows you to color-code certain days based on your business logic and display details on mouse-over event? Here is an example of what I’m talking about: So, perhaps the yellow color means “standard” appointments...

Have you seen a coding guidelines document that did not call for some sort of exception handling, be it in the form of __try/__except, On Error GoTo, try/catch, or any other way? Most developers would agree that it’s important to catch exceptions and...

In case of portals, the story is reasonably clear. I think most would agree that the goal of portals is to provide users with integrated access to relevant business information. The key words here are: access, integrated and relevant. So, it’s a “one...

All the “best practices” I’ve seen recommend avoid calling System.Thread.CurrentThread.Sleep() method. Agreed; but there are some legitimate situations when you just have to block for a certain period of time… If that is the case, consider using System...

If you need to convert a non-boolean data type to a boolean, and you’re dealing with a typeless language (e.g. javascript), you’ve got a couple of choices: write an if-then-else logic or use the not-not (a.k.a. double-not) operator. The results are same...

Animation, whether via an animated gif (a sequence of frames) or custom drawing, does not come for free. As a rule of thumb, the more colors and the more frames your animated gif has, the larger the memory footprint and the higher the CPU utilization...

From within Internet Explorer, click on Tools and then on Internet Options. Now click on the Advanced tab, and under the Browser section make sure Enable Install On Demand (Internet Explorer) and enable Install On Demand (other) are not checked. This...

Fact: triggers execute automatically whenever user modifies data in the underlying table or view. In my projects, I frequently use triggers when comprehensive auditing is a requirement. However, I’ve seen some developers use triggers as a mechanism to...

In http://blogs.msdn.com/irenak/archive/2006/09/22/766164.aspx post, the following problem was described: if you have a SSRS report parameter that is multi-value and of one of the label s in the “available values” list exceeds 25 characters , the dropdown...

If you are deleting a column of varchar(max), text, ntext, or image data type, your database has likely allocated a large amount of space for the stored data. When you drop a column, it’s always a good idea to rebuild indexes which may help you...

For those of you who haven’t done much work with JSON, this blog may be a good introduction... JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation (pronounced ‘Jason’) and is a lightweight data-interchange format with smaller footprint than xml, human readable...

Both, BizTalk server and .NET Windows Workflow Foundation (WinWF) provide design tools to build a process workflow. So, what product/technology is right for you? Below are some questions I go through when making such decision on my projects. · Do...

First, here is what triggered this investigation: since your application (windows/web) hosts the workflow runtime in process, and given that the WinWF is managed code, it made me think: 1. What application domain will it run in? Will it create its...

Did you know that the “best practice” in terms of font sizes is to use em not px ? Interested? Then read on… When it comes to font sizes, they can be fixed , a.k.a. absolute, or relative , a.k.a. variable. As the name suggests, fixed font sizes...

We know that C# keywords are simply programming language (in this case, C#) lingo that map into the .NET framework types, objects, etc. So, what does the ‘lock’ keyword map to? Through the simple use of ildasm tool, you can see that the lock keyword ends...

Since there are still developers out there that are not clear on if/when should you call Dispose, and what your class’s finalizer should look like if it holds on to non-memory resources such as file handles, GDI objects, database connections, etc., I...

With .NET 1.0 came the beloved System.Diagnostics.Trace and System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitch classes. While it provided the ability to filter out Trace.Write statements that did not meet the trace level setting of the TraceSwitch setting, it gave no ability...

Say you need to prevent two pieces of code from running at the same time. If you’re dealing with two threads in the same application domain, then it’s easy – you’ve got many synchronization objects to choose from for the job such as System.Threading....

Groove is collaboration software that allows project teams to work together in a more efficient manner. How? Below are some of its features: The Files tool is used to store, organize, and share files. To support offline usage, Groove stores all...