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This is the second article in the .netTiers series. The first article included getting started with the template settings, generating the libraries, a first look at the admin site, a page selecting data out of the database and a page inserting data into the database. This article will include .netTiers discovery of custom stored procedures, SourceTable configuration, and adding custom code to the .netTiers library. [Read This Article][Top]
Data layers allow the abstraction of your application's SQL calls to a separate set of objects. The .netTiers template library (using CodeSmith) can help you build a data layer for your .NET Web application. This article will start with an existing sample database and will walk you through the process of using .netTiers to creating all the Create Read Update Delete (CRUD) stored procedures and a data layer for a .NET Web site. [Read This Article][Top]
This article walks you through the process of building a simple .NET command-line application that is designed to be scheduled to execute. The sample application will send an HTTP request to a web server and send the returned HTML as the body of an email message. Once the application is complete, the article will examine how to schedule it to run using Windows Scheduled Tasks. [Read This Article][Top]
Part of the business logic encapsulated in the Typed DataSet is the ability to add specialized queries to the table adapters to retrieve the data with different filters. By manipulating the XML schema that defines the dataset and adding the correct XML metadata, Visual Studio will generate the added queries for us. In this article, filtering queries will be automatically added to each table adapter for each field that is indexed on the table in the database. [Read This Article][Top]
This article shows how you can build a search form that will search a number of different sources without the need for a different textbox for each. It even incorporates some basic OpenSearch functionality in order to allow the easy addition of new search providers. [Read This Article][Top]
While most of us are no strangers to FTP, performing file transfers from a web page is not that common of a requirement. Come to find out, .NET handles it quite well. The trick is keeping it simple. [Read This Article][Top]
The binding source component in Visual Studio 2005/2008 Windows Forms provides a valuable service for data driven applications by providing automatic data binding between controls and the data source. This article shows how the functionality can be extended to add a few features to make it even more useful. [Read This Article][Top]
With the introduction of C# 3.0, Microsoft has released a number of features that greatly enhance the object oriented programming experience for C# developers. These new features enable you to declare and instantiate objects with a new syntax that is not only intuitive but also simple. In addition, you also have the ability to initialize collection objects and arrays using a single line of code. [Read This Article][Top]
Most web-based slide show applications depend on a database for some or all of the storage. This application allows you to show pictures from a directory structure without any underlying database. The application uses an ASP.NET 2.0 TreeView control for file system navigation and the AJAX 1.0 SlideShow Extender to display the images found in the directory. [Read This Article][Top]
The Dataset Editor in Visual Studio 2005 assists in the design of a data entity structure and generates a set of classes that meets the requirements of a good object relation mapper (ORM). This article shows the code that needs to be added to provide tier separation and how it can easily be generated automatically. [Read This Article][Top]
The Dataset Generator in Visual Studio 2005 generates a data entity structure that meets the requirements of a good object relation mapper (ORM), except for a couple small areas. This article shows the code that needs to be added to provide tier separation and how it can easily be generated automatically. [Read This Article][Top]
In the first part of this three part series on designing an N-tiered data access layer using datasets, David Catherman discusses the pros and cons of using datasets and examines how the dataset generator works in Visual Studio 2005. [Read This Article][Top]
In the first part of this two-part article, David Beahm created the SQL database objects and .NET classes that provide the database backend for the website. In this part, he will tie that logic to an ASP.NET page with a GridView and DetailsView. [Read This Article][Top]
In this two-part article, David Beahm builds upon his previous SQL Server 2005 paging solution. Part one covers creating a data access layer that provides an efficient way to incorporate paging and updating into an ASP.NET application via the ObjectDataSource control. [Read This Article][Top]
OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for the sharing of search results. You're more likely to know it as the format that websites use in order to let you access their search engines directly from the search box in IE 7 and Firefox 2.0. This article offers a brief introduction to OpenSearch and shows you what it takes to easily let users add your site's search to their browser's search bar. [Read This Article][Top]
The process of uploading a file to a web server generally requires that the incoming file be stored in memory until the upload is complete. This works fine for relatively small files, but uploading larger files can cause errors and performance problems. The streaming solution presented in this article allows you to upload large files without swamping your web server by streaming the upload right into a SQL Server database. [Read This Article][Top]
If your Web site has large quantities of data to manage, then a database-driven design is pretty much a necessity. However, storing all your data in the database often creates a lot of work for the database server and can hurt your site's performance. This often leads developers to fall back to storing files on the Web server's file system, but this raises a whole new set of issues. This article will show you how to implement a Web server file cache so that you can keep your content in the database and still benefit from both server and client caching. [Read This Article][Top]
The most common questions about this series all relate to why the article doesn't discuss stored procedures. The answer to that question and more in the forth installment of Ziran Sun's popular series on using MySQL from ASP.NET. [Read This Article][Top]
While Try...Catch...Finally and ASP.NET custom error pages are both error handling godsends, they're not the only error handling methods available. This article will examine the Page_Error method and the Application_Error event handler in order to help you round out your ASP.NET error handling arsenal. [Read This Article][Top]
A couple weeks ago, I gave you guys a sneak peek at Windows Server 2008 Beta 3. Well, what good is a brand spanking new server platform without the development tools to properly utilize it? This week I spent some time with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. [Read This Article][Top]
Migrating from ASP to ASP.NET can open a whole new world of possibilities for your web-based applications. Moving to ASP.NET allows you to take advantage of all of ASP.NET's new features and at the same time can drastically improve the performance of your applications. This article will examine the issues that you must consider before performing a migration and the various migration strategies available. [Read This Article][Top]
Microsoft Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" is now Windows Server 2008, though you may not be able to tell from the latest Beta which is still branded as Code Name "Longhorn". Whatever you want to call it, the latest version of Microsoft's server platform is one step closer to shipping and I figured it was time to give those of you who haven't seen it yet a sneak peek. [Read This Article][Top]
This article focuses on the GoldParser/Calitha usage and C# programming required to build a .NET class library that converts simple Google-style syntax into Transact-SQL syntax for full-text searches. [Read This Article][Top]
How would you like to enable searching of your SQL Server data using Google-style syntax instead of Transact-SQL? Because of the commonality of the Google search syntax, most web users find it simple to construct a query using it. This article will show how to implement a .NET class library to perform a full-text search on a SQL Server table using Google-style syntax. [Read This Article][Top]
Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. It's a great little tool to have in your web application debugging toolbox and is invaluable when troubleshooting issues with things like caching, cookies, form data, and headers. [Read This Article][Top]
Developers and database administrators have long debated methods for paging recordset results from Microsoft SQL Server, trying to balance ease of use with performance. The simplest methods were less efficient because they retrieved entire datasets from SQL Server before eliminating records which were not to be included, while the best-performing methods handled all paging on the server with more complex scripting. The ROW_NUMBER() function introduced in SQL Server 2005 provides an efficient way to limit results relatively easily. [Read This Article][Top]
The first part of Alex Homer's article on using the Enterprise Library Validation Application Block in ASP.NET examined its built-in validators, configuring validation rule sets, and using validation rule sets. The second part builds on these topics and discusses validating data from a web service and UI validation integration in ASP.NET. [Read This Article][Top]
This article shows how you can take advantage of the validation features within the Validation Application Block, part of version 3.0 of Enterprise Library, in your ASP.NET applications. Part one examines the Validation Application Block's built-in validators, configuring validation rule sets, and using validation rule sets in ASP.NET. [Read This Article][Top]
The second installment in our introduction to Microsoft Silverlight walks you through installing the development tools and creating your very first Silverlight Web page. [Read This Article][Top]
The first part of our introduction to Microsoft Silverlight explains what Silverlight is, how to get it, and shows some sample usage scenarios. [Read This Article][Top]
Microsoft has just released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Express Edition family of products. This marks the first publicly available release and, as such it's probably the first chance many of you have had to catch a glimpse of the new version. [Read This Article][Top]
In recent years, increasing numbers of businesses have chosen to outsource their development overseas. While outsourcing can increase productivity and efficiency while lowering operating costs, it brings with it some inherent risks. This article discusses five major risks of outsourcing as well as methods of mitigating these risks. [Read This Article][Top]
This article presents a one-page, extremely simple, online note taking application built in ASP.NET. It's not much from a technology point of view, but sometimes it's the simple little things that help you the most. [Read This Article][Top]
In this article I'm going to make a slight departure from our usual focus on enterprise technology and give you a sneak peek at Beta 2 of the newly announced Windows Home Server. [Read This Article][Top]
Webparts provide an easy way to customize a website at runtime. This article will cover the basics of using webparts in ASP.NET 2.0, including the Web Part Manager, Web Part Zones, and using a database to store customizations. [Read This Article][Top]
If you've been wanting to leverage the power of AJAX in your ASP.NET Web applications, but aren't a client-side Javascript and XML guru, the moment you've been waiting for is finally here. Microsoft just recently released version 1.0 of the "Atlas" project, calling it simply ASP.NET AJAX. [Read This Article][Top]
It used to be that you could figure out how a web page worked simply by using your browser's view source command. Unfortunately, these days it's not so easy to take a look at the magic going on behind the scenes. With the emphasis on usability and appearance, previously simple HTML has become increasingly difficult to read and these days web pages often use as much CSS and client-side script as they do HTML. Luckily Microsoft has realized this fact and is building a tool to help developers analyze these complex web documents. [Read This Article][Top]
This article is not about Project Management or the software development lifecycle. Its main focus is to educate new developers and project managers about the benefits of process oriented development. Hopefully, the guidelines this article provides will help readers define a process that can be customized for your specific development needs. [Read This Article][Top]
In Part 1 of this article series, you saw the use of data contracts and service contracts and the steps involved in leveraging IIS to host WCF services. In this installment, we'll cover the basics of message and fault contracts and examine the steps involved in implementing them in a WCF service. We'll also explain how to host WCF services in a .NET console application and give examples demonstrating the instancing behavior and the flexibility of WCF in allowing you to control the invocation sequence of WCF service operations in a service. [Read This Article][Top]
The adoption of XML as the native file format for Excel 2007 has opened up a whole host of new possibilities for utilizing the power of Excel as a reporting tool. Now instead of relying on hacks and OLE Automation, you can create native Excel files on the server using standard tools. [Read This Article][Top]
Did you know that you can actually use the ASP.NET authentication system to secure other types of files like images and PDFs? It only works on IIS 5 or later and has some limitations, but it can be done. [Read This Article][Top]
If you've been curious about what to expect in the next version of IIS, there's no need to wonder any more. Microsoft quietly slipped the latest version of their web server, IIS7, into the recent release of Windows Vista. This article will give you a quick look at the all new management interface and highlight a few of IIS7's exciting new features. [Read This Article][Top]
Normally the last thing you want is for your web application to be offline. That being said, there are times when it's either desirable or necessary to take an ASP.NET application offline. Luckily ASP.NET 2.0 provides a convenient way to take an application offline and inform site visitors of the situation in one easy step. [Read This Article][Top]
In the first part of his article series on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Thiru Thangarathinam focuses on the basics of WCF by introducing you to the WCF through simple examples and discussion. [Read This Article][Top]
With the inclusion of the FileUpload control in ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has finally given us a WebControl to handle file uploading. In this article we'll examine the new FileUpload control and show just how easy it is to build an ASP.NET Web Form that accepts user uploads. [Read This Article][Top]
Microsoft's ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode) is a popular LDAP server for application developers. This article describes how to configure ADAM for regular LDAP communication and build a boilerplate ASP.NET authentication application on top of it. [Read This Article][Top]
In this article, Ziran Sun introduces the new ASP.NET 2.0 Navigation Controls and shows you how they make managing your site easier. He walks you through the entire process -- from creating your first sitemap all the way to applying formatting to the controls so they match the design of your site. [Read This Article][Top]
In the third installment of our series on the new ASP.NET 2.0 Theme system, we introduce you to the concept of Skin files and illustrate how they extend your theme so that it applies to the built in ASP.NET server controls. We then examine Named Skins and the EnableTheming property and show how they add some needed flexibility to the Theme system. [Read This Article][Top]
In the first part of this series we gave you a brief introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 Themes and walked you through creating a theme, adding a stylesheet to it, and associating the theme with your site's content files. In the second part of the series, we show you how to add a second theme to the site, easily manage multiple themes, and even let users select their own. [Read This Article][Top]
The advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was a huge leap forward in document presentation on the web. Using CSS, you were finally able to separate a document's content from the associated layout and presentation information. With the inclusion of Themes in ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has taken this idea and expanded upon it. This article is the first in a series that will introduce you to ASP.NET 2.0's new Themes. In this part, you'll learn how to create a new theme, add a style sheet to the theme, and associate the theme with the site's content files. [Read This Article][Top]
In the conclusion of his article on how to create an ASP.NET 2.0 web part using Visual Studio 2005 and the C# language, Gayan Peiris shows how to add the web part to the Web Part Gallery and a SharePoint site. [Read This Article][Top]
In this article, Gayan Peiris will explain how to create an ASP.NET 2.0 web part using Visual Studio 2005 and the C# language. As an example, he will walk you through the creation of a simple ASP.NET 2.0 web part that displays the logged in user's name. [Read This Article][Top]
In the previous installment of his series on LINQ, Thiru Thangarathinam explained the basics of DLINQ and showed how to use it to retrieve data from the database. In this installment, he will introduce the XML-related aspects of LINQ, known as XLINQ. Follow along as he takes you from the very basics all the way to implementing complex data binding with hierarchical data generated through XLINQ. [Read This Article][Top]
The next version of SharePoint introduces new ways of building web parts through ASP.NET 2.0 Framework, as well as offering standard SharePoint web part support. Lots of developers may get confused about the differences between the two web part frameworks and when to use what. This article covers the technical details about both frameworks and how they fit into the next version of SharePoint sites. [Read This Article][Top]
Web applications are getting more and more complex every day. As applications get more complex, issues tend to arise in the areas of development, maintenance, and scalability. Model-View-Controller (MVC) is the most popular and most often implemented architecture that has been developed to ease the development of complex applications. This article describes one way of implementing MVC in ASP 3.0.
[Read This Article][Top]
This article is a follow up to the "An Introduction to the ASP.NET 2.0 Wizard Control" article we published a few weeks ago. It seems that many of our readers were unsure how to use the ASP.NET validation controls in conjunction with the new ASP.NET 2.0 Wizard control. The process is largely the same as performing validation of any other form, but due to the large number of questions we've received, we decided to provide a step-by-step guide on how to add form validation to samples presented in the original article.
[Read This Article][Top]
In classic ASP and ASP.NET 1.x, there has always been a requirement that an attachment exist on the hard disk before it can be attached to an outbound email. That makes sense, right? In order to attach a file to an email, you need to have a file to attach. Well that's not the case in ASP.NET 2.x. Not only can you add an attachment without having a file, but the code and considerations required to do so are greatly reduced.
[Read This Article][Top]
In Part 1 of this series on LINQ, you learned all the basics of LINQ. With that background, this installment will now focus on the use of LINQ in querying relational data. Specifically you will learn DLINQ and its role in querying relational data.
[Read This Article][Top]
The LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) family of technologies is designed to provide a unified approach to accessing data from disparate data sources. This article series will take you from the very basics all the way to performing data access using LINQ. The first installment of the series will focus on the basics of LINQ, introducing the new features of C# 3.0, and how they can be used in conjunction with LINQ.
[Read This Article][Top]
This article serves as an introduction to the ASP.NET 2.0 Wizard Control. It starts with a brief overview and then walks you through the steps involved in building a complete web form that utilizes a wizard to collect information from a user.
[Read This Article][Top]
In today's world of Web services and RSS feeds, it seems like every application you build needs to pull in data from somewhere. Luckily, ASP.NET makes retrieving data from a remote server via HTTP extremely simple... maybe too simple. Many applications are brought to their knees because for every request that comes in, multiple requests go out.
[Read This Article][Top]
Visual Studio 2005 Windows Forms has some new extended provider components that allow ToolTips and validation error messages to be assigned to individual controls, but the process requires a fair amount of developer time in large projects. A better way is to automate the process to make the ToolTips and validation rules table driven so that non-developers can make changes easily and extend the Binding Source component to attach them to a form.
[Read This Article][Top]
Having realized the need for efficient built-in support for XSLT processing, Microsoft has included in the .NET Framework 2.0 a set of classes that are highly optimized, robust, and scalable. This article will explore the rich XSLT support provided by the .NET Framework 2.0 by providing examples on how to use the XSLT related classes to create rich ASP.NET Web applications.
[Read This Article][Top]
This article discusses the pros and cons of choosing to build an application on top of an existing application framework. In addition to examining some of the common features most application frameworks share, it then introduces you to a couple of different frameworks that can be extended to create a lot of value for you and your clients.
[Read This Article][Top]
With the introduction of ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, many of the security tasks required to connect an application's authentication and authorization mechanisms to Active Directory have been dramatically simplified. This article shows how to perform both Active Directory (LDAP:\\) and local member server (WinNT:\\) tasks.
[Read This Article][Top]
This is the fourth part in a series of hands-on tutorials that will take you through all the steps to build a complete application using Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. The tutorial is finished by creating a Web Service to host the data and then consume the Web Service from Windows, the Web, and the business layer.
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This is the third part in a series of hands-on tutorials that will take you through all the steps to build a complete application using the new Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. This part will focus on building a Web interface to the application.
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This is the second part in a series of hands-on tutorials that will take you through all the steps to build a complete application using Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. In this part, David Catherman walks you through building a Windows Forms based interface to the database.
[Read This Article][Top]
In the first part of his hands-on tutorial on using Visual Studio 2005 to build a complete 3-tier application, David Catherman examines how Visual Studio 2005 can be used as a great tool for designing and building SQL Server 2005 databases.
[Read This Article][Top]
Visual Studio 2005 offers fantastic improvements in rapidly constructing Windows and Smart Client applications. The Data Sources panel automates placing controls on a form and binding them through the Binding Source component. While the Binding Navigator component offers great potential, some simple extensions vastly improve its capability to completely automate navigation and CRUD functionality for data access. This article demonstrates how to create a User Control to extend the functionality of the Binding Navigator component.
[Read This Article][Top]
Sometimes the simplest things in ASP.NET 2.0 turn out to be the hardest things to implement. One example is trying to have a shared property across all your web pages. This article shows you how to subclass the System.Web.UI.Page class in order to build a master page that "knows" the user and let's you easily add page-wide properties.
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An ASP.NET HTTP Handler is a simple class that allows you to process a request and return a response to the browser. Unfortunately, when things go wrong, debugging an HTTP handler can be a little tricky. This article examines the process of debugging an HTTP handler in order to get everything working again.
[Read This Article][Top]
With ASP.NET 2.0, caching can still be implemented as simply as it was in ASP.NET 1.x, but for those of you who want to do more, Microsoft has added a number of features which help make caching even more flexible and robust. In this article I'm going to give you a quick overview of the new caching features in ASP.NET 2.0 and show you how to use them.
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In the first part of this article series, Ziran Sun introduced one of the new data-bound controls available in the .NET Framework version 2.0 -- the GridView. In this part, he'll continue to examine this versatile control and introduce you to some of its more powerful capabilities.
[Read This Article][Top]
In the third part of his series on using MySQL with ASP.NET, Ziran Sun provides a C# version of his ASP.NET 1.x sample query page, explains how to connect to MySQL using ASP.NET 2.0's new fully declarative data binding model, and provides a solution to those pesky namespace not found errors.
[Read This Article][Top]
In this continuation of his first article on COM Interop, Patrick Steele explains how to expose your .NET events to COM clients. Defining events that will be exposed to COM isn't difficult to do, but it does take a few steps.
[Read This Article][Top]
One of the most anticipated new features in ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 is SQL Dependency. This article will show you how to set up surrogate procedures so that you can use SQL Dependency to its fullest and bypass its limitations.
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The data access tools made available in ASP.NET 1.x were far more powerful then anything available in classic ASP, but with that power came an additional level of complexity. With ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has taken things to the next level yet again by re-simplifying things. This article will introduce the new ASP.NET 2.0 GridView control and show just how easy it is to use it to build a basic data display page.
[Read This Article][Top]
This article serves as an introduction to Perst, an open source, OO embedded database for .NET. In addition to high performance and a modest footprint, one of Perst's greatest achievements is its tight integration with Java and C#, resulting in exceptional 'transparent persistence' and ease of use.
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While some of you have been playing with Visual Studio 2005 for a while now, many of you probably either haven't found the time or are a little worried about messing up your current development environment. This article will give you a quick look at Microsoft's latest development environment and highlight some of the new features you can expect when you do get around to installing it.
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In many applications, data enters the database in a number of ways -- from Windows and Web-based applications to Web services. It is no longer good enough to put business rules at the application level and assume the rules will be implemented correctly and consistently across all data entry points. This article focuses on a methodology for ensuring data integrity by enforcing business rules at the database level.
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Have you ever wished you could easily set up password protected areas of your web site without creating system user accounts? What about moving a password protected website from Apache to IIS? This article examines a free product that makes both of these tasks amazingly simple.
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When I first heard that Microsoft was planning a series of events to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006, I was all excited. It was late October and I knew that the products were due to ship any day. I'd be one of the first people to see all this great new technology and I'd finally get my hands on the actual release versions... or so I thought.
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Masking or anonymizing a Web server involves removing identifying details that intruders could use to detect your OS and Web server vendor and version. This information, while providing little or no utility to legitimate users, is often the starting place for hackers. This article explores some ways you can minimize the risk of such detection.
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