Technical News and tips from My learning

The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management. I've downloaded this, if any one require this, you can drop me a mail or can collect from me.

Who says that Microsoft manufactures products only to sell ?? Microsoft has many products that are free to download. As am into .NET and specially with Visual Studio, am aware that Visual Studio is free to download from Microsoft's website. Yes, that's true.. Microsoft give Visual studio 2008 Express Editions , MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 as well as the Runtime for the latest .NET framework 3.5 . Here is the link to learn more towards free products as well as priced products. To know more about the product information about Visual Studio 2008, click here .

That's true, you read the title correct. BBC recently wrote about this on 6th Dec 08. Microsoft is working out towards the XP operating system to be a reality on the co called $100 laptop or XO. If things go as scheduled, $100 Laptop or XO will be a reality by the mid 2008. James Utzschneider , GM for Marketing and Communications from Microsoft, wrote about this at his blog . According to him, about 40 engineers are working towards mid 2008 to come out with a production-quality release. The XO laptop works with 1GB Flash memory, when compared with traditional Hard Disk Drive. OLPC , One Laptop Per Child, organisation is having a great idea towards making this product into a reality. During June 2008, Intel announced a laptop under $220 with a title as " Classmate PC ". This is similar to that of XO laptop, but some of the basic difference is kind of 2GB Flash memory in ClassmatePC , where as 1GB in XO laptop. These kind of laptops are really good towards educating the

Servers belong to Office. All these days, wife's worry that their husband not only work wholly with LapTop, on top of this, Micorosoft is coming out with one more product titling as " Stay at Home Servers ". Don't you believe this .. pay a visit to their product page . Microsoft addresses this as " WindowsHomeServer ". The advantages explained in nice video. This video has all the possible places that every home can have and what every one can do from every location of common home. Where are we going .. and where is the infrastructure is moving to ?? anyhow, when will India have all such infrastructure inbuilt apartments or homes built with such facilities.

The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview provides a glimpse of new, powerful functionality being added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET next year. This release delivers features that enable high-productivity data scenarios and creates the best server for rich clients. The release includes an ASP.NET model-view-controller (MVC) framework, ASP.NET Dynamic Data , Silverlight controls for ASP.NET , ADO.NET Data Services , an Entity Framework runtime, new features for ASP.NET AJAX and a wide variety of API References as hosted at ASP.NET Official site. You can download the ASP.NET 3.5 Preview , which contain all the Siliverlight controls, ADO.NET Data Services and many more. There is a forum specially dedicated to ASP.NET 3.5 Preview at ASP.NET Forums .

Microsoft Visual Studio Team has announced the new font for the Visual Studio Editor . The old font in the Visual Studio editor will look like the below one. You might wonder what is the difference between the old code font as well as the new Microsoft Consolas Font Family. The main difference in the words of microsoft is.. " All characters have the same width , like old typewriters, making it a good choice for personal and business correspondence". You can download the latest font from Download Section. Where as the new font will have the look as displayed below I've updated my Visual Studio with the latest font. Did you? ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Yes, that's true. You haven't heard about this website . oops.. Mistaken, it is not YOU Haven't.. but I Haven't heard of this till this day. This website has 4 major sections as displayed in the image. 1) MSDN Admin KIT 2) MSDN DDIK - Developer Desktop Inventory KIT 3) MSDN BluePrint - Helps towards your role at your organisation 4) SDLC-in-a-Box, with lots of testimonials Every one should give attention to this site. This site has some thing or other for every technology person. This site can be mentioned as a gold mine. Did you come acorss of this?? What are your comments on this?? ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

After a long time, today, got a requirement from ASP page. Our current client has a major application written in classic ASP 2.0, and we have given him an extension functionality written in .NET with VB as programming language. Now, we have 2 different applications running at the same box with 2 different technologies, ie., an ASP application and an ASP.NET application. For both of the applications, there is a common functionality talking to the database via a webservice written in Java. The current situation demand a common library that will be reused at both ASP.NET pages as well as ASP pages. Apart of the requirement, the one point that led me to post here is "How to call a .NET Assembly in a Classic page" Creating .NET Assembly Imports System Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices Public Class MyLibClass Public Function MyLibFunction() As String Return " Invoked the method from COM successfully .." End Function End Class With the abov

For all those who didn't attend the Mix at UK during Sep 07, here is a good news. The good news is not only for those who didn't attend the MIX, but for all the technology lovers as well as persons who are passionate about latest technology happenings. The two day event is now available for offline viewing at their website. Here is the link that give you the download of all the videos of all the sessions that happened. Isn't nice for all of us, who missed the event and who couldn't afford to attend the event. It's time to download and view them offline. Am going to download all the events, if any of you doesn't have the i-net connectivity or by any issue, could not download these videos, drop me a mail at DSKCHECK at MSN dot COM Catch you later..

Most of the industry say that, Google is the top search engine and will give you lot of results when you search. But the missing point is that, Live Search gives you deeper search when compared to Google. Surprising !!!! i just did a small search for my name, Chakravarthy, at both the search engines. To make the figures matter, i go upto 100 pages in Live Search results. Where as, Google takes me only upto 84 pages. To my surprise, when i go back to the 83 page, then i see the search pages count is increased from 84 to 87. is isn't it weird .. And adding to my surprise, i read a statement at the bottom of the last search page as " In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 870 pages already displayed "   Don't believe !!!! Try out your self..

Siderys webpage is designed using Sliverlight. An awesome work. This work simply demonstrates the power of using Sliverlight. I can use this as starting point to present the Silverlight technology to my customers. Did you see this ??? Pl visit that page and post back your comments on the same. Blogged with Flock

Recently, while coding for a Text Field value padded with left zeros, realised the importance of the RETURN key word for the FUNCTION written in JavaScript. Before i mention the actual importance, let me describe you the situation. Scenario: A Text box need to be padded with zeros and should have the length of 7 digits, even the data entered is less than 7. Ex: When the key board input being 88, the text box should show 00000 88. Note the ZEROs padded on left. So, started with a JavaScript function as mentioned below function PadZeros(x) { var v = x.value; while (v.length<7) { v = '0' + v; } var ss = document.getElementById(x.id); ss.value = v; } After this, the text box is padding with ZEROs and the code is perfectly running. To allow this to code execute for any given text box, all you have to do is, add the ATTRIBUTE to that text box. And while adding keep one thing in mind that, we would be calli

Recent development in my technical life is that, started working out with Orcas Beta 2. So, thought to blog about the latest happenings with C# language. The idea emerged to start a series of posts related to C# new features. This is the first of ever such kind of blogging specific to a topic. C# 3.0 has many-a-new features. To start with, let me take a concept of Implicitly Typed Variables . Implicitly Typed Variables In the good old days, the developer has to worry about the type of the variable. Say for instance, whether to use long or double for a counter. Here all that we observe is that the language that is built upon is the type specific. Hence forth the developer is not required to define the type of the variable at the time of declaration, but it is the task of the compiler to decide what type of the object the variable is. All that the developer has to do is that, use the var keyword while declaring the variable, similar to that of JScript or Visual Basic style. Hey!!! S

With, Introducing Microsoft LINQ , as title, Marco Russo & Paolo Pialorsi , authors of the book (title same as the head line) initiated a website, keeping the concept LINQ as the center of the gravity. The concept seems great and as on this date there is less activity from the creators of the website. Anyhow, hope that this website will become active and vibrant in short time. del.icio.us Tags: LINQ , Marco Russo , Paolo Pialorsi

There is a big debate going on with these two buzz words. Before we get to the point of this post, let's first examine what they are... and what they mean by to the development force. SaaS : By definition it goes like this, Software As A Service. In the good olden days, we are used to think the application as whole system and all the modules have to function only with in. But as the technology evolved and the new horizons are leading the development process to newer levels, we got a new dimension as "Web Service". This concept then further raise the functionality of the individual modules belonging to the big application turn into smaller parts of reusable components by other applications as well. Resulting the module as a service altogether for any and every consumer application. This left the architects to view their application in smaller, exportable as well as consumable by different vendors or applications. This led to the concept of designing every application to

LINQ By definition Linq is Language Integrated Query. That's not the concept of this post. From my understanding and experience with LINQ as well as SQL programming, i would like to make a point. Most of the ideas that are in air about LINQ is an extension to the Structured Query Language, ie., SQL. In other words it is spelled as a kind of influence by Microsoft to the SQL. Having mentioned the misconception from the people, let me correct with my understanding of LINQ is all about Reflection . So it is not about any kind of Database related query language. Lambda Expressions By definition from MSDN, they are the extension for the Anonymous methods from C# 2.0. In reality they can be interpreted as anonymous functions, such as from C# 3.0 feature some thing similar to FUNC<>. In other words, lambda expressions are nothing but the inline expressions . And the function body of the FUNC goes on the right hand side of <>

A new user group that is taking into shape, specially for the teams that involve software testing. You can get to know more about this user group from http://mtaug.net or get onto http://groups.msn.com/mtaug This group is going to be functioning in parallel with " Hyderabad .NET User Group ", http://muag.net or http://groups.msn.com/dotNETUserGroupHyd Tomorrow, 20th July 2007, is going to be the launch of the group. Am going to be there as a speaker for C# 3.0 fundamentals.. are you ?

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Acccording to MSDN, there were about 24 types of nullable in C# 3.0, but only 3 types are drafted. They are Using Nullable Types (C# Programming Guide) Boxing Nullable Types (C# Programming Guide) ?? Operator (C# Reference) Let me draft about the point that lead me to post this information. With in our application, we want to validate a variable towards null. we started validating the variable with the ".HasValue" property. During some progress, suddenly some thing flashed in my mind about my experience of working with the teritory operator (of C or perhaps VB). The syntax could be some thing below variableX = (condition) ? truevalue : falsevalue similar such, is there in C#, not similar thou, but approxmately, ?? operator returns the left-hand operand if it is not null or it returns the right operand. You can observe from the below codesnippet int? p = null; int? y = 7; if (p.HasValue) y = 9; int c = p ?? y; // this will return 7 as the value in p is null Console.WriteLine(&

Thousands of partners registered with Microsoft competing for the WPC Awards. The finalists ready and their details are out from Microsoft, you can see their details at this link . Out of 42 categories 125 partners reached the finals. 3 companies with Indian origin also found their way to the final and competing with giants. They are Satyam Computer Services Ltd ., Quadrasystems.net - finalist in 2 categories TECHGYAN The final show is scheduled to July 11, 2007. Let's see whether these companies will win and give a tough competition with the peers in the industry.

Today accidentally, found my webcast on XMLDom functionality at ondemand Microsoft, India webcast site. Please go through the " VSTS " section, at the last you will see my name and the link. You can download the webcast from this link or search for the event id as 1032301833. And if you require the demo application and the presentation, write to me. From this link you can learn more about my career as a speaker for Microsoft. And these details as on the date of May 2005. The details mentioned at their Speakers profile section are updated while am working with XYKA . ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

This link is really cool for people who want to test their typing skills and specially i found this useful for one important reasons is, spelling.. you will type fast if you know the spelling, else you have to read than type. This way you improve your spelling skills also. Did you try, on my first attemt got around 365,xxx ... am not sure.. but is a good score for me. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

One of the frequently seen situations from a technical standpoint in a large scale of Business Layer objects is, invoking methods from different objects when they contain same method name. Today, am going to make it simple to give an example for Runtime Polymorphism. Leave your comments if am mistaken At this stage, I don’t think to mention about "Polymorphism", as hope that you are aware of how polymorphic behavior can be fused using C#. If you want a start up, in simple words, implementation of one Method with many definitions, as mentioned below. class Employee { /// <summary> /// Invoked for the Regular salaried employes /// </summary> /// <param name="intEmpId"> Employee ID </param> /// <param name="intAbscentDays"> Number of days </param> /// <returns></returns> public long CalculateSal( int intEmpId, int intAbscentDays) { return (GetEmpSal(intEmpId) * (GetWorkingDays( DateTime .Now.Month)

During my last interview, got a question about the mentioned subject. Have decided to learn and post some code. Definition of the Asynchronous Calling: Executing the method Asynchronously, inother words, executing like the concept of Thread. The bottom line is inheriting the method by System. IAsyncResult and using BeginInvoke and EndInvoke to track the status of the method. Between these methods, one can check the status by IsCompleted status. This is acomplished by Deligate keyword. Will edit this post during the time with all the example code.

While reading some news about VSTS, got to know that, Vertigo did some samples that Microsoft is using. Surprisingly true .. anyhow, thought to blog so that it can be useful for me in future learning towards VSTS. They also have a blogs section with lots of content on VSTS, did you visited that? ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Use F8 to switch to next error in your code. It could be either HTML Error or CodeBehind. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

While working with Debugging our current application, surprised to note that all the variables are showing their value in Hexadecimal format at Immediate Window. After doing some R&D got to know that some of team member set at to display in Hexadecimal value. To revoke that format, all you have to do is, goto Watch Window and right click on any row and you will observe that "Hexadecimal Display" is enabled. Select or Deselect depending on your requirement. Dont go to Tools => Options => Debugging => ... The tools option may not be available with some VS flavors like Professional or Architect. But for every edition, the Watch Window works. What do you say? ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

To convert any given sentence into Title Case, use the following code. public static string PropCase(string strText) { return new CultureInfo("en").TextInfo.ToTitleCase(strText.ToLower()); } Ofcourse, you have to use the Globalization class to get the CultureInfo method be available for conversion. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

While searching for some tips on Visual Studio environment, came across the blog from Helixoft . Seems interesting, blogging here so that will find some time to read through all his posts when time permits. Meanwhile if you got some time, go through this blog . Forgot to mention that, the tag line is damn cool, "Documentation has never been so easy .." ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

After trying out many client tools to post from my desktop, am now decided to use Microsoft's Live Writer. Seems simple, let me try out this. How do you see this post on the web now? Isn't it cool ???

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 is a preview release of the latest version of the .NET Framework. Many ISV’s, enterprises and Microsoft product teams are successfully building on the new features Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace in the .NET Framework 3.0. Microsoft plans to continue to invest in the .NET Framework developer platform and in support of existing users the .NET Framework 3.5 has a minimal number of breaking changes. So that existing applications built for .NET Framework 2.0 or .NET Framework 3.0 should continue to run without requiring changes. The .NET Framework 3.5 adds new features in several major technology areas; including: Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness ASP.NET AJAX for quickly creating more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers New web protoc

This is the team am currently working with. Left to me is Prashanth, Steve, our onsite PM is sitting oppsite to me. The only girl is Abhaya. We went out to have lunch ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Aren't you shocked to read the Title, but me ... when i first read this post from Joe Duffy . Read through the lines to learn why he insists on that. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Today, during the discussion with our fellow developer from offshore noticed the following statement about documentation and time. Thought that it is time to share my feelings with world on this kind of statement(s). Most of us come across such statement from some one or the other, or most of us use these statements in some time or other .. my feelings is that you guys are used to work with the well defined structure, document and think like that, we lack of that here, we just don't have time to do much of that. I use to work with <<xx>> tool, we used to make a lot of UML design doc, UseCases every thing, but here we don't .. no time for documentation .. The above statement has 2 controversial concepts. Follow the Standards Have NoTime My understanding towards this goes as mentioned below, First - NO STANDARDS : Who creates these Standards .. aren't these created by individuals like us??? why people are used to relate them with companies ??? and bla

There is a hoax to paly prank with user by the mentioned title at this link . Fell in trap by Sudhakar at his blog and thought that is a kind of reality. This is some kind of cool trick during this april month, a nice trap to fool your friends. Did you try this out.. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

While searching for some server side control and accessing the htmlhidden values through the codebehind of ASP.NET pages, came across the article " Getting Started with XAML ". This article is so simple and easy to digest. All those who are new to .NET, pl start learning the V3.0 directly, dont start from both v1.1 or 2.0. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

On March 23, Slashdot published an article about HP scrapping the warrenty given along with the hardware, if Linux is loaded. How surprising is this ??? I can't believe this, but some how read from Slashdot website. Did you read this article narrating in detail and this is from Linux community ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Now-a-days, am trying to download the webcasts from microsoft ondemand site . Unfortunately, i get "Connection to server was reset" error after downloading about 8MB of file, is really irritating and disappointing.. any of you have clue about how can i download these webcasts with out getting these error? If any of you got tools that will help us to download these webcasts, pl drop me a line at the below mentioned mail id. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

While am updating my IE to Version 7, got this link from Microsoft's IE weblog. This link has all (major) shortcut keys and some interesting ways to explore your regular "ToDo's" Try and experience them.. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

There is a small quiz from Microsoft to promote 2003 Cluster Server... did you participate ? If not, quickly participate and win prizes. I got 5 out of 5... how about you??? ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Let me post about the truths that many of you unaware First ) Am a Diploma holder for Bharatha Natyam Second ) While persuing Education, dance tutions are my main trade towards financial support for my education Third ) Started my technical career as DataEntry operator with HPCL at Kondapally @ 70/- perday for entering about 3000 records. This is during my 3rd year of Graduation. During the entire year, very few days visited the college. Forth ) Soon after the college exam on April 2nd 1996, started my professional career as Faculty Member at Prime Computers, Gudiwada on April 4th 1996. Fifth ) Recently finished the 6th Sem Exams of MCA from Sikkim Manipal University. Yet there are 4 & 5 th semisters are pending due to my visit to Dubai. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Time and again, have been visiting this page for many a times. Hence felt that it is time to store at some place about the error that every web developer will come across during the debugging. Great resource to learn more about Using the Visual Studio .NET 2003 Debugger with ASP.NET Applications Did you come across of such articles any other place ... pl post back here to know more. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Jon Skeet an MVP and having a strong software development experience. I first got through his blog at his home page , later redirected to MVMPS weblog . Interesting to read about the articles that are available at his MVMPS Weblog, where as good amount of learning stuff from his Yoda homepage. Did you come across of any other such people... ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

AJAX v1.0 is ready to download from http://ajax.asp.net . Did you download ???? There are many-a-videos available to view, have learned many things from the vedio presentations. This is a good place to learn AJAX ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Error while downloading the webcasts from Microsoft Event home . Has any one know about how can we deal with these kinds of errors? Or Any clue about where the partially downloaded files would have been saved... checked "%temp%" foder, InternetFiles folder and ApplicationData folder... but invain. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

First post from home... let's see how this will uplift my blogging skills ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

Before the CLR actually came into lime light, it was with a team called CROEDT stands for Comman Runtime Odds and Ends Development Team. And this team is the first team in achiving the round-tripping with the coding. Round-Tripping means, take any managed code like IL, disassemble it, add or change some ILs and reassemble it back into modified Executable ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.

What do you say, if i tell you that, Google is recently hacked ... "Naaaaaaaaaaaa .... no way ..." Are the answers from you... then tell me what do you see when you click on this link . Good that you got some results from their database. But apart of the results, do you understand any hyperlink that is displayed at this link ? Fine, let me go to the root cause of the problem. What do you see when you click on this link ? Hey.. do you understand any hyperlink at this link ? What do you say after looking at these links... Common... comment.. ----------------------- If you have something to share in person on this post, pl drop me a mail at dskcheck@gmail.com with the title in the subject.