Technical News and tips from My learning

Today, when visiting the MSDN forums , came across of a request about the subject of this post. While replying, thought of writing a post with visual aids. So that it would be more meaningful. But unfortunate that MSDN forum doesn’t support to upload the Images. Hence is the blog post. Before we talk about .NET application, it is required to understand how SMS works and the integration with some application. Thus, let’s see what happens when some one sends SMS. Am not going to talk about SMS sent to any phone with 10 digits unique number, but am talking about sending SMS sent to less than 10 digits number, sent on some reserved interfaces (or) mass SMS receiving mechanism. Mostly these kind of requirements come into action when polling is required or a kind of reality shows like American Idol in USA and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa from Zee Tv in India. Let’s start with how this kind of polling is offered by the Providers, called as SCS Providers ie., Short Code Service Providers. Any business

Workflow foundation is currently at 4th version. The main coding syntax that is expected for any of the code activities are more from the VB code syntax. Hence, it is proven that Microsoft considers VB as primary language while doing any kind of Research. Apart of this, there is one more fact that there is a recent toolkit released from Microsoft, just yesterday, ie., 28th Nov 2010. It is RTW for Windows Phone developer. This release enables Visual Basic developers to create Silverlight applications for Windows Phone 7 using the final version of the windows phone developer tools. You can download the Windows Phone developer tools RTW from this link .

  Today, I’ve come across of a requirement within a windows application to suppress the user input and allow only integers for a text box. Currently am working with .net framework 4.0 and I use C# as programming language. Before I search the web for any code samples, MSDN is my primary source for understanding the control behavior as well as the different events that are associated. In most cases MSDN would have proper help text and meaningful examples. For my requirement, eliminate user input if it is other than integer, I found a link from MSDN. The given example is inappropriate for eliminating the key input. The given example doesn’t work for you, if your interest is to prevent the user to input anything other than the numbers. I’ve tried and came up with a simple workout for preventing the user to input other than numbers. Here is my code, please comment and revise if it can be more simplified. Step 1: We need a small reusable function as mentioned below. bool IsDigitInput( char

Our current employer decided to have the code base as VisualSVN. So we stated a demo server and then after successful trail started a staging server for our project. For the entire March month it worked well, and we decided to have another VisualSVN server as production.  During the last week we have decided to migrate our staging SVN source to production box, but now the problem is about history or revision of the full one month. After binging and googling , I’ve found many alternatives. Most of all, I’ve realized one simple solution and migrated the entire code base from staging to production as simple as cake biting. Problem : Source SVN is at 10.4.5.68 and the repositories are installed at D:\ Target SVN is at 119.18.112.63 and the repositories are installed at E:\ Solution: Step 1: Copy all the project folders from 5.68\d$\repository\<<projectRepositories>> to 112.63\e$\repository\ Step 2: Copy the auth files from 5.68 to 112.63, this would copy all the users

  Many a times, i get to read from lots of places as, “.. don’t use generic exceptions, as they are very expensive .. instead use specific exceptions like devidebyzero .. blah .. blah ..” According to the MSDN Article from this link , it clearly states to use specific exception, but doesn’t give you as why to use specific exception. You can read my comment beneath the article . If you don’t see that, here it is. When you use the catch and cast that as generic exception, it then compares with the following set of exceptions. Which is definitely an unwanted comparison or type conversion with the exact exception that is caught and caused by the code.. Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine..::.InternalLoggerException Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine..::.InvalidProjectFileException Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine..::.InvalidToolsetDefinitionException Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine..::.RemoteErrorException Microsoft.Build.Framework..::.LoggerException Microsoft.JScript..::.CmdLineException Microsoft.JScript..

Am a big favorite of EntLib. I started using this from v1.1 during June 2005. The good thing from the latest version is that they are not adding any more blocks, on top of it they are removing some unwanted code. They are targeting to release this by 14th of April after 2days of VS2010.

Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates started a new website about his leanings and thoughts that are cooking in his mind. It is really good to know such transparent information from a person like him. Every January, he writes a news letter to all the employees of Microsoft and shares his ideas to them. This year is some thing different. Why only the Microsofties know about him, not the world. From this thought is raised a new concept of sharing via web. Did you see this web, the Gates Notes . It has various sections like, Thinking, Learning, Travel, blah.. blah .. Why don’t you go there and start exploring more about him. BTW don’t forget to convey this to your friends..

Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates started a new website about his leanings and thoughts that are cooking in his mind. It is really good to know such transparent information from a person like him. Every January, he writes a news letter to all the employees of Microsoft and shares his ideas to them. This year is some thing different. Why only the Microsofties know about him, not the world. From this thought is raised a new concept of sharing via web. Did you see this web, the Gates Notes . It has various sections like, Thinking, Learning, Travel, blah.. blah .. Why don’t you go there and start exploring more about him. BTW don’t forget to convey this to your friends..

This link gives you a beautiful access to the code snippets available from MSDN Code Gallery. The way it is designed is great.

Google is coming out with a new programming language with title as “ GO ” and the tag line for this programming language is, “a systems programming language…” In my first impression all that got to my mind is that, most of the concepts are taken from programming languages like C and other few more features like GC from current world’s programming languages. The 1Hr talk by Rob is posted on YouTube. Interesting.. After going thru the entire presentation, all it struck to my mind is the title of this post. What about you?

Google is coming out with a new programming language with title as “GO” and the tag line for this programming language is, “a systems programming language…” In my first impression all that got to my mind is that, most of the concepts are taken from programming languages like C and other few more features like GC from current world’s programming languages. The 1Hr talk by Rob is posted on YouTube. Interesting.. After going thru the entire presentation, all it struck to my mind is the title of this post. What about you?

Currently, we see version 4 of .NET Framework is the hot topic. It all started with v1.0 during 2003 and have seen various version changes, such as v1.1, v2.0, v3.0 and v3.5. But what’s new in every version? You might start comparing each version directly with its predecessor. Did we ever thought interms of the need of the new version? (or) What makes new version much a mandatory for the application to start using them? Jerry D. Miller , a .Net Developer from Austin, Tx, has a different perspective about the new version of .NET. He says that the new thing about every version is not just the feature set, but the Functional Programming.  Yes, I too felt this. But could not give a shape to this idea. He has written a detailed article about this concept at MSDN. A worth reading article under the tag line of “Patterns in Practice”

Most of the iPhone users use Windows.. isn’t it strange.. Yes, it is for me. See this for a funny discussion between the Mac and PC characters

If the current statistics continue till the end of this year, Microsoft would have a good news, ie., Bing overtakes yahoo search by the early next year.

Most of the ASP.NET developers ignore the page life cycle. They dig only when it is a trouble shooting situation or fixing a bug or as part of a rescue mission. For all those developers, there is an article that explains in detail about ASP.NET v4 page life cycle. Click here to read more in detail. But a picture is worth more than 1000 words. So is this. Isn’t it??

Visual Studio 2010 & .NET v4 would release on 22nd March. Microsoft is giving an offer by name “Ultimate Offer” and the deadline for this offer is 12th March. Below is the image that clearly explains the various features of this “Ultimate Offer”

This week, Microsoft released a new Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. This is a downloadable version of the training content and includes 17 presentations, 21 Demos and 26 Hands-on Labs. The January preview adds content for Office , SharePoint and Application Lifecycle Management ! The content in this training kit has been tested with Beta 2 and is ready for you to use. Download: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit

Can you tell me about TFS & VSTS in 5 minutes?   Can any one really tell about TFS in 5 minutes!! I doubt. But it is true. It’s a reality. Steven van Niekerk, an Architect from Microsoft, started a project on this concept of telling about TFS & VSTS in 5 minutes. And a broad range of MVPs are supporting him to let community know in 5 minutes. Their first cut of release is ready and you can tryout. They are tagged as Rangers, ie., Visual Studio ALM Rangers. Their mission is to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. Their objectives are A “What is” section A “What are the new and important features” section A “Quick Reference Poster” section All these above are packed decently in a zip format and is available from this link . Did you try this?