VB .NET Code

Fix for VB 2005 Compiler out!

Rob Reynolds — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:31:00 GMT

http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2006/08/03/13539.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=920805

DevConnections Aftermath

Rob Reynolds — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:30:00 GMT

It was a great conference and I still need to get out there and get all of the code samples that were put out.

Rick Strahl had a great session on AJaX and also a few good sessions on other Web Items. If you went to the conference and you need a good pointer to that stuff, look here.
AJaX: http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/5096.aspx and http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/5139.aspx
Integrating Credit Card Processing into ASP.NET: http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/5145.aspx

Scott Guthrie gave a great Opening Keynote Presentation and also a session on ASP.NET 2.0 Tips and Tricks. He has slides available here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/03/441787.aspx and more information here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/09/442332.aspx

Michele Leroux Bustamante gave a few great presentations. Her information is here: http://www.dasblonde.net/PermaLink,guid,2a996943-5bd3-48c4-94e9-97368c00222d.aspx

Rob Howard and Code Smith: http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward/archive/2006/02/13/438156.aspx

Dino Esposito gave a couple of great presentations, but I have not seen his slides up on his site yet. It is possible that he only put them up on the conference link.

DevConnections - Day Two (Microsoft Day)

Rob Reynolds — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 01:24:00 GMT

Today I attended some sessions with Microsoft product groups (particularly Scott Guthrie and Michael Leworthy).
First of all, let me say that these guys are really dynamic!

We started off the day with learning more about the ObjectDataSource, which will make my job much, much easier now that I can
bind directly to objects instead of passing a datatable (or view) all the way up from the DAL to the UI.

Then I switched gears and went over to VS2005 Team System with Michael Leworthy for a talk on Mission Critical Development.
It was a great talk about the product and we found that we followed some of the same procedures during our migration. I posted my question/suggestion on
auto locking some files on automatic checkout, but not others (which just makes intuitive sense that we should be able to do that but is not there).

Then I learned about how the .NET 2.0 Framework has improved Asynchronous Programming to make it more approachable this time.
I learned that not using multiple threads could hold up the ASP.NET worker process on long running queries.
And that was for all requests coming through the pipe...

Omar Khan validated my thoughts and our steps for migration from ASP.NET 1.x to ASP.NET 2.0.
His model for migration followed the same methodology that ours did so he really validated what we have done and are doing, which is great!

The last presentation I went attended today was with Scott Guthrie (the father of ASP.NET).
He went over some tips and tricks for ASP.NET 2.0 (slides and samples are here).

So now I go grab a T-Shirt (the "official" conference T-Shirt to add to the 12 T-shirts I swiped from vendors the night before) during the T-Shirt giveaway.
It's really interesting how lunch is served in the back of this little hall where the vendors are, and for some reason all of the extracuricular activities take place there as well.
It can't possibly be because it makes us walk through the sea of exhibitors could it?

Update: I apparently missed a T-Shirt from Telerik that was great although I don't think I would be allowed to wear it in public. I won't
tell you exactly what it said, but it made a reference to both coding and sex. :)

I decided I would go to one of the hundred dollar a plate restaraunts for dinner tonight. That was only because there were no cheaper restauraunts at this resort.
So I sit down and I am looking at this menu trying to decide what I can order that will fill me up, won't make me look like a cheap bastard (for once), and
"might" be covered by the office once I get back. So I end up ordering something that will let me sample the different types of seafood that they have there.
Because it has rice in it (and I ate up all the free?! bread), I can't finish it. So I get a to-go box wondering how I will store it in the room.

The last thing I attended today was the Microsoft "Unplugged" Session where we could ask questions of the Microsoft Teams that were present.
It was kept kind of lighthearted, but a lot of good points and issues were brought to light for Microsoft, some they may not have identified or
were given feedback on.

After I left the "Unplugged" session, I immediately went upstairs and downloaded many of the new toolsets that I learned about during the last two days.
That included Atlas and Fiddler (of all things), samples of code from different sessions, etc. Then I programmed until like 1AM in the morning.
This is going to hurt tomorrow...

DevConnections - Day One

Rob Reynolds — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:16:00 GMT

Today I attended a preconference session with Rick Strahl of West Wind Technologies.
It was an excellent session on ASP.NET 2.0 and AJaX.
I learned quite a bit and am excited to start using AJaX in my site.
I haven't really had a lot of time to code in my spare, as if you hadn't noticed by my lack of updates for the last few months.
When you are getting married though, you don't have alot of free time to do much anything else.

Scott Guthrie of Microsoft did the Opening Keynote Presentation where he built an entire dynamic (database driven)
website using ASP.NET 2.0 in less than 20 minutes. Actually he finished the site in less than 12 minutes.
Then he went on to use Atlas (Microsoft's AJaX Component) to make the site take use of the new technology.

After the keynote I visited all of the Vendors (ahem...exhibitors) that were showing off technologies.
A great reason for working my way around to nearly every vendor in an hour and a half was to stamp my entry form.
The entry form is for a free Harley that they are giving away.
If I won it I would just sell it and invest the money, cuz that's just how I am... ;)
I would probably pay down some bills as well.

How to get Option Strict to work in VB2005 Web Site Projects - BUG?

Rob Reynolds — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:59:00 GMT

I just recently started working with the VB2005 Website instead of the Web Application Project (Beta 2 still) and found an interesting issue.
There is no project related file to look at properties on. So I was trying to turn on Option Strict because I had it set to on by default.

I figured that I would probably be setting it in the web.config file at some point, but searching didn't help much for awhile.
Apparently not alot of VB developers like to turn this setting on, so I finally found the answer on Microsoft's site:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2fdbs127(VS.80).aspx

So what does this do for you? Well it will give you Option Strict in aspx pages ONLY. By default it doesn't cover the code behind pages that some of us use,
which is where it is more important that it be applied. But hey, maybe the testers never really liked Option Strict and so didn't complain when nothing changed for them when they enabled it.

DevConnections Next Week

Rob Reynolds — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 08:23:00 GMT

I am headed out to DevConnections in Orlando, FL. Should be a great learning experience and a good time! :)

http://www.devconnections.com

Team Foundation Server: Create Shadow Folders (Workaround)

Rob Reynolds — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:20:00 GMT

TFS doesn't come with the ability to create shadow folders “out of the box.”

Buck Hodges has a good workaround that creates a psuedo-shadow folder.

[ http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2006/03/02/shadow_folders.aspx ]

Team Foundation Server: On Checkout, TFS Does NOT Perform a Get Latest (By Design)

Rob Reynolds — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:40:00 GMT

This can be irritating to find out about when you expect it to. This is something IMHO that should be configurable with TFS for those of us who would like to see a get latest performed on checkout. That will resolve issues with making changes to the Solution file and having to merge changes that could have conflicts. Think of having conflicts and resolving it through the merge tool and ending up with 32 projects instead of 16. That could be bad. I would hope at least a granular level of control where certain files are exclusively checked out and where you would be able to specify that certain files have a get latest on checkout to help avoid any conflicts such as the one described above.

[ http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2005/08/20/454140.aspx ]

[ http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showpost.aspx?postid=70231&siteid=1 ]

Team Foundation Server has been released!

Rob Reynolds — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:42:00 GMT

[ http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/03/16/553413.aspx ]

[ http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2006/03/16/553177.aspx ]

Although you can't download it from MSDN until next week, it is out today!

Post Build Events - Now In VB2005!

Rob Reynolds — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:46:00 GMT

Now you can also do PostBuild Events in VB2005 instead of having to add a C# project to do a postbuild event. Awesome!