I’ve been getting my slides and code samples together over the past few weeks for the upcoming conferences. The next one I’ll be at is at the end of this month in Boston at VSLive talking about transactions. The session is titled Lightweight Promotable Transactions using System Transactions and ADO.NET 2 and is at 2pm on June 30th. Below is...

I’ll be at VSLive in Boston at the end of this month demonstrating coding techniques with ADO.NET 2, so please drop by and say hi if you get a chance. The session is titled Get Ready for ADO.NET 2 and is at 5:45pm on June 29th. Below is the synopsis of the session … and the agenda from my slide deck:   Get Ready for ADO.NET 2 Data...

I’ve been getting my slides and code samples together over the past few weeks for the upcoming conferences. The next one I’ll be at is at the end of this month in Boston at VSLive talking about transactions. The session is titled Lightweight Promotable Transactions using System Transactions and ADO.NET 2 and is at 2pm on June 30th...

As I posted last week, I got up a new iPod mini for running and light soccer drills. It was a very nice birthday / father’s day gift from my family. I bought myself some of the Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones that Sahil and Brendan both recommended. They are excellent and quite comfortable. I don’t push them all the...

The July 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online. The amount of discussion that has surrounded the Enterprise Library and its Application Blocks (good, bad and indifferent) has been tremendous. I decided to create a 3 part series that explores the Enterprise Library Data Access blocks in my Data Points column. In this issue I...

OK, so I pick up a new iPod mini for running and light soccer drills. (I’ll review how it holds up after some time with it) The headphones are not so good so I get myself some of the Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones that Sahil and Brendan both recommended these as well). I got the headphones for $81 at buy.com which is also...

The Finalizer was revealed today at Tech Ed. You can check out this BattleBot that runs on .NET code at the new web site. New content is still being added including videos and an official case study.

At today's Tech-Ed keynote address in Orlando, Microsoft Vice President Paul Flessner announced that Visual Studio.NET 2005 will "launch internationally the week of November 7th". He also stated that SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006 will be launched that week, too.   I imagine the official launch site will be updated soon,...

OK, so this isn’t rocket science, but then again some of the best things are the simplest. You can do a lot with the information_schema views in SQL Server. Here is a short stored procedure that you can use to find: a table by its full name a table by partial name a column by its full name a column by its partial name  It comes in handy...

Pablo Castro, Microsoft's Program Manager of the ADO.NET Team, has a good post last week that helps clarify how bath updates are intended to work in ADO.NET 2. This is a common discussion that I am drawn into since the DataAdapter actually invokes its command for each modified row in the DataTable that it is associated with. Thus if you have a...

As I mentioned in a blog last week, I downloaded two refactoring tools: .NET Refactor and ReSharper. I had some really horrible experiences with refactoring tools in the past, so I was a bit skeptical going in. It has been a week so here are a few more thoughts about the tools. While .NET Refactor has some nice features, like the how...

As I mentioned in a blog last week, I downloaded two refactoring tools: .NET Refactor and ReSharper. I had some really horrible experiences with refactoring tools in the past, so I was a bit skeptical going in. It has been a week so here are a few more thoughts about the tools. While .NET Refactor has some nice features, like the how...

OK, so it has taken me a long time to give in and join the growing group of developers who use 2 or more monitors. Some of my colleagues have been using them for years and touting the incredible convenience that it is to have 2 monitors. I don’t really have a good reason why I never did it other than the cost of the second monitor. Now that...

In the past I have been skeptical of the refactoring tools purely because my experiences have been such that they are buggy, can slow down my IDE while they are processing and have even crashed my IDE at times. Well, its been a year or so since I have tried them so I figured I would give them another shot last week. After all, the idea behind...

There are several ways to convert and cast values in .NET. For example, DirectCast versus System.Convert and if you are a VB.NET'er, you have the CInt, CBool, Cxxx functions. It is along these lines that I offer this quiz: What are the differences between the following ways to cast an object?   Casting quiz/// Technique #1 object item...