The June 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online. With all of the press that SQL Server 2005 gets, I thought it would be nice to discuss in my Data Points column how to tackle several XML scenarios when using SQL Server 2000 and show how to send and receive XML data to and from a .NET application. In this issue I discuss how to use...

For a look at a non ADO.NET solution ... Dino Esposito wrote an article called Collections and Data Binding in a recent MSDN Magazine issue. Its a good read and addresses how to bind collections to controls, as opposed to using ADO.NET objects for binding. I believe he is going to follow this up with a discussion of collections vs DataSets in a...

A few days ago Raymond Lewallen blogged about refactoring some VB.NET code using interfaces, and abstract classes. I followed up with a C# example of the same code in a blog. I thought this would be interesting to see how it looks in a VS.NET Beta 2 class diagram. One of the nice features that I like about the tool is that it lets me export an...

ASPSOFT has released Trailer #2 for Project Rally, which will be unveiled at Tech Ed (June 5–10 in Orlando, FL). And in case you missed it, you can check out Trailer #1 for Project Rally here, as well. It is going to be awesome!  

OK, I don't want to leave out the C# developers from this VB.NET OOP example that Raymond posted recently. So here is one way to accomplish this code in C#.   Inheritence, Interfaces, and OOP (oh my!)public class foo { public static Int32 GetNumberOfRequiredTokens(IPerson person) { return person.GetNumberOfRequiredTokens(); } } public...

I've recently had a flurry of email asking how to navigate up to a grandparent table using ADO.NET. Assuming that it is not preferable to export all of the data to Xml and use an XPath, ADO.NET offers a few other ADO.NET based solutions. One solution is to use expression based columns. (If you want more of an explanation of how to use...

I am happy to announce that I am joining ASPSOFT (aka the haven of the angrycoder, Jonathon Goodyear). I ran across Jonathon somewhat by accident when I was exploring the job market in southwest Florida, we started talking and after a few weeks I was on board with ASPSOFT. (It's funny that Jonathon and I have never actually met before since we...

Scott Stewart gives a good overview of Delegates and Event Handlers in his recent blog. He has some good points regarding how to define events and some of the implications of not using some forethought in designing events.

I was just poking around in Visual Studio.NET 2005 Beta 2 and I noticed that in my VB.NET project there is now the option to create build events! This is a feature that I have used a lot in C# WinForm projects to copy my Enterprise Library configuration files to the targe directory (release or debug). I am glad it is now available in VB.NET (at...

Tom Hollander, Product Manager of Enterprise Library, announced that a new patch is out for Ent Lib. It patches a memory leak in the Enterprise Library Configuration Application Block, which is used by all of the other blocks. I downloaded it, installed it and was done within minutes. Testing several apps that use Ent Lib showed that everything...

I’ve been using BlogJet for a few weeks now to post to my blog and while it has not overwhelmed me, it has proven to be a useful tool. Here are some quick observations that I have made regarding the pros and cons that are important to me: Pros: It is nice to be able to post to my blog without having to go to my blog’s web page I can...

If you want to get a head start on ASP.NET 2, check out the ASP.NET 2 QuickStarts Tutorial. It's all beta, so of course treat it as such. I've played with a few of them and there is some decent stuff out there already. Code samples are avaialble in C# or VB.NET, as well.

I have been writing for MSDN Magazine for almost 7 years with what started out as feature articles and moved into my current Data Points column. 7 years is a long time and is it suggests, I love working for them. I get a lot of comments via email from readers and despite the volume, I do read all of them. I don;t have the time to reply to all...

I am really excited about some of the new features in ADO.NET 2. I posted here last month regarding how the ADO.NET 2 DataTable class will expose a Merge method (woo hoo!). I found this very useful when I had DataTable's to merge but no DataSet (and thus had to create a DataSet just to merge the DataTable objects -- yuk!) Anyway, there are...

The May 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/05/DataPoints/default.aspx. After a 2 month break, my Data Points column is back. In this issue I discuss several Data Access Strategies Using ADO.NET and SQL, inlcuding some tips on writing queries, connection maintenance and building...