In my previous post on this topic,  I concluded with three key points: The Begin function does not actually initiate the physical call on the wire – it simply places these calls into a queue to be processed later.  Due to point #1, if you are making multiple asynchronous calls while varying the parameters on an input struct or...

I run into this infrequently enough that I have to search on the properties.  Since I usually have a hard time finding the details...Using the "Bindable" attribute on a public property will make this property available through the design-time properties and settable on the aspx.The aspx setting for the following property would...

I’ve been reading David Anderson’s Agile Management for Software Engineering book.  The subtitle “Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results” piqued my interest as I’ve been following ToC/Lean in the manufacturing space for some time. We also took the principles of ToC and Lean and applied them to our software...

I decided to blog this collapsable list after digging it up recently for another project.  The idea is very simple and cleans up processing lists that may result in long/unsightly output on a web page. The code is very simple and straight-forward, no AJAX here - just complete client-side management of the list display.  I've removed...

I've had several conversations on OO languages in the past couple of months.  Going back to the migration from C to C++, developers became dependent on the 'new' operator and many times did so without understanding the consequences. In C++, 'new' = malloc() + non-inline function call (constructor).  So I started wondering - what...

The latest word on anti-virus firms  focuses on their inability to adjust to the rootkits that are running around in the wild these days.  Companies such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro do not have rootkit detection and removal capabilities.   While rootkit detection and removal appears to require an architectural...

Here's the code for a command-line utility I've written for gathering EventLog information from remote testing/production machines on our network.  I've found the utility to be pretty handy and can be xcopy'd without any other assemblies.  While the utility writes all information out to the Console, it is...

Last night, I grabbed my video camera and hooked it up to my pc to create a DVD of some home movies. I haven't done this in a while, so I dusted off my copy of Pinnacle Studio 9, installed all the patches and started working.  This program just randomly crashes - sometimes with errors, sometimes it just disappears.  The product is not...

On my new project,  I've been helping to trace down problems with 3rd party/backend libraries exhibiting bad behaviors.  In tracking down these behaviors, I've been using TCPView to watch connections and see how the application is behaving on the wire.  TCPView is a product written by Mark Russinovich and made available at...

 I’ve spent the last couple of months in a new job, new project, etc..  The project I’m working on deals with securities data and the application's scope is very interesting.  We’re using a combination of ASPX and ASMX services for the consumer-facing services and WinForms apps on the back-end.    When I started...

I'm looking at distributing a C# assembly that provides access to a C/C++ dll.  On first thought, I was thinking I didn't need the GAC so long as a user is aware of where the C# assembly and C dll directory is.  As I think about this, since the C# assembly will be compiled and run elsewhere - will it be able to find the C dll...

I’ve been playing with Red-Gate’s Sql Dependency Viewer which is currently in Beta.  During this beta period, Red-Gate  is allowing people to download the tool for free.   I’ve run into a few dependency viewers based on sysdepends in various blogs, but I’ve always run into problems with one project I worked on.  The...

I've been pretty quite lately - job change plus other changes have had me pretty heads down. I've started into a new position where we're in the middle of a 1.0 product release - the benefits of testing approaches are always so apparent at these times.  I'm spending the morning the catching up on email but thought I'd take a break to talk...

I blogged about some problems we were having with an EMC NAS device and file locking with C#/.Net.  It turns out the differences between the file systems were causing strange problems - it looked like phantom processes were holding locks on the files. One of the guys on our team nailed this problem by using the NFS support in Windows...

Doug Rhoten over at CVNUG just sent me a link to the LINQ project.  The LINQ project extends C# and VB.NET wih  native language syntax for queries.  There are some excellent resources on the page along with code tutorials. Native language syntax for queries is something I've missed since my xBase days. ...