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Visual Studio 2005 ASP.NET F5 Debugging performance

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:27:00 PDT

I was experiencing a delay of about a minute between pressing F5 to start debugging my ASP.NET application (VS2005 SP1, Vista) and anything appearing in the browser. After researching this and installing various hotfixes, nothing improved. Removing the google toolbar however seemed to make debugging return to its normal speed.

ASP/ASPX pages giving 404 errors

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:12:00 PDT

In case I need to do this in future... I have been trying to copy a web site to a new web server (Windows Server 2003) and getting very confused about why .ASP and .ASPX pages were giving 404 errors, but HTML pages were displaying correctly. The reason was "ASP.NET" and "Active Server Pages" in the Web Service Extensions directory were both set to "Prohibited".

The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 05:21:00 PDT

I was getting an error message "The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel." when trying to connect to an HTTPS site using an HttpWebRequest. As the site I was connecting to was a test site from a 3rd party known to me, but not set up correctly at their end, to bypass this check I added the following line before calling GetRequestStream on my HttpWebRequest. ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback += new...

A set of principles for taking a new assignment

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:40:00 PDT

Gerald M. Weinberg offers a set of principles for taking on a new assignment.

InternalsVisibleToAttribute, Unit Testing and Strong Names

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:05:00 PDT

I previously posted about using the InternalsVisibleTo attibute for testing with NUnit. I've had some problems building this with a stronly named assembly. I found the following post on Kent Boogaart's blog that describes how you should change the code in your assemblyinfo.cs file as follows: [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("Company")] to [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("Company, PublicKey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx")]

Adding a strong name to a third party dll

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:35:00 PDT

I've been trying to build an assembly with a strong name and had some problems as it referenced a 3rd party assembly which had been built without a strong name. To add a strong name I disassembled and reassembled the 3rd party assmbly as follows: ildasm /out:thirdparty.dll.il thirdparty.dll ilasm /dll /resource=thirdparty.dll.res thirdparty.dll.il /out=thirdparty.dll /key=mykey.snk

World Environment Day

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:07:00 PDT

To celebrate World Environment Day, we have all been given a flowerpot, some peat and some forget-me-not seeds. You can follow whether the seeds grow into a beautiful plant or not here.

Refreshing Progress Bars

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:01:00 PDT

I've been having some problems getting a progress bar to refresh, trying various calls to Refresh() and Invalidate() without much success. The solution to this is to create the dialog containing the progress bar in another thread, as described here. Although the dialog is modeless, it should be displayed using ShowDialog(), not Show().

Standard for improving Standards

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 16 May 2007 02:29:00 PDT

Simon Baker suggests that standardisation does not have to supress innovation. It's important to communicate the best ways of doing things, but standards are often enforced in a way that people are expected to accept without question. However, there are often many ways of doing something, and the best way will change over time with changes in technology and changes in people. Perhaps standards should be seen as something that should be followed, but when its thought they cause a problem,...

Visual Studio 2005 - Disappearing controls on Windows Form

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:21:00 PDT

My computer crashed the other day and when I returned to edit my application, to my horror I noticed that the controls on a very complicated windows form that I was working on had vanished. When I tried to edit it, all I got was an empty dialog box, but all the source code for my form was still there. I found several references to disappearing controls in VS2003, but they all said the problem had been fixed in VS2005. The cause of this turned out to be that some lines had removed...

Complete years between 2 dates

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:23:00 PST

A problem we have had calculating ages was due to it using the SQL Server "DateDiff" function. This counts the number of times a day crosses a boundary, e.g. DateDiff(year,'12/31/2006','1/1/2007') is 1, as it crosses the 2006-2007 boundary. DateDiff(year,'1/1/2006','12/31/2006') is 0 as it doesn't cross a year boundary. I have written a function "yeardiff", which calculates the number of complete years between 2 dates, so YearDiff('12/31/2006','1/1/2007') is...

Nant and licensed 3rd party controls

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:04:00 PST

I've been having some problems building a project containing licensed grid and graph components from ComponentOne using NAnt. The project built correctly in Visual Studio, but when built with NAnt I got a box saying the component was not licensed. I've found some others have had similar problems, but no solutions have been posted. I go it working after a lot of trial and error as follows: 1) Use an <exec> task to run the license compiler (lc.exe). 2) Ensure the /target: command does not...

10 Characteristics of a great programmer

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:11:00 PST

Steve Riley has complied a great list of the 10 characteristics of a great programmer. I'd agree with everything on the list - the one thing that is missing is that great programmers know why they are doing what they are doing - there's no point producing an excellent solution to the wrong problem.

Cakes

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:14:00 PST

Cote writes about requirements gathering and cakes. If your powerful boss asks you for a cake, you can't easily find out the details of what he wants. You have to find out via secondary sources (e.g. the boss's calendar, asking the baker what sort of cakes the boss has ordered before). The calendar may not be up to date, and the baker may not remember accurately. This takes longer and is more likely to go wrong. If there are more steps than necessary in finding out requirements, the...

Personal Search Filter

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:44:00 PST

If you want to find out information about something, you will typically enter terms into a search engine. The search engine will determine which results are most relevant (by using a complex algorithm based on how important it thinks the pages are). Everybody using this search engine will see the same results. The things you want to see might not be the same as the things others want to see. However, you are more likely to want to see things that people "compatible with you" liked. If A...

Anti-tests

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 02:21:00 PST

Charles Miller describes the concept of an "Anti-Test", which is a test that verifies a bug exists. This can be written when the problem is discovered, even if it's not going to be fixed immediately. It means that if the problem is inadvertently fixed as a result of something else, we know this has happened, have a look at why this is the case and update our records accordingly. The test can then be changed to a normal test to make sure it doesn't go wrong again. When you're ready to fix an...

NAnt version

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 02:09:00 PST

I've been trying to add version numbers to a NAnt build script using the <version> task, and come across a problem with the script in Marc Holmes' "Expert .NET delivery" book. The task increments a property called "buildnumber.version", not "sys.version". Adding the following line to the script (as described here) seems to fix it. <property name="sys.version" value="${buildnumber.version}" />

Using attributes to specify the contents of a menu

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 08:22:00 PST

Most people think it is a good idea to separate business and presentation logic in your application, so you can update one without changing the other. When you create an application with a menu bar, the menu items will often call functions in your business logic, and if you add a new business logic function you will need to add a handler in your presentation layer and the business logic function in your business logic layer. This article describes how you can add attributes in your...

InternalsVisibleToAttribute and Unit Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 05:10:00 PDT

When creating unit tests to be run with NUnit, I like to keep my tests in a separate assembly, which is not delivered when my project is deployed. This can make it difficult to create unit tests for classes that should not be visible outside of that assembly. One of my classes uses one of 3 strategy classes that encapsulate a feature of the business logic. I would normally declare these with the intern access modifier, but to test each strategy works I've needed to make them publically...

Processes and Practices

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:33:00 PDT

Jared Richardson describes a process he wants his team to follow. Many others have attempted the same and have reached similar conclusions, and I can't disagree with any of Jared's thoughts. However, I think he misses out the most important part of the process which should be to regularly think about your process and what you have done and how you could have done it better. All processes and practices should be adaptable. Different people have different strengths and new technologies mean...

C# collection classes performance

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:42:00 PDT

I was looking for a table summarizing how different C# generic and non-generic collection classes performed, relative to one another, thought there would be hundreds available, but could not find one. So here one is for my future reference, and for anyone else who reads this. O(1) = constant time O(log n) = time proportional to the log of the number of elements in the collection O(n) = time proportional to the number of elements in the collection Some collections are better for smaller...

The type or namespace name 'Properties' could not be found

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:25:00 PDT

I was getting an error message when building my project that said "The type or namespace name 'Properties' could not be found". This was because I had changed the default namespace in the properties for my project to make it "project.name" instead of "name". The class that did not build was already in the namespace "project.name". The error message was on a line that said "global::name.Properties.Resources...." Changing this to "global::project.name.Properties.Resources...." seemed to...

Export to excel from SQL Server Express

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:23:00 PDT

Once upon a time, a big bad grizzly bear wanted to write a program to export a view from an SQL Server Express database (containing the names and addresses of sweet fluffy things he wanted to eat) to an Excel file. As this was SQL server express, he tried to use DTEXEC and integration services, but growled ferociously when he realised that integration services was not supplied with excel, promising to sharpen his claws and tear apart Bill Gates. However, a passing raccoon came to his...

Shrinking an SQL Server 2000 Transaction Log

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:54:00 PDT

I have a database in which the transaction log grew to 19GB, taking up the entire disk space on the server it was on, and which could not be shrunk. Most of the things I found on the net didn't shrink this very much. However, I found the following script here which worked well, reducing it from 19GB to 52 MB. http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread79839.html use database_name go create table shrinkfile( col1 int, col2 char(2048) ) dump tran database_name with no_log dbcc...

Updating .NET user controls on the screen

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Jonas) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:57:00 PDT

I have some user controls that I need to add a lot of data to. This can be slow as the screen display is updated when each item of data is added. It also makes the dislpay flicker. I couldn't find an equivalent of the BeginUpdate and EndUpdate functions in .NET 2.0, but it is possible to call the Windows API functions as follows. private const int WM_SETREDRAW = 11; [System.Runtime.InteropServices. DllImport("user32.dll")] static extern bool SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msd, Int32...