# Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Retrieve the column name which have uniqie constraints on them in a CodeSmith template.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010 6:13:07 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Two useful menu items to help eliminate "using" clutter in VS2008.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:43:28 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Saturday, November 07, 2009
More promising features of VS2010
Saturday, November 07, 2009 3:45:19 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Wednesday, September 16, 2009
How to enumerate all the shortcut keys in the Visual Studio IDE
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 6:22:12 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Monday, August 31, 2009

Since I am going back into full time consulting, I decided lugging around twenty 800 page books is a bad idea. Tonight, I pulled the trigger in a Kindle DX. A bit pricy, but the fact I can annotate my books (and export the annotations) and read native PDFs, I can see the value in the price. I only wish it allowed you to annotate PDFs, as I know I can put a LOT of things in PDF form and place on there.

So I was noticing Amazon charges for placing RSS feeds on the Kindle, and I decided to either find a service which converts RSS feeds to PDF format, or write one myself. Fortunately, I found Tabbloid, which mails your RSS feeds in PDF format at an interval you specify. Even better, it looks free. I may still write one and put some filtering capability in it, but this is a win for now.

The other gadget I have and just enjoy is my Pioneer XMp3 player. It allows me to record XM content, and place all kinds of music on the Micro SD card. It's still kind of buggy, and with the XM-Sirius merger, I don't imagine that will change, but I still enjoy it immensely.

Monday, August 31, 2009 5:26:21 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Sunday, August 30, 2009

Normally, I don't have enough time to really dig into the bleeding edge technologies, but I am trying to rectify that. The question is always "When is it too early.."

For now, I have been looking at some of .Net 4.0's newer features, and one really cool thing for environments which have years of legacy software is called "Multi-targeting". Essentially, it allows you set the target environment for an application in the same IDE (but later target new versions).

As an example, let's say you are currently using ASP.Net 2.0, and you have to because of client concerns. No problem, you'll be able to set the VS IDE to target the 2.0 framework. However, when you decide to upgrade, you can just change the target framework version. The neat thing is that the IDE willl hide and show Intellisense based on the target framework as well.

Scott Guthie is writing a series on it I plan on following closely. This time, I may just have to be more bleeding edge than I have been in the past.

Sunday, August 30, 2009 4:31:31 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Friday, August 28, 2009

I am a huge fan of CodeSmith. If you are not familiar with it, and you do any amount of coding at all, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Below is some template code which loads the foreign keys of a table into a Dictionary object. It stores the name of the table and foreign key field name. As you can see, it generates a notice when it comes across a recursive relationship.

 

public Dictionary<string,string> GetForeignKeyTables()
{
    Dictionary<string,string> dic = new Dictionary<string,string>( );

 for (int idx = 0; idx < SourceTable.ForeignKeys.Count; idx ++)
 {
        string primaryTable = String.Empty;
        string primaryKey = String.Empty;

  // To get the foreign key columns
  ColumnSchema col1 = SourceTable.ForeignKeys[idx].ForeignKeyMemberColumns[0];
        primaryKey = col1.Name.Trim();

  // To get the foreign key tables
        primaryTable = SourceTable.ForeignKeys[idx].PrimaryKeyTable.ToString().Replace("dbo.",String.Empty).Trim();
        if (!dic.ContainsKey(primaryKey))
            dic.Add(primaryKey, primaryTable);
        else
            MessageBox.Show("This table may contain recursive relationships. You must set those relationships up manually.");
    }

    return dic;
}

 

Friday, August 28, 2009 10:48:39 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Some tools I downloaded today which appear VERY useful, and touching on the ORM topic.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 6:31:11 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Friday, April 28, 2006
A new blog...
Friday, April 28, 2006 4:38:06 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Easy solution..
All Things | C# | General | Tools
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 11:00:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
Re-inventing an outdated but very useful wheel....
All Things | ASP.Net | C# | CSharp | General | Tools
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 3:44:55 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Is it just my installation, or is WinCV missing from the latest version of .Net? Granted, I can still use the old WinCV by changing the config file, but why was such a useful tool pulled from VS2005?

If you've never used WinCV, check it out for VS2003 and prior version. It essentially lets you search the framework for a certain keyword. For example, if you want to find out which namespace "Registry" is in, type it in, and see the entire implementation. By using the configuration file, you can add additional assemblies for WinCV, to search your own libraries or those of third party vendors.

 

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 1:48:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Friday, October 07, 2005
..or why MS has once again dropped the ball on it's core developer community.
Friday, October 07, 2005 4:57:27 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Wednesday, July 20, 2005
When you have to eat your hat...
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:31:12 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Tuesday, July 19, 2005
I hate LLBLGen, ask me why!!
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 5:49:51 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [5]  | 
# Friday, May 27, 2005
Need a good developer?
Friday, May 27, 2005 12:33:35 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  | 
Tired of cutting and pasting? Try CodeSmith...
Friday, May 27, 2005 12:19:32 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Friday, December 10, 2004
Too tired to code, so I will at least post a link or two..
Friday, December 10, 2004 2:30:27 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [3]  | 
# Friday, December 03, 2004
If you own a TabletPC, gotta have this!
Friday, December 03, 2004 3:23:38 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Thursday, December 02, 2004
Well lookie what else it can do!
Thursday, December 02, 2004 5:42:28 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Monday, November 29, 2004
Save the day!
Monday, November 29, 2004 6:16:26 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Follow me as I configure a client in automated builds
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 9:47:25 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
# Sunday, November 21, 2004
How to configure log4net to save entries into the database
Sunday, November 21, 2004 4:05:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  | 
# Wednesday, November 10, 2004
How to search all those assemblies and find just what you need...
Wednesday, November 10, 2004 4:47:53 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Tuesday, November 09, 2004
CodeLib from fish
Tuesday, November 09, 2004 5:34:42 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
# Saturday, October 23, 2004
A cool addin for getting source code onto the web...
Saturday, October 23, 2004 5:31:16 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  |