Coffee, smoke and techilicious burps at 3.47 AM

Visual Studio 2008 Unit tests… Error loading .vsmdi: .vsmdi

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:01:38 GMT

I got this error. I got no information on the internet as to how to get around it… 3 hours earlier: I wanted to create a sequence diagram from the code I have already written. Visual Studio 2010 comes with the sequence diagram feature. I decided heck...(read more)

UML 101

Nilotpal Das — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:13:31 GMT

So you need to read the entire UML book in 20 minutes. What do you do? These are the excerpts from the Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual I was reading and thought I could summarize for a quick refresh. Aggregation and composition: Generalization...(read more)

Dots instead of spaces in Studio 2008 while running test cases…

Nilotpal Das — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:51:16 GMT

Well I was running my test cases today and suddenly all my white spaces turned into dots. Yes it creeped the heck out of me. First thing I thought was to get rid of that. Went to Tools and Options and couldn’t find the setting that would get rid of the...(read more)

Left outer join in Entity Framework

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:04:46 GMT

This evening I heard someone say that Left Outer Joins are not possible in Entity Framework or perhaps Left Outer Joins are possible, but they bring in all the data and then filter out the right table. I felt an urge to argue, but I resisted. I thought...(read more)

Singleton Vs. Static Class

Nilotpal Das — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:40:01 GMT

Well I was asked this question once. “What is a singleton design pattern and why should I use it? Why not use a static class instead?” And it was quite surprising how it went. I said that Singleton is used when you need to maintain state. Static classes...(read more)

To query the local object context

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:48:53 GMT

When faced with the dilemma that what if I wanted to insert something and before I actually saved the changes into a persistent storage (database) by calling SaveAllChanges() method on the data context, I wanted to do a select, and also I wanted to make...(read more)

Entity Framework, Business Objects and Beyond…

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:58:50 GMT

Back during the RMI days, we used to generate skeleton (henceforth referred to as skel or skels) and stubs for all long range service communications… Yes… WCF has its roots there and perhaps further into the past…! Details available here . Looking at...(read more)

Does not have a valid owner

Nilotpal Das — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:27:19 GMT

“Database diagram support objects cannot be installed because this database does not have a valid owner. To continue, first use the Files page of the Database Properties dialog box or the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement to set the database owner to a valid...(read more)

Xsd to Database

Nilotpal Das — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:03:32 GMT

There are times when you have to work with XML. Yes those dreadful times. Specially the times when you get data as XML. And not just master data you sometimes get transactional data in XML. Think about it. How much worse can it get if you had to work...(read more)

Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile.

Nilotpal Das — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:19:05 GMT

This is not a problem that I feel you would encounter on a regular basis. I think I had a unique problem because of which I encountered this one. When you install an operating system it allows you to create a profile. Now I installed the machine at home...(read more)

Function Point Analysis (FPA) Glossary

Nilotpal Das — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:00:55 GMT

Internal Logical File (ILF): An internal logical file (ILF) is a user identifiable group of logically related data or control information maintained within the boundary of the application. The primary intent of an ILF is to hold data maintained through...(read more)

Update an entity in Repository Pattern

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:08:19 GMT

Look around the web. You will find no Update method in the repository patterns for entity framework implementations published. There are different flavors of retrieves, mark for insertions an deletions but no update implementation. And curiously this...(read more)

Repository Pattern – The purpose

Nilotpal Das — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:33:07 GMT

We decided to implement the repository pattern for the Entity Framework Implementation in our project. So last couple of weeks people have been asking me why the repository pattern is required. I mean what is it that this pattern does besides giving a...(read more)

Are you Eager? Or are you Lazy? Or are you both on a case to case basis...??

Nilotpal Das — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:37:00 GMT

Entity Framework, Eager Loading and Lazy Loading, my own 2 cents. For those new to Entity Framework, we are talking about the patterns that you can use to load related objects. The strategy by which you would load entity objects that are related to the...(read more)

StyleCop and Good Code

Nilotpal Das — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:58:17 GMT

So you are serious about your code quality huh... well StyleCop is a fantastic tool to ensure that. The best part is, it integrates with Studio 2008. It is simple. Go to This Location , click on downloads and download the latest version of StyleCop. As...(read more)