Archives
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Managing Windows Services
It may happen that you wish to connect to and control the behavior of a Windows Service - programatically. There's a .NET class called ServiceController just to do that. It represents a Windows service and allows you to connect to a running or stopped service, manipulate it, or get information about it. You will most likely use the ServiceController component in an administrative capacity. For example, you could create a Windows or Web application that sends custom commands to a service through the ServiceController instance. This would be useful, because the Service Control Manager (SCM) Microsoft Management Console snapin does not support custom commands.
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"... pregnant with thought ..."
Rory on PDC 2003: “Up until a couple days ago, I was a Large-Conference-Virgin. I have since been robbed of my innocence, and am now pregnant with thought ...”
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AssemblyDiff Tool
John Lam (iunknown) has developed a small utility that will diff two different sets of assemblies and calculate the diff between .NET v1.1 and v1.2 of the Frameworks. Check it out here ...
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Articles at MSDNAA
The following two articles at MSDNAA are pretty interesting:
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Longhorn and Whidbey Preview for MSDN Subscribers
MSDN Operating Systems, Professional, Enterprise, and Universal subscribers can request a set of the software that will be distributed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003 (PDC), including the preview versions of Longhorn, the Longhorn SDK, and Microsoft Visual Studio code-named "Whidbey."
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High-end Backend
Werner Vogels has gathered some interesting notes on the backend architecture of some largely complex and distributed database-driven systems like those at eBay, Merrill Lynch, Swab, NASDAQ etc.
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Interviews from PDC
Radio Interviews with .NET techies from PDC via SYS-CON Radio.
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Avalon Screen Saver Contest and Longhorn Installation Tips
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The Best New Technologies of 2003
Business 2.0 (November 2003 Issue) features a nice article on The Best New Technologies of 2003. “Social Network Applications” is rated as the The Technology of the Year.
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Longhorn Development Center and XAML
The Longhorn Developer Center @ MSDN is live as expected. And so is the Longhorn SDK.
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Thread Isolator
While reading an article at CodeProject, I came across AmThreader - a code generator for “converting any singlethreaded .NET class to a multithreaded one”. However, what it actually does is create a class wrapper for any .NET class (not necessarily C#) and any call of wrapper class method will be translated to original class call but in a separate thread. For independent developers AmThreader is free.
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Inno Setup
Inno Setup 4.0.9 has been released. I use and recommend it for packaging & deployment of Windows desktop and client applications. Its scripting based compiler system provides a lot of flexibility. And, it is open source (Borland Delphi).
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WinToolZone
Gaurav Khanna has published some very cool .NET articles, applications, components, presentations, source code, tips and web services on his web site - WinToolZone.com (under the .NET menu option). He has also been working on extensions and enhancements to Rotor. Great content overall!
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How did they get their names?
Where did some of the most heard and renowned computer software & hardware companies get their names from? Here's an interesting look at the origin of corporate brands from Adobe to 3M: http://scott.yang.id.au/archives/000177.php
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Free ASP.NET Training
Free ASP.NET training sessions are scheduled in the month of October and November 2003 in New York, Florida and Virginia. A great offer indeed!
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Joel on Developers and Exceptions
In his latest article, Joel Spolsky refers to the Empower Program for ISVs: “If you're a software company willing to commit to developing software for any variant of Windows, you can join the Empower Program for ISVs, which entitles you a huge pile of software at the ridiculously low price of $750.” Not to mention, the video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the advanced stages of ecstatic frenzy chanting the “Developers” mantra ...
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Windows Form in Full Screen "Kiosk Mode"
[Quick Tip] The following lines of code (VB.NET) will produce a full screen Windows form - like the kiosk mode in Internet Explorer (press F11 to toggle). This screen mode is quite useful in situations where full screen user interactivity is required or the GUI demands full screen usability, like in multimedia demos, POS systems, embedded kiosk applications, touchscreen-driven apps, software installer programs etc.
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India .NET Forums
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Run .NET Code from SQL Stored Procedures
The CLR Proc Container is free software that enhances the capabilities of SQL Server stored procedures by opening a door to the .NET world. Code written in any .NET language can be invoked from stored procedures, providing stored procedures all the functionality of the full .NET runtime. Named procedures can be defined in .NET, dynamic procedures can be created and run, and binary objects passed between stored procedure code and the .NET object.
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PDC Woe
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FileSystemWatcher Tips
The .NET FileSystemWatcher class makes it possible to quickly and easily launch business processes when certain files or directories are created, modified, or deleted. The FileSystemWatcher class, for example, can be quite useful in application integration, by way of monitoring incoming data files and processing it once an event is raised. It listens to the file system change notifications and raises events when a directory, or file(s) in a directory, changes. The component can watch files on a local computer, a network drive, or a remote computer.
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Rules to Better .NET Projects
Rules to Better .NET Projects by SSW.com.au. Some basic but interesting points discussed there.
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Scheduled Execution in ASP.NET
On a .NET-based project, I had the need to run scheduled maintenance tasks on the web server. My first preference was building a Windows Service or a Console Application (and scheduling it using the Windows Scheduler to run at regular intervals). However, this option was not feasible considering that the client for whom I am developing the application plans to host it in a shared hosting environment where they don't have the privilege to deploy & run a Windows Service or Console Applications. So I had to come-up with an alternate approach, something that's robust, efficient and flexible - if not as suitable for the concerned task as a Windows Service or a Console Application.
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.NET News (Portal?!?!)
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.NET India User Groups
MSDN .NET India User Groups exist to help facilitate education and knowledge exchange among developers, architects and managers (residing/working in India) with an interest in Microsoft's .NET technologies. They provide a great place for local developers to come together to learn about .NET technologies, to network with their peers and to foster a sense of community among developers learning and using the same technologies.
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VS.NET Full Screen Mode
Just discovered the full screen mode in VS.NET - Press Alt + Shift + Enter in the IDE to toggle between the normal and full screen mode. Sure looks awesome on a 17” monitor!
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Longhorn Bits
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Sample Chapters
Srinivasa Sivakumar has listed more than 500 sample chapters (in HTML/PDF format) on his resource site, from various books related to .NET. A great resource!
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Free .NET Web Hosting
Some guys at work and others online, have been asking me for some suggestions on a free .NET web host. Free hosting may be a good way to play around and learn .NET (ASP.NET in particular) but by no means is it suitable and reliable for live production-level applications. Although I strongly recommend a (paid) basic shared hosting plan for any meaningful development but I just did a bit of lookup and came-up with the following list of free .NET web hosts:
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.NET Framework Class Browser
I find the .NET Framework Class Browser very convinient. It has saved me a lot of time on a daily basis looking for namespaces, classes and interfaces. I remember the commonly used namespaces and their respective classes but information on rarely used namespaces and their classes is just a click away with this web site. Nice quick reference material!
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XML Resume Library
One of the development teams at my office recently used the XML Resume Library for a document management project in ASP.NET. Although it was a pilot project for a HR consultancy but the guys here seem to be appreciating the usefulness of the library. Earlier, we were planning to develop our own custom solution to document management but apparently the time-to-delivery was cut-short by days from using the existing library. The XML Resume Library is an XML and XSL based system for marking up, adding metadata to, and formatting resumes and curricula vitae.
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Yahoo Groups blocked in India
Lately, I haven't been able to access the Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com) from back here in India. There are tons of .NET-related groups which I browse once in a while to respond to queries, get answers to my own questions and share custom code snippets. Unfortunately, following an order by the Government of India, Indian ISP's have blocked access to Yahoo Groups due to some political and anti-national content. However, I figured out a quick “hack” to still access Yahoo Groups by accessing any one of the localized gateways like groups.yahoo.co.uk or groups.yahoo.com.au.
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F# Compiler
Following an e-mail from a friend, I browsed the information on the F# compiler (a Microsoft Research project). Seems pretty cool but not something I would like to get a taste of right-away. There's already too much - more relevant (atleast for me) to soak. But its good to see that the .NET-based development context is expanding and programmers from “unmanaged” code domains can easily try-out or maybe even migrate to .NET with the help of available resources like this one.