April 2003 - Posts

• My Biggest InfoPath Gripe

  If you have a schema which is not finalized and you happen to modify it, you have to recreate your entire InfoPath template from scratch. This seems to be a result of the fact that once you point a template at a schema, InfoPath copies it internal to it's .xsn file and references only that local copy from that point on. I can't seem to find any "Refresh Data Source" functionality, which I would expect to just detect any form elements that were maybe removed or modified and notify the user that he/she must recreate those. I realize it's not supposed to be a developer tool, but this is a really aggravating problem and I can't imagine that Microsoft doesn't realize that developers and knowledge workers are going to be working hand in hand while developing forms that submit to web services. Other than this, I'm very impressed with the tool and believe that it really could play a major role in taking web-services that next-step... if people learn how to leverage it properly. Posted Apr 30 2003, 05:00 PM by drub0y with 2 comment(s) Filed under: .NET

• Office 2003 XML Shell Extension

  ... I also noticed that Office 2003 must've installed some shell helper for XML files, because when I saved the file to my desktop, the shell peeked inside the XML file and gave me an XML document icon with the Excel icon overlaid across the upper left corner. I wonder why the file opened in my browser on double-click instead of into Excel... ... [The .NET Guy] I noticed this as well. Office seems to achieve this cute bit of functionality by inserting a PI into the XML instance document which the shell extension just scans all .XML files for to determine if the file should be opened with a specific Office application. The PI looks like this: <?mso-application progid="InfoPath.Document"?> Posted Apr 29 2003, 04:29 PM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• Strongly Typed IEnumerable/IEnuerator: Perf. Boost

  Trevor Misfeldt has an interesting article on iteration performance in .NET . Here are some additional things to consider: ... snipped for brevity ... It would be cool if someone (Trevor?) would perform these simple steps and rerun the tests. The results should be much closer to the indexer. [Don Box's Spoutlet] Don's spot on here. All too often people overlook the performance boost of strongly typed IEnumerable/IEnumerator implementations. I think this is mainly because you have to write a lot of redundant code each time you write a custom collection. Of course, you could just have a code-generator to do the work for you. ;) Fortunately, I think this issue will go away for C# people with the advent of iterators which will be a welcome addition to the language's features in the Whidbey release of .NET. Posted Apr 25 2003, 09:58 AM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• Using XmlElement As A Parameter Type In Your Web Methods

  Matt Powell explores different ways to use XmlElement parameters with your Web service to access raw XML data and gain high-level control. [MSDN Articles] Great article detailing how you can change the singature of your web methods in ASP.NET web services to gain tighter control of the underlying XML. Posted Apr 22 2003, 04:57 PM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• Chris Sells Received His Implant Today

  ... Right now I'm sitting in NEO (New Employee Orientation) for Microsoft employees. Not only is it a cool name, but the nice folks at Microsoft provide a wireless network for new folks that can't spent hours w/o one (although I'm the only one that's geeky enough to have his laptop out at the moment : ). I start today as a Content Specialist on the MSDN content team at Microsoft, Corp. I'll be in charge of the Longhorn DevCenter. A DevCenter is a section of the MSDN web site that focuses on a specific technology area, like the XML/Web Services DevCenter . Longhorn is Microsoft's next major operation system (and different than Windows Server 2003 , which is the OS that Microsoft is launching this month). I can't (yet) say anything more about Longhorn except that it's cool enough that I took a job at MS so that I could get my hands on it. If you are dying for more info on Longhorn, but aren't quite ready to change your employment arrangements to get it, check out the PDC in October . And, if you stop by and say "hi," I'll show you the implant scars... : ) ... [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] Wow, Microsoft is scoring some serious talent lately. Congratulations to both Chris and Microsoft! ;) Can't wait to read some serious developer oriented articles on Longhorn. Posted Apr 21 2003, 04:32 PM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• MS Plans To Torture Us Slowly With Whidbey Details

  I know, I know, you just got your hands on Everett, but I thought I’d start wetting your appetite for Whidbey (the next release of the .NET Framework and Tools)… As I see cool Whidbey demos I’ll let you know about them…. This one really brought back memories for me from the good old days of gamming. A guy on my team has a console based version of Space Invaders up and running. He did it 100% in C#, no PInvokes needed. Very cool… I can’t wait to see what you folks will do with it, any ideas? [Brad Abrams] Nobody likes a tease, Brad! Seriously though, as much as it hurts, we'd love to hear about the demos and appreciate anything you can share with the community. It would be really cool to see some more code samples too. I'm sooooo looking forward to Generics . I'm just hoping my involvement in the previous betas of VS.NET automagically put my name on the list for the Whidbey beta. ;) Posted Apr 18 2003, 01:27 PM by drub0y with 4 comment(s) Filed under: .NET

• Chris Brumme Hops On The MS Blogging Bandwaggon

  Ingo Rammer writes: .Net notes by Chris Brumme has to be one of the most advanced .NET related weblogs. You're not kidding! I've learned a lot already from this blog, and I only subscribed this morning! [The .NET Guy] I had the same reaction. Don mentioned him this morning and as I subscribed I was amazed he already had about six entries, all of which are high in .NET technology fiber. :) Posted Apr 15 2003, 06:03 PM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• How To Get Intellisense For WSDL

  ... You can use VS.NET as an XML editor, but that is all. Maybe the next major release will have a graphical WSDL (or generally spoken Web Services contract) designer with support to leverage existing XML Schemas. ... [Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET ] What you can do is save the WSDL XML Schema into a file and put it into the <VS.NET Install Dir>\Common7\Packages\schemas\xml directory. Once you do this and you start definining your instance document, as soon as you define a node with the WSDL namespace, you'll get intellisense support for it. Actually, the title is a little misleading as this feature of VS.NET applies to any XML specification for which there is an XML Schema defined, including your own! Posted Apr 14 2003, 02:26 PM by drub0y with 4 comment(s) Filed under: .NET

• The .NET Show: IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET

  In this episode of "The .NET Show", will talk about Windows Server 2003, which should be shipping soon. Specifically, we will focus on IIS 6.0, which is underlying architecture that allows web servers to function on top of Windows Server 2003. [Microsoft Download Center] Sam's been talking about this a lot lately... and with good reason. Check out the latest episode for all the glorious details on this technology match made in heaven. :) Posted Apr 11 2003, 03:35 PM by drub0y with no comments Filed under: .NET

• The Matrix Reloaded - 05/15/03

  I don't know about anyone else but I have been waiting for this a long time, and it better be good.  Here is a link to the final trailer. [Wes' Puzzling Blog] Umm... wow. That's about all I can muster up right now because I'm too busy wiping the drool off my keyboard. Posted Apr 11 2003, 10:16 AM by drub0y with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Personal