Memi.Reflection

Design Time Directory in VS 2005

2005-03-20T18:24:00Z

I'm currently working on some design time editors, which need to read configuration settings from the web.config / app.config files, located in the main project folder.

The main problem is to find the directory of the project. There are some good posts about it, like here and here, but alas, they are all good only for VS 2003. I couldn't find any info about implementing such a functionality in VS 2005.

Do you know of any source available regarding this issue?

Distributed Developer

2005-03-05T23:46:00Z

This is how I feel these days.

I'm currently involved in four projects, which are based on the following technologies:

1. ASP.NET v1.1

2. WinForms V2.0 (Beta 1)

3. J2EE (With some parts in VSTO2)

4. And.... VB6

I'm looking for some COBOL projects, to complete the list.

So whoever wondered about my long silence - that's the explanation.

XSL Transform performance

2004-12-22T06:53:00Z

I came across few posts regarding the performance of XSL transformation in .NET 1.x, but only yesterday I came across a situation which made that quite clear.

We had an XML file of 1.2MB size, and a quite complicated XSL file (based on WordsheetML) to transform it.

Using the XslTransform object, it took about 10 secs.

Using MSXML4, including all the interop overhead, it took less than a second.

Is that reasonable? Are those the performance I should expect in the following scenarions? Did anybody find a good solution to this problem?

Division by Zero

2004-12-15T19:27:00Z

Is it possible? I didn't think so either. But read this.

I'm working now on a presentation regarding J2EE and .NET. For the sake of the presentation, I wanted to create error on one of the ASP.NET pages (yes, sometimes we do it just for fun. It's not a Bug, it's a Feature, you know...).

So, what is the easiest way to create an exception, I thought to myself? And immediately added the following code to the Page_Load event:

Response.write(1/0)

and executed the code. To my great surprise there was no exception! The page looked just normal. But while examining it more thoroughly, I found the following text on the upper left corner:

אינסוף חיובי

To those of you who can't read Hebrew (and I guess there are a handful of you), the meaning of those words are: Positive infinity.

WHAT? WTF? But wait - that's not all! When I modified the code to:

Response.write(-3/0)

The result was:

אינסוף שלילי

Which is:

Negative infinity.

Now, this is really strange:

First, since when a division by zero results in an infinity? I don't know much about math, but I asked my mother in law, who has a PhD in Mathematics, and she said that an expression like this is undefined, and definitely not infinity.

Second - localized math result? I liked that!

Anyway, here is an article which discusses this issue, but still does not explain when a division by zero is infinity. On the other side, in this article there is a good explanation why <Quote>division by zero is not defined for reals</Quote>, and when it is defined. Well worth reading.

So, does anybody know why division by zero is allowed in .NET?

.NET Deep Dive

2004-12-02T22:35:00Z

Long time no post...

It was a very long silence, but I guess that's what happens when there is so much work that one can't find enough time even to blog a little...

Anyway, a week ago we had the .NET Deep Dive event in Israel. I gave one lecture, about Design Time programming. I think it went pretty well. One of my indicators for a good lecture is the questions you are asked after it. I had tens of questions, face to face and by Email.

BTW, if you would like to express you mind about the event, click here. You'll find here a quick survey regarding this event. Please take your time and fill it. I think it is very important to hear as many as possible opinions about events like this, so we can always improve.

Productivity Killers

2004-10-11T16:45:00Z

A few days ago the Middleware Company released a research comparing .NET and IBM tools for java.

I guess most of you read this research (and if you didn't - you better do it), but I wanted to add my 2 cents about it.

One of the big problems in java, which is not part of the .NET (thanks god), is its over-complexity. This complexity may be logical for huge systems, with loads of servers and thousands of users, but for most systems - this is simply overkill.

Take, for example, the following scenario: you are developing a business logic component, and whie debugging you found some minor bug (say - add 1 to a variable). What would you do?

In .NET- stop the debugging, change the code, press F5 and check again.

In WSAD (IBM's IDE for Java), this is what may happen:

1. Stop the debugging (~10 secs)

2. Change the code (~ 2 secs)

3. Build the project (~0.5 mins)

4. Oops - hot code replace not working! Restart server (~ 10 mins) (For those who have no idea what I'm talking about - you have to have an active server to work on. The closest thing to this in .NET would be the CLR, however you can't restart the CLR. To do that you would have to start the whole OS, and how many times did you have to do that?)

5. Mmmmm... where did this additional server come from? You can't really debug like that. Restart WSAD (~ 10 mins)

6. Wait for the ClearCase to load its data (~5 mins)

7. Start the server (~5 mins)

8. Now go for it, and make sure you fixed that goddam bug!

So - in .NET the bug was fixed and tested in less than 10 secs. In WSAD - more than half an hour to add "+1".

To make things clear: Our Java project is not a small one. It has hundreds of files. However, we also have large .NET projects as well, and we didn't experience those horrible times.

Now, I'm sure there are some lighter Java tools, and maybe our architecture is not perfect, but hey - under no circumstances should an IDE take more than 5 minutes just to start up!

It's a Boy!

2004-09-25T22:18:00Z

We have added 20% to our family!

Our 4th kid, a cute boy, joined our team yesterday, at 4:30AM (in the middle of Yom Kippur, the Jewish most important day of the year). He and my wife feels very well, and I'm going to be quite busy in the next couple of days preparing the bed, the safety chair and the celebration for our newcomer.

We haven't choose a name yet, and you are more than welcome the send in your suggestions.Unfortunately, "Version 2.0" already caught.

The decision will be made by the family's court, cosisted of Aluma (7), Ofek (5) and Arava (2.5). We, the parents, have no Veto rights whatsoever.

VS 2005 - The road to the (Dark | Client) Side

2004-09-18T17:43:00Z

While toying around with Beta 1 of the VS 2005, I found myself get intrigued more about the client side apps new features, rather than the new web features.

Specifically - I really don't find the new Datasource controls of much help. Since no one (I hope) is going to put an SQL DataSource on an ASPX page, and the Object DataSource is simply thin layer of coupling form fields and object properties (a feature which was developed by almost every IT shop using .NET), and since most of the new server controls can be found as third party controls, usually with better features, for more than two years, I really couldn't make myself excited about this.

BUT - the new Visual Studio Tools for Office definitely caught me. The first version of VSTO was, IMHO, wrong step in the right direction. I mean - common, why do I need to implement 26(!) methods in an applet-like fashion just to display a single button in the task pane? But the new version is really good. To have the word designer integrated directly into the VS designer - yes, this is how things should be done! A real masterpiece.

Furthermore - the ClickOnce mechanism is another revelation. Now there is really no real reason to develop a web inter-organization application.

I guess my focus will have to shift from web based to (office | winforms) based application in the near future.

Good thing we still have Java, which has no any other viable alternative to the web...

IIS on XP Home

2004-08-23T22:25:00Z

Yep, that's possible.

My machine had crashed yesterday, and is in the lab right now. Looks like the vent has gone crazy.

As usual, I had a really urgent .NET thingy to finish, so I wanted to use my wife's laptop (IBM R40, cute little machine) for this.

There was no problem installng the VS.NET. Since it went so well, I though to myself: "Well, why won't we try to install a web server?".

I started with Cassini, but the VS.NET didn't get used to it.

I then found this article, and voila! after 15 mins I had IIS on my wife's machine up and running.

I'm sure she is very happy about it.

[OT] Cute easter egg for VB6

2004-08-15T14:30:00Z

I may be the last one to hear about it, but in case there is someone who didn't know that:

1. From VB's View Menu, select toolbar, then customize......

2. In the resulting dialog, click on the command tab.

3. In the Categories List, select Help.

4. Select "About Microsoft Visual Basic" in the Command List, and drag it to any
menu or the toolbar.

5. Right-click on the item you just dragged and rename it to "Show VB Credits"
(without quotes).

6. Then close the "Customize" dialog and click on the "Show VB Credits" item

found here.

The best thing to happen to Java...

2004-08-15T14:27:00Z

... is .NET.

I know it sounds a bit strange, but I really think that's true.

Before the .NET era, the world was divided between two groups: The USA and the USSR.

Ok, just joking: The programming world was divided between two groups: The VB group, and the Java group. There were some smaller groups, such as the Delphinians, the Perlians, and even some Cobolists, but the major ones where, undoubtly, the VB'ers and the Java-ists.

Those two groups almost didn't communicate between them. The Javaists regarded the VB'ers as novice programmers, whose programming skills are limited to dragging fancy UI object in their toyish RAD environment (of M$, of course!), while the VB'ers looked at the Javaists as some ultra-geeks who prefer hand coding the RDBMS itself, if that was possible, and who actually hand coded the whole OS.

Those two groups lived quite happily beside each other, and continued to grow and flourish.

And then came .NET.

Suddenly, the VB'ers exposed to java-like terms such as CLR (=JVM. Yes, I know you can't really compare them, but still...), MSIL (=Bytecode), OOP (=OOP), Patterns and Practices (=Design Patterns) and so on. While assimilating this huge pile of knowledge, it was discovered that there is some high-end language that has some of these features already - Java!

If, four years ago, it was almost impossible to "convert" a VB'er to the Java world, it is now much easier. The basic concepts are exactly the same. Of course, there are important differences, but it is not something you can't teach yourself in 21, or even less, days. All in once, the Java world gained a ten of millions potential developers.

And it looks like they know that. In a heated discussion in TSS.COM about the Current State of JSF (which is the Java's answer to ASP.NET), the following post appears:

"What I see happening is that non-gurus are literally driven off by the complexity and weirdness of JSF (and JSP custom tags and JSP expression language). The Java community is off on ivory tower framework tangents and losing sight of the simple elegance principles behind Java. Rather than competing with ASP.NET the web applications infrastructure is making Java LESS competitive and giving Microsoft a free ride with their existing developer customers who cannot begin to fathom what the heck is going on in Java web app land."

A few years ago, no one at Java Land would consider it important to compete with MS products. In fact, they may be humiliated just by mentioning it. But the .NET is a very legitimate competitor, and Java responds accordingly (or, more accurately, tries to respond accordingly.)

We saw this close relations recently in our company. We answered an RFP, and suggested using .NET in our solution. The customer liked our proposal, but wanted it to be a Java solution. Now, if we were in the VB6 era, this was the point where we would say "T'was nice to meet you. See you at the next project.". But since we were familiar with .NET, we felt quite comfortable migrating to Java.

Item Templates in Visual Studio 2005

2004-08-15T11:22:00Z

One of the first things I've checked in Beta 1 of VS 2005 was the way to customize its item templates.

I think this feature in general is one of the best productivity boosters around, and once implemented correctly can reduce development time remarkably. The reason most organizations don't use this feature is that in order to use it one would have to dive into complex ASCII files and obscure directories, without any reasonable debugging mechanism and sparse docs. There are some tools in the market for this purpose (such as my Merlin), but still - most developers don't use this feature.

When I looked in VS 2005 after this feature, I've got a surprise. Looks like the good guys at MS introduced a new mechanism which makes it more convenient to add / customize item templates. The new mechanism uses XML files (at last!) called vstemplates, which make the whole process a lot more human-readable. There are even already some articles about the new mechanism (like this and this). But, it looks like the job is not done yet. The new mechanism is applied only to the Winforms application. The web based projects still uses the (not so) good old vsdir & vsz files.

Does anybody know whether this will be the situation in the final product, or is it only in the Beta? Will the web guys enjoy the vstemplate file, or will they keep struggle with the older files?

If someone knows the answer - please drop me a line.

SUN vs MS on Web Services - what really matters

2004-08-05T06:46:00Z

I couldn't overcome my curiosity, and I donwloaded the source code used by SUN for their comparison of the .NET vs Java web service performance.

The first thing that striked me was, that out of 208 files in the ZIP file, only 44 are related to .NET. All the rest are required by the Java implementation.

I think that's also means something when comparing those technologies.

DataSource controls

2004-07-31T23:07:00Z

I've started diving into the VS2005 beta 1 a few days ago (I hope I'm not the last one...), and naturally started looking at the new features it provides.

While browsing, I've stubmled accross this article in MSDN, which explains the new concept of the DataSource controls. This article made me wonder about this whole new concept.

The SQLDataSource control looks really nice, not to say sexy, but I woner how useful it is going to be in real, full blown applications. I mean, you're not going to write your SQL in its full glory on the ASPX page, don't you? Not to mention the connection string itself. What happened to the n-tier architecture? I don't really see a scenario in my company when I'm going to use this control, except maybe for some really tiny make-it-done-in-two-days applications.

The ObjectDataSource looked more promising, until I've read the small letters. The source object has so many restrictions (default, parameterless constructor, stateless, easily mapped to update, insert and delete actions), but what really caught my eyes are those two:

1. The update / insert methods in the object are expected to accept named parameters. Hey, where did that come from? I've been taught that the best way to pass parameters between layers is by using some general purpose package, may it be XML, named value collection, or even arraylist. If I'm going to add new parameter - why do I have to change my object interface?

2. The method execution is done by reflection. I don't remember where I've read it first time, but AFAIK execution by reflection can be 400 times slower than regular one. OK, when you think of it, there is no really other way of performing this databinding, but if I'm going to use reflection just to update the business layer, why won't I use some third party's professional O/R mapper, which will update my data layer?

So, am I missing something? I guess it's a bit too early to ask for other's exerience on this subject, but what do you think of it? Which DataSource control will be the real hit? Will this concept be widely used?

VSTO setup issues

2004-07-24T19:51:00Z

While reading the VSTO setup instructions, I found the following paragraph under the “Troubleshooting Setup”:

Issue: High contrast mode hides text in the Setup wizard.

If you have your monitor set to use High Contrast, the text in the Setup wizard is not visible.

To view the text in the Setup Wizard

Open the Control Panel, choose Accessibility Options, and then click the Display tab.
Clear the Use High Contrast option.
Click OK.
Run Setup for Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System again.

It's not the first time I read setup instruction, however this is the first time I see a setup issue regarding the contrast settings of the monitor. But why stop there? Maybe there is a problem in the brightness settings? Or even better - maybe the monitor is not turned on!

MS guys, is there any special reason for listing this problem?