Archives
Archives /
2004
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XMLDocuments and Default Namespaces
In my latest project, we have been working a lot with some complex XML documents, which never used to have a default namespace. eg.
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New things
Totally non .Net related but more important to me, is the fact that my daughter had her 2nd baby just 2 days ago, which makes me a grand daddy for the 2nd time! His name is William Paul Francis and weighed in at approx 4Kg. A nice size indeed (much to my daughters anguish at the time...). Me and my wife are very proud grandparents again, and my daughter and her partner are very happy indeed. I shall post some pictures soon.
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ASP.NET Mixed Mode Authentication
Ever wanted to have an ASP.NET application that utilises the seamless login process of windows integrated authentication (for intranet users for example), but also be able to easily handle anonynous/forms based authentication, and all using the one standard principal object behind the scenes for full role based authorisation support?
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Windows Principal and the MAGIC_NUMBER
A number of our apps use a mixed model of authentication. We have a Windows integrated authorisation site which extracts role information from intranet users, stores it in a cooke, and redirects to a forms aiuth site. Users not on the intranet can access via the forms auth site directly. Part of this process involves enabling impersonation on the windows auth site and extracting role information from the windows princpal. This is done using the code below :-
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UML Modelling in VS.Net
As part of the MSDN connection program offered by Microsoft here in Australia, I believe that all dedicated level developers received a copy of Borlands "Together" for Visual Studio.Net. An addin that lets you do UML modelling synchronised to source code. It comes complete with a patterns repository and other features. I wasn't too interested in synchronising source code but loved the idea of integrated UML modelling in VS.Net. I like UML and use it constantly to describe class designs and system designs for a lot of our detailed design documents we need to produce, as well as to simply describe a class design for developers in my team to work towards. (Note: If you dont use UML for your design work, I recommend you start, even if its just to describe class heirarchy and design for yourself)
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Technical Interviewss
I have been going for some job interviews lately, and what has been interesting is the technical interview aspect of each of them. I have been to what I consider 2 major interviews, each with the technical interview (they all consisted of at least 3 interviews) going for at least 2 hours, usually up towards 3 hours.
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Finally, some Australian TechEd photos.
I have finally managed to post some Oz tech Ed photos. Better late than never. Thanks goes to Nick Wienholt for a lot of the photos, and you may see some of these duplicated on his blog.
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Oz TechEd complete.
A bit late in the telling, but the Australian TechEd conference is well and truly over. It was a great conference, and I picked learnt a great deal. Of particular value to me was the Hands on Labs. I was actually assisting in the running of the labs, but I did get a chance to have a play, and did some of the SQL Server 2005 ("Yukon") labs which I normally dont get a chance to play with. The labs were very good and apart from some minor problems, went very smoothly.It was also great to be on the "other side" of the event, in that I was part of the organisation and was able to help out, instead of just attending. I found it very cool and enjoyed helping people in the labsm as well as helping attendees while at the MVP stand.
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OzTechEd - 2nd day
The 2nd official day of TechEd here in Oz (1st real content day) went very well and the Team System/Team Foundation presentations were very well received. The room was packed beyond capacity so it goes to show the amount of interest this particular line of products has generated.
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Oz TechEd is alive...
Well, TechEd 2004 has finally begun here in Australia. I have been a proctor in the hands on labs for the entire first day and its been very interesting to say the least. The Developer labs were very popular and I was overwhelmed with requests for help and some really in-depth questions. Its really good to be on the “other” side of the fence when it comes to these events and see what goes into the organisation and preparations, as well as being able to play my part.
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Oz TechEd 1 week away...
TechEd is only 1 week away here in Australia and we will finally get to experience what the US and Europe have already experienced. If you are coming to TechEd here in Oz, I'll be at the MVP stand or in the Hands on Labs and would be great to chat with others in the community.
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.Net 2.0 Fav feature results
About 2 weeks ago I asked what your favourite .Net 2.0 feature is. The post is here. Well there has been a huge number of responses compared to my usual posts (ie. this means there has been more than 3 comments ;-) ). In actual fact there is about 8 responses so I would hardly say its a conclusive examination of industry opinion, but its at least conclusive evidence that people have opinions ... :-)
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Testing Application Block
I grabbed this from the newsgroups :-
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Your Number 1 Feature in .Net 2.0
I attended the Sydney Deep .Net User group meeting last wednessday night and Chuck Sterling of Microsoft (see “Ask Chuck“ column on ZDNet) asked me what my favourite feature in .Net 2.o was. It got me to thinking about what others thought on the subject. So here is an informal poll. Let me know what your absolute favourite feature is in .Net 2.0, and I'll post the results in about a weeks time. You dont have to explain why, (ofcourse you can and that will help me qualify the results) but at least let me know what the most important/favourite feature in .Net 2.0 is for you.
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Retrieving a users fullname from their domain account (No Interop required)
In a current project, there was a requirement to have a web site that used windows integrated authentication, so that valid users who have logged onto the domain would not have to authenticate themselves to gain access to the site. Pretty standard stuff. We also had a requirement to extract the users first and last name from the domain and use that to populate information on the page.
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Configuration Setting Management Article
I have posted a new article here on Configuration Setting management and usage within your .Net applications (ASP.NET or Winforms).
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DPAPI Managed Wrapper Library
I have written a DPAPI Managed wrapper that was pretty much taken from MSDN examples and had some extra functions added for ease of use (EncryptString, DecryptString). It uses an attribute mechanism to sandbox calls to the unmanaged functions/libraries.
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IE 7 ?
Well, not really, but I thought this might interest some. Note that I have not personally tried this, but might be worth having a look.
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Enterprise Session Storage
Session storage within .Net is a huge improvement over the classic ASP type methods. The inbuilt support for Inproc, StateServer and SqlServer is great. One thing that has plagued me for sometime though is that I have been unable to use it in almost every enterprise application I have written (bar one).
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"Emergency" programming
Had a “situation” today where some developers (new to .Net) had coded a 2 tier application on our dev servers, moved it into our UAT (User Acceptance test) environment and it wouldn't work. This was a simple 3 page app that simply saved some info in a database but it was designed/created with only 2 tiers in mind, and the UAT and PROD environment are 3 tiers. The DEV servers are not really 3 tier due to hardware purchase restrictions so all their testing before UAT worked fine.
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Authorization and Profile App Block - webcast
The latest kid on the Application block is the Authorization and Profile application block. I haven't had a chance to get to know it very well yet but in our corporate envionment, this might come in very handy.
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XBox Woes - the continuing saga....
I posted earlier about some XBox problems I was having, and had a bit of feedback, so I thought I would update you on whats happened so far.
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Web Service Compression
I have recently uploaded my WSCompression library which compresses web service/SOAP calls. It contains full source code, examples and VS.NET project file. No licencing mumbo jumbo so you can do as you will. Reason I uploaded it, is I mentioned it on the ASPAdvice email lists a little while ago and it generated quite a bit more interest than I had anticipated. So for all those interested, you can grab this library here. To use, just apply the [WSCompression(CompressionLevels.High)] attribute on both web service client/proxy and the service itself, and you are away.
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Improving Perf and Scalability - Beta 2
Hope this hasn't already been blogged about (I've been out of the loop for a bit), but the “Improving .Net Application Performance and Scalability” document has recently been released in tis Beta 2 form. Its an excellent piece of work from the patterns and practices team and I encourage you to contribute to its development.
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My XBox rant
Saw a post from Cameron Reilly about why modding Xbox hurts everyone and it made me think about my own Xbox woes. Not that too many people care, but I thought I'd whinge about it anyway.