February 2003 - Posts

• Just because I'm on vaction, don't mean I'm out to lunch.

  I'm not teaching this week so I thought I'd take some exams.  First on the list: Developing XML Web Services and Server Components.  Holy jeez that was a beast.  All kinds of questions on remoting and a bunch that are along the lines of: You build version 1.0.0.0 of your component against version 1.2.0.0 of some .dll.  Later on, someone puts that .dll in the GAC.  Then, someone create a version 1.1.0.0 version and creates a publisher policy in the GAC.  Then you rebuild your app.  What happens?  And those were the easy ones.  Oh well, I passed and now it is time to take the Windows exam.  I have Mike Gunderloy's exam prep book (full review coming...) so that should help me through some stuff I normally don't do on the windows side of things (globalization, accessability type stuff).  If it wasn't for Joe Milionaire being on tonight I would probably try to knock out that exam tomorrow morning.  As it stands, I have a theory that might hurt exam prep tonight: You can never be too drunk while watching Joe Milionaire.  Oh, this exam makes me an MCAD.  So right now I'm an MCT, MCSD for VB6, MCAD for Microsoft .NET.  By wednesday I hope to have MCSD for Microsoft .NET, and by friday perhaps I'll be ready for the Win2k Server exam so I can get my MCDBA.  All this with a cold.  But as Terry Tate eloquently put it: I don't got time for pain, the only pain I got time for is for fools that don't know what time is. Btw, this machine I'm on right now I can actually type out whole sentances before they appear on the screen.  WTF?  So please, excuse any spelling or grammatical mistakes.  And in the future, when you see spelling and grammatical mistakes assume that I'm using a machine that struggles on processing keystrokes and it is not due to my third grade reading level.  I'm babbling again. Posted Feb 24 2003, 05:59 PM by Phil Scott with 2 comment(s)

• humph

  People sitting behind the play-by-play guys during the half-time show that are on their cell phones waving and grinning like an idiot need to be immediately removed by the arena security.  I feel very strongly about this. Posted Feb 22 2003, 05:30 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Download!

  Something came up at work where one of our larger partners would like to get our schedule database in some sort of XML so they can put our schedule on their site.  Great!  Piece of cake to do, plus more sales for us.  Well, now they want all the schedule data from all the centers, world-wide I assume.  Now, our corporate HQ hold the data and there is no direct way to get at it.  So what I have is a little command prompt app that simply hits their public website and strips off the classes and dates for our schedule.  Best I can do.  Requests for an XML Web Service or even a CSV file have gone unanswered, so this is what I was left with doing. Now, I need to multiply that by 300 centers world wide.  Originally we were looking at 5mb for just our site (there is a lot of "filler" text per page), now we are looking at ~1.5gb downloaded.  Woohoo!  I wonder if I keep sucking their bandwidth will they relent and create a web service.  It's not like this isn't data that is already public or anything. Also, the addition of centers world wide kinda presented a problem to our database too.  I had to basically create a new table to hold the course dates with one extra field, the Location.  I dropped the old table, and created a view that returned the "old" table with just our records, keeping our web site running flawlessly.  Once I get the data downloaded I'll see what kinda boast an indexed view on that table will produce. So, I guess the question is if I should download all the dates nightly or weekly.  If this thing completes in under 3hrs, I'm going nightly until they fold.  Of course, knowing corporate, they won't even notice 1.5gb of traffic nightly coming from the same IP. Posted Feb 19 2003, 07:04 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• MCAD / MCSD

  I've been fooling around preparing for the XML Web Service exam.  This exam is by far the more difficult of any of the other exam, mostly because it covers stuff I simply have no reason to work with on a day to day basis.  Giant chunks of remoting seem to be in this exam.  I mean, I know how to work with remoting and I understand it, but I really don't see where your average developer looking to get their MCAD (Microsoft Certified Application Developer) really should be an expert at writing remoting components.  It just isn't something used in most applications by people I think this cert is targeting. An example path to get your MCAD would be to pass the web application exam, pass the SQL 2000 design exam, and then take the XML Web Service exam.  Now, keep in mind everyone takes the XML Web Service exam.  If you want to be a web developer or windows developer, you still need to pass this exam.  But, let's look at what is covered:  XML Web Services, Windows Services, COM Interop / PInvoke, Remoting and COM+.  To properly prepare for this exam, you would need to take course 2389, 2557, 2415, 2524 and still need to pick up some where on how to write Windows services and read Ingo's book on remoting.  To pass the web exam: Course 2310.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should dumb down the certification.  But it really seems that if I was looking to hire someone to do some web or windows development, I really don't care if they know how to write a Windows Service.  What I would like to see is making sure consuming a web service is covered in both the windows and web exams, creating web services are in the web exam, and that potential certification canidates could take the Windows, Web and SQL Server exam.  I think that would create the best rounded canidate.  Leave remoting, windows services and the such to the MCSD candidates. Posted Feb 19 2003, 09:24 AM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Extended Markup Language (XML) Web service

  I'm taking a practice exam for the XML Web Service exam, and they pose questions like this: "You create an Extended Markup Language (XML) Web service..." I'd hope that anyone taking the XML Web Service exam would be ok just seeing "You create an XML Web Service..." I'm talking to myself again. Posted Feb 18 2003, 08:48 PM by Phil Scott with 3 comment(s)

• Catch ex as exception when IL = WTF

  Roy's post about the when statement in VB got me thinking about how that would be implemented in IL.  I'm not an IL expert by any means, but that doesn't look regulation to me.  I can follow it, but it looks like spaghetti code to me.  I'd stick with an if statement or something. .try IL_0002 to IL_0008 filter IL_0035 handler IL_0053 to IL_0062 Posted Feb 18 2003, 02:44 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• qqqqqqqqqqqq

  The man, the legend ScottGu has posted some info about some pretty snazzy ASP.NET utilities, including QQQ I played with the other day.  I didn't have ACT installed on the machine, so I wrote a ghetto console stress test to try it out on some dummy ASP.NET.  Today I'm going to try it on the latest build of our new site and see what happens.  I wish I had a multi-proc test bed though.  Our webserver is only a dual proc, and as I understand it .NET won't do anything fancier with two proc over one, you need to get four procs in your "web garden."  Not too sure how this will impact performance testing, but considering our site gets a whopping 6000 hits a day, I'm not too terribly concerned.  Note to the guys who come up with terms like web garden: I am forced to say them outload in classes, and each time I do it I can feel my soul dying.  Stop it. Posted Feb 18 2003, 10:28 AM by Phil Scott with 1 comment(s)

• By Popular Demand

  Download TopMenu.ascx.  The zip file contains an example on how I broke apart the DHTML menu from BrainJar.com into an ascx, css and js file to make the thing a little more reusable in my app.  I didn't include the .vb file for TopMenu.ascx because there is no server side code on this guy quite yet.  But it works fine for normal navigational purposes.  I have it setup so the menu drops down automatically when you hover over some text, the demo on BrainJar you have to click to expand the menu.  I think mine works a bit better for my site's purposes.  Once again, all this code represents is how to take the demo from BrainJar and put it in an ascx file for reuse, he's the DHTML wiz that made the menu happen :)  I just don't want Mike thinking that I'm trying to take his hardwork and pawn it off as my own - I just copied and pasted.  Edit: Just when I thought it was safe.  It appears they wrote some code to hard code the width of a certain item in IE because of some sort of bug.  We'll, it goofs up the menu when you do this in Opera (Opera identifies itself as IE6 too).  Do a search for this code:  // Fix IE hover problem by setting an explicit width on first item of // the menu. In the if statement for checking if browser.isIE == true, add in && browser.UserAgent.indexof("Opera") > 0 or something to that effect (I'm no javascript expert, I just muddled through the code) Posted Feb 14 2003, 04:03 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Bork Bork Bork

  http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/ I didn't purchase AspNetMenu solely based on the fact that it doesn't render at all in Opera.  I instead took the code from BrainJar.com and put all the code into a web user control.  Works great (even in Opera). Edit: Now with screenshots (click for larger version) Posted Feb 14 2003, 02:26 PM by Phil Scott with 2 comment(s)

• ASP to ASP.NET Migration Handbook

  Its official, my book copies came in today's mail.  Wow, it is pretty cool seeing your name on the cover of a technical book.  Someone actually allowed me to share my thoughts and actually published them...now that is scary!  I wrote to share my experiences with .net and to hopefully help 1 developer.  I did not write for the money, as there is none, nor did I write for pride or selfish reasons.  I truly wanted to say something, and I hope this helps one person.  If it does, it was worth it.  [Greg Robinson's Weblog] Too cool Greg, congradulations! Posted Feb 13 2003, 12:48 AM by Phil Scott with no comments