Archives
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In Memoriam to My Nephew, Matthew O'Bryant
My nephew, Matthew O'Bryant, was one of the two US military personnel that was killed in the terrorist bombing of the Pakistan Marriott last weekend. He was a great kid (22 years old) and he will be missed very much by his wife, brother and sisters, parents, the rest of our family, and his many friends.
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Scott Bellware in Alpharetta
Scott Bellware's working in Alpharetta for a few weeks. Contact me if you're in Alpharetta and want to join us for lunch on Tuesday, August 5th. So far Dave Ward is also joining us, but there's room for a few more.
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Atlanta Code Camp 2008
From the Atlanta Code Camp site:
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Review of Excellent Book: Linq in Action
"LINQ in Action", published by Manning, is by far the best book available on Linq, both for those new to Linq and those already following it. The authors, Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, and Jim Wooley, have done a fabulous job of explaining Linq from the basics to the advanced. They even made it enjoyable to read, which makes it one of the best .Net books ever!
The authors' introductory chapter shows us right away that this book is different by presenting a perfect balance of the problem, the history, and the solution. Linq is a huge subject, but the authors are up to it, and they quickly whet the readers appetite for all of Linq -- Objects, Sql, and Xml. We then get a very thorough explanation of the new language enhancements that Linq relies on, but which the authors clearly show to have uses of their own. The chapter on Linq's building blocks, covering sequences, query operators, query expressions, and expression trees, was especially instructive to me, even though I've followed Linq from the alpha days, so again I'm sure this book has something for everyone. The book then covers Linq to Objects very thoroughly, including common scenarios and performance considerations that other books never consider.
The book then progresses to three chapters on Linq to Sql, which are of course my favorite since I'm really into O/R Mapping. The authors cover not just the basics to get beginners up to speed, but they also cover far more advanced content than I was expecting. For instance, they discuss not just the designer to setup mappings, but also the SqlMetal tool, and manual mappings using either attributes or xml. They also discuss the various concurrency options, the entity life cycle, inheritance, and more. The authors then give us three chapters on Linq to Xml, which again have something for everyone -- I especially like the chapter on common scenarios. The book finishes with a very thorough chapter on extending Linq, with a Linq to Amazon example, and a chapter that ties it all together with a real-world example that was gradually put together during the course of the entire book.
The authors also provide additional support and material online, including a bonus chapter on Linq to Datasets. There is also downloadable code in both C# and VB, although the book actually shows both languages in most cases, and always points out the differences when there are differences between them.
Disclaimer: I personally know Jim and have seen him present on Linq multiple times, Steve was a user of my WilsonORMapper, even contributing to it, and I've known Fabrice in the online world for quite some time too -- but I did very much enjoy and learn even more from their most excellent book on Linq. -
Do .NET 2.0 SP1 Binaries Fail Without SP1?
Do .net 2.0 service pack 1 compiled binaries fail when ran on machines without that service pack? Developers automatically get force-fed .net 2.0 sp1 when we install VS 2008, which doesn't sound like it should be a big concern typically. But what about the next time you compile an existing VS 2005 app and deploy on machines without sp1, which would of course be the case for most non-dev machines right now? I believe I have found a case where this is indeed happening, at least that's the only explanation I can find so far, and it looks like there are a few others reporting things too -- but the details so far are sketchy at best.
I've got an existing .net 2.0 app (written in C#) that calls a 3rd party web service that has always ran just fine. I needed to make a couple of small updates to my app which did not change anything related to the calling of this web service at all. Everything works flawlessly on my development pc, which has service pack 1 for .net 2.0, but fails when deployed on my qa server, which does not have service pack 1. Here are the exception details: