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2004
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Combine RSS Feeds and Display Random Items
I added a new code sample to the XML for ASP.NET Developers Website (http://www.xmlforasp.net) that deals with RSS feeds. Here's more information about it:
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Mark Fussell and WSE
One of the first people who was kind enough to help me out when I started with .NET (what seems like decades ago but was only about 4 1/2 years ago) was Mark Fussell from Microsoft. Mark has been one of the geniuses behind the XML functionality in .NET (which…if you haven’t played with XML in V2 of .NET has significantly been enhanced even in the Beta) and has recently moved to be Program Manager for the Web Service Enhancements (WSE) team (I was a little late to the party on this one apparentlyJ). That’s good news for all of us who are fans of XML and Web Services since Mark knows a ton about these technologies. You can find his blog here:
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Putting Windows Sharepoint Services to Work
I’m amazed how many people ask questions on newsgroups and listservs about different .NET portal solutions but somehow don’t seem to find out about Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). While there are several open source options that definitely have their set of strengths (DotNetNuke, Rainbow, etc.) and of course cons, WSS is extremely powerful, integrates with office products, is easily customized, and can even expose parts of the framework programmatically (lists for example). And…to top it off it’s free (although it does require Windows 2003 which could be a stumbling block for some companies).
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XML Spy 2005 Out
I’ve been a fan of XML Spy for years due to its excellent support for editing, schemas, DTDs, XSLT debugging, etc. A few days ago XML Spy 2005 came out and I was happy to see it had several new features in it (see a complete feature matrix here: http://www.xmlspy.com/matrix_entsuite.html) that further enhance productivity. Here’s a short list of some of the new features:
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x86 Assembler in .NET?
It’s pretty amazing what you can find while searching Google. I recently came across the following while doing a little IL research: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/asmil.htm. Someone took the time to write a compiler that takes 80386 assembler code and generates IL. An example of using the code to create an ASP.NET page is shown below:
What’s this world coming to? :-) -
System.Xml Online Reference
Looks like TopXml.com has put up a nice System.Xml reference that shows the different XML classes in the System.Xml namespace along with their properties, methods, and some VB.NET sample code. If you’re new to working with XML this should serve as a good starting point.
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XML Changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2
Microsoft’s Dare Obasanjo has put together a great list of XML related changes between .NET V2 Beta 1 and Beta 2 at http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f2d229e4-a0f3-4660-aeda-0806c4ace79d. Some of the highlights include the merging of the XPathEditableNavigator into the XPathNavigator (which was expected), and the removal of XQuery support (although SQL Server 2005 will still have some XQuery support to work with native XML types). Although removal of XQuery support is a bummer given all of the great things you can do with it, I personally think it’s a good move given the current status of the XQuery spec and the lengthy process it’s going through to get recommended status within the W3C. I’d rather have classes that adhere to the “official” spec rather than a potential moving target. Too many maintenance headaches come up down the road otherwise.
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The "Enterprise" View and Web Services
I’m always amazed how inflexible some people are when it comes to taking an “Enterprise” view of a company’s architecture. People seem to get fixated on 1 tree in a forest and don’t realize there are a lot of other trees out there that could benefit from a proper Enterprise architecture design. While there’s a lot that goes into creating the “optimal” enterprise architecture, I think Web Services can play a huge role. The problem is, many of the people I interact with just don’t seem to get it. I’ll admit that Web Services are a fairly new technology (although not that new at this stage of the game), but the concepts are actually quite simple and actually make sense.
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The Power of InfoPath
I’ve read a lot of articles about InfoPath over the past few months and took a few minutes to play around with it myself, but to be honest it never clicked as to why it was truly needed given that we had ASP.NET Web Forms and .NET WinForms. I even created my own FormBuilder.NET application to simplify creating basic ASP.NET forms and integrating them with databases (it’s all browser based). My original take was that it was simply a way to generate basic forms and I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that you had to install InfoPath (clients have to install it as well) in order to fill out the forms. Well, my initial impressions about InfoPath were wrong!
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Combining the XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter Classes
Awhile back I put out a new sample at http://www.xmlforasp.net that demonstrates how to combine the XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter classes when custom XML needs to be output. The example shows how to create SVG maps containing flight information. Here’s more information about it:
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Better Late Than Never.....
I’ve had several people ask why I don’t have a blog out there yet. My standard response has always been that I just don’t have enough time (which is true most days) between running my consulting business, training, spending time with my wife and kids, running the http://www.xmlforasp.net website, writing, etc., etc.. However, after reading more and more blogs from a variety of people I’ve come to the conclusion that creating a blog is a great way to help out others (when the blog is technology related….sorry but I don’t have much to offer in the area of self-help J) plus is a great way to track different things that have been worked on.