Archives
-
Announcing the ExtendedDataGrid: Adding essential functionality to the default Windows.Forms.DataGrid.
The default System.Windows.Forms.DataGrid provided by the .NET Framework is a little bit limited in functionality. Therefore I've spent some time during my holidays building an extension to this default grid: the ExtendedDataGrid. At this point I've released a Beta version: 0.1 including these features:
-
New Article: Getting Started with ObjectSpaces
It seems that not everybody has a day-off; the MSDN Belux team published my new article: Getting Started with ObjectSpaces, thanks Tom! This article starts with a description of what Object/Relational Mapping tools are, or at least I tried to explain it as clearly as possible. After that the article provides a step-by-step guide to a first ObjectSpaces article using the Mapper Utility. Topics like Spanning, Delay Loading, OPath are explained too. At the end there are some intresting links regarding ObjectSpaces, I'll post them here:
-
Fun with InfoPath: Dynamically Populate a List by Using a Webservice with a Parameter
Some time ago I started to explore InfoPath, so far it was a pleasant journey. Everbody (including myself) seems to be requesting an user-control version of InfoPath so you can have InfoPath forms in your own Smart Client applications. This would be really great, top of the bill would be integration in Visual Studio.NET, but maybe that's a little bit too wishfull-thinking. Another nice feature would be a free version of InfoPath, without the functionality to create and edit forms. Like there is a free Acrobat Reader and a commercial Acrobat Writer. Microsoft says it's hearing these requests, but has anyone already an idea if these features will be available?
-
Best Wishes
Now that ScottW has updated the .Text blog engine, it’s possible to post stuff that doesn’t appear in the weblogs.asp.net main feed. So I can post some more personal things, or things that are only appropriate for Belgian people (who all check the Belgian .NET Bloggers Aggregated Feed of course :-).
-
Having some fun with Sharepoint!
I've been exploring for some time now Windows Sharepoint Services and I'm really getting excited about it! After seeing some demos and presentations about this product I gave it a try. Actually it's quite impressive what you get out-of-the-box. In my opinion one of the great things is that once a user has it's own workspace or team site, he/she can control what will be on his/her site. Not only which Webparts are on the site, but even he/she can create subsites beneath his/her workspace, for example for meetings, documents, ... And this is possible without any intervention of an IT-guy. Life will be great! :-)
-
Belgian .NET Bloggers Aggregated Feed
Since you can't hide something on the internet very long, here is the “official” announcement! :-) I've created an aggregated feed for all the Belgian .NET Bloggers. On this page you can see the last 15 post made by the bloggers in the list, ofcourse there is also an RSS feed. If you want your blog included or removed, please contact me.
-
Consuming Webservices over HTTPS (SSL)
When Webservices are used, a common concern is security: SOAP messages are transferred in plain text over the network, so anyone with a sniffer could intercept the SOAP message and read it. In my opinion this could happen also to binary data, but probably it requires a little bit more hacker skills. So a solution is to use HTTPS (SSL) instead of HTTP, so the communication is encrypted. To accomplish this, you need to get and install a certificate (issued by a Certificate Authority) on your webserver. In a production environment you would buy a certificate from Verisign or another well known CA, or you would install your own CA, which is a component of Windows Server. If you only want to play with HTTPS, SSL and certificates or your project is in the development phase, you can also generate a test certificate using the MakeCert.exe tool (included in the .NET Framework SDK). After that you have to add this certificate to a website in IIS, and set a port which HTTPS should use.
-
More on Generics in .NET
Last week, I blogged about my experiences with generics in C# and VB.NET. The focus was on applying multiple constraints for which the syntax in C# was well documented. But the syntax in VB.NET was not that easy to find, but I “discovered” it after a little bit of searching. Anyway read more about this topic here.
-
Organising Your Knowledge: Code Library for .NET
Do you know this feeling: you're working and while coding you find a really cool code snippet. Or you are surfing the web and you find an interesting article, but way too long to read at that point. Or you're browsing through posts of weblogs you read, and there are some “must-remember” ones. You want to remember all of this valuable information, so you can go look for it when you really need it (or have time to catch up). But my personal internal memory is rather limited and cannot be expanded, so it's impossible to remember the location or contents of everything. Some time ago I started looking for a tool that could capture all this information and store it in a database making it easily searchable. For some time now, I'm using Code Library for .NET: a free tool to store all sorts of information (articles, links, code snippets, pictures, ...). It's available both for Access databases and SQL Server (or MSDE), and it has a really nice user interface.