Jon Galloway

How do you track changes to data in your database? There are a variety of supported auditing methods for SQL Server, including comprehensive C2 security auditing, but what do you do if you're solving a business rather than a security problem, and you're interested in tracking the following kinds of information:

ASP.NET 2005 introduced a pretty solid menu which is integrated with a configuration driven sitemap. The cool part is that the menu can be hooked in with your security roles, so you don't have to worry about hiding or showing menu options based on the user - the menu options are automatically kept in sync with what the user is allowed to see. We'll talk about how to set this up, using an example from a website I worked on recently.

I've been thinking about the odd problem, and what can be done about it. I've found that more active participation in a group can lead to more information, but that new information can actually stifle further participation. Here are some of the problems I'm thinking of, as well as some possible solutions.

We made heavy use of the ASP.NET membership and profile system for Video.Show (a Silverlight 1.0 video community website system, available on CodePlex). In addition to storing basic profile information, we created a custom profile with some additional fields. It's a really easy way to add add some additional personalization to your site without having to add a bunch of tables to your database.

Opening too many tabs in Internet Explorer 7 can cause the Windows shell to switch to "Evil Mode". Fortunately, there's a registry setting that fixes the problem by increasing the Windows heap size.