Andrew Whitten's .NET Blog

Your Opinion: Using VS 2005 beta on customer projects?

I'm sure everyone is quite excited by the beta of Whidby ( http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/default.aspx ) which they can download soon. There are definately many features I would love to employ in the current product I'm developing ( A web based administration front-end to our SQL-Server based server. )

I know of leading edge consultants who would use this straight away, and I'm curious to know whether anyone here has contemplated doing the same?

SQL Stored Procedure and C# API Generator

Another useful tool. This small, open source, and unassuming program examines a Sql Server database, and generates many stored procedures and all the C# code you need to access them.

http://csharpdatatier.sourceforge.net/

It creates stored procedures based on:

ASP.NET Version Switcher

Useful utility I found:

"The ASP.NET Version Switcher is a little utility that can be used to quickly switch the .NET Framework version that the ASPX pages are compiled against. This is helpful for developers who often have to test their web applications for compatibility with different version of the .NET Framework"

http://www.denisbauer.com/NETTools/ASPNETVersionSwitcher.aspx

Library of Regular Expressions for validation

VS Studio.Net 2003 comes with a very useful Regular Expression validation control. However the few expressions supplied (e.g. Japanese postcodes) are not too useful to my locale.

There is a great website called RegExLib  which has many libraries of such expressions, and you can test each one out online to see if it fits. These can then be applied to the validation control.

MS Technical Roadshow London

I have been so busy with ASP.Net the past few weeks, I havn't really had chance to blog. However I have been let out the office for a couple of days to attend the Microsoft Technical Roadshow at the Hilton Metropole in London!

Well, it seems like a mini Tech-Ed, with three tracks over two days, covering 'Developer', 'Security' and 'IT Professional'.

My main interest in this event was 'Security', since to be honest, it is the things developers are least knowledgable about!

Nevertheless, I start with a couple of ASP.Net sessions, but found that they covered no new ground for me.

In the afternoon I attended the 'Security' track hosted by Jeremy Palmer of Interquad Learning, and I have to say I got a lot of value out of these. He made me think of possible attacks that could expose our product, and many useful tips, which I will write up here when I have some time this weekend.

Tomorrow I will continue with the Security track... it should be more centered on .Net security.

Other random observations:

Lunch was bad, but end of day Pizza was very nice :D

I seemed to be the only one with a Tablet PC.

Tablet power lasted until last 5 minutes of the day... (and judicious use of the 'hibernate' feature used thoughout the day)

Each session they gave away an X-Box game, which I felt bad each time for not winning, even though my wife would never let me buy an X-Box with which to play it ;)

Did anyone else here attend today?