Chuck Bryan

Enharmonically Speaking

c2bryan — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:35:00 GMT

Having a Music Education background, I often like to jest that I code in D-flat.

Not your average patterns book

c2bryan — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:13:00 GMT

This caught my eye at B&N the other day. After flipping through it, and thinking “Are you serious?” I plunked the money down and picked it up. This is, perhaps, one of the best approaches to learning and retaining a subject.

And, the cover is easy on the eye.

Also, for you CSharpies out there, who, like me, are starting out in the study of patterns, check out http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx for examples.

Peter Jackson as a verb

c2bryan — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:12:00 GMT

Thought I would post this as a follow up to my Google your own dogfood post.

quiet vs quite

c2bryan — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 19:15:00 GMT

quiet: the quality or state of being quiet

quite to an extreme : often used as an intensifier with a <quite a swell guy> <quite a beauty>

Google Your Own Dog Food.

c2bryan — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:35:00 GMT

I always find it somewhat amusing when we convert a noun into a verb. For instance, Google is a website that allows you to perform searches for web pages. However, Google can also be used as a verb, which means to use the Google Website. For instance, “So, you are stuck with that problem? Have you Googled it Yet?”

Or, how about Dog Food.

A source of nutrition for our four legged canine friends. But, while researching NHibernate, I realize that this can also be a verb, as in, “They are dog fooding their own code.” I believe that this implies they are eating their own dog food (i.e. using their own product).

Any other examples out there?

The Marco Polo design methodology

c2bryan — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:12:00 GMT

We've heard about Rad and Waterfall, but, what about the Marco Polo methodolgy.

Marco Polo is a game you play in a pool. The person who is “It“ closes their eyes and yells out “Marco,“ and other players yell out “Polo. The “It“ player moves in the general direction of “Polo“ and then calls out “Marco“ again. By this time, the “Polo“ player has moved, and yells out “Polo“ in a new location. The complexity is increased with multiple players shouting “Polo.“

I've worked on projects where this game becomes the software writing methodology. The source of this problem is when coding begins prior to the project being properly scoped. The developer may be trying to ascertain what they are trying to build. “Marco.” As they move towards what they think the client wants (“Polo“), it turns out that either the client has moved on, or the client was never there and now, there are more players involved and it becomes ~~quiet~~ quite confusing.

Bleck!!! This is obviously not the “preferred” method.

Uploading a document to a location not on the web server

c2bryan — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:57:00 GMT

I came across this problem this week, and wrote about it here:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/cbryan/articles/30388.aspx

Long Time, No See

c2bryan — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:06:00 GMT

Ah...the joys of changing jobs. I'm back to doing more C# coding after a stint of SQL Development. Yeah. Happy Happy, Joy Joy. Diving back into C#, I've been indebted to the blogging community and web sites in general for helping me come up to speed, so, to pay back, I'm going to start posting coding problems that I have encountered, and how I resolved them.

Colateral

c2bryan — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 23:20:00 GMT

Ah...finally a good movie for the summer! I like the Village, hated Manchurian and liked Colateral. Two outta three aint bad.

Programmer Toolset

c2bryan — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 11:56:00 GMT

Ah...missed this column previously (so, it is old news). Some of the tools I have used, others (codesmith) I look forward to using.

Declarative Programming in ASP.NET 2.0

c2bryan — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:58:00 GMT

So, how easy is 2 tier development in ASP.NET. Pretty Simple:

<HTML>
<BODY>
<B>ASP.NET 2.0</B><br>
A Test page for some of the ASP.NET 2.0 Features<br>
<form runat="server">

<asp:SqlDataSource id="ds1" runat="server"
ConnectionString="server=localhost;database=Northwind;uid=sa;pwd="
SelectCommand="Select ProductId, ProductName, QuantityPerUnit, UnitPrice, UnitsInStock, Discontinued From Products"
/>

<asp:GridView id="grid1" DataSourceId="ds1" runat="server" />
</form>
</BODY>
</HTML>

So, what do we have here? One of the goals of ASP.NET 2.0 is to continue to decrease the amount of code the developer has to write. To that end, more programming can be done declaratively. I honestly do not know what that means, but, from the context of the word, it appears that there are more controls that you can put on a page and set a series of properties.

Take for instance the new Data Source Controls. This example uses the SqlDataSource, which can be used to connect to a SQL server. All you have to do is provide a connection string and a select statement and the control will create your command, connection, data adapter and even fill a dataset for you. There are many more attributes that you can specify, including Insert, Update and Delete statements.

BTW, went back to B&N and bought ASP.NET v2.0 The Beta Version by Homer, Sussman and Howard. If you are playing with the betas, this is an invaluable “field guide!”

Code Folders

c2bryan — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:16:00 GMT

Everyone who actually reads will probably already know this, but, it was new to me.

In your ASP 2.0, you can add a folder called Code to your project. If you add a class file to that directory, it will be dynamically compiled with your site. No build required. I understand that you can put Typed Datasets and WSDL files in there as well and the proxy classes will be generated.

I was breezing through ASP.NET v. 2.0-The Beta Version at B&N (until I noticed that Hurricane Charley had arrived to Chesapeake Va...and my street usually floods out) and saw that you can include both .vb and .cs classes, but you have to define seperate folders under code and configure your web.config so that the compiler knows that it is handling two languages.

I sorta skipped the ASP thing, but I was always impressed with being able to add a page to the site and it ran. I don't think that I want to add my source code to production sites, but for fixing bugs in development/test this will be great.

Staring me in the face.

c2bryan — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:08:00 GMT

Ok...I've often muttered under my breath for someone to RTFM, and I am usually the one who has not read the manual. But, with a product like VS2k5, the manual is either the MSDN Help Collection, assortment of books (browsed through quickly at B&N while sipping a Mocha) or web resources (MSDN, Blogs, etc).

Today, I was working through a series of articles at MSDN (Web Development with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). All the while, I did not notice that my ASP “Project” did not have a Project! It's a web site.

I know that there will many advantages to this, but the first one that came to mind was this: Source Control Integration. I have worked on several projects where one of the two events has happened:

I need to add something to the web site, but another developer has the Project checked out.
(Worse) A developer adds a new ASPX to the project and then checks the Project in, but not the ASPX. I come along, refresh the project and low, there is a Yellow Caution sign next to a Phantom Page.

Of course, I've never been guilty of that...

Guru Mediation

c2bryan — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 22:58:00 GMT

Manchurian Candidate! What was up with that movie! What a waste of time.

Data Binding In Whidbey

c2bryan — Mon, 02 Aug 2004 22:52:00 GMT

Have you gotten your copy of VS 2k5 (I keep trying to extend that whole Y2k abbreviation)? I have had mine for a few weeks, but have only really started to play with it.

When I read articles, I tend to fixate on the things that will, honestly, make my life easier. With VS 2k2, I had to join a twelve step program to get over my dislike of the D word: databound. But, where would we be without the data binding features of the intrepid DataGrid (as for that matter, think of what Dino Esposito would have written about with out it...thanks for your articles Dino, your early articles guided me ~~quiet~~ quite a bit)?

And so, you know the routine: add grid, set data source, call databind. Rinse, lather, repeat. You want paging with that? Or how about sorting? Comon, you know which events you need to code up! Have you ever said “Why do I have to call databind on Web forms? I don't on Win Forms!”?

VS2k5 introduces some new components for data binding, called Data Source Items. With a DSI, you configure your data source and then add a control, say the new Grid View Control. Set up your GV so that it uses the DSI and Run your app. As if by Magic, you got data in your Grid View with no call to a databind method! You can also configure your GV control for pagination, and you do not need to add any code to set the current page. Want Sorting, again, its a property of the GV control, with Zero Code.

Fun Fun.