: Blog Posts

Welcome to KolkataNET Blogs.

KolkataNET Admin

Please share your experinces, your learning...

KolkataNET Team

MS MVP's Blogs.

KolkataNET Admin

The Ultimate Destination for Blogs by Current and Former Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/

India MVP BlogsList

KolkataNET Admin

http://www.satheeshbabu.com/IndiaMVPBlogs.aspx

Arijit Basu's Blog

KolkataNET Admin

Microsoft Dynamics AX - Arijit Basu | Dynamics AX MVP

Arijit Basu - Microsoft Dynamics Community

Choto Cheeta Online

KolkataNET Admin

This is Saurav Basu's blog http://www.chotocheeta.com/

It's all about systems, technologies, experinces...

Sankarsan’s Journal

KolkataNET Admin

So many tech things you see... NET, AJAX, ASP.NET, C#, Channels, CLR, IIS Hosted, WCF, JSON, Microsoft POX, REST, Serialization, Sessions, System.Transaction, Transactions, Two phase Commit, Volatile, RM, WCF, WebService ...

Abu's Blog

Abu Ismail

Slogan of my blog http://msmvps.com/Abu

In depth knowledge about the Technology with proper understanding of the requirements and proper architecture - Transforms Best Enterprise Solution.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Architecture

KolkataNET Admin

A bird’s-eye view from 1000 feet in MSDN... Conceptual diagram which cover A2Z Basic Key Words associated with WCF.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733128.aspx

WCF Architecture Digram

Basic level articles from MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480210.aspx

A Developer's Primer from Code Project
http://www.devx.com/codemag/Article/31674/0/page/1

Some useful links .. from NetFxGuide

http://www.netfxguide.com/guide/wcf_architecture.aspx

IIS 7.0 Architecture - For ASP.NET, WCF developers and architects - Level 200 (Intermediate)

KolkataNET Admin

IIS 7.0 Architecture

If you are an ASP.NET, WCF advanced serious developer, would like to play with internals of ASP.NET, Web Service, WCH hosting with IIS 7.0; this this article will be very useful to know it's architecture.

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/101/introduction-to-iis7-architecture/

Understanding Hosting WCF Application using Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) in IIS 7.0

If you want to host WCF application using IIS, it will be easy and robust.

Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) in IIS 7.0 makes it possible to host WCF services beyond HTTP and without having to install the whole IIS package.

"Extend Your WCF Services Beyond HTTP With WAS" http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163357.aspx

PDC 2008 @ Channel 9

KolkataNET Admin

.NET Framework (16) Ad Platform (2) ADO.NET (3) ASP.NET (10) Azure (39) CCR (1) Dynamics (5) Entity Framework (3) Expression (4) HPC (1) Identity (8) IIS (2) Internet Explorer (3) Languages (10) LINQ (4) Live Framework (10) Live Mesh (10) Live Services (14) Office (2) Oslo (5) Parallelism (9) PowerShell (1) research (4) Sharepoint (5) Silverlight (11) SQL Server (16) SQL Server Data Services (8) Surface (0) Sync Framework (3) TFS (3) Unified Communications (3) Velocity (2) Virtual Earth (1) Visual Studio (19) VSTS (8) WCF (6) WF (8) Windows 7 (24) Windows Embedded (1) Windows Home Server (2) Windows Server (12) WMI (1) WPF (9) XNA (1)

WAW !!! Application Architecture Pocket Guides

KolkataNET Admin

Application Architecture Pocket Guides now available http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/tags/AppArch/default.aspx

Initium - Start

Sankarsan Bose

Thanks to Abu for providing me this opportunity to blog/klog and share my thoughts and opinions in this KolkataNet website.

I already have a couple of blogs on diverse categories like technology,movies,etc. in wordpress and blogspot but this new writing pad in the cyber world is really exciting me.

My friends and colleagues always complained about my blog topics being incomprehensible and complex. So KolkataNet blog will be place where I will note down stuff we all work yet we miss to see some inner details and trivia about them.

My next (or first… Oh! No ….second) post will be on “Inside Events in C#”

Delegates in C#

Sankarsan Bose

Though I have never worked with C/C++ in my professional career, like any other programmer I have seperate interest and liking for these languages.The concept of a function pointer was always very interesting to me.So when I switched over to C# from Java back in 2004 the delegate keyword caught my attention quickly.Others also draw a comparison and reference between C# delegate and function pointers.But I have seen many people are confused about how exactly it works in the managed environment.

This is what I tried to explain my wordpress post:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/delegates-in-c/

Features of C# 4.0 and C# Language Evolution

KolkataNET Admin

Features of C# 4.0

Dynamically Typed Objects
Optional and Named Parameters
Improved COM Interoperability
Co- and Contra-variance

More @ http://msmvps.com/blogs/abu/archive/2008/11/29/c-language-evolution-features-of-c-4-0.aspx

"What NEXT?" - Visual Studio 2010 and with C# 4.0 and VB.NET 10.0

KolkataNET Admin

"What's Next?" - Everybody is interested to know about new and upcoming things. While I purchase new thing, I could not wait to use. Previously I was curious to know abour Whidbey, Orcas, WinFx ( Indigo, Avalon)... Next???

Now it is the case for Oslo too.

Through PDC 2008, may many of us come to know about Visual Studio 2010.

"10" - this one very significant number for football player or hockey player; only the most important player are getting No. 10 as their jersey number.

Yes, this time, it is "10" - Visual Studio 2010, VB.NET 10, Visual Studio 10 is the NEXT.

Here are some very useful links related to this.

http://blogs.msdn.com/kirillosenkov/archive/2008/11/20/links-about-visual-studio-2010-and-c-4-0.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2008/10/27/the-future-of-c-4-0.aspx

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpfuture

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpfuture/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Home&version=4

http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2008/11/04/what-s-new-in-the-bcl-in-net-4-0-justin-van-patten.aspx

Great Work

Sumon Dey

Good to see our new form of KolkataNet. Really its look good than previous one. Great work Abu da.

[.net] An interesting bug and its solution

palash biswas

Recently I came across to a bug ... it was pretty interesting to debug that. I have blogged my experience on this @ http://palash-biswas.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-program-static-void-main-string.html.

New data types of SQL Server 2008

KolkataNET Admin

Many new data types will be helpful for better performance and optimization of proper data type.

>> DATE/TIME
Till 200 we have datetime and smalldatetime datatype. In that case if we want to compare with only date or time value then what we do basically use the convert function. In the select query we are familiar to used this function in the WHERE clause. This causes huge performance degradation.

New date and time data types:
>DATE: A date-only type
>TIME: A time-only type
>DATETIMEOFFSET: A time-zone-aware datetime type
>DATETIME2: A datetime type with larger fractional seconds and year range than the existing DATETIME type

>> HIERARCHY ID
Till 2005 for hierarchical data we keep record where apart from unique ID, we maintain Parent ID, even some time to make query easy level. The concept of recursive CTE helps us to write query easily, which returns tree structured rows.

Enable database applications to model tree structures in a more efficient way than currently possible. New system type HierarchyId can store values that represent nodes in a hierarchy tree.

>> FILESTREAM Data
Allow large binary data to be stored directly in an NTFS file system, while preserving an integral part of the database and maintaining transactional consistency. To keep large file we used use TEXT / IMAGE data type in SQL Server 2000, in 2005 varbinary. If we compare with these data types, FILESTREM is almost new data type.

>> Integrated Full Text Search
Integrated Full Text Search makes the transition between Text Search and relational data seamless, while enabling users to use the Text Indexes to perform high-speed text searches on large text columns.

>> Sparse Columns
NULL data consumes no physical space, providing a highly efficient way of managing empty data in a database.

>> Large User-Defined Types
SQL Server 2008 eliminates the 8-KB limit for User-Defined Types (UDTs), allowing users to dramatically expand the size of their UDTs.

>> Spatial Data Types
Build spatial capabilities into your applications by using the support for spatial data.
>Implement Round Earth solutions with the geography data type. Use latitude and longitude coordinates to define areas on the Earth's surface.
Implement Flat Earth solutions with the geometry data type. Store polygons, points, and lines that are associated with projected planar surfaces and naturally planar data, such as interior spaces.

Reference: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/whats-new.aspx

How to get SUCCESS in an Interview... 27-10-2007

KolkataNET Admin

The 27-10-2007 meeting was on "How to get SUCCESS in an Interview... in .NET and SQL Server, Frond End / UI and Database Developer".

Abu started with the homework that one should do before appearing for the interview. We discussed the total time needed for it and what are the key points essential for a good preparation. The discussion also included some of the methods that one should follow for achieving this target.

We discussed what were the general types of questions asked and what should be their answering format. What should be the answer to the standard "rate yourself" and "tell me about yourself" type of questions and how to approach them. Approach to HR questions were also discussed. Abu showed us a sample CV and discusses what all should be there in a CV; what to give for freshers, what for 2 yrs experience.

The dress code on the day of the interview and the best behavioral practices were also discussed. Abu stressed on the fact that an interview the candidate can also ask questions and what questions a candidate must ask.

The last topic to be covered was telephonic interview. How to approach them were discussed regarding where to receive the call, what to have with you at the time of the interview. Abu stressed on the fact that having a copy of CV in front is one of the essential things which is often overlooked.

The meeting was overall an interactive session where I could gather much about how to prepare for an interview and how to give the interview so as to maximize my chances. From what I could gather, the most essential things for achieving this goal is to prepare thoroughly and to have a cool head to tactfully answer all the questions.

Due to shortage of time Abu could not share any files. I am sure he will post them on this forum soon.

Author: BiGYaN

HTTP APIs - REST & RPC

Sankarsan Bose

It all started with the WCF session I conducted a few months back.After the session one good friend of mine(Debjit) asked me to help him in chalking out the HTTP based APIs for the website he is currently working on.I remember we had a lot of debate on whether WS-* compliant WCF services or simple HTTP APIs.Gradually we were convinced that for a collaborative Web 2.0 site HTTP APIs are suitable for their simplicity.So began my experiment with POX/JSON support and WCF Web programming model.

Gradually as I started getting deeper I learnt that HTTP APIs can be designed in both REST and RPC ways.The differences of these two I tried to list down in this blog post:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/http-based-apis/

Preparation for a Job Interview

KolkataNET Admin

This post is realted for Job Interview of the IT Professionals especially for developers. Appearing without proper planningg and preparation is not a good practice. At least minimum level of preparation is required, though I believe to get qualify an interview depends on certain things
• What is requirement of the post applied for
• Based on the mix and match of the actual requirement and the candidates profile
• How good the preparation of a candidate has been taken
• Candidates’ knowledge level, experiences, communication skills, confidence
• The interviewer and the process / methodologies following to select a candidate
In this case, it will be wised if we start this exercise with proper planning and taking it seriously. More on …

http://msmvps.com/blogs/abu/archive/2007/11/05/preparing-for-an-interview-should-be-planned-excercise.aspx

ASP.NET MVC Custom ControllerFactory

Sankarsan Bose

In the month of November this year we had a session on ASP.NET MVC framework.There a couple of questions were raised regarding the restrictions imposed by the framework on naming of Controllers,Views and structuring of the Web application.

So I started exploring the extension points and customization features of the framework.There are following extension points

Route
RouteHandler
ControllerFactory
Controller
ViewEngine
ViewLocator

In the post mentioned I have noted down the steps to develop a simple ControllerFactory:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2008/12/16/asp.net-mvc---developing-custom-controllerfactory.aspx

"Covariance and Contravariance" - Step By Step

KolkataNET Admin

So nicely step by step blogged by Eric Lippert for "Covariance and Contravariance" as "Fabulous Adventures In Coding". Here all the things are explained with easy understable examples.

Covariance and Contravariance, Part Eleven: To infinity, but not beyond

Immutability in C# Part Three: A Covariant Immutable Stack

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Ten: Dealing With Ambiguity

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Nine: Breaking Changes

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Eight: Syntax Options

Covariance and Contravariance in C# Part Seven: Why Do We Need A Syntax At All?

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Six: Interface Variance

Covariance and Contravariance In C#, Part Five: Higher Order Functions Hurt My Brain

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Four: Real Delegate Variance

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Three: Method Group Conversion Variance

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part Two: Array Covariance

Covariance and Contravariance in C#, Part One

Quick Look into Up/Downcasting in C#

Sankarsan Bose

Today I was just go through the different aspects of type conversion and casting.Upcasting/Downcasting is nothing new in C# world but sometimes we miss out the internal difference between the two.Noted down my observations on the same in my post at: From .NET Geek's Desk

REST in WCF

KolkataNET Admin

The series blog post on REST in WCF

REST in WCF - Part I (REST Overview)

REST in WCF - Part II (AJAX Friendly Services, Creating The Service)

REST in WCF - Part III (AJAX Friendly Services, Consuming The Service)

REST in WCF - Part IV (HI-REST - Exposing a service via GET - Configuring the service)

REST in WCF - Part V (HI-REST - Exposing a service via GET - The ServiceContract and Implementation)

REST in WCF - Part VI (HI-REST - Consuming our GET service via AJAX)

REST in WCF - Part VII (HI-REST - Implementing Insert and Update

REST in WCF - Part VIII (HI-REST - Implementing Delete)

REST in WCF - Part IX - Controlling the URI

REST in WCF - Part X - Supporting Caching and Conditional GET

Object Equality

Sankarsan Bose

A little note on object equality and identity:

Object Equality & Identity

String Interning in C#

Sankarsan Bose

Few days back one of my friends profiling his application with Jetbrains DotTrace profiler told me that he suspecting some memory leak issue with hard coded literal strings as they are not getting collected properly.After discussing I found that he is completely unaware of the process interning of literal strings by CLR.So I have discussed about this in my post below

String Interning in C#

Locating Views in ASP.NET MVC

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post on ASP.NET MVC I mentioned about different extension points in the framework and discussed about custom controller factory.But before proceeding into further details of extension points I felt the need of discussing little about the core classes in the ASP.NET MVC Framework.This is what I have tried to do in my post below:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2008/12/25/locating-views-in-asp.net-mvc.aspx

Customizing ViewEngine in ASP.NET MVC

Sankarsan Bose

This is another post explaining how we can customize ASP.NET MVC view engine to read the view locations from config.

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2008/12/25/customizing-viewengine-in-asp.net-mvc.aspx

Lambda Expressions

Sankarsan Bose

During initial days of launch I was not very much into LINQ and programming language changes related to LINQ.But for a past few weeks I have started taking a look at LINQ related features.In the post below I have discussed my observations on Lambda expressions, one of the C# 3.0 features extensively used in LINQ.

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2008/12/28/Lambda-Expressions.aspx

WCF Extension Points - Dispatcher

Sankarsan Bose

I have planned to discuss about the WCF extension points with examples.I have started with the extension points available in DispatchRuntime/DispatchOperation in this post:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/wcf-extension-points-dispatcher/

The plan is to discuss about behaviours in the next post and then each of the interfaces with samples.

Break from Tech

Sankarsan Bose

I was planning to complete my study on WCF behaviours tonight itself but some other thoughts were bugging me for past one week.So I decided to "tech" a break and flush out my thoughts in this post:

http://logicalcircles.blogspot.com/2008/12/finally-sunday-to-rashomon.html

Dependency Injection

Sankarsan Bose

Earlier in one of my posts I mentioned about customizing the ControllerFactory of ASP.NET MVC framework.After that I read few articles and posts about usage of a Dependency Injection container to do that and gradually I started evaluating the containers.This post contains the very basics of DI pattern:

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2009/01/04/Dependency-Injection.aspx

WCF Behaviors

Sankarsan Bose

WCF behaviors are key to extending functionalities of WCF runtime.In this post I have discussed about types of behaviors and how they can be hooked to the WCF runtime.

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/wcf-behavior/

WCF A2Z Hands On Lab (HOL) - Tutorial/Lab # 01

KolkataNET Admin

This is my first post for WCF HOL. I will be posting series of Lab Sessions with code and explanations for the whole series. I have noticed in one UG Session people who don't have any WCF backround but who are familiars of ASP.NET/.NET for them this series will be useful as a tutorial with practical.

Step by step I will be covering all the possible aspects of WCF. Same time I will be covering the SOA / Service based real life application scope especially for Connected and Distributed systems.

WCF A2Z Hands On Lab (HOL) - Tutorial/Lab # 01 (a) - Service

WCF A2Z Hands On Lab (HOL) - Tutorial/Lab # 01 (a) - Client Application

Here is the code... of WCF A2Z Hands On Lab (HOL) - Tutorial/Lab # 01- Service and Client Application Click to Download

Grady Booch on PnP Application Architecture Guide

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes Grady Booch's comments on the PnP Application Architecture Guides.One of the most insightful blogs I have come across recently.

http://www.handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com/index.jsp?page=Blog&part=2008

An Hour with Steve Ballmer

sumeet singh

Hi! It exciting to share that i got the oppurtunity to attend the keynote session of Mr. Steve Ballmer (CEO - Microsoft Corporation) in International CES (Consumer Electronic Show - http://www.cesweb.org) at Las Vegas this evening. It was exciting to see Steve in front of naked eyes . He delivered an hour keynote session focussing on Economic turnmoil - how Microsoft stands in this period of recession, new product launch (Announcing Windows 7 Beta release today for MSDN customers and on Friday globally), Cool games including XBOX 360 live. A little background on CES (http://www.cesweb.org), it is the largest Consumer Electronic show globally with more than 2700 exhibitors around the world demostrating their products for 4 days. The main topics Steve covered: 1> Convergence of PC, Phone and TV - which a common man uses daily. The main focus of Microsoft is to integrate these three devices seamlessly. It will be the Internet Cloud - which will connect these 3 devices to interact seamlessly. 2> Future of Windows - Microsoft announced the launch of WINDOWS 7 Beta - future Operating System - today for MSDN Customers and Gold Partners. Globally it will be released on Friday. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/microsoft-relea.html 3> Microsoft launches - Windows Live which inclues Messenger/Mail/photos globally which is available free today - http://home.live.com 4> In the world of games - Microsoft will be launching "Halo Wars" ; "Halo 3 ODST" ; XBOX LIve ; KODU (game creator for kids). There are more to come alongwith this event. I am happy to share some pics of Steve Ballmer during his keynote (attached). Cheers Sumeet

SOA Is Dead - Storm in the Blogoshpere

Sankarsan Bose

SOA is declared dead by Anne Thomas Manne's now famous post

"SOA is Dead; Long Live Services"

May be the jargon is dead but services & service orientation as a thought process is not .

Share your views please.

Gran Torino

Sankarsan Bose

Client Eastwood is back:

Trailer: Gran Torino

Flixster - Share Movies

Understanding SOA - SOA in the Real

KolkataNET Admin

This is one of my most interesting eBook which gives the real concepts of SOA. I am here to share this... Click on the book's image to download

Windows 7 - Beta Download Available

sumeet singh

Folks,

Enjoy Windows 7

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Cheers
Sumeet

Role of an architect

Sankarsan Bose

This is nice synopsis on the role and competencies of an architect:

http://www.bredemeyer.com/architect.htm

ASP.NET MVC URL Routing

Sankarsan Bose

I was exploring how to develop custom route handler in ASP.NET MVC.While doing that I did some detailed study of the routing related classes.This is what I have tried to note down in my post below:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2009/01/10/asp.net-mvc-routing.aspx

Anonymous Types and LINQ

Sankarsan Bose

Along with anonymous methods and lambda expression it is important to have a understanding of anonymous types as well for LINQ.This is what I have discussed in my new post:

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2009/01/17/Anonymous-Types-and-LINQ.aspx

Intelligence Amplification & Web

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my thoughts on Intelligence Amplification:

http://logicalcircles.blogspot.com/2009/01/intelligence-amplification-over-web.html

Developing Custom ASP.NET MVC RouteHandler

Sankarsan Bose

Today I completed my study of ASP.NET MVC routing by developing a sample RouteHandler.This is what I have described in my post below:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2009/01/18/developing-custom-routehandler.aspx

Developing Custom OperationInvoker in WCF

Sankarsan Bose

Explained my understanding on operation invokers in WCF in my post below:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/developing-custom-operationinvoker/

The code sample can be downloaded from:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=wcfsamples&DownloadId=4496

VM Image of Windows 7 - No need to install on your PC/Laptop

sumeet singh

Hello Everyone
Aren't you folks excited about Windows 7. Its cool - wonderful - fast and appearance fantastic :)
You can download the VM image and can play with it:

http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/63752

Cheers
Sumeet

LINQ To XML Overview

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my first post on LINQ to XML :

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2009/01/24/LINQ-To-XML-Overview.aspx

24th Jan 2009 - Findings

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my findings today:

http://techherald.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/24-jan-2009/

Cross Page Postback in ASP.NET

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my understanding on cross page postbacks:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2009/01/24/cross-page-postback-in-asp.net.aspx

25th Jan 2009 Findings

Sankarsan Bose

Tonight's findings:

http://techherald.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/25th-jan-2009/

26th Jan 2009 - Layoff stories & IT Jobs

Sankarsan Bose

Tonight's findings:

http://techherald.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/26th-jan-2009/

Microsoft certification exams 10 percent discount Coupon

vikram Lakhotia

Hi,

From now till March 31, 2009, you can use this Promotion Code to obtain a Microsoft Certification Exam Voucher Code at a 10% discount and free retake offer. You are free to pass on this information to any friend interested in giving Microsoft exams.

The promotion code for the voucher is IN93C1EC

Vikram

27th jan 2009

Sankarsan Bose

Software

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate Now Available - IE 8.0 Release Candidate now available for public download.
Ultimate guide to upgrading to SQL Server 2008 - In 2009.... Read More

Functional Construction in LINQ To XML

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my understanding on XLINQ functional construction

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2009/01/31/Functional-Construction-in-LINQ-To-XML.aspx

Attn Students:Microsoft Research India Summer School on Networking

Subhamoy Mandal

Microsoft Research India, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), will host a Summer School on Networking during June 08-19, 2009. The Summer School seeks to expose the audience, mainly comprising students, to cutting edge research in the field of computer networking. The summer school will bring in several eminent researchers in the field, each of whom will deliver a series of lectures in their area of specialization. Besides these lectures, the summer school will also provide opportunities for the attendees to network with the speakers. It is our hope that these lectures and interactions with the speakers will convey to the students in the audience the excitement of doing research in computer networking and inspire them to embark on a research career themselves.

This page includes information on the summer school program and also the key dates. Please note that past experience suggests that many more students than we could possibly accommodate are interested in attending, so we are constrained to select student attendees via a competitive process. While students would comprise the bulk of the attendees, we also expect to have participation from post-doctoral researchers and research staff, selected based on the applications we receive.

Important information

Deadline for applications: March 02, 2009
Intimation to selected applicants: April 06, 2009
Summer School dates: June 08 -19, 2009

Venue: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

More Details : http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/indiasummerschool2009/default.aspx

IIT Kharagpur, Microsoft India Launch Centre Of Excellence

Subhamoy Mandal

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in association with Microsoft India, has launched the ‘Microsoft Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Property Research and Technology Policy’ (MSCIP). Situated within the institute’s Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, the centre will enhance the school’s attempt at equipping professionals from technological backgrounds in Intellectual Property law.

News Results:

EFYToday : http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=32059&magid=11

ManagingIP: http://www.managingip.com/Article/2097688/Microsoft-tries-to-bridge-Indias-university-industry-divide.html

Free online training on designing & architecting virtual infrastructure

sumeet singh

Folks,

The URL mentioned below will help you to learn - designing & architecting virtual infrastructure. Some cool stuff coming up with Windows 2008 server (like HyperV).

http://www.msasappro.com/msasappro/homepage.aspx?ID=Reg

A Short Description on Virtualization

Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing the resources of that single computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer.

I run VM image of Windows 7 , Window Server 2008 and several instances of Windows 2003 server - on my machine - sharing my CPU usage, memory, hard disk space. You built a VM image of any application or OS - clone it and can distribute it to as many users you want. This eliminates the time for setting up a new environment. This is very usefull in development world as intial time can be reduced if environment is ready and pre-configured.

As i know all big companies are running or migrating their servers to VM ware - ESX infrastrucutre.

http://www.microsoft.com/india/controlcosts/Virtualization/default.aspx

There are some applications which are not certified to run on VM's, so please read the release notes of those products - before deploying it to VM's.

Cheers
Sumeet

Physical Layout of Data - StructLayout

Sankarsan Bose

Back to my desk after two busy weekends.This week did some study on interop.Sharing the first interesting finding.

from_net_geeks_desk/archive/2009/02/22/Physical-Layout-of-Data-_2D00_-StructLayout.aspx

Today's Discussion On An "Expert"

Sankarsan Bose

Summarizing one of the points of today's discussion:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/todays-discussion-on-an-expert.html

On Metrics - Project KOLKATANET

Sankarsan Bose

This my second post on thoughts after last weekends discussions:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/metrics---lets-not-measure-blindly.html

KolkataNET Session 28th Feb 2009

Sankarsan Bose

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/kolkatanet-session---net-debugging-and-profiling.html

Security - In Times of Insecurity

Sankarsan Bose

Security has been one of the areas in S/W development where I have never given much specialized attention.I planned to do so in the light of the Tech Days theme and here are my first two posts of a multipart series:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/trustworthy-computing.html

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/security-development-lifecycle.html

Please Support GreenPeace

Sankarsan Bose

Though the times are hard and challenging,I think we must face the "Inconvenient Truth" and do something to get winter back in our city i.e. to prevent the drastic changes in climate.

This is my post on a project GreenPeace and related organizations are doing.

http://logicalcircles.blogspot.com/2009/03/music-wood-coalition-project-green.html

PLEASE EXTEND YOUR SUPPORT TO THEM (IF NOT ALREADY)

KolkataNET Sessions,ALT.NET & Tech Ed India 2009

Sankarsan Bose

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/kolkatanet-sessionsaltnet-tech-ed-india-2009.html

Cloud Computing - Basics

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my initial understandings on Cloud Computing:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/cloud-computing---introduction.html

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/cloud-computing---part-2.html

Cloud Computing - Amazon EC2

Sankarsan Bose

For the past few I was working with the Amazon cloud and here goes my first post on this:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/cloud-computing---amazon-ec2.html

Rule Processing

Sankarsan Bose

Some thoughts on Rule Processing and Rule Engines:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/business-rules-and-rule-engines.html

WF Rules Engine - Object Model and Basic Flow

Sankarsan Bose

Here goes my understanding of WF Object Model and basic flow:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/workflow-foundation-rule-engine-part-i/

Try out Dbc With Code Contracts

Sankarsan Bose

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/design-by-contract-devlabs-code-contract.html

Microsoft Ajax 4.0 preview available

vikram Lakhotia

The Microsoft Ajax team made the fourth preview of the 4.0 version available on CodePlex. This is an important release because it enables the full client data story, complete with the ability to get changes back to the server
automatically.

Click here for more...

WF Foundation Rule Engine - Policy Activity

Sankarsan Bose

A simple sample code for Rule processing with PolicyActivity:

sankarsan.wordpress.com/workflow-foundation-rule-engine-policy-activity/

Managed Service Engine CTP + Service Virtualization

Sankarsan Bose

Managed Services Engine CTP is released at Codeplex.But prior to checking out the product features I thought getting the basics of Service Virtualization right.So here goes my thoughts:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/service-virtualization-managed-services-engine.html#more

jQuery - The magic of ready() event

Sankarsan Bose

For the past few months I am mesmerized with jQuery.Here goes my first in the series of posts on this to share my amazements and views:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sankarsan/archive/2009/04/03/journey-with-jquery---part-i.aspx

AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers & Sandboxing

Sankarsan Bose

This is something very important to know while u are working with web applications with medium trust.

APTCA-and-Sandboxing.aspx

A Layered ASP.NET MVC Application

Sankarsan Bose

Last week Debjit asked if I am aware of layered ASP.NET MVC applications using WCF.That time I had not much idea about this apart from the fact I had seen some sample implementation on the net.So I directed him towards that.Anyways conceptually that looked very much feasible to me

Today I was just checking on those existing samples.I found that some of the samples are using WCF but the O/R patterns are not in place properly or vice versa.So I set out to build a sample on my own and posted them in my wordpress blog.I have splitted them into a series of four for better readability and focus under the following categories:

O/R Mapping Patterns

Building The Repository with Entity Framework

Building The WCF Service

Building The ASP.NET MVC Application

Till now this does not consider any Exception Propagation,Transaction and dealing with multiple tables and SPs.

Need your feedback to improve on the same.!!!

Windows 7 is now ready to be Launched

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

Windows 7 beta version is available but the big question is wheather it is better than Vista or not?

This new OS tried very hard to please users by addressing some of the biggest gripes people had about Vista, and by generally making everyday tasks accessible and easy to perform. To the extent that these efforts are visible in our early beta, they look pretty good.

Journey with Patterns - Prologue

Sankarsan Bose

Last Saturday Abu & I went to Picadilly Bookshop and bought some nice reads on SOA.Abu raised very good point that if the reading and learnings can be shared that might be helpful for others who are interested but not having enough time to read through the whole book.I was thinking of starting a series on SOA as I was reading through the books.Then I felt that similar series is required on basic stuff like architecture and design patterns before getting into SOA.So I started with the following post on patterns today:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/journey-with-patterns---prologue.html

Look and feel of SQL Server 2008

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

The look and feel of new SQL Server 2008 is almost same as SQL Server 2005 but SQL Server 2008 have several new and exciting features. The difference and features of SQL Server 2008 I will discuss in the next blog. Here is the look and feel of new SQL Server 2008. http://subhrendu.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/look-and-feel-sql-server-2008/

CAPTCHA and Latest Innovation

Sankarsan Bose

CAPTCHA - This is implemented in this site as well.Google releases it's latest research innovation in this field.

Oracle Acquires Sun

Sankarsan Bose

This is surely the news of the day for techies

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/oracle-acquires-sun.html

Layers - Architecture Pattern

Sankarsan Bose

The following two posts contains what we discussed about in yesterday's meeting:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/journey-with-patterns---layer-part-i.html

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/journey-with-patterns---layers-part-2.html

Win 7 RC1 Review

KolkataNET Admin

Bigyan: I'm sure many of the members (specially the MVPs) of KolkataNET enjoy a MSDN Premium subscription. I guess some of you have downloaded the Win 7 RC1 from there. So how was your experience with it?
Even within my exams I downloaded a copy 3 days back and tried it out. Here is my take on Win 7 RC1:
http://naygib.blogspot.com/2009/05/win-7-rc1-review.html

ASP.NET MVC With StructureMap

Sankarsan Bose

For the past few days I have been playing with StructureMap.StructureMap with it's fluent interfaces and DSLs is really great.Here goes my post about how we can fit this into ASP.NET MVC

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/a-layered-aspnet-mvc-application-with-structuremap-part-v/

IEEE Workshop on MSP430 / DSP and BeagleBoard at IIT Kharagpur

Subhamoy Mandal

Dear Friend, The IEEE EMB Student Club of IIT Kharagpur along with the IEEE Kharagpur Section is organizing a Workshop on Low Power Embedded Systems for Medical Applications during June 13-14, 2009. The two-day workshop will cater to needs of students and young professionals working in this domain, and would be addressed by eminent speakers who help in development of this technology. Details can be obtained at the webpage : http://www.smst.iitkgp.ernet.in/embs/index.html For details please contact : Subhamoy Mandal smandal_biomed@ieee.org smandal@smst.iitkgp.ernet.in IEEE EMB Student Club IIT Khargpur embs.smst@ieee.org

Reinventing The Wheel - Does That Makes Sense

Sankarsan Bose

Just some thoughts on code reuse vs reinventing:

http://lifewithcode.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/reinventing-the-wheel-does-that-makes-sense/#more-22

The Non Departmental Subjects

Sankarsan Bose

On the subjects we hated to learn those days:

http://sankarsan.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-non-departmental-subjects.html

Permanent Redirect in Asp.net 4.0

vikram Lakhotia

One of the most important things for web 2.0 sites are to be searchable, because every one wants top get more and more users for the search result.

http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/Permanent_Redirect_in_Aspnet_40.aspx

Strat.In stands for Strategy Invented, Strategy Indianized, Strategizing!

KolkataNET Admin

Generally I go through on technical blogs... Apart from technical thing, I have interests on different areas such as Indian/International Politics, History, Economics...

I found all these in a single blog - Strat.in; really very good blogers are blogging... What Atul, co-founder of the blog, says about this blog...

Are you an MBA? Are you an asipiring MBA? Are you an MBA in the making? Or do you just want to take a peak into their world of thoughts? Visit us at Strat.in. We are very much from the city of Joy - IIM Calcutta!

Strat.In stands for Strategy Invented, Strategy Indianized, Strategizing!

Today the web has made huge strides in replacing the traditional media and blogs have become ubiquitous. We, some of the recent graduates of IIM Calcutta and other premier colleges in India wanted to contribute to this revolution. We felt that though a lot of people write about technology and even business, but the strategy behind them is rarely discussed. This is our attempt to discuss the strategic decisions and management issues faced in India.

We believe everyone has an interesting story to tell, just not everyday. A lot of people have amazing ideas and story to tell the world but they are not able to. One reason being that their ideas come once in a while and hence they are not able to maintain a blog, and even if they do have a blog a lot of people don’t read or comment. At strat.in we feel that people can contribute these articles and our readers will comment and this will lead to further discussion and growth. If you feel like contributing any story / suggestion/ comment then please to write to us!

Disclaimer: Views mentioned by posters on strat.in are their own and strat.in is not responsible if they hurt someone’s feelings directly or indirectly.

C# 4.0 Optional Parameters

Sankarsan Bose

I have downloaded the VS 2010 Beta last week Saturday night but after that week's schedule was pretty tight so did not get much time to hack around.This weekend started off with 2010 and this is the first post of a series on this:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/first-look-at-c-4-0-optional-parameters-and-default-values/#more-196

C# 4.0 Named Arguments

Sankarsan Bose

This is the second post in the series on C# 4.0

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/first-look-at-c4-0-named-arguments/

Microsoft Tag - Linking real life with the digital world

Arindam Sinha

Microsoft Tag

This links the real life with the digital world. These are small,Colorful barcodes which can be
printed or stuck or displayed anywhere.

How does this work?

Users need a Microsoft Tag Reader and mobile phone’s camera to capture a tag.
Once the Tag is decoded and action associated with the Tag (like opening the browser and displaying
a specific web page) takes place.To do that user should have Internet Connection in the phone.
Currently, Microsoft Tag is available for most smartphones (Windows Mobile,J2ME,iPhone,Blckberry and Symbian S60 phones). You can find the detailed listing in Microsoft site itself.

Charges for Tagging

Microsoft Tag reader is free for phones which will not cost anything to the users.
However charges for Internet access, dial phone, sending emails,SMSs and all will be applicable
as per connection provider.
For Business or Publishers,during beta period there will not charge for commercial use of Microsoft Tag
(like generating, using and recieving consumer analytics data). Mcirosoft entered Beta phase on 07-Jan-2009 and will continue for at least 2 years.

How business can use?

Tags can be used in many different ways for any business or organization. Put it on your packaging,
on your storefront, on your offline advertisements. Add them to product shelving or museum exhibits.
Microsoft Tag helps you build connections with your customers, letting you interact in real time in the
real world, and is just plain fun to use. It lets you reach more people, at more times, using the thing
they carry everywhere–their mobile phone. Plus, any Tag your customer scans is automatically saved,
so they can revisit your information time and time again, or share it with their friends.
Microsoft Tag Beta is intended to use in the United States,UK,Australia,New Zealand and Turkey.
For more details please visit -
http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

UG Meet - WCF - July 2009

KolkataNET Admin

Today, 19 th July, Sunday we had a session on WCF. Nice to see so many experienced developers in the session. I have enjoyed a lot to encounter many interesting question. In very rare session, I got such a great response for making so interactive like today's session.
The source code and presentation of this session are available here...
Demo Code -
http://kolkatanet.com/UGMeet/2009/07/WCFBasicService.zip
http://kolkatanet.com/UGMeet/2009/07/KolkataNETService.zip
Presentation -
http://kolkatanet.com/UGMeet/2009/07/WCF.zip

Thanks to all who attended the session, special thanks to Biswajitda for providing venue.

Abu

Demonstration of Windows Mobile App without Visual Studio

Arindam Sinha

I have faced some issues when I tried to test a Windows Mobile Application in an emulator as I did not have any actual device. The system where I tried to test, did not have any Visual Studio installed. Hope this blog would help you -

http://arindamsinha.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/demonstration-of-windows-mobile-app-without-visual-studio/

Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code

Arindam Sinha

Visit my post -

http://arindamsinha.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/configuring-visual-studio-to-debug-net-framework-source-code/

Trace SOAP Request/Response XML with TraceExtension

Arindam Sinha

If you are interested to trace or log the SOAP Request Response XML then read my post -

trace-soap-requestresponse-with-traceextension/

Roadshow for The launch of Windows7 in 16 cities

vikram Lakhotia

Microsoft is organizing a road show for the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. Roadshow will be organized in 16 cities in India on different Dates. Roadshow for the launch of Windows 7

ASP.NET 4.0 WebForms Routing - Part I

Sankarsan Bose

A cursory glance into ASP.NET 4.0 Webforms Routing:

asp-net-4-0-webforms-routing-part-i/

Currying in F#

Sankarsan Bose

A quick look into currying:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/currying-and-f/

User Preference using Application Settings

Arindam Sinha

Go through this post on user preferences implemented through Application Settings.

user-preference-using-application-settings

Programmatically set the Page Description and Keywords in Asp.Net 4.0

vikram Lakhotia

One of the small but new features in Asp.Net 4.0 is the addition of the Title, Metakeyword and Metadescription property in the page class itself. Now we can easily set the Title, Metakeyword and Metadescription (very important for sites looking for SEO.) from the page itself.

Programmatically set the Page Description and Keywords in AspNet 40

Asp.net 4.0 FormView Control Enhancement

vikram Lakhotia

Another of the new features of Asp.net 4.0 is the enhancement(in terms of rendering) made in the Formview control. By default the Formview control would render table, tr and td tags for display of content. This can be of much trouble to many of the designer because they have little control over the rendered HTML.

Aspnet_40_FormView_Control_Enhancement.aspx

Received ASIA MVP Certification Hero Award 2009

vikram Lakhotia

Just received the ASIA MVP Certification Hero Award 2009. I did not knew that another award was coming. Was more than pleasantly surprised. Thanks to Microsoft, Microsoft MVP Team, Microsoft Learning Team.

Received ASIA MVP Certification Hero Award 2009

Contest for Azure application 'N' win many prizes

KolkataNET Admin

This a very good opportunity to learn Windows Azure application for the INDIAN students and professional developers

The Road Show on for the Launch of Windows 7

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

Click Here to Register

Microsoft is organizing a road show for the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. Roadshow will be organized in kolkata on 9th September , 2009

The Road Show on 9th September for the Launch of Windows 7

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

Click Here to Register

Microsoft is organizing a road show for the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. Roadshow will be organized in kolkata on 9th September , 2009

Operators in Scala

Sankarsan Bose

This is really interesting language feature to note:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/operators-playing-with-scala/

An Introduction To Dynamism

Sankarsan Bose

Getting started with dynamism:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/dynamic-in-c-introduction/

Application running in localhost and debugging mode

vikram Lakhotia

How to know when the application is running in Localhost or debugging mode.

Application running in localhost and debugging mode

A workshop for IT Professionals on 15th September on Implementing SECURITY INSIDE-OUT with MICROSOFT Technologies

vikram Lakhotia

There an interactive live session on September 15, 2009 on how the New Efficiency Products will help you manage security in a simpler way. This session will occur across 16 cities at NIIT centers as a live session with benefit of face-to-face teaching, each participant having their own computers to work on, and having the ability to ask questions any time.

http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/Implement_SECURITY_INSIDE-OUT_with_MICROSOFT_Technologies.aspx

Vikram
www.vikramLakhotia.com

Why I will go to an event

Sankarsan Bose

I was thinking how our events can be made more participative:

http://logicalcircles.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-will-i-go-to-communityclub-event.html

Chime in with your thoughts

Dynamic in C# - DLR Basics

Sankarsan Bose

Quick look into DLR

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/dynamic-in-c-the-dlr-part-2/

LINQ queries and IN clause in SQL

vikram Lakhotia

Hi,

When working with the LINQ queries for SQL one of the common queries that we need to run is the select query with IN clause. In SQL IN clause is used to provide more than one value to match in the where clause.

How to simulate IN Clause in LINQ queries

http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/How_to_simulate_IN_Clause_in_LINQ_queries.aspx

Vikram
http://www.vikramlakhotia.com

Dynamic in C# - Part 3

Sankarsan Bose

This post discusses implementation of "dynamic" in C#

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/dynamic-in-c-part3/

Imperative and Functional Languages

Sankarsan Bose

For the past couple of months I have been looking into different aspects of functional programming and learning languages like F# and Haskell.While discussing about this with my friends ( particularly to those who are developers without much academic inclination) I find it sometimes a bit difficult to explain the essence of functional programming as many are not much aware of the basic driver behind the design of the imperative languages.... Read More

Login and Register for Tech days

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

http://communitytechdays.com/registration1.aspx?Status=found&login=offline

BlockingCollection in .NET 4.0

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post about Parallel Extensions in .NET I had mentioned about the Coordination Data Structure(CDS) , the new set of thread safe collections that are introduced in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace.Read More

Laziness in C# 4.0

Sankarsan Bose

C# 4.0 introduces the Lazy<T> class as part of BCL for this purpose.In this post we will take a detailed look into the behavior and functioning of this class.Read More

Security Live in Kolkata

Subhrendu Guha Neogi

http://www.endtoend.in/apps/forms/microsoft/SecurityLive/registration.aspx

Why Software Development ?

Vaibhav Sharma

I have been thinking off late as to why I chose to be a Software Developer ?

Here is a peak into what I think drives us (we developers).

Read here

Windows 7 - Dreams come true!

Vaibhav Sharma

Welcome to Windows 7!

Yes, version 7 of the flagship product from Microsoft, the successor of the not so overwhelmingly popular Windows Vista. Going by the release of this edition of Windows, it won't be unsafe to say, they finally got it right!

Check it out here

IMiserable <T>

Vaibhav Sharma

IMiserable <T>

Before you think otherwise let me clarify that IMiserable <T> is not a new generic interface introduced in .NET 4.0. As I climb up the stairs as a developer, every passing day, there are certain things that simply make my life miserable day-in and day-out.

I hereby attempt to list down the top 3 things that I believe are a mess for developers at large. It’s amazing how most of us (if not all) find ourselves hooked up eradicating these miseries per project, per day basis.

Read the miseries here!

Community Tech Days Presentation on C# 4.0

Sankarsan Bose

My Community Tech Days presentation is available here:

http://codingndesign.com/blog/?p=103

Join My KolkataNET List

Sankarsan Bose

Join Twitter...Join KolkataNET

http://twitter.com/sankarsan/kolkatanet

Stay in touch...

The agonizing SME developer

Vaibhav Sharma

Read the post here

The Criminal Coder

Vaibhav Sharma

Read it here

Got Started With Google App Engine

Sankarsan Bose

The term “Cloud Computing” has gained a lot of attention by now and the momentum seems to be rising even in 2010.Cloud Computing appears in Gartner’s list of Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010 and as per the report..... Read More

Microsoft AJAX Library Preview 6 & Data Binding

Sankarsan Bose

Sorry for a long absence.In my last post I had discussed about Microsoft AJAX Library Preview 6 and the DataView control.In this post we will take a look into the data binding feature.... Read More

Dynamic Reception in C#

Sankarsan Bose

In my last couple of posts I had discussed about the new dynamic keyword introduced in C# 4.0 and the how the DLR integrates with CLR to provide the dynamic programming services.In this post I will discuss about the System.Dynamic.DynamicObject class and how we can implement dynamic receivers in C#.Dynamic Receivers allows the client code to make a method call that is not defined in the class. .. Read More

Parallel For Loop

Sankarsan Bose

In my earlier post on Parallel Programming I have explained about Task and Data Parallelism.In this post we will go into a little more deep into the API and discuss about Parallel For loop in .NET Framework 4.0. Read More..

My TweetCloud Over An Year

Sankarsan Bose

Check my tweet cloud:

http://sankarsan.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/my-tweetcloud-over-an-year/

Tuple in C# 4.0

Sankarsan Bose

Tuple provides us with a way to group elements of disparate data types together.This is present in functional languages like Haskell and also dynamic languages like Python. Read More

2012 The Movie

Sankarsan Bose

Last Tuesday I managed to see the movie "2012" finally..

This Week - 7th December 2009

Sankarsan Bose

This week for me.

http://logicalcircles.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-week-7th-december-2009.html

Parallel For Loop : Break Or Stop

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post I had discussed about Parallel For loops and in what situation it can be useful compared to a sequential loop.In this post we will take a look at how to break or exit from a Parallel For loop.We can use the break or exit keywords for this purpose as Parallel For loop is not programming language construct but a method of the System.Threading.Tasks.Parallel class.To break or exit we need to use any one of the following overloads of Parallel.For method... Read More

Creating Code Snippets - Part 1

Debjit Kar

Very recently i came across a very frustrating moment of my life. Guess what… I had to repeat a couple of lines of same code for about seventy two derived classes. Now that was too much. In this article i will show you something that might help. They are called code snippets. Many or almost all of you know what code snippets are, now lets discuss on how to create code snippets of your own.

Basically IntelliSense code snippets are in real xml files with a .snippet extension that adhere to the IntelliSense Code Snippet XML schema.

You can use any tool to generate the xml file but please remember to save it with a .snippet extension name.

XMLDictionary & Serialization in WCF

Sankarsan Bose

We all are quite conversant with the XmlWriter & XmlReader classes in System.Xml namespace.But not that much with the XmlDictionary ,XmlDictionaryReader & XmlDictionaryWriter present in System.Xml namespace in System.Runtime.Serialization assembly.These are used primarily by the WCF framework to optimize XML serialization/deserialization.In this post we will see how a XML Dictionary can be used to make XML writing/reading more optimized... Read More

How to mark a method or class as deprecated

Debjit Kar

As the year 2009 passes away and 2010 countdown have begun let me share with you an important attribute in .net programming world. With new developments in your application it sometime becomes important to mark a method as deprecated or obsolete. Here is the attribute usage to mark the method so.

public class MyClass
{
[Obsolete(“My Reason”, [...]

Got Introduced To BerkleyDB

Sankarsan Bose

Every application that we build needs data.Traditionally in most of the applications we have a client component which interacts with the end user and data resides on a separate database server.In modern applications we have an intermediate web server or application server as well.There are some applications which needs a storage component as an integral part...Read More

What is Engineering??

Sankarsan Bose

Last Tuesday I saw the movie Three Idiots and on Friday we were having discussion on our own engineering college days,about so many engineering colleges springing up here and there etc. Read More

Three Idiots

Sankarsan Bose

Last Tuesday we planned to see the latest James Cameron sci-fi blockbuster Avatar.We decided upon the odd showtime of 10.15 PM in Fame Cinemas of South City Mall under the anticipation that very few will choose that time... Read More

Micorsoft MVP for the year 2010

vikram Lakhotia

I feel great joy to share with all that I have been rewarded the Microsoft MVP award for the year 2010 also. It feels great to have received the Award two year in succession.

http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/Microsoft_MVP_for_the_year_2010.aspx

Regards

Vikram
VikramLakhotia.com

Opening BerkleyDB Database

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post I have discussed about the BerkleyDB product family.In this post we will discuss about using BerkleyDB ith it’s C# API set.Before getting into the details we will take a quick look into the different access methods provided by Berkley DB. Read More

Truth be told

Vaibhav Sharma

The IT industry in particular has been guilty of over using (read misusing) acronyms and phrases, the real meaning of which is not known to many, in and outside the industry. The following is an honest attempt for people at large to get to know or revive their knowledge about few such phrases.

Read the post here

Single Quotation Marks will be encoded in HtmlEncode and UrlEncode

vikram Lakhotia

Hi,

One of the small but important change in the Asp.Net 4.0 is the change is the Encode methods.

HtmlEncode and UrlEncode Now Encode Single Quotation Marks

Vikram

Who is your tomorrow's competitor

vikram Lakhotia

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. The answer is: None of the above. The winner is Nokia, whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cellphones.

Who is your tomorrow's competitor

Vikram

RIA Services in .NET – A Closer Look

Sankarsan Bose

The RIA Services provides a mechanism of exposing data and business logic for consumption by the Rich Internet Applications like Silverlight.These are basically WCF services with some additional plumbing which....Read More

Custom Layout in WPF

Sankarsan Bose

The layout system in WPF is responsible for measuring and arranging the user interface elements within the panel and displaying them on screen.This is a two phase process.In the measure phase the panel will measure what is the amount of space required by each of it’s children, in order to find out the total space required.In the next arrange phase it will find out how much space it actually has and accordingly render the elements as per predefined logic.. Read More

Awaiting .NET 4

Vaibhav Sharma

The .NET Framework version 4.0 is slated for release in April 2010 and everyone seems to be excited about it (everyone by definition includes everyone, so me too). Being the next big release of the framework, there exists number of enhancements and fusion of several new ways of writing old and new smart applications.

Installing Life or Uninstalling it?

Vaibhav Sharma

"But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth".

It’s astonishing to discover how many of us are existing without doing the most imperative thing in our life – living!

Are you installing or uninstalling your life? Read it here.

Flex with WCF Service Over Https - Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

For the past week I am trying to play around with Flex and find out how it works with different back end service endpoints.In this post I will discuss about how Flex works with a simple WCF Service over HTTPS and also the issues I encountered while doing so. Read More...

Let’s Zune

Vaibhav Sharma

As a professional developer (don’t care if you disagree) one thing that has always stayed on my priority list is UX (User eXperience). UX is what makes an ordinary app stand out in the crowd and boost its adoption rate. There has been a sudden upsurge in the resources that are now being directed towards designing and developing effective UX.

Read it here

ADO.NET Entity Framework Data Loading – Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

In any Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework the client code interacts with the objects.The framework maps the same to relational database tables and manages database connection and all the SQL queries.So in this context it is extremely important to understand what are the various mechanisms using which data can be loaded into the objects.In this series of posts we will discuss on how ADO.NET Entity Framework does the same.To start with we will discuss about how the objects are explicitly populated with data. Read More...

ADO.NET Entity Framework Data Loading – Part 2

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post we have discussed about how to explicitly load data into related objects using EntityReference class.However in .NET Framework 4.0 there is another new way to explicitly load data into related objects using the LoadProperty method of the System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext as shown below.... Read More

CASE Statement Equivalent in LINQ

Sankarsan Bose

Last Friday while having a discussion on various LINQ standard query operators the topic of expressing T-SQL CASE statement in LINQ came up.The most obvious solution to this is using the ternary operator as shown below:.. Read More

Caching in HTTP – Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

A Web Cache stores copies of web resources(html/images etc.) returned by the requests that pass through it and next time onwards returns the stored copy to the client instead of forwarding the same request to the server.This helps to improve the speed of content delivery, reduce bandwidth usage and processing load on the servers.Caching as a concept is nothing new and can be seen in many other areas of software and hardware technologies as well.In this post we will discuss about what all options HTTP as a protocol provides to control and manipulate the caching of web resources.Read More

Heard it somewhere!

Vaibhav Sharma

The world it seems, is moving towards an age where an intellectual person will be judged based on the blog posts per week he writes, the tweets he generates (or regenerates) per day, the number of new jargons demystified or created by him per minute and the number of questions he answers per second on stackoverflow.com (think before you rule out the possibility of such a world in near future).

Fileless Activation of WCF Service in .NET 4.0

Sankarsan Bose

Every WCF service needs to have a host process.It can be a windows service,IIS or any other .NET program.This host process will create an instance of the System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost class or any custom class deriving from System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.This host class will manage the service... Read More

WCF & MetaData Exchange – Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

Web Services have to expose metadata so that clients can understand how to interact with and make use of that service endpoint.This metadata is generally exchanged in the form Web Services Description Language(WSDL) and XSD schemas describing the bindings,network addresses,messages to be exchanged & also operations and data types.WCF provides... Read More

Code Like A Kid using Small Basic

Sankarsan Bose

Along with few of my friends I started learning programming with a language called BASIC.It seems to be a very long long time from now.But that was fun..real & honest. Read More....

Reacting to Exceptions

Vaibhav Sharma

While preparing my slides for the Community Tech Days at Kolkata, I encountered a very interesting exceptional situation. Just to sync you up, I was evaluating Office 2010, specifically PowerPoint 2010. The very first slide had an effect exclusive to the 2010 version of PowerPoint. Just to check the compatibility I ran the slides on another system with PowerPoint 2007 version installed. To my amazement, the slides ran without any effects. No messages or warnings whatsoever! I went berserk (and FYI when I go berserk, that ends up into a new blog post).

Continue reading here.

Single Assignment & readonly Fields in C#

Sankarsan Bose

We have all heard about immutable objects, the objects whose field values cannot be altered throughout it’s lifetime.Immutable objects are simpler to deal with in case concurrent programs where they can be shared between multiple threads.The single assignment variables variables which is once assigned a value cannot be reassigned again.These are inherently immutable in nature.In languages like Haskell,Erlang,F# etc. variables are by default single assignment variables.... Read More

Race Condition & Synchronization in C#

Sankarsan Bose

We have heard about the term race condition in relation to threads.This is basically a scenario where two or more threads are competing(racing) to read/write from a shared memory location leading to the possibilities of leaving the program in an inconsistent state.... Read More

Theme Up!

Vaibhav Sharma

With the dawn of the last decade, user-centered design and end-user customization of literally every fragment of an application (web, client or phone) has taken a quantum leap. It has virtually become quintessential to have multiple ways of allowing end users to customize their experience with the software. With the advent of graphics cards and graphics accelerated hardware, pixels literally lit up, giving a whole new dimension to user experience and enabling creation of stunning user interfaces.

Abstraction, which is the dominantly prevailing concept, in every software methodology or framework today, impacted the design process as well, and what once was limited to selection of colors, got somewhat abstracted to selection of themes, even though the underlying idea was to only change the colors and at times, background graphics.

Read it here

Identity & ServiceSecurityContext in WCF

Sankarsan Bose

In an Windows environment every process(or code) executes under some valid user identity which is nothing but a authenticated Windows account.In .NET Framework we have the interface System.Security.Principal.IIdentity which provides the basic definition of identity.... Read More

C# Monitor – Some Important Points

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post I started the discussion on race conditions and thread synchronization technique using Monitor/lock in C#.In this post also, we will continue with the same and discuss some important points related to the Monitor class...Read More

Being Numero Uno!

Vaibhav Sharma

Half a decade into the technology industry, primarily software development, and post working on varied nature projects, with some of the most diligent and unswerving programmers I ever came across, this intends to be a succinct summary of what in essence could assist in being the numero uno in the surroundings we live in. Even though some slices of this post relates to the Information Technology landscape, this could easily map to any other industry or sector you recognize.

Irrespective of the organizations I worked for, there always were few elite professionals that stood apart right from the inception. It was surprising to observe that they just excelled at a quantum pace while all others seem to have had trouble placing their foot in place. There were some common characteristics that could be discovered from their conduct and their supremacy in their relevant world.

ServiceLocator in ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 3 – Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

For past couple of days I was checking out features of the new ASP.NET MVC Preview 3.There are couple of interesting new additions like integration with the new Razor viewengine,improvements in Model Validation,AJAX support and Dependency Injection.In this post we will discuss on, how ASP.NET MVC 3 has streamlined the ability to register/retrieve objects/services in a loosely coupled manner by incorporating support for the Common Service Locator framework... Read More

How does It Ready Boost!!

Ritaban Guha

So What Is Ready Boost!

It is the technology that is built-it to the Windows Vista or 7, which allows the use of a usb flashdrive as a RAM.

How does It Ready Boost!!

Now, a normal 7200rpm Hard drive can easily provide access speed upto 60-70MB/s while a flashdrive would give an access speed of 10-16MB/s.

So, How can a flash drive be used to increase the access speed instead of the hard drive!!

If we go in to the construction of the devices, a flash drive is eighter NOR flash or NAND flash or a combinated structure of NOR & NAND flash memory cells. The NAND flash cells permit random access while NOR flash allows the faster sequential access.On the other hand, hard drives store data with the magnetic read/write heads.Because the magnetic head takes time to move from one track to some distant track on the hard drive, it takes sufficient time to make it almost impossible to achive random access but is very efficient in accessing sequential memory cells.

Because of the NAND flash circuit a flash drive can support ramdon access speed up to 5 MB/s untill now[sequential access being at a rate of upto 25MB/s theoretically ].

So, the concept behind ready boost is to use the NAND flash enabled drives to store the page tables and hadrdisk cache data so that the RAM get a faster access to the cached data, thus improving performance.readyboost just introduces another layer of memory in the memory-access hierarchy between the RAM and the hard drive[primary memory].

What is in it for the developpers:

Because of the mini laptops not having a cd drive, every thing has to be done with the pendrives.
OSs/applications to be installed from usb canbe programmed to use its free space as readyboost to decrease installation time. Because it is plug & play type technology, it can be used to instantaneously increase performance.High resourse using applications can be programmed to automaticaly reserve space on flashdrives on runtime to use as readyboost and release on exit time.

This technology is really worthed to the people with a bit low end mechines. I my self use it to run Visual Studio 2010 on my 512mb laptop with alreadt windows 7 on it and it runs smooth as butter.

Drawbacks:

there are two major drawbacks to be negotiated with.

i> It reserves the allocated space while boosing.

ii> a dedicated readyboost flashdrive's cells are not going to last more than 10 years.

But these are considerable from the technological achivement's point of view...

Cognitive Computing

Ritaban Guha

It is not very unrealistic to imagine a child asking for a brain instead of a PC now. Even more, a child may even ask for a non-pirated MIND operating system preinstalled in it. I mean, look at the world now, PCs processing graphics more realistically than….. reality. Mobile phones are becoming smart phones, as if they are regularly going through crash courses or something. Even the digital sensors sense better than me. I used to visit places with a tour guide, but now a GPS phone or PDA out-smarted the guides. Countless examples exist. But where did they come from!! The brain of course!

Scientists have been working to decode the algorithms of brain for so many years. All of the today’s technologies are the result of reverse engineering the Brain and engineering the Mind. Our brain has this indefinable capability to simulate a cognitive reality in time-space-object dimensional frame by interpreting the inter-relativity of touch, vision, audition, taste, smell and the previous records of the database running on some neuro-synaptic SQL server [called the 6th sense].

So we need to find a way to build a brain, as cheaply an quickly possible, People at the IBM, Almaden Research Centre, are already on to it, so that they could build one, before their child asks for one.

So what is Cognitive computing!!

Cognitive Computing is an intersection of the sets of neuroscience, supercomputing and nanotechnology. It is the very subset holding the algorithms of MIND.

Research shows, that a cognitive computing device [BLUE GENE/L, for now] equivalent to a simple rat’s brain will need 1.06GB/sec ip/op/node data communication speed, 91.8TF computation power with 32,768 CPUs and 8TB of RAM.

The interesting part is, IBM did it. They have this simulation of a simple brain. But the downside is, there is no MIND. Also, if we look in to the power consumption scenario, the simulation consumes 0.5MW of power compared to a rat’s brain consuming only 20mW.

So, the real deal is still far away. But acknowledging the current technological progression rate, it is imagined that may be, in the year 2018 somewhere on earth a successful brain simulation will be possible. Now, at least there is a better strength in hope. Future will be cognitive. Time will promote the recognition.

ServiceLocator in ASP.NET MVC 3 – Part 2

Sankarsan Bose

In my earlier post I had discussed about the Common Service Locator framework (IServiceLocator interface)and how we can implement an adapter for the StructureMap container.In this post we will take look into how the new ASP.NET MVC provides support to plug in this ServiceLocator... Read More

C# Monitor,Busy Wait,True Wait & SpinLock

Sankarsan Bose

In my last two posts I had discussed about thread synchronization,critical sections and System.Threading.Monitor class.What we have seen is, a critical section in the code where thread synchronization is required is protected by a lock.When a thread encounters a critical section it tries to acquire the lock,if successful it executes the code or else waits to acquire the lock.Now when we say wait, what exactly happens?.There are two possible ways this can be done...Read More

Be fast....be a Dvoraker....

Ritaban Guha

Now, for all the programmers, there should be a common quality among them, which is, faster coding capability then normal people..

But still we r not yet a Dvoraker..

lets get in to the description ..

There are two popular types of keyboards [the main weapon of a programmer]. The all time favorite QWERTY
ant the myChoice, Dvorak.

what is QWERTY keyboard layout!!

well. its the keyboard thay we use generally.

it was designed for the typewriters..
the early typewrites had a problem if subsequent keys were pressed very quick.
they couldn't recognize them that fast, causing errors. So, the QWERTY type keyboard was invented by Christopher Sholes.

So the most frequent keys were kept apart from each other, which improved the efficiency of the typewriter but not the typist.

But it somehow became the most popular convention of keyboard layout.

what is Dvorak keyboard layout!!

this is the layout which was designed to improve the efficiency of the typist not the typewriter.
Dvorak layout keeps the most important keys on the middle row. The mid importance keys on the top row and the list important keys on the bottom row [approximately].
In the middle row, the vowels are placed on the left side and the most important consonants on the right.
So, a Dvorak typist would keep his fingers on the middle row. this provides a faster typing speed compared to QWERTY.

Lets look at the statistics..

topic QWERTY DVAROK

keystrokes                          32%                                                  70%
in middle row

keystrokes                            52% 22%
in top row

keystrokes
in bottom row                       16%                                                   8%

finger movement       30Km/Day 15Km/day

user friendliness     takes time to get used to    very quick to get
                                                                                           used to..

============================================================

almost all computers supports DVAROK today by default. MaCs use DVAROK.
many great programmers [Bram Cohen(inventor of BitTorrent), Matt Mullenweg(lead developper of WordPress), Barbara Blackburn(world's fastest typist)]

it is a good practice/choice for efficient coders who take less time to think then to type.
most importantly,.. it was a nobel work.. It deserves respect..

Entity Framework & Concurrency

Sankarsan Bose

ADO.NET Entity Framework is the Object Relational Mapping(ORM) framework from Microsoft which enables us to map .NET classes to objects(tables,views,stored procedures..etc) in a relational database.While studying any ORM framework it’s important to know about, how it handles concurrency and ensures data consistency.In this post we will look into what options ADO.NET Entity Framework provides for ensuring this consistency.... Read More

Manager Was A Programmer Then….

Swapan Garai

I am not sure whether you guys have faced this situation or not but this always happens to me and happened quite recently.This Friday I planned to leave office a little early..... Complete Story

Bankers Rounding in Math.Round Method

vikram Lakhotia

What would be the output of the following program?

Console.Write(Math.Round(-0.5).ToString() + “~”);
Console.Write(Math.Round(0.5).ToString()+ “~”);
Console.Write(Math.Round(1.5).ToString()+ “~”);

Console.Write(Math.Round(2.5).ToString()+ “~”);

http://www.vikramlakhotia.com/Bankers_Rounding_in_MathRound_Method.aspx

Reactive Extensions in .NET – Observable Collections

Sankarsan Bose

Last week I was reading about the two new interfaces introduced in .NET Framework 4.0 – IObservable & IObserver.In first place they seemed to be just simple interfaces providing a mechanism to implement the Observer (GoF) design pattern.But soon I found out that really meaningful implementations of these are actually present in the Reactive Extensions for .NET.This is a separate class library released as a MSDN DevLabs project and not part of .NET Framework till now.Read More...

The Self-Adaptable Software

Vaibhav Sharma

Indelicately speaking, self-adaptable software is any software (specialized or otherwise) that has the ability to respond to the needs of the users and doesn’t completely depend on the operating environment and is further proficient in dealing with faults, curtailing the chances of partial or complete failures. At its core it’s flexible. With flexibility, comes complexity. But then, we are software developers, and complexity is as native to us, as pointers to C/C++ (no pun intended).

I am a decently mini-pro type of a PC gamer (I am proud of it, even though its mini) and was trying out FIFA 2010 on my PC with an NVidia GeForce 8400GS graphics card installed onto it. As is true for all the recently launched games, on-board graphics simply doesn't suffice their needs. They humbly need more powerful GPUs to render the superior graphics intensive characters, surroundings and their interactions. On the beautiful start of a weekend (yes I can still recall, it was a beautiful Saturday morning) my graphics card passed away (pardon me for my emotions, but they are as real as the real data-type).

Reactive Extensions in .NET – Hot & Cold Observable

Sankarsan Bose

In my last post on the Reactive Extensions in .NET we have discussed about observable collections.Here we will take a look into the different types of observable and how they pushes values to the subscribers.In the example mentioned in the last post we saw that, after invoking the subscribe method on the observable collection it starts pushing values to the subscriber.Read More..

77 Outright Rajinikanth Facts

Vaibhav Sharma

For those of you who were so unfortunate to not know about the Rajinikanth, here is a tip of the iceberg about him. Of course I understand you were amongst the unfortunate who were exiled to the planet Pluto, (all other planets are aware of Rajinikanth) and couldn’t keep up with the most illusive force on planet Earth.

What follows are 77 outright (an understatement indeed) facts about the man himself that demystifies (more than what Da Vinci did) literally every fact that you have ever known or would ever know. Some of the facts mentioned below are highlighted to do the intended justice.

Disclaimer: All the following facts, incidents or individuals involved are real and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely intentional.

Continue to the facts

How to track an object which is Out of Scope while Debugging ?

Abhijit Jana

In this blog post I am going explain how we can track an Object which is already out of scope using by creating a Object ID while debugging. By using “Make Object ID” option we are informing Visual Studio Debugger to keep track of that object no matter it’s within scope or out of scope for the current context. We can create “Object ID” either from Locals, Autos or from Watch Windows. Object ID is a integer number followed by a pound (#) sign. When we create Object ID for an particular object, Visual Studio Debugger ( CLR Debugging Services ) use an integer value to uniquely identify the object. This “Object ID” allows you to get the object details even if it is out of scope.

Read Complete Post How to track an object which is Out of Scope while Debugging ?

Simplest way to Create a Non-Movable Silverlight Child Window

Kunal Chowdhury

Are you looking for a Silverlight Child Window, which can’t move from it’s actual position? Then this article will help you to understand & create a non-movable child window in Silverlight. Child Window is available inside the System.Windows.Controls.dll assembly. By default, it is movable. You can drag the Title Bar of the Window and position it anywhere in the screen. But, you may face some situation when you need to fix the position of the Window by restricting the user to drag it. So, how will you do this? In this article, I will show you the simplest mechanism to make your child window not movable.

Choose the way to Create a Silverlight Out-of-Browser Application

Kunal Chowdhury

In all of my earlier articles on Silverlight Out-of-Browser (OOB) applications, I demonstrated you creating the OOB application using Visual Studio. There are plenty of steps you have to follow there. Today I found another way to change the settings for it.

In this post, I am going to discuss about both the processes and at the end tell me which one is best & simple.

DLR using Reflection.Emit (In Depth)

Abhishek Sur

Reflection is one of the most important topic for any application. Each application needs to have external code libraries, even if you take the example of BCL, they are external codes which runs internally with our own applications. Reflection.Emit being the opposite of Reflection actually allows you to enhance DLR capabilities of the Compiler. With the classes you can generate your custom type dynamically during runtime, and even save the Library to disk. This might come handy at times.

Reflection.Emit like CodeDom allows you to build your custom assembly and provides you a number of Builder classes which might be compiled during Runtime, and hence invoke DLR capabilities of C#. The library also exposes one ILGenerator which might be used later to produce the actual MSIL by putting efforts to emit Operation codes. So finally after you write your OpCodes correctly, you could easily able to compile the type dynamically during runtime. In this post, I would use ILDASM to see the IL generated from our own class, that I define, and later on I would try to build the same class dynamically.

READ Full Article PART 1

READ Full Article PART 2

C# 5.0 Asynchrony Made Easy

Abhishek Sur

In PDC 10, Anders Hejlsberg introduces two new investments on C# which is probably now still in CTP to allow asynchronous calls to the applications very simple and easy to handle. The two keyword which were introduced recently are "async" and "await". They lets you to code your application the same way as you are doing with synchronous programs, but in asynchronous way.

Read the Full Post

Using EventTrigger in XAML for MVVM – No Code Behind Code

Kunal Chowdhury

I have seen people writing Code Behind a lot while they are working in the MVVM framework. A huge lines of code in their xaml.cs file actually creates problem to the designers to change anything present in the XAML. Why is this so? Because, lots of people don’t know how to use Triggers to call the MVVM methods to complete their business need. Michael Washington has a nice article on DataTrigger to reduce the Code behind file. It definitely reduces the problem of MVVM that world faces generally. Also, we need to do some additional things to reduce the code behind. In this article, I will show you how to fire Triggers to call some methods present in your ViewModel, instead of writing in the code behind file. Read more here: Using EventTrigger in XAML for MVVM – No Code Behind Code

Customized Scrolling in Silverlight using Expression Blend

Kunal Chowdhury

In some case, we need to customize the Scrolling functionality in Silverlight depending upon the requirement. The default look of ScrollViewer doesn’t give proper UI effect. In such case, you need to create the whole scroll behavior by modifying XAML and writing a bunch of C# code.

In this article, I will demonstrate you how to create the above scrolling functionality simply without writing any lines of C# code. You have to use only Expression Blend to create the richness of the Scrolling.

Read more here: Customized Scrolling in Silverlight using Expression Blend

C# 5.0 vNext - New Asynchronous Pattern

Abhishek Sur

There is a buzz all around on the new way of doing asynchronous programming using async database modifier and await contextual keyword. Threading or Asynchronous style of programming is very useful at times but each of us faced a lots of problems though converting a Synchronous code to Asynchronous coding style. Asynchronous style of coding is not new to the framework. From the very beginning of the evolution of C# as a language we can do programs that may run in parallel. But was it simple enough? No ! Its not. The way of writing our very own asynchronous programs can be very complex at times when we are about to deal with exception handling. We could have lots of callbacks around for every single asynchronous calls, there might be few thread blocks around for network calls etc.

C# 5.0 takes this into consideration and orchestrate the style of coding to more like synchronous manner.

Read the full Article

WPF - An Overview

Vaibhav Sharma

Ever since Windows Vista (sorry Microsoft, for reminding you of that product again) and .NET Framework 3.0 were released, the Windows client developer (the one who is intentionally unaware and exceedingly pleasured by ignoring JS, HTML, DHTML and other useless irrelevant terms in technology) was puzzled with an (frankly) unwanted choice that never existed for him before: continue using the ultimately productive Windows Forms framework, that has been the cornerstone of Windows client applications ever since Visual Basic (classic), or learn, explore and rewrite the apps in the WPF framework for building (what’s now become an overly exploited term in software development) next generation user experiences.

Microsoft has always assured (many consider it a curse) its developers of continued abundance of options and tooling support for all the major line of business applications that one develops. While this has obvious and much desired advantages, the real problem comes in at the start of the adoption phase of the new technology or framework. The earlier releases of the framework don’t (in almost all cases) provide a complete replacement of the previous technology and there is a very steep learning curve involved, with an exceedingly high cost and risk factor in recreating the missing bits, by extending the not so feature complete releases.

Static Vs Dynamic Vs Embedded Vs Entity SQL

Vaibhav Sharma

Structured Query Language (SQL) is a way to communicate with a relational database that lets you define, query, modify, and control the data. Using SQL syntax, you can construct a statement that extracts records according to criteria you specify (I know, you know that). However, there are certain flavors of SQL, which you should be aware of like Static SQL, Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL, to better understand and apply them, as and when required.

With .NET you would also end up using Entity SQL, which when used with Entities (as in the Entity Framework), could eventually generate dynamic SQL, executing and returning results as entities.

Continue reading the many flavors of SQL

Using ValueConverter to Show/Hide Element in Silverlight (MVVM)

Kunal Chowdhury

One of my reader “Girish” recently contacted me with a problem statement. His problem is, he wants to show a TextBox on selection of “Others” from a ComboBox and I informed him to use a ValueConverter and also told him, I will do a blog post on it, so that he can understand each step from that.

This post I am dedicating to him. May be, some other people who are new to Silverlight can get benefit from it. Read the full post to learn the process to do it.

Read the Complete Post here: Using ValueConverter to Show/Hide Element in Silverlight (MVVM)

How to Reposition a Silverlight Child Window?

Kunal Chowdhury

Sometime we need to reset the position of the Silverlight Child Window at the center of the screen. This generally require when you have a static instance of the ChildWindow and you want to use the same instance to show various messages in the screen. When you loads the ChildWindow for the first time, by default it loads at the screen center. But think when your user reposition that ChildWindow to a different location in the screen, closes and reopens it, what will happen?

What will you see is, the ChildWindow opens at the same location where the user closes it last time. So, how can we reset it to the center of the screen? This small tip will help you to achieve the functionality. Read it to know more details. Code is available for use.

Read more here: How to Reposition a Silverlight Child Window?

How to Reposition a WPF Modal Window at the center of the Screen?

Kunal Chowdhury

In my earlier post “How to Reposition a Silverlight Child Window?”, I demonstrated you how to reposition a Silverlight Child Window into the screen. I tried the same with the WPF Modal Window too. But was not able to make it.

Later Thomas Claudiush gave me a cool sample where he did it very easily. In this post, I am going to share that code for you so that, if in near future you need the same behavior, you don’t have to research for it again.

Read more here: How to Reposition a WPF Modal Window at the center of the Screen?

Summary of Microsoft Community Tech Days - 28th November Kolkata

Abhishek Sur

Yesterday(28th November 2010), we had our Session for Community Tech Days Kolkata, In association with Kolkata .NET community we have put our effort to produce few great Sessions from few great people. In this post, lets cherish those magical moments we had together.

Microsoft Community Tech Days – Kolkata – 28th November 2010 [ Event Overview ]

Abhijit Jana

Community Tech-Days (CTD) is a Microsoft technology event organized by Microsoft and Local Microsoft User Groups to help developers and IT Prof. to catch up with the latest Microsoft technologies. Kolkata Community Tech Days was held on 28th November at Moksh Auditorium, Camac Street, Kolkata. The event was full of large number of technology enthusiasts and a number of regular event speakers from various technologies present for the event.

Read Complete Post and Download the PPT of my presentation

How to use out of scope object with in Conditional Breakpoint ?

Abhijit Jana

During debugging of your application, you may need to keep track of some data which are already out of scope. Say, You call a MethodB() from MethodA() and did some operation inside MethodB(), now when you returned back to MethodA(), all the local variables inside MethodB() are out of scope. But you want to use them in MethodA(). Now here is the trick, that you can create an ObjectID for an member variables or objects and can track the same when it’s out of scope as well, but until GC() does not collect it. In this post, I am going to explore how we can use an Out of Scope object value to deal with Conditional Break points. To start with, first you have to understand how to use Object ID to track and out of scope object. Here is my complete article How to track an object which is Out of Scope while Debugging ? . Though I described a quick look into use of out of scope object inside conditional breakpoints on that article, I received few query about more details on the same. So here I am going to give some more details.

Read Complete Post

Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–4)

Kunal Chowdhury

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement. In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 3)”, I described you how to create a DataGrid of records to insert/update/delete records. In this chapter, I will guide you to create a List and Details screen using LightSwitch. This will show you how to integrate two or more tables into a single screen. Also, we will discuss on some custom validation. These all steps are without writing any code. We will use just the tool to improve our existing application. Read to Learn more about it. Read more at: Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–4)

Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–5)

Kunal Chowdhury

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 4)” I guided you step-by-step process to create a List and Details screen. There I demonstrated you, how to integrate two or more tables inside a single screen.

In this chapter, I am going to demonstrate you of doing custom validation using Visual Studio LightSwitch. This time we will jump into writing some code to extend the functionalities.

Read the Complete Article at: Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–5)

Proud to be a CodeProject MVP - Thanks to all of my Supporters

Kunal Chowdhury

I am really very pleased to receive this award. But this is because of my Codeproject readers and supporters, who did their support by voting and providing their valuable feedbacks to my articles. Thanks to each one of you. I am also thankful to Abhijit Jana, who always supported me. I am also thankful to the GIT members of CodeProject like Nish, Raja, Ankur, Abhinav, Abhishek, Brij, Hiren and all others for their support in various period of time.

Proud to be a CodeProject MVP - Thanks to all of my Supporters

Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend

Kunal Chowdhury

Do you work with Child Window in Silverlight and want to customize the look & feel to match with your application UI? Then this post will help you to understand the process. I am going to discuss with you the customization steps in detail, so that, next time when you want to modify your Child Window UI, you will find it very useful.

In this article, I will guide you through the steps of customization with the help of a sample application. We will need Microsoft Expression Blend for the full customization. Read the complete article to learn about it.

Read the Complete Article at: Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend

instant ON

Ritaban Guha

At the beginning when I used to get so amazed to see that “Loading Windows” screen [1^stwas introduced to windows later other OSs ]. After an year or 2, I used to get amazed to realize that the behind that boring screen so many drivers were being loaded, so many things are happening behind the screen. And finally the OS logon screen appeared. WOW.

And now, I feel like throwing my PC if takes to much time to boot. “60 second to boot!! I rather keep in on”. :P

Many people does keep their PCs on, as because the boot time is too much for them. Power isn’t cheap. IF every one can save 1Watt/month, that could serve someone or few with no power at all.

Apart from the Nobel thoughts, keeping the PC ON, reduces the device lifetime and there are other side effects also. So the Idea of Instant boot was in the dreams for a long time.

And voila, Microsoft hints for an 8 second boot Windows 8. With Intel’s SandyBridge processors, It may be possible to provide boot time less that 8sec. Microsoft didn’t promise anything but they are working on the feature called “Instant ON”.

App Fabric–Walkthrough Of A Simple Client Code

Sankarsan Bose

Windows Server AppFabric has been released for quite sometime now.I did not had much time to look into it then.Since last week I have started playing around with the App Fabric Caching.In this post we will build a small App Fabric Cache client and try to understand how it works...Read More

TPL DataFlow–BufferBlock & Load Balancing

Sankarsan Bose

Let’s consider a situation where we have a data source which is churning out data like a continuous stream and passing it to some data processing units (like a method) as shown in the figure below.The processing units are load balanced i.e. if one unit is still busy processing then the next element coming out of the data source will be handed over to the next processing unit...Read More

Y moved to Multi Core

Ritaban Guha

We know its better, but how is the multicore architecture better than the single core and why this change is important, is an interesting question. A more important question is, how is a single core 2.55GHz single core [e.g. pentium 4] processor is not better than a 1.6GHz Dual-core, Core2Duo etc. processors.

Well it’s certainly a very strong point that, the clock frequency ultimately decides the processor speed. Higher the clock frequency, better the processor performance. But still we moved to the multicore architecture even if the clock frequency is not necessarily greater. WHY?

Keep reading

Azure Camp Kolkata on 10th April 2011

Abhishek Sur

Windows Azure Camp - a 1- day deep dive session conducted on developing for Windows Azure.

Silverlight 5 Beta - Lets deal with its features

Abhishek Sur

In MIX 2011, we can see our very own silverlight new version called Silverlight 5 beta is released. Yes, if you are looking for it, its time to download the beta and try them out. The major goal of Silverlight 5 is to move the silverlight development more towards the WPF and hence releasing some of the benefits that you already enjoy being a WPF developer is now available to silverlight. In this post lets talk about the features that were introduced with Silverlight one by one.

To install Silverlight 5

To try the features, you first need to download the Beta. Lets follow the steps to install silverlight in your machine.

You first need to download Visual Studio 2010 (SP 1) if you didn't have done that already.
After you install Visual studio update you need Silverlight tools for Visual Studio
Optionally you can also try Silverlight help tools to get started.

Now after you are done with this, lets talk about few basic features introduced in Silverlight 5.

Silverlight 5 Features

You should notice that there are few major benefits that are not present yet with Silverlight 5 beta, to name a few :

Our old requirement to support 64 Bit is not present
You still cannot launch external applications (using PInvoke) with elevated trust level
DataContextChanged is still not present.
Vector Printing

Sorting Collections in C#

Sankarsan Bose

In this post we will discuss about different techniques of sorting collections of objects in C# using the functions provided by the base class libraries.This is something very common and there different types of provisions in .NET BCL to achieve the same.We will try to discuss the advantages and limitations of each of these approaches... Read More

Visual Studio 2010 - Before you begin

Vaibhav Sharma

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

The saying above probably fits developers the most. More so if one happens to be a Microsoft technology developer, spending his day in and out of Visual Studio – the ultimate development experience (no offence intended to the Notepad developer). I am almost always amazed by the insane complexity that Visual Studio abstracts away from a developer, presenting it in a visually elegant and magnificent way. Before you even think of disagreeing, think of the top 3 features of the Visual Studio code editor according to you and try integrating it on a Rich Text Box in the language of your choice.

Entity Framework 4.1 Annotations–Part 1

Sankarsan Bose

Entity Framework 4.1 has introduced the Code First Approach with it’s Fluent API and Annotations.In this series of posts we will focus on the Annotations part of it and how it can be used to build the domain model and map it to the database....Read More

ReadyBoost On Linux

Ritaban Guha

In my previous post on readyboost I tried to explain out the basic ideology of the technique called readyboost and also some performance statistics to support the theory. Well that was for Microsoft operating systems [dedicatedly available in Vista or newer and have to be manually configured in older OSs].

The idea of readyboost is simple. For machines with low RAM, whenever the data access requirements over-flood the RAM, the OS starts to pass the least probably-important data to the page files on the hard disk and loads currently required/most important/high priority data on to the RAM from the hard disk/page files. This is where the machine slows down. Activating the readyboost adds another layer in between the page files and the RAM in the data access hierarchy. Thus whenever the ram over-floods, the new data is loaded from the flash drive and the old data is passed to the flash drive. In the flash drive also data is collected and maintained in the same manner as the RAM.

Now, Linux also uses something similar to the paging file systems called the swap partition. Swap partitions do the almost the same job that is done by the page files in the windows environment. So it is possible to create swap partition on a flash drive. As because flash drives give a higher access speed, the swap partition will be faster on the flash drive. And if we assign priority to the flash drive swap compared to the dedicated hard disk swap, the flash drive enters in to the hierarchy scheme and performs almost the same way as the readyboost concept.

W(8)DP Customization Trick:

Ritaban Guha

With a Hit over million, on the very 1st day of the launch of the Windows Developer Preview, WDP is probably the most Hot Topic in the market. Yet, a good size of crowd is disappointed with some of its new style statements. In aid to solution, this document will help improve the look & feel of the next windows, in the manner you desire. 1. There are already tools available to change the theme color and the Metro UI background. If you are not interested to get down dirty and get a flavor of full control of the UI style, I suggest you go for these tools. BluePoison, Win8StartTweeker etc. 2. And here’s the dirty method to get stuff customized. i. Download a hex editor. Anyone you like. E.g. HeXEdit, HxD etc. and install it. ii. Open the command prompt in admin mode. iii. Go to windows/System32/ and type takedown /f uxtheme.dll iv. Now type icacls uxtheme.dll /grant Administrators:F v. Now, copy the uxtheme.dll file to desktop or some other convenient place to edit. vi. Open up the file with your hex editor. vii. For the RGBA values, use the hext code for the color in red-green-blue format and use the alpha to set transparency. viii. Backup the uxtheme.dll in the System32 folder and copy the modified one there.. After reboot the changes will be a effective. If anything goes wrong, press F8 at boot time and go to Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt. Type the following commands, ren C:\windows\System32\uxtheme.dll uxtheme.dl.blabla ren C:\Windows\System32\uxtheme.dll.old uxtheme.dll [here uxtheme.dll.old is the backup file] Continue to read in detail >> http://ritaban.webs.com/apps/blog/show/10055772-w-8-dp-customization-trick-

SharePoint Foundation 2010 - Study Book

KolkataNET Admin

One of the best Free Resource from Microsoft on SharePoint Foundation 2010 for downloading

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8472

Please have a look!!!