google has just launched its free word processor- Writley. it is pretty cool, allows collaborative editing, assists in blogging, saves documents in PDF even as RSS feeds.

8/25/2006 3:32:07 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

when you try to use webparts in your application for the first time, and if you are not using SQL 2005 express chances are that you would be getting an error saying, SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified.

The reason is WebPart Manager looks for SQL2005 express as its db in the personalization provider.

Kudos to Pete Orologas for pointing the solution. I am just reprinting his solution here. All credits to Pete.

The Issue:

   The webpartmanager is looking for SQL Express 2005 which, by default, is the personalization provider.  We can work around this but if you are really eager to see your page displayed you can set the Personalization-Enabled="false" in the webpartmanager.  This will render your page but it will also defeat any purpose of using webparts.  For the real solution read on.

The Solution: (3 simple steps)

1) Open your visual studio command prompt located in "Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005\Visual Studio Tools\Visual Stuido 2005 Command Prompt" and type in aspnet_regsql.exe.  This will launch a wizard so that you can either create a DB or add tables to an existing database for storing personalization infromation. Click Next, Next, then enter in your DBServer Name. Lets leave the DB as "default" for now, click next, next, finish.  By leaving the db as default the tool will create a database named aspnetdb

2) Now we have a database so we will need a connection string to access it from our  Personalization Provider in Step 3.  The connection string will go into your web.config and it will be similar to the one show below:

<connectionStrings>

  <remove name="LocalSqlServer" />

 <add name="DBConn" connectionString="Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;Data Source=DBServer" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

</connectionStrings>

Note: The "remove" tag is used to inform Visual Studio that we will not be using SQL Express

3) The final step is to add our own personalization provider in the <system.web> section of the webConfig.  The personalization provider will point to the store we created by using the connection string we provide (Dbconn).

<webParts>

    <personalization  defaultProvider="AspNetSqlPersonalizationProvider">

        <providers>

             <remove name="AspNetSqlPersonalizationProvider" />

             <add name="AspNetSqlPersonalizationProvider"

             type="System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.SqlPersonalizationProvider"

             connectionStringName="DBConn"

             applicationName="/" />

        </providers>

    </personalization>

</webParts>

8/21/2006 3:59:42 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [2] 

There are many days in the life of a programmer, when you need to build a search query based on the some/all fields of user input. This function would return the first non-null value.

Coalesce function could be a perfect fit in such cases. It could replace case statements, ISNULL etc.

The other beauty of Coalesce is it take multiple values, whereas ISNULL can take only two values to compare.

SELECT Name, COALESCE(HomePhone, Mobile, Pager) AS ContactNumber FROM User

would return the first non-null value or null value if all of the values are nullPlease follow here for much more on this.

Coalesce on SqlTeam

Interesting Facts on Coalesce

8/20/2006 6:15:19 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1] 

There was a seminar organized by the The Wisconsin .NET Users Group. Daniel Egan gave a good presentation on the http modules and handlers.

The best part about is that I won this book on the lucky draw. I hope this puts an end to whatever streak I was going thru.

[Pic Src = MS Press]

8/9/2006 4:10:33 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Check this out.

8/1/2006 2:30:31 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

 Here is a list of cool FireFox  add-ons/extensions for Web Professionals. I like the server switcher extension, which lets you jump back and forth betweek development server and production servers.

7/29/2006 7:26:54 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

http://www.dotnetkicks.com/ is a community based news site for .Net Technology. If you wanna experience something like digg but totally on .Net technologies, this is the place to be.

7/29/2006 7:19:47 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Microsoft has made MSDN library freely available for downloads. MSDN library was previously available only for MSDN subscribers. MSDN library is a neat place to look for syntaxs' and definitions. Though the number of people referring to it has been greatly diminished by blogs, online groups etc. Neverthless this is step forward by Microsoft.

7/29/2006 7:15:14 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Our man Scott Guthrie has come up(actually a long time back) with the list of articles on Security. Check it out.

7/14/2006 4:19:50 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

There are two new namespaces in .Net for handling/sending mails.

• System.Web.Mail 
• System.Net.Mail

You have to be using MailMessage and SmtpClient classes.

There are properties to set the mail server, pass user credentials for the SMTP server(thru NetworkCredential class).
You can also send email through SSL, send emails asynchronous, send emails with alternate views( text emails for email clients that block HTML email display), email with linked image resources

Please refer here for more information

7/14/2006 3:52:53 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]