Scott Guthrie has posted in his blog that a full featured RC of Atlas would be coming by the end of this year. Also, the naming game for code name "ATLAS" seems to be over.

Some of the popular names were:-
Rich Web Programming Foundation - RWPF
Web Technology Framework - WTF (!)
AJAXX (aka let's just add an 'X' to the existing name to make it sound cooler)
Rich Language ASP Framework
Big ASP Rich Foundation - BARF
Active Client Pages - ACP

The client-side “Atlas” javascript library is going to be called the Microsoft AJAX Library.   
The server-side “Atlas” functionality that nicely integrates with ASP.NET will be called the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions.
The toolkit has become ASP.Net Ajax Control Toolkit.

Lots of promises are being made by the "Atlas" team, hopefully they walk the talk.

9/12/2006 4:45:17 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

[Pic Src= Tim Knight]

I took a trip to Seattle during the past labor day long weekend. Meeting friends is always a good thing, but seeing new places, doing new things is always fun. Above all, we had the perfect weather. No rains at all. Though hailing from the midwest, I was still awed by the "evergreen" state. We also spent some time on the pacific coasts of Portland. The whole place was pretty scenic. I think Seattle has a lot of options if you are the person who wants to try different things, and that doesnt stop with the cuisines. Kudos to Guru for making plans for this trip.

9/11/2006 2:54:59 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

In a land dominated by NASCAR news like this goes unnoticed.Michael Schumacher has announced his decision to retire from Formula-1 racing. He is a legend. I would rate him more than Tiger Woods. Nascar is so popular in U.S that F-1 has only limited fan following in US.

In another realated news Martina Navaratilova retires after winning her 59th grand slam. Martina was the one of the first female atheletes I watched growing up. I still remember those days of watching tennis rooting for Steffi Graf, Gabriala Sabatini.
Years later, I have seen tennis pros' come and go, but Martina just played year after year winning games. Salute' to her passion.

What a way to announce the retirement, after winning the championships. I wish Agassi could have done this.

9/11/2006 2:40:49 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

Federer beats Roddick, became the US Open champion.He also became the first person in history to win 3 consecutive Wimbledon and U.S open titles. Roddick to everyone's surprise has risen his game to a good next level, but still came short.
It is a pity that there is no one in sight, to challenge Roger. I still cherish those days when Sampras, Agassi, Ivanisevic, Stich, Courier played their best and were contemporaries. The only man in sight to challenge this guy is injured.

9/11/2006 2:24:46 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

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]