Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Technology is changing faster than ever. After ASP.NET 1.0 came out in January 2002, it took over three years for ASP.NET 2.0 to be released (in November 2005) but the latest version, ASP.NET 3.5 which has come out in November 2007 has taken a relatively smaller time frame . To add to developers' woes, most of them are perennially short of time. Therefore, learning a new technology under time constraints and becoming productive quickly is a challenge. As the book MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-528): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development , is based on the well-conceived certification objectives of the new Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) series Exam 70–528 & focuses on the essentials of ASP.NET 2.0 as they relate to the real-world, I feel it's useful for MCTS aspirants as well as those interested in ASP.NET 2.0. This is also the only 70–528 exam prep guide currently available as the Amit Kalani book is still in cold storage. In ...

It is extremely useful to know the answer if you are embarking on a long term project where you plan to use ASP.NET AJAX and the project SLA demands that your web application be cross browser. As per the official documentation , ASP.NET AJAX is compatible with most modern browsers on some operating systems and this includes the following: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later versions. Mozilla Firefox version 1.5 or later versions. Opera version 9.0 or later versions. Apple Safari version 2.0 or later versions The supported Operating Systems are: Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed. Microsoft Vista. Apple OSX (Intel architecture only). The documentation is slightly incorrect when it says Apple Safari version 2.0 or later versions are supported. Precisely Safari version 2.0.4 on the Mac & above are actually supported. ASP.NET AJAX can run with the default security settings for the above browsers. If browser security and privacy settings are set too high, JavaScri...

Did you ever bookmark a valuable web page & discover one day that it has vanished? Or as a designer or developer found that a website that you have built for a former client & proudly put in your portfolio returns a "Page not found" error just when a prospective employer checks it out? On the Internet there is a constant churn, web pages get modified or disappear altogether alongwith the whole website due to various reasons. It is in times like these that you can invoke the services of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine . Unless you have configured the robots.txt on a website to exclude your site from being crawled, you may get back the whole website as it was archived by the Wayback Machine at different intervals. Even dynamic pages (that render standard html & do not require interaction with the originating host) are archived and you can also link to the old pages ! These options make it more attractive than the cached content provided by Google or Live Sear...

I had a chance to work with PHP years ago. Due to it's similarity with Classic ASP, I could learn & finish a small maintenance task. It wasn't however a cakewalk and I noticed compatibility issues between versions 4 and 5. I came across some interesting tidbits about PHP in recent weeks & wanted to record them here. Rasmus Lerdorf , the creator of PHP is now Infrastructure Architect at Yahoo! and recipient of the 2007 Enterprise Developer of the Year - Oracle Magazine's Editors' Choice Award. Here's an excerpt about him from Oracle Magazine - "Back in 1994, Lerdorf developed the PHP dynamic Web page programming language for producing his personal home page. Today Lerdorf uses PHP to manage one of the largest Web sites in the world—Yahoo.com. "Just about everything at Yahoo! is PHP driven," says Lerdorf, who's responsible for Yahoo!'s PHP infrastructure components and common tools. The fact that PHP has evolved from managing Lerdorf...

In case you don't have the time to read PC World's compilation of The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007 , here is the quick list: Windows Vista The High-Def Format War Facebook Beacon Yahoo Apple iPhone The Broadband Industry Voice Over IP Apple "Leopard" OS 10.5 Office 2007 Wireless Carriers Microsoft Zune Internet Security Social Networks Municipal WiMax Amazon Unbox I wish they also came up with a similar compilation on the Tech Wonders of 2007.

"..Being hard to contact and unresponsive seems to be a characteristic of the busy software industry. Simply being nice is refreshing" Secrets of Successful Cross-Group Work There are certain traits that IT professionals need to acquire & build to grow & succeed in their career. The Microsoft Certified Architect Program lists these non-technical competencies : Leadership Communication Organizational dynamics Strategy These competencies are relevant to other technical roles as well. An interesting link on MSDN Success Builder appeared in a recent edition of MSDN (India) Flash newsletter. It contains freely downloadable material adapted from internal Microsoft resources & based on experiences of Microsoft employees on the following topics: Project Management: Vision & Leadership Project Management: Tactical Assistance Communication & Team Dynamics Professional & Personal Growth There are several sub topics under each of the above. The few articles I rea...

"There are 2 kinds of people on the Web - voyeurs and exhibitionists." Michael Detouzos, MIT In my Classic ASP days, I managed a portal that was free for all. During this period I understood how important it is to monitor the website continously to stay ahead of smart-alecky visitors who try to attract attention with suggestive usernames or doing something whacky. A common prank that is played is to harass nice folks in the online community by creating a username with a underscore prefixed to some other nice guy's name (the underscore is hardly noticeable if the word is hyperlinked) & misusing his identity. And if a website offers members to upload any files, you can be assured that some vandals will be upto some mischief. All file uploads should ideally be validated & published only after moderation. Ok, now let me cut to the chase :-). There was a question recently on the ASP.NET Forums that struck a chord. A poster wanted to know whether it was possible to pr...

It's interesting news that Google Notebook is built into the new Google Toolbar. I love the "Note this" feature in Google search which lets you add personal notes about a search result in your copy of Google Notebook & I use this often. I think the new built-in Notebook feature in Google Toolbar is a good handy convenience to add any mental notes to web-pages you visit that you can review or blog about at a later point of time. It's nice to see how well Google has integrated the Notebook app with the Toolbar & "Note this" feature.

AdRotator populates its image and navigation properties in 3 different ways: XML file (for extra security, give it a file name extension like .ads & place it in the App_Data folder because ASP.NET prevents files from that folder from being served to browsers) Database Programmatically If the page that contains the AdRotator control is cached, the AdRotator control automatically performs cache substitution to replace the cached ad with a new one whenever the page is retrieved from the cache. Related links: AdRotator Web Server Control Overview Using the AdRotator Class + Dynamic Image Generation in ASP.NET 2.0 When you have to review a topic & you don't have much time, it helps to have a crisp summary with only the vital details. I plan to put quick references like this post under the new label/tag - " QuickList ". Talking to friends & from my own experience, I have found that organizing key points as a list makes it easy to recall & memorize. No doubt...

Among the 90+ MVPs from India , there are many accomplished authors. Here is a list of such authors that I know of. Arun Ganesh Geetesh Bajaj Bipin Joshi Anand Narayanaswamy Nishith Pathak Yashavant Kanetkar Joydip Kanjilal Nishant Sivakumar Shankar Kambhampaty Vivek Thakur Vivek Thangaswamy Manu Zacharia Bipin Joshi & Geetesh have recently come up with their new books - Developer's Guide to ASP.NET 3.5 & Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit respectively. I've had the good chance of meeting & talking to Arun & Geetesh (who are based in Hyderabad, as I do) & got to know that the book writing process is pretty intense & requires a lot of commitment. Update: Joydip Kanjilal's book ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls Essentials is also out. Oops, I missed out Nishant. Thanks JK for pointing it out. Nishant is infact a key person behind CodeProject as well. Update (May 2008): Shankar Kambhampaty's "Servi...

In case you haven't noticed the Red-Gate ad on the Web, they are offering a downloadable copy of Beginning SQL Server 2005 for Developers by Robin Dewson . You can participate in their promotion of a free trial of SQL Compare or click on the link on the right that says "No thanks, just the ebook, please"

While reading some material on SQL Server 2005 recently, I was stumped for a moment when I ran into the term "SAC tool". I soon realized the author who abruptly introduced the term was a victim of Acronymitis & was referring to the Surface Area Configuration tool. Of course considering the sheer breadth of topics that continue to emerge, it is getting imperative to abbreviate commonly used terms & use TLA's (Three Lettered Acronyms). Here is a quick reference of acronyms related to SQL Server: BOL - Books Online BLOB - binary large object CTE - Common Table Expressions DBCC - Database Console Commands DDL -  Data Definition Language DCL - Data  Control Language DML - Data Manipulation Language DMV - Dynamic Management Views DTA - Database Engine Tuning Advisor (new in SQL Server 2005, replaces ITW - Index Tuning Wizard of SQL Server 2000) FTS - Full Text Search ISQL - Interactive Structured Query Language MDX - multi-dimensional experssi...