Wagnerblog » Asp.Net 2.o

Selenium and Fitnesse – two great tastes that taste great together

Thomas — Tue, 22 May 2007 13:19:09 +0000

OK that was goofy. But it shouldn’t distract from Goijko’s post describing his experience of using Selenium and Fitnesse together to run some very nice functional tests of web sites. To me this is a great example because software testing can be a bit of a chore. Sure unit tests are nice, but how often do they suffice in testing the actual usage of a web application. Thats where tools like Selenium and even Watir come in handy.

Debug Statements and Trace Statements

Thomas — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:45:46 +0000

dnrTV has a very nice episode full of information on using Debug.Writeline and Trace Statements to help debug applications. I continue to be blown away occassionally by the depth of Scotts knowledge.

Watch the show here

Wicked Code: The SQL Site Map Provider You’ve Been Waiting For — MSDN Magazine, February 2006

Thomas — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 05:11:55 +0000

This is really very useful in larger sites. Now I only wonder if having a SiteMap provider can increase SEO. It even includes a nice little example of SQL 2005 cache dependency

The one drawback to site navigation is that XmlSiteMapProvider is the one and only site map provider included in the box with ASP.NET 2.0, which means that site maps must be stored in XML files. Even before ASP.NET 2.0 shipped, developers were clamoring for a means to store site maps in databases.

Read Article.

The daily handful of links

Thomas — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:05:14 +0000

Codeproject article on serializing a custom class (Via Frans Bouma)
Another drop in the CSS Friendly Adapter Toolkit. Its a nice way of changing the html/css output for server controls.It brings their output more in line with current CSS practices.
Ryan Farley discusses RSS Feeds in IE and Vista. Both have built in FeedReader classes.
Scott Mitchell on creating a Tag Cloud server control in ASP.NET. Looks promising.
Pascal Belaud, the creator of Olymars, has this really interesting VS add-in that lets you link source files into a project without copying the files themselves. By pointing at the original file you have a reference to the current code. So if the owner of the current code changes it, you see the changes right away. I’m probably not doing a very good job explaining it so read the post, its good stuff.
I came across this press release article today. There is something very scary about a billion dollar corporation like MS using a small Southern California based consultancy as the driver for a “prescriptive guidance” dealing with ESB. Maybe it’s my proximity and familiarity with local consulting companies that has me scratching my head about this move. But heck, if MS wants to do things that way – hey Redmond… I have a great “prescriptive guidance” for building fantastic IoC systems using . NET. Give me a call, lets chat. I like seeing my name in lights as much as the next guy.

The most links for one post

Thomas — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:11:42 +0000

My collection of interesting links has been growing for weeks and I haven’t had the time to post them. So here they are in one massive list.

Daniel Zeiss is on rev 9 of his major Ajax framework comparison. Great stuff.
Today I installed ScrewTurn Wiki in 10 minutes (as opposed to an hour for Sharepoint2007)
Another very cool color scheme generator
Microsoft has updated the XML Notepad. It has some very cool features.
Nicelist of links for Reporting Services
A comparison of Themes versus CSS
Atlas crash course part 1
Atlas crash course part 2
Creating and using your own custom events
Enum to list converter
Chad Finsterwald Server Side Validation Lib
Convert the .NET tilde to normal path in js
Prototyping wireframes directly in FF browser
Edit CSS in Both IE and FF
Examine the XML output of a webservice
Looking for an open rest-based api?
Nice! Chad Finsterwals Reg Expressions Class. Patterns all set to verify one or multiple matches
Interesting discussion of scheduled app execution in asp.net
The Commerce Server team used divs and design time properties to create layout flexibility in their product
RadRails made some progress -
Whitpaper on sql server db physical design decisions.
Tools for sys admins
Rick Strahl talks about Atlas
Craig Dunn - Generics serialization and Unit Tests (via Jason Haley)
Everything you need to create and manage IIS sites in code -
Ward Pond’s Time Zone Table
A must read. The Definitive Guide to ASP.NET ViewState

Link O Rama

Thomas — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:16:26 +0000

Via Jason Haley – WebServiceStudio, a small utility program that can be used to test web services interactively. Might be fun to try out.
Poor Man’s Camtasia . Yes Software produces a screenshot animation tool that costs only $50..00 and can be used to produce software demo’s and training snippets.
AJAX and the market saturation of IE. Love this! Jeff Atwood contrasts why we have AJAX in the first place and just how prevalent IE browsers are (lest we forget that AJAX was made possible specifically for / by IE to support Outlook Web Access)
RSS Bus. As the name implies, its a Service Bus (see SOA) that uses RSS as the main interchange mechanism. Interesting and scary at the same time. Just what you need for a Monday morning.
TimeSprite – via Mike Gunderloy, another time measuring utility. Does it seem like coders are getting nickeled and dimed to death with these? So many companies I’ve seen try to account for a programmers daily tasks you’d think they are all in the consulting business.
Don’t let your kids catch you doing this! USB Teddy Bear with removable head. “Daddy Daddy the computer ate my bear” . What will they come up with next

I wanna be like Mike

Thomas — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:09:28 +0000

Remember the jingle during Michael Jordan’s days? “I wanna be like Mike..” Well as many links as I’ve been posting I think I wanna be like Mike Gunderloy

Dr. Peter has an article that delves into caching.
Tim Bednar uses FireFox and some extensions to edit css live within the browser – rock on !
And in case you forgot how to optimize a stored proc , here is one of those “ we are working on it” message boxes for the web – a progress bar of sorts
Last but not least, Scott Hanselman shows how to find a Trojan using his three horsemen. Thats the computer kind…. not the profilactic. Ok just read the darn blog post already!

My XML Rant

Thomas — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 08:13:03 +0000

I’ve mentioned that I am working on a code generator. Its quite a bit of fun. And I am purposefully going an “old-school” route by using System.CodeDom.Compiler.IndentedTextWriter to produce text. Yes I know this is NOT the most sexy way of doing things. If I were to follow the advice of people who have blazed this trail before me – like Scott Hanselman or Kathleen Dollard, I would certainly try to use XML and perhaps some XSLT to embody the definition of how my business object will look.

In essence both bloggers / authors have described their way of approaching the idea of code generation. Each uses his or her own logic to describe the needs for it. Scott talks about something along the lines of a “language factory” for example. And while I am guessing that both Scott and Kathleen have had success with their approaches I have personally found that moving logic out of my class code and into angle brackets just confuses the hell out of me.

Somewhere there is an argument to be made that xml models of the code that the generator produces is easier to maintain and change than having the same functionality embedded in code. Hogwash. (Again my personal opinion). I carefully design the output of the generator to match my needs. If those needs change, then it is certainly an unusual circumstance. Meaning that my entire framework of dealing with business objects has changed. Thats a biggie. And if that is the case, I would certainly take the time to change my generator code.

Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I like XML as a data transportation mechanism just fine. Even if I need to model XML documents into some sort of class structures, I can deal with that as well. XSD does a pretty good job there. But thats about where my love for XML ends. My buddy Dan has pulled his hair out so many times when trying to work with Hibernate in a similar setting, its not even funny. When something breaks in Hibernate you are left digging through mountains of angle brackets whilst trying to make sense of it. No fun. So there you have my justification for avoiding the fashionable approach to code gen. Hopefully by using a plain old text approach I will retain my hair whilst having an admittely less sexy piece of code.

O’Reilly Radar > ASP.Net on a Roll

Thomas — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:57:41 +0000

With all of the buzz about Ruby on Rails and AJAX, not a lot of people have noticed that Microsoft is making another really good run at the web development space. Based on book sales data, it looks like ASP.Net 2.0 is on fire, with ASP-related book sales up 53% since the same period a year ago, versus PHP, down 3%, and JSP, down 25%.

O’Reilly Radar > ASP.Net on a Roll.

Overloaded Web Methods

Thomas — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:57:15 +0000

Question: We are in the process of developing an application that will be used internally. We have just started coding using Visual Studio 2005. Part of the design uses overloaded functions and methods. This works fine until I start building some Web Services that we need. For some reason I keep getting the error that the message name isn’t unique. Is overloaded WebMethods not supported? Or am I doing something wrong?

Answer: Overloaded WebMethods are actually supported. However, you have to add some additional attributes to your WebMethod calls.