.NET Enthusiast Daily Happenings

Little wonders of C#

2010-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

C# is a wonderful programming language and the Hare's compilation of little wonders of C# make the developer more proficient. Get all the little wonders here.

In addition to that check "Advanced C#" chapter excerpt from C# 3.0 in a Nutshell and Visual C# 2010 code samples.

MSDN subscription Activated

2010-07-27T05:47:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to my MVP friend Prasanna for giving me free MSDN subscription. I have activated my subscription and queued the downloads to play around with the new technologies.

I am thankful to two great guys Prasanna and Merill in my IT career and I was lucky enough to work with the guys who have been actively involved in sharing knowledge to the community and I am one proud beneficiary. Long life you guys.

CIMA exams journey comes to an end.

2010-07-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

I got through TOPCIMA exam finally and still I could not believe I got 66 credits (33/50). TOPCIMA or current T4 is the final hurdle in CIMA journey and differs significantly from previous stage exams. Test your professional competence as Management Accountant and previously known as case study exam which is based on pre seen case study and unseen material on the exam day. One of the very hard exams in my career perhaps I have been in IT industry from the start. This will open up the gates to ACMA and CPA routes.

I have achieved one of the milestone for this year and I need to complete the Viva (Presentation) on my research thesis “Empirical Study of Identifying value drivers in Software Industry” to claim my ‘MBA in IT’. I am trying to get the presentation dates from the Computer Science department of University of Moratuwa and hope I will get viva dates this year to complete my MBA in IT degree. I do strongly believe in famous saying in Tamil “Learn theft and then forget”.

jQuery - Rising from Horizon

2010-06-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

I am back after my CIMA exams and hope that I will clear the last hurdle in CIMA this time.

Until now I really did not get a chance to apply jQuery in full scale in our web projects and now in the current project I have got a chance to play around with jQuery. We have been moving away from Updatepanels and use jQuery for AJAX calls and I have to tell you that learning experience is awesome. I usually hate javascript programming but now jQuery has changed that and I have started to love javascript programming now. I don’t know why I missed looking at jQuery before. I found this #Improve your jQuery – 25 excellent tips# very useful and the comments also second it.

On the other note I have started attending .NET user group meetings in Sydney and as far as I know there are minimum of 4 .NET user groups. I have attended architecture user group meeting on last Thursday. There will be another user group meeting by Sydney Deep .NET User Group on 1^st of July 2010 and for more details visit http://www.sdnug.org/

Enterprise Library 5.0 Released

2010-04-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

The long waited enterprise library 5.0 is released now and the collection of reusable software components is designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development challenges. The application blocks are the center piece of enterprise library and developers cake piece.

For more details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632023.aspx

Silverlight 4 WCF RIA Services Line of Business Application - Hands On Lab

2010-02-01T14:37:00.000-08:00

If you want to get hands on WCF RIA Services for Silverlight 4 then Swiss MSDN team has developed 108 pages Hands On Lab (HOL) manual. The HOL uses Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and Beta 1 of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to create a data driven line of business style rich internet application and it is a great way to expose to the new technologies.

The HOL is an order management system that shows a list of orders in a datagrid and details of an order in a details pane.

The following features are covered in the HOL and you will be exposed to the new “AutoCompleteBox”, “BusyIndicator”, “DataForm” and “DataPager” Silverlight controls:
· Entity framework and service layer definition
· Data filtering, paging, sorting and grouping
· Data modification and validation
· Foreign key management
· Projections
· Programmatic printing from a Silverlight application
· COM interop with Microsoft Excel

Disclaimer: Expect Visual Studio 2010 crashes and in my case it was more than 20 times and your patience is required to complete the lab.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/D/74D51112-BC02-46DA-ACDD-E6138940306A/SL4-LOB-RIA-Lab.zip

HTML 5

2010-01-31T06:34:00.000-08:00

It is true that HTML 5 would be a ground breaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification but the sad point of that it is going to take 5 to 10 years to become fully acceptable standard in the market.

It is always good to use industry standards rather than going with proprietary standards especially in web development for cross browser support. HTML 5 tackles the gap that Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX are trying to fill but in my point of view, HTML 5 is not a replacement to these technologies. Time can only tell which technology will mature in the market and definitely they will at least have their own niche place in the web market.

As a developer or technology evangelist it is important to know the impact(s) of the html 5 specifications in web development and main browsers already started adding HTML 5 features in their latest browsers. Have a look at html5demos.com for the html 5 features and video,cross-document messaging, canvas, local storage support are some of the cool features of HTML 5. At the moment Apple Safari leads the html 5 support and IE 8 lags in adding html 5 support compare to other browsers. Will Youtube be using HTML 5 instead of flash in the future?

New Year and 2010 technologies

2010-01-17T04:29:00.001-08:00

This is my first blog post in year 2010 and hope 2010 would be a great year for everyone. So far it is good for me and expects to accomplish 2 mile stones in my career. This time I got the chance to get my hands on some great beta releases early such as VS 2010, .NET 4.0, F# with Azure services. There are lot to learn and explore, the coming days will be spent with these ground breaking technologies.

There are plenty of materials and articles available in the Internet but I found the training kit is an easy way to get start with the new technologies. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – for January is available now and this includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. The following framework technologies included in the training kit and January release is the latest release.

C# 4.0
Visual Basic 10
F#
Parallel Extensions
Windows Communication Foundation
Windows Workflow
Windows Presentation Foundation
ASP.NET 4
Windows 7
Entity Framework
ADO.NET Data Services
Managed Extensibility Framework
Visual Studio Team System

There is another training kit available for Windows 7 developers and not yet get the chance to explore and waiting to get install Windows 7 first.

There is also New Year complimentary available in J.D. Meier’s blog about the trends for 2010 and it is one of his lengthy blog but worth read at least once.

Ucertify 70-528 exam Preparation guide review

2009-12-17T05:43:00.000-08:00

I got the request to review the Ucertify exam preparation guides last month and due to my CIMA exams and other busy schedules I could not even have the time to open it. Today I got some time and wanted to review the exam guide and you can expect a balanced review even though it is provided free for me to install.

I have to tell in advance that I did not buy any full exam preparation guides for my MCPD achievement. I have used free samples and questions from internet/friends and focused primarily to clear the exams. I have been acquiring plenty of knowledge in day by day projects work and it is two way sychronisation of day by day experience help to pass the exams and exams support in day by day work. Unlike other undergraduate exams the professional exams mainly highlight this fact and MS exams are not exceptions here.

It is also important to note that I m not going to compare the other available exam preparation guides with Ucertify as I don't have access to other materials and it will be a tedious work but worth for the community if someone carry out. In this review I will only consider 'fit for the Ucertify material 70-528 to pass the exam'.

The first impression about Ucertify preparation guide for 70- 528 was positive with the user interface and easy navigation but Ucertify can think of upgrade the exam guides to new technology platforms to attract more audience and to include more user interactive questions.

The two most important factors for tech exam guides are closest match to the real exam questions and comprehensive and precise answers to the questions. According to my memory the questions match close to the real exam questions even though there seems to some irrelevant questions and the answers are descriptive and additional 'Fact' items will help further to enhance the relevant technical knowledge. I have not gone through all the questions and answers but there is always issues with preparation guide answers for their correctness.

The study materials are organized in a systematic way and whether it is a beginner or advanced user both can take advantage of the materials. The additional study materials such as study tips, exam objectives, study notes, How to, Articles are great assets with quiz, flash cards and various tests. If I prepare for the exam I will first go through exam objectives, study tips and then study notes, How to and Articles and finally apply the theory through flash cards, quiz and tests. Tests also can be tried in umber of different ways and I would prefer Diagnostic test, Fixed time test, Custom test, Adaptive test and Final test in the order and measure your progress through available reports. The user also can use the additional features of tag, my notes and feedback. By adopting this scientific approach I am sure every one can pass the exam very easily. I guess the above mentioned materials are available in every exam kits and the observation is based on 70-528 kit only. Ucertify can add more articles and how tos with questions/answers and deliver it as upgrades for the existing users which will make the product active.

Over all it is a good guide to pass the exam and there are some glitches in the licensing, questions and answers and I am sure Ucertify will continuously fix those. The price also looks worth paying but not the cheapest product in the market.

P.S: One last factor I noticed is that ucprep.exe memory usage is around 50 MB in my computer and next to sqlservr.exe and a heavy process.

WCFStorm

2009-12-03T04:46:00.001-08:00

I am back to my blog world after my TOP CIMA exams and it is festive season and hope everyone will have a fantastic season this time as the world economy heads toward recovery. I will start with the WCF tool which impressed me a lot these days and being used heavily in our latest released project to QA. Every time when the QA guys report an issue whether that is really a bug or not I used this tool to test the WCF calls and it saves a lot of time. The QA will give the request file and it is easy to load the input variables from the file and you can directly invoke the method directly without much hassle.

WCFStorm is a WCF test tool written in .NET and reasonably priced product in my view. The free version ‘WCFStorm –lite’ is available but at the moment the ‘lite’ download did not extract properly. WCF Storm user interface is easy to use and complex data types support is very handy. Functional test and performance test are some of the great features of the product and make the WCF development easy. I would say every WCF developer should try this tool even there are other test tools available in the market. Get more information about WCF Storm from here.
http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/home.aspx

Free TFS Work Item Manager

2009-10-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

I am sure this is a great addition if you use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server to manage the work items. The intuitive user interface promotes better work item visualization and improved team collaboration. You will love the search and filter of work items features and here are the highlights of the TFS Work Item Manager. It is worth to look at another free TFS product from Telerik called TFS Project Dashboard.
TFS Work Item Manager Highlights:

Work Item grid filtering, grouping, and aggregation
Area and Iteration filtering using single and multi select modes
Filter query results using a tree of areas or iterations
Unique Task board view of work items independent from any process template
Print work item cards for the board in your room
Iteration schedule
Paste clipboard contents into a work item
"New Query by example” saves your query for other team members
Search the title and description of query results as you type
Built with RadControls for WPF

System Requirements

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer 2008 (Service Pack 1)
.NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 Runtime

WebsiteSpark Program

2009-09-29T07:30:00.001-07:00

This is a really a good news for the small web development companies and individuals. The program from Microsoft will enable the company to access the latest development suits and server licenses to host the applications. This includes following software licenses and upgrades to the software is also available with in the 3 year program period. This means that the program subscriber is access to VS 2010 RC in the near future.

3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
2 licenses of Expression Web 3
4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

The exit fee is $100 and catch the marketing trick of the MS here and I would say it is superb a marketing technique to lock the small and growing companies with MS products. I have to accept the fact that MS provides the cutting edge development tool access to the small and start up companies but once you invest with the sophisticated tools then it is really difficult to switch to other tools. I am sure this will be quoted in Marketing case studies later for successful marketing strategies.

Here are some of the answers from ScottGu blog to get clear with the programs.

>>>>>>> How can individual developers register for this program? Individual developers don't have companies and the restrictions cannot be met. Isn't it?

Individual developers who do web development for others can also register. You don't need to be an incorporated company to enter the program.

>>>>>> Why not VS 2010?

VS 2010 is still in beta and hasn't been released yet. Once it is release, though, people in the program can download and use it too. Throughout the three years in the program you can always use the latest version of all the software.

More details available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/

Employment at Cover More

2009-09-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

I have started to work for Cover More Insurance from last week and directly started digging into LINQ advanced features to use in the current project. I have been working in legbased quoting WCF services and uses LINQ to objects for validation and extract the quote information. The project is very challenging and work with superb .NET team members.

Converting Web Site projects to Web Application Project

2009-09-01T06:25:00.001-07:00

Last week I attended converting our web site projects to web application projects. The conversion had two steps. First step is to upgrade the projects to .NET 3.5 framework and then convert to web application project to set up auto build deployment for all our projects and to maintain uniformity among our products.

The conversion of web site projects to web application project was not a smooth as I think before in my case as the projects are too complex. I followed the steps mentioned in http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/Migration2/Migration2.aspx. In some instances the global.asax file need to be dropped and recreated but don't ask 'why'.

As a side note, if you want to know the web application project and web site project in detail Vishal has posted a blog entry @ http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2009/08/web-application-project-vs-web-site.html and very useful.

WPF Cheat Sheets

2009-08-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is one of the posts from my lists to be posted and now got the time to post. These WPF cheat sheets are very useful in the early stages of WPF learning and can be used as a cross reference.

XAML for WPF Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet mentions commonly used controls and properties such as Data binding, Resources, Transforms, Layout, Brushes, Styles and Triggers.
Download the free cheat sheet http://blog.blueboxes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wpfcheatsheet.pdf

WPF Data binding cheat sheet

This cheat sheet talks about WPF feature of data binding only and download here.
http://www.nbdtech.com/Free/WpfBinding.pdf

Coming back...

2009-08-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

This blog post is almost 11 months after my last post. I did not have the mind to write any blog posts as hundreds of innocent Tamils were died during the last war in Sri Lanka every day up to May 2009. Now war is over but still no freedom to the people to move back to their homes and held in military run camps.

The exact number of civilian casualties was not known yet and I don’t think the truth will be revealed. We don’t have any news about our father and still searching for him in hospitals and camps. We got the news that he was taken to Udayarkaddu hospital after the shell attack on 02^nd of February 2009 but no information after that. If any of you have any piece of information please pass it to me. Here are my father details.

Name: Sithar Sivam
DoB: 18 Jan 1950
Last lived in Oddisuddan then displaced to Suthanthirapuram.

On top of that, my previous company do not promote writing blogs mainly writing about the technologies used. Due to these reasons I was away from my blog postings but hope that I can blog regularly in the future.

P.S: Please bear with me for the personal and political nature of this post and I will avoid personal and political posts in my technical blog in the future.

Another break through

2008-10-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

It is again a new start of life in Sydney. I have moved from London to Sydney last month with my family and getting settled in Western part of Sydney. I do enjoy the weather and life style in Sydney and plan to settle permanently here.

I am lucky to get a job in my first week and I am sure it will be too exciting as my first project will be in .NET 3.5 using TFS server for project management. It is a really a good chance for me to expose myself to new technologies. I am also exposed new domain of knowledge which I haven’t work before and I will be a part of a small smart team which will develop recruitment management system. I am already excited about the design of the product and it was superb and the product will be a small scale ERP system for the service industry.

Win 1000$ every week

2008-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is not a scam message and everyone has the chance to win 1000$ every week by helping others to solve questions and problems. You have better chance to win these days as the site was launched on last Monday only and having fewer members. Hurry up and visit to www.bornclever.com to get registered and for more details click on FAQ link.

Don’t think that bornclever.com people pay me for promoting their site and instead the whole site was designed, developed and implemented by me for my company. It is better to mention here that the site was designed according to the strict user requirement and you can’t blame me for any usability issues. But I will be responsible for any technical issues with the hosting provider here. I am happy to see one of my developed applications is going to be used by millions of people and hope best for the client to success in their business.

MCPD - Web Developer

2008-08-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

I have completed my MCPD Web development by passing the exam 70-551 UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework. I haven’t tried any Microsoft certifications after my MCAD which I achieved in January 2006. During the period 2006/2007 I was busy with my MBA and CIMA strategic level exams and I think it’s time to play around with technology again. I need to thank my previous office co-worker Nilmini for the support materials and the encouragement to do this exam and hope to continue the exam fever.

Web Server controls and the web project

2008-07-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

I came across some of the web control specific features in my last project and I thought of sharing with you all.

If you want to show some password in a password TextBox you can’t simply assign
txtPassword.Text = “*****”;

You need to do replace with txtPassword.Attributes.Add("value", “*****”);

My first issue was with the password textbox and the issue was that the created user’s password is empty when the user upload profile image. When I debugged the code, I noticed that when there is a page postback occurs, the password textbox is cleared due to security reason in ASP.NET 2.0. So in this case you need to think whether the postback is really needed or you can save the password in temporary storage.

The second experience was with Html server control HtmlInputImage. When I click on the htmlinputimage control then there was automatic postback to the server and this behaviour is not observed with HtmlInputButton control. This seems to be an expected behaviour and the workaround is to define onclick client event and return false as shown below.

Pass authentication details in System.Web.Mail

2008-07-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

I have assigned to fix the problem in sending email of asp.net 1.1 project. I haven’t involved in the development of the project but I setup the application in the live server. I developed and successfully deployed another asp.net 2.0 application with the same hosting provider. My project uses System.Net.Mail to send email works fine.

You can check ScottGu’s blog for more detail using System.Net.Mail here.

It was not easy for me to setup the email functionality in 1.1 asp.net app and I have searched a lot in the internet to pass the credential details. I ended up with a resourceful site to use System.Web.Mail which demonstrates sending username and password to the SMTP server to provide authentication.

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate", "1"); //basic authentication
mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername", "my_username_here"); //set your username here
mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword", "super_secret"); //set your password here

Source: http://www.systemwebmail.com/faq/3.8.aspx

CIMA Strategic level Completed

2008-07-19T01:16:00.000-07:00

I have completed my CIM A strategic level and this is my second innings of CIMA. I studied the strategic level @ Virtual in Colombo and got through two subjects in Nov 2007 and completed the Financial Strategy paper this May 2008. The TOP CIMA is remaining and I plan to complete that in 2009.
I am also working towards getting my MCPD and hope I will be able to sit for the exam this month.

Expect the unexpected

2008-06-30T16:41:00.000-07:00

In my previous organisation we have a separate team called infrastructure team to build and deploy the products in Testing, Staging and Production environments. The development team duty is to check in the bits and releasing the product to infra team through a ticket with release notes. But in my current organisation the developer are sometimes involved in setting up the product for the client. These are mostly web applications and need to be hosted in third party environments. It means the product bits have to be moved to the server using ftp and not much access to the server environment for debugging and other information.

The latest web project had worked fine in my computer and in our testing server too but it gave some unexpected and never seen error messages when it was hosted in the real environment. The first error message was “Unable to serialize the session state. In 'StateServer' and 'SQLServer' mode, ASP.NET will serialize the session state objects, and as a result non-serializable objects or MarshalByRef objects are not permitted. The same restriction applies if similar serialization is done by the custom session state store in 'Custom' mode.” This was handled by adding the following element to web.config as there is no external session management.

After this error fixing this error I got the error message “Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.” After some time of googling, I found this page which closely matches with my scenario and the solution work for me perfectly. http://aspadvice.com/blogs/joteke/archive/2006/02/02/15011.aspx

It is better to note that the machine.config file of the server would be different than your one and also it is good practice to clean the web. config file before moving to production environment for the elements compilation, authentication, customErrors, tracing and debugging with security in mind.

Moratuwa General Convocation - 2008

2008-06-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the General Convocation of Moratuwa University. I missed the opportunity to get my MBA title after 2 years of hard work. My MBA batch (2005/07) mates will be receiving their certificates in the convocation ceremony and congrats to all of them.

I came to UK on December 2nd and MBA research viva’s for my batch started one week after that. I requested the department to arrange my VIVA earlier and at first department replied me positively that it will be scheduled earlier for me but didn’t give any dates. I had the hope to have by latest on December 1st as that was a Saturday but on December 1st noon time, I got the sad news that it was not possible to arrange the VIVA for me specially. I could not think about it that time as I was busy with my travel arrangements.

I need to go back to Sri Lanka to have my MBA VIVA and hope this will happen before end of this year. This will enable me to receive my MBA title in the next convocation ceremony and hope for the best.

Free AJAX E-Learning Clinic

2008-02-12T10:48:00.002-08:00

There is a free ASP.NET AJAX E-Learning Clinic from MS learning available for limited period and anyone interested can subscribe by visiting here.
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=73568

I have started the clinic right away otherwise it will slip from my TODO list.

Next Monday will be fresher and newer than before

2008-01-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

It is nice to get to know other technologies while you master in one technology. Last 5 weeks I have got the chance to work in Oracle 8i database with TOAD for Oracle. I got to work with Oracle in 2002 for my final year under graduate project and after wards I didn’t get the chance to work with Oracle. Another new experience is to get work with only VB.NET for my report building engine. I develop the Excel report engine and VB.NET is better selection than C# for Microsoft Office Interop projects. I will be moving to a new company from next Monday and expecting to work with the new technologies.

Language Converters

2008-01-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

A quick VB.NET and C# language syntax reference can be found here http://www.harding.edu/fmccown/vbnet_csharp_comparison.html . This can be a good starting point for those who have to switch to the other language. I do normally write it in C# and then convert using language convert tools available online such as http://authors.aspalliance.com/aldotnet/examples/translate.aspx. This is suitable only if you have to work for short time period or it is part of a small project but if you need to switch over the language fully then it is better to get used to the syntax which will save your time.

I have used C# in my previous work place for more than five years but now I am developing in VB.NET. I am sure I can get work with C# very soon and looking forward that day because I love C# then VB.Net. Don’t ask why?

Parse large XML files

2008-01-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

Our batch is one of the luckiest batch @ Computer Science & Engineering Dept of University of Moratuwa to have Sanjiva Weerawarna as a lecturer to teach XML and Web Services. That time only he returned from US to Sri Lanka and had worked for IBM from Sri Lanka. We were the first batch of him @ Uni of Mora. He was instrumental in putting up the solid foundation of XML related technologies in students mind and I can still remember his lecture about DOM parser and SAX parser for XML parsing.

OK, now we will come to the story….

One of my friends had problem in loading big XML file and wanted a solution to parse and then insert the records to the database for one of his application. He tried with XMLDocument and got the “Memory out of Exception”. Here we need to use the SAX parser instead of DOM parser and.NET XmlTextReader class comes to solve the problem which provides a fast, non-cached, forward only read access to read XML data. Using the XmlTextReader we can load large files 4kB chunk by chunk into memory and process.

You can read about working with large xml files here.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302289.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998559.aspx

ASP.NET MVC framework

2007-12-31T04:34:00.000-08:00

Today I find some time to watch the video of ScottHanselmanIntroToMVC and Hanselman once again did a good job by posting the video introducing ASP.NET MVC framework. He explains well the new and awaited feature Model-View- Controller framework and introducing to the user more than the framework there. Visit here to catch all the actions.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ASPNET35ExtensionsPlusMVCHowToScreencast.aspx

First day at United Clearing

2007-12-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

This is my first post from London and today is my first day at United Clearing. I joined as a Microsoft .NET developer and will be the part of their web application development team.

First I worked in web application development projects then movcd to smart client application development projects and now again its web application development. I need to refresh my self to work with web apps and in London most .NET developer openings are for web apps only.

Hope to have a good time in the future.

Last Post from Sri Lanka

2007-11-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

This would be my last post from Sri Lanka and this week end I will fly to London and will continue my writing from next week. Due to my CIMA exams and MBA project work I didnt get the time to update my blog and in the future you can expect more coverage on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.

I want to try out these new technologies and going to start with Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit which includes 20 hands-on labs, 28 presentations, and 20 scripted demos. The technologies covered in the kit includes: LINQ, C# 3.0, VB 9, WCF, WF, WPF, Windows CardSpace, Silverlight, ASP.NET Ajax, .NET Compact Framework 3.5, VSTO 3.0, Visual Studio Team System, and Team Foundation Server.

Little Break through

2007-10-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

I got UK visa under the HSMP category yesterday and will be moving to UK end of November. These days’ lot of happenings are going simultaneously, preparing for my strategic level CIMA exams and MBA thesis are the heavy ones. I will be writing about my research thesis detail in a separate post.

I am looking forward fresh and new life in UK and will be moving to UK with lot of hopes. I am very lucky to get the visa on the last date of my HSMP offer expiry date.

Send email with attachments

2007-09-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

System.Net.Mail.MailMessage class is really rich and you have number of samples to send email using this. The attachments can be added with time stamp information for the file using ContentDisposition property of the Attachement object. Here is the little sample to add content disposition.

using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Net.Mime;

MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
Attachment data = new Attachment(attachmentFilePath, MediaTypeNames.Application.Octet);
// Add time stamp information for the file.
ContentDisposition disposition = data.ContentDisposition;
disposition.CreationDate = File.GetCreationTime(attachmentFilePath);
disposition.ModificationDate = File.GetLastWriteTime(attachmentFilePath);
disposition.ReadDate = File.GetLastAccessTime(attachmentFilePath);
// Add the file attachment to this e-mail message.
message.Attachments.Add(data);

Tip: The TO and CC MailAddress Collection Properties can be set with collection objects of email addresses or simply by passing a comma separated email addresses in a string.

University of Moratuwa is ranked 10th in Indian sub continent

2007-08-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

University of Moratuwa is ranked 10th place according to the webometrics ranking of world universities in the indian sub continent region and world rank is 3144. University of Peradeniya is ranked @ 15, University of Colombo @ 26 and University of Sri Jeyawardenapura @ 48. In the indian sub continent Indian Institute of Technology universities of India are ranked in top places.

Access the report here: http://www.webometrics.info/Webometrics library/Indian SC jan07.pdf

2007 IET Skills Survey(UK): Key Findings

2007-08-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the key findings of the IET skills survey(UK) and better read in conjunction with the Sri Lankan ICT work force survey report 2007 (Rising Demand).

Good engineers are increasingly hard to find.
Recruitment of women into the engineering and technology sector has remained static in the past year.
More than 70 percent of companies in the UK are struggling to recruit experienced or mid career level staff, which could threaten national growth and competitiveness.
Companies believe that leadership skills are most important among experienced or mid-career level staff. Around 90 percent said they have to provide additional training, in areas such as mentoring, coaching, communication and leadership.
Half of respondents saidd that they would not be recruiting school leavers.

Another new survery has shown how how email has changed our working patterns, and how increasingly complex it is becoming to manage.

75% of the respondents have a minimum of 3 email addresses, with 13.8 % using 10 or more addresses.
Thee survey also showed a creatain amount of blurring of email boundaries, with work email finding its way into personal accounts and vice versa.

The findings are more or less applicable in Sri Lankan context and I would highlight one fact that leadership skill/soft skill is highly demanded and those who want to move in the career ladder in management area better take steps to improve or enrol for courses like MBA.

MBA in IT research project Questionnaire

2007-07-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

Last few weeks I am dead busy with my questionnaire preparation for my MBA research project and I manage to host the draft questionnaires to do the pilot study.

I will be happy if any one of you participate in the pilot study and give your comments/thoughts. The questionnaire is available in the following url http://www.globalsols.com/rajah/questionnaire.shtml.

It is better to note that I have not done any input validation in the current version of the form and be smart and assume the role of Manager - Software Engineering when you fill the form. Your earliest replies will be appreciated.

Sri Lankan Software Industry

2007-07-04T02:56:00.001-07:00

Do you know how many Sri Lankan software companies operate in the industry and the type of business they are in? There are two main software associations operate in the industry such as Software Exporters Association (SEA) and Sri Lanka Association for Software Industry (SLASI). The good news is that these two associations work closer after signing the MoU but the problem is that these two associations combined have only around 60 software companies in their member list.

It is expected that there are more than 200 software companies operate in Sri Lanka and for my MBA research project I managed to find around 175 companies with their web url. It is a serious issue for the researchers to select their samples in this industry since there is no up to date official list of software companies. I have plan to publish the list after I edit it and it will not be having other details about the company but you can get it by visiting the web site.

If you want to know about Sri Lankan ICT or software industry then you better get to know about the following organizations in addition to the above two that I mentioned.

Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA)
Sri Lanka Information and Communication Technology Association (SLICTA)
ITPro
The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka

Here are some of the interesting facts about Sri Lankan software companies published in the article by SEA in 2004 and I am not sure about the validity of the facts in current context but I am sure we will be having more success stories now.

Did you know that capital markets in Boston, Nairobi, Colombo, Mauritius, Ghana and Croatia, use an advanced Automated Trading/Depository Software for Stock Exchanges, designed and developed in Sri Lanka?
Did you know a US Fortune 500 company in mobile technology solutions has one of its R&D centres in Sri Lanka?
Did you know that the World’s largest mobile phone manufacturer uses Repair and Return software developed by a Sri Lankan company?
Did you know that a Sri Lankan software company developed a web based software solution for the predominant ferry operator in the Baltic Sea that transports nearly 6 million passengers and
more than 130.000 cargo units annually?
Did you know that a global ERP provider has a research and development facility in Sri Lanka?
Did you know that the billing and customer care software for several telecom operators in the Developing World was
developed by a Sri Lankan company?
Did you know that award winning Airlines from the Emirates and Scandinavia use mission critical software developed by a Sri Lankan company?
Did you know that a Sri Lankan software company has over 1000 developers working at offices and development centres in USA, India and Sri Lanka?

Free e Learning Clinics at Microsoft Learning

2007-06-29T02:19:00.001-07:00

Today I manage to finish the free e Learning clinic 5135: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005 after some time. I have forgotten the subscription of the clinic then I got the reminder from Microsoft eLearning saying that my subscription is about to expire. I get some free time today and finish the clinic.

I prefer microsoft e Learning clinics than reading books because it is very much interactive with videos, lab sessions and Self Test. It gives you the basic idea and if you need the in depth knowledge then you need to refer books.

Still you have following free clinics with other clinics offer from Microsoft eLearning and grab the offer before ends. Check here for full developer catalog.

Collection 5134: Developing Rich Experiences with Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005
Clinic 5135 : Introduction to Developing with Windows® Presentation Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
Clinic 5136 : Introduction to Developing with Windows® Workflow Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
Clinic 5137: Introduction to Developing with Windows® Communication Foundation and Visual Studio® 2005
Clinic 2806: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training for Developers
Clinic 2807: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training for Developers II

Microsoft Exams Offer at IDM

2007-06-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

You have a price offer from IDM exam centre in Sri Lanka for any Microsoft exams given that you select Pearson VUE as your exam provider. This offer is valid only up to September 2007 and applicable to those who pay cash. The offer price is now Rs. 4100 and normal exam fee is Rs. 5600. If you want to get more details you can call Kanchana on 2597676 @ IDM but I had a bad experience in getting more details with her.

I am not sure whether this offer is available at any other exam centers in Sri Lanka but this is a good time to clear your Microsoft exams and get your MCTS or MCPD or any other titles.

Research Project Proposal Approved

2007-06-15T01:29:00.001-07:00

Last saturday we had our proposal presentations and I got the approval to do the research project "Empirical study of identifying value drivers of Human Capital in Sri Lankan Software Development Companies" under the supervision of Dr. Kennedy Gunawardena from University of Sri Jeyawardenapura. I am really delighted to do the research project on the area of my interest and the industry that I work. Here is the abstract of my research project and you can get some idea about my research project.

Abstract

It is projected that software exports will reach the 1 billion $ mark in 2012 and more than 4000 IT professionals are required in IT sector for year 2007. The significance of software industry in Sri Lankan economy is increasing every year and creates new jobs to the labour market.

Intellectual Capital can be classified into 3 such as human capital, structural capital and relational capital. Among the three human capital is more important and it is used as a tool to exploit the structural capital and relationship capital. The role of Intellectual Capital in the new economy is enormous and measurement of Intellectual Capital would help to manage it very well and to reveal the true value of the company.

The human capital which is the main component of Intellectual Capital plays major role in software industry due to the nature of software development and demand of team working, design and architecture skill with art of writing code. The first step in measuring human capital is to identify the value drivers. The identification of value drivers will be great beneficial to the industry as a whole from the internal and external perspective.

This paper analyses the driving factors of human capital in Sri Lankan software industry and try to model casual map of human capital formation area. A suitable structural modelling technique will be used to form the structural model with testing the hypothesis defined to test the firm based characteristics. A historical review of the human capital drivers will be looked with new set of drivers and the suitability to software industry will be analysed.

It is better noted that measuring human capital is not directly available and difficult to measure. Human capital has two perspectives such as individual perspective and company perspective. Individual effort is also paramount in human capital management with the company action which addresses current business problems of employee attrition, motivation, unemployment, employees retire, resign.

Keywords: Intellectual Capital, Human Capital, Software Industry, Sri Lanka

Mathematics and my life

2007-06-07T04:00:00.001-07:00

I love Mathematics like "Alwa" and maths have been playing a critical role in my life from my child hood. Basically Maths is crucial for number of other streams of studies and a great instrument in my management, engineering and computer science studies. I did Maths in my A/L which was a big step in my life and open up the higher studies world to me. You don’t get self satisfaction in writing theory answers but by proving or calculating a given sum you get self satisfaction and greater motivation.

Even though I love Maths, I do poor in exams and still I don’t know the exact reason. I do silly mistakes in exams and not adding much to my average or GPA. Here is an email which talks about beauty of Maths from my Inbox.

Beauty of Maths!

      1 x 8 + 1 = 9
      12 x 8 + 2 = 98
      123 x 8 + 3 = 987
      1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
      12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
      123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
      1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
      12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
      123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

      1 x 9 + 2 = 11
      12 x 9 + 3 = 111
      123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
      1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
      12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
      123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
      1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
      12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
      123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

      9 x 9 + 7 = 88
      98 x 9 + 6 = 888
      987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
      9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
      98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
      987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
      9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
      98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

Brilliant, isn't it?

And finally, take a look at this symmetry:

      1 x 1 = 1
      11 x 11 = 121
      111 x 111 = 12321
      1111 x 1111 = 1234321
      11111 x 11111 = 123454321
      111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
      1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
      11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
      111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

CIMA 2nd Innings - Started

2007-06-04T00:32:00.000-07:00

I have started my 2nd Innings of CIMA by re-register CIMA student membership. I plan to take the strategic level exams this November. 1st innings of CIMA was played during 1998 to 2000 and it was a good innings for me. I got 86 for Economics Environment in stage I and 89 for Operational Cost Accounting in stage II further I got less than 60 for only one subject out of 12 subjects.

The 2nd innings game rules are changed and I will be playing this game in a new pitch. The first innings was played when I was studying for my engineering degree at University of Moratuwa and that time I had only one main business that was to study. The 2nd innings will be played while working and with family.

The CIMA syllabus has been revised number of times and most of the time the changes to the final level is direct and simple. I received the credits up to managerial level by completing the stage III in the very old syllabus and need to complete the strategic and TOP CIMA level to become the CIMA passed finalist.

I have registered at Virtual for the classes and it is very closer to my home. I can even come to home for tea breaks.

TabControl.Selecting and TabControl.Deselecting Events

2007-05-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

TabControl.Selecting and TabControl.Deselecting events are newly added events in the .NET framework 2.0 and saved me lot of time in my project. If you want to cancel the selection of tab then you need to subscribe to one of the two events and not the Deselected or Selected events. But care must be exercised in selecting the two events because in the case of Selecting event TabControl.SelectedTab property will return you the newly selected tab and in the case of Deselecting event TabControl.SelectedTab property will return you the tab that you are in now.

This is the order of events when the current tab changes in a TabControl
Deselecting
Deselected
Selecting
Selected

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tabcontrol.deselecting(VS.80).aspx

MBA Exams are over

2007-05-17T04:53:00.001-07:00

We have completed all our MBA exams and next two semesters we have to work on research project to fulfill our MBA program. One happy news is that no more classes on week days and Saturdays but have to work hard to complete the research project to finish before end of this November. In semester IV we had only three exams: IT Project Management, IT Procurement Management and E-Commerce; Principles & Infrastructure and all three subjects are closed book exams.

Even the MBA classses are over I will be having CIMA classes on week ends. I plan to re-register CIMA student membership to complete strategic level and written to CIMA to approve my re-registration. As I mentioned earlier in my post this year will be full of exams and in the mean time I took IELTs exam also.

Rising Demand:

2007-05-13T22:31:00.001-07:00

Sri Lanka Information Communication Technology Association (SLICTA) has released another ICT work force research report this week. This is another step in building Sri Lankan ICT sector and this time the research report touches on the skills in demand for various job categories. The information provided in the report can be of use to different category of people starting from students to policy makers of this country. The first survey "Gearing for Growth" is also available in SLICTA site. (Size - 34MB). The full report can be downloaded here (Size - 1.1 MB) and here some of the highlights of the report.

>The IT workforce in Sri Lanka grew by nearly 10,000 over the two years from 2004
>Nearly 14,500 IT workers are required in the next two years (2007-2008). There is a demand for 7,672 IT workers in 2007.
> A total of 5,755 graduates are needed in 2007 but only 2,216 IT Major graduates will be added to the workforce this year
>Programming/Software Engineering is the largest job category with 27% of the overall workforce.
>Testing and Quality Assurance engineers have increased from 4% of the total workforce in 2004 to 13% in 2006, the largest increase across all job categories
>The overall attrition rate for the IT workforce has doubled from 6.6% in 2004 to 13% in 2006
>Employers find that essential soft skills are deficient in employees with Communication Skills being the most deficient
>IT training organizations have open vacancies for qualified trainers and the government training institutions in particular struggle to attract trainers due to salary constraints
>A good compensation plan is essential to retain IT workers at any level of experience, according to employers
>The starting salary of an IT worker is approximately Rs. 10,000 to 20,000 across all job categories, but with experience his capacity to earn increases at a higher rate if employed in the IT sector

Office 2007 Demos

2007-05-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

Check here for some Office 2007 demos.
http://bink.nu/Article10085.bink

SDL blog launched

2007-05-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) blog is live from last week. The blog provides information about SDL and commentary on security and privacy processes as close to “real time” as possible. This will serve as another site to hunt for those who deserve better security and privacy in the MS software products.

Micahel Howard has posted the first blog entry "Lessons learned from the Animated Cursor Security Bug" there which gives some insight about the recent animated cursor security (ANI) bug.

Extended Rich Text Box

2007-04-25T02:53:00.001-07:00

I have involved in developing a rich text box editor for one of our smart client application and in the Internet there are plenty of rich text box editor controls for web application.

First I did not have any idea about rich text box control and posted a message in lk dotnet forum to get some help. But later I found that rich text box control is a given gift here to achieve rich text editor. I have started to develop the text editor using the control but unfortunately I stopped that due to some reasons beyond my control. The code was half way done and if I have time I will finish it and release it to the community for free. I got the chance to learn the masks and flags operator in this project. I also brush up my knowledge in working with memory stream. Here you can see my rich text editor control in action.

There is already another Visual Studio 2003 C# project available to you but I could locate this only after I started my control development.

http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/RichTextBoxExtended.asp

Google beats Microsoft, Coke in brand stakes

2007-04-23T07:12:00.001-07:00

According to Millward Brown Optimor consultancy, Google has been named the most powerful global brand of 2007 beating out Microsoft. Google ranked first with a brand value of more than $66bn.

The 10 most powerful global brands of 2007 with their value
1. Google - $66.4bn
2. General Electric - $61.9bn
3. Microsoft - $55bn
4. Coca-Cola - $44.1bn
5. China Mobile - $41.2bn
6. Marlboro - $39.2bn
7. Wal-Mart - $36.9bn
8. Citi - $33.7bn
9. IBM - $33.6bn
10. Toyota - $33.4bn
source:http://www.silicon.com/0,39024729,39166829,00.htm?r=2

Check the 2006 list here.
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39157840,00.htm?r=1

It is intersting to know that the brand value calculations are not consistent among brand valuers and different criterias are used to value the brands and its a complex calculation. We looked at brand valuation in nutshell during our third semester of our MBA program Marketing subject. If you want to get some idea about valuing brand and Best Global brands of 2006 of Interbrand company you better visit to this page.
http://www.ourfishbowl.com/images/surveys/BGB06Report_072706.pdf

Create Event in VB.NET and consume it in C#

2007-04-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

I faced little hardship last week when I try to create an event in VB.NET and consume it in C# project. I searched and could not locate any helpful resource to suit my requirement. Then I created a simple VB.NET and C# application to test the event handling and got it work. I have posted the code samples here for the benefit of others. I have used delegates in my event handling sample. Look carefully the code statements that are in bold to understand the logic. I have returned the addition of two numbers using the events here.

VB.NET class

Public Class Class1
‘Delegate WorkDone is defined that accepts integer argument
Public Delegate Sub WorkDone(ByVal Sum As Integer)
Public Handler As WorkDone

Public Sub Add(ByVal num1 As Integer, ByVal num2 As Integer)
Dim num3 As Integer
num3 = num1 + num2

‘Invoke the delegate instance
If Handler IsNot Nothing Then
Handler(num3)
End If
End Sub

End Class

C# Windows client application subscribe to the event

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private Class1 mworker = new Class1();

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
mworker.Handler += new Class1.WorkDone(work_WorkDone);
}

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
//By calling the Add method the event get fired.
mworker.Add(300, 400);
}

private void work_WorkDone(int sum)
{
MessageBox.Show(sum.ToString());
}
}

Invalid request. Filename cannot exceed 255 characters.

2007-04-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

I was getting the error "Invalid request. Filename cannot exceed 255 characters." when I tried to open a ppt file programmatically and I could not figure out my silly mistake at the first instance. When I search in the internet and that points to the MS knowledge base article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923337 which is of not relevant in my case. The actual mistake was that the full path is not passed to open the file and only the file name was passed:)

In another instance I had meddle with reading varchar field to byte[]. Actually I was supposed to read the varbinary field to byte[] but the table column type was not updated from varchar to varbinary. Converting varbinary to byte[] is easy and directly we can convert by accessing the datarow
(byte[])dr["Notes"];

If the Notes field is of type string then we can convert using the Encoding class depending on the type of encoding you want in .NET.
eg: new UTF8Encoding(true).GetBytes(dr["Notes"]);

Blessed with a boy baby

2007-03-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

Day before yesterday (27th of March 2007 at 9.13 AM) me and my wife Jacheethala were truly blessed with a boy baby and mother & baby are doing well. He is another addition to our 'Ram' family and decided to name him as 'Harishram' and number of friends/relatives commented as good name. To suit with mumerology his name might be written as Karisram and I have not decided on this yet. He is little over 4 kgs and still the delivery was normal.

Here is the list of our Ram family members:

Seetharam - my brother
Rajaram - Yes, this is me
Anantharam - my brother's son
Raguram - my elder sister's son
Harishram - new addition

Top 100 Most Influential People in IT

2007-03-18T09:10:00.001-07:00

eWeek has listed top 100 most influential people in IT and if you go through the list we can see the people who influence the IT world in numerous fronts such as great IT strategists, researchers, language inventors, policy advocators, law makers, Information Management gurus etc. Only the first part is available now which covers 76 to 100 and I am eager to see the remaining list.

.NET 3.5 - Orcas March CTP

2007-03-13T11:50:00.001-07:00

If you are interested in programming on next version of .NET platform called Orcas then you have the March CTP available you to play around with it. The .NET Framework 3.5 includes with LINQ, AJAX, WF, WCF, and WPF Developer Tools and BCL enhancements. Download the bits here.

If you want to get more details in summarised form then visit to Thom Robbin's .NET weblog or if you want little more than what is in Thom Robbin's then visit to channel9 site.

What Programming Languages are in demand now

2007-03-13T11:28:00.001-07:00

Are you interested in knowing what programming languages are in demand these days? First of all, different bases are used to assess the demand and there are contradict views among publishers, individuals and different stake holders. The adoptation of language depends on number of factors like national policy, education system, company wide policies and sometimes as programmers we don't have any control on selecting the most demanded language. I vote for the method using jobs in demand rather than number of books sold in languages.

This report list according to the jobs in demand and Tim O'Reilly has captured the trend of programming languages in terms of books sold from 2003 Q1 to 2006 Q3. It is true that the demand for C# language showing increasing trend and with the release of .NET 3.0 and Orcas can expect further increase.

How To Cite References

2007-03-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

If you are in the academic world or doing some higher studies then you will definitely know about different styles of referencing. In semester IV we have a subject called “Skills for Research Project” and there we had a module to learn about using references. Since our department is under the engineering faculty the IEEE reference style is promoted than the Harvard style or Chicago style. Most of the management related articles use the Harvard type (name, year) or Chicago style. Actually Harvard style was discontinued and Chicago style is recommended. If you want to learn different styles of referencing then Murdoch University has a very good site about Referencing. IEEE Canada also has some good stuff on IEEE style referencing.

Now I am trying to find the ways to use the Word 2007 to add/manage references. I have found some good web sites but Word 2007 does not directly support the IEEE style and there are some issues with Word2007 referencing feature. I will be posting about Word 2007 Reference later and EndNote is recommended by most but you need to buy that separate.

Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster

2007-02-26T21:54:00.000-08:00

Are you fond of using key board shortcuts in your Visual Studio .NET IDE? Microsoft has released keyboard shortcut reference guides for Visual C#, Visual C++ and VB.NET. If you are a Visual C# developer then download your reference here and VB.NET developers get your reference here. The both documents are provided in both color and grayscale for you to print.

How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

2007-02-26T00:34:00.000-08:00

My blog is worth $564.54 and check your blog worth at http://www.business-opportunities.biz/. You can appraise your domain name at http://leapfish.com.

B.NET UG BOOK for Vista and Office 2007 Special Edition

2007-02-24T11:58:00.001-08:00

Bengalore user group guys have published a book which contains articles on Windows Vista, WCF, WPF, CardSpaces, WF, Sharepoint, InfoPath and BizTalk. It is really a good effort and great cheers guys. I would say, this is a good begineer's guide which introduces the new technologies and have simple examples to try out. What about CDNUG guys and any plan ...

Access the free ebook here. http://in.solit.us/archives/download/12006

Google Docs to support PowerPoint presentations soon

2007-02-08T04:10:00.000-08:00

It is revealed that Google will soon add online presentation creator to its product line with Docs and Spreadsheets. Read the full story here.

Year 2007 Plan

2007-02-07T02:11:00.001-08:00

When others have looked back at 2006, I would like to look at the year 2007 and 2006 was also a happening year for me. This year dawn with my semester III MBA exams and I can declare this year as "Year of Examinations". I have one more semester exam this April and I planned to finish my CIMA finals this year provided that CIMA allow me to re-register after 6 years. I have to take the IELTs and have already registered to sit the exam end of this month. With these tight schedule if time permits, I will upgrade my MCAD to MCPD during this year.

I got the MIET and AMIESL from The Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK and The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka respectively this year. I was not interested with the memberships before but now these memberships help for my research project of my MBA program. We all started to feel the heat of MBA research project and that would be the biggest item of this year. I plan to do the research on "Intellectual Capital in Sri Lankan software firms" and this is not yet confirmed by the department.

Word2007 - Changes from Office 2003

2007-02-05T20:58:00.001-08:00

You can check the changes introduced in Microsoft Office Word 2007 from Microsoft Office 2003 here and for the whole family of office product changes check here.

Windows Developer Power Tools

2007-02-01T22:03:00.001-08:00

Developer power tools help to improve the productivity and quality of the software product and the success depends on selecting the best tool for your scenario.
I got the Windows Developer Power Tools book by James Avery and Jim Holmes from Merill before two weeks and not yet started reading, but hope to read or just skim through at least some tools whenever I find some free time. I have used some of the tools in the book and will be blogging about some of my inspired tools here. The beauty of the book is that it talks about free tools.

Word 2007 - Equation Editor

2007-01-22T04:34:00.001-08:00

I really experienced the difficulty of typing complex mathematical equations in our engineering mathematics subject during my undergraduate program. But now it is easy with the equation editor of word 2007 and you can give very good professional look.

There are basically two ways to enter equations, UI based entry and Linear format. There are already number of built in equation functions are available for common mathematical equations such as binomial equations and Fourier series.

In the above screen shot it shows how to use the UI based entry with the drop list selected for Geometry. The second equation is in linear format and equation editor converts to professional look automatically when you press space. You have the option to convert to linear format and professional format of your equation. You also have the option to save your equation formats to the building block and reuse them later. You can simply draw rectangular box around your equation as shown in the 4th equation and just type \rect(\quadratic) and see. (Don't copy and paste just type). One last note about equation editor is that it is very handy to use but it has number of known bugs.

History of Computer Languages

2007-01-17T21:04:00.001-08:00

The link is from my coworker and get the whole picture of computer languages in one wide page with the year of introduce. http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html#05

MBA Semester III exams are over today

2007-01-16T00:44:00.001-08:00

Today I wrote my final paper IT Policy and Planning and completed my MBA in IT semeter III exams. This time we had 4 exams to sit and two subjects are open including Information System Management and IT Policy & Planning. The other two subjects Accounting & Financial Management and Strategic Management are closed book ones. The exams are ok but the hate part is that our semester IV classes are going to start next Saturday without any break:(

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is free

2007-01-16T00:31:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's free and it can help the small businesses in number of ways. The intuitive look and feel like Office 2007 and seamless integration with other office applications are some of the highlights. Get Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 here.

Product Information:

Save time on everyday tasks

Create quotes and invoices; track expenses and employee time
Enter data once and share it seamlessly with other Microsoft Office system programs
Manage payroll and taxes with ADP’s integrated payroll service

Get a complete view of your business

Store and organize all your customer, vendor, employee, and financial information in one place
Get business insights with over 20 customizable reports
Easily share your books with your accountant through Office Live

Grow your business online

List items on eBay, track sales activity, and download and process orders
Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal
Monitor your customers’ business credit in real-time through Equifax
Share your financial data with your accountant easily through Office Live

Word 2007- Smart Art

2007-01-10T21:43:00.001-08:00

Engineering and Management students can now make use of the newly available Smart Art feature of Word 2007 to draw organization charts, Venn diagrams and process diagrams. I have created a corporate strategy hierarchy using the horizontal hierarchy available in smart art. Typing text is easy and you can see a text pane in the left to type. Adding a new branch to the existing level is as simple as enter and start typing in the text pane and to add a new level branch press tab key.

Vista Search Facility

2007-01-09T21:50:00.001-08:00

I really like the Vista Search feature and it saves lot of time in searching for files and more over launching the applications. Now you don't have to search for the application in the All Programs list and only need to type start characters of the application to launch in the new instant search box and on top matching Programs list will be narrowed down as you type and then press enter when it is selected. Here you can see the screen shot.

Sri Lanka as a offshore disaster recovery site for Indian IT Companies

2007-01-08T22:41:00.001-08:00

We had been asked to do a SWOT analysis to study the potential for Sri Lanka to be known as a viable offshore disaster recovery site for large IT companies in India for our MBA in IT subject Information System Management (ISM). Actually this is a very good potential new business idea since Sri Lanka is very close to IT hub Bangalore and Chennai. This will help to improve the system engineering field in Sri Lanka and faciltate the knowledge transfer. But with the ethnic war and prevailing current country situation setting up a offshore disaster recovery centers would be more disastrous to the companies and no one will think about it.

Word 2007 - First Look

2007-01-04T03:29:00.001-08:00

It's really cool working with Office 2007 and these days I explore the Word 2007 features and I am really fascinated with number of new features. My first vote is to layout of menus & controls and its really organised ins systematic way to learn things or intuitive to learn. I am not a power user of office and as I read, average user uses only very a few features and the simple reason is that they don't know the available feature sets.

I will be posting some other cool features that I am impressed with screen shots. I encountered some issues in save as PDF functionality. It converts the document to PDF successfully but when I try to open the PDF document it says "Adobe Reader 7.0 has stopped working Windows is checking for a solution to the problem." and later reporting that "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

But I have noticed that if I close the adobe reader and then open it works fine sometimes or at least universal solution restarts help. I tried to search in the Google but could not find any useful hints.

The best apps of 2006

2007-01-02T02:12:00.001-08:00

The lifehacker site has posted best apps of 2006 list. Out of that list, I use Google Reader, Google Calendar with Vista. Ubuntu linux CD sits on my desk and I need to find a computer to install which was given to me by my friend Kavinda. You can get more reviews on the listed applications and more useful applications by going through the comments posted there.

Don't forget to check the site scrybe.com

New Year with fresh Apps

2006-12-31T22:38:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year wishes to all of you.

This is my first blog of 2007 from my newly installed Vista and Windows Live Writer. I also have moved my blogger account to new blogger beta which works with my Google account.

Enterprise Library 3.0 CTP is released

2006-12-26T23:48:00.000-08:00

Community Technology Preview release of Enterprise Library 3.0 is now available at CodePlex. This Includes a partial implementation of the Validation Application Block, Application Block Software Factory, Visual Studio-integrated config tool, DAAB enhancements and more.

SmartCode-An Open Source Code Generator

2006-12-26T02:20:00.000-08:00

I have heard number of auto code generation tools for .NET languages but still I have not use effectively any of it in our real projects. Code generator tools are very much demanded in Rapid Application Development scenarios to cut down the development time significantly.

Today I come across another code generator tool in code project called Smart Code and when I skip through the contents it seems it fits with our 3 tier model. Still I haven’t try the product but I have added to my TODO list and the list becomes a long list these days

This is a two part article and access it here:
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/SmartCode-Code_Generation.asp
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/SmartCode-Templates.asp

Smart Code is defined like this,
SmartCode is a 100% Open Source template-driven code generator tool (Released under both BSD license and Lesser GPL library license). with the next features:

SmartCode operates by reading a database schema, allowing the user to set certain extended properties for tables and columns, and applying templates to each table in order to generate code.
SmartCode main building blocks are Tables,Views, columns, and top level project definition.
In SmartCode , a template is a program that generates text (which is generally code in a programming language), and may be written in C# or VB.NET (or theoretically in any .NET language that supports the creation of dynamic-link libraries, or DLLs).
A template library (or library, for short) is a logical grouping of templates. A template takes as input a model and an Table or View to generate the code
Allow you to build fully-functional prototypes of web-based applications that interact with database systems.
Fast, Because your libraries templates are compiled code and does not need parser script expressions
Use Visual Studio to access to SmartCode object Model and debug your templates!
Easy to extend, allow you create your custom drivers for access to other databases, and add custom properties to customize the code generation

topjobs.lk - for jobs, employment and careers in sri lanka

2006-12-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for a career change in Sri Lanka then you should first check this site. The site is fully dedicated to Sri Lankan market jobs and you can find jobs in all most all the categories you want. This site is of well designed and big players of Sri Lankan job market featured in the site. Already they have number of openings and I dont know how I missed this site until today.

www.topjobs.lk

Statement Generation Failed due to unhandled exception in Directory.GetParent Method

2006-12-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

It is better to note the NullReferenceException when you use the Directory.GetParent method with the shared folders. If the folder is inside the parent shared directory then no problem but if it is the top shared directory then the System.NullReferenceException will be thrown and better handle this excetion in your code.

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Released

2006-12-17T04:51:00.000-08:00

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 December 15. It provides more than 70 improvements and very soon there a beta of the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista. Check here for more info and download details:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx

Vista Ultimate Experience

2006-12-15T03:59:00.000-08:00

I had some issues installing Vista on my computer and the error I got was “Your product key cannot be validated.” But this was a misleading error message. I tried to install Vista after login to Windows XP system and I got the previous error message. Then I cut the DVD and boot from DVD and installed it in a new drive.

Today I got some time after releasing the product I have been working and it took around 35 minutes to install. The installation is seamless but after first time login, sound card was not identified but after 15 minutes automatically identified and I could play songs on Windows Media Player 11. Vista gives a pleasant experience and I am in the process of exploring more.

Windows Vista Review

2006-12-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

If you are searching for good article or review in Windows Vista then there is a good article by Paul Thurrott at http://www.winsupersite.com/vista/ . It is a very good read for anyone further it’s not complete yet and don’t forget to check back for the new additions. I am really anticipated the Part 7 and CIO’s and IT strategists really need to worry about this. According to Paul “Vista is a complex product, a big product. It's a major Windows update with lots of new functionality and oodles of new features. It's the first Windows version to provide developers with a major new programming model in a decade. It's got an unbelievably long list of extensibility points so that Microsoft and its partners can build off it for years to come.”

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Vista Product Editions
Part 3: Installing Windows Vista
Part 4: The Vista Experience
Part 5: Windows Vista Features
   User Interface Features
   Security Features
   Performance Features
   Reliability Features
   Internet Features
   Bundled Applications
   Digital Media Features
   Networking Features
   Mobility Features
   Other Features
Part 6: Compatibility
Part 7: Where Windows Vista Fails
Part 8: Wrapping Up

Ready for a new day?

2006-11-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

Check the Microsoft new site http://msnewday.com/.

Unable to install Vista ultimate

2006-11-29T22:36:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to install Vista Release Candidate in my computer from last week and not successful yet. I was working with the MSDN support to resolve the issue but no useful hint yet. Basically it rejects all the product keys and simply says "Your product key cannot be validated. Review your product key and make sure that you have entered it correctly." I don’t know where it is wrong and I have used two keys so far. One I generated in MSDN subscriber site and the next one sent to me by MSDN support team.

Data Can Now Be Stored on Paper

2006-11-22T23:36:00.000-08:00

It is another revolutionary change in storage technology and could not believe that the data can be stored in paper and this is amazing! Kudos to Sainul Abideen and read the full story here.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=88962&d=18&m=11&y=2006

Top ten girl geeks! ok Top eight girl geeks

2006-11-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

CNET UK has published a list of 10 geek girls and lot of controversy in the list. Most of them not agree with the inclusion of Lisa and Paris so I make it as top eight girl geeks. You better read it here to improve your general knowledge.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/0,39029477,49285435,00.htm

IT workers are "job flirts", survey finds

2006-11-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

I did not say this and the survey in UK reveals this. The key points of the survey are:

IT staff are always on the lookout for another job.

IT employees are knowledgeable about what they look for in a new job and are intent on finding companies that can offer the best deal. However, money was not necessarily the main priority for job seekers.

Top factors that attract job seekers to a new company or role are interesting or challenging work (89 per cent) and friendly environment (84 per cent).

Internet has created a "new generation of career traders".

Many employees will be happy to stay in their jobs if the company is meeting its commitments.

This is the situation in UK and I am not sure about Sri Lanka market but we need more surveys in LK in every field and we lack in that.

source: http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/98526/it-workers-are-job-flirts-survey-finds.html

Generics - Insight Look

2006-11-21T02:50:00.000-08:00

There is an excerpt from Mark Michelli’s book, Essential C# available online for free. This Chapter 11 talks about Generics and if you want an insight of Generics then this is a good article and as he discussed the advantages of Generics are the increased type safety, cast avoidance, and reduction of code bloat. You can also see Language Contrast: Java—Generics there.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/b/f/cbfbdf30-de37-45a7-a806-20a93f94b7b8/Michaelis_ch11.pdf

Ask Ms Dewey not Search

2006-11-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

Ms. Dewey is a fully animated search assistant who audibly comments on searched keywords in her own style, as well as make random actions when idle. It is a search engine from Microsoft powered by Live Search. You can try this for a different experince in searching.

http://www.msdewey.com/

Open source and Commercial - Are they two religions?

2006-11-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

I just came across this old interview with Dr.Sanjiva Weerawarna in the printed copy of Sunday observer magazine and there it was mentioned that the comprehensive interview was published in the following web link. But to see it is not the full interview and the contents are different.
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2006/08/13/mon13.asp

The important fact I wanted to highlight here is that he mentioned there “You should never rely on any religion totally. You should use the best tool available. But if the problem you are trying to solve has a better free and open source solution, then go for it. But if it doesn’t have it, don’t use it.”

As developers we need to use the best tools and technology available in the market. For this you need to keep eye on both commercial and open source world. I have met few people who say “I don’t use any Microsoft products”. Do they really smart or want to show them as smart? In my view they want to show them as smart.

You loose the ability of comparing the products by totally omitting one product. The other point I would like to highlight here is that the world changes drastically and what ever facts and thoughts people had it in past is not valid now. For e.g.: There was a believe in the past that Microsoft OS products are not much secure enough. But now if you take Vista, they wanted to break this perception and same applies to open source. They both try to improve their products and as developers or consumers of the products we need to get the maximum out of it. Let them build good products.

Invalid Operation Exception in Web Service Call

2006-11-07T00:34:00.000-08:00

I got this strange exception in one of our smart client application when it tries to call Web Service methods.
InvalidOperationException
"the found request-type is 'text/html; charset=utf-8', but 'text/xml' was
expected"

The simple reason is in the IIS Server the ASP.NET version selected was 1.1 instead of 2.0.

2007 Microsoft Office system RTM'ed, Window Vista 99% RTM

2006-11-06T00:36:00.000-08:00

Long waited system products Microsoft Office 2007 have been released to manufacturing(RTM) today and Windows Vista & Exchange Server 2007 will go manufacturing end of this month.
Accoring to bink.nu Windows Vista build 6000.16386.061101-2205 is 99% RTM only a few managers that need to sign of the code are left. This is really a gold code milestone in software industry.

source: bink.nu

How to Design and Develop more Secure Applications Quickly

2006-11-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

Every software company wants to achieve this and work hard for this. It is possible through some discipline and having dynamic and enthusiastic team of developers.
David Martin has published an article on 8 Golden Rules to Develop and Design Quickly. He basically talks about web development and highlighted guidelines are

1. Avoid Rendering HTML from .NET code.

2. Avoid rendering HTML from JavaScript

3. Avoid In Line ASP.NET

4. Do not save Formatted ASPX page in Visual Studio

5. Developers keep their own working copy of the site

6. Release the code behind DLL or code by side files to the designer

7. Agree at the start of the project the folder structure

8. Document a Development Site Map as early as possible

There is one more article “8 Simple Rules For Developing More Secure Code” from November 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine by Michael Howard. The article discusses about the following key points

· Using analysis tools and experts to review your code

· Reducing risk using fuzzing and threat modeling

· Keeping bad input out of your applications

· Learning all you can about security concepts

It is every developer’s responsibility to write secure applications and we as developers at least should know these habits.

8 Habits:

Habit #1: Take Responsibility
Habit #2: Never Trust Data
Habit #3: Model Threats against Your Code
Habit #4: Stay One Step Ahead
Habit #5: Fuzz!
Habit #6: Don't Write Insecure Code
Habit #7: Recognize the Strategic Asymmetry
Habit #8: Use the Best Tools You Can

It is also better to mention this old link here “They Write the Right Stuff”
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff_Printer_Friendly.html

Geared for Growth - Sri Lanka IT workforce survey report

2006-10-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

In the past there were not much IT work force related surveys done in comprehensive manner in Sri Lanka and identified as a significant barrier to the development of this sector in Sri Lanka. “Geared for Growth” survey report which was published by Sri Lanka ICT Association (SLICTA) is a good step towards building the IT industry and different stake holders such as employers, employees, fresh graduates and policy makers can make use of this report. Other than some minor presentation and data issues this is a good quality report but by this time we should have the year 2005 report in our hands but the survey is carried out in year 2004.

Download the report here and the report is about 35MB!

http://www.slicta.lk/news/fullreport/gfg1.pdf

UoM MSc in Computer Science - Join the Best

2006-10-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

University of Moratuwa is well renowned for the engineering specialisation degrees locally and in abroad and especially Computer Science & Engineering department plays a vital role in IT education in Sri Lanka.

University of Moratuwa – Computer Science & Engineering offers MSc in Computer Science degree under three different specialisatin namely Computer Networks Specialisation, Software Architecture Specialisation and Information Systems Security Specialisation. Department calls for next in take of MSc 2007 batch and any one who are interested can get more details from the department MSc web site.

Application Closing Date: 23rd October 2006

What is .NET framework?

2006-10-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

It is a simple question and any one can answer this question using 2 or 3 sentences but if you want to know more about the framework then the wikipedia page is a good resource to go through. The contents of the article is given below and gives a clear picture to the readers about the .net framework of all versions in detail. This is a good reading for the beginners and students to understand about .net framework.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework

1 Significance

2 Rationale

3 Design goals and principal features

4 .NET Framework architecture

5 Security

6 Standardization and Licensing

7 Versions

8 .NET vs. Java

9 Criticism

10 Alternative implementations

11 See also

12 References

13 External links

Software giant Symantec launches Toll-Free support for Sri Lankan users

2006-10-13T01:25:00.000-07:00

This I got it from a coworker.

Software giant Symantec launches Toll-Free support for Sri Lankan users

Symantec Corporation, the world’s fourth largest software company recently launched a Toll Free 24 hour support service via its Global Support Centres in Singapore and Australia, for the benefit of its Sri Lankan users. Henceforth Symantec customers in Sri Lanka can dial either 2422035 (for previously registered Platinum maintenance) or the default line 2422051 (for Gold maintenance) and get instantly connected to Symantec’s Global Support Centres.

“This is the very first time a direct support facility of this nature has been launched in Sri Lanka. Any kind of query or issue can be directed to the centre and instant help obtained by the experts themselves”, said Suramya Karunaratne, Chief Executive Director of CNT International, the sole authorised distributor for Symantec in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

“With today’s increasing virus attacks and Internet security threats, consumers are only more concerned about the safety of their information, and in turn, are in need of a reliable security solution. Symantec is a leader in providing services for business continuity and ensuring the security and availability of information which is critical to any organization. It is only natural that users face certain issues and worries in implementing a complex network environment. This is where Symantec’s Toll Free Support proves to be an invaluable service”, Karunaratne further added.

This exclusive support is offered to users of original Symantec licensed products. Any user who calls the Toll Free support line can use the case number given by Symantec for all subsequent correspondence relating to the specific query. This nocost Global Support is available without any restraint to any Symantec user who has a valid license within the corporate sector, small and medium businesses or home users. It’s just a phone call away.

This initiative of bringing world class support to one’s fingertips is part of Symantec’s Global Services Program. Symantec Global Services offers extensive IT risk management knowledge, technical and business expertise, and global insight to balance risk, cost, and service quality to protect infrastructures and information.

SQL Server 2005 Free E-learning Courses

2006-10-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

Number of free courses are avaialble now for SQL Server 2005 and catch the offer early https://www.microsoftelearning.com/catalog/itproDev.aspx#sqlServer

OOP Concepts and Definitions - Refresh Again

2006-10-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today there was a post in our forum www.dotnetforum.lk about some OOP concepts. This remembered by computer science and engineering degree life at University of Moratuwa (www.cse.mrt.ac.lk) where we all tried hard memorizing the definitions for exams with little practical/real understanding. But now we have the real understanding but when it is definition it should be properly defined with proper words and I lack in that part. To answer the post I did a search on Internet and compiled this. It helped me to refresh my mind once again.

OOP

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming language model organized around "objects" rather than "actions" and data rather than logic. Historically, a program has been viewed as a logical procedure that takes input data, processes it, and produces output data. The programming challenge was seen as how to write the logic, not how to define the data. Object-oriented programming takes the view that what we really care about are the objects we want to manipulate rather than the logic required to manipulate them.

Examples of objects range from human beings (described by name, address, and so forth) to buildings and floors (whose properties can be described and managed) down to the little widgets on your computer desktop (such as buttons and scroll bars).

Encapsulation

In object-oriented programming, the grouping of data and the code that manipulates it into a single object. If a change is made to an object class, all instances of that class (that is, all objects) are changed. Encapsulation is one of the benefits of object-oriented programming.

In object-oriented programming, encapsulation is the inclusion within a program object of all the resources need for the object to function - basically, the methods and the data. The object is said to "publish its interfaces." Other objects adhere to these interfaces to use the object without having to be concerned with how the object accomplishes it. The idea is "don't tell me how you do it; just do it." An object can be thought of as a self-contained atom. The object interface consists of public methods and instantiated data.

Polymorphism

In computer science, polymorphism means allowing a single definition to be used with different types of data (specifically, different classes of objects). For instance, a polymorphic function definition can replace several type-specific ones, and a single polymorphic operator can act in expressions of various types. Many programming languages and paradigms implement some forms of polymorphism.

The concept of polymorphism applies to data types in addition to functions. A function that can evaluate to and be applied to values of different types is known as a polymorphic function. A data type that contains elements of different types is known as a polymorphic data type.

polymorphism (object-oriented programming theory) is the ability of objects belonging to different types to respond to method calls of methods of the same name, each one according to an appropriate type-specific behaviour. Overloading is kind of polymorphism.

Refer http://www.answers.com/topic/polymorphism-in-object-oriented-programming for more details and example.

Inheritance

Inheritance is a way to form new classes (instances of which are called objects) using classes that have already been defined. The former, known as derived classes, take over (or inherit) attributes and behaviour of the latter, which are referred to as base classes. It is intended to help reuse of existing code with little or no modification

Abstract Method

A method definition that specifies the method interface but gives no method implementation

Overloading and Overriding

Overloading deals with multiple methods in the same class with the same name but different signatures. More over overloading lets you define a similar operation in different ways for different data.

Overriding deals with two methods, one in a parent class and one in a child class, that have the same signature and overriding lets you define a similar operation in different ways for different object types.

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is an environment for building, deploying, and running Web Services, Windows form applications, Web applications and other applications. It consists of three main parts: the Common Language Runtime, the Framework classes, and ASP.NET.

The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive - Error

2006-10-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

I got this error in our smart client application not in the development environment but in our QA environment when the client calls some web service method. The error message is not much informative and the exception stack trace in the client log also not gives much clue to directly identify the issue. Then I google and find some what help full page from Microsoft support. But again there can be many causes and too many resolutions to this issue according to that support page. Anyhow that gives me some feeling that there was some type of time out and web service call return this exception to the client. To support this I checked the server side log and to see there was some problem with the data access layer. This is the support page from Microsoft which helped to solve the issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;915599

Google crawls into source-code search

2006-10-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

Search for source code using Google and read more from cnet.

October User Group Meeting - Small Review

2006-10-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had our October user group meeting @ Microsoft Sri Lanka Office. It is one of the best ever user group meeting that I attended. Merill did the presentation on Introduction to the .NET Framework 3.0 and I m sure everybody enjoyed the presentation. The beauty of attending the user group meeting is that you can learn a lot with in a short time and can clear your doubts on the spot with the speaker. I know, Merill prepared for this presentation couple of days and it will take more time to read and understand if we go through web sites or books but with in that 2 hours we could grasp a lot. Merill explained the technical matters and key points very nicely and passionately. My vote is for the demo on WCF and WF in Merill’s presentation. He made the presentation colorful with the selected videos and kudos to Merill.

He took more time than allocated and Manoj, the second presenter could not cover his whole part and will be continuing in the next user group meeting. Nothing to worry Manoj, better luck next time and make sure that Merill will not be presenting in the next user group meeting.