Code Samples 1

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This content was made available by WROX Conferences 1999.

Comparing RDS, Data Binding and Remote Scripting

or Three Options for Web Data Retrieval

Gone are the days when you necesseraly needed to leave the current page in order to retrieve data and display it to users. Today, three somewhat related technologies let you connect to remote data sources, invoke methods, and obtain Recordsets, XML strings and so forth, directly onto the client's machine. What remains to do is just split the data and update the page using DHTML. the three options have some differences both in terms of syntax and underlying architecture. Dino will compare and illustrate each technology and their features through a series of demos.

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What's New in Windows 2000 IIS 5.0 and ASP 3.0

Windows 2000 beta 3 will have been out for at least 4 months, and maybe even beta 4 will be around? So, most of the conference sessions you will be seeing will deal with Internet Information Server 5 (IIS5) and ASP 3.0. This session takes an overview of what is new, what has changed, and how it affects the up-grader coming from IIS4 (and even IIS3). This lecture will feature: changes in IIS set-up, configuration, security, management, etc ...; the MMC, core changes, performance, threading issues; ASP 3.0 new Virtual Application Management and MTS integration; new Component hosting and caching; overview of new objects, functions, methods, properties and events; overview of the new scripting objects; plenty of examples to illustrate.

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XML Data Binding

Is XML a language for Web pages or just a new format for data transfer? OK, so it's both, but we're really interested in the latter. XML is an ideal inter-platform and inter-application data transfer protocol that works really well over an ASCII 7-bit-based network like the Internet. Instead of converting recordsets to lumps of MIME-encoded binary stuff, just use ordinary text! The real bonus is that Internet Explorer 5 can take an XML document and convert it back into a real recordset all by itself, using the new <XML> element in a Web page. No more awkward ActiveX controls to act as Data Source Objects (DSOs), and problems with the server-side bits and pieces that always seem to break and stop it working. Now it's just 'plug-and-play for data' — plug it in and watch it all just work. This session will feature: Why XML data binding, What can it do, Where can I use it? (Yes, you can make IE4 do it as well), How do I manage the data on the client, What do I do with it when I want to update it, Some practical examples, including specialist components, future developments.

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Developing A Database Abstraction and a Persistant Object Manager

The presentation will focus on how to develop a Persistent Object Manager, that will act as a middle tier component(s) to map business objects to relational tables. Object to relational mapping is a challenging task. The objective for creating such a mapping is to the provide the following:

• Isolate business components from database schema changes, thereby reducing maintenance costs.
• Generating SQL statements dynamically, so that developers need not worry about database activities and focus on solving business problems.
• Isolates data access to a central place that can be easily modified to service multiple database engines.
• Allow for customisation of data schema without impacting the business components or the UI.
• Provide true database abstraction by eliminating the need for components to communicate to the database directly.
• Provide a generic object factory based on object MetaData.

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Guide To Creating POM
POM Objects, Methods & Properties
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Using XML to Maximize Application Performance

This presentation will discuss the practical usage of XML in a Client/Server n-tier environment not just the web. XML can be a very viable data transport mechanism when used properly. Although XML is mostly associated with Web development and business-to-business communication it can deliver substantial performance gain for component to component communication across tiers. The presentation will show the different Client/Server scenarios that XML can help you solve such as:

• Recordset transport mechanism between clients and servers (20x faster than ADO Recordsets).
• UI Data validation mechanism.
• Transient state management mechanism
• UI generator based on data resultsets. XML can be used to generate the entire UI dynamically at runtime based on the data being returned from the server, not just in a web environment but also viable for desktop clients.
• Servicing multiple client requests from the server and fulfilling them in a single trip instead of the multiple round trips typical of Client/Server environments.

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Add English Query Interfaces to Your ASP-based Website

Microsoft English Query is a component of SQL Server that allows Web developers to provide their users with the ability to query database information in plain English. It is the most ASP targeted technology in all of SQL Server. The development environment is hosted inside Visual InterDev. We ship several full-fledged ASP application frameworks to begin with, and all of our demos are ASP based. EQ allows ASP developers to quickly add search capabilities to their Web pages that access any information in the database, without requiring them to handcraft query form after query form in ASP. EQ is an object model that converts English to SQL so it can be added to any application but it has been primarily targeted at performing optimally on a middle-tier ASP-based application servers. For more information on English Query as a tool for ASP development, see www.microsoft.com/sql/eq.

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Component Programming 1

In the first part of a two-part session, Brian will start by reviewing the three component architecture types, focusing on n-tier architecture. He will then review the different tools that can be used to create COM objects to be used with Active Server Pages (ATL, C++, Java and particular focus on VB). Importance is given to how to use VB to build components. A Case Study will be introduced in this session that will be developed and integrated in the next.

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Component Programming 2

Following from the Component Programming 1 session, Brian will look at how to build components that can take advantage of Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and will take a detailed look at the ACID properties that define a transaction. The different component threading models supported by Windows will be examined as well. Finally, he will look at how to create a Data Access Component using VB and then integrate that component with MTS.

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MSMQ

In this session, Brian will introduce Microsoft Message Queues. He will explain what message queuing does for application design and when to use it in applications. He will discuss the topology of the MSMQ system and will present a high-level overview of working with queues and messages. The session will feature the case study of a web site using MSMQ. The study will cover design and implementation, configuration of NT Server, component building using VB.

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Advance Session management with platform Independent ASP

For most Web sites, effective session management is both crucial to a positive user experience and essential to efficient transaction management. Charles Crystle, one of the country's foremost experts on Web site construction, provides insight on using and extending session management. The Session Object, one of the most powerful tools of Active Server Pages, also has limitations. The talk will demonstrate how to manage ASP sessions under adverse conditions, such as browsers without support for cookies, or using ASP across multiple machines (the Web Farm). It will also focus on scaling ASP applications in vertical environments where ASP scalability can now be maximised by adding CPUs, and in multi-machine environments, where the web servers and ASP engines might be distributed across many (possibly heterogeneous) machines.

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Web Enabling the Enterprise

In this discussion, Craig will draw on his personal experience in leveraging existing investments in Enterprise Data to show important considerations when building ASP applications. Often, Enterprise (or Legacy Data) Data and Programs reside on legacy systems such as the IBM AS/400 and Enterprise Software such as SAP. Although there are several options for using this data and these programs, most use ADO and an OLE DB provider. Craig will look at three principal ways to access enterprise systems including ODBC, OLE DB and DCOM.

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Managing Knowledge with Site Server

In this session, Craig will focus on using Site Server for managing knowledge. Site Server has capabilities that enable people to work more effectively by giving them control and context over information. In addition to technical details, Craig will discuss how to integrate a Site Server implementation with people’s workflow. The details that will be covered include control of information publishing, gathering information from many sources and providing an effective user interface to browse and find information.

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Using XML for eCommerce

As XML starts to take a hold as a solution for e-commerce applications, and since it is an exchange format across different platforms, Craig will introduce you to the current offerings from different vendors for XML solutions. The theoretical part of the session will focus on an overview and understanding of the standard DTDs being proposed for e-commerce solutions. Specifically, this talk will focus on the following technologies: Commerce XML (cXML), Microsoft’s BizTalk Server, the Commerce Interchange Pipeline, WebMethods B2B and SAP.

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ADO 2.5, What's to Come ?

Dave, the best selling author of ADO 2.0 Programmer’s Reference and its sequel, ADO 2.1 Programmer’s Reference, will look at the new version of ADO - which is to be shipped with Windows 2000. He will focus on the new and exciting features of the technology such as access to Unstructured Storage (including Microsoft Exchange Server), full support for Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) and, improved support for XML. Dave will expose what these new features mean to the ASP developer.

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Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV)

If you've ever used Microsoft FrontPage with its server extensions, then you'll know that it's possible to edit Web pages remotely. IE5 and Office 2000 have brought us Web folders to treat URLs as standard file directories. Now, with IIS 5.0, we see a full implementation of the new W3C Web DAV standard, allowing Distributed Authoring and Versioning. In this talk Dave Sussman will look at how to use Web DAV to allow remote authoring, but how to use ADO and Web DAV together, to build your own remote administration tools.

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Site Server Content Management

Site Server Content Management is the ability to manage files via the internet as though they were on a local file system. Content management allows you to add security and attributes to the file to allow for better organisation of the information. In this presentation Dina will include code samples to create the content store and upload to the content store. She will go on to examine the LDAP content store via the MMC interface, and how to create and alter rule (.prf) files to retrieve the information.

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ASP Components with VBScript

With the advent of ASP, the issue of writing COM components enabling the insertion of text into ASP pages at run time, has been one of the first to be addressed. Using COM and ATL, writing these components is easy, however if you are unfamiliar with C++, it might be a bit problematic. Dino Esposito will show you how writing ASP components using VBScript can achieve the same results.This presentation will delve deep inside the WSC technology to demonstrate a COM component written entirely in VBScript and accessed by ASP pages like any other COM object.

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Using ADSI in your ASP Applications

The Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) provides developers new and exciting ways for accessing directory services, including the Windows 2000 Active Directory, the IIS metabase, the Windows NT user database, Microsoft Exchange Server, Site Server's Personalization and Membership server, and many more. By implementing ADSI in your ASP applications, you can perform tasks previously not possible without specialized components and services. This session with discuss in detail the different objects included in ADSI, their methods and properties, and their specific syntax. We will build ASP applications that use ADSI for manipulating Windows NT user accounts, create Exchange Mailboxes, and even performing heterogeneous network administration simultaneously on Windows NT and Novell Netware. We will conclude by discussing building ADSI based administration components and scriptlets for Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0.

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Writing Dynamic XML Pages

You know a lot about HTML pages dynamically created on the server and then served up to the browser. This is just what the ASP technology lets you do. A problem with this is that the basic language is still HTML and you still use HTML to describe both your data and the way it should be rendered. You should also know a lot about how XML lets you separate data and presentation. Why not, then, write dynamic XML Pages? That is, ASP pages that produce XML/XSL output to be read by an XML-compliant browser like IE5. If you think that this limits you and your users to having IE5 as the browser, be careful. I'll also demonstrate how you can have other browsers such as Netscape Communicator to manage them as pure HTML. What's your ultimate gain? You design and code your ASP pages (and possibly your Web site) using the more expressive XML instead of HTML.

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UDA and OLEDB Providers

In this session, Dino will shed some light on OLE DB - a area of data access that is often not well-understood. Beginning with some basic considerations, he will move on to focus on the existence of a universal way of accessing data. This session will discuss a custom provider to read e-mail messages and join them with a SQL Server or Access table using ADO and RDS.

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Connecting to Oracle

Oracle is the no. 1 provider of RDB, yet it is almost absent in the VB press. In this session we'll concentrate on the techniques of using Oracle in VB. We'll discuss ADO - using both ODBC (system DSN) and OLE DB for Oracle, ODC (Oracle Data Control) and, with a special emphasis, Oracle Objects For OLE (0040). 0040 is Oracles own forerunner to ADO. We'll also cover the Oracle Data Dictionary structures and the use of Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Sequences.

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Creating Visual Interdev 6.0 Design Time Controls

Design Time Controls (DTCs) can enable rapid Web Application development. This presentation is aimed at developers who have seen a need for a new reusable DTC and want to create it for in-house or commercial use. In this session Ian will firstly look at the role of the DTC, comparing it to ActiveX controls, and examining the output it produces. He will then demonstrate creating a real-world Visual InterDev DTC from scratch. This will incorporate the following areas:

• Creating and Registering DTC in VB6;
• Gathering information from other DTCs (such as Recordset DTC);
• Publishing Information to other DTCs from your new control;
• Communicating with VI6 Services such as the colour picker or SQL Builder;
• Exposing your DTCs Object Model.

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ASP Application Design Using UML

Web applications are becoming increasingly complex. Modelling systems is one way to manage complexity. UML is the industry standard for expressing software intensive systems. However, UML has object oriented roots, while web applications have decidedly non-object oriented features. To effectively model web applications with UML, the UML language must be extended to provide the necessary semantics useful for expressing such systems at the level of abstraction appropriate for designers and implementers of the system. This presentation introduces the UML Extension for Web Applications, and demonstrates its use in an ASP based web application. In this example the Rational Rose modelling tool is used to express the software system in UML, and then used to generate the appropriate ASP pages. Visual InterDev is then used to provide the page’s implementation.

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RDS in Action

In this session, Johnny will look in more detail at ADO's lesser known ally, RDS, and how the latter can enhance the performance of the former. This breakthrough technology has been refined to allow programmers to pass ADO recordsets across the Internet using HTTP protocols. This feature opens the door to several new and exciting possibilities (e.g. creating a client-side pick list, calling business objects from the browser, etc.). Johnny will look at the features of RDS and how to use them.

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Profiling Performance and Tuning ASP Applications

The speed and reliability of any web application is a major factor in the overall experience of an end-user who visits a web site. Profiling and Tuning are indispensable techniques used to ensure web sites perform at the optimum level. The first half of the session will provide a detailed discussion of "Performance Profiling." This session will cover performance-tuning methodologies, profiling techniques, and metrics for determining NT server performance and server load. Additionally, a variety of commercial and homegrown performance profiling tools will be compared and contrasted. The second half of the discussion will focus on "Tuning ASP Applications." Various tuning techniques will be applied to a basic ASP page and result in a performance improvement of three times the original speed. This portion of the session will cover tuning techniques for ASP (e.g. disabling unused features and tuning ASP scripts), IIS and NT registry settings, COM, ADO and SQL Server. NT and network tuning options to enhance application performance will also be discussed. The session will close with a brief look at other options when tuning just isn't enough.

ASP Troubleshooting and Optimization Tips

Juan, in his unique style, will cover such topics as: Troubleshooting IIS Set-up, Troubleshooting Data Access, Troubleshooting Scripting, Security Tips, Script Optimisation Tips, Tuning IIS - Basic Performance Issues, Server Optimisation Tips. An “all you ever wanted to know” session to learn to deal with those session to learn to deal with those nagging error messages.

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Site Server 4.0: Introduction and Overview

The next version of Microsoft's popular Site Server® is in the pipeline. Ken will take you through some of the new and improved commerce features available in Site Server 4.0.

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Creating an eCommerce Infrastructure with Site Server

This session discusses the creation of a complete electronic commerce system using Site Server. It will include the creation of a store, a brief analysis of its structure, and the construction of a supply-chain integration system based entirely on the Commerce Interchange Pipeline. As such, it will discuss the definition of the appropriate business processes, the creation of line-of-business systems at the supplier's site, the creation of pipelines and the exchange of documents between the two parties. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how Site Server provides an excellent alternative to systems such as EDI that is extremely inexpensive and can be easily integrated with existing legacy systems. At the end of the session, the system created will be live-tested and its functionality demonstrated.

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Extending Site Server Pipelines

This session discusses the creation of a complete electronic commerce system using Site Server. It will include the creation of a store, a brief analysis of its structure, and the construction of a supply-chain integration system based entirely on the Commerce Interchange Pipeline. As such, it will discuss the definition of the appropriate business processes, the creation of line-of-business systems at the supplier's site, the creation of pipelines and the exchange of documents between the two parties. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how Site Server provides an excellent alternative to systems such as EDI that is extremely inexpensive and can be easily integrated with existing legacy systems. At the end of the session, the system created will be live-tested and its functionality demonstrated.

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Stress Testing your Site with Microsoft Stress Testing Tool

Web sites are growing at an alarming rate, and this has led many people to build large-scale sites and applications with little thought for the number of users who will access it. Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool is a stress-testing and analysis tool, which will allow you to simulate large scale usage of your site. This testing is particularly important if your site uses components, as you may not know how they will perform when simultaneously used by many users. In this talk, Matthew will concentrate on how to use the Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool to test your sites effectively.

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Essential XML: Basic Design Patterns for XML Applications

Michael will demonstrate the essential building blocks necessary for practical XML applications: true n-tier data management (using XMLHTTPRequest), strongly typed data, updategrams, a grid metaphor, formatted input/output, sorted and filtered data, dropdown controls, and context menus. One of his XML spreadsheets, his "polymorphic" spreadsheet, will render any ADO 2.5 recordset without any source code changes to the spreadsheet application itself.

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Real World XML: Examples of XML at Work

In this session, Michael will highlight some tools recently developed at Microsoft. The main focus is on how XML can be used to solve real world problems, often in ways that only XML can. The following tools will be demonstrated and their source code reviewed: CSV2XML.ASP: an application that converts CSV files to XMLDOMs. If only one file is processed, the data is presented using the polymorphic spreadsheet. If two files are processed, the two XMLDOMs are compared to identify missing and different content. The content happens to be imported from CHECSYM.EXE, another standard utility that verifies symbols and inventories DLLs running in any given process. This tool is very useful when trying to confirm any given configuration or to identify the precise differences between two machines. VMMAP.ASP: an application using an ATL component to render virtual memory allocation data as XML. The data is then transformed by XSL and rendered using CSS StyleSheets to depict the VM data visually. XML can also be used inside the component to document the changes made to virtual memory and to help identify memory anomalies early. This is particularly important when monitoring technologies that make heavy use of VM, such as ADO.

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Encapsulating XML: Applying the lessons of COM to Web Design

This session is the culmination of all that's come before (see Essential XML and Real World XML). Building on the tools and user interface patterns presented earlier, Michael introduces programming design framework especially suited to an object-oriented, XML-based application. Michael will show how to use XML and XSL in the Model role of a Model/View/Controller-based application. His presentation explores further ideas about object-oriented documents first introduced in his "Essential XML" presentation. In the process he also makes liberal use of ideas from COM like polymorphism, abstract base classes and QueryInterface, applying each to a new design paradigm for web-based application development.

Note: the following presentation may only be viewed with IE5 or higher browser

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Reducing Web Site Maintenance with XML and ASP

In this practical session, Paul will develop three examples of how to use XML and ASP to build web sites and applications that ease maintenance by separating content from data.

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Enterprise SQL 7.0

In this session Peter will introduce some of the new features of SQL 7.0.

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Views, Stored Procedures and ADO

This session will look at the important features of views in SQL 7.0. Following on from the previous introductory lecture on SQL Server, Peter will walk you through the uses of Views, the programming of stored procedures and their access using code and ADO

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Building a Successful Personalization and Membership Solution

Rob's session will be a demonstration of a fully functional Site Server Commerce site integrated with Site Server Personalization & Memebership that the developers on the Microsoft Site Server team wrote and which builds off the Wall Street Investing demo from his P&M book (Site Server 3.0 Personalization and Membership). Rob will make the demo available to all.

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Disconnecting ADO

Going beyond the usual discussion of ADO as a representation of the results of database queries, Rob will explore the use of ADO as a data structure in its own right, regardless of the source of data. The chief objective of this presentation is to define how server based programs can be enhanced dramatically through full exploitation of ADO.

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MTS, How it Makes your Life Easier

The small amount of MTS documentation available claims that it makes programming easier - and then delves into its considerable complexities without ever justifying this claim. Consequently, a great deal of misinformation has been created about MTS because of a failure to understand what MTS really does, and how it can make your life easier. In this session, Rob will remedy this by looking at three important MTS themes: scalability, transactions and state management.

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ASP & COM

The use of COM objects within an ASP application can result in real scalability with regards to a Web or an Intranet site while achieving real performance and reliability gains. In this presentation Scott Short will look in detail at COM and how it may be used with Active Server Pages to achieve real scalability.

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Collaborative Network Applications

Web Applications are increasingly being connected to back end, line of business systems. These applications often develop modules (e.g. ASPs, servlets) that are themselves reusable bodies of business logic. A key element of building competitive advantage will be constructing Web Applications in such a way that ASPs and similar resources can be reused. Web programmers who have learned the benefits of object frameworks or Web techniques like ASP that promote rapid development are ready to step up to architectures that build on what they know and further enhance productivity. This presentation is more than just how to use the tools on the market. It develops an architecture and method of Web development that promotes future Web development.

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XML and ASP

In this session Stephen will review the tools and techniques needed to use XML in an ASP based Web Application. He will be discussing server-side XML topics in detail, and also covering topics such as IE5 support for XML, IIS configuration, parsing and using client-side XML.

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Developing a Web Project Management Application with CDO

In this case study, Todd and Mikael will use CDO and Exchange Server to develop live a Project Management Application that may be used over the Web. They will tackle the issues of connection and collaboration between members times, dates, tasks and how to store information on a server. In the process, they will address the common problems encountered in building such an application: the difficulty in integration and the failure to be 100% Web-compatible. The case study will draw heavily on CDO Programming Techniques, MS Exchange Server, ASP and DHTML.

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15Seconds.com: A Case Study

The building and running of the largest ASP and IIS resource web site. This case study will talk about the begins all the way to the sale of the site, including business models, asset growth, sales tactics and technology, including how ASP and SQL Server where implemented. The case study will be presented by the founder and chief architecture, Wayne Berry.

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ADSI and managing the NTLM Database

In this session, Wayne will explain how to use ADSI to manipulate User, Groups and Domain on Windows NT from VBScript,either with ASP or the Windows Scripting Host (WSH). Included in the discussion will be details of security, pitfalls and the limitations of the technology. Sample code will be shown along with a working demonstration and pointers to available resources.

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