All posts by : DonXML

1 of 84 | Static Code Analysis and Custom FxCop Rules for Enterprise ASP.Net Development - Over the last couple months I've been doing a bit of work with FxCop and Static Code Analysis.  If you remember playing with FxCop back in the day, it was a cool tool to check for possible design, localization, performance, and security issues with your .Net code.  But, for most of us, that's where things stopped, playing with a cool tool and then forgetting about it.  Sure, Microsoft built it into VS 2005 as Visual Studio Code Analysis, but still most developers forget about it, and never turn it on.  Well, I've been on a Continuous Integration kick for over a year now (with CruiseControl.Net or TFS 2008, depending on the client), and it is easy to an things like FxCop ......

2 of 84 | Static Code Analysis and Custom FxCop Rules for Enterprise ASP.Net Development - Over the last couple months I've been doing a bit of work with FxCop and Static Code Analysis.  If you remember playing with FxCop back in the day, it was a cool tool to check for possible design, localization, performance, and security issues with your .Net code.  But, for most of us, that's where things stopped, playing with a cool tool and then forgetting about it.  Sure, Microsoft built it into VS 2005 as Visual Studio Code Analysis, but still most developers forget about it, and never turn it on.  Well, I've been on a Continuous Integration kick for over a year now (with CruiseControl.Net or TFS 2008, depending on the client), and it is easy to an things like FxCop ......

3 of 84 | Rhode Island .Net User Group Dec. 5th - I'm making my first INETA speaking gig on Wed. Dec. 5th, up at the Rhode Island User Group.  The topic will in LINQ (what else?) An Intro to the One Query Syntax to Rule Them All – LINQ An introduction to the new standard query syntax (LINQ) added to C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0.  LINQ is much more than just LINQ to SQL, and in this session we will dispel the belief that LINQ is LINQ to SQL (and that LINQ to SQL is evil).  We will cover the basics of how to use LINQ with in memory collections, how to build your own query providers, and explore to 2 of the built in providers, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML. The idea behind the talk is to give the anti-LINQ talk.  Most LINQ ......

4 of 84 | VSLive San Francisco Workshop - LINQ - One Query Syntax To Rule Them All - Since I'm talking about conferences, I should also mention that I'll be giving a full day pre-conference workshop, LINQ — One Query Syntax to Rule Them All at VSLive! San Francisco 2008: By now you have probably already heard about LINQ and think it is all about querying SQL Server. Well, yes, with LINQ to SQL you can query SQL Server. But, LINQ is so much more. LINQ extends both C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries, provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities, and you can even write your own query provider. In this workshop will cover the basics of how to use LINQ with in memory collections and the language constructs that make LINQ pos......

5 of 84 | VSLive San Francisco Workshop - LINQ - One Query Syntax To Rule Them All - Since I'm talking about conferences, I should also mention that I'll be giving a full day pre-conference workshop, LINQ — One Query Syntax to Rule Them All at VSLive! San Francisco 2008: By now you have probably already heard about LINQ and think it is all about querying SQL Server. Well, yes, with LINQ to SQL you can query SQL Server. But, LINQ is so much more. LINQ extends both C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries, provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities, and you can even write your own query provider. In this workshop will cover the basics of how to use LINQ with in memory collections and the language constructs that make LINQ pos......

6 of 84 | Rhode Island .Net User Group Dec. 5th - I'm making my first INETA speaking gig on Wed. Dec. 5th, up at the Rhode Island User Group.  The topic will in LINQ (what else?) An Intro to the One Query Syntax to Rule Them All – LINQ An introduction to the new standard query syntax (LINQ) added to C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0.  LINQ is much more than just LINQ to SQL, and in this session we will dispel the belief that LINQ is LINQ to SQL (and that LINQ to SQL is evil).  We will cover the basics of how to use LINQ with in memory collections, how to build your own query providers, and explore to 2 of the built in providers, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML. The idea behind the talk is to give the anti-LINQ talk.  Most LINQ ......

7 of 84 | Sharepoint and Biztalk Job Syndicate - If you are a developer that specializes in Sharepoint (2003 or 2007), or Biztalk (2004, 2006, 2006R2), and lives in the New Jersey, New York City, Conn. area, I'm putting together an informal "Job Syndicate".  Basically, a loose network of individuals that will share information about open employee and consulting opportunities in our area.  If you have tried Dice and Monster and have been swamped by all the Resume Trawler's spam, you might have realized that the only way to find the decent jobs is via a personal network.  Now, we all know that we should spend time cultivating a personal network, but most of us (myself included), have been ne......

8 of 84 | What To Do On Monday at 1:15PM at TechEd 2007 - I don't think I mentioned it, but I'll be speaking at TechEd, which is a first for me.  I'll be doing a talk on Visual Studio Extensibility: DEV345 - Extending Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with Managed Packages and the Visual Studio Managed Package Framework Monday, June 4 1:15 PM - 2:30 PM Visual Studio 2005 (VS 2005) provides you with three levels of extensibility, macros, add-ins, and packages. This session walks you through the process of developing a package written in managed code (Visual C#). The example managed package is the open source project, XPathmania, which was the winner of the Microsoft Visual Studio Extensibility contest’s managed package category. XPathmania extends......

9 of 84 | Microsoft Web Experiences Events in NYC, LA, and Denver - If you want to find out about Microsoft’s next generation of technologies such as Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow, IIS 7, ASP.NET Ajax, and you happen to live near New York City, LA or Denver, well you might want to check out this free full day event.  The dates are: New York: May 31st Los Angeles: June 8th Denver: June 15th Here's a few of the sessions I thought interesting: Expression Design and Blend: Sizzling User Experiences Designing Domain Specific Software – DSL & Factories Designing for the SharePoint Platform Windows Presentation Foundation for the Business Developer Windows Workflow Foundation - Crafting......

10 of 84 | Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) Webcast May 3 - In case you haven’t heard (either thru James Lau's blog or Josh Holmes' blog) I’ll be doing a webcast on Visual Studio Extensibility at 9AM Pacific time (12PM Eastern), May 3, 2007 titled: Do-It-Yourself Tools Inside Visual Studio. For those of you going to TechEd, I’ll be doing a similar session there, but that one will dive more into the coding side of writing Visual Studio extensions using the Managed Package Framework. If you want to talk about extending Visual Studio, I’ll be hanging out in the Ask The Experts area, and might even do a couple talks in one of the small auditoriums.Over the next couple months you will see more coming out from the......

11 of 84 | Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for XML in 2007 - Yesterday I received my Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (aka MVP) award email, and I must say that I am (still) very honored to receive this award (this is my 4th year).  Some people may think that MVPs may just expect to get this award every year, but I've got to say that most of the MVPs I know still worry about it at renewal time.  When you start to compare what you have done for the community over the last year to some of the other MVPs, you begin to wonder if you have done all that you could have.  Me, I try my best to remember that I do what I do because it is who I am, and the MVP award is just a side benefit.  It shouldn't be the reason why I do (o......

12 of 84 | Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ) - I have a habit of browsing the Microsoft Careers site looking for interesting tidbits of information, and I just found yet another, PLINQ - Parallel Language Integrated Query.  Since I subscribe to Joe Duffy's Blog, I've been keeping up to date with his work with Concurrency and Parallelism in the CLR (read his 2 MSDN Mag articles for a quick summary, Using concurrency for scalability and Transactions for Memory), so I knew that the CLR is hard at work on adding parallelism to the .Net framework.  But what I didn't know (and probably should have guess by now), that they are trying to add it via the LINQ enhancements to the core languages.  There are (currently) a number&......

13 of 84 | TechEd Barcelona 2006 Days 3 and 4 - In re-reading my last post, I think it sounded a little bit too negative.  I've got to say, the people in Barcelona are great.  I'm still amazed that almost all of the locals I've met have done their best to talk to me in English.  I don't know if it has to do with the fact that I'm staying in the tourist area, or that in Barcelona they speak their own dialect of Spanish.  I had 3 years of high school French, and I can definitely hear some French and even what sounds like some Italian in the local dialect.  But, as easy it is to figure out the metro, there are still some quirks with switching between the metro (the subway) and the tram (the lightrail system).  ......

14 of 84 | TechEd Barcelona 2006 Days 1 and 2 - Well,  I'm sure everyone is interested in reading about my first trip overseas.  OK, well not everyone, but I know that there are at least a few people that are interested ;)   I'm putting up my pictures over in the new TechEd Barcelona 2006 picture gallery.  I only have a couple pictures up there, as I didn't have much time yet for the touristy stuff, yet.  So, lets go thru the past couple days.  I'll probably ramble a bit, but I'm trying to get this out as quickly as possible.  The flight out was packed.  When I checked in online, it looked empty, but it seems as though there was a tour group that booked all those "empty" seats, and just hadn't rese......

15 of 84 | LINQ At The Heartland Developers Conference 2006 - If you happen to be attending the Heartland Developers Conference 2006 in Omaha, NE, be sure to stop by and see my "Intro To LINQ - Reinventing Visual Basic" talk on Thursday evening.  This is my first time out in Omaha, Kent Tegel's home base, but I think DeveloperMentor may have scheduled him to be in another city that week, so I'll have to just hang out in his town without him.  The conference is sold out (and with a list of speakers like this, I can see how), so if you really want to go, you will have to hit the waiting list.  I'll be flying out Wed. and back early Saturday, so if you are there and want to discuss LINQ, WPF, Sharepoint, SQL Server, Domain Driven Design, W......

16 of 84 | XPathmania Wins Visual Studio Extensibility Plug-in Contest (I'm Going To TechEd Barcelona) - A few months ago I entered XPathmania (the XPath enhancements to Visual Studio's XML Editor project) into the Visual Studio Extensibility Plug-in Contest, for the Managed Package Category.  I didn't actually write it for the contest, but since XPatnmania was open source, and seemed like a pretty good project (that could use some publicity), I figured I might as well submit it to the contest.  There were 2 categories for the contest, Packages and Add-ins, and XPathmania fit the rules for the Package category.  Well, last month I got an email from the contest team letting me know that XPathmania won First Place for the Package Category!  I've been holding off on this annou......

17 of 84 | Sharepoint Web Services - Where Are The Schemas? - Sharepoint's web services have been around since version 2 (2003), but I never had much use for Sharepoint (except for Team Portals), unitl Sharepoint 2007 (aka MOSS 2007, aka v3). One of my clients had been going down the path of IBM Websphere, but once they saw what came with Sharepoint 2007, well, they decided that the future may be with Sharepoint. But, they already own all these WebSphere portals, and Sharepoint 2003 sites have been popping up, so they decided that they were going to try to use both, and use web services to interop. Well, on paper, that all looks great. Microsoft has been promoting interoperation this way. But, have these same people ever looked at the web services tha......

18 of 84 | Calling All Microsoft MVPs Practicing Domain Driven Design - Udi Dahan is calling out the Patterns & Practices team on their lack of Domain Driven Design (or even a lack of a true domain) in the Web Service Software Factory Guidance Package.  There are 2 things that I'd like to do to help resolve this.Create a list (hopefully an OPML) of all Microsoft MVPs that think of themselves as Domain Driven Design practioners.  This way we can band together and help spread the word.Work together to create a Domain Driven Design Guidance Package using the Guidance Automation Toolkit. I know that the P&P folks are open to listening to us about DDD, but at the minimum we need to create a DDD refernece implementation. ......

19 of 84 | Calling All Microsoft MVPs Practicing Domain Driven Design - Udi Dahan is calling out the Patterns & Practices team on their lack of Domain Driven Design (or even a lack of a true domain) in the Web Service Software Factory Guidance Package.  There are 2 things that I'd like to do to help resolve this.Create a list (hopefully an OPML) of all Microsoft MVPs that think of themselves as Domain Driven Design practioners.  This way we can band together and help spread the word.Work together to create a Domain Driven Design Guidance Package using the Guidance Automation Toolkit. I know that the P&P folks are open to listening to us about DDD, but at the minimum we need to create a DDD refernece implementation. ......

20 of 84 | XPath Queries In SharpDevelop 2.1 - If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, well then I'm very flattered.  Matt Ward announced that SharpDevelop 2.1 now has support for running XPath on the currently active XML document, and it sure looks a lot like XPathmania.  I hope I wrote it in a style that was easy to adapt to use in SharpDevelop, and I'm glad to see that it could help another open source project.  When I get a chance, maybe I'll check out what he had to do to adapt it and see if I can make it easier to share the code base.  It would be cool to have some others help with some enhancements.  The top enhancement I have right now is to make it so you can execute a query from someplace other......

21 of 84 | Steve Eichert Talks XLinq - As you can probably tell from the lack of decent content, I've been busy with "things" and have not blogged much.  But, that doesn't mean I have stopped reading blogs, and one blogger you should check out is Steve Eichert.  First he mentions that VB's XML Literals makes him envious of the VB developer and then follows up with Xml Axis properties, VB.NET's second cool Xml language construct.  It is great to start to see blog entries from others that "get" VB's XML Literals (especially if I haven't been the one coaching them).  ...

22 of 84 | Intro to XPathmania - Extending Visual Studio 2005 to Support XPath Development - Something that has been on top of my list of improvements needed for XML in Visual Studio is better support for writing and testing XPath queries.  Currently, the only way to write and test your XPath statements is to either create your own console or Window application, create a test XSLT (using the XSLT debugger), or worse, put break points in your code, and use the edit and continue feature.  Well, I heard that Visual Studio extensibility has been greatly improved in Visual Studio 2005, so I figured that I would attempt to extend the XML Editor (yes Virginia there is an XML Editor in Visual Studio) to include support for XPath.  The project is called XPathmania and is part......

23 of 84 | TechEd Must See - ARCTLC14 Introducing the Service Factory - Day/Time: Wednesday, June 14 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM  Room: ARC Theater (Blue TLC Area) Day/Time: Friday, June 16 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM  Room: CON Theater 1 (Blue TLC Area) Speaker(s): Shy Cohen, Don Smith The Service Factory is a cohesive collection of various forms of guidance that have been build with the primary goal of helping you build high quality connected solutions in a more consistent way with less effort. In addition to the forms of guidance you may have already seen from the patterns & practices team, a new form of guidance called a Guidance Package is used to allow guidance to be automated from inside Visual Studio 2005 through the use of a wizard-based di......

24 of 84 | TechEd 2006 Bound - Well, I’m off to TechEd today, and driving up with Miguel and Nick.  Miguel wanted to get a bunch of the  NJ and NYC folks together and drive up in a short yellow bus, but no one wanted to join him (and do you blame us?). I’ll be staying at the Marriott Copley Plaza most of the week (staying at the Hilton Logan, tonight, Saturday).  If you want to catch up with me, you can find me via TechEd Connect, or my MSN IM is don_xml at hotmail.com.  During the conference, odds are you will find me at the architect lounge at the Technology Learning Center (TLC).  I really want to get into some deep conversations around LINQ and you know I’m also a suck......

25 of 84 | Crazy Idea - Free Version of Microsoft Visual Studio With Advertisements? - Disclaimer: I do not work for Microsoft, but I am a Microsoft MVP.  The following is all derived from public information, and any inferences or extrapolations are entirely the work of my imagination, and is not something that I know that Microsoft is working on.  If I knew Microsoft was working on things like this, it would be covered under my non-disclosure agreement, and you wouldn’t be reading about it here.  If you like (or hate) these ideas, let Microsoft know about it. Back in December 2005 I had the post: Is Microsoft Planning to Make Visual Studio Standard Edition Free?, where I discussed some ideas I had about making the base Visual Studio free, and just selli......

26 of 84 | Microsoft Architect Connections - June 5th - 7th - I know it is a bad week for something like this (the week prior to TechEd), but if you are not going to TechEd, or you just can't pass up on a great FREE conference with Harry Pierson from Microsoft, David Sprott from CBDIForum, and Aaron Skonnard from Pluralsight, you just might want to check this out: Microsoft Architect Connections event in Los Angeles June 5th - 7th in Los Angeles.  This is a free event, and is going to be a top-quality show focusing on Enabling the Service Oriented Enterprise.  Registration is LIMITED, and there are only a couple open slots left. There are some incredible sessions, and this is a rare opportunity to hear speakers of this caliber for free.&......

27 of 84 | Kent Tegels and the "10 Must Know Things About XML in SQL Server 2005" - The NJ SQL Server User Group’s May meeting will be on May 16th, and features Kent Tegels (a SQL Server MVP, my friend, and a trainer with DevelopMentor).  His presentation is titled "10 Must Know Things About XML in SQL Server 2005"  (like I said he is a friend of mine, with a title like that, who could not have figured that out?).  Kent isn’t from NJ (or even NYC).  He is a long way from home (Nebraska), but happens to be doing some SQL Server training for DevelopMentor in the NJ/NYC area.  I’ve been bragging to him about how great the NJSQL group has been going (exceeding all expectations for a 5 month old user group), and I know t......

28 of 84 | Dan Rogers Blogs! - Just over a year ago I put the word out that, in my opinion, Dan Rogers needed to start blogging.  Well, today I got an email from the man himself that contained just one line: http://bigdogsoftware.blogspot.com/, and that is all I needed.  SUBSCRIBED. What?  You don’t know who Dan Rogers is?  Back in the day (’99 and 2000), when XML was just starting to catch on, Dan Rogers was a very public figure for Microsoft’s fledgling Biztalk product, and he taught me a bit about the Object-XML Impedence Mismatch.  Actually, he taught me more then a little bit, and the more I look back on his comments, the more I realize that he was way ahead of his ti......

29 of 84 | Boston Code Camp 5 - May 5th and 6th - I didn’t blog about it much here, but I went down to the Richmond Code Camp, April 22nd & 23rd.  I was originally going down with the whole family, as my oldest daughter was interested in checking out Virginia Commonwealth University (she wants to study forensics, and is currently a junior in high school).  But, her wisdom teeth had other plans, and needed to come out, 2 days before the trip.  We had plans to have them removed this summer (which is early, since she will not be 17 until Sept.), but these things happen on their own schedule.  She had them all removed, and is doing fine.  At the Richmond Code Camp I gave the Intro to Web Services Contr......

30 of 84 | Job Posting - Sharepoint and SOA Developers - New Jersey - My new firm, Galaxy Systems is looking for top-of-the-line Sharepoint and enterprise developers for some seriously cool work we are doing for a Fortune 100 client, here in the New Jersey & New York City area.  This is a Sharepoint 12 enterprise integration project, and will be built using service oriented architecture.  The project will integrate Sharepoint 12 portals with various other services, including integration with Java based portals like IBM’s WebSphere, and corporate search tools like Google’s Search Appliance.  We need good service oriented enterprise developers, for both .Net and Java sides of the project.  Sharepoint 2003 or WebSphere experie......

31 of 84 | Books That Help Teach Web Services Contract First - At the end of my recent Intro To Web Services – It Is All About The Message presentation, someone asked if I knew of any Web Services Contract First books.  Although there are lots of books on building Web Services with Visual Studio, there are no books that I know of that show how to build web services in a contract first manner.  Mostly it is because Visual Studio forces developers down the Code First approach, and therefore, most authors embrace this approach, which is unfortunate (but it does sound like a niche that some inspired author will fill). But, if you want to learn the Web Services Contract First approach, I can recommend a couple books for you to pick up to he......

32 of 84 | Intro To Web Services Presentation at the Central New Jersey .Net User Group - March 16th - If you happened to miss my NYC Code Camp session Intro to Web Services - It's All About the Message, and live in the NJ/NYC area, I’ll be giving the newly updated version on March 16th at the Central New Jersey .Net User Group.  What’s in the new version?  Well, Christian Weyer and the Thinktecture team released a new version of WSCF (Web Services Contract First) plugin for Visual Studio 2005, so migrated all the example code to .Net 2.0.  Plus, I have an extra 15 minutes of presentation time, so I’ll go into more detail on how to architect your project so that you can easily use either the code first or contract first methodologies, with very little difference between the......

33 of 84 | Web Services Contract First - Now Available For Visual Studio 2005 - Christian Weyer and the Thinktecture team have released a version of the WSCF (Web Services Contract First) plugin for Visual Studio 2005!  At the NYC Code Camp, I gave a presentation on an Intro to Web Services and used Visual Studio 2003, instead of Visual Studio 2005, because the plugin wasn’t available for .Net 1.1.  Well, now I don’t have to use Visual Studio 2003 anymore.  As much as I love WSCF, I really want the Microsoft Patterns and Practices equivalent, WS-BAT which uses the Guidance Automation Toolkit.  Actually, the first time I saw the Guidance Automation toolkit in action was at the PDC pre-con on Web Services best prac......

34 of 84 | .Net Framework Design Guidelines Book - I finally got around to buying the Framework Design Guidelines book by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, and I must say I should have bought this book when it first came out.  As far as guidance documentation goes, this book is extremely easy to read.  The combination of a design pattern book style (listing the do’s don’ts and should considers after each pattern) with frequent interjections by some well known .Net folks (like Chris Sells, Jeffrey Richter, Eric Gunnerson, Paul Vick, Rico Mariani, and of course Anders Hejlsberg) is an excellent format for this type of topic. If you are a senior .Net developer or architect, and are building enterprise ready applications......

35 of 84 | Data Transfer Objects Are a Type of Message - Jeremy Miller posted a reply to my Intro to Web Services post/presentation entitled Pragmatic viewpoints on SOA, where he questions coding WSDL by hand, but agrees with my stance on decoupling the message contract from the business object.  A lot of the content from my talk isn’t embedded in the presentation, so some things may be a little vague.  No, I’d never, ever recommend coding WSDL by hand.  It screams for a tool to build it, and the WSCF tool I mentioned is a perfect for this.  But, I do promote spending as much time as possible on designing the actual message contract itself (i.e. the XML Schemas). In the comments Jeremy talks about using XML serial......

36 of 84 | Intro to Web Services - It's All About the Message - NYC Code Camp - Wow!  That is all I can say about my “Intro to Web Services – It’s All About the Message” session at the NYC Code Camp.  For something that I put together pretty quickly, and under pressure of time constraints, I really like the way this presentation turned out.  Except for one small lull with a spur of the moment idea to show how to create Schemas from a dll using the XSD tool (forgot to add the XSD.exe path to my PATH settings) everything seemed to flow well, and I was just a little long on time (thanks to the XSD.exe hiccup).  Otherwise, it worked out very well. If you were not there, don’t worry, I’ll be giving the same presentati......

37 of 84 | Do Not Send Datasets or Their Kin Thru Web Services - There has been quite a commotion on some of the private discussion/newsgroup and sending Datasets or Data Tables via web services.  So much so, that I think I need to say it again, Send Messages Not Serialized Object Graphs.  The usual offers of this rule seem to be under the influence of a number of Visual Studio 2005 presentations, and extend what they have learned via these presentations to web services.  A typical post looks like this: I've seen a number of presentations on VS2005 and Framework 2.0 that emphasizes the new shiny role of the DataTable type. Indeed, there's a new DataTable designer, typed DataTables and typed DataAdapters. So far, so good. Then, there are......

38 of 84 | I'll Be In Redmond Feb 15-18 - I’m heading out to Microsoft and their Redmond campus next week, Feb 15–18.  Feel free to contact me if you want to get together.  I’m not sure on how much time I’ll have, but I’ll try to fit everything in.  No, it isn’t for an interview or anything like that.  I’ve got some free time since I’m in between big consulting contracts (if you know of anything in NJ give me a shout, big or small) and will be working on small XML MVP-oriented thing, and will fill everyone in when I can (nothing Earth shattering, just some fun stuff). ...

39 of 84 | SQL Server Magazine - Confusing The Term LINQ With DLINQ - Michael Otey has an article in the Feb. 2006 SQL Server Magazine called LINQ to the Future along with an online editorial LINQ—The Missing Piece of Database Development where he continually uses the term LINQ, instead of the correct term DLINQ, which will just make things more confusing for the SQL Developer.  Let’s set things straight. It starts with the first line of the article, where he tries to define what LINQ is Microsoft's new Language Integrated Query (LINQ—pronounced link) project is the next step in database-development technology. LINQ addresses the current database-development model's disconnect between the object-oriented programming model ......

40 of 84 | XLINQ XML Literals - Reemergence Of Classic ASP Spaghetti Hell? - Daniel Cazzulino kick started the whole “Is XLINQ’s XML Literals a bad thing” issue with his post, XLinq: is XML embedded in a host language a good idea or a terrible one?.  Mike Champion replied on the XML Team blog, XML literals undermine the MVC paradigm? and wants more feedback from the general public. I talked about this very topic back in Oct in my XAML + XLinq + VB.Net's XML Literals Equals Classic ASP For WinForms? and is a good place to start if you need a refresher on the whole VB XML Literal thing in XLINQ.  I started with what it looks like in today’s world to build an XML document via code, and bring you up to speed wi......

41 of 84 | .Net Remoting With IIS as the Remoting Client - I’m not a big fan of .Net Remoting from within ASP.Net apps (although it does have its place, and is sometimes required), so when one of my clients had some weirdness with .Net Remoting within their ASP.Net application, I do what I normally do, and go back and re-read the documentation, looking for things that they missed.  In this case, they were remoting to the Domain Layer from their ASP.Net pages, and everything had been fine for a long time in production.  But when a Web Service was added to this app (with a call to the same Domain Layer), weird things started to happen.  So I went back to basics, and re-read the section on Configuring a Remoting Cli......

42 of 84 | Elliotte Rusty Harold`s Northeast Tour Is Stopping In Princeton, NJ Jan. 24th - Wow!  Somehow I missed this, but Elliotte Rusty Harold is doing a Northeast Speaking Tour on how you can use RSS and Atom to manage, read, and publish all sorts of information.  Here are the dates and locations (check back to his site for any changes): Wednesday, January 11, Linux Users Group in Princeton: RSS, Atom, OPML, and All That Tuesday, January 17, Capital District XML Developers Network, Albany, New York: XOM Tuesday, January 24, Princeton Java Users Group: RSS, Atom, OPML, and All That Monday, January 30, Long Island PHP Users Group: RSS, Atom, OPML, and All That Wednesday, February 8, Capital District Java Developers Network, Albany, New York: Measuring JUnit Code Coverage ......

43 of 84 | January Microsoft MVP Awards Announced - Microsoft recently sent out the notices for the January 2006 MVP awards (I think it is done quarterly), and if you read .Net oriented blogs,  you probably already saw that some people got their status renewed, some are first timers, and others didn’t get renewed (I’ll refrain from linking to everyone).  I was one of the renewed folks (for XML), so I’d just like to thank everyone involved (you know who you are).  I don’t consciously go out and try to meet the MVP requirements, so for the last 3 years I can say that I’m honestly surprised when I get the email.  It is an honor to be considered, and the benefits are pretty nice, but if they ended the program tomorrow, I’d still do what I do.  A......