.Net

Shrink SQL Server Log File

2006-08-19T09:07:00Z

I have hosted my site on a shared hosting server and have to live with the reality of limited database/web space, recently my database space was shooting up and I was really worried about it. My posting (blogs) are not too long to reach a whopping 114 MB and so I was stunned to see the database size. After carefull investigation of each table I thought of checking at database level using the below given sp... sp_helpdb 'DATABASE_NAME' To my surprise I found the data file size as 10...(read more)

ASP.Net 2.0 DataList Control - Basics

2006-08-08T09:46:00Z

DataList control is a template driven data control which allows us to display a list of data in a customizable format. Simply speaking we will define how the data is to be displayed and assign a data source, the control in turn uses the data source and simply displays the data using the definition. The power of this control is realized when we need to perform some operation on the displayed data. At the end of this post we will be able to perform some common operations using DataList control, we...(read more)

System.Net.Mail - How to add Alternate views and Embed Images

2006-07-23T19:05:00Z

System.Net.Mail provides us with a very intuitive object model to construct and send an email message. These days almost all the web and windows email clients gives us more control over the email content we wish to view (a.k.a HTML view, plain text view). This is to make us aware that the email content we are viewing may contain explicit images or externally linked images. Now imagine the recipient have disabled HTML content in his/her settings then the email content will be displayed...(read more)

.Net Profile Object "my customers, my ambassadors" - Part 2

2006-06-30T22:11:00Z

To be short and sweet, a good website should remember my preferrences. So that the next time I visit , I get a personalized welcome. So how do we achieve this without using the out of the box solution provided by ASP.Net 2.0? Create couple of tables and stored procedures to store and manipulate user profile details. Write few classes' which will hold user's preferrence. Write data access code to store and retrieve user's preferrence....(read more)

Excellent resource on 3-tiered data architecture with ASP.NET 2.0

2006-06-25T12:10:00Z

Scott Mitchell has put together an awesome tutorial on building and using 3-tiered date architecture with ASP.Net 2.0 It's available here The flow of the tutorial is excellent, you can also download the tutorials in pdf format. C# Tutorial in PDF format is available at http://www.asp.net/learn/dataaccess/datatutorials1_10cs.zip and http://www.asp.net/learn/dataaccess/datatutorials11_15cs.zip VB.Net Tutorial in PDF format is available at http://www.asp.net/learn/dataaccess/datatutorials1_10vb.zip and...(read more)

.Net Profile Object "my customers, my ambassadors"

2006-06-17T02:36:00Z

At first it might look irrelevant and you might ask "What has .Net Profile to do with my optical business?", just sit back, relax and read on as it will be evident that it is relevant. Around 5 years back while I was pursuing my graduation degree, I opened an optical showroom, it was one heck of time to juggle between college and look after the business. Yet somehow I managed it, this log is not about how professionally/successfully I managed...(read more)

Tech.Ed 2006 - for geeks in Chennai

2006-06-10T10:13:00Z

Tech.Ed 2006 in Chennai will be held at Chennai Trade Centre and kick starts on 15th June and will end with a bang(entertainment/party) on 17th June. Where is Chennai Trade Centre?Chennai Trade CentreMount Poonamallee High RoadNandambakkam Chennai: 600089 Ph: 91-44-22316033, 22315551 Map of Chennai Trade Centre is available at http://www.indiasoft.ind.in/venue_map.htm Complete details of all the session is available at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032295913&Culture=en-IN...(read more)

Date with DataSource Control - Ms. ObjectDataSource

2006-06-10T08:10:00Z

Developer's are the most busiest guys on the earth and unfortunately I am one of them. So what do we do about it? Well, I have decided to go out on date with the five beautifull girls. Their names are listed below. Ms. ObjectDataSource Ms. SqlDataSource Ms. AccessDataSource Ms. XmlDataSource Ms. SiteMapDataSource So let me start with Ms. ObjectDataSource... Where can we find her? She hangs out almost everyday in the data tab of the VS IDE toolbox. What's her nature of job? She...(read more)

Operation could destabilize the runtime

2006-06-10T01:39:00Z

Hmm "Operation could destabilize the runtime" sounds too scary, what operation on earth is this; which can destabilize the .Net runtime?

It looks like the 1.1 C#/VB.Net compiler had case boundary with the generated IL code, the massive overhaul done for the new features in 2.0 forced some low level code changes in CLR; this in turn is haunting few 1.1 assemblies.

One of the well known case is the switch statement having more than 8 conditions. If you try to use 1.1 assembly having a code block of switch statement exceeding 8 conditions then you might face the horrifying exceptions like...

System.Exceptions.PageLoadException

System.Security.VerificationException

Try changing the switch case to if..else condition that will solve the problem.

For more details check the below given link

http://forums.asp.net/thread/1255521.aspx

String.IsNullOrEmpty(String)

2006-06-10T01:09:00Z

As simple as it gets, C# 2.0 has brought with it loads of language features. Some made a huge difference and few less talked about. One of them is String's IsNullOrEmpty method, let's do a comparision of C# 1.1 and 2.0 logic to check for a empty and null string. We have been doing this past several years, a condition where in we check a string object is null or empty and perform certain actions based on the the outcome of the condition. //C# 1.1 Sample code string sParam = null;...(read more)

String.Contains(String)

2006-06-10T01:07:00Z

In our .Net 1.1 days we used to check whether a string object contains a specified string(text) using IndexOf method. Here is the typical code to check the existence of a string in an string object. //Sample code string sName = "John Smith"; if(sName.IndexOf("Smith") > -1) { //Smith exists in string object sName } Now let's take a closer look at the above code...... What we want is to know whether an instance of string contains some string(text). Did I say contains......that's exactly...(read more)

System.Nullable A.k.a Nullable types

2006-06-09T09:10:00Z

Developers were always looking forward to the inclusion of Nullable types in C#. I love the way it's been implemented using generics. Before we go in to the specifics of Nullable types; let's look at what is a Nullable type and it's usage. What's a Nullable type?A nullable type is a value type which can be assigned a null value. Type's like int/bool/double/etc... now can be assigned null values. Usage:A simple case for nullable type is while assigning a database column value to a value type....(read more)

Interned string

2006-06-09T08:05:00Z

Interned string is nothing but a locked up version of a string, so that it can be shared. Memory allocation can be avoided by using string.Empty. string sFirstName = string.Empty; The C# compiler is intelligent enough to generate code based on our declaration, if we declare a string object with either string.Empty it just refers to a shared empty string object. As we know string object are immutable(cannot be changed) once created so any assignment will not affect the shared string object....(read more)

Generics an overview

2006-06-08T07:38:00Z

We all have come across a situation where we need to store a collection of a specific type.

Let's say for example we have a class called Customer and we need to have a collection of customers.

Simple way of doing that may be to use ArrayList and add customer class to it. But we have to pay a heavy price for using an ArrayList.

For those of you who don't know the pitfalls of using ArrayList, let me briefly list it out.

The default initial capacity of an ArrayList is 16, even if you add only 2 items to the ArrayList object it will still occupy memory area of 16 elements.
Assume you have added 17th element in your ArrayList object then your object will grow to 32 capacity, that's real waste of memory.
ArrayList stores everything as object and so any value type you store goes through an overhead of boxing and unboxing. Boxing and Unboxing is the most performance intensive operation in .Net as it has to convert a value type to a reference type and the vice versa.
There is no type safety as you can store any type in an ArrayList object.

Now where do the Generics come in picture.......??

Well they are the saviors in this .Net world, don't believe me then look how simple and smart generics are.

Now we have a class called Customer and I want a collection of Customer to store n numbers of customers.

//Sample code
<Customer> objCustomerColl = new List<Customer>();

Essentially what we are doing in the above given line of code is we are using the List class which is part of the System.Collections.Generic namespace.
The declaration is pretty simple we are telling the compiler that create a list of Customer class.

With this simple piece of code we have our CustomerCollection ready for use.
Now we can add, remove and perform many different operations on it.

//Sample code
objCustomerColl.Add(new Customer());
Points to be noted....

This generic list is type safe.

If you use a value type to create a generic list it doesn't require boxing/unboxing.
All the incrementing/decrementing of the list is done under the hood.

Few more examples of Generic list....just to give you an idea of how powerfull are generics.

List<int> IntCollection = new List<int>();
List<string> StringCollection = new List<string>();