Weblog of a workaholic 2010-07-14T19:20:36+02:00 http://www.cuttingedge.it/blogs/steven/index.php steven at this domain tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie Pivot Copyright (c) 2010, Authors of .NET Junkie 2010-06-28T17:40:00+02:00 2010-06-28T17:40:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.77

Since I built CuttingEdge.Conditions, I had lots of positive reactions from developers who loved it. However, I've never saw the source code been reused in another library or framework; until now. ...

Steven 2010-06-13T19:01:00+02:00 2010-05-06T15:41:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.76

In .NET 4.0 the SmtpClient class now implements IDisposable. This is a breaking change what you should watch out for. ...

Steven 2010-05-05T12:14:00+02:00 2010-05-05T12:14:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.75

Bryan Sullivan describes in the May issue of his MSDN article a denial of service attack that abuses regular expressions. As Bryan explains, a poorly written regex can bring your server to its knees. ...

Steven 2010-04-13T08:28:00+02:00 2010-04-13T08:28:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.74

Microsoft published an interesting list of breaking changes in the just released .NET 4.0 framework. ...

Steven 2010-06-13T19:01:00+02:00 2010-03-22T21:30:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.73

This article describes how to build an IConfigurationSource implementation that allows validators, defined in a base class or interface, to be inherited by subclasses and implementations. ...

Steven 2010-03-22T21:01:00+02:00 2010-03-05T12:05:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.72

This article describes how to build an IConfigurationSource implementation that allows reading multiple configuration files that each contain part of the total Enterprise Library Validation Application Block configuration. ...

Steven 2010-02-19T12:53:00+02:00 2010-02-19T11:07:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.71

The last couple of days I've been having a Printer Jam on my way to work. ...

Steven 2010-01-21T12:24:00+02:00 2010-01-06T17:35:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.70

The Simple Service Locator is an easy-to-use Inversion of Control library that is a complete implementation of the Common Service Locator interface. It solely supports code-based configuration and is an ideal starting point for developers unfamiliar with larger IoC / DI libraries ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:17:00+02:00 2009-11-10T22:14:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.68

In the November 2009 issue of his MSDN Magazine Toolbox column, Scott Mitchell writes about CuttingEdge.Conditions. ...

Steven 2009-11-04T15:36:00+02:00 2009-11-03T17:42:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.67

Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 contain a (not officially supported) feature that allows display of vertical guidelines in the (code) text editor. Visual Studio 2010 however, seems to completely miss this feature. I created a feature request on Microsoft Connect. Please help and vote for this feature to return. ...

Steven 2009-11-11T16:22:00+02:00 2009-10-25T21:28:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.66

This article describes the EntitySorter class. It's a nifty little thing that allows the presentation layer to instruct the service layer how collections should be returned. ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:36:00+02:00 2009-09-30T11:00:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.65

This article describes how to extract the validation configuration to its own file and allow this to also work with unit tests. ...

Steven 2010-03-11T10:29:00+02:00 2009-09-30T01:30:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.64

This article describes how to extract information from your generated LINQ to SQL entities to automate validations like maximum string length and disallowing null values. ...

Steven 2009-09-24T10:31:00+02:00 2009-09-24T10:31:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.63

I just watched an amazing Google Talk video on YouTube that explains how botnets work. ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:46:00+02:00 2009-09-19T17:14:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.62

This article describes what Cross-site request forgery attacks are and how to mitigate them. ...

Steven 2009-09-19T12:44:00+02:00 2009-09-19T12:44:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.61

The Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library (Anti-XSS) is an encoding library designed to help developers protect their ASP.NET web-based applications from XSS attacks. ...

Steven 2009-09-14T17:51:00+02:00 2009-09-14T17:50:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.60

For over three years I've been using NDepend. In this post I'll describe my thoughts on NDepend. ...

Steven 2009-09-07T16:52:00+02:00 2009-09-07T16:51:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.59

Last week I published the first stable release of CuttingEdge.Conditions. ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:48:00+02:00 2009-08-26T13:36:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.58

In this post Ill describe another breaking change Im making to my open source project, CuttingEdge.Conditions. ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:49:00+02:00 2009-08-24T17:49:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.57

In this post Ill describe a controversial change Im making in my open source project, CuttingEdge.Conditions. ...

Steven 2009-08-20T19:47:00+02:00 2009-08-20T13:14:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.56

This post explains whats wrong with ApplicationException and why it should not be used. ...

Steven 2009-08-18T17:32:00+02:00 2009-08-18T17:32:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.55

Last month I read Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise, written by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello. This book is a great piece of work. ...

Steven 2010-01-14T12:33:00+02:00 2009-08-17T10:27:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.54

Just found this free ebook on the Red Gate site: ...

Steven 2009-08-16T11:09:00+02:00 2009-08-16T11:09:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.53

Dennis Doomen, architect at Aviva Solutions, published a set of C# 3.0 Coding Guidelines a few months ago. While a lot of different C# coding guidelines can be found on the web, this one caught my attention. ...

Steven 2009-08-15T11:28:00+02:00 2009-08-15T11:28:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.52

The Entity Framework Design blog just published a template that enables converting a LINQ to SQL .dbml file to a Entity Framework .edmx file. ...

Steven 2009-09-22T13:07:00+02:00 2009-08-14T14:21:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.51

The NCover team has supported my open source CuttingEdge.Conditions project by donating a license of this cool tool. ...

Steven 2009-05-29T23:08:00+02:00 2009-05-29T23:08:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.50

... and all I got was this lousy CodePlex Sticker. ...

Steven 2010-02-14T22:51:00+02:00 2009-05-28T22:29:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.49

This article shows the complexity a developer is facing, implementing a custom validator while using an O/RM tool. While the article uses the Validation Application Block and LINQ to SQL in writing the validation logic, the problems encountered in the article are very general. ...

Steven 2010-05-05T12:15:00+02:00 2009-05-23T12:24:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.48

Tom Hollander describes on his blog a denial of service attack I never knew the existence of, called XML Entity Expansion attack. Tom explains how to bring a server to its knees when allowing any type of xml document as input and passing it directly to an XmlDocument for parsing. ...

Steven 2010-02-03T15:37:00+02:00 2009-05-21T18:04:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.47

This article describes how to write custom validators for the Enterprise Library Validation Application Block, in such a way that it runs within the context of a specific LINQ to SQL DataContext or Entity Framework ObjectContext class, which allows analysis of non-persisted (in-memory) changes in that context. ...

Steven 2010-02-18T14:37:00+02:00 2009-04-07T21:58:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.46

This article describes how to integrate the Enterprise Library Validation Application Block in conjunction with an O/RM technology such as LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework. ...

Steven 2009-01-18T14:02:00+02:00 2009-01-18T14:02:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.45

One good spell checker and one really bad spell checker plug-in for Visual Studio. ...

Steven 2009-04-09T20:54:00+02:00 2009-01-14T22:13:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.44

This article describes the true danger of SQL injection attacks. The article shows how a hacker can steal your sensitive business data, even when your website connects to your database with a normal non-privileged login account. ...

Steven 2009-01-22T14:11:00+02:00 2008-12-23T18:49:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.43

This was announced some time ago at the PDC2008, but I just found out after watching the PDC session on Tips And Tracks For The Visal C# IDE. ...

Steven 2008-11-03T17:00:00+02:00 2008-11-01T18:55:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.42

The Microsoft ADO.NET team blog made an important announcement yesterday about the future of LINQ to SQL. ...

Steven 2009-09-22T13:57:00+02:00 2008-09-29T21:51:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.41

Did you ever wonder why .NET doesn't have a Temperature type? I suppose not, because I didn't find any implementation of such a thing on the internet. ...

Steven 2008-08-20T21:32:00+02:00 2008-08-18T22:49:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.40

The .NET JIT compiler has changed with the new SP1 release of the .NET 3.5 framework. Microsoft claims it's faster. I claim the opposite! ...

Steven 2009-12-17T19:55:00+02:00 2008-08-04T14:53:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.39

In a previous post I introduced CuttingEdge.Conditions, a library that helps developers to write pre- and postcondition validations in their .NET 3.5 code base. In this post I'll explain how you can extend the library. ...

Steven 2009-12-17T19:48:00+02:00 2008-07-16T16:27:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.38

CuttingEdge.Conditions is a library that helps developers to write pre- and postcondition validations in their .NET 3.5 code base. Writing these validations is easy and it improves the readability and maintainability of code. ...

Steven 2009-03-22T16:12:00+02:00 2008-07-13T01:40:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.37

Have you ever wondered why the C# language doesn't have a specific feature, or why it works the way it does? As a matter of fact, I did, and I mailed them over a year ago. I never got an answer though. Now I'm publishing this mail, hoping to start a good discussion. ...

Steven 2009-12-17T19:53:00+02:00 2008-07-09T15:51:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.36

The last couple of days I had some spare time. What does a workaholic do with spare time? Exactly: he builds his own library. :-) ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:32:00+02:00 2008-06-21T23:56:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.35

I just reported a bug on the Microsoft Connect site about a quirk in the C# IntelliSense feature regarding generic extension methods. ...

Steven 2008-05-14T16:05:00+02:00 2008-05-14T16:05:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.34

Great news is coming from the .NET Runtime Team. The new coming service pack for the .NET framework addresses inlining of value types. ...

Steven 2008-04-29T11:40:00+02:00 2008-04-29T11:40:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.33

I'll repeat Greg Young and Fredrik Normén here. ...

Steven 2008-03-02T16:47:00+02:00 2008-03-02T16:47:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.32

My weblog was offline for a couple of days. ...

Steven 2008-06-03T14:28:00+02:00 2008-02-10T18:45:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.31

It has already been several months since I purchased the book Framework Design Guidelines by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams. Since that time it proved itself to be invaluable. When you design or write reusable libraries or are concerned with the quality and usability of your API, this book is for you. ...

Steven 2008-07-13T01:01:00+02:00 2007-11-28T22:50:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.30

...

Steven 2010-05-20T14:48:00+02:00 2007-11-22T18:55:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.29

This article describes an implementation of a ReadOnlyDictionary that's missing from the .NET framework. ...

Steven 2008-01-16T21:53:00+02:00 2007-11-07T22:35:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.28

Here's a link to a very interesting Channel 9 interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman about Software Composability and the Future of Languages. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:35:00+02:00 2007-06-21T22:05:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.27

While discussing the C# using statement with a colleague of mine, we discovered that there was a shorter version of the using statement possible. ...

Steven 2009-05-21T15:26:00+02:00 2007-03-31T16:16:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.26

This article describes my Visual Studio 2005 / Visual Studio 2008 template for rolling your own custom provider on the ASP.NET 2.0 Provider model. The model is actually not restricted to ASP.NET and this template allows you to create your custom provider for every type of .NET application, including console and forms applications. ...

Steven 2008-07-13T01:02:00+02:00 2007-03-09T12:20:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.25

The easiest way to convert a hexadecimal string to an integer is using System.Convert. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:37:00+02:00 2007-03-09T10:33:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.24

Sometimes I'm wondering strange things. For instance, this morning I was wondering if a static constructor of a class can create an instance of itself. It seemed to me this would be a conflicting requirement, because a classes constructor will only run after it's static constructor has run. ...

Steven 2007-04-19T13:39:00+02:00 2007-03-08T22:39:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.23

Last two months I have been reading SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled (Second Edition) by Sajal Dam. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:39:00+02:00 2007-03-03T18:25:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.22

This article describes a little gotcha that might emerge when writing a custom parameter that derives from System.Web.UI.WebControls.Parameter. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:40:00+02:00 2007-02-21T23:15:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.21

Three weeks ago Joe Duffy published an article about 'Monitor.Enter, thread aborts, and orphaned locks' on his blog. After reading this article and responding to it (see my comments), I was pretty much in shock. I came to the conclusion that the C# using statement isn't 100% safe. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:40:00+02:00 2007-02-11T14:20:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.20

This article describes how to inherit your .aspx pages from a custom class, in such a way that you can use nested master pages, without getting that terrible 'Design view does not support creating or editing nested master pages. To create or edit nested master pages, use Source view' from the Visual Studio Designer. ...

Steven 2006-12-19T19:27:00+02:00 2006-12-19T19:27:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.19

I came across this Google Tech Talk about Human Computation by Luis Von Ahn. Luis talks about how he uses humans to solve problems computers can't. His talk is really fascinating and funny. You should watch it! ...

Steven 2007-01-02T19:36:00+02:00 2006-11-20T23:57:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.18

Microsoft's ACE Team, announced the release of the Anti-Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Library version 1.5. ...

Steven 2006-11-14T11:18:00+02:00 2006-11-14T01:52:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.17

Here's a great article about passionate software developers. It is a must-read for every software developer. ...

Steven 2006-10-23T23:08:00+02:00 2006-10-23T23:08:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.15

ScottGu has blogged about this over 9 months ago, but I had some trouble finding that blog again. So this is for my own memory: Optimizing C# Refactoring Performance with Web Projects in VS 2005.

Steven 2009-12-28T20:12:00+02:00 2006-10-12T12:05:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.69

When a Connection object throws an exception and tells you 'all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached', it usually has to do with bad code. Fixing it could however be a problem if you don't own the source code. In this article a quick and dirty workaround for this connection timeout problem is proposed. ...

Steven 2009-10-22T21:52:00+02:00 2006-10-06T14:19:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.13

A few months ago I wrote some code for a project I was working on. It was a class that wrapped a SqlTransaction and a SqlConnection object. I named it the SqlTransactionWrapper. This class made coding easier for my colleague with whom I was working at that time. Also, I no longer needed to type a lot of code over and over again. I now rewrote the class so it fits in the more generic approach given by ADO.NET 2.0. So behold: The DbTransactionWrapper! ...

Steven 2007-01-02T19:38:00+02:00 2006-09-26T11:41:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.12

Anders Hejlsberg, lead architect for the C# language at Microsoft, announced early august Microsoft is working on a parallel implementation of LINQ internally known as PLINQ. ...

Steven 2009-01-21T19:51:00+02:00 2006-09-25T22:22:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.11

There seems to be a rather nasty bug in the 2.0.50727.42 release of the .NET runtime. ...

Steven 2007-01-02T19:38:00+02:00 2006-09-21T17:54:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.10

I'm really in love with BLINQ, look at the channel 9 video here. ...

Steven 2009-08-16T11:12:00+02:00 2006-09-13T23:52:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.9

In this post I'll show my implementation of the Factory Pattern build with C# using Generics, Delegates and Reflection.Emit. ...

Steven 2007-01-02T19:39:00+02:00 2006-08-23T11:39:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.7

The IE team blogged yesterday about their final list on bug fixes and changes for CSS, which is a must read for every web developer. ...

Steven 2006-09-19T01:49:00+02:00 2006-07-18T18:07:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.6

It has already been 4 months since Dave Reed posted an amazing article about the viewstate, but it's never to late to reference it. You should read it if you haven't!

Steven 2006-05-23T16:11:00+02:00 2006-05-23T15:23:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.4

Microsofts corporate vice present of the Developer Division, Somasegar, wrote on his weblog about the backwards compatibility of the .NET framework version 2.0. But his readers doubt the usefulness of this compatibility, as do I. ...

Steven 2006-05-23T12:31:00+02:00 2006-05-10T00:28:00+02:00 tag:pivotpowered,2010:NETJunkie.3

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog! ...

Steven