Spent the morning trying to figure out why my Application Block help file (.chm) was not displaying content. Needless to say, I went down several rabbit holes on the Internet (web pages that did not yield a solution).

If you download a help file (.chm) and then open the file you may get a warning message - but this is not a clear message to what the problem is. When the application comes up, the content pain says something to the effect that it cannot display the page. There is nothing to indicate how to fix the problem.

So, here it is. CHM (help files) that are downloaded are blocked - and you have to "unblock" them. They were blocked by a security update. So, downloaded CHM files have the blocked attribute set. If you select on the file's properties you can change this behavior by selecting the "unblock" button.

Rob Caron has short discussion with screen shots here.

 

Working with Microsoft MVP, Jeff Schoolcraft, we have organized a wonderful developer learning event on Saturday, March 29th at Strayer University in Woodbridge, Va.

CodeCamp SOUTH

Speakers include:

• Brian Noyes, Microsoft MVP
• Jonathan Cogley, Microsoft MVP
• Sahil Malik, Microsoft MVP
• Frank LaVigne, Microsoft MVP
• Antonio Chagoury, DotNetNuke Team Lead

and many more.

Topics to be covered include a host of new technologies along with some introductory courses. Here is a sample (you can see the rest at the NovaCodeCamp site).

• Visual Studio 2008
• SQL Server 2008
• SharePoint 2007
• DotNetNuke Module Development
• Office 2007 Development
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Development
• Ajax
• Silverlight

For you developers, this is a golden opportunity to see presentations that would typically be presented at high priced conferences like Microsoft TechEd and VSLive. And it is FREE. However, registration is limited to the first 100 that sing up - so make your reservation today!

 

 

 

Well, I have really done it now. I'm giving two presentations tomorrow at the Richmond CodeCamp. Andy Leonard is putting on another show, and if this one is as good as the last, everyone coming should be in for a real treat.

 

See you all Saturday!

First, let me congratulate our fearless leader, Scott Lock on being selected as a Microsoft MVP. This is a wonderful accomplish and it is about time Microsoft got around to recognizing all the people who organize events and connect developers together. Scott's recognition is long overdue. He's not only a technologist, but a community leader.

On most nights there is a user group somewhere in the Washington DC metro area with someone presenting technical content that would typically cost significant monies in travel, lodging, and registration fees to see the same content at a conference or training scenario. Without a doubt, the CAPAREA user group has had a stellar list of presenters and topics. Without people like Scott, who work tirelessly to make these presentations happen - and for no compensation - the developer community would not have access to these wonderful resources. Thanks Scott - and kudos for a job well done.

 

Scott is giving a presentation tonight at the Capital Area .NET User Group (CAPAREA) on VSTO - Automation and Customizing Excel 2003.

Here's the summary:

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 7:00 PM

Building office applications has never been better.  You've heard all of the hype about Office 2007, Ribbons, etc.  This session is based on what the majority of us are in today...Office 2003.  Customizing and automating Excel 2003 is a great way to build dynamic workbooks that solve some cool problems.  This presentation is an overview of what Visual Studio Tools for office is about and how it applies to Excel 2003 and Office 2003.

 

Located below are the SQL, data and VB project files from my presentation at the Richmond Code Camp

RichmondCodeCampXquery.zip (12.6 KB)

Here is my powerpoint presention. It is more than a little light because the focus of CodeCamp is the CODE!

Richmond Code Camp XQuery Tips and Tricks.ppt (2.34 MB)

I would like to thank Andy Leonard, Susan Lennon, and the rest of the Richmond crew for a well run operation.

OK. I'm a slacker.

I promised to get this up back a month ago. Here is my powerpoint presentation on developing user defined aggregates in SQL Server 2005 using .NET CLR. I gave this presentation at the NovaSQL user group. The group is managed superbly by Jeremy Kadlec, who also does MS SQL Tips.

novasqlMarch2007.zip (2.2 MB)

I had the pleasure of presenting at Monday's NovaSQL user group meeting on developing User-Defined Aggregates using Visual Studio 2005.

I will post my presentation and code later today for anyone who is interested.

 

Getting an error message after installing your CLR assembly in SQL Server 2005 and running the binding operations (CREATE TYPE or AGGREGATE or FUNCTION) to register the function name with the assembly method? Perhaps the reason is...

CAPAREA was visited by none other than Mr. VB, himself, Paul Vick. He is the Microsoft VB language architect on Tuesday, September 26th.

Paul's topic was "Visual Basic 9.0: Language Integrated Query (LINQ), XML integration and beyond...". Paul is also author of The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language.

The speaker was a huge draw for our group. We had over 65 people in attendance last night.   

http://www.caparea.netBrian Noyes' book, Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0, has recently hit the street. Brian is the Executive VP at CAPAREA.NET and responsible for managing our speaker series (which has been excellent). Brian is also a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director. Brian is also a chief architect at iDesign, and works with Juval Lowry and Michelle Bustamante. I understand that Brian will be speaking at Microsoft's TechEd this year.

If you are intersted in getting Brian's book, you can find it here on Amazon. Of course, we are giving a couple away for some lucky prize winners who attend our CAPAREA.NET user group meetings over the next couple of months.

I am attending the .NET Framework 2.0 - The Smart Client Perspective. Great stuff. This one is being presented by Rocky Lhotka and Billy Hollis. I highly recommend checking out any presentation these two guys do -- they have some great material and they are very good speakers. Anyway...

Rocky was discussing architectures, basically where the business and data objects on what tiers (client, back end server, etc.) and what type of applications those create (browser based, rich client, etc.), and he expressed an idea on something I and many others have obviously have thought about... Building a presentation tier/client that accepts both data and metadata.

The purpose of the metadata is to provide information to the UI so that controls...probably smart controls...can populate themselves and handle validation --- without having to know anything about the business rules. So, the client has no business object at all, it communicates (perhaps remotely) with the business layer.

The smart controls would get data to help populate things like combo box items, and just enough validation logic to assist the user in entering valid data and prohibiting invalid information. This system would allow the UI to "reconfigure itself" within bounds to adapt to a slightly different domain (different user roles, different but similar data sets).

We developed something similar to this for a VB6 application that used a custom web-services layer for communication. We not only handled the validation issue, but we also handled event operations. An example was the population of a tree control from the data, purely handled by the UI, but we had metadata that determined not only what events were available, but also what operations were available on a per-element basis. The UI interpreted the operation information by turning on or off menu items, or revealing or hiding controls - like buttons.

While this scheme could handle a host of validation issues, there were some business cases that could only be resolved by comparisons against various tables within the datastore. Therefore, when an input operation was made to the business layer, we had a return call that told the client whether the operation had succeeded, and if not, why it did not. Also, calls made via these operations might inform the UI to "refresh" its overall data-representation (repopulate the tree control, for instance) since the data may have changed. This refresh reference could apply to a single entity type or for the entire tree.

Rocky hinted that Billy Hollis was going to talk about an implementation of such a system that he had done.

So, I didn't make TechEd, but I'm on my way to Microsoft's PDC.

I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on, especially in the XQuery area. Michael Rys is giving the following presentation which I'm hoping to attend:

DAT405  SQL Server 2005: Deep Dive on XML and XQuery

You can find out more about PDC here. Sorry, it is already sold out.

Using Custom Controls can make modifications to large Windows Form Apps easier to manage.

Did you want to attend Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference? Too bad, it's sold out.

VB.Net Editor bug

Have you tried installing SQL Server 2005 June CTP over VS 2005? What a pain!

Excellent CAPAREA user group presentation by Tim.

I had a demonstration to put on at a local trade show, and I had recently installed SQL Server 2005 on my demo laptop. The demo involved the LogiXML Info product which uses the Northwind database.

Imagine my surprise to not find it anywhere. So, I just copied the scripts from a SQL 2000 version over and installed it by running the scripts. The original scripts required a few changes, but I had no trouble setting up Northwind and getting my demos to run against it.

I thought it was an oversight that Northwind and Pubs were not included. I didn't think anything more of it until I saw Brian Noyes' blog this moring. According to Brian (see his discussion here at .NET Ramblings) Microsoft intended to ship SQL 2005 without them, but that may have changed.

For those interested in why XQuery is not in .NET Framework 2.0, Arpan Desai's blog has a short summation here. Also, one of the outstanding issues is that XQuery will not reach Recommendation status by W3C until sometime next year while Framework 2.0 is set to be released this year.

Not that I know, but I would venture to guess that we will see XQuery in the .NET Framework with an updated version (2.1?) which will probably be available around 2007.

If you downloaded the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and expected to find the Database Projects, that allow you to create CLR stored procedures, user defined functions, etc., within the Visual Studio 2005 environment, you will be disappointed.

The VS 2005 Beta 2 download is for the Standard version of the VS2005 product. To get the Database Projects you need to have the VS2005 Professional version. This isn't available, yet, in the MSDN subscription downloads. To get it, you need to download the VS 2005 Team System (which integrates VS Professional 2005). If you download it prepare to wait - it's a 3.9 GB iso image.

This link to the Visual Studio 2005 online documentation explains what is available in the different versions (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/8czxd086(en-us,vs.80).aspx). I wish I had this before I downloaded the Standard edition.