In my last post , I showed the basics of creating a custom LINQ provider, now moving forward , we just wont query against Name property only, we may need to query against ID or Age of the Person object.

 

Therefore, we must fuse a method that will enable use to query against any property. In simple, we can create a common BinaryExpression processor, that will build up the query object using reflection, which will be used to fetch similar item from the repository. This is, though a fictions Person class and nothing to do with Provider basics, the change is  useful for creating any real life project.I sightly modified the PersonContext class from previous post to support query against all properties.

Now, ProcessExpression method will call only ProcessBinaryResult, for any type of Binary expression processing.

 

ProcessBinaryResult in turn will call ProcessItem, which will take the query (Person) object and will match against its list.For ex, for Equal expression, ProcessItem will have the following code.

 

PersonContext class with recent changes can be downloaded here. After updating the project(which is attached previously) with the new class, it is possible to use queries like p.Age == 40 , or p.ID = 1,  or query against any new properties that has been added to Person class.

In Short, the power of LINQ query is to query against any object , it could be SQL, XML, or custom, and being able to query any property, does make a provider more useful.

Let me know , if it is useful.

Thycotic is gearing up for a new product development cycle and we are looking to grow our team of passionate test-first developers. Our team is one of the best places to learn and improve your agile development skills.

 

 

Can you solve the problem below?
http://www.thycotic.com/codetest.txt

Please submit your solution with your resume to tddjobs@thycotic.com

You will be joining a highly capable team of .NET developers who work on consulting projects for clients and interesting products such as Secret Server.

Requirements:

• You want to develop using Test Driven Development (that is *ALL* we do!)
• You live, breathe, sleep, eat and drink code of the C# or VB.NET flavor
• You enjoy or are excited about Pair Programming
• You have a strong understanding of Object Oriented principles, the .NET Framework, ASP.NET, relational databases and web application development
• You have the permanent legal right to work in the United States
• You have excellent written and spoken English
• You are able to communicate effectively with co-workers and clients/customers
• You are willing to work in the Washington DC Metro Area

Why come to Thycotic?

• We always practice TDD and Pair Programming
• We are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
• Your ideas and opinions will be valued
• You will be working in the heart of Washington, DC
• You will continually learn about new development techniques and technologies

PLEASE NO RECRUITERS, THIRD PARTIES, INDEPENDENTS OR OFFSHORE COMPANIES.

Rob Conery made a very interesting post on Ruby on Rails today. I stand with everything he is saying, especially about how he could not imagine treating his users in the way the Rails team does. This is a very important part of the whole post, if you are going to release something to the public, you need to be willing to support it and the situations that may arise from the use by others. I volunteer as a Project Lead for DotNetNuke and there is one thing I have found out, you don't know shit about your users until they use your product and find bugs you thought were never possible. I understand that it is hard sometimes to maintain your composure when someone you do not know starts verbally abusing you in a public forum. They don't know your dedication to the project, they don't know you, what gives them the right to treat you this way? Well guess what bud, you put yourself into that position. Sometimes you are gonna have people say things that you don't wanna hear, it will make you mad. The only person to be mad at this is yourself. You put yourself in the public eye.

So head on over to Rob's place and check out the post. While you are there, check out his other posts too. He has a very unique writing style that I think displays who he is very well. Rob is an all around good guy and someone I admire deeply. I just want to know, where do you get your energy Rob?


 

If you are still using HTML <table> elements to create page layouts, Chris Pels shows you why you should start using Cascading Style Sheets and <div> elements. We then learn how to create a custom membership provider and a custom profile provider for your ASP.NET application.

This article discusses and demonstrates to what extent the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET support Arabic, including information about the features and limitations of Arabic support.

In my current position, it always helps to take a small step back and do something else for a little while. I'm working on a simple problem involving building a reporting services report (SSRS) from a SharePoint task list. It will involve building the report against a dataset that was created programmatically. I've looked and can find no secure way of reporting directly against a list of data within the current user's context. Once complete I'll post how I did it. That's not the problem.

The problem is that I could not see the reporting services web sites after setting them up using the SSRS configuration manager UI. It said they were there but I couldn't get to them. So, since I'm doing a brief 15 minute intro to data abstraction next month at a local user group, I figured I'd fire up the latest Beta of the VS 08 VPC and dink with EDM for a while. I only got as far as extracting the VHD's before I fell asleep so more on that later too.

So, firing back up my MOSS dev VHD this morning I looked back at IIS and realized that the "normal" installation of MOSS involves stopping the default web site. Looking into the default web site I find the ReportServer and Reports web apps. Duh!

So I went back to SSRS Config and put them under the Portal web site. Then I get this:
- Parser Error Message: Cannot use 'partitionResolver' unless the mode is 'StateServer' or 'SQLServer'.

Whoops. A quick Google and a this forum post led me to believe there was a conflict with MOSS.

So, I'd recommend doing the following when you're firing up SSRS on a MOSS box, at least in a development environment. (Caveat Emptor)

1. Create a new virtual directory off \inetpub\wwwroot\
• Give it a specific port number
• I used RS / 8090
2. Configure (in SSRS) a new "Report Server Virtual Directory"
3. Configure (in SSRS) a new "Report Manager Virtual Directory"
4. Go wo Web Service Identity and click the New button next to Report Server
5. Create a new App Pool for RS to run within
• I used ReportingServicesAppPool
6. Set the authenticated user for the new app pool to the SQL Server Service account you used to set up MOSS.
• This should have all the SQL permissions you need to run SSRS (I hope...)
7. Set Report Server and Report Manager to the new app pool and click Apply

After making these changes I can go to the following URL's and get big love:

http://MOSSPlaySet:8090/ReportServer/
http://MOSSPlaySet:8090/Reports/

Now I can continue to configuring everything to actually use the Report Web Part. Hope this helps some.

Incidentally, what I'm hearing from the business community (faintly and very far away) is that BI, Agile Reporting and Custom Workflows are the pieces that really draw in the clients around here for SharePoint consulting engagements. Reporting seems easiest to me so off I go...

JJ

There's been a lot of talk about the announcement at the ALT.NET conference about a new offering of an MVC framework for ASP.NET.  This is very exciting news for any serious ASP.NET developer building large web applications.  If you've ever used the Web Client Software Factory to build a web application, you know the advantages that building upon an MVC framework can bring.
 
I've been scouring for more details about this exciting announcement.  I finally found what I was looking for...  Scott Hanselman has posted on his blog the presentation and screen cast from the ALT.NET conference.  This is going to be awesome!

Register now for ASP.NET Connections and Visual Studio & .NET Connections on November 5 - 8 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Learn all about the new features in Visual Studio 2008 from Microsoft and industry experts.

The General Purpose Colorizer colorizes an input file so the syntax is easier to read. Here's a simple example . The overall project will be housed at SourceForge so check at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gp-colorizer/ for the latest version. GPC is released under the GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL) GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Read more......(read more)

This simple library provides implementation of almost all aspects of multithreaded programming

This article presents code that augments any INPUT box with an auto-suggest feature, AJAX-capable

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I ego-surf. Type your name into Google and see what comes up. With Google's blog search, I like to see who's referencing things I've mentioned and whatnot.

However today I saw this link on some Windows Live space site (not even sure what that is, some bastard child from MySpaces?) posted October 11. My name came up so I started skimming through the entry. I know it was about DotNetNuke and SharePoint so I assumed the writer was referencing my blog post from January 2006. After reading through the Windows Live space I realized it was a copy of my own blog entry I was reading (I *thought* it looked familiar as I was skimming). I got down to the end and it said "Published Tuesday, January 31, 2006 by Bil Simser".

Right. I get it now. It's some aggregator that copies content. I've seen them before. However what befuddles my meager brain is why in the name of all that is holy is my post from January 2006 showing up in October 2007? Slow mail delivery or something. The guys crawler *just* got around to finding my blog entry?

I just don't get it.

This article discusses how to create an HTML Editor server control for use within an ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 environment.

This article depicts how to merge cells in a Datagrid control of ASP.NET, hence gains better look and clarity.

In this article Soyuj examines the usage of LinkedResource class for sending embedded image mail in .NET in a step-by-step way. Read more......(read more)

Stuff that is swirling in my head and being worked on coming shortly to this blog:

• Updates on SharePoint Forums and KB Web Projects for Office 2007 support
• Continuous Integration Build Indicators (via X10 and some fancy integration with Cruise Control.NET)
• What does Alt.NET mean to you and growing the Alt.NET community
• Greenfielding Agile in the Enterprise
• Making sense of the *DDs
• Sessions for Edmonton Code Camp (Oct. 20)
• Getting ready for XNA 2.0 and driving out games with TDD
• Fixing a dead TFS server with Subversion

Feel free to toss your own ideas on the pile that you would like to see...

I posted an article about Sites, References and Articls that I cannot work without awhile back. I decided I'd follow up on it on tools I cannot work without.
 

Visual Studio 2005.
Yea, I can't really work without this. This is my bread, butter, coffee, and ninja-snacks all coupled into one nice thing.

FireFox 2.x
This is my main development browser. I always create web sites and web applications to work first in FireFox. I then modify little bits to make sure they work in IE7.

FireFox Developer Toolbar.
This is the main tool I use while working with FireFox. It's a very lightweight accurate and very efficient tool for web design.

FireFox - FireBug
FireBug is not a priceless tool that I cannot work without. FireBug allows you to navigate through the HTML DOM as the browser sees it. Whenever you ViewSource (FF/IE) it will show you what the browser originally recieved from a web server. However with all the dynamic content being generated in todays world, we need to see what that content is. Firebug allows us to do this. Firebug also allows developers to disable and add CSS styles dynamically to any webpage they're browser. It also comes with a built in JavaScript debugger.

CSS Vista
I saw this on a blog awhile back and decided to give it a try. It is a great tool for fixing small CSS issues. You give it a URL and it will render that webpage in both FireFox 2.x and IE7... and displays both versions on one screen. From there you can modify the CSS files  that the URL uses and both browsers use your changes as you type them (Real Time!).

Windows Service Debugger
Anderson Imes blogged about this little tool he wrote. Now that I am working with Windows Services more, this tool is insanely helpful. All you do is reference his DLL, and change a single line of code in your Start method of your windows service. From there you can hit F5(Run) and you can debug directly inside your service.