I Love C#.NET

New LINQ Discovery

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:01:00 GMT

In developing the NukePress blog, I've been using LINQ to SQL on a SQL 2005 database. Recently, I had an issue with a module that would run perfectly fine locally, but not on a client's.

On a client who was using SQL 2000, they would get the following error:

Incorrect syntax near 'MAX'

The offending line of code was:

var

Description is of type ntext in the database. The SQL That is created for this field was

nvarchar(MAX)

This is an odd outcome, so I recreated the database on SQL Server 2000, recreated the relevant dbml file by dragging & dropping from the new SQL 2000 database and ran it.

No dice. The odd thing is that there was no reference to SQL 2005 specific data types (nvarchar(MAX) for example). The data source was strictly SQL 2000, and I could find no way to specify to LINQ to create SQL compatible with SQL 2000. May be my keen Googling ability was off today, but I could find nothing.

The answer came with simply removing the ToString() method from Description. It was left over from an obsolete approach, but it is strange that LINQ acted in this way.

Makes me wonder whether I should migrate to Entity Framework. Not much of a stretch and it helps that EF is the apparent future.

cmts = (from cmt in ctx.Comments
                    where cmt.ModuleID == selectedModuleID &&
                                        cmt.Post.PublishDate != null &&
                                        ((cmt.Post.IsPublished == true && cmt.Post.PublishDate < DateTime.Now))
                    select new
                    {
                                        CommentID = cmt.CommentID,
                                        UserName = cmt.SubmitterName,
                                        Description = cmt.Description.ToString(),
                                        PostID = cmt.PostID,
                                        PostTitle = cmt.Post.Title,
                                        ISApproved = cmt.IsApproved
                    });

New Video on DotNetNuke Cambrian Skinning

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:23:00 GMT

I just finished a new video on that is being highlighted on NukeCast.NET. The video, titled "Cambrian" First Look - Skinning Enhancements focuses on the new skinning features of Cambrian. It will be the first of a multi-part series on Cambrian.

Also, in the next couple of weeks, we're putting out several videos on .NET 3.5 SP1 features such as Silverlight Deep Zoom and Dynamic Data.

and

Oh Twitter, where art thou?

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:56:00 GMT

I admit when I'm the last one to the boat. I recently started exploring some social networking tools. For the longest time, I avoided them simply because I did not see the value for me individually or the opportunity for my business. Early on, they seemed like gimicks that would not likely last. (man, I sound old!)

When several friends and colleagues started promoting their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, I decided to look into it again. Twitter has been fun, but it raised some questions in my mind. Thus the purpose for this blog post.

Unavailable

Since I've been using Twitter (let's say 2 months), it has been unavailable easily a dozen times. The site has obviously come crashing head on into growing pains. So where does the problem lie? Scalability with the servers, software architecture, limitations with the underlying programming language? I prefer to look at it from a different approach: resource utilization.

There were some new followers to my Twitter account, and when I reviewed some, I found something that made no sense.

So, there's obviously some value to ringernation to have 100K follows, but regardless of the value, he must be sucking resources when he reads those twitters. In the law of diminishing returns, once you get to this level, what quality of networking is there? If it is simply a way to promote yourself or your web site (as ringertnation has done), then IMHO, it devalues the social tool we're using.

So what would I say to Twitter?

Put a cap on the number of followings
When prompted for to read twitters, pull up to a fixed number of posts (say 50 or 100)
Charge a premium to increase limits above - help pay for some infrastructure and would put an end to abuse.

I would post this on Twitter, but... you guessed it!

See My Presentation on Silverlight Deep Zoom and DotNetNuke

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:06:00 GMT

I'll be presenting at the next Dallas DotNetNuke Users Group on Deep Zoom, Microsoft's new feature in Silverlight 2 that allows for interactive navigation and zooming on collections of extremely high definition images. We'll go over how to add a Silverlight module to DNN and how to create a collection of images in Expression Blend that users can interact with on the web.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
6:30 - 8:30 PM
Microsoft Building, Irving TX

For more and to RSVP, sign up on the Dallas DNN Users Group website.

Free DotNetNuke Training This Week - Standards Compliant Menus with Telerik Controls in DNN

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:51:00 GMT

Catch some free instructor led training this Friday on Telerik's Radmenu, TabStrip, and PanelBar in DotNetNuke. Will Ballard of Ingen Systems will be presenting in an hour long webinar on how to leverage Telerik's controls to create standards compliant valid XHTML pages, improving search engine rankings, less complex code, and faster page loads.

This session is one of a weekly series of free training courses sponsored by Ingen Systems. RSVPs are required so visit Ingen's free weekly training page to sign up for this session and view upcoming sessions.

Compatibility Challenges with Silverlight 2 and Visual Studio SP1 Beta

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:34:00 GMT

Recently, I've been digging into Silverlight 2's Deep Zoom technology which is a part of the upcoming release of .NET 3.5 SP1. have been having fun learning how to bounce between the rich XAML UI tools in Expression Blend and the ever functional Visual Studio 2008.

For months now, I've been working with ASP.NET Dynamic Data, which is also a part of the .NET 3.5 SP1 release. Recently, I upgraded Visual Studio 2008 with the SP1 Beta, which was required to take advantage of the new Wizard in the latest build of Dynamic Data (I'll blog about this in a later post). The upgrade went great and the wizards were allowed to roam freely across the plentiful app domains of my laptop. (a little poetical liberty here!).

It was only when I delved back into Deep Zoom that I realized that there were some breaking changes here. The short story, after blood, sweat, and some serious Googling, is that the VS 2008 SP1 install breaks some of the key components for Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom. (The ones that I noticed were that VS's Intellisense had no knowledge of the root tags in XAML application and there was no option for Design when the XAML file was opened.)

The Silverlight team is rolling out Silverlight Tools Beta 2, which is fully compatible with VS 2008 SP1 Beta and is scheduled to be release within a few weeks. More here.

Can't Attend Tech·Ed? Watch it Online!

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:46:00 GMT

As quoted from the Tech·Ed site itself, "Tech·Ed Online offers a live simulcast of the Keynote address, top Breakout Session recordings, on-site "Tech·Talks" video interviews with subject matter experts, and much more".

Go to Tech·Ed Online

Free Weekly DotNetNuke Training Webcasts

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:22:00 GMT

There are many common questions or areas of interest that we hear in the DNN community.& Will Ballard and I have started a weekly teaching series to address some of these.& It's also a great sounding board for some of the cool things that we've learned in DNN.

Each Friday at 2pm (central time), we will have a live web cast, running +- 1 hour.& RSVPs are required, as space is limited.&

Sign up for a session or view previous sessions. All free!

Give it a try and give us your feedback.

Welcome to I Love C#.NET

jasonk@ingensystems.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:20:00 GMT

This site has been a long time in the making.

I originally purchased the domain name immediately after I started reading my first book on C#:

It did seem much easier than C++ and had many of the best features of Java. Though I had learned VB and some VB.NET, I preferred using a language that I considered cleaner, rmore efficient view of my code (yes, my personal opinion here, but hey, this is my blog :) ).

More to come.