I am presently working on Performance Improvement of my application. So I was going through one nice article which I though I should share with my blog reader. I will be posting more in couple of days.

ASP.NET AJAX Performance Improvement

To translate / migrate your code from C++ to C# or VB.Net very handy utility is available at by Code2Code.net.

The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

Training kit on VS 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 –> click here to download..

Microsoft Codename “Astoria” – Sept 2007 CTP (Community Technology Preview) is released.

Question: What is Microsoft Codename “Astoria”?

Answer: The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within corporate networks and across the Internet. The data service is reachable over regular HTTP requests, and standard HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are used to perform operations against the service.

The payload format for the data exchanged with the service can be controlled by the client and all options are simple, open formats such as plan XML and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data-interchange format).

The use of web-friendly technologies make it ideal as a data back-end for AJAX-style applications, Rich Interactive Applications and other applications that need to operate against data that is across the web.
The first Astoria CTP is a dual release, making Astoria available in the form of downloadable bits that can be used to build data services that are entirely contained within a single computer or network and as an experimental online service that you can use to create online stores that are hosted by Microsoft and are accessible over the Internet.

This September 2007 CTP enables developers to use Astoria together with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework and Tools Beta 2.

The Astoria September 2007 CTP is now available for download.

For more information on this release please check out the announcement on the Astoria Team Blog.

For additional information, updates and for details on the experimental online version of Astoria, go to the Astoria web site at http://astoria.mslivelabs.com

Problem : While loading data from Excel source to SQL destination, I was facing problem that source column contains both Numeric and Alphanumeric type data. While loading this data to SQL, some times values are populated as NULL in SQL instead source column value. I have spend whole day to find out solution for this problem and finally following is the solution I found.

Solution : Set ConnectionString property of Excel source file as following

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=filepath\filename.xls;Extended Properties=”EXCEL 8.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1“;

NOTE: Setting IMEX=1 tells the driver to use Import mode. In this state, the registry setting ImportMixedTypes=Text will be noticed. This forces mixed data to be converted to text. For this to work reliably, you may also have to modify the registry setting, TypeGuessRows=8. The ISAM driver by default looks at the first eight rows and from that sampling determines the datatype. If this eight row sampling is all numeric, then setting IMEX=1 will not convert the default datatype to Text; it will remain numeric.

You must be careful that IMEX=1 not be used indiscriminately. This is IMPORT mode, so the results may be unpredictable if you try to do appends or updates of data in this mode.

Reference : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/194124/en-us

If you are new to SharePoint, you might take a look at this resource guide. It is wealth of SharPoint information in 41 pages.

As Kevin Dean points out on his blog, “the premise behind the attached SharePoint Resource Guide is that almost everything in the booklet is the result of an education customer asking for more information.”

download : http://blogs.msdn.com/hied_mid-atlantic/attachment/4645260.ashx

jQuery is a new type of JavaScript library. It is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

Few links that will help to reach jQuery resources :

• Downloading jQuery
• jQuery Documentation
• Tutorials
• Plugin Repository
• Using jQuery for AJAX in ASP.NET

Improvements in VS 2008 Beta 2 are listed below. Each improvement link will lead you to the explanation page of that improvement with examples.  I must say each link worth visiting, it’s written by the Scott Guthrie, General Manager of Microsoft Developer Division.

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

• VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support

• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense
• VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging

Language Improvements and LINQ

• Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
• Extension Methods
• Lambda Expressions
• Query Syntax
• Anonymous Types

Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL

• Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
• Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
• Part 3: Querying our Database
• Part 4: Updating our Database
• Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data. Office development is much richer – including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon. WCF and Workflow projects and designers are included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more…

You can download the Visual Studio 2008 product here. You can alternatively download the smaller VS 2008 Express Editions here.

Reference : Scott Guthrie’s Blog

We have seen at many places we are preferred to use Custom entity classes over Dataset, I came across some useful articles which has reason behind this, and sample code for Base entity and entity collection classes (including non-generic as well as generic(.Net 2.0) version).

On the Way to Mastering ASP.NET: Introducing Custom Entity Classes
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/En-US/library/aa479317.aspx

In brief

Problem with DataSet

- Lack of Abstraction

o The first and most obvious reason to consider alternatives is the DataSet’s inability to decouple your code from the database structure.

- Weakly-Typed

o DataSets are weakly-typed, which makes them error prone and likely to impact your development effort.

- Not Object-Oriented

o DataSets are objects and C# and Visual Basic .NET are object-oriented (OO) languages doesn’t automatically make your usage of them object-oriented. The “hello world” of OO programming is typically a Person class that is sub-classed by an Employee class. DataSets, however, don’t make this type of inheritance, or most other OO techniques, possible (or at least natural/intuitive).

Benefit with Custom Entity Classes

- Take advantage of OO techniques such as inheritance and encapsulation

- You can add custom behavior

- Object-Relational Mapping

- Mapping Custom Collections

- Managing Relationships between two entities in Object oriented way

Some good SharePoint Server 2003, 2007 Developer Resources

http://www.spsfaq.com/
http://www.wssdemo.com/
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/
http://wss.collutions.com/
http://www.sharepointu.com/
http://www.sharepointcustomization.com/
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/sharepoint/
http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
http://msdn.microsoft.com/sharepoint
http://portal.sharepointsolutions.com/
http://sharepointd2d.com/
http://www.spsdev.com/