Exposing your data using .NET WCF Data Services: Part 1

on .NET, WCF Data Services

Last year I wrote the post Data as a Service: The next big thing? where I mentioned that in a *Devices + Services era, *one issue we face is that in many cases it is not possible to access useful data to build consumer applications over. I summed up that post by saying the following: As a result I really think that for the Devices + Services to succeed we need more data to consume… if you have data that can be shared to make other services possible, simpler or better then share it! It’s time to make DaaS the next…

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Visual Studio 2012: New Features

on .NET, VisualStudio 2012

 So you will have probably heard that Visual Studio 2012 has been released to manufacturing earlier this month. With that announcement I thought I’d write up a quick post highlighting some of the new features in Visual Studio 2012 that I like. 1) Opening solution files between Visual Studio 2012 & Visual Studio 2010 without conversion If you have a Visual Studio Solution file that was created in Visual Studio 2010 you can open and modify the same solution in Visual Studio 2012 without having to upgrade your projects which means you can go back and forward between the…

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Beginners Guide: Hosting a Silverlight application on Windows Azure

on .NET, Silverlight, Visual Studio 2010, Windows Azure

I was wondering how easy it might be to build a Silverlight application and have it host in on Windows Azure and it turned out to be much simpler than I thought! The steps below will demonstrate everything from creating a Silverlight application all the way to having it live hosted on Windows Azure. It’s easy? Step 1: Create a new Azure Application in Visual Studio 2010 To begin we’ll start off by creating a new ‘Windows Azure Cloud Service’ in Visual Studio 2010 by selecting the ‘Cloud’ option under the Visual C# section as shown below, for…

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IIS6 HTTP Compression/CSV Export issues

on .NET, HTP Compression, IIS

I’ve been investigating this problem for a couple of days and hope that this post would save others some grief. Here’s the situation: 2 web servers, same configuration (at least that’s what it seemed), and on one server I can successfully export data to a downloadable CSV file but on the other server the CSV export downloads as an ASPX page instead of the CSV file. Seems strange when all configurations on the server is supposedly the same. After several unsuccessful comparisons of configuration settings …etc I’ve gone down to the level of analyzing the HTTP…

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To Get Certified Or Not To Get Certified?

on .NET, Certification, General

Thoughts on my mind as I get ready for upgrading my MCAD .NET to MCPD Web… Getting certified was something that I got interested in doing not long after finishing my degree at university back in 2005. Given that I was involved with Microsoft stuff and .NET at the time my choice of certification was to be Microsoft Certified and more specifically Certified in .NET so in 2006 I started working towards the Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) .NET certification and had that completed, this of course was in .NET 1.1. I personally find a lot of value in…

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Christchurch CodeCamp Update

on .NET, General

The planning for the the first Code Camp in Christchurch is moving along pretty well but the main thing we need for this event to succeed is YOU, if you have not registered for the event already please do so. Below are updated details on the event. TO REGISTER GO TO: https://www.codecamp.net.nz  Trimble Navigation, Birmingham Drive, Addington, Christchurch. Map here Speakers are confirmed and sessions are close to finalised. Chris Auld (Intergen, MVP) Jeremy Boyd (Mindscape, MVP) Darryl Burling (Microsoft) Chris Crowe (Trimble, MVP) Edwin Dando (Clarus) Peter Jones (Intergen, MVP) Bryn Lewis (Clarus) Pat Martin…

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Rendering ASP.NET controls in non MS Browsers

on .NET, Browsers

Probably all of you know that stuff already but for those that dont. ASP.NET by default does not treat non MS browsers as uplevel browsers leading to ASP.NET controls being rendered incorrectly. Well the solution for that is to include browser caps in the .config files of the application. Here is a great article that explains all about this, and here is a browserCap section already written to handle non MS browsers including many of the unfamiliar ones.…

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Role based Forms Authentication for ASP .NET

on .NET

A question came up today on the NZ.NET mailing list about using 2 web.config files for admin authentication and user authentication using one Form for both. Nic blogs about an article on how do deal with this, see his blog here…

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C# and VB.NET Comparison Cheat Sheet

on .NET

While browsing some resources on the web today, I came accross this: “A quick cheat sheet that highlights some key syntactical differences between C# and VB.NET. While this is not all inclusive this cheat sheet proves to be a handy reference.”  See it [here](https://www.harding.edu/USER/fmccown/WWW/vbnet_csharp_comparison.html). Very useful!…

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