Although the .NET Framework simplifies the challenge of developing distributed Web applications, it increases the complexity of deploying, and then managing, those applications. The adoption of Web 2.0 techniques and SOA Web Services only amplify this complexity, making performance ass...

The Windows Presentation Foundation community is growing because WPF facilitates the development of better graphical user interfaces and graphical applications. But WPF's tri-dimensional resources are not developed compared to DirectX’s capabilities and existing hardware potential. T...

With PowerBuilder 11 Sybase gave developers what we have long hoped for – the possibility of taking an application created in a client/server architecture and turning it into a Web application, almost without having to move the code; and it's better if you don't use a server applicat...

At the end of my previous article (DNDJ, Vol. 6, issue 4), I explained the theory behind the two major technologies to be used in timing the market. On the one hand, we are dealing with distributed computing – a process whereby large computationally intensive tasks can be broken up a...

In the recent past, it was common for Windows applications to be manually compiled and built directly on a developer's desktop computer. This caused many problems. For example, the developer may have had a different version of a component used in the application, or you couldn't build ...

In Part 1 we started to develop a small racing game using XNA Game Studio Express 2.0. We learned about the game loop and how it's implemented by the XNA (by using the Update and Draw methods) framework. We also created our first track on the screen and four cars started moving on the ...

Call me a purist but I like to make my code as object-oriented and well structured as possible. I like to tweak the design and to work toward the overall quality of the code. My refactoring olfactory sense is quick to react to any offending odor in the code and it's becoming more sensi...

I've always been puzzled by the ability of some traders to consistently make money. A cynic would say that anyone who is able to profit in all adverse economic environments (recessions, depressions, etc.) is most likely able to do so because they are getting information that is not gen...

The computer desktop today is what the television was to people in the 1980s. It's the single most important channel for consumer entertainment and information. The computer desktop - as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television - has bec...

The programming language dictates how developers can describe data structures, interfaces, and algorithms. The libraries provide an extensive array of advanced services to the program such as data access, communications, and graphical user interface. The language and libraries are call...

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys li...

In this article we're going to take a database and create our own mini version of an 'Amazon-like' item lookup. That is to say, any .NET or .NET-compatible client will be able to look up items in our database via the Web by simply providing a UPC. This article will show you how. To com...

Maybe some of you remember a time when we created a sprite on a piece of graph paper and afterwards hacked zeroes and ones in so we could see something eventually move on a TV screen. I have to admit that those days have been gone for a long time and a lot of things have happened in IT...

db4o, an open source object database system with broad industry applicability, belongs to a popular database management systems that has close to 2 million downloads to date. Here we'll illustrate the features and application areas of such a database and compare db4o against relational...

Like many world-changing technologies before it, SharePoint has caught IS organizations off-guard. Early adopters within the business established SharePoint environments on their own. These users assumed they could manage these environments independently without IS's knowledge or perha...

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issues of this magazine, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be re...

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides the foundation for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows Vista, blending together application UI, documents, and media content. WPF contains two data sources for XML and objects. To enhance productivi...

In Visual Studio 2003 and earlier, the build process for Visual Basic and C# projects was hard-coded, and built into Visual Studio itself. The only build scripting tool that Microsoft offered was nmake, and a companion tool called build.exe that provided some support for concurrent bui...

C# 3.0 represents a radical new approach to .NET development. The new language features were added primarily to support Language Integrated Query (LINQ), allowing you to query data using the same constructs regardless of where the data is currently stored. However, you'll find that the...

To take advantage of the OpenSocial implementation in Orkut sandbox, you have to create a Google Gadget with the OpenSocial feature, post the gadget on the Internet, and then add the URL of the gadget as an application. As I looked into the Google gadget API to build this, I found some...

Enterprises frequently have to deal with part of their infrastructure that doesn't have the privilege of uninterrupted connectivity. Such system environments designed using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) need a way to manage uncertain connectivity. SOA as an architectural paradigm...

.NET lets us easily serialize an object into XML and deserialize XML into its corresponding object. This functionality has been available since .NET 1.0. The introduction of new data type called XML in SQL Server 2005 gives us even more advantages that come in handy with Stored Procedu...

You might be tempted to say that once you enter the .NET world, you'll never look back. Nothing seems too easy for you at this moment, what with the brand-new .NET 3.0 that's just out, high tech and still unexplored in its entirety.

At this point, we should think about the permissions our component needs. We're creating our own code group and permission set, so we start from scratch: this means that we'll have no permissions at all to start with. So, in addition to the permission to call unmanaged code (which we n...

Most of the applications we software developers build need to interact somehow with data from a database. The .NET Framework defined by Microsoft provides a rich set of objects to manage database interaction; these classes are collectively referred to as ADO.NET and the latest versions...

As both a .NET programmer and ColdFusion developer, I always wondered how I could leverage the world of .NET in ColdFusion. Both platforms come with powerful features and using them together might be a wonderful friendship, if one could only make them cooperate. There are two worlds ou...

We're living in an information age. Our daily life involves absorbing useful information and filtering out garbage. Information (data) plays an important role in our daily life. People, especially businesses, need to organize large amounts of disparate information. The information need...

When building WCF services you'll eventually need to integrate common logic that may be applied across a number of services, contracts, endpoints, or operations. Examples include logging, security, error handling, and message or parameter manipulation. Since this kind of logic cuts acr...

Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets are a great way to add value by addressing targeted and focused user scenarios. Think souped-up system tray - always-on applications typically used for monitoring something that often drives, based on notification, to a broader range of related scenarios. ...

To solve problems DHTML, JavaScript and XML can't handle, you sometimes need so-called 'rich' client components for your Web applications. Traditionally, this is the realm of Java (applets) or ActiveX controls.

The significance of blogging is not the word 'blog' whether used as a verb or a noun, but its role as a harbinger of the game-changing Web-as-platform revolution. In particular, the migration of blogging from the individual toward the enterprise...

Predicate is a new feature introduced in .NET 2.0 in conjunction with Generic collections. Generics are also new in .NET 2.0; Generic collections are by nature strong-typed. What that means is that if we declare a generic list of Address objects, we can only insert an Address type of o...

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

We are on the cusp of the next giant step in software applications. It's a new frontier that is there for the bold of mind to embrace. This new caliber of applications will be hugely beneficial to mankind, the quality of our lives, and the safety and security of our nation. These appli...

The capabilities and advantages of using the Microsoft .NET Framework are undeniable. It provides the ability to rapidly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, security-enhanced solutions with Web Services, enabling businesses to integrate their systems more rapidly and agilely and ...

Anyone who develops applications for devices can vouch for the importance of having a powerful emulator that can help accelerate the overall development and debugging process. This articles talks about the new Microsoft Device Emulator and how you can exploit some of its capabilities a...

In the February issue of .NET Developers Journal, I described how implicit operations such as the boxing of value types can dramatically increase the amount of memory your .NET Compact Framework application uses. At the time, the tools available to help you get a picture of how your a...

Visual Studio project templates and item templates are reusable and customizable stubs that can simplify the development process. They provide pre-defined starting points for the project or the project items, thus removing the need to create new projects and items from scratch every ti...

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) provides tools and features that can be used in almost all areas of software development. As Microsoft VSTS has a broad spectrum of features and target areas, some of its core feature areas are still not well understood by many people working ...

You have probably seen applications that control their size and positions with greater fluidity than you can get with normal .NET Forms, such as maintaining an aspect ratio while resizing, or docking to the side of a screen. Thankfully there are ways of gaining access to the more power...