May 2008 Entries
The other day I was installing a Windows Server 2003 R2 32-Bit virtual machine to install Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. After installing the OS and then set it up as a Domain Controller it was time to install Exchange Server 2007. So I inserted the Installation DVD only to get a "This installation package is not supported by this processor type" error. So I decided to look for the requirements on Exchange Server 2007 only to find out that I needed a 64-bit OS. You see I'm the kind of guy who likes to get his hands dirty so I...
A long time ago I was trying to set up my Exchange Mailbox on my new Windows Vista 64-bit laptop and I needed to access Mail Setup. So I thought well this is easy, just use the new start menu in Windows Vista and typed "Mail" and it should come up. Like you can see in the picture to the left when I type Mail the only thing that comes up in the Programs section is Windows Mail. So the next thing I decided to do is go to the Control Panel and just open it from there. I...
I was in need of querying some sort of database or web service to clean up a user entered address. I was going to go the route of screen scraping, but after doing some research I read in the USPS Web Site about their Web Tools and their Address Information APIs (AIA). Under the AIA you have 3 tools: Address Standardization, Zip Code Lookup, and City/State Lookup. I was in need of Address Standardization, so I started reading. Their process and documentation did not seem so straightforward so here is a more simplified help on how to do it. Step...
This is more of a "mental" note for me than anything else, but I would like to share it with everyone as well. The DateTime.ToString method has 2 overloads, one with no parameters and the other with a string parameter. I would like to talk about the second one (hence the title of this post). You can pass a custom format pattern as the parameter to show the date anyway you want. Here are some of the possible values: Pattern Description Example yyyy Full Year 2008 yy Year 08 MM Month 05 MMM...
One of the great things about LINQ is it's deferred execution. Read about deferred execution here and here. What does this mean to us developers? Well it means many things, but one of those things is that you can dynamically construct your LINQ expressions based on some input. Let's say you have a search form and you want to add the filters only when they are selected. You can easily do this like this: var q = DB.Products.Where(p => p.Published); if (categoryID != null) q = q.Where(p => p.CategoryID == categoryID); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(description)) q =...
Have you missed the Heroes Happen Here event in Ft Lauderdale? Do you want to revisit some of the topics? Then don't miss today's Mini-Launch at Devry University in Miramar. I will be showcasing the demos from the "Reach End-Users with Next Generation Web Applications" session. My friend, Max Trinidad, will be talking about Server Core and the Entity Framework.
Join me and Joe Healy, aka the DevFish, for the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here event in Ft Lauderdale. There will be a lot of content regarding Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008. The event is at the Broward Convention Center: 1950 Eisenhower Blvd,Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316 See you there!
I noticed that my outlook RSS feeds were not synching. After verifying the feeds were ok I searched for a solution and found a hotfix for it. As of today you have to request the hotfix to Microsoft support since it is not publicly available yet. Follow the instructions on how to obtain it.
Two days ago I got an email from Tony Davis letting me know that Simple-Talk is coming out with an eBook. The book will include a combination of the best ASP.NET articles published by simple-talk. My article, Take Row-Level Control of Your GridView is part of the eBook. My coworker, John Papa, is a co author along with many other authors. Stay tuned for more info on where to download the book.
When you query the WSDL of a WCF service that is hosted with HTTPS the location of the service will be pointed to the machine name by default. So if a client is querying your service by pointing to https://www.yourdomain.com/YourService/Service.svc?wsdl the WSDL will come back with something like this:
<wsdl:service name="ServiceName"> <wsdl:port name="HttpService" binding="tns:HttpService"> <soap12:address location="https://MachineName/YourService/Service.svc" /> <wsa10:EndpointReference> <wsa10:Address>https://MachineName/YourService/Service.svc</wsa10:Address> </wsa10:EndpointReference> </wsdl:port></wsdl:service>
Therefore...