February 2005 - Posts

posted Friday, February 25, 2005 10:38 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Office Web Components, C# and Interop Wrappers

Here's a tiny little "gotcha". I haven't really looked much at the Office Web Components before but I wanted a Chart control today that looks really nice and this has to be the easiest way of getting one :-) I found Read More
posted Friday, February 25, 2005 2:05 AM by Mike Taulty :: 3 Comments

SQL Server 2005 Service Broker and WSE2.0 SOAP Messaging

Following up on this previous post about SQL Server 2005 Service Broker, I've been writing a SOAP message transport for the Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 to move messages using ServiceBroker whilst still gaining advantage Read More
posted Wednesday, February 23, 2005 4:29 PM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

SysInternals & Rootkits

One of the big security fears at the moment is around Rootkits. I'm a long way from being any kind of security person but the idea of a Rootkit is that you install something malicious onto your PC by mistake and the install modifies Read More
posted Wednesday, February 23, 2005 4:13 PM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Filtered Exception Handling in .NET

I saw a piece of code on a screen at DevWeek the other day and a description that went along side it that left me thinking about something that you don't see very often in .NET. The piece of code looked like something like this; Read More
posted Tuesday, February 22, 2005 8:49 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Human Networks

I found this on Slashdot and I think I've read something about it before but the RedTacton site and their press release about using the human body as a data network is pretty interesting. Whether you actually need this in the Read More
posted Monday, February 21, 2005 5:39 AM by Mike Taulty :: 5 Comments

Wrapping IAsyncResult

I've been trying to write some code and struggling to find continuous blocks of time to do it in. However, something that I keep coming across is a scenario where I want to wrap up some code that already has an asynchronous nature Read More
posted Monday, February 21, 2005 2:36 AM by Mike Taulty :: 3 Comments

In-car music bliss

I'm based a long way from the Microsoft offices in the UK (it's my fault) and so I spend quite a lot of time in my car. I also trek around the country to lots of different sites so that means more time in the car. My car's got Read More
posted Thursday, February 17, 2005 8:28 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

MSDN Nugget List Growing

The list of "MSDN Nugget" videos that we have published on the UK MSDN website is growing nicely. We've gone from around 4 to around 10 separate items up there right now. It'll continue to grow as there's a Read More
posted Thursday, February 17, 2005 7:48 AM by Mike Taulty :: 1 Comments

On Garbage Collection, Scope and Object Lifetimes

I posted this the other day and then Marcus only went and read it and spotted the glaring error I'd left in the middle of it so this is a re-post... (thanks Marcus!!) For no obvious reason I've sat through a few mentions or even Read More
posted Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:53 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Devweek 2005

And now for another "message from our sponsors" ;-) I'm speaking at DevWeek next week down in London Village somewhere. You can find the details from their website, I'm on the SQL Server track on Day 2 There's also Read More
posted Tuesday, February 15, 2005 3:34 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Microsoft UK Technical Roadshow

The big shindig that is the UK Microsoft Technical Roadshow (for developers, IT professionals and security folks) is now publicly announced. You can go here http://www.microsoft.com/uk/resources/techroadshow/default.mspx to see Read More
posted Monday, February 14, 2005 3:26 PM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Indigo ServiceContract's

Don Box (no less) has just posted an entry around ServiceContract's in Indigo with some detail as to how various bits fit together. Generally, I try and skim-read blog postings but, from time to time, I have to go and "Mark Read More
posted Monday, February 14, 2005 3:15 PM by Mike Taulty :: 2 Comments

SQL Server 2005 Service Broker & WSE 2.0

I've been thinking about trying to use SQL Server 2005 Service Broker as a mechanism for transporting WSE 2.0 messages. Note that what I'm doing is highly dubious as WSE2.0 isn't supported on .NET Framework 2.0 so it's purely Read More
posted Monday, February 14, 2005 3:03 PM by Mike Taulty :: 1 Comments

It's Magic!

I'm in the process of trying to put together a bit of code but I can't seem to find a spare 3-4 hours to sit down and sort something out. Sometimes I really miss those days where I could stick my head down for 16 hours of code Read More
posted Wednesday, February 09, 2005 11:53 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

David Chappell on Indigo

David Chappell has just written a really, really (yes, it deserves 2 "really's") excellent introductory article to Indigo over here on MSDN. I've just read the thing end to end and it's excellent - the thing that I Read More
posted Wednesday, February 09, 2005 10:51 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Clemens Vasters posting on Indigo

Clemens Vasters has started to post some bits and pieces around Indigo starting with a hello world sample and also this interesting post which suggests that his expectation (and I think I agree) is that people will increasingly Read More
posted Tuesday, February 08, 2005 4:40 PM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Indigo/Avalon CTP's coming?

According to this story over at CNET News, VSLive had an announcement that a CTP preview of Indigo would ship in March along with an updated Avalon CTP. Sounds like a lot of stuff to play with in the Spring. Read More
posted Tuesday, February 08, 2005 2:33 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Smart Client - FAQ, FAQ, FAQ

Some new resources for Windows Forms developers have gone up at the MSDN Smart Client centre. These take the form of 3 different FAQ pages being; Smart Client FAQ Windows Forms FAQ .NET Compact Framework Read More
posted Monday, February 07, 2005 5:06 AM by Mike Taulty :: 6 Comments

I want to buy your product, please let me!

Seagate has a 100GB portable USB 2.0 hard drive that powers itself off the USB ports. It's exactly what I want. Here it is; http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/portable/ Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to buy it in Read More
posted Sunday, February 06, 2005 9:43 AM by Mike Taulty :: 1 Comments

Notifiable Queries with SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications

I've been around this loop a few times and I'm not learning from it! If you work with SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications through ADO.NET 2.0 then you'll more than likely be working with a class called SqlDependency. A few times Read More
posted Friday, February 04, 2005 4:28 AM by Mike Taulty :: 2 Comments

WebCast: Connected Systems and the Microsoft Office System

I was just flicking through some mail when I noticed this;     http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032268546&Culture=en-US It's a webcast. It's on Connected Systems and the Read More
posted Friday, February 04, 2005 3:53 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Understanding SmartTags

There's a clear,  concise article over on MSDN about what an Office 2003 SmartTag actually is and how you'd build one. Read More
posted Friday, February 04, 2005 3:47 AM by Mike Taulty :: 1 Comments

.NET Framework 2.0 Source Code?

One of the things I remember around the timeline between the .NET announcement in 2000 and the first real ship date in 2002 was that there were rumours of a plan to ship the source code to the framework (much like you got in Read More
posted Friday, February 04, 2005 2:49 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

ChangeThis

Late in the game no doubt, I've discovered ChangeThis.Com. A truly fascinating web site - it probably needs a warning slapped on it because I could see it sapping a lot of your time :-) So far I've had a read of "The Six Read More
posted Thursday, February 03, 2005 7:03 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Y!Q and searching

It seems like Searching is hotting up. First there was www.a9.com and then along game Google with Google Suggest and then comes MSN Search and now Yahoo arrives with Y!Q. It's good to see competition in this area as it's Read More
posted Thursday, February 03, 2005 3:09 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Microsoft Webcasts

The Webcasts that Microsoft puts out tend to be scattered in lots of different locations around both the Corporate site and the regional (e.g. UK) sites. Someone's noticed this and created a new one-stop page which links you off Read More
posted Wednesday, February 02, 2005 8:42 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Authorizing WSE web service access with X509SecurityTokens

When you read the WSE 2.0 help about authorising access to web services you'll spot that under the UsernameToken and KerberosToken sections there are links to a couple of topics;     How to authorize the message Read More
posted Wednesday, February 02, 2005 4:44 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

PatternShare.Org

Following up on that last post, I noticed that there's a new community site called PatternShare which is providing a Wiki around a whole tonne of patterns spanning across; Business Architecture Integration Architecture Read More
posted Wednesday, February 02, 2005 4:29 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Plug for MSDN Patterns and Practices

I wrote this little article for the UK MSDN Flash Newsletter the other day so I thought I'd publish it here as well. Let’s go back in time to around three or four years ago, when the majority of people were Read More
posted Wednesday, February 02, 2005 1:07 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Still making chips from transistors?

Blimey - it looks like the days of the transistor could be numbered (no, I don't pretend to understand this stuff ;-)). Read More
posted Tuesday, February 01, 2005 3:25 PM by Mike Taulty :: 3 Comments

3D Desktops?

Wow, this 3D desktop for XP looks interesting - haven't tried it yet but wouldn't mind putting it into a VPC image and seeing how it works out. Read More
posted Tuesday, February 01, 2005 8:11 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Keith Brown on UsernameToken security for WSE 2.0

Keith Brown has got a great article over at MSDN around how you can secure web services with WSE 2.0 UsernameTokens. I often fall back on using UsernameTokens for demos of WSE functionality because they're easy to understand Read More
posted Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:50 AM by Mike Taulty :: 6 Comments

MSDN .NET Nuggets

The UK MSDN site has a new section today where we are posting what we've called .NET Nuggets (!) The idea is to put up a piece of video which looks a little like a 10 minute web cast on a .NET topic (we've widened it out a little Read More
posted Tuesday, February 01, 2005 1:36 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

Endpoint References and XML Canonicalisation

Interesting post from Martin Gudgin over here on the work that's going on at the W3C around WS-Addressing and how this leads to a need to be able to compare endpoint references which then leads to a great description of the Read More
posted Tuesday, February 01, 2005 1:02 AM by Mike Taulty :: 0 Comments

.NET and "Mid Life Crises"

Interesting post over here about "mid-life crises" in .NET applications. To summarise (badly, no doubt)... The post is about a .NET server side application honouring a large number of requests and, as part of serving Read More