Weekly Link Post 135

March 7, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

 SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

  • Run a Stored Procedure when SQL Server starts – “Recently I needed to setup a SQL Server box so it had access to a mapped drive to support a legacy application. I created the below stored procedure, which utilises the subst command. to get this done.”

Community/Technology Events & Training

 Internet, Software, Technology & Science 

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Blogging and Social Networking

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

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Great Link Blog Sources

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Categories: Links

Weekly Link Post 134

February 28, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week.

Application Development/Design

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

Community/Technology Events & Training

Internet, Software, Technology & Science

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

–

Great Link Blog Sources

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Categories: Links

Using GetProperties() in C#

February 28, 2010 Rhonda 2 comments

Reflection, in the simple terms, is the ability to extract information about an object during runtime. I found a great explanation of why Reflection is used in a tutorial titled Reflection in C#.

With reflection we can dynamically create an instance of a type, bind the type to an existing object, or get the type from an existing object and invoke its methods or access its fields and properties. If Attributes (C#) are used in application, then with help of reflection we can access these attributes. It can be even used to emit Intermediate Language code dynamically so that the generated code can be executed directly.

I have been doing some research and test apps using the GetProperties method. GetProperties basically returns array of PropertyInfo objects.

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Sample Program

using System;
using System.Reflection;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var person = new Person
        {
            Name = "Rhonda",
            FaveShow = "Fringe, Lost",
            FaveMovie = "Star Trek",
            FaveSong = "Contagious"
        };

        var type = typeof(Person);
        var properties = type.GetProperties();

        foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}",
                             property.Name, property.GetValue(person, null));
        }

        Console.Read();
    }
}

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string FaveShow { get; set; }
    public string FaveMovie { get; set; }
    public string FaveSong { get; set; }
}

C# Listing on Snipplr 

As you can see below there are several other methods available as well as GetProperties.

Reflection1

 

Output

Reflection2

 

Additional Information

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Categories: .NET General, C#

Awesome Blogs of the Month – FEB ‘10

February 26, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

blogging_101

There are tons of great blogs out there. Each month I will shine a spotlight on blogs that I access often and find useful. Hopefully, you will find something of use too.

I pick one blog from each category. The categories include Application Development, Database Development, Science/Technology, Productivity and Health.

Application Development – The Absent Minded Coder | The very informative blog of Jonathan Birkholz (JB), an application developer at EPS Software.

Database Development – Jonathan Gardner | A blog with a focus on SQL Server and related technology.

Science/Technology – Engadget | All things technology

Productivity/LifeHacks – Dumb Little Man | Shares ideas to make the everyday person more productive in life.

Health/Fitness – Yahoo Health | Good overall health information.

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Until next month…

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Categories: Links

Weekly Link Post 133

February 19, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week. I am going to be quite busy this weekend, so this is an early release. Have a great weekend!

Application Development/Design

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

Community/Technology Events & Training

Internet, Software, Technology & Science

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Blogging and Social Networking

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

–

Great Link Blog Sources

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Categories: Links

Weekly Link Post 132

February 14, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week. Hope everyone had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Application Development/Design

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

Community/Technology Events & Training

Internet, Software, Technology & Science

Blogging and Social Networking 

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Health, Fitness and Recipes

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

–

Great Link Blog Sources

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Categories: Links

HDNUG Meeting – 02/11/10 – Recap

February 14, 2010 Rhonda Leave a comment

I attended the February Houston .NET User Group meeting. There was a great turnout (80-90) considering how bad the weather was. The sponsor was New Horizons, an independent IT training company.

hdnuglogo       newhorizons

Announcements
Some people from TechSmith will be here for next month’s meeting
Meeting #100 is coming up quick. There will possibly be big prizes

Main Presentation
Markus Egger from EPS Software did a great presentation on C# 4.0 focusing mainly on the Dynamic aspects.

eps     codemag  

Types of .NET Lanuages

  • Traditional – C#, VB.NET
  • Functional – F# — Book recommendation: Expert F#
  • Dynamic – IronPython, IronRuby

Dynamic (Python, Ruby, JavaScript) – Advantages

  • Simple
  • Implicitly typed
  • No compilation

One of the main disadvantages of dynamic languages is the lack of Intellisense support.

Static (C#, VB.NET) languages – Advantages

  • Performant
  • Intelligent tools
  • Better scaling

DLR – Dynamic Language Runtime

dlr

DynamicObject class

REST

Named and Optional Parameters

Improved COM Support

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Markus Egger’s Information

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hdnugpic2     hdnugpic1

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Categories: .NET General, C#, Community

Weekly Link Post 131

February 7, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

Here is the latest installment of links that I have found interesting in the past week. Way to go Saints!

Application Development/Design

SQL Server, Compliance and PowerShell

  • More Free SQL Server DBA Training Videos Online – The SQLBits conference in Great Britain videotapes their sessions and makes them available for public viewing. This weekend, they announced that last fall’s sessions are online now – and it’s all free!
  • SSIS: Make your output files dynamic – I wanted to build a little more flexibility into my packages. Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply modify a stored procedure to include additional columns, and these changes would be reflected in the output files, with no further work required? Here’s an outline of my first steps towards achieving this.
  • SQL Server Table Variables – A table variable provides functionality similar to a standard variable and a local temporary table combined.

 Community/Technology Events & Training

Internet, Software and General Technology

Self-Improvement, Productivity and Career

Sports, Entertainment and Everything Else

  • Icy Saturn Moon Burps Up Heat and Ice – The icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus appears to occasionally belch up blobs of warm ice, findings that help explain the mysterious heat seen there, scientists now suggest.
  • ‘Lost’ recap: What’s Your Worldview? - This was forwarded to me by a co-worker. You are advised not to read this if you have not seen the Lost season premier.
  • Our best look yet at Pluto – Here’s what astronomers say about the new set of Pluto images: Hubble’s view isn’t sharp enough to see craters or mountains, if they exist on the surface, but Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain.
  • Dilbert comics I Found Funny: 02-01
  • Movie Trailers:  The Last Airbender

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Great Link Blog Sources

–

Happy Surfing.

^..^

Categories: Links

Generating Getters and Setters in Eclipse

February 7, 2010 Rhonda 1 comment

I am taking Software Development with Java this semester, so not only am I learning a new language, but a new IDE. Eclipse is one of the most popular of the Java Integrated Development Environments.

eclipse_ide

There is a nice feature in Eclipse that saves a lot typing. It is the Generate Getters and Setters… option on the Source menu.

In the lab we did in class last week there were three main variables.

GenGettersAndSetters1-Eclipse 

 

In Eclipse, go to the Source menu and select Generate Getters and Setters…

GenGettersAndSetters-Eclipse

 

In the Getters and Setters dialog, select which fields you want to create the getter/setter for. In this case, I want all three, so I click the [Select All] button and then click [ok].

GenGettersAndSetters3-Eclipse

 

Magically, all of the getters and setter code is generated for you.

GenGettersAndSetters4-Eclipse

 

Java Lab Source Code 

This works well for straight forward variables. I’m sure it is not the best approach for more advanced situations, but it sure saves a lot of typing.Whew

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Categories: Java

Houston C# SIG Meeting – 01/19/10 – Recap

February 2, 2010 Rhonda Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Houston C# SIG meeting. Ken Getz did presentations on both Silverlight and LINQ to Objects.

Silverlight

Ken defined Silverlight as a programmable browser plugin that supports animations, vector graphics and videos.

Some features include –

  • Works on Mac/Linux/Windows
  • Client-side technologies
  • Uses XAML for declarative design
  • Expression Blend – best software to use for Silverlight/XAML design
  • Visual Studio 2010 includes the components needed to build Silverlight apps out of the box

The following site allows you to verify if your pc is able to run Silverlight applications http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx

Silverlight is basically an HTML page with an <object> tag.

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LINQ to Objects

There are several LINQ providers –

  • Objects
  • SQL
  • DataSets
  • XML
  • Entities

Example Usage

string[] geeks = { “Sheldon”, “Leonard”, “Howard”, “Raj”};

var myQuery = from g in geeks
              orderby g
              select g;

Console.WriteLine(“My Favorite Geeks”);

foreach (var x in myQuery)
{
    Console.WriteLine(x);
}

image

Ken provided a very informative presentation on LINQ to Objects and I am glad I was able to catch it.

Ken’s LINQ demo code

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Categories: .NET General, C#, Community