August .NET Users Group Meeting

The topic for this month's Kansas City .NET User Group meeting was "Introduction to System.Xml and Web Services" and the presenter was Microsoft MVP in XML, Jeff Julian. He's the creator of the .NET Book Club and hosts the blogging system Geekswithblogs.net.

Some highlights (Microsoft propaganda?) from the meeting. I forgot my notebook so they're from memory.

• Microsoft is deprecating XSLT in favor of XQuery. System.Xml.Xsl is going to be marked as obsolete in .NET 2.0 and will return warning messages when its used.
• XmlDocument and the XML DOM are also being deprecated in favor of improved XML streaming techniques that will allow editing not just appending to the end of the stream.
• SAX is bad because its Java and its old. (See what I mean about the propaganda?)
  
• He demonstrated using XmlDocument, XPathNavigator, XmlReader, XmlWriter, and used a web service to demonstrate XML serialization.

I ran into former co-workers Galen and Derrick Vidacak at the meeting and had a good time talking to Derrick for a while after the meeting.

Retrieving Stored Proc Info

Here's an article about retrieving information about stored procedures in SQL Server.
HOW TO: Retrieve information of Stored Procedure in SQL Server

Tools and controls

Here's a list of some tools and controls

Lookout Search Addin For Outlook

Microsoft bought Lookout and has released their addin as a free download.

Download details: Lookout V1.2: "Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email from directly within Outlook - in seconds..."

IISReset Utility

IISReset Utility: "One of the most significant reliability improvements in IIS 5.0 and Windows 2000 Server is the reliable restart feature (IISReset) of IIS 5.0. It allows an administrator to restart Web services without rebooting the computer from a command line. This article discusses the IISReset utility, its options, & how to use the command line version of the tool."

Have you "met Dr. Thip"?

The Saturnian moons that will be observed by the Cassini probe are:

Mimas [MY-mass]
Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus]
Tethys [TEE-this]
Dione [dy-OH-nee]
Rhea [REE-a]
Titan [TY-tun]
Hyperion [hi-PEER-ee-en]
Iapetus [eye-AP-i-tus]
Phoebe [FEE-bee]

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products

Microsoft has some .NET 2.0 development tools at MSDN Lab that have gone to beta and can be freely downloaded. They include "Visual C# 2005 Express", "Visual Web Developer
2005 Express", and "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition".

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta Products

Here's a couple of links with some more info:
Whidbey Beta 1 Ships
Visual Studio 2005 Express Products (Includes a link to MSDN Express that didn't seem to be with the other express products)

Paint.NET

Paint.NET: "Paint.NET is a senior design project aided by a mentor at Microsoft. It is a paint program designed entirely by students and written using Microsoft's .NET Framework. The program makes it easier to create and edit photos. It maintains some of the best features of the original MS-Paint application and includes new, powerful tools. Such new tools include a history storage for undos and redos, and powerful multi-layering which is often seen only in high-quality, expensive photo-applications. This product was engineered with the latest in graphics and coding technology such as the new C# language from Microsoft, and the GDI+ graphics libraries. These programming frameworks allowed for the creation of a speedy, responsive application with an amazing array of graphic capabilities."

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000

They've got a lot of useful utilities. Including:

Process Explorer v8.4
Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.

Autoruns v4.31
See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login. Autoruns also shows you the full list of Registry and file locations where applications can configure auto-start settings.

Add Support for "Set" Collections to .NET

Roy Osherove found another .NET Set implementation

Add Support for "Set" Collections to .NET: "One of the missing collection classes in .Net is one that's not as often used, but when you need it, boy, it's really missing, is the Set. You know - Set theory ('Group Theory') and all, including Intesect, join and so on.
I found this really nice Set implementation library with Source over on CodeProject :
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/sets.asp "

Virus Proofing

This will probably prove useful for my relatives.

A Simple Plan: "Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free"

System.Web.Mail FAQ

Complete FAQ for the System.Web.Mail namespace

NT Commands

This site has information on the Windows NT command line commands. They apply to Windows 2000 as well.

NT Commands

Next Day

This chunk of T-SQL code can find the next date that a certain day of the week occurs after the current date. The example finds the date of the next Thursday.

-- Get the next Thursday (in the formula we are using Monday = 1 so Thursday = 4)
SET @wanted_day = 4
SET @ap_date = DATEADD(d, (15 + @wanted_day - @@datefirst - DATEPART(dw, GETDATE())) % 7, GETDATE())

National Do Not Call Registry

National Do Not Call Registry I'm going to be using their complaint form a lot if those telemarketers don't stop calling.

Visual C# Developer Center: Frequently Asked Questions

Visual C# Developer Center: Frequently Asked Questions: "The C# team, along with members of the C# Community, are answering Frequently Asked Questions "

Sets

Microsoft's got an interesting article on sets that includes a C# class that handles sets similar to the way Pascal does.

Part 6: Efficiently Representing Sets

Kansas City Events

This page lets you search events occurring in the Kansas City area.
VisitKC.com - Official Travel and Tourism Site for Kansas City

Getting the absolute path in ASP.NET

This could be useful if I get to do any ASP.NET development again.

Getting the absolute path in ASP.NET: "Typically when we create ASP.NET applications, we are developing against a virtual directory. However, when we deploy our app to a production web server, it is likely set up as a web site. This can have an impact on href assignments when using absolute paths. In order for paths to be consistant between virtual directories and web sites, I created a helper method that will work in either environment. "

My Parents Visit

My parents came for a visit over the weekend.

While they were here I bought a grill and my Dad showed me how to use it to grill hamburgers. It was a bit more involved than I thought. I'm glad I waited to get one until someone who knew what he was doing was here.

While we were on our way to the GrassPad to try to buy some rhubarb plants (unfortunately they were sold out), my Mom noticed a sign for the Arboretum. So we stopped off there briefly on our way back. I think I now know where some of my stranger weeds are coming from.

Mom made a couple of delicious rhubarb pies using Grandma's recipe and some rhubarb she brought from South Dakota. That was what lead to the GrassPad trip as I was hoping I could start growing some rhubarb of my own.