Visual Basic

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is Released

Walt Ritscher — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:51:00 GMT

Hooray! Microsoft released the service packs for Visual Studio today. These are a MUST INSTALL for anyone using VS. There are plenty of bug fixes. The two that I'm most excited about are the Visual Basic background compiler fix and the performance fix for compiling large projects. Both of these issues have slowed my daily development consistently during the last year.

If you are an ASP.NET developer you'll be happy that the Web Deployment and Web Application projects are now included.

Microsoft has added some interesting new features in the SP too.

Multicore support for profiling
Multicore support for code gen
Team Server performance improvements
See the Microsoft website for more details

There are several version of the SP. Pick the one that matches your version of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 (includes SP1 updates for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of Visual Studio 2005)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server SP1
Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions SP1
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta

Seriously, if you are using Visual Studio 2005 you should install this SP as soon as possible.

Seattle Code Camp 2006 (October 28,29)

Walt Ritscher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:35:00 GMT

It's only three weeks away and coming to Seattle. That's right, the Seattle Code camp is looking for camp counselors (speakers). If you want to talk tech to a room full of eager participants this is the event you've been waiting for.

Last year we had over 50 presenters and 250+ attendees.

http://seattle.techevents.info/codecamp/2/default.aspx

Glean Programming Knowledge from Paul Sheriff

Walt Ritscher — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:06:00 GMT

Paul Sheriff is always thinking of new ways to share his enormous knowledge of .NET and other programming skills with the world. Every-time I have dinner with him or see him at a conference he's bubbling with energy and enthusiasm over some new idea. I'm always probing and mulling new ideas too, my wife will tell you that she can't get me to shut up , but I have a hard time keeping up with Paul.

His latest idea sound exciting. He has started a subscription website that shares his catalog of tools, utilities, books, articles and web-casts. It's called Paul Sheriff's Inner Circle and it launched today. For as little as $9.00 a month you can tap into a wealth of knowledge.

I've previewed the site and I think you'll like it. Check it out.

I'm an MVP again

Walt Ritscher — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:17:00 GMT

Microsoft decided to make me a Visual Basic MVP again this year!

VSLive 2006 Toronto Code is online

Walt Ritscher — Tue, 02 May 2006 01:15:00 GMT

I finally finished the zips of my talks from VSLive Toronto.

http://www.waltritscher.com/Default.aspx?tabid=55

Enjoy

Toronto VSLive 2006 - Talk #2 - Async Triple Threat

Walt Ritscher — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 22:40:00 GMT

Time to explain what I'm doing with my second talk at Toronto VSLive 2006.

Abstract

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has been getting lots of press lately. It provides a very Windows-like experience for web applications. AJAX is a mixture of technologies (DHTML, script, XML and more) that produce highly-performant and scalable UI's by leveraging asynchronous callbacks to your webserver. Did we mention that they look good too? A number of high profile sites including Google maps, Gmail, A9 and Flickr are built with AJAX tools. You can build similar apps in ASP.NET 2.0 because .NET introduced a handy API for out-of-band calls back to the server. After this session you'll know how to exploit callbacks to build smooth, responsive interfaces too. If that's not enough for you we'll also take a quick tour of Atlas. Microsoft is quietly working on a new application framework (Atlas) that combines client side/server side development into a single useful library. See how Atlas extends Javascript with numerous useful classes, interface enums and coordinates the traffic back to your server code.

What it's about

AJAX is the hot web buzzword for 2006. Every web developer is trying to figure out how to incorporate the asynchronous back channel into their applications. AJAX is simply a way to send a request back to the server without refreshing the whole web page. When the asynchronous call returns to the browser it has a payload (string argument) that we can use to update a portion of the existing page. The X in AJAX stands for XML and it is one of the preferred methods for formatting the return text from the server. There are other possibilities too: (example: Simple strings and JSON - Java Script Object Notation)

I proposed this talk for a couple of conferences. VSLive is the first conference to put it on their agenda. The reason for the title - Async Triple Threat? I noticed that there are three major ways to handle Async if you work for Microsoft technology shop. Roll your on - AJAX. Use the limited async features of ASP.NET 2.0 or experiment with the upcoming Atlas (AJAX extensions) bits. So I put examples of all three into the talk

I've got some mixed emotions about this talk. One the one hand I'm really excited about simplicity that Atlas brings to AJAX web development. On the other hand Atlas is brand new and an ever evolving platform. Which means I'm playing catch-up with Microsoft every week to stay on top of the latest releases. I just put the finishing touches on the Atlas demo last night. Knowing myself, I'll probably fiddle and fuss over the demo during the next couple days.

I'm going to be showing the ultra-cool Atlas April CTP features. See you at the talk.

Refactor Bug - Local Project Items - Fix

Walt Ritscher — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:46:00 GMT

I use the DeveloperExpress Refactor tool frequently when working in Visual Studio 2005. I suspect a lot of other developers use it too, especially since it is available for free - for Visual Basic programmers.

There is a consistent bug in Refactor that hasn't been fixed yet. It's more of a petty annoyance than a serious bug but I found a fix for it anyway.

The problem

When adding a class, user control or other item to a project the Add New Item dialog opens in the wrong folder. The dialog should open in the Visual Basic folder. Instead it opens in the Visual Basic/Local Project Items folder

Steps to fix.

Close Visual Studio 2005
Delete the "Local Project Items" folder that is under VBProjectItems in your install directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VB\VBProjectItems by default).

SQL Server 2005 SMO - Help is Completely Lame!

Walt Ritscher — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:17:00 GMT

OK let's do a simple review here. SQL Server 2005 was in development for what? Five years? Give or take a year. That is sixty months, or 1800+ days, however you want to look at it. A good portion of that time was waiting for .NET 2.0 to stabilize so that the CLR could be incorporated into SQL Server. The good news is that the SQL Server team did a great job of integrating managed code into the product. It's in many places, CLR support, Visual Studio integration, .NET data type and so on.

I've used SQLDMO in a few products, including our DbValidator tool. So I was thrilled to see that DMO has been replaced with SQL Management Objects (SMO). SMO is a completely managed API granting you full programmatic control over the SQL Engine

This week I started working with SMO and I gotta tell ya. The help bites!

NOT ONE SINGLE CODE SAMPLE

Let me say that again. “Not one single code sample“

Five years of work and Microsoft can't give us examples for each object in the library? I spent the last hour looking through the SMO namespaces and comparing them against the SQLDMO version. Not one single topic had any code samples other the simple syntax declaration.

public bool Identity { get; set; } (C#)
Public Property Identity As Boolean (VB)

What is the documentation team thinking anyway?

SQL Server 2005 Team Documentation Meeting

PM “So remember our target audience for SMO is developers (echo of Steve Ballmer chanting (developers, developers, developers)). Oh and maybe a admin or two who wants to write some script automation”

Help Author “OK. So I'll put some C# in the help. I can show how the method is declared.”

PM “Better write some VB.NET too or the VB team will be all over my back”

Help Author “What's that? You mean VB Script?”

PM “No, I think it's a little different”

Help Author “I don't know VB. I'm a writer, not a programmer. But I can make C#, we have a tool that generates it for us.”

PM “Well, find a C#-VB.NET converter and run the C# stuff through it.“

[No developers in the meeting because they are too busy trying to integrate the latest CLR build into their code.]

Tester “I think we ought to include some code that shows how to use the...“

PM “Come on. This meeting is over. I'm already late for the 3:30 meeting with marketing.“

Help Author “Alright, we're going. Sample code makes the help files too big anyway”

Help for Help

I cannot believe that a namespace full of SMO objects is completely lacking in any code examples on the individual classes, methods, event or properties. I did find a few scattered general examples (like how to open a connection) but it's not what I expect to see in a professional help file.

Billy Hollis - Funny History of C and BASIC

Walt Ritscher — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:54:00 GMT

I've been bumping into Billy Hollis at developer events for the last ten years. Last time I saw him, we were riding in a taxi in Sydney Australia with a tremendous thunderstorm raging outside the cab. If you know Billy, you know that he was telling stories -- funny and profound, all the way back to the hotel.

Well, he's still spinning stories, and he's got a couple of funny ones up on his website. Both are pure gold, here a few excerpts.

History of the BASIC family of languages.

1964 – A pair of instructors at Dartmouth College decide they have a group of students too lazy to learn FORTRAN. They produce a new language with only 26 variable names, so that even a lazy programmer can keep track of them.

1966 – The creators of BASIC decide it will never have any commercial application since students too lazy to learn FORTRAN can’t possibly write anything of value. They place the language in the public domain...

History of the C family of languages.

1972 - The precursor to C, the language B, is developed at Bell Labs. The B language is fast, easy to maintain, and useful for all kinds of development from systems to applications. The entire team that designed the language is immediately fired for behavior unbefitting a telephone company employee, and the project is handed to Dennis Ritchie. He alters the language to be incomprehensible, difficult to maintain, and only useful for systems development. He also designs in a pointer system guaranteed to give every program over 500 lines a pointer into the operating system...

Adding a Working Hyperlink to Your 'Windows Form' in .NET

Walt Ritscher — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 18:14:00 GMT

It's common in web programming to place links to resources on a page. The hyperlink tag is on nearly every page on your website. But what about Windows Forms?

In .NET it is easy to add a hyperlink to a form. At least it looks and acts like a hyperlink.

Add a LinkLabel to the form.
Change the text to the web address (example http://www.waltritscher.com/ )
In the LinkClicked event add one line of code.


    
Private Sub LinkLabel1_LinkClicked(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabelLinkClickedEventArgs) Handles LinkLabel1.LinkClicked
        Process.Start(LinkLabel1.Text)
    End Sub

This works because Windows knows that a string with http:// is a web address and will launch the users default web browser. Process.Start merely asks Windows to launch a process based on the file/URL string being passed as parameter.