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Team System integration in a software organization - personal case study
2007-09-17 23:44:00
I have been asked several times for my experience regarding installation of Team System inside an organization using (up to this point) an older version control system, so here are few tips:Team system is a complex software to install, maintain and upgrade. Study the various pitfalls you may encounter and plan your installation strategy very carefully. You can find an updated installation guide
More About: Software , Personal , Organization

Supporting "foreach" without implementing IEnumerable
2007-09-15 18:10:00
Krzysztof Cwalina wrote a post detailing how have your class support the "foreach" loop without implementing the IEnumerable interface: Public GetEnumerator() method that returns a type with 2 members:The type will have a bool MoveMext() method.The type will have an Current property of type object.Example:class Foo { public Bar GetEnumerator() { return new Bar(); } public struct Bar {

I would like some salt with that password, please
2007-09-13 23:22:00
Jeff Atwood wrote an interesting post on using "Rainbow tables", which are pre-calculated hashes of a range of possible string to brute-force crack a password database. One of the better methods for stopping someone who has your encrypted password from deducing the unencrypted version is "salting" your passwords before storing them, meaning you concatenate your password string with a long
More About: Password , Salt , Some

Beware of the AutoScaleBaseSize property
2007-09-13 19:58:00
I have had a problem recently with some of the form in my application, which were descendants of a custom form class (not the classic Windows.Forms.Form class). The form would look fine in design mode, but during run time it appeared to have shrunk, with all the controls in it being affected similarly. It took a lot of digging to find out what was wrong, but after noticing that setting the
More About: Property , Beware , Prop , Pert , Rope

Working with a remote development team
2007-09-13 00:08:00
Some times you have a remove developer/team working on the application, as well as in-house team, and they can't use a remote connection to your source-control solution. I found out these methods help: Check out files for them to work on in advance, keep the files checked-out until they give you the updates.Have the remote developer save the original file for comparison (if merge is needed).Have
More About: Development , Team , Remote , Working , Mote

XP and Scrum
2007-09-09 00:09:00
In one of the companies I worked at I introduced TDD into the development cycle. This was not done as a part of adopting it as a part of a complete methodology, but as a singular concept. Later, when the company switched to Scrum , we also incorporate ideas like daily build (you don't have to go all the way to continuous integration) and simple designs, but never as partial concepts from the XP

Motorola cell phone stereophonic adaptor
2007-09-08 22:50:00
I'm using my cell phone to hear podcasts, and I'm hearing it in my car using FM transmitter.Unfortonately, the transmitter's jack is a standard 3.5mm, while cell phones (at least mine) use a 2.5mm jack. There are cheap adaptors available for mobile mp3 players (also with 2.5mm), but the phone's socket is a bit different.So I searched a little, and found out the SKN6183 adaptor. Since I couldn't
More About: Phone , Motorola , Cell Phone , Cell , Stere

Podcast review #2
2007-09-07 23:17:00
.Net Rocks show 251 on Enterprise architecture - Roger Sessions talks about enterprise architecture, focusing on reducing the complexity of enterprise applications by breaking them into smaller parts (sounds a lot like SOA). He also talks about a mathematical model for deciding on how to break the application to it's components. Could be useful for SOA architects. (3/5) SE Radio episode 65 on
More About: Review , Podcast

Dotmad's BlogDay recommendations
2007-09-01 01:16:00
As 31/8 is BlogDay, I decided to find some blogs to recommend. I have tried recommending relatively new/unknown blogs (at least as far as I can tell), and also focus on people publishing new posts at least once a week. Blonde 2.0 - Recently opened, and already quite a success, focuses mainly on web 2.0 items.Latest gadgets and the technology used - As the name says, the focus here is on
More About: Recommendation , Dati

One developer, 2 servers, over 50 millions page views each day - using ASP.
2007-08-31 18:34:00
I have read Oren's post, in which he writes (again) why he thinks Asp.Net is a bad web platform. I have been reading about various tools like Ruby or MonoRail and people promoting over using simple Asp.Net. Coincidentally, I have recently listen to an Arcast episode with Markus Frind, the founder of http://plentyoffish.com/. This dude is the only employee in the "company" (acting as the
More About: Views , Servers , Developer , Page , Millions

Effect of the CPU on an application
2007-08-29 23:37:00
I am working on a C4I application using GIS engine, and since the engine uses the CPU for it's calculations (not many GIS systems use the capabilities of graphics cards so far) the effect of the processor is critical in terms of performance. We recently ran a test of the same system and scenario, once with an old processor, and once with a new, faster (both in clock speed and FSB), HyperThreading
More About: Effect , Application

Page faults using GDI+
2007-08-25 20:02:00
I'm working on a C4I application using GIS maps. The map is refreshed (redrawn) by calling the Control.Invalidate() method. What got my attention was seeing few thousands of page faults on each refresh, resulting in CPU usage of 3-6%. After some research, this is the response I got from Hans Passant in the MSDN forums: "GDI+ bitmaps use memory mapped files. The bitmap data gets loaded into
More About: Page

Writing source code in your blog
2007-08-23 13:38:00
Trying to simply copy/paste code to a blog (especially one you manage online) can create a very ugly block of text. There are two ways to solve this problem: Visual studio addins - CopySource AsHtml creates HTML formatted code to paste into the blog.Online tools - This tool from Manoli.net creates HTML formatted code online.
More About: Writing , Blog , Code , Source Code

Adding a performance counter
2007-08-23 13:31:00
Some times you need to measure the value of something while running the application. Using a logger is not comfortable, since you don't want to monitor gazillion rows of values. The solution: create a performance counter and use Perfmon.exe to view it while the application is running. Here is a code for creating a counter: private Perform ance Counter CreatePerformanceCounter() { string

Free and cheap WiFi in Berlin
2007-08-20 23:51:00
It has been more than a month since I got back from Berlin , so I need to backup my memory of hot spots in there: Wifi is actually pretty expansive in Berlin - there are many hot spots, but to surf you need to either pay directly to an ISP, or use your own account (assuming you have one). Here are the few locations I found: Cheap connection in the Häagen-Dazs cafe in Kurfürstendamm streetFree

WCF concurrency, throughput and throttling
2007-08-20 23:24:00
Michele Leroux Bustamante (aka "Das Blonde") wrote a great post on WCF callback scenarios:Callback Sync<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />ContextCallback Concurr. Mode Service OperationCallback OperationService Concurr.ModeResulting BehaviorTrue/FalseSingle/Reentrant/Multip leOne-way/Two-wayTwo-waySingleThese are defaults. InvalidOperationException at the
More About: Throughput