Fast .NET

Property pages for common settings in VS2010

jkhk — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:26:48 +0000

It’s the second time since I’ve had to trawl through the VS2010 settings to find the property pages manager. For some reason I keep looking in project properties. It’s under view->other windows->property manager. From there you can add props files for common settings.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces detailed: pooling redundant disk space for all

jkhk — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:55:25 +0000

“If the feature does indeed ship in desktop Windows, it will overnight obsolete a range of SOHO-oriented storage systems; products like Drobo and ReadyNAS will find it hard to survive in a Windows 8 world.”

Details here

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server.

jkhk — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:08:48 +0000

“”A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server)”

I was checking everything from firewall settings to SQL Network Configuration to solve the issue. Turns out I didn’t bother checking that the server-name

Rather than just localhost or (local), I needed to append the SQL instance name to it – so localhost\SQLExpress or (local)\SQLExpress….. many hours wasted

Why consider using GC.Collect?

jkhk — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:18:58 +0000

I can hear the cringes from my .Net colleagues already. Are you serious? Do you think you’re smarter than GC. The reason you avoid doing so is because it effects how much space is allocated to any given generation section in the heap. You’re essentially reducing the effectiveness of the GC to determine when and how often managed memory is cleaned up.

Under normal operations the GC makes predictions on the size of each generation based on past allocations. You probably know where I’m going with this; if you suddenly attempt to dispose of a whole load of objects that are sitting in generation 2 and allocate a whole load of unmanaged resources (such as font and bitmap handles) you might find handles excessively spikin

Check the comments here as well if you need more convincing: >

“To optimize performance, GDI+ retains some resources throughout the lifetime of the invoking process. These resources are not freed by the call to dispose. The only supported way to free these resources is to end the process”.

GC.Collect should be used as a last resort, but you shouldn’t take it out of your option list.

Everything You Need To Know About Windows 8 In 8 Minutes

jkhk — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:31:52 +0000

Everything You Need To Know About Windows 8 In 8 Minutes

Windows 8 Developer Preview

Control all your Windows computers with a single mouse and keyboard

jkhk — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:25:30 +0000

Mouse without borders

.Net Continuous Integration Servers to consider

jkhk — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:28:01 +0000

TeamCity

FinalBuilder

Cruise Control

I haven’t used TeamCity before so I can’t comment on except to say I’ve heard good things about the product. FinalBuilder web interface among other things does seem a lot better than Cruise Control though

Strategies for localization

jkhk — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:46:41 +0000

Externalize strings (e.g. resx resource file)
Layouts need to accomodate different length text (e.g. expandable TableLayout
Culture specific – Direction of text and numbers
ToString and Parse – Use InvariantCulture for internal usage and CurrentCulture for display purposes
DateTime – use ToString(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture)
Avoid compound strings due to different grammar

Which generic .Net collections to use?

jkhk — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:10:24 +0000

EF Link Drive

jkhk — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 01:38:51 +0000

Entity Framework 4 POCO, Repository and Specification Pattern

Generic Entity Framework 4.0 Base Repository

Use Repository Pattern with Entity Framework

What database technology does Twitter use to support so…

Why use the Entity Framework with SQL Azure?

Entity Framework 4 POCO, Repository and Specification Pattern