Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in September 2007

A simple Business Object wrapper for LINQ to SQL
September 27, 2007 @ 4:59 am

I've been talking about how I'm using a small business object wrapper around LINQ to SQL to provide better abstraction of the LINQ to SQL functionality and I suppose the time's come to be bit more specific. This is going to be a long post with a fair bit of code and a brief discussion of the whys and hows...

36 comments

LINQ to SQL Queries out of a Business Layer
September 26, 2007 @ 12:43 am

Using LINQ to SQL for queries out of a business layer has some cool benefits in that core business layer queries returned from business objects can further refine query before the final query operates against the database. This allows the client to perform common formatting like picking which fields to retrieve, changing order or applying a final front end filter on the data. It also allows the client to choose best to represent the query results as an entity list or data reader/data table etc. This entry shows a few ways of how this has advantages and how a business object can greatly facilitate the data serving process.

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I'll be speaking at the Portland .NET User Group on LINQ to SQL next Tuesday
September 25, 2007 @ 12:36 pm

I'm making one more pit stop at PADNUG next Tuesday (October 2nd) before heading back to Hawaii later in October. The topic will be using LINQ to SQL in a Business Layer. Here's the topic abstract: LINQ to SQL in a Business LayerLINQ to SQL is one of Microsoft’s new OR mapping tools that aims to...

5 comments

A few C# Time Utilities for Fractional Time Values
September 24, 2007 @ 11:34 pm

I found myself working with displaying time values a bit today for a demo app I'm building that needs to display elapsed time values in a meaningful way. There's display, but also storage of total values in a rounded fashion. Here are couple of routines that helped make short work of the time values.

3 comments

ASP.NET and Styles & CSS Embedding
September 24, 2007 @ 1:20 am

One thing that really bugs me about ASP.NET is the way it deals with header management especially when working with Themes. One of the big problems I see is that ASP.NET embeds the Themes style sheet at the bottom of the header list. If you happen to be using Master Pages which can have a header...

24 comments

Forms Authentication and Persistant Login Problems
September 23, 2007 @ 2:18 am

I'm mucking around with an authentication form that requires some extra authentication data for the user, so rather than using the stock Login control and it's authenticate method I'm using a custom ticket and manually redirecting the data. I'm not sure how this option to stick custom user data...

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jQuery and jQuery UI and maintaining a custom Client Library
September 22, 2007 @ 7:15 pm

I've been spending some time over the last couple of days working with jQuery and a few helper components. jQuery a week ago or so released version 1.2 and a few days later a new jQuery UI library which looks to be pretty cool for a number of reasons. If you haven't looked at jQuery before I...

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LINQ to SQL Serialization bites me again
September 21, 2007 @ 12:01 am

I'm mucking around with a bit of code today that's using AJAX and returning some data from my business layer that's using LINQ to SQL Entities. I mentioned some time that one issue that I ran into and continue to bump my head against is that LINQ to SQL has big issues serializing its entities. The...

3 comments

Fire, Fire
September 20, 2007 @ 10:38 pm

We had a big fire here on the other side of the river today pretty much straight across from where I look out. The damn railroad once again started up a fire which in the typical Gorge wind spread like a wild fire up the hill very quickly. Several homes burnt down so far and the thing's still...

ResolveUrl() without Page
September 18, 2007 @ 3:43 am

If you're writing generic non-Page code in handlers, modules or other system components for ASP.NET you might find that at times you need to use ResolveUrl(), only to find that this functionality is not available outside of the Control class. Here's a generic routine, and another variation that can return a fully qualified absolute path using the familiar ~ syntax outside of the Page framework.

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Reflection, GetMember() and COM Objects?
September 17, 2007 @ 12:32 am

I'm working on an old app that interfaces with a legacy COM object. In reviewing some of my wwDataBinder code I noticed that it didn't work against COM objects for databinding. With a few minor changes I've been able to make the binding code work by using the the higher level Type.InvokeMember...

Missing PageMethods on an MS AJAX Page?
September 14, 2007 @ 12:31 am

You ever have one of those days when just nothing wants to go right? A couple of days ago I was working on my session code for ASP.NET Connections. One of my sessions is on Dealing with Long Running Requests and one of the examples uses AJAX to offload the processing to messaging engine and...

30 comments

wwHoverPanel AJAX Control Updated
September 12, 2007 @ 7:43 pm

I've updated the wwHoverPanel library yesterday with a number of small bug fixes and a handful of new features and enhancements. Most of these are cosmetic. wwHoverPanel is a small AJAX library that I use in my internal tools and products and it provides a few core features: Simple JSON remote...

First Impressions on LINQ to SQL
September 11, 2007 @ 12:45 pm

I've been experimenting with LINQ to SQL for the last few weeks and there's a lot to like as well as a few things to think about. In this editorial I'll describe some of the things that worked well and some of the issues I struggled with and how I worked around them.

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Stickman in Peril
September 10, 2007 @ 1:58 pm

I stopped by our local used book store Artifacts here in Hood River yesterday and ran into these on the way out and had to laugh out loud at the Stickman in Peril sticker set. I especially like the guy getting sucked into intake manifold of - what - a steam ship? Yeah, that happens to me...

5 comments

Rendering a WPF Container to Bitmap
September 10, 2007 @ 2:07 am

One of WPF's nicer features is its ability to render any visual into a bitmap easily, and so I thought I'd create a simple little tool that would create rounded corner bitmap bars with transparent backgrounds. It's actually quite easy to do, but I ran into a few pitfalls and inconsistencies that make WPF coding oh so much fun.

11 comments

Back to Basics: .NET Framework 2.0 Book
September 08, 2007 @ 12:59 pm

Every once in a while I feel I need to review the basics of CLR development because frankly I'm not smart enough to keep it all in my head at once and over time the not so frequently used functionality kind of starts getting a little foggy. So from time to time I pick up a core CLR/Language book...

5 comments

FormVarsToObject - a quick way to collect form input values
September 06, 2007 @ 7:33 pm

Here are a couple of small routines that let you quickly collect ASP.NET form variables into an object or a data row with a single line of code. This routine comes in handy in many situations where full databinding may not be involved or more commonly in AJAX scenarios where no form databinding can be applied on Page level callbacks.

4 comments

Opening Word Docs inside Internet Explorer in Vista?
September 04, 2007 @ 3:04 am

Ah progress - you gotta love it. Fewer choices, less control the dumbing down of the masses. I'm checking out some old code that I've used to load Word documents for editing into a Web Browser control. It appears that under Vista this doesn't work any longer as a Word document now refuses to load...

4 comments

LINQ to SQL and Serialization
September 02, 2007 @ 10:40 pm

LINQ to SQL provides entity objects that can be used easily for object access to data members. But these objects can be difficult to deal with if you need to serialize them in Web Services or in other ways because relationships are often circular. Here's a discussion of things to watch out for and how you can get around the issues.

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New Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop - two weeks later
September 01, 2007 @ 1:24 pm

So it's now been almost two weeks since I got my new machine and I'm happy to report that things are going well. No more video problems (even though I ended up with yet another nVidia card) and the system has been rock solid. It's sad that this should astound me, but this has been one of the...

27 comments