KoolB's Blog

Hurray!. New Broadband Operator

2008-05-01T15:50:00.001+05:30

Sri Lanka Electroteks to start broadband, voice in May
Electroteks chief B A C Abeywardene says the service will use CDMA
(code division multiple access) based technology to provide up to 1Mbps
speeds and voice calls priced around 1.50 rupees a minute, which is
about half the current tariffs.

ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber line) services are now priced at
just under 20 dollars a month, but Electroteks says it will give higher
download speeds.

- LBO

According to the above LBO news item Electroteks will launch its Broadband network in this may. They promised to provide better service using CDMA technology for the same price.

Following are some of my thoughts which need be considered by the new operator when packaging and costing their products.

Better QOS
Most of the European operators publish their sharing ratio of the bandwidth with their packages(e.g 1:50 or 1:10). This way the customer knows what they are paying for. But in Sri Lanka operators promised to give the sun and the moon but in reality the connections are very slow and you don't know the sharing ratio of the service you are getting.

Opportunity to select packages based on the needs
Currently SLT and Dialog only offers DSL connections. In SLT ADSL you don't know your sharing ratio and you don't have the option to go for a better package if you want a good service by paying more(Specially for corporate customers). End of the day you are in the same bandwidth pools(512Mbpspool or 2Mbps pool) what ever your need is.
Same time Dailog broadband offers the maximum of 4Mbps links advertising no quotas. But they shamelessly limit your bandwidth using a Fair Usage Policy. Quota for a 4Mbps packages is 16GB. They even offer you an IP even to run your own Mail or Web servers. If you divide the quota by 20days, you will get roughly 800MB per day. Whats the purpose of having a 4Mbps link with 800MB quota per day?
The above operator are very unreasonable as they don't offer alternative packages to customers who wants more. Therefore everybody needs to stick to the same package what ever their need is.

Lower broadband equipment and setup cost
Dialog setup cost is Rs. 5000 which is very unreasonable.

eBooster - boost your XP, Sinhala interface

2008-04-26T22:37:00.001+05:30

eBoostr brings the benefits of Windows Vista's ReadyBoost to XP. eBoostr could be perfect for XP users who want a little extra memory but don't want to install RAM, or for laptop users who have no way to increase memory. Following is a comment from the lifehacker post which proves its performance

Ok guys, I just tested my Lenovo T61 laptop with the eBoostr

w/Cruzer SanDisk U3 2m memory stick.

For my full system specs, see this:
[screencast.com]

Here's the benchmark WITHOUT eBoostr:
[screencast.com]

Here's the benchmark WITH eBoostr:
[screencast.com]

I ran both right after system reboot with no major apps open other than my usual (light) startup list (anti-virus, and a very short list of must-load startups).

As you can see, there is some improvement but it doesn't seem to be major...

what do you think, should I keep it?

author : avniassa

Special thing I noticed was Sinhala was available in the language selection box. This is the first software from a international vendor, which I have seen Sinhala in the language selection. This is how it looked when I changed the language to Sinhala ( I was so excited and even took this screenshot even before I restart the PC :-) )

Sinhala interface

English Interface

You can also grab a copy from Filenetworks

Introduction to WiMAX

2008-04-26T22:35:00.001+05:30

Here is a very good presentation on WiMAX technology.

Please check the the entry @ my new blog .

Here is a way to look professional

2008-04-26T22:32:00.001+05:30

Never thought glasses make that much of difference. Here is a smart advertisement of some glasses manufacturer showing the difference with and without the glasses.

Is it really required to show the User Name and Password in ASP.NET Error Page?

2008-04-26T22:30:00.001+05:30

I got the following ASP.NET error when I was browsing a local web site. The error is due to ASP.NET cannot authenticate using the User Name and password in the impersonate tag. Ther real issue is not the windows authentication problem. Because the reason for the error could be the domain server is down or the administrator has used an incorrect user name and password in the web.config.

But is it sill good to show the User Name and Password in the error message? You can argue that the developer has switched on CUSTOM ERROR MESSAGES and he has forgotten to switch it off at the time of deployment. But still is it really required to show the whole user name and password in the error? If the necessary ports are not secured, someone can easily login to the server and mess up the server very easily. (In this case only the port 80 and 21 is open and this user won't have permission for FTP.)

Sri Lanka - Broadband QOS (Quality of Service)

2008-04-26T22:27:00.001+05:30

I have ADSL connection and Dialog WiMax connection at our work place. ADSL should have speed of 2Mbps, but it has around 800Kbps of real speed at off peak hours and on peak hours it goes down to speeds closer to dialup connection (around 100Kpbs). Dialog WiMax still maintains a good QOS. But still at peak hours it is 800Kbps for a 4Mbps connection and on off-peak hours it is around 1500Kbps. So I had the question whether the regulator of ISPs in Sri Lanka has rules on QOS for Broadband when they issue the operator license to the ISPs. But I couldn't find any on the Service or Bandwidth QOC for internet or Broadband in the TRC web site. They only have some QOC Indicators to monitor Telephony services.

I found the following line below the tariffs when I was referring to Airtel India web site.
"* Speed indicated are only speed upto our ISP Node and are given on best effort bases as per TRAI guideline on Quality of Service for Broadband Service"
TARI is the Indian regulator. I checked their website on the guidelines they practice in India for Broadband services. I found "TRAI issues Regulations on Quality of Service Standards for Broadband Service" document which explained various indicators of QOS to protect broadband consumers.

I couldn't figure out why the DSL and other broadband services license and tariffs are defined unconditionally in Sri Lanka. As I can understand from the TRC web site, any ISP can market a product indicating a huge bandwidth offering. But the QOS of the Network bandwidth they should offer is not enforced by the regulator. Basically they can share the network bandwidth with any number of customer since there is no minimum bandwidth QOS enforced by the regulator.

So that's how it goes… we will hope someday TRC - Sri Lanka will take necessary actions to protect Broadband consumers.

Heroes

2008-04-26T22:25:00.001+05:30

I watched the tv series Heroes by downloading all episodes from the web. There are set of cool drawings which are used in the episodes to show the future. I found a collection of these drawings while I was browsing the web. So if you are also a fan, here there are.

Prevent RSI

2008-04-26T22:24:00.001+05:30

Are you using computer for a long time? You can be a victim of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). Here is a free open source program which will help you to prevent RSI. Its called Workrave and it works on Windows and Linux.

Popularity of programming languages

2007-08-13T22:05:00.001+05:30

According to the following blog post Java still is the most popular programming language. Its hard to believe that C# only has 3.9% popularity among other languages.

For some time now, Tiber has published on a monthly basis its so-called Programming Community index, measuring the popularity of programming languages. It uses search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo to calculate the ratings based on the number of available skilled professionals, courses and third party vendors.

The methodology is not without flaws, but the general results are widely acceptable.
The dominance of the C family of programming languages and Java is apparent, and this has not changed at all.
Java is first with 21.8%, but if C (15.7%) and C++ (10.1%) are combined, they would overtake Java.
C is notable, because many other languages including Java are actually derived from it, and other languages including Ruby, Luna, Python, etc are implemented in C.
If a young aspiring programmer wants to seriously do programming, I would recommend C.
However if the person wants to develop business applications, then Java or .Net would be the choice.
VB (VB, VBA, Vibe.Net) has 10.6% about the same share as C++. Then comes PHP (9.7%) and Perl (5.3%), followed by C# (3.9%).
The three P's PHP, Perl and Python (2.7%) have not changed much over the years.

Read the full post @ 10outof10.blogspot.com and don't forget to check the Programming Community index

Want to find out who is hosting your favorite web site ?

2007-07-16T23:25:00.001+05:30

I always wanted to know the details of the web site if I find it interesting. I used to type www.whois.sc/<doman name> to find the domain information and SEO details. But whois.sc didn’t provide enough information about the Hosting Company. I found this new site which displays the Hosting Providers name for the given web site.

Try it and see, whoishostingthis.com

I'm Puzzled with Rediffmail

2007-07-11T23:41:00.001+05:30

You must have seen the advertisements of Rediffmail. Specially during the Cricket Worldcup season they were advertising about Unlimited Storage on cable TV. They were advertising this even before the Yahoo mail announce of their Unlimited Storage offer. So I registered there for use it as my mail backup. But today I got "Your Rediffmail is full" message when I check my other pop accounts in Rediffmail.

So I checked the help section on the account size. There is no indication of any limitations for other POP accounts. But it says..

1. What's special About Rediffmail New?
New! Rediffmail is a free, fast & easy-to-use email. Offering you a storage space of 1 GB. It enables you to send 20 attachments at a time, with a total mail size upto 10 MB. The New Rediffmail has several features that make managing your email simpler, like drag and drop mails, instant preview, quick attach, mail search, easier to access address book, etc. It has powerful spam control and a much richer and more efficient interface.

So then what's the meaning of the Advertisements ? Either the help section is not updated and the message I got is a bug Or they are big liars who can even lie on TV :-)

Dialog BroadNet - WiMAX Installation

2007-07-11T13:05:00.001+05:30

Yestday we got the WiMAX connection to our office from Dialog Broadband. Here are some pics which was taken when its installed.

WiMax Antenna.

Configuration was simple. They connect the laptop to the antenna / control unit using a web browser and Ethernet connection, like how you configure a DSL router. After that they configured the frequency for the cell.

Even though, WiMAX doesn't need line-ofsight to work, they have to turn it around to get the maximum signal strength. They said even the reflection of the single would also work.

Initial speed tests

The purchased package was Ultra which should have speeds of 4000kb/s for download and 1000kb/s for upload (theoretically). These tests were done by connecting a single PC.

It doesn't have the promised 4Mbps speeds, but currently it has fairly decent speeds. Hope they will maintain the same quality in the future. ( At least half of the promised bandwidth as its shared bandwidth :-( )

Anyway I got 450Kbps on FlashGet for downloads from download.com using 10 threads

Here is a presentation from dialog which has the details of the available packages.

Flash presentation would take some time load. Pls wait or check it @ http://www.slideshare.net/koolb/dialog-broadnet-brief/1

Most waited Dialog WiMax is now available.

2007-07-04T23:03:00.001+05:30

Dialog has launched the WiMAX solutions under “BroardNet” brand name. You can now get WiMAX installed by contacting Dialog Broadband. I don’t know why they are not advertising it as their other products. The products are currently under testing, but following packages are available.

Available Packages
Name	Speed	Pro	Pro +	Ultra
Speed	1 MB	2 MB	2 MB	4 MB
IP Address	Dynamic	Dynamic	Static	Static
Mail Box	2	5	10	10
Common Firewall	X	X	X	X
Virus Protection	X	X	X	X
Authentication	X	X	-	-
Web Space	X	X	X	X
Option 1
Connection Charges	15,000.00
Monthly Rental	3,450.00	4,900.00	10,000.00	13,000.00
Option 2
Monthly Rental	4,000.00	5,500.00	11,000.00	14,000.00

Write once – Run in any OS……

2007-05-29T23:42:00.001+05:30

Seems likes a dream. But California-based startup plans to release an application that will allow Windows, Mac, and Linux users run Linux binaries without any modifications. Check out this intro video.

You can find out more @ http://www.openlina.com/

Technorati tags: OpenSource, Linux, Windows, Mac, Software, Development, CrossPlatform

Linux GUI Application Development

2007-05-27T23:58:00.001+05:30

It just came to my mind to look for the best cross-platform GUI application development on the web. So I started to find available options on the web. There was some love for Linux

deep in my mind from the days I stated programming. Actually it’s after I moved from VB 6 to mature OO development frameworks like .NET and JAVA. I tried some samples on Mono platform but I was not that convinced with the development tools available on Linux. Glade and Mono was not been convincing enough to do a commercial projects. Though I found a very successful implementation for healthcare industry called OpenVista and many other products.

“Linux GUI Application Development for Windows How do you get started?” by Anthony Barker gives a very good starting point to evaluate Linux GUI application platforms even though it was written on 2002. I finally decided that wxPython is the best solution form the information I found. You can get some idea of wxPython by referring to ShowMeDo.com videos. Further the best IDE that people were referring was wxDesigner. It is not a free IDE, but it is best developed so far and even it supports C# bindings.

I’m not an expert when it comes to Linux based Application development. This is what I have found from my own research. If you are an expert on the subject please guide me to choose the rite path on Linux GUI application development. I’m looking forward to check these platforms and tools in the future.

Technorati tags: Linux, OpenSource, GUI, Application, Development

5GHz++ CPU

2007-02-07T23:51:00.001+05:30

Via: VideoSift

Helping hand

2007-02-02T00:12:00.000+05:30

My friend Rev. Piyala has stared a blog called ‘iranawila e-village”. Currently he works as teacher there and he wanted to uplift the knowledge of children in the iranawila village. Please visit his blog and help him to build awareness about this to the world.

The pursuit of happiness

2007-01-23T14:03:00.001+05:30

Directed by
Gabriele Muccino
Writing credits (WGA)
Steve Conrad (written by)

I watched a good movie after long time. The pursuit of happiness was a great movie and I was inspired after I got to know that it was a true story. I was able to Google Dean Witter then Gardner Rich. They were the Chris Gardners internship company his own company. Then I was able to find this interview with the real Chris Gardner who is a very inspiring person.

You can find out more about pursuit of happiness and the real Chris Gardner from this Wikipedia link

Menu bar missing in Windows Explorer

2007-01-22T13:51:00.001+05:30

Sometimes you may face the problem of loosing the windows explorer tool bars. You don't have any option to restore them to their original state. What you can do is, run Regedit.exe to edit the registry and find the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar". Then select the Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer depending on where you faced the problem and delete the "ITBarLayout" value. You explorer will be back to normal.

ASP.NET 2.0 Validation Controls

2006-11-30T13:32:00.001+05:30

ASP.NET 2.0 has not introduced any new validation controls but MS has enhanced the existing validation controls a lot

Validation Groups

Now you can have multiple form areas on the same page by grouping the controls to be validated by using ValidationGroup property of controls.

This feature supports server side validations too. In Addition Page.Validate() method has been enhanced and GetValidators() method has been added. Specifically Page.Validate(ValidationGroupPropertyValue) and GetValidators(ValidationGroup) makes your life much easier

Focusing Controls

Validation Controls now have SetFocusOnError property to make the control focused in the case of an error. You can also use the Focus() method of server controls which will add client-side JavaScript to set focus to a particular control on page load

Browser compatibility

MS has used document.getElementById(id) in validation controls making client side validation possible in all the browser which supports JavaScript 1.2 or higher. This has make all the controls to be work in IE, Firefox and Opera.

Following are the Base Validation Control Properties from MSDN

ControlToValidate

The programmatic ID of the input control that the validation control will evaluate. If this is not a legitimate ID, an exception is thrown.

Display

The display behavior for the specified validation control. This property can be one of the following values:

None — The validation control is never displayed inline. Use this option when you want to show the error message only in a ValidationSummary control.

Static — The validation control displays an error message if validation fails. Space is allocated on the Web page for the error message even if the input control passes validation. The layout of the page does not change when the validation control displays its error message. Because the page layout is static, multiple validation controls for the same input control must occupy different physical locations on the page.

Dynamic — The validation control displays an error message if validation fails. Space for the error message is allocated dynamically on the page when validation fails. This allows multiple validation controls to share the same physical location on the page.

Note
Because space for the validation control is created dynamically, the physical layout of the page changes. To prevent the page layout from changing when a validation control becomes visible, the HTML element containing the validation control must be sized large enough to accommodate the maximum size of the validation control.

EnableClientScript

Indicates whether client-side validation is enabled. You can disable client-side validation on browsers that support this capability by setting the EnableClientScript property to false.

Enabled

Indicates whether the validation control is enabled. You can prevent the validation control from validating an input control by setting this property to false.

ErrorMessage

The error message to display in the ValidationSummary control if validation fails. If the Text property of the validation control is not set, this text is also displayed in the validation control when validation fails. The ErrorMessage property is commonly used to provide different messages for the validation control and the ValidationSummary control.

Note
This property does not convert special characters to HTML entities. For example, the less than character (<) is not converted to <. This allows you to imbed HTML elements, such as an <img> element, in this property's value.

ForeColor

Specifies the color in which to display the inline message when validation fails.

IsValid

Indicates whether the input control specified by the ControlToValidate property is determined to be valid.

SetFocusOnError

Indicates whether focus is set to the control specified by the ControlToValidate property when validation fails.

Text

When set, this message is displayed in the validation control when validation fails. If this property is not set, the text specified in the ErrorMessage property is displayed in the control.

ValidationGroup

Specifies the name of the validation group to which this validation control belongs.

ASP.NET 2.0 Problems / Issues with Master Pages

2006-11-29T18:54:00.001+05:30

I faced hell of a lot of problems when doing Master Pages. Master Pages will work smoothly as Microsoft says if your application is a very simple and all the files are in the same directory. But if your application is bit complex, where you have to use multiple directories for different user roles etc, then you will have face lot of problems implementing Master Pages.

I was able to solve almost all of the problems by referring to following posts. So read them and solve your problems too...

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t300671-how-to-link-a-stylesheet-to-a-mastercontent-page.html

http://www.odetocode.com/Articles/450.aspx

Looks Like Macs Crash Too

2006-11-22T01:11:00.003+05:30

This is interesting set of video clips from MAC conference. Seems all are in the same boat :-) ....

ActiveX plug-in from TODO: from TODO:

2006-11-08T22:57:00.000+05:30

Do you install an ActiveX plug-in from Unknown publisher? Or if IE says that it’s from TODO: <company name>? Click on the following screenshot to see what I'm taking about.

Source: tv.yahoo.com
Click on the image to see the message clearly.

This is from non-other than Yahoo. Its good programming practice to put TODO: in your code where you can attend later rather than just keeping them on your mind. But releasing the software without removing them and without checking.....disaster…..

Microsoft and Novel Agreement

2006-11-05T01:22:00.000+05:30

Microsoft and Novell have signed a cooperative technology deal on Nov 2nd, which will make it easier for Novell's Suse Linux distribution and Microsoft Windows to work together.
According to news the Mono (open source version of .NET) is free from possible Microsoft patents.
Check out more on this @ http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/

and

Google News

One Vista Demo...:-)

2006-08-27T17:55:00.000+05:30

This video is bit old. But how come something like this could happened?. When you say "Dear Mom" how can it picks up as "Dear Aunt". MS getting screwed big time here :-)

Great... Photograph

2006-08-22T23:22:00.000+05:30

Ruch, originally uploaded by Marooned.

Failed to generate a user interface of SQL SERVER due to a failure in starting the process for the user interface

2006-08-21T12:32:00.000+05:30

I got the above error when I want to check some Win Form samples with the SQL Server Express.

I found the following resources on the web, but non of them was able to resolve my problem. But one comment made by Manoj was to able to make it work even its not the solution.

I was satisfied with it since I wanted do some thing else with Windows forms. But need to find a solution in future.

So any of you have found a real solution to above please forward me....

http://blog.krisvandermast.com/FailedToGenerateAUs...
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?Pos...

2006-08-18T16:56:00.000+05:30

Ameno

Cool soothing song, even, I cannot undestand the words. Thanx, Asela to finding the name of this from VS launch

.NET Developers

2006-06-02T16:51:00.000+05:30

My Office wanted to find some good .NET resources since two of our best guys are leaving. So we found some CVs through the staff itself and we interviewed some of them. After spending time for all the interviews, we could select only one person, but unfortunately he had commitment to his current work place as he was leading the team there. So he was not in a passion to join
The GM proposed that we should go for a big paper advertisement and we should conduct an examination to recruit some people. But when I looked around, I found lot of paper advertisement similar to our requirement in the Sunday paper. It that case, it’s a game of convincing developers, why they should select our company.

I think you can find Three types of resources in the industry.
1) People who have a degree as a qualification and know some development language semantics form some course or certification.
2) People who are creative, who reads books, who experiments and challenge software development concepts.
3) People who have no idea what programming is

1st type of people is usually recruited by large outsourcing companies. Because they have a well setup internal process and its matter of training new people to follow the process and making them knowledgeable only in the area that the company wants them to be fit in.

2nd types are the people who works is small or medium scale development companies. Companies which develop products or custom creative projects based on customer requirements. The customers of these companies are not ready to pay for various additional resources such as business process consultants, dedicated project managers etc. They expect a team of 5-10 people will do the job for a flat rate and they don’t wont jazz like dedicated project manager and domain consultant etc..

These requirements result the need of multi talented, very creative people to support these software projects. The developers should have little marking ability and personality, planning ability, R&D skills and self discipline to very closely communicate with team members and management. The reason is that, there are no closely monitored process and supervisor level people to monitor whether everybody is following the process. Basically no one will consider the management time as a need and no one is there to pay for this time.

When you compare software developers, you can find hundreds or thousands of people of category 1, but very limited people like 500 for category 2. Because category 2 is value addition to category 1 and the companies looking for category 1 prefers category 2 people.

Therefore finding a category 2 person is very hard. Even if you find one, he is currently working in someplace and they won’t allow him to leave. They will offer what ever he wants because it’s a very valuable asset to them and they know how hard it is to find same caliber of a person.

I think usually at a given time, there are 20-30 developers in category 2 changing their companies due to some reasons. But since there are new companies joining the industry every day, grabbing one is been a major challenge.

In a way the outsourcing model has created some of the problems.
Consider the garment industry in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is one of the best countries who produce garments to the world. But see how it works. International company seeks a local partner to outsource its production. They will setup the factory, train people, and create processors and they will create a best business venture.

But what happened when the US stop the quota system.?. Most of the Sri Lankan garments factories had to close. My point is that, knowledge won’t come to 3rd world countries as to independently operate. Some consultant creates a process and makes our people to follow that. Locals don’t know the whole operation. That’s why they couldn’t create own brands and designs and market it to the world. Locals are best at following someone else’s process productively but not at creating complete processors own there own.
This is happening to the local Software industry as well. A company which does well in outsourcing in SL has only their production arm locally. Either there process is setup by some international consultants or they are getting the whole spec from another country to produce the code.

Some time back I interviewed a Software Engineer, who worked in some major outsourcing company in Sri Lanka. When I asked him some simple questions like , “how to make a connection to the DB” for my surprise, he told me that he doesn’t know to do it as they are using ready made components.

This is the bad side of outsourcing. It will make our workforce dumb; destroy their creativity and destroy the eager to learn new things. Most of the developers don’t like to put extra effort to lean something and improve themselves from developers to architects or some senior level. They want a higher salary with less effort but doing same set of job functionalities. This has not become a problem now because there are lots of outsourcing jobs in the country. But we have no idea when this model is going to fail. In that day we are going to face a hell of a problem….

Cool remote control airplane stunts

2006-06-01T19:38:00.000+05:30

Information

2006-05-28T22:41:00.000+05:30

This is really cool. You need Macromedia Shockwave player to view this. Believe me its worth downloading. Click Click Click......

Intellisense for SQL Server

2006-05-24T23:03:00.000+05:30

Found another good tool while browsing the web. SQL Prompt will add Intellisense to your SQL queries. Currently its free and hope it will be the same in the future.

BusyBoxDotNet

2006-05-24T22:56:00.000+05:30

BusyBoxDotNet is free ASP.NET Control which can be used to a show a Message when performing long process.

Seems to be a very useful control, Check it out @ http://busyboxdotnet.qsh.eu/

Introduction to Windows Workstation Foundation (WF)

2006-04-23T19:54:00.000+05:30

[SDK, Up Coming Tools]

Consider a process like “Complain Management System”, where you need to get the customer complains through a Web site or a published for Phone no. Internal employer should be appointed to act upon complains and take the necessary actions. A Manager should review the employer actions and then get back to the customer.

Typical organization wants to implement many processors like this and monitor the progress of them.

Some elements are human processes and some are System process if you take a look at the above ( e.g Customer needs to enter the complain through a website is Human responsibility and authenticate customer in to the system is System responsibility.)

You can find hundreds of processes like this in your day to day work environment. Do you have a facility to setup something like this using MS Office or other available software?This is where the up coming Windows Work Flow (WF) comes in to place. WF will be an Application development framework to design applications to setup work flow in your organization and a user friendly integrated set of tools with next
Office Suite (V12).

More @ http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/UnderstandWWF.asp

Mapping Data Provider Data Types

2006-04-23T19:53:00.000+05:30

[.NET 2.0 Data Access]

“We recommend that you use the typed accessor methods of the DataReader when you know the specific type of the value being returned. Typed accessor methods result in better performance by returning a value as a specific .NET Framework type, eliminating the need for additional type conversion. The SqlDataReader exposes SQL Server–specific typed accessor methods if a .NET Framework type does not meet the needs of the application. SQL Server–specific typed accessor methods return objects of System.Data.SqlTypes.” -- local MSDN

Above lines are extracted from MSDN which confirms that you should use accessors to read the data out of data readers and it will result better performance since it eliminates type casting. Further MSDN describes the getter names which you should use in SQL and Oracle provides for specific data type. So better to read section “Mapping Data Provider Data Types to .NET Framework Data Types” before reading values from datareaders.

.NET 2 Links

2005-12-31T11:57:00.000+06:00

Found some good reference material for .NET 2.0 today.
They are as follows
Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 Setup Troubleshooting Guide
ASP.NET jumpstarted: Establishing the Application and Page Framework
Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer New dataset Features in Visual Studio 2005
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/vs2005.asp
Brian Goldberg Blog

Now there is a page for ASP.NET UI Designers as well. You can find info on how to design your page according to web standards, Themes master pager etc. So Asela (Who is our UI designer at office) be ready, I'm going to bug you to implement them.
ASP.NET for Designers

UK government gateway runs totally on Microsoft software

2005-12-29T18:26:00.000+06:00

I just found that UK government gateway runs totally on Microsoft software. It runs on top of Windows 2000 Advanced Server using BizTalk Server 2000, SQL Server 2000, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, Application Center 2000, and Commerce Server 2000. According to Microsoft, this was there largest BizTalk server implementation. Even though the Linux community criticize this, It has proven that the Stability and Practicality of Microsoft solutions. This would be a good reference for me to convince customers for .NET Framework based applications.

More @ http://www.ciber-uk.com/casestudies/search_results_single.cfm?id=ukonline

.NET Localization

2005-12-13T20:01:00.000+06:00

[ C#, .NET 1.1, 2.0 ]

We can do this by using resource files. A default resource file is generated for every form and text, images etc will be stored in this file and they are complied in to a satellite assembly. Custom text which you need to display as messages etc can be embedded in to custom resource file. You have to create this file manually.

To create multi language form first you have to set the Localize property to true;

Then you can add controls to the form. These controls will be added in the default language. Then you can change the language property to the language that you want and enter text in the form. This will result creating two resource file for the Form by the designer with there culture-name. At the compile time multiple assemblies are created for each culture. When you change the current culture form the Regional Settings the form will load with the specific language text that you added to the form.

Custom resource files will act as the same way, but you have to manually name them accordingly. Ex. Messages.resx , Meesages.fr-FR.resx

You have to load them in the following way

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

ResourceManager localResMgr = new ResourceManager("GraphicsTest.messages", typeof(TestWinControls).Assembly);

string welcomeMsg = localResMgr.GetString("strWelcomeMessage");

MessageBox.Show(welcomeMsg);

}

To check this you have to manually change the UI Culture of the form. You have to change the current threads’ UI culture in the Constructor of the Form before the Initializecomponent method is called.

public TestWinControls()

{

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("fr-FR");

InitializeComponent();

}

Note: When you deploy the application the OS should be Win2k , Win3K or WinXP Multi-Language version and you should be able to change the UI Culture from the control panel.

.NET Graphics

2005-12-09T19:40:00.000+06:00

I saw some enhanced controls created using the “Owner Drawn” feature of Winforms.NET 2.0. So I open the MSDN and start studying System.Drawing form the scratch. I found out that you have to get the Graphics object from the current control to draw graphics in the form and there are 3 methods to do that.

1. Graphic property of the PaintEventArgs, of the Paint event of the control

2. Calling CreateGraphics() method of the control

3. Getting the Graphic object a image using Graphics.FromImage(<class derived from image class>)

To check this I used the onPaint event of the PictureBox control as follows

1. Graphic property of the PaintEventArgs, of the Paint event of the control

2. Calling CreateGraphics() method of the control

3. Getting the Graphic object a image using Graphics.FromImage()

To check this I used the onPaint event of the PictureBox control as follows

private void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)

{

//Get a graphic object of the picturebox

Graphics graphicsRef = e.Graphics;

//Create a brush

System.Drawing.Brush brush = System.Drawing.Brushes.DarkOrange;

//Draw some text

graphicsRef.DrawString("This is a Sample Text", new Font("Forte", 14), brush, new Point(30, 30));

//Draw a line

graphicsRef.DrawLine(System.Drawing.Pens.BurlyWood, new Point(30, 60), new Point(100, 60));

}

Which generate a output like…

Furhter to add a Liner gradient to the text drawn in the screen I replaced the follwing line

//Create a brush

System.Drawing.Brush brush = System.Drawing.Brushes.DarkOrange;

With the

//Create a linear for the string

System.Drawing.Brush brush = new System.Drawing.Drawing2D.LinearGradientBrush(

new Point(30, 30),

new Point(200, 30),

Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, 0), // Opaque Green

Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 0, 255)); // Opaque blue

To generate an output like…

2005-08-08T18:58:00.000+06:00

I have came across following when I was looking for .NET Persistance object
pattens

href="http://www.awprofessional.com/articles/article.asp?p=30298&seqNum=8"
target=_blank>

Implimentation of Facade Pattern

id=_ctl0__ctl0__ctl0_Title1>href="http://developerland.com/CSharpGeneral/Database/372.aspx"
target=_blank>Domain
Objects Persistence Pattern for .NET by
href="http://developerland.com/CSharpGeneral/Database/Users_ShowProfile.aspx?user=sarah">Iqbal
Khan

NET Persistance object pattens

Laptop for $230 ( LKR 23,000)?

2005-05-20T15:05:00.000+06:00

What do you think if u can get a laptop for $230 ( LKR 23,000)? Indian company called Encore has developed a laptop and a desktop for that price range. It comes with a Linux version and it is capable enough to do normal day to day work. more >>

more images >>

2005-05-16T19:34:00.000+06:00

HACK IIS 6.0 and Win a XBOX.

If you can hack IIS 6 and prove that it is not secure, here is your chance to show it to the world and same time win a XBOX.

Hack http://www.hackiis6.com/

"Double meaning"

2005-05-15T14:08:00.000+06:00

If you look at things with a dirty mind you will see things differently. Advertising companies has used this to send their messages as "double meaning images". You can some of those image in this web site.

WB Editor 2

2005-05-11T10:48:00.000+06:00

This is Just a Test I'm Testing WB Editor 2

2005-05-04T13:32:00.000+06:00

Yeah! is a going to be a good animated movie when it is released. Meantime
check out their web site

Roots of Computing

2005-04-23T11:32:00.000+06:00

I found this page when I was searching for "why 64-bit computing".
Just read and see the accomplishments of the DEC. Seems they are the people who
started all the things related computing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation

iPod Killers

2005-04-20T14:21:00.000+06:00

Great new phones has been introduced to the market with features of a phone, a camera, and now with the features of a iPod

Abilon

2005-04-20T09:42:00.000+06:00

I just download the Abilon and I'm checking it out.

Vehicle Performance

2005-04-19T15:38:00.000+06:00

This is very cool gadget that I found on the web. It can plug it to your cigarette lighter and it measures your cars performance. It has measurement capabilities like horsepower, torque, 1/8th & ¼ mile times, rpm & shiftlights, 0-60 time, and handling Gs.
Check out their demo @ http://www.gtechpro.com/test.html

2005-04-18T16:05:00.000+06:00

I watched the movie HITCHED. It is a great movie. You should watch it too.

Homepage

Welcome

2005-02-15T11:55:00.000+06:00

Welcome to my Blog.