We have decided to start a Tunbridge Wells Dot Net User Group modelled on the London Dot Net User group. The company I toil for has agreed to provide the Venue & Free Pizza. We trial ran this internally over the last couple of months and now want to open it up to the local developer community to get new ideas.

The next meeting is on Wednesday 12th April @ 6pm at our offices in Tunbridge Wells see the website http://www.redlinesoftware.co.uk/contactus.asp for directions. We are very near to the station. If you would like to come along or even better present a topic then send an email to CharlieBarker[At No Spam]RedlineSoftware.co.uk and I will put you on the list.

Over the next couple of weeks I will put together a mailing list and simple web page detailing dates of meetings.

Come along because:            +     Dot Net = Fun!

Logo:

We do a monthly Pizza.net night at our company where a couple of people do a presentation on a topic relating to development. Tonight I did a quick introduction to Unit Testing in .Net using nUnit. I have uploaded the ppt which covers the features and benefits.

 

Unit Testing.ppt (71.5 KB)

I have already blogged about Vault and source code control here: http://www.dualbotic.com/DasBlog/What+Visual+Source+Safe+Doesnt+Do+For+Us.aspx

We are a seven man MS dev team and have been using Vault for nearly a year. First things first it is a huge improvement on VSS 6.0d, because it uses compression combined with a webservice our dev's can work from home over broadband hardly noticing any slow down in check ins/outs. The other killer feature is the Diff tool this is big step up from VSS. It also has some neat reporting although it takes a while to figure this out as the UI is not designed all that well. The one bug bear we have is that there is no plug in for VS2002 only for VS2003 over time this will cease to be a problem as we move more of our code base to VS2003.

I haven't looked at the newest MS VSS which ships with VS2005 Team System so I am not sure whether Vault has some competition coming it's way but we will probably be using VS2003 for at least the next couple of years so we are very pleased with the utility we are getting from it.

One thing I have noticed with all source control products is that the less experienced members of the Dev team struggle with the concepts that lie behind source control and that the UI of most tools doesn't do much to assist them in their plight. It would be good to see more narrative in the UI that would help them make the right decisions and not overwrite local changes by mistake.

I was compiling a release script the other day, and needed to check if all data items in a column were unique before adding a Unique constraint to a table. I wanted a way to stop Query Analyzer (QA) from executing the batch if the check revealed there were duplicate items in the column. I tried a few obvious things like Return and raiserror but these didn't work. I then realised that the issue lay with the GO command. I found this in BOL "GO is not a Transact-SQL statement; it is a command recognized by the osql and isql utilities and SQL Query Analyzer." unfortunately there isn't a corresponding STOP command so you cannot easily perform a test in T-SQL and then tell Query Analyzer (QA) to stop processing the rest of the batch.

I did however find a dirty way around this problem. Using a While loop and the Print command I was able to repeatedly display a message to the user explaining the problem and instructing them to cancel the execution. Not very elegant but it did work.

BOL Search Terms: Batches, Batch Processing

Following on from http://www.dualbotic.com/DasBlog/Using+Typed+Datasets+In+VBNet.aspx

I have been using the typed datasets for a few months now and have learnt more about their behaviour. If you alter the stored procedure you used to generate your dataset there is every chance your application will runtime error. It is possible avoid recompiling your application if say you have added a column to the query in the sp then simply refreshing your typed dataset in VB.NET and deploying the newly generated XSD file should do the trick. Of course if you have removed a column that your code was referencing your screwed but the same would normally be true even if you weren't using TD's.

I recenlty discovered this funky new device from Nokia it's a mini tablet pc that runs Linux and retails for 350 euros, apparently Nokia can't make them fast enough. You get about three hours battery life and a portable web browsing tool that can be used for a multitude of other tasks. According to the Reg there is nothing else like it, if strong sales continue then this could be an entirely new market.

The Reg has the skinny on it here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/05/electric_nokia770/

Duey finster has bought one and gives his impressions on it:

http://blog.dueyfinster.com/2005/12/nokia-770-internet-tablet.html

 

 

I found a useful article here , Google gets my backing on this, it looks like there are plenty of options open to the US govt to find out the information they seek without using Google. I believe Google have a valid concern that people will think twice about using their search engine if the search data will be handed over to the US govt without good reason.

I have just read a couple of articles on client-side scripting techniques by Scott Mitchell of 'Four Guys from Rolla' fame. He really knows his stuff and offers great insight into whats going on under the covers in dotnet.

I keep reading stuff like this on the web

"you forget to mention those call Centers are in India,Pakistan and taking away US jobs."

from Channel9 's fourm

I don't think job's can be owned instead I believe they must be earned and this is achieved by running companies that are efficient in what they do.

These are Jobs that were being done by US workers which are now being done by foreign workers because they are prepared to work for less pay. Now the consumer pays less or the company makes a bigger profit. This is something all capitalist democratic countries should welcome. Protectionism just drives up prices, prevents competition and thus stifles innovation.