February 2004 - Posts

• Using Typed DataSets with Web Services

  Someone asked me about using a typed DataSet on both ends of the wire using a web service. I honestly don't work with typed DataSets, but this question was to accomodate the client's existing architecture. We both tried it, and couldn't get it to work. Read More... Posted Thursday, February 26, 2004 6:58 PM by kaevans | 34 Comments Filed under: XML 1.0, .NET

• "They Are Millionaires, I am Not"

  Douglas Reilly has a great post on what seems to be a recurring theme throughout my career. He talks about being tasked to write a system with features that he knows are fragile, implement it in such a way that maintenance and support costs are exponentially Read More... Posted Thursday, February 26, 2004 1:31 PM by kaevans | 7 Comments Filed under: Project Management

• Inside Indigo

  I am actually not a fan of individuals posting aggregated feeds, but I found a set of posts tonight that all hit around my areas of interest. This will not be a common occurrence for me, as I am posting these mainly as a selfish set of pointers. For those Read More... Posted Saturday, February 21, 2004 11:20 PM by kaevans | 3 Comments Filed under: XML 1.0, .NET

• Swallowing the Red Pill

  I accepted an offer from Microsoft: I will be swallowing the red pill on March 1st. My new position is Developer Evangelist for the telco vertical, and I will be based in Atlanta. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! Read More... Posted Thursday, February 19, 2004 10:50 AM by kaevans | 33 Comments

• The "a-" Designation Not Just Within Microsoft

  A new hire is meandering around the work area at a company I have consulted with. The HR manager walks in. ”Hi, welcome (name withheld to protect the innocent), we are so glad to have you. Here is where your cube is, if you have any questions let Read More... Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2004 2:10 PM by kaevans | 4 Comments Filed under: Project Management

• Kicking the Dead Horse: More on Exceptions

  An interesting thread on the API Design Hall of Shame on Brad Abrams' blog. I have a question, how was the decision for these 2 classes ctor parameters made... Constructor for ArgumentNullException public ArgumentNullException( string paramName, string Read More... Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2004 10:30 AM by kaevans | 5 Comments Filed under: .NET

• XPath-Based Filtering With Pull-Based XML Parsing

  Some very interesting work has been going on with the classes in the System.Xml namespace. Daniel Cazzulino blogs about an XseReader implementation he has been working on for providing XML Streaming Events . I had been using a similar implementation for Read More... Posted Monday, February 16, 2004 9:36 AM by kaevans | 1 Comments Filed under: XML 1.0, .NET

• Anonymous Methods and Higher-Order Procedures in C#

  Steve Maine has a great article on using anonymous methods and higher-order procedures in C# . A point not necessarily highlighted in the article's text but rather through the code examples is that not all problems are solved through inheritance. Suppose Read More... Posted Thursday, February 12, 2004 11:24 AM by kaevans | 1 Comments Filed under: .NET

• Assembly Caching and XmlSerializer

  Paul Wilson emailed me with some questions regarding perceived memory leaks related to System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer. I questioned whether it would be a “memory leak”, but pinged Christoph Schittko for some backup evidence. He said Read More... Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2004 4:11 PM by kaevans | 14 Comments Filed under: XML 1.0, .NET

• Project Management

  I thought I would add a category for rants on Project Management practices. Misinformed PM quote of the week: “Our business model simply does not allow confirming requirements before construction. The software development team is helping to shape Read More... Posted Sunday, February 08, 2004 10:42 PM by kaevans | 5 Comments Filed under: Project Management

• XML Validation Against a Schema and a DTD With Namespaces

  Steven Livingstone has a great tip on validation using DTDs and Schemas against an instance document that includes namespaces . Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Read More... Posted Sunday, February 08, 2004 9:45 PM by kaevans | 0 Comments Filed under: XML 1.0, .NET

• Set Property in XsltArgumentList Extension Object: Ugly Hack

  Paul Duncan asks in the microsoft.public.xsl list how to set a property for an XSLT extension object. Yes, there is a way to do set the property of an XSLT extension object in .NET. But... This is such an ugly hack, I feel dirty posting the solution. Read More... Posted Sunday, February 08, 2004 6:16 PM by kaevans | 10 Comments Filed under: XSLT 1.0, .NET

• Exceptions and VB.NET, Revisited

  After a series of long IM sessions with Cory explaining my earlier post on VB.NET and Exceptions , he decided to post his thoughts on the matter . And Paul Vick weighed in through comments... > Our assumption is that the first thing that people will Read More... Posted Wednesday, February 04, 2004 6:33 PM by kaevans | 4 Comments Filed under: .NET

• DevDays - Nashville, TN - March 8th

  I am lucky enough to have been invited to speak at DevDays in Nashville, TN on March 8th at Loews Vanderbilt . I will be speaking on “Developing Secure Web Applications: Examining an End-to-End, Hack-Resilient Application.” Looks like I need Read More... Posted Wednesday, February 04, 2004 5:16 PM by kaevans | 1 Comments Filed under: .NET

• CSS Explanations

  Tim Tabor pointed out on the win_tech_off_topic list that Selectoracle (aka “Selector Oracle“) provides English and Spanish translations of CSS3 selectors. It allows you to enter the URL for a web page with an embedded stylesheet or enter Read More... Posted Tuesday, February 03, 2004 9:40 AM by kaevans | 0 Comments