Motivational Video
0A very wonderful video that I wanted to share with you.. It is a very true thing… It is a great motivator for me
Conditional Page Break in SRSS Reports
0one of the cases that I faced recently is having conditional page break in SRSS report. this is not an out of the box feature in SRSS and I had to do a workaround in order to accomplish this feature. To do so, I followed these steps:
-
Add a rectangle to your report
-
Right click on the rectangle and select “rectangle properties “
-
Check the checkbox related to “Add a page break after” or “Add a page break before”; depending on the location of the rectangle and where the page break is intended to be.
-
The tricky point is to set a visibility condition that control when the rectangle. The point is if the rectangle is invisible; then there will be no page break.
Visual Studio Achievements Extension
0I believe Visual Studio Achievement extension is a very nice plugin to have it on Visual Studio. It is running in the background while you are doing your daily tasks to analyzes your actions and according to the progress you are going to get an achievement badge(s).
Most often developer hard work and efforts will not be noticeable, till he/she achieved a huge thing in short time or discover a hidden bug within a very short period. But having VS achievement in place, this is will not the case again. The tool will analyze actions on Visual Studio and unlocked the deserved achievement to the developer according to actions. These unlocked achievements will be posted to Channel 9 profile for the developer (thus having profile on Channel 9 is a prerequisite ).
Once you have an achievement granted, a popup will appear on the right-bottom corner of More >
Sync Data Between SQL Server and SQL Azure
0couple of weeks ago I had discussion with a friend of mine about cloud technologies form Microsoft. After we finished that discussion I start thinking of what scenarios that we maybe come over while developing a real enterprise application on cloud. One scenario came into mind about that; What if I get into a need to synchronize data between SQL Azure on the cloud and SQL server on-premises? is this will be an easy thing to be accomplished? Sudhesh through the below video illustrate how to setup data sync between a SQL Azure and SQL Server databases.
Java Script Curly Braces place
0I got annoyed while writing some Java Script inside Visual studio, because Visual Studio keep placing the curly braces at the same line as the control statement which what is called K&R style. as I am coming form C# background I would like to have the braces at the new line just like how the C# code got formatted; this style called Allman style. I never thought that might has any effect of how the Java Script interpreter might interpret the code and thus affect the end result.
so I decided to do a research why Visual Studio formatting Java Script in K&R style rather than Allman style. I got into a very nice article by Dave Ward that explained to me why is that by an example. The article explained in details how it would matter the position for the curly braces in certain cases because of More >
TransformXml Task Failed Unexpectedly Error Message While Publishing Web Project in Visual Studio 2010
0
one of the strange issues that I faced yesterday while trying to publish one of the web projects that I am working on. although the project compilation was working fine and when I run the project locally on my PC it was working fine without any issue.
After investigating for this issue I found the cause of this issue because the Web.config file was containing a special character inside it. so what I did is encode the special character then try to publish it again and things worked for me fine.
I had a very large Web.config file so looking for the special characters was not an easy job. I wrote a regular expression on Visual Studio that helped me on accomplished this job. so I would recommend to use regular expression to search Web.config instead of looking for the special characters inside the web.config file.
Tips to Secure IPad
0Recently I got a new IPad. it is a wonderful thing to have such a device with that small size that has that functionalities. but storing your information on it might be risky thing if you did not secure your IPad. this devise is much easier to be stolen comparing with other devises. so you have to secure your devise to mitigate the side effect of loosing it. I have couple of tips that will make your devise more secure.
1. Use locking functionality on your IPad.
This is a basic security thing and will prevent anybody from getting into your devise and start looking into your data. you can do that from Settings—> general –> passcode lock.
2. User MobileMe service from apple.
This is a very nice feature. using MobileMe feature will enable you to find your device once you loose it. if you could not get it More >
Accessing SharePoint folders using UNC
0Recently I had faced an issue regarding opening SharePoint shared document library folder using UNC path. I mean by UNC something like this path “\\ServerName\Sites\Documents”. the weird thing is I was able to access the UNC path from my Windows 7 PC but not able to do that from Windows Server 2008. while I am able to get into windows shared folders (Ordinary shared folders ) from my Windows Server 2008 machine. The only different thing between those 2 shared folders is the document library shared by SharePoint server which means it is not a real shared folders, it is shared through Web folders. In order to access the web folder you need to have WebClient service installed and running on the machine which you want to access the web folder from it. by default Windows Server 2008 does not have that service installed there. thus you need to More >
Performance Troubleshooting (ANTS tool)
0it happened once that a client raise an issue regarding to poor performance at certain area on an application that I was working on. That area was working perfectly on my environment, but at their environment it was not like that. I could not duplicate their environment locally because of security restrictions rules we have. Tracing code and do debugging was not helpful. Thus I decided to look into a tool that will help me on this mission.
I found a very nice tool that help me very much on tracing and figuring out the bottleneck on my application, that tool is called ANTS from Red-Gate. I strongly recommend to try this tool.
The good thing about this tool is that it is integrated inside the visual studio which making your life much easier when you want to start troubleshoot the performance issue. another thing that More >
Parallelism in .Net 4.0
0One of the major enhancements that Microsoft has accomplished is enhancing the parallelism in many .Net class library. that is making things much faster and using the hardware in more effective way. in .Net 3.5 and earlier versions of .Net framework, wee have to using Threads to accomplish the same job. Actually .Net 4.0 is using Threads but that is internally at the .Net class library and it will be hidden from your code which is making your life much easier.
The new Parallelism feature of ..Net framework categorized into one of the folllowings:
1) Task Parallel:
including parallel implementaion for FOREACH and FOR loops letting you define the concurrent, Async tasks without working directlying into threads thing,
2) Parallel LINQ (PLINQ):
Significantly improves the performance of LINQ.
3) Data Structure for Parallel Programming:
including a high performance collection of classes More >
Tips to Secure your Wireless network
0these days almost everyone has a Wireless network (WLAN) either at home or at work. it is very nice to deal with WLAN as you are not have to set in specific place just to use the wire connecting you with your router.
the main issue with WLAN is any Wireless-enabled devise can connect to it not only your laptop or mobile devises. specially if your WLAN signal is accessible outside the boundary of your building. which means anybody can set outside and monitor your network traffic or even access internet using your WLAN. this is really scary !!
When I setup my WLAN network at home for the first time, I thought it is secured just because I have to provide passphrase (password) before I can access my network. after doing some researches I could find my network is not secured at all and I like More >
My Experience with WordPress, Office Live and Google sites
0during the last year I was using GoogleSites and MS Office live to host my site. I was spending lot of time just to implement things like RSS or enable users to comments on articles I am posting there. I trust MS and Google so I thought they are providing a good tool and will not find a better ready product at low cost.
after couple of days trying WordPress (free product), I found I was making a huge mistake by hosting my site on MS Office Live or Google sites. with couple of clicks I am doing things I was spending days to implement similar functionality at MS office and google sites.
I would strongly encourage you to try WordPress as platform to host your blog and I am pretty sure you will never say “I was mistaken by using WordPress”
Microsoft Platforms Dominate – Proven by Survey with Enterprise Companies
0Back to the days I was at school up to the current moment I am writing it, I had so many discussions with many friends of mine regarding to current technologies we are using to build our software solutions. .Net/Java/SQL Server /Oracle/MySql…. Etc. unfortunately, most of my friends are not a fan of Microsoft technologies and did not like the idea of using Microsoft products as a solution for their customers. I was disappointed of that; I tried many times to change that idea with no luck. The discussions were becoming more aggressive once we start talking about solutions for enterprise organizations where we should have ZERO downtime.
Couple of days ago I wrote an article about this subject and posted it to Integrant’s blog site. The article was mainly about a survey taken place by an organization called IDC contracted from Microsoft side. It is worth to emphasis here More >
Enable Remote Access for MS SQL Express Edition
0By Default when you install SQL Server express edition on a machine you will not be able to connect to it from another machine by using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio or application. You need to do specific steps to enable SQL Server Express to accept connections from remote clients.
Recently I read a nice article posted to CodeKicks site about this issue, I would strongly recommend reading that article, to read it click hear
Loops Performance differences in .Net
0I never thought there will be a big different when you use different approaches to iterate through a collection of objects. I knew there are some differences between FOREACH/WHILE/FOR loops, but I never thought the different will be as much as an article I read recently in an article published on codekicks site.
The article was demonstrate how using the foreach/while/For loops will affect the performance of your application. The first time I read the article posted there I got convened and posted a recommendation to read it to my personal site. a friend of mine read the article and we had a discussion about it. He had a very true observation about the test applied to come into the conclusion. The main issue raised by Ahmad (my friend who raised the issue) was about the internal operations done by each loop. For example, in FOREACH More >
How to Change the Remove Desktop (RDP) Port
0You can use "Remote Desktop Connection" tool to connect to other PC and mange them remotely. It is a great tool that is really helpful specially when are talking about outsourcing industry. I do not mean this is only helpful only in IT outsourcing industry, but what I meant it is providing a huge help on that industry because you need to work on windows based machines while you are setting in a different country.
For me, I exposed my personal PC at home to be accessible from public internet network in order to be able to connect to it while I am travelling or at work. But this means I am also exposing my personal PC for hacking risk specially when I am not having a very good secured network infra-structure at home.
Hiding the Remote Desktop port is one step is to make my personal More >
How to register a Plugin inside MS CRM 4.0 using Registration tool shipped with Crm Sdk 4.0 Plugins on
0Plugins on CRM 4.0 replaces Callouts on CRM 3.0.. Mainly Plugins/Callouts is a custom code that should run to response for an action taken place against specific entity. actions like : Create / Update… and so on. Plugins can response to more events than Callouts.. the more events mean more complexity on registering Plugins if we comparing it with Callouts. Thanks for MS, MS released a registration tool with CRM Sdk 4.0 to make out life easier. I listed below main steps to register Plugins inside CRM 4.0.
To register Plugins on CRM 4.0 Please follow these steps:
-
Your assembly should be strongly named.
-
The Class that wills response to actions on activity should be implements IPlugin Interface.
-
Move your assemblies to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Server\bin\assembly\ folder with any resources needed[like XML configuration file, and so on.].
How to audit Privileges changes (Security Role) on MS CRM 4.0
0One of the challenges that I face while I was working on auditing changes on the major entities at MS CRM 4.0 is to audit changes on Privileges… CRM 4.0 consider privilege entity as a special case this is why we need to build a special case for auditing changes here.
First of all, there is no supported Message (Event) to handle this case. So we have to enable couple of messages to be able to audit changes on security Roles. Those messages called:
1. AddPrivileges. –> this event will handle the creating of a new Security Role
2. ReplacePrivileges. –> this message will handle adding/update/delete security privileges
The below script help you to enable those messages:
/*
Enable Privileges unsupported messages
*/
DECLARE @Message1 uniqueidentifier
DECLARE @Message2 uniqueidentifier
SET @Message1= (SELECT SdkMessageId FROM SdkMessageBase WHERE [Name] = ‘ReplacePrivileges’)
SET @Message2 = (SELECT SdkMessageId FROM SdkMessageBase WHERE [Name] = More >
How to Know the Execution Time of SQL Statements in Simple Way
0When client report to you a performance issue in certain area on your system, you start troubleshooting and tackling the issue. the performance bottleneck might be everywhere on your system, it might be on front-end, business layer, data access layer, … etc. The scope of this article is to check the execution time taken for certain SQL statement till you get the result out from the DB. this would very helpful if the performance issue is at data retrieval. after figuring out the performance bottleneck is at data retrieval, the solution might be as easy as adding index for some of table’s columns. but in most cases you might get into a trouble of changing the body of SQL statements to have better performance. so you need a tool to assess your changes. SQL 2008 IDE shipped with a built-in tool that I found so much helpful and made More >
Be Simple winner
0"Be Simple winner" this is a phrase I heard from a friend of mine long a time ago. He was advising me in regards to couple of things. After thinking of it I believed it is totally a true statement. our discussion was about software development industry specifically but I believe this statement can be reflected to other industries as well, being a simple winner does not means to deliver a bad quality software that does not meet your client requirements. being simple winner means to develop a software that meets client requirements and not exceed the requirements to extra requirements that your client is not in need for it. You should not deliver something that is extra for your client and they might not get benefited from . This does not means to ignore the basic software requirements that your client did not ask for explicitly like security More >
How to Compress Files in .Net
0There is many options to compress files, and .net framework provide you with 2 easy ways to do it. Basically there are 2 class under System.IO.Compression namespace. More specifically those classes are: 1. GZipStream 2. DeflateStream
Both of these classes has certain usage. I will start first by explaining how to use each one then jump into a comparison between them on later posts.
Yasser Jaber wrote an article about how to compress files using GZipStream class at integrant’s blog. Read this article here
How to Make your URL shorter
0For many reasons you might ends you having a very long URL for certain pages, distributing the long URL might be an issue for you as people usually does not remember long URLs and they like having short URLs.
Today there is many websites that make your long URLs shorter and make your life easier. Personally I checked http://tinyurl.com site and it worked just perfectly for me. I am pretty sure there are more sites that are doing the same thing for you. But I am recommending this one for you.
Advance Operation using LINQ to object
0In certain cases you might find yourself in need to do sum for a field that is a member of object in a list or collection. Doing summation for a certain field is somehow an easy job. What if you want to do Average or more complicated equation. Definitely you will write a long procedure to do the needed job. Well, if you decided to use LINQ to Object to do the job for you, then you might do the job by writing couple of lines of code. Yes, it will be as simple as that. Yasser Jaber wrote a short article about this in Integrant’s blog
Dealing with Time.. Be Careful!
0Dealing with time is something crucial that we need to a pay very close attention to it. I like the aphorism that say " Time is like a river. You can’t touch the same water twice", This is very true statement and I am having it in front of me every single minute in my every day.
In my past days I wasted many days doing not useful things. I have a guilty feeling because of that and I hope if I can go back to fix that. But there is no Time-Machine that will get me back to that time to fix my mistakes. I hope if I can have a time-machine that will lead me to correct my mistakes I made in the past. I learned that in the hard way while I could learn it in the easy way if I listen to my father More >
Outsourcing What and When?
0Outsourcing becoming part of the core business of any successful business these days, one of the very nice articles I read couple of weeks ago was about outsourcing. It is explaining the outsourcing in a very good way and explain what to Outsource and when to do that. The subject of this article was "Outsourcing: What and When?" I strongly recommend to have couple of minutes reading this site.
What is LINQ to Object
0LINQ is a new language introduced in .net framework 3.5. it is so much useful for developer as it is freeing developer from writing large number of code lines. If you did not try it yet, I strongly recommend to read the following article that I posted to my company blog site. this post explain basic things of LINQ to object language..
Date different in SQL server Vs Oracle
0
While setting back in my chair today and thinking of the power that MS tools giving to us , I decided to do a very small compare of things I can do in SQL server and how can I do the same thing in Oracle.
I decided to do a very primitive operation on both DBs… something is very silly. Just to get the differences between 2 dates in Weeks. This is very easy thing
In SQL Server I could do that in single line of SQL Statement
SELECT DATEDIFF (ww, ’03/20/1983′, ’11/03/2010′) DiffInWeeks_SQLServerWhile I could do the same operation in Oracle by a long equation comparing with the one I have for SQL Serer:
SELECT (to_date(’03/20/1983′,’mm/dd/yyyy’) – to_date(’11/03/2010′,’mm/dd/yyyy’)
) / 7.0) DiffInWeeks_Oracle
FROM DUAL;
I still like working on Microsoft platforms.
How Can I Enhance the Performance of .Net Application?
0The performance of any system is considered as a key part of the requirements that client usually ask for implicitly. The poor perform application is most likely going to be failed because of that even if it is doing lot of very cool functionalities. Recently I read an interesting article about this topic published on CodeGuru. They highlighted couple of key actions that is easy to be implemented and they are almost effortless but at the end those actions will improve the overall performance of you application by better utilization of server CPUs. They depending on the fact that the CPUs we have these days is much sophisticated that previous days and we need to take benefits of that. I strongly recommend reading this article
Don’t Delete Negative Reviews/Comments
0I had discussion with a friend of mine couple of days about negative reviews that somebody might have on their site. He was after convincing me to simply DELETE negative comments or reviews. His idea is simply hide that negative thing from being displaying on your website and protect yourself from it.
My opinion was totally against that. I believe I should keep negative comments just like keeping positive comments. There are many reasons that letting you doing that. Simply it is part of honest relationship between you and your readers/customers. It is a great chance to have conversation with your reader/customer and to get his feedback and if he/she has the correct opinion, then you need to fix that immediately.
What trigger me to write this article not only the conversation I have with my friend. The trigger is mainly an article I just read about More >