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Archive of Entries
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Most recent blog entries
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short article |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
10/28/2004 4:00 PM
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Well in my quest to actually publish a book someday, I've begun the arduous task by writing a small series of articles for the TEKsystems newsletter. My focus for these articles will be upcoming microsoft technologies and their implementation for developers. writing a technical article is not a task easily undertaken. its a total polar opposite from the term papers and fiction that I had to produce en masse while in college. I am enjoying it though. It's helping me to focus on procedural writing rather than just conceptual dialogue. Hopefully the book can be complete sometime next year. the article can be found in the articles section of the site.
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UML |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
10/18/2004 4:00 PM
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o.k. so i underestimated the depth of UML. I always had this perception that it was simply flowcharting with a different terminology. but no. there are nuances that separate it from the old high-school programming courses that are absolutely unbelievable. And the integration with Visual Studio is awesome. I've been constructing Sql Server Databases based on my DB UML diagrams and I have to say that I'm very impressed. I'd like to take a look at some Rational products next.
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db2 course |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
10/12/2004 4:00 PM
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i'm sitting thru a db2 class for the next few weeks. its pretty informative. especially for someone as microsoft biased as I am. But I'm trying to not limit myself in scope. I find that developers who are so narrow minded in their preference, really limit themselves in opportunities that may come along in the future. Probably move on to Oracle next. And I need to throw some Java training into the mix. So many books, so little time. :)
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wiped out |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
10/3/2004 4:00 PM
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not much to blog today. wiped out. went to detroit for a three day break. brief summary:
-ate in greektown - awesome food!
-stopped by the casino to see what the hype was about. didnt spend any money cause logically the machines are designed and programmed to ween you out of your money. I just wanted to see what a casino looks like. sure was a bunch of lifeless looking old people there. prolly blowing their life savings.
-went to a Tigers Game - they lost.
-saw fireworks after the game. that was great; it was right over our heads and very loud.
-went to concert later - that was awesome.
-Went to Detroit Institute of Arts. Very cool. Michelle had a blast there.
-Went shopping and spent an hour looking for a mexican restaurant in Detroit. Ended up having Pizza in greektown.
-Spent some time with friends.
-took care of some "professional" business and what nots.
long weekend. but now i'm wiped out. need another vacation to recover.
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Writing Code documentation |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/27/2004 4:00 PM
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The Enterprise Development book that I'm working through is already having an impact on how I document code. I've noticed that I'm now leaning towards a reverse-engineered solution for UML markup. Previously I was flowcharting user interaction and data flow, but now I'm integrating all of that into a consistent UML diagram. Definitely a good book.
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Enterprise Architect |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/22/2004 4:00 PM
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I'm knee deep in this great new book, "Enterprise Development with Visual Studio .NET, UML and MSF". Its an awesome book. Well, I should say that its awesome so far. Some tech books have a habit of falling apart at the end; hopefully this particular title will not fulfill that prophecy. I finally have VS.NET Enterprise Architect to work with and I'm loving every minute of it. I dont think I could ever go back to using the stripped down version of Visual Studio. I love having the ability to concept in Visio and then have it dump the code out for me in VS.NET. Very cool. The aforementioned book spends a good deal of time describing Microsoft Best Practices and various architectural techniques. I find the most beneficial aspect to be the interactive exercises included throughout the entire book. They're very informative and straight to the point.
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C# Attributes |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/14/2004 4:00 PM
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Well i've spent my fair share of time really wondering if I would throw myself head first into C# and really just turn my head from VB.NET. I've had various concerns, primarily all geared towards my ability to garner employment with a heavier concentration in C#. So its been to my secretive and allusive content to find an abundance of opportunities presenting themselves in C#. I'll still MCAD in VB.NET, because I'm looking to finish that soon and having to study for the sharp version would introduce learning curves that I'm not quite ready to surf yet. Its nice to see the 'C' language finally get over that R.A.D. stigma that has precluded its presence in a largely lucrative corporate world. Integration with Visual Studio.NET is seamless and profound. Good times.
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oh yeah... |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/12/2004 4:00 PM
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I started my next article on asp.net 2.0 features. I'll post it soon. Waiting on VS2005, so that I can throw some code samples in as well.
Next year is going to be a great year for developers.
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NOoooooooooooo! |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/12/2004 4:00 PM
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I've been identified as the Code documenting Guru at work! NOoooo!
:)
I prepared a few Visio flowcharts of my code responsibility with some Object write ups and now Meijer is going to follow my pattern for all programmers in our project. Which is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I'm thankful for the praise and a curse, because it was rather detailed. So I have a few programmers who feel like they've been handed extra work; even though every one is responsible for documenting their code outside of Visual Studio. Sorry guys! :D
Actually, I came away with extra work because I've been asked to learn and document someone else's project in the same format. And I'm looking forward to it, despite some assumptions made by others, because it will present more of an opportunity to learn more of the process here and maybe throw a few skills into the mix as well.
Time to code...
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Paging article complete |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/6/2004 4:00 PM
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well i finished my article on asp.net datagrid paging. Click on Articles to view it. It's actually harder to write an article than I thought. You would think after having been an English major and all the term papers I've written over the years, that I would be a little more literate than I thought that I was. But I tried.
Still having major site issues with Jodohost. I've found another host at:
http://datapacket.net/webhosting.asp
Havent actually paid for any of their services yet, because I want to make sure I have all of the site backed up and ready to go, so that it will be a seamless transition.
Jodohost has tanked almost everyday that I've sat down to update the site. Its almost as if the server isnt setup to handle any kind of traffic. The tech support guy told me to give him the error message that I'm getting. But I know that they, as the admins, have access to the event log and should be able to troubleshoot this on their own. Thats one of the sucky things about being a remote user with
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asp.net grid paging |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/2/2004 4:00 PM
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worked on a project today setting up a grid thats datasourced to a query that could potentially bring back thousands of rows. so bringing back that much info is baad. so i limit the query to the top 10 rows of the query and depending on the paging direction, i'll limit the rows by the running ID and sort accordingly. With our db2 database, its company policy to avoid temp tables; which is understandable. dont want a hundred people creating a hundred tables just to page thru a grid.
built the procs, built the forms and blammo..done. works like a charm.
did i mention that I really am not a big fan of DB2. I miss the ability to create procs in SqlSrvr2k by just typing CREATE PROCEDURE. DB2 makes the simplest tasks just another degree more difficult.
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Visual Studio 2005 Beta DVD |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
9/1/2004 4:00 PM
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well i tried. i attempted to order the dvd beta of Visual Studio 2005 from msdn. I dont have a subscription, so i have to pay some lame shipping and handling fee. Not a big deal. $9 later I'm hoping to start working with VS2k5. But noooo.
Microsoft says they're back ordered. WHAT????!!!
The largest tech company in the world and they're out of dvd's? They cant run down to best buy and pick up some more? ugh.
so i wait.
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stupid installs |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
8/31/2004 4:00 PM
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o.k. so i dont know why it is that microsoft screams for anti virus software to be installed, but yet they design installers as if nobody has them.
case in point. i'm installing sql server 2005 yukon. i have norton corporate running. i keep getting config issues as well as a Workbench QFE installation problem. The installation fails. no problem. i kill norton, uninstall sql server setup tools, reboot and try again. the install works flawlessly. now its really odd, because at home on my IIS box, i have norton corporate running as well. virtually the same setup. It installed at home without issue. but on the laptop, it freaks out over the norton protection. seems retarded to me. maybe i'm just missing something somewhere.
but i have it up and running on the laptop and its so sweet.
i cant wait to run across some documentation to really dive into it.
I still have about 500 pages to go on my Actuate training guide, before I'll really get into sql2k5. That and i'm working on the C# certificatio
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Installing SQL Server 2005 "Yukon" |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
8/31/2004 4:00 PM
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So now I'm installing Sql Server 2005 Beta 2 on the laptop. I installed it at home last nite on the webserver and it seemed to run pretty smooth. its an interesting change from the typical Enterprise Manager and QA. They've combined both of those applications into a single "workdesk" area. I like the heirarchal layout of the DBs. The only gripe i have is that it seems like its going to take alot of screen space to really use the program seamlessly. but thats a small issue.
I'll be working with this app for a few weeks to get a feel for whats coming.
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WinFS |
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The Woolston Blog
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By daniel on
8/29/2004 4:00 PM
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microsoft announced that they plan to deliver the next OS in 2006. However it will be without the much anticipated WinFS filing system. Well poo.
It was actually a good selling point. But i guess that it was going to delay the release so they nixed it.
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