Tuesday, July 24, 2007

.NET Security Blog : What Happens When My Application Throws An Unhandled Exception

.NET Security Blog : What Happens When My Application Throws An Unhandled Exception: "What Happens When My Application Throws An Unhandled Exception

There are several different behaviors that can occur when a managed application throws an unhandled exception. The two most common are to bring up an error dialog box, or to pop up the Visual Studio Just In Time Debugger dialog box.

The first behavior is the default when you install the CLR, but don't install Visual Studio. Installing VS modifies the default to pop up the select-a-debugger dialog. How does the CLR figure out what behavior to use? It checks a registry key, located at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\.NetFramework\DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting. The value of this key lets the CLR know what to do when it encounters an unhandled exception."

Andrew Coates ::: MSFT : Learning Online with Virtual Labs - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Virtual Labs

Andrew Coates ::: MSFT : Learning Online with Virtual Labs - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Virtual Labs: "Learning Online with Virtual Labs - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Virtual Labs

Today, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Virtual Labs (from the MSDN Suite of Virtual Labs)

What's new in Visual Studio Team System
Virtual Lab Express is the fastest and easiest way to test drive Microsoft products and the Virtual Lab environment. These are 30-minute hands-on overviews of some of your favorite Microsoft products and developer tools. Try them out online now - no need to download full trial versions or dedicate test machines.
VSTS Virtual Labs

* Express: What’s New in Visual Studio Team System
* Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers New!
* Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers - Tips and Tricks for ASP.NET
* Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Project Manager-Focused Scenarios
* Visual Studio Team System Reports
* Change Management with Team Foundation Server
* Writing Secure Native Code with Visual C++ and Visual Studio Team System
* Writing Secure Managed Code with Visual Studio Team System

Connected Systems Virtual Labs

* Architecting Connected Systems: XML Inside of SQL Server"

Welcome to the MSDN Virtual Labs

Welcome to the MSDN Virtual Labs: "Welcome to the MSDN Virtual Labs! Quickly evaluate or learn how to build great applications for Windows and the Web through a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less. The best part is, the MSDN Virtual Labs don’t require any installation and are available to you immediately for FREE. Start by selecting the lab you’re interested in from the list below."

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock - suspense, camera angles, style, editing, basics

Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock - suspense, camera angles, style, editing, basics: "How to turn your boring movie into a Hitchcock thriller...

Borgus.com - We've put together a list of the most significant film techniques that were used by Alfred Hitchcock. This information comes out of many books and interviews from the man himself and his been simplified for your consideration.

This page is mostly for filmmakers who are sad and depressed because their movie is so average that nobody will watch it. Stop crying and pay attention. What is written here will save your career (at least until tomorrow morning.) However there is no cure for a bad producer - there may be no help for you!"

Smashing The Clock

Smashing The Clock: "Smashing The Clock
No schedules. No mandatory meetings. Inside Best Buy's radical reshaping of the workplace

One afternoon last year, Chap Achen, who oversees online orders at Best Buy Co. (BBY ), shut down his computer, stood up from his desk, and announced that he was leaving for the day. It was around 2 p.m., and most of Achen's staff were slumped over their keyboards, deep in a post-lunch, LCD-lit trance. 'See you tomorrow,' said Achen. 'I'm going to a matinee.'"

Friday, July 13, 2007

SequenceViz :: generate sequence diagrams from .NET assembly file - Nauman Leghari's Blog

This sequence diagram tool is excellent. I think the resources used in constructing it might be very useful, or at least interesting.

SequenceViz :: generate sequence diagrams from .NET assembly file - Nauman Leghari's Blog: "The following tools are used in making SequenceViz.

Cecil for reading IL by Jb Evain
Excellent PHTree control from CodeProject by Peter Chen
GNU Plot utilities - Win32 Port (There is a treasure in there waiting to be utilized)
PIC File macros for Sequence Diagrams from UMLGraph by Diomidis D. Spinellis (blog)
Log4Net for logging"

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Occasionally Connected Systems Architecture

Occasionally Connected Systems Architecture: "By employing the publish/subscribe pattern between clients and an application server, as well as durable subscriptions when clients get connected they get pushed only the updates since the last time they were connected. This pattern improves scalability in that it prevents the scenario of many client connecting and performing costly queries against the database at the same time. Another difference between this (messaging-based) pattern and the more common database-level synchronization is that it maintains the discrete units-of-work (pattern) that were performed. While this isn’t very important for updates being pushed from the server to the client, it is absolutely critical for changes the client wants to send the server. These are the relevant architectural characteristics:

· “Automatic or semi-automatic push of cached data to the server (two-tier) or data service (n-tier) when connected to the network”

· “A process to enable the client to resolve data update and deletion concurrency conflicts; alternatively, to notify the client of the action taken by a business rule”

· “A process to enable the client to resolve insert and other conflicts with multiple rows of child tables, such as order or medication line items”"

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Dr. Dobb's | Survey Says...Agile Has Crossed the Chasm | July 2, 2007

Dr. Dobb's | Survey Says...Agile Has Crossed the Chasm | July 2, 2007: "When the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, it gave name to a collection of methodologies that had been growing in popularity for several years. These methods, many of which are now in common usage worldwide, had strange names such as Scrum, Pinball, Extreme Programming (XP), and Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM). My 2007 Agile adoption survey (see sidebar) shows that agile techniques have been successfully adopted within a majority of organizations and often at scale. So now, six years later, I think that it's clear that Agile has successfully crossed Moore's technology-adoption chasm."