.Net Geek: A blog by Aakash Jain

Visual Studio 2008 with .Net 3.5 has been released on November 19, 2007 and available for download at Microsoft’s Website. It is not an ordinary release with some common updates and extensions. VS2008 comes up with lots of exciting features for developers. Some of the main features are:

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support.
ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support.
VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support.
Language Improvements and LINQ.
Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL.
Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio.

You can find the detail explanation of above features at ScottGu’s Blog.

I’ve finished my first dasblog macro that was created by me. It’s an Ajax enabled Shout-box. Still it is under testing and enhancement. Let me tell you it took me two full weekends to get this done. It was quite a good work behind this. But I am happy that I am seeing it running and working perfectly. Initially, I have added it on my blog (see the right navigation) for testing purpose only. Some of the main features are:-

a) XML Database (All entries are stored in XML File. It can be kept under the content directory of blog)
b) Ajax Enabled – No Iframe or refreshing of whole page. Update shoutbox silently and regularly after specified interval.
c) Customizable CSS – I tried to make it very customizable. It can gel with any theme perfectly.
d) Support New dasBlog version 2.0 (with Asp.net 2.0)

I’d appreciate any feedback, comments or error from you. It will be available for download, once I make necessary changes on the basis of feedback received.

If you install IIS after .Net 2.0 or Visual studio 2005, you may receive “Failed to access IIS metabase” error. To resolve this issue either you need to install .Net framework again after IIS or you can do the following...
You can use the aspnet_regiis utility comes with .Net framework 2.0. This is an administrator utility to install or uninstall Asp.Net on local server/machine. To run this utility through command prompt move to C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727 and type (without quotes)

“aspnet_regiis -i ”

This will install the ASP.Net and update and upgrade the scriptmaps at the IIS metabase root and in below the root. In certain cases, a particular user account doesn’t have access to IIS metabase. Such condition will result the same error. However, in this case you can simply grant access to user account using…

“aspnet_regiis –ga (user_account_name)"

Recently, I have joined NIIT Technologies Ltd, New Delhi (http://www.niit-tech.com/). It’s well known around the world for its remarkable software services in Travel and Transport domain. It’s been few weeks since I have joined but no project allocated to me yet. So I decided to brush up my skills and drill down in State Management Techniques in ASP.Net. I have planned to cover it all gradually. I have started with ViewState, here are some important points about it.

View state is state management technique at the page level. (between the round-trips on same aspx page.)

Veiw state save the information by serializing it into base64 encoded strings.

View state can be saved in another location such as SQL server database by implementing the cusom PageStatePersister class

You can save the information in ViewState (is a dictonary containing key/values pair) between page round trips.

View state data is first converted in to XML and then encoded using base64 encoding.

View State can store following types of objects:
Strings
Integers
Boolean values
Array objects
ArrayList objects
Hash tables
Custom type converters (see the TypeConverter class for more information)
(To store other types of objects class must be compiled with Serializable attribute.)

MaxPageStateFieldLength (page attribute) specifies the amount of maximum data that can be stored in  viewstate. The page split viewstate into multiple hidden fields if the data exceed this limit.

Changes to view state can be made until the PreRenderComplete event. It means that once a page is rendered changes to viewstate will not be saved.

More about ViewState

Points to remember about APP_CODE Directory

• Asp.net handles the files in bin and app_code folder in a special way.
• The compiled classes (dll) placed in bin folder are automatically available to all the pages in application. We don’t need to register the assemblies to use them. Asp.net automatically detects the new version of assembly and start using the new one.
• Assemblies in the bin folder have application scope. They cannot access the resources outside the current web application.
• The access levels of assemblies are determined by the trust level specified by the local computer.
• By default code run in full trust under visual studio development environment.
• We can store and create as many folder and files (class files) in app_code folder. But Asp.net still compile all in a single assembly.
• As Asp.net compiles all the code (App_code) in a single assembly, all files must be of same programming language. Ex - App_Code folder cannot contain code in both VB.Net and C#. However we can make settings in web.config to configure the code subdirectories in different compliable units. The configuration is specified by creating a “codeSubDirectories” element in the compilation element of the Web.config file. Ex –

<compilation debug="false">
    <codeSubDirectories>
        <add directoryName="VBCode" />
        <add directoryName="CSCode" />
    </codeSubDirectories>
</compilation>

This weekend I have added some Technical Interview questions in my site. This part is still in progress. I could have added them much earlier but there was some URL Rewriting problem. Anyway I have published them without using URL Rewrite module.
You can checkout that part here - .Net Interview Questions

 

ASP.Net Inverview Question

Vb.net Interview Questions

.Net Framework

Ado.Net provides much more than just retrieving and submitting data. We can create in memories representation of tables. This is not limited we can define the Parent and Child relation between those tables. My New article will show how to use Data Relation between two Data Tables to show the records on the basis of Master Child relationship.

Here, I found an interesting post on thinksharp.org. This is a good practical example for judging the performance of Iterating lists. Often, I used ForEach. This is essential when you are seriously taking the performance in account.

AJAX created new vibes in web developer community. Some webmasters/developers are not very much aware about it and its working. So here is some food for those fellows. Hope it will help.