Posts
All the articles I've posted.
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Book review: Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008
Another book review, this time for Packt’s “Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008”. The book introduces you to the main types of testing available in Visual Studio Team System 2008 for both desktop and web applications, and then walks you through deploying, running, and interpreting the results of tests. The book starts with an overview of why you need testing and then lists all available test types in Visual Studio 2008. It also explains the differences between a stand alone Visual Studio 2008 and a Team Foundation Server backed version. Each chapter thereafter covers one of the test types in detail: unit tests, web tests, advanced web tests, load tests, manual tests, …
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Saving a PHPExcel spreadsheet to Google Documents
As you may know, PHPExcel is built using an extensible model, supporting different input and output formats. The PHPExcel core class library features a spreadsheet engine, which is supported by IReader and IWriter instances used for reading and writing a spreadsheet to/from a file. Currently, PHPExcel supports writers for Excel2007, Excel5 (Excel 97+), CSV, HTML and PDF. Wouldnt it be nice if we could use PHPExcel to store a spreadsheet on Google Documents? Let’s combine some technologies: First, we need an implementation of PHPExcel_Writer_IWriter which will support writing stuff to Google Documents. Since Google accepts XLS files and Zend_Gdata provides an upload method, I think an overloaded version of PHPExcel’s integrated PHPExcel_Writer_Excel5 will be a good starting point. [code:c#]
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New VISUG website online
Last week, the new VISUG website has been released. VISUG stands for Visual Studio User Group Belgium and is one of the largest .NET related user groups in Belgium, providing technical sessions on different .NET related topics. This new site not only features a new layout, but also some new features. One of the most useful features is that there now is finally an RSS feed listing upcoming events (such as 19 Februari’s Live Mesh event). The front page now also syndicates blog feeds from different members of the user group, containing lots of useful information regarding .NET. That being said, also check the new MSCommunity site which is a new website that gathers all event information for the main Microsoft user groups in Belgium (Sharepoint, SQL server, ITPro, …)
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Form validation with ASP.NET MVC release candidate
Last week, the ASP.NET MVC framework release candidate was released (check ScottGu’s post). Apart from some great new tooling support, form validation has never been easier. Here’s a quick introduction. Imagine we have a LINQ to SQL data model, containing an Employee from the Northwind database. As you may know, LINQ to SQL will generate this Employee class as a partial class, which we can use to extend this domain object’s behaviour. Let’s extend this class with an interface implementation for IDataErrorInfo. [code:c#] public partial class Employee : IDataErrorInfo { #region IDataErrorInfo Members public string Error { get { throw new NotImplementedException(); } }
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PHPLinq 0.4.0 released on CodePlex!
I’m pleased to announce that PHPLinq 0.4.0 has been released on CodePlex. PHPLinq is currently one year old, and I decided to add a huge step in functionality for the 0.4.0 release. This blog post will focus on the current status of PHPLinq and what it is capable of doing for you in a PHP project. PHPLinq is a class library for PHP, based on the idea of Microsoft’s LINQ technology. LINQ is short for language integrated query, a component in the .NET framework which enables you to perform queries on a variety of data sources like arrays, XML, SQL server, ... These queries are defined using a syntax which is very similar to SQL.
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TechDays 2009 agenda has been posted!
Just a quick note: the Belgian TechDays 2009 agenda has been published. You can find it on the TechDays website. Also, Katrien has posted some more details on the agenda on her blog. Hope to see you at the TechDays in Antwerp!
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Updated CarTrackr to ASP.NET MVC RC
As you may have noticed, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate has been released over the night. You can read all about it in ScottGu’s blog post, covering all new tools that have been released with the RC. Since I’ve been trying to maintain a small reference application for ASP.NET MVC known as CarTrackr, I have updated the source code to reflect some changes in the ASP.NET MVC RC. You can download it directly from the CodePlex project page at www.cartrackr.net. Here’s what I have updated (copied from the release notes): The templates for ViewPage, ViewMasterPage, and ViewUserControl (and derived types) now support language-specific generic syntax in the main directive’s Inherits attribute. For example, you can specify the following type in the @ Master directive: [code:xml]
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ECMA-376 implementation notes are out
Last month, Microsoft released the implementation notes for their ODF implementation in Office 2007. These implementation notes are actually the documentation on how Office 2007 treats ODF documents in various cases. Today, Microsoft released the ECMA-376 implementation notes, or in short: they've now documented how Office 2007 handles OpenXML documents. The implementation notes site can be found on www.documentinteropinitiative.org.
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Book review: ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking
Last week, I found another book from Packt in my letterbox. This time, the title is ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking, written by Andrew Siemer. On the back cover, I read that this book shows you how to create a scalable, maintainable social network that can support hundreds of thousands of users, multimedia features and stuff like that. The words scalable and maintainable seem to have triggered me: I started reading ASAP. The first chapter talks about what a social network is and proposes a new social network: Fisharoo.com, a web site for salt water aquarium fanatics, complete with blogs, forums, personal web sites, …
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Checking username availability with jQuery (screencast)
A new screencast has just been uploaded to the MSDN Belgium Chopsticks page. Don't forget to rate the video! Abstract: "This screencast explains how to use jQuery and the ASP.NET MVC framework to quickly add a username availability checker to a user registration page."