Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Phil Haack have release a book named ASP.NET MVC 1.0. first chapter of the book which is writen by Scott Guthrie is available to download for free. if you are new to MVC and also eager to know more about LINQ to SQL then you need to check this out. as always scott discribes the topics in practical manner so that we learn it much better. any way the chapter is available at the following link. download it, go through it and dont forget to thank scott.

Download the free end-to-end tutorial chapter in PDF form

Download the source code + unit tests for the completed application

 

i have worked with some cool open source applications which are based on microsoft .net framework and i thought of sharing them with you.

DotNetNuke

URL: http://www.dotnetnuke.com

DotNetNuke® is the most widely adopted framework for building websites and web applications on Microsoft ASP.NET.  Using DotNetNuke, businesses can quickly develop and deploy interactive, dynamic websites, intranets, extranets and applications. 

With hundreds of thousands of deployments around the world, a thriving user community and a huge array of available third-party extensions DotNetNuke is the smartest way to develop and deploy Internet applications.

YetAnotherForum

URL: http://www.yetanotherforum.net/

 YetAnotherForum.NET (YAF) is a Open Source discussion forum or bulletin board system for web sites running ASP.NET. The latest version is ASP.NET v2.0 with a Microsoft SQL Server backend. The full C# source code is available licensed as GPL.

Oxite

URL: http://visitmix.com/Lab/Oxite

Oxite is an open source, web standards compliant, blog engine built on ASP.NET MVC. It is fully featured and includes support for all the blogging features you would expect.

Born out of a necessity to showcase Microsoft’s muscle in the blogging scene, Oxite provides example of ‘core blog functionality’ in a reusable way. The entire VisitMIX site runs on Oxite, which just shows the potential quality of the finished product. I love the effort that they have put into the design of MIX, and for once, we are able to show others a production Microsoft site running a Microsoft product that really shines visually.

nopCommerce

URL: http://www.nopcommerce.com/

Running on C# nopCommerce is a fully customizable shopping cart. It’s stable and highly usable. nopCommerce is a open source e-commerce solution that is ASP.NET 3.5 based with a MS SQL 2005 backend database.

It is pretty feature packed when you take a look around the system, and should serve as a good platform to build on for some developers. Whilst they aren’t over on the MVC system they have taken care of some of the problems with querystrings, and include a URL rewrite module.

Most developers should be able to get up and running quickly, simply change your web.config in a few places and the autoinstaller should get you going. well worth investigating if you are a .NET developer with a background in e-commerce.

BlogEngine.NET

URL: http://dotnetblogengine.net

BlogEngine.NET is an stable open source .NET blogging project. Touted as the next alternative to Wordpress for .NET developers it integrates the best features of the .NET platform into its offering. It also has received backing from Redmond, and is featured on the Microsoft.NET website as a Starter Kit.

actually my blog is also runnin using this applicaiton. i am quite happy with it.

 

Web user controls are easy to make, but they can be less convenient to use in advanced scenarios. You develop Web user controls almost exactly the same way that you develop Web Forms pages. Like Web Forms, user controls can be created in the visual designer, they can be written with code separated from the HTML, and they can handle execution events. However, because Web user controls are compiled dynamically at run time they cannot be added to the Toolbox, and they are represented by a simple placeholder glyph when added to a page. This makes Web user controls harder to use if you are accustomed to full Visual Studio .NET design-time support, including the Properties window and Design view previews. Also, the only way to share the user control between applications is to put a separate copy in each application, which takes more maintenance if you make changes to the control.

Web custom controls are compiled code, which makes them easier to use but more difficult to create; Web custom controls must be authored in code. Once you have created the control, however, you can add it to the Toolbox and display it in a visual designer with full Properties window support and all the other design-time features of ASP.NET server controls. In addition, you can install a single copy of the Web custom control in the global assembly cache and share it between applications, which makes maintenance easier.

considering the kind of flexibility we get from web custom controls, i believe most of the times it would be much better to use custom controls.

 Check out the following article about Integrating PayPal Payments into ASP.NET E-Commerce Applications. this a very descriptive, useful article.

http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/PayPalIntegration/PayPalIntegration.asp

The process of integrating a PayPal payment involves several pages and HTTP POST backs.

Today I was testing a function in pl/sql using pl/sql developer. In the function we are contenting so many strings that the leng of the final string would go more than 4000. As usual I was trying to use dbms_output.put_line to debug the function and make sure the end result is ok. But at the end of the function when I was trying to print the final string using this function I was not  getting the expected result. the string was being truncated. First I thought there is a problem with varchar2(4000) data type which I had declared for my variable. So I changed the data type to LONG which can hold unto 2GB of data. But still the same issue was there.Spending sometimes on the issue I thought there may be some limitation to the put_line function. So I created a temporary table with a single clob column and inserted the final string into that column instead of printing to out window. Surprisingly it worked properly and I was able to see the whole string from the column. Doing some R&D on this I came to know that dbms_output.put_line() function has just a buffer of 2000 characters and it will only print 2000 chars. I was not able to find out any way to increase this buffer size but once I find it, I’ll write about it. 

 

 need to know about new cool features in visual studio 2010? check this link which describes new features for entity framwork in vs 2010

http://blogs.msdn.com/efdesign/archive/2009/01/22/customizing-entity-classes-with-t4.aspx

browsing internet i found this document about ado.net entity framework which comes with microsoft .net framework 3.5 sp1.

check it out at:

 

 

(reference http://cid-245ed00edb4c374e.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/entity%20framework%20learning%20guide.pdf)

 

What is the Azure Services Platform?

he Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

 

Windows Azure

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage internet or cloud applications. Windows Azure supports a consistent development experience through its integration with Visual Studio. In the early stages of CTP, .NET managed applications built using Visual Studio will be supported. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. Windows Azure welcomes third party tools and languages such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python.

 

Hi,

if you have been working with Windows communication foundation and you still don’t know how to organize your layers in a very good way, you have to check this out. in this video of DNRTV Miguel Castro shows us how to get the best out of Windows Communication Foundation. Miguel extholls the virtues of doing WCF projects from scratch, and not using the Visual Studio templates.  you can get/watch the video from the following link

http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=122

Want to learn LINQ? looking for a lightweigh and fast application to evaluate your linq expression? now check this out. i found a very good free application which lets you interactively query SQL databases in a modern query language: LINQ. LINQPad is also a great way to learn LINQ: it comes preloaded with 200 examples from the book, C# 3.0 in a Nutshell.  And finally LINQPad is more than just a LINQ tool: it's a code snippet IDE that instantly executes any C#/VB.net expression, statement block or program. Put an end to those hundreds of Visual Studio Console projects cluttering your source folder! you can get it from here.