DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by adrianbanks

Alternatives To .Net Reflector

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:03:21 GMT

There are many alternatives to RedGate's Reflector. This is a summary of 12 current and up-coming alternatives, covering both free and commercial versions.

Temporarily Disabling ReSharper

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:10:20 GMT

ReSharper can be temporarily disabled from within Visual Studio without having to restart. Very useful for those times where ReSharper is being a resource hog and you just want to get something done.

YQLAutoTagger Demo

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:14:54 GMT

Automatically extract keywords from text using Yahoo's term extraction.

Extracting MSI Files (Revisited)

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:45:28 GMT

How to extract the contents of an MSI installer without installing it

MSDN Lightweight View

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:52:02 GMT

Similar to the low bandwidth view, MSDN currently has a beta of the new lightweight view. This is streamlined for speed and also includes features such as quick links to change version of .Net and the language of the examples.

SQL Server SP3 and kb959016

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:38:57 GMT

One of the bug fixes in SQL Server SP3 released last week was to fix a strange condition where deleting rows from a table using an IS NULL condition on an image data type did not delete rows when there is a foreign key pointing to the table.

Handling "GO" Separators in SQL Scripts - the easy way

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:46:02 GMT

use SMO to run SQL scripts on .NET

detect if a finally block is executed during exception handling

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:39:16 GMT

With disposable action pattern it can be useful to detect if code inside the dispose is called because we exit the using block with or without an exception.

25 Resources for Tuning Your .NET Application Performance

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:46:02 GMT

A great list of resources, including MSDN links, guides, .NET blogs and how tos about improving .NET performance.

MySQL versus SQL Server

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:16:02 GMT

"We were recently in a review where the ISV was using both SQL Server and MySQL. Of course working for Microsoft my first question was to ask why they had chosen to use MySQL."

Useful Diagnostic Tools

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:31:36 GMT

I recently visited a customer site to diagnose some problems with an application deployed on a server. This is the set of tools I took with me.

Directory name donates namespace Yes or No

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:32:46 GMT

ReSharper hint about project structuring.

Creating a Native Win32 Splash Screen for your .NET Apps

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:24:55 GMT

I though I would share a native Win32 splash solution with you on this rainy night in June (well, it is June here and it is raining from where I am, YMMV). This is slightly different from your typical splash screen as it's done using the Win32 API calls and it's fired off before the .NET Forms engine even gets started. As a result it's quick and snappy and doesn't intrude on your normal WinForms programming.

Accessing Network File Shares From A Command Prompt

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:55:46 GMT

If you've ever tried to access a network file share in a command prompt by simply using the cd command, you'll know that it just complains that "CMD does not support UNC paths as current directories". Well, there is a way to do it (two in fact).

Box Selection In Visual Studio

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:17:33 GMT

Use the mouse to select text in Visual Studio by drawing a box instead of selecting all of the line.

Preventing Accidental Schema Changes To The master Database

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:40:52 GMT

If you have ever run some SQL within SQL Server Management Studio only to realise that you've run it against the master database by mistake, you'll know that it can sometimes be hard to undo the damage. A simple way to stop these accidental changes is to create a database trigger that will prevent any schema changes to the master database.