Time for a quick timeout — It recently came to my attention that the Aussie Wine Guy app for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 is doing a pretty decent trade. It’s ranked amongst the top apps in the competitive Food & Dining category in the Windows App Store. This is […]
Introduction Recently, I mentioned that the newly minted Visual Studio 2013 asks you to authenticate with a Microsoft account to tie your copy to a specific account. This comes in the wake of Visual Studio no longer being pre-pidded (when a product has a license key included in the installation […]
In case you haven’t heard yet, Visual Studio 2013 (RTM) has been made available to MSDN subscribers this morning. In case you aren’t already familiar with the different flavours of Visual Studio, here’s a link to the product comparison page at Microsoft.com. One important change which I highlighted when I […]
Introduction Over the weekend, I decided to try and import image metadata using C# and the .NET Framework. Aside from “normal” file attributes such as date modified and size, the Windows Explorer (shell) provides extended file property information which can be quite valuable. The challenge was how to extract this […]
Introduction When we left off in Part 1, we had edited the T4 template which generates Entity Framework POCO entities and had it add appropriate attributes to assist in data validation checks. The next step is to show you how we can make use of these annotations. Note: the data […]
Introduction The next logical step in my journey across the Entity Framework v6 RC1 after having established a fairly robust data access approach was to imbue my solution with some more “smarts” when it came to entity validation. Out-of-the-box Entity Framework POCO entities are exactly as advertised – plain old […]
Introduction This one’s going to be a little shorter than the normal entries, even though I’m stepping through the maze that are exceptions which can be raised out of using the Entity Framework. I’m working on some functionality which will ease the pain of POCO object validation, and also cleaning […]
Today I tried to locate the “Desktop Experience” server feature in Windows Server 2012 R2. Problem is, I couldn’t find it! The Desktop Experience feature lets you use normal Windows desktop features like media player and photo viewer, and so forth: It used to be a “top level” feature, but […]
An Announcement Recently I was on a bit of a writing spree, churning out new articles at an above average rate until I stopped just prior to the end of September. I haven’t run out of ideas.. hardly.. rather we welcomed some good news: What happened? My darling wife successfully […]
Recently I asked what the Internet Society of Australia’s position was in relation to the distinction between the Coalition’s FTTN-based NBN verses the previous Government’s FTTP-based NBN plans. Here’s an abstract from the response off the member’s list: On the topic of FTTN vs. FTTP: ISOC-AU does not see any […]
Intro If you want to manage your SQL Databases in Azure using tools that you’re a little more familiar and comfortable with – for example – SQL Management Studio, how do you go about connecting? You could read the help article from Microsoft, or you can follow my intuitive screen-based […]
Introduction Recently I began writing a series of articles demonstrating how you could take a blank Database schema and bring it all together with a fully integrated object relational mapping access model (Entity Framework) and then exposing the entire object graph via WCF web services in a completely detached mode. […]
Introduction This article is part of the ongoing series I’ve been writing recently, but can be read as a standalone article. I’m going to do a better job of integrating the changes documented here into the ongoing solution I’ve been building. However, considering how much time and effort I put […]
Yesterday saw the release of a number of products from Microsoft. The big news is Windows 8.1, which was revealed to have hit the RTM milestone last week and was released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers yesterday. Included in the mix was the well performing Windows Server 2012 (previously in […]
Introduction Following on from the previous article, Data Access with the Entity Framework V6 RC1, this time I’m going to go deeper and look at how we manipulate entities through a structured and often times generic approach. We’ll take a particularly close look at an approach to adding, updating and […]