MSDN Magazine August 2004

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.NET Tools: Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now

This article introduces 10 development tools that can increase your productivity, give you a better understanding of .NET, and maybe even change the way that you develop applications. The tools covered include NUnit to write unit tests, Reflector to examine assemblies, FxCop to police your code, Regulator to build regular expressions, NDoc to create code documentation and five more.

James Avery

MSDN Magazine July 2004

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C# allows developers to embed XML comments into their source files-a useful facility, especially when more than one programmer is working on the same code. The C# parser can expand these XML tags to provide additional information and export them to an external document for further processing. This article shows how to use XML comments and explains the relevant tags. The author demonstrates how to set up your project to export your XML comments into convenient documentation for the benefit of other developers. He also shows how to use comments ...

Now you can perform efficient, sophisticated text analysis using regular expressions in SQL Server 2005.

David Banister

MSDN Magazine February 2007

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Kenny Kerr sings the praises of the new Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack, which brings modern conveniences to Visual C++.

Kenny Kerr

MSDN Magazine May 2008

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Jason Clark

MSDN Magazine July 2003

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August 2004

Reporting: Deliver User-Friendly Reports from Your Application with SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services--a server-based reporting platform built on the .NET Framework and integrated with SQL Server 2000--lets you easily add reporting from diverse data sources. Using Visual Studio and Reporting Services you can integrate reports from any data source that has an OLE DB, ODBC, or ADO.NET provider into your Web applications. This article explains how it's done. John C. Hancock

GridView: Move Over DataGrid, There's a New Grid in Town!

When incorporating the ASP.NET DataGrid control into your Web apps, common operations such as paging, sorting, editing, and deleting data require more effort than you might like to expend. But all that is about to change. The GridView control--the successor to the DataGrid-- extends the DataGrid's functionality it in a number of ways. First, it fully supports data source components and can automatically handle data operations, such as paging, sorting, and editing, as long as its bound data source object supports these capabilities. In addition, the GridView control offers some functional improvements over the DataGrid. Here DataGrid expert Dino Esposito introduces the GridView and explains all its long-awaited features. Dino Esposito

Genetic Algorithms: Survival of the Fittest: Natural Selection with Windows Forms

Genetic Programming is an evolutionary algorithm that employs reproduction and natural selection to breed better and better executable computer programs. It can create programs that implement subtle, non-intuitive solutions to complex problems. By taking a well-known example from the Genetic Programming community and implementing it with the .NET Framework, this article demonstrates that CodeDOM and Reflection provide all the facilities that are needed to do Genetic Programming effectively. Brian Connolly

Web Parts: Use Windows SharePoint Services as a Platform for Building Collaborative Apps, Part 2

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which is part of the Office System, lets you create and manage virtual servers, site collections, sites, workspaces, and users. You can also use the Windows SharePoint Services object model to design and implement user-targeted applications. In the second part of a two part series, the authors take a look at the WSS and SPS object models, Web Part Page anatomy, creating and deploying Web Parts, and Web Part security. They also discuss Web Part infrastructure and how to create custom Web Parts. Jason Masterman and Ted Pattison

Virtual Server 2005: Program Customized Testing Environments Without Trashing Your Machine

Efficient testing can require many different machine and server configurations but the effort needed to manage these test environments can take a toll. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 simplifies the provisioning and management of testing environments. This article demonstrates how the extensive Virtual Server COM API can be used to create an automated application testing environment to make your testing chores a whole lot easier. Ben Waldron

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Columns

Editor's Note: New Technologies and a New Magazine Hey, remember the Web? Back around 1996 it was big news. People suddenly realized that with just a telephone line and Internet Explorer, they could go shopping without ever leaving the comfort of their home! Over the Web you could buy furniture, art, books, and appliances, all of which would make your home comfortable enough to stay there and do some more online shopping, accelerating the vicious cycle of consumerism.	New Stuff: Resources for Your Developer Toolbox Blue Marble Geographics has released its developer toolkit, GeoTransform 5. 0. GeoTransform is a DLL for programmers using Visual Basic®, C++, Delphi, PowerBuilder, C++ Builder, and other Windows®-based development tools. Theresa W. Carey	Bulletin Board: News from Online Communities This month's column introduces you to Code Project, a vast site of resources for Web development. Code Project is a member of the Microsoft Code Wise Community, a source for tips, code samples, news, and advice from experts outside of Microsoft.
Web Q&A: Page Ready State, DataGrid Row Deletion, and More Edited by Nancy Michell	Data Points: Migrating from ADO to ADO.NET, Part 2 As you move forward with your use of ADO. NET, you'll need to know how to approach situations that you previously learned to handle in ADO and now have to tackle with ADO. NET. Just as n-tiered solutions developed using Visual Basic®, C++, and ASP often rely on ADO for their data access needs, Windows® Forms, Web Forms, and Web services rely on ADO. John Papa	Cutting Edge: Script Callbacks in ASP.NET If you're involved in Web development you may have faced a problem that you couldn't find a good solution for—making client-to-server calls outside the current page. For example, you might want to validate the content of a textbox against data stored on the server asynchronously, without interrupting the continuity of the work or without forcing a full page refresh, which is particularly heavy for UI-rich pages. Dino Esposito
The XML Files: What's New in WSE 2.0 Microsoft has recently released Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft® . NET (WSE) 2. 0. WSE 2. 0 provides extensions to the existing ASP. NET Web services framework (. asmx) as well as a standalone messaging framework that's completely transport independent. Aaron Skonnard	Test Run: Test Automation for ASP.NET Web Apps with SSL If you're encrypting user data with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) over HTTP and you want to test your Web applications programmatically you'll find that the techniques are not widely known. In this month's column I'll show you how to set up a test SSL server and write test automation that verifies the functionality of a simple but representative Web application. James McCaffrey	Wicked Code: Foiling Session Hijacking Attempts Let's face it: every minute of every day, someone, somewhere, is patrolling the Web looking for sites to hack. ASP. NET developers must constantly be on their guard to ensure attempted hacks can't be successful. Jeff Prosise
Advanced Basics: P2P Comm Using Web Services Iwanted to use my first Advanced Basics column as an opportunity to strike out into new territory, to do something I haven't seen extolled much in the literature, so I've built a Windows® Forms chat program that uses Web services to communicate with other peers. Carl Franklin	.NET Matters: Debugger Visualizations, Garbage Collection Stephen Toub	C++ Q&A: GetKeyState, the STL String Class, Exposing C++ Objects, and More Paul DiLascia
{End Bracket}: C# to Visual Basic Translation Tool Having talked to thousands of developers who use the Microsoft . NET Framework, I've heard one consistent complaint: "I really wish all the samples were written in my programming language. " Nothing is more frustrating than having braved the wilds of Internet searches for a snippet of code that does exactly what you want but is written in a language you don't use. John Robbins