No matter what your position is, one of the most important responsibilities is to know who your customer is, because they’re the one that you need to make happy. If you think it’s the where the money comes from, you’re…
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Stored procedure reporting & scalability
Today’s post is a case study of sorts, about my former employer, who had an interesting architecture. It’s roots were VB6 and SQL server (version 6 I believe). They decided to put as much logic in their stored procedures as…
Software is hard!
Not too long ago, I was telling my uncle about an e-commerce site that a coworker and I were able to develop in about 4 months. I was shocked at his next query: What is so hard about that? Why…
Code Snippets in Windows Live Writer
I was asked how I insert code snippets with Windows Live Writer. I actually did it the hard way. I wrote a Windows Live Writer plug-in, and then I found out someone had already done the same thing. I originally…
Free Software! – Visual Studio 2008, Windows 2008 Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate
I have some free software that I’d like to give away! Here is your chance to win one of the following: Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition AND Windows 2008 Enterprise (64-bit and 32-bit) – Including the virtual keys. Windows Vista…
SQL Server NULL values and “Order By” order
I have a few tables that contain a column called "Order", which is used to sort by when retrieving the data. The purpose is to keep the data in a certain order when displayed to the end user. Black Linen…
Object does not match target type in GridView
I created a shopping cart for a website that can display multiple types of items that implement IShoppingCartItem. When the GridView would display items that were different type, I would get this exception: Exception Details: System.Reflection.TargetException: Object does not match…
Writing code that you’re proud of
Almost every time that someone shows me a snippet of their code, I hear a comment like this: "This isn’t finished, I have a lot of cleanup to do" "I wrote this code a long time ago, it’s not very…
Push Email on the Windows Mobile Platform
A few months ago, I went ahead a bought an HTC Touch Smartphone. I initially wanted the Pocket PC platform, so that I could easily sync up with Outlook and have all of my contacts and appointments with me at…
Don’t play the “What If” game
One of the biggest traps I’ve seen developers fall into is what I like to call the "What If" game: "Make your ID columns integers", "But what if we want them to contain a letter eventually? "Let’s cook these 10…
