Couple of weeks ago I got a paper copy of book Pablo Cibraro, Kurt Claeys, Fabio Cozzolino, Johann Grabner - Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4. This book has not a lot of pages, just about 400. Really, I don’t remember when I saw so thin book about some technology. But maybe this book has not a lot pages, but a lot of interesting themes.

First chapter is patterns and principles of SOA applications. This is the best chapter in this book. When I was reading this chapter I saw that authors have a lot experience of creating applications with Service-oriented architecture. Authors described all possible architecture principles, with which you can create SOA applications. And they did not limit themselves to the principles that are possible with WCF. I think that this chapter is “must read” for all developers, it is doesn’t matter what technologies you are using: php, java or .net. And this is good luck that Wrox published this chapter online: Design Principles and Patterns. It is about 30 pages, so read it right now.

Passing array/list/set to stored procedure is fairly common task when you are working with Databases. You can meet this when you want to filter some collection. Other case – it can be an import into database from extern sources. I will consider few solutions: creation of sql-query at server code, put set of parameters to sql stored procedure’s parameter with next variants: parameters separated by comma, bulk insert, and at last table-valued parameters (it is most interesting approach, which we can use from MS SQL Server 2008).

XDT Transformation is a new feature of ASP.NET 4.0 named Web.Config Transformation.

Scott Guthrie: "In most real-world deployment scenarios, the web.config file you use for development is different than the one you use for production deployment. Typically you want to change environment settings like database connection-strings, making sure debug is turned off, and enabling custom errors so that end-users (and hackers) don’t see the internals of your application."

But the chief problem of this feature - is working only with web.config files.

I investigated this problem, and wrote Config Transformation Tool, which gives opportunity to use XDT Transformation Syntax like at Deployment Web Application Project for any files. This tool is very easy, it just run msbuild task, which do this transformation.

I want to make public one small project on CodePlex. Everybody knows that you can work with CodePlex like with TFS client and with SVN client as well. But really I can’t work with it from SVN client. When I tried to add some binary file (it was dll) I got the error “Server sent unexpected return value (200 OK) in response to PUT request for …”. How to solve this problem I don’t know, I found thread at CodePlex's discussions Can't commit binary files using TortoiseSVN, but last message was at past year. Ok, I’m working with TFS at work, so for me it will be not a problem connect to CodePlex with TFS. But there are some distressing case, Visual Studio always ask credentials at every new connection to project. And I didn’t find a checkbox “Save credentials”. But I found the method.

At our product we have a client Silverlight part and server-code part, which contains a lot of WCF methods. We don’t use ASP.NET Compatible mode, because we want to leave an opportunity to deploy server part to server without web-server role (without IIS). Really, I don’t know why we chose this way, because all of our installations at current moment are on IIS. But we have what we have, so we haven’t ASP.NET Compatible mode, and as an expected result we can’t get HttpContext.Current instance at server WCF methods. One of WCF Service is a RESTful service, which at his methods returns report files, so it can handle GET-queries from browsers.

As you know MS SQL Server Express Edition hasn’t Agent Service, which can be used to schedule daily backups or other periodic administrative tasks. But you can use for this standard Windows Schedule tool.

Just became a lucky owner of this book C# IN A NUTSHELL 4th edition. This is a fourth edition of this book’s series. I saw previous third edition of this book, we presented it on one of our events at Yaroslavl State University, but that book was a Russian translated version and published in Russia, this is was bad side of that book – all books at Russia printed on really bad paper. I should say that I didn’t read this book by end, but already I was surprised. Why? Why I heard a lot about Richter CLR via C# (English version of 3rd edition of this book I already have, and this book are waiting my attention), and just a few words about C# IN A NUTSHELL, at least in my sphere. I just listen once about this book at one of the podcast of Alt.Net group, and this words was Richter it is really good book, and C# IN A NUTSHELL it is a good handbook. My opinion is - you should read Richter if you want to develop with .NET. But if you want to develop on .NET with C# you should read C# IN A NUTSHELL too.

Few days ago I have an experience with setting CCNet build server for continuous integration environment. What is it continuous integration and why you need to know it you can learn from many articles, and the better of course is article written by Martin Fowler. Also you can read a book Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk, which Martin Fowler advises well.

Below I will try to tell you main steps of setting continuous integration environment and will give you some advices. Also I will glad to look response and advices from you. So, what is it continuous integration? In this case word integration mean integration not across some systems (applications), as you can think when you will heart this phrase first time (this was my case). In this case this word means integration across team members.

Data export from DataGrid to Excel is very common task, and it can be solved with different ways, and chosen way depend on kind of app which you are design. If you are developing app for enterprise, and it will be installed on several computes, then you can to advance a claim (system requirements) with which your app will be work for client. Or customer will advance system requirements on which your app should work. In this case you can use COM for export (use infrastructure of Excel or OpenOffice). This approach will give you much more flexibility and give you possibility to use all features of Excel app. About this approach I’ll speak below. Other way – your app is for personal use, it can be installed on any home computer, in this case it is not good to ask user to install MS Office or OpenOffice just for using your app. In this way you can use foreign tools for export, or export to xml/html format which MS Office can read (this approach used by JIRA). But in this case will be more difficult to satisfy user tasks, like create document with landscape rotation and with defined fields for printing.

At this article I'll show you how to work with Excel object from .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 with dynamic objects and give you an approach which allow you to export data from DataGrid Silverlight and WPF controls.

In Windows 7, I really liked an opportunity to change the position of the windows by pressing hotkeys Win + (Left | Right | Up | Bottom):

• Win + Left - window attached to the left side
• Win + Right - window attached to the right side
• Win + Up - window is maximized
• Win + Bottom - window in the normal state

So I spent my time and wrote this tool for Vista/XP users.