The dotNET blog

In this article you'll learn about the .NET Framework's equivalent of ISAPI extensions: the ASP.NET HTTP Handlers. Using a photo album as example, the author explains the creation and configuration of HTTP Handlers and he discusses caching to improve performance.

The data binding capabilities in .NET are great, you can bind many controls to almost any type of data, but in some scenarios data binding has its limitations. For example data binding is not possible when using custom collections, instead of DataSets, coming from a Web Service. This article explains the problem and a possible, easy-to-use, solution: a class that dynamically builds wrapper classes at run time, which exposes the field member of the proxy classes as properties.

Using Managed Components from Unmanaged Code:
Mansoor is back to explain .NET runtime's forward compatibility feature. Here he shows us how to access .NET components from COM components.

Accessing Active Directory Through the .NET Framework:
The System.DirectoryServices namespace gives users access to some rudimentary user administration via ASP.NET. This article first reviews what the Active Directory (AD) is, then looks briefly at the actual System.DirectoryServices namespace itself, and finally presents the code that allows us to add, edit, and delete users.

Designing Your Apps to Handle Loss of Connectivity Well:
Many applications have a built-in dependency on a live network connection that doesn't become obvious until you try to operate them on a disconnected device. This paper highlights techniques you can use to architect your applications to handle loss of connectivity in an intelligent way. This will lead to a better user experiences and greater customer satisfaction.

Caching Google Web Service Request
This describes how to use the Google Web Service and serialization in order to cache Google search requests so that the website owner doesn't go past the 1000 request limit set by Google. This will allow you to limit the number of requests you make to the Google Web service. This is done by serializing the Google Request Object into an XML file and writing it to the disk. Then when a user does a search the search engine checks the cache before going to Google to request the search.

Strategy to distribute secure database connection strings in an enterprise environment - .NET:
The following article discusses a simple strategy to maintain and distribute connection strings securely.

ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: Quickly Editing an XML File
Today virtually all Web sites use a traditional relational database for persistent storage, retrieval and modification of data. Databases have numerous advantages, such as having a rich standardized querying language (SQL), providing transaction support, and good performance. Anytime you are building a professional-grade Web site, or are dealing with large amounts of data, it behooves you to use a database to store and retrieve the data. Sometimes, though, for smaller Web sites or for small amounts of data, a database seems like a bit of overkill. Too, for Web site hosting companies that charge extra to have database support, it might not make sense to pay this extra fee if you only need to store a tiny bit of persistent information. This article, by Zubair Ahmed, demonstrates how a simple XML file can be used to store, retrieve, modify and even delete records with the help of the DataGrid Web control.

Below is a sneak-peak of the user interface we'll be building for editing this XML file. Note that by the end of this article you'll be able to build a means to insert new records in an XML file, as well as update and delete existing records. Additionally, feel free to check out the live demo.

[Read More] | [Visit ASPNET.4GuysFromRolla.com]

Bind a Datalist to a Remote XML File:
In this article we will cover binding a remote XML file to a datalist. In this specific example, the remote file will be an RSS file containing syndicated content.

Hosting the ASP.NET runtime in your own application - part 2:
In this second article you will learn how to create an application that enables running an ASP.NET application from a cd-rom.

Hosting the ASP.NET runtime in your own application - part 1:
It's quite easy to host the ASP.NET runtime in your own application. This first article in a series of two demonstrates how to execute ASP.NET pages and display the result in Internet Explorer.

Passing Values between ASP.NET Web Forms:
ASP.NET web forms provide excellent event driven programming model to developers. This does simplifies the overall design of your application but poses some problems of its own. For example, in traditional ASP you can easily pass values from one ASP page to another ASP page using POST. The same thing is not possible in ASP.NET if you want to stick to web form model (i.e. Server side form and control processing.). There are, however, some ways that can be used to overcome this situation. This article examines various possibilities to do the same. More specifically we will cover how to pass values using querystring, how to use session variables to do the same and finally how to use Server.Transfer method to do that.

Adding Attributes to an Object Within a Datalist:
In this article we cover the difference between adding attributes to objects directly and objects contained within a datalist. In this specific example we will add some Javascript behind an image button for a confirmation dialog.

Highlighted Hovering and Anywhere Selecting A DataGrid Row

How To Pass Parameters to Threads in Windows Forms Applications and Get Results:
Launching new threads is easy, but it's not as obvious how you can pass parameters to the threads and get the results back. In addition, accessing Windows Forms controls from multiple threads can cause problems. In this article, you'll see how to pass parameters, receive results, and access controls safely from multiple threads in a Windows Forms application.

Using System.DirectoryServices to Search the Active Directory
Duncan Mackenzie describes how to use the System.DirectoryServices namespace to search for information in Microsoft Active Directory.