Last Blog

Hello Michael,

This is my last blog in this semester. I finally finished all my assignments and have time to prepare for the exams and look forward to the break.

This subject was, because of assignment 2, one of the subjects I had to invest the most of the time. Anyway, luckily I didn’t feel it as a lot of work because the assignments were challenging but not frustrating. This motivated me to achieve the best I could.

The visual server was a great Idea, even if there were some problems, like the insufficient space on the hard drive. I think if the hardware of the server should be improved. I really liked the idea of the screen casts. Even if I have never watched a whole screen cast of a lecture the screen cast for the solution of the active directory problem was very good and useful. I think the screen casts have a lot of potential. A good idea would be posting solving to exercises in a screen cast.

Thank you for this course.

Peter

Vanatec Open Access

Vanatec Open Access (VOA) is an object relational mapping tool for asp.net. I allow the developer to change objects in the source code without thinking of the persistent storage. To save changed or new objects the class has to me marked as transient. This is basically the only work a developer has to do after VOA is configured correctly. To configure VOA it’s possible to use the Enable Project Wizard of VOA in Visual Studio.

VOA can be configured in many ways. Changes in the mapping strategy are a compromise between redundancy and performance. For example the mapping strategy horizontal creates for every class with in an inheretige an own table. While the vertical mapping strategy only creates on table for all classes in an inheretige.

VOA is a good method to improve the development of applications. No matter, if it is a web application or a desktop application. The express version of the software is free available on the Vannatec web site.

I suggest everybody who’s developing a larger application to have a closer look at VOA or another or mapper.

Infragistics NetAdvantage for asp.net

Infragistics offers a bunch of rich controls for asp.net. These controls allow creating sophisticated web applications. The web applications can look like Microsoft Outlook or other desktop applications.

I really like the Office 2007 look and feel offered by NetAdvantage.

I saw the Infragistic controls the first time, two years ago. Some students from my prior University used it to create a web application. That time was the first time for me I’ve saw what AXAJ is able to do.

So if you are deleoping with asp.net just have a closer look. But I think most .net developer already know about it.

My Favorite Web Applications or Blogging Task 10

I guess all of you know my three favorite web applications. These are Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube.

Facebook allows, to stay in contact with friends chat with them leave messages or upload pictures. The chat function is a very useful function if you have a question or just want to say hi. Like Twitter Facebook answers the question what are you doing? Everyone can write a short message about what he’s doing and all his friends see when the message is changed.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia on the Internet it has more topics than any printed encyclopedia. The entries are made by users. And because everyone can make entries and change entries the quality of these entries is increasing. But, not all articles in Wikipedia are good or true. When I had the subject mathematical principales of encryption. I looked up some things about elliptic curves. Because, in one formula was a mistake I made my calculations wrong and it took me days to find the problem. So don’t rely on Wikipedia but it is great to get a first overview.

The next one is YouTube. I think YouTube is the maybe most useful web application of all. It is a stage for many people to express them self’s. For example, probably only a few people would have noticed the research of Jonny Lee (I mentioned in one of my last posts). But it is a good place to be entertained. You can watch several music videos an funny homemade videos. The wide use of the application together with it s simplicity makes it to my favorite web application

Login ASP.NET

Login ASP.NET

As you all figured out it is not very simple to login a user and check who the logged in user is after he changed the website. To simplify this asp.net offers controls to login a user. If this login is used on a website the developer has not too many things he has to think about. The dot net framework automatically checks the login if the developer wants it, but he has the option to do check the login on his own.

Anyway, there are still a few things left the developer has to take care of. Which authentication method should be used? The standard setting is Windows authentication. This is only useful in intranets. For web applications the method should usually be username and password. The developer hast to restrict the access to the page. The authentication method and the restriction of the page will be done in the webconfig file.

If a client tries to access the restricted page he will be redirected to the login page.

Rich Controls ASP.NET

In addition to the standard html controls asp.net offers a wide range of rich controls. The rich controls have much more options are than the normal html controls an make the creation of web applications more convenient.

The following controls are examples for rich controls:

The Calendar Control

The Calendar Control allows creating a calendar in the web application. It is possible to make specific dates not selectable. It has a property to check if the selected day is a week day or on a weekend. It is although possible to add events to the calendar like birthdays or the end of the semester.

The AdRotator

The AdRotator allows to show changing advertisements on the screen. The images of the advertisements are stored together with the link and other details in an xml File. The displays the changing image.

It is although possible to create own controls and reuse them.

Validation with ASP.net

Validation with ASP.net

ASP.net offers five Classes to validate controls. The RequiredFieldValidator checks that an input control doesn’t contain an empty string. The RangeValidator checks if the value is within a specific numeric, alphabetic, or data range. The compareVallidator matches the value of two controls, which is useful for setting a new password. The RegularExpressionValidator compares the value of the control with a specified regular expression and the CustomValidator allows the developer to define new Classes for validation.

The developer has the choice to execute the validation on the server, the client, or on the client and on the user. The .net framework creates the java script code for validating on the client side. To make the application more secure, I would recommend validating on the server and on the client.

Thanks to Visio Studio, it is possible to validate the controls without writing source code. It is possible to create and configure these controls by drag and drop and the preferences bar.

Finished Assignment 2 and the Masters Assignment

Hi mates,

I’ve just finished my Masters Assignment and I have finished ma Assignment 2 yesterday. So I’ going to have the whole Monday to test my Assignments and comment the source code. Now I just have to write some blog’s for my blogging assignment.

I hope you r all doing well in you assignment and the exams. For my Masters exam I have used AJAX. First I wanted to write it in asp.net, but as the time is running I don t have the time to look into another framework. But anyway I’ve read some interesting things about asp.net. For this reason I m still going to post the most interesting things I’ve read about asp.net. I think it really can make life easier.

Google Docs vs. Office Live Blogging Task 9

Google supports the following file extensions: HTML, .txt, .doc .rtf, .odt, .xls, .csv, .ods, .tsv, .tsb, .ppt, and .pps while Microsoft Office Live supports all file extensions. Google Docs supports a folder tree. Microsoft Office only allows to create workspace, which are like folders. But it does not allow sub folders.

Google Docs allows to edit the documents online. No other software is needed. Office Live is focused on the use of the MS Office software.

Google Docs only allows files up to 500KB plus Images. Presentation can be up to 10 MB large. MS Office Live offers regardless of the file type 25 MB per file.

I like the integration between MS Office and Office live. For this reason I would choose and recommand to use Office live.

Login Google, WordPress and Del.ico.us

Today I had a look at the login pages of Google, WordPress and Del.Ico.Us.

The first thing I had to do was, setting the preferred language to English. The Google login is a multilanguage login. So if my preferred language is German, as it was, the login will be in German too.

First of all google:

Google requests the email address and the password, it allows to save the email address and password on the computer.

After the login google allows to start using it. There is no welcome notification.

Delicous is pretty similar to Google, but it doesn t allow to store the login details

like Google, Delicious allows you to start using it the only notification is the username.

Like Google, Word Press allows to store the login details.

There is a welcome message!

Word Press displays a welcome message and allows the user to access relevant sites.