PeterKellner.net

I was surprised and happy to receive notification of being awarded the MVP for ASP.NET 2.0. During the past 18 months, I’ve spent a lot of time both learning the technology as well as being involved in the community that it supports. During that time, I’ve done lots of posting (both questions and answers) on the
asp.net forums.  In addition, I’d spoken at 4 code camps including the one I organized in Northern California (
http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com ).  I’m sure it didn’t hurt that during this period I authored four MSDN articles.

At any rate, I’m very happy and fortunate to receive this award and look forward to future opportunities to be even more involved in the exciting community around asp.net.

Introduction

A question that frequently comes up in the asp.net forums is how to have a gridview show the the last record added highlighted. This articles gives a technique for doing this. It only works with SqlServer but could could be modified for other databases.

What It Looks Like Running

After pressing the insert button on the screen shot below, the bottom line was actually added and it is automatically highlighted. This is in a nutshell, what the code listed below and this article discusses.

Abstract

In this article we will demonstrate a technique used to automatically add Wiki Pages to PBWiki using
the not quite released API provided by the peanut butter guys. The demonstration will involve integrating scheduled presentations at our Silicon Valley Code Camp on October 7th and 8th each with its own Wiki Page. Without the API, creating and linking the presentation to a Wiki page would have to be an ugly manual process involving the dreaded cut and pasting of URL’s.

Background

So, to begin with, I’m an enterprise database kind of guy and to be frank, Wiki’s scare me a little. The
idea of adhoc data being deposited by anyone onto a page with no real structures just makes me nervous. My
smart friends tell me I should embrace the chaos so I’m trusting them and going for it.

Performance Comparison

Recently, I’ve been wondering what the difference is between rendering an image using IIS’s built in file handling capabilities, or using the asp.net with a custom handler. I decided to do a little test program to simply see the difference in clock time for processing such requests. The results of this test clearly show that IIS is faster. Sometimes a little, and sometimes a lot. I decided to test three size images, and run them each 10 times. Often, there is a start up lag time so the iterations should wash that out.

The table below basically sums up the results pretty well. The resolution of my timer is not great so for small images (35KB), both IIS and the handler processed the image in under 15 milliseconds. There may be a difference but in
my case, it was probably not measurable because of all the other time involved in the request. For Medium size images (550KB), difference is more consistent. Again, it’s a timer resolution problem that makes 15 milliseconds probably something related to a CPU click of sorts. For large images (5.6MB) you can clearly see a difference. The time it takes for the handler to process the image is almost double that of IIS.

Using Microsoft’s Visual Studio Design Templates

Author: Peter Kellner
Date: August 27th, 2006

( ObjectDataSource1.Insert(); )

ObjectDataSource’s are great for building your own middle tier between your aspx web page and your database (or any other datastore for that matter). By binding the datasource to a databound server control like detailsview, you auto-magically get the insert behavior you are looking for. If however, you just just want to insert to the ObjectDataSource you have included on your aspx page without using a databound control, you don’t have a lot of fancy footwork to do. All you have to do is reference the insert parameter by name (or index offset) and assign it directly.

Membership Editor Works With Atlas March Community Technology Preview IE and Firefox!

In two previous postings I used the January version of Atlas. At MIX06, Microsoft released the next version which is known as the March CTP. I have updated my web demonstration programs to take advantage of the new Atlas. The basic difference now is that the demonstrations all now work with Firefox as well as IE. I don’t know about other browser compatability issues, but I’d sure like to hear if they work in your browser. The code can be run at the following locations:

http://livedemos.peterkellner.net/ (using March Atlas)

http://livedemos.peterkellner.net/DefaultNoAjax.aspx (no Atlas, just for comparison)

and demonstrating adding Membership with Personalization information:

http://livedemos.peterkellner.net/DefaultWithProfile.aspx

I have not yet posted the code for the working versions of this you can download. I’m still not happy with part of the solution. Specifically, to make the textbox field you enter the search name into work correctly the changed behavior has to be added. This is done by declaratively putting the following in the asp page of interest.

MSDN has published both of the articles from this blog in their latest release of MSDN. The articles can be found at the following two URL’s.

Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Member/Role Management with IIS

Part 1: Security and Configuration Overview (or Here at peterkellner.net)

Part 2: Implementation (or Here at peterkellner.net)

There is no source code with Part 1. The source code for Part 2 can be downloaded from the download section, or go directly to this file:

Source Download Here

(this source code replaces what was here before. It has many improvements and has been tested with the released VS2005)