A day in the life of...

My compact framework application imports XML into a local database. As there is so much data to import this can take up to an hour. During development there were no problems with this, but of course during development the Pocket PC is docked in its cradle which provides it with power. When a Pocket PC is removed from its cradle it manages power differently, just like an unplugged laptop. So every five minutes the Pocket PC would hibernate and the user would have to turn it back on in order for the import to continue. During an hour the user would have to do this approximately twelve times. How annoying, and dangerous too if the employee is driving to their first job. Anyway, I found the following very useful code on the web and thought I'd point it out as it was so useful! public class Device { #region Device sleep support [DllImport("CoreDll.dll")] public static extern void SystemIdleTimerReset(); private static int DisableSleepCallsCount = 0; private static Sy

Ever played "Spot the difference"? I'm sure you have :-) I'm just looking through an application I have inherited from a Turkish company it was outsourced to. I was just browsing through a 5MB SQL script to generate the DB + stored procs when I saw this.... @MATERIAL_CODE=REPLACE(@REPLACE_MATERIAL_CODE,'Imprinter','Imprınter') Does it do anything? Sure it does, but can you see what it is? There are two clues in this post but I wont tell you where!

Hi all I have finally reached a point where I can dedicate a few hours each today to "something new" and have decided that the ECO book I have always wanted to write would be great fun. My first idea is to create 2 or 3 separate items: Title: ECO jump start This would be in paper / PDF format and would contain a set of exercises for a new user to follow in order to get started with ECO as quickly as possible. It would basically cover creating a simple model, prototyping using auto-forms, using the different handles, databinding, parent-child grids, creating/evolving the DB, OCL / code derived / reverse derived attributes, and stuff like that. Title: ECO API This would be an electronic format which would basically be a "Press F1" reference. Title: ECO book This would either be a paper/pdf format or, if possible, part of the ECO API document. It would be a technical overview of the framework + its services and abilities. I imagine it might be similar to my ECO Ser

I have just released a minor update to ECO extensions. It contains a fix for a bug that would prevent the DirtyObjectCatcher from catching modified objects for MDI child forms.

I recently developed a simple support application that allows users on a PC to provide a one-off security number to a Pocket PC user and when entered the PPC will perform a specific support function. I used the same class to generate these security codes in both the desktop and compact framework applications, tested it quite thoroughly and it all seemed to work fine. However once deployed it became evident that the codes provided by our support department were being rejected by the PPC as invalid. So what went wrong? Seeing as the same class was used for both applications I thought it would be okay to test the encoding/decoding of command numbers on only a single platform, and this was my mistake! The routines use string.GetHashCode() to add a checksum to the end of the security codes just to prevent the user from performing actions without authorisation. For reasons I cannot imagine the implementation of string.GetHashCode() is different in the compact framework from the one in t

This post is really a reminder to myself, so that I can find the information quickly for the next time I reformat my hard drive! To run a website with a root path in Visual Studio 2005 follow these steps: Tools->External tools menu Click Add Title = Webserver Command = C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\WebDev.WebServer.EXE Arguments = /port:8080 /path:$(ProjectDir) Tick "Use output window" Whenever you need the webserver running just open your project and go to Tools->Webserver.

I occasionally find it annoying that I cannot specify at which point in a class's constructor I wish to invoke the base constructor. Having C# always invoke it before any of the code in my descendant constructor is executed sometimes causes me problems. Considering .NET is capable of calling the ancestor constructor at any point I wondered why C# wont allow it. I contacted Anders Hejlsberg and he was kind enough to reply, unfortunately he seems to have answered a question I didn't ask :-) Anyway, I have been deleting some old emails today and I came across his response, which he gave me permission to publish: The problem with Delphi's model (allowing constructors to be called on an already constructed object) is that it makes it impossible to have provably immutable objects. Immutability is an important concept because it allows applications to hand objects to an external party without first copying those objects and still have a guarantee that the objects won't be m