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• ASP.NET
• C#

• Who are the best .co.za domain name registration people?

  I'm looking to register some .co.za domain names, but the guy that I've been working through is messing me around. He is not prepared to set me up as the admin & techie contact. As far as I know this is against domain name registration policy, but I don't want to piss him off only to lose the domain name. I was wondering if this community has any thoughts on good and reputable .co.za domain name registration people. It astounds me that this kind of business (which has a proven business model... Posted Dec 02 2005, 05:01 PM by attie with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• Who says they're illegal?

  This is something that I've been wondering about for a long time. My big problem is that any file - whether the file is an mp3, mpeg or software - is essentially a combination of 0s and 1s. It doesn't mean anything until it gets interpreted by some software (like IE, Windows Media Player) etc. I'll explain further. So lets say I've downloaded an mp3 from the Internet. When do I break the law? Do I break the law when I download the offending file or do I break the law once I play the offending file... Posted Oct 28 2005, 03:26 PM by attie with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• De-skilling the developer

  When I started my software career in 1991, I wrote an application that "peeked" and "poked" individual pixels to and from the screen. It had a meta declaration process (kind-of like xml/xsl, except it wasn't xml) and it could even draw graphs. It was called, originally enough, "Newdisplay". It took me ages to get this spot on and I was very proud of myself when I finished it. It is still in daily use with Neat Contech, my employer at the time. Today though, I can get 10 times the functionality using... Posted Aug 10 2005, 07:50 PM by attie with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• My most popular articles sofar

  My 5 most popular posts (as measured by web hits, not news readers) at this blog sofar are: .NET and MySQL myths exploded Why AJAX? The benefits of AJAX explained It salaries in South Africa C# Design Patterns ASP.NET/DHTML Menu User Control I find stats like these very interesting. What is also interesting that I've written several, what I feel are very useful, posts on XML/XSL and XForms and these haven't been that popular at all. Does this mean that the eXtensible languages are misunderstood?... Posted Aug 01 2005, 09:28 PM by attie with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• Database table & column naming conventions

  When designing databases I use the following table & column naming conventions: Tables: Pascal case for entity based tables. Example: Organisations, AuditScheme. "Connector case" for connector tables. This means Pascal case joined by an underscore. Example: Organisation_AuditScheme, Partnership_Organisation. [Tablename]_AU for System Audit tables. I'll post more on these in due course. Columns: Primary key is always Id. Many people use [Tablename]Id, but I prefer just Id. This also works well... Posted Jul 14 2005, 05:10 PM by attie with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: C#, Software community

• SharpDevelop: the open source solution for C# coders

  Anyone who reads this blog will know that I am a supporter of open source & open standards etc. In this light I'd like to mention SharpDevelop from the guys at ic#code . Once again my learned friend, Phil Armitage, first introduced me to SharpDevelop a couple of years ago. This is a very useful open-source IDE that you can use to code C# to your heart's content. It is very easy to use (has a similar feel to VS.NET) and does most things that VS.NET can do. In fact, I think Microsoft "lent" some... Posted Jun 15 2005, 05:37 PM by attie with | with no comments Filed under: C#, Software community

• XForms: an "interface" for user input

  If you've read my blog, you might've noticed that I list XForms as one of my skills. A lot of visitors to this blog have enquired as to what XForms are. With this in mind, here is a brief explanation. In essence, XForms are XML driven forms. I know it sounds too simple, but this really is what all the fuss is about. To understand the benefits that XForms have over standard web forms you have to look at it in deeper detail though. Forms are an important part of many web applications today. Most of... Posted Jun 06 2005, 08:11 PM by attie with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• Visual Studio.NET IDE matures with 2005

  I find 2005 an absolute pleasure to work with sofar. Apart from some expected (this is only Beta 2) bugs I think they have done really well in maturing what was already there as well as adding some new very useful IDE enhancements. Just some of the stuff that I'm very happy with: One of my pet hates was the awful way in which VS.NET used to reformat HTML when you switch from "HTML" mode to "Design" mode. They have now seen the light and leave your timeously formatted HTML excactly as it was! The... Posted May 26 2005, 11:53 PM by attie with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: C#, ASP.NET, Software community

• Software Soap Opera

  Linus Torvalds, former champion of the common man, has fallen from grace in almost Soap Opera style. Name calling and toy throwing are the order of the day now at Open Source Central. This article says it all. The legal issues surrounding reverse engineering are very interesting. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Apr 21 2005, 04:44 PM by attie with | with no comments Filed under: Software community

• How to blog without fear

  I wrote this post about the "private life - working life" issues of blogging on my personal blog . Since we are all bloggers, I thought it might be of some interest. There is also some stuff about the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) guidelines for bloggers to this end. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Apr 12 2005, 09:26 PM by attie with | with no comments Filed under: Software community

• Why AJAX? The benefits of AJAX explained.

  While reading the comments on Armand's AJAX Wrapper DLL post , I got the impression that readers weren't quite sure about the benefits of AJAX. AJAX has two huge benefits: Speed and invisibility (ala smart client) makes for a very slick user experience. The smaller server resources footprint helps server scalability (seriously!). I'll explain. If you post using AJAX, only the data (or parameters) that the server function requires is posted. In a login scenario, only the username and password strings... Posted Apr 12 2005, 05:07 PM by attie with | with 35 comment(s) Filed under: C#, ASP.NET, Software community

• .NET and MySQL myths exploded

  Profesionally I almost exclusively use SQL Server, but for my own stuff I've been using MySQL for a while now. I started on MySQL because it is "free" (under a GPL license) and because of their support to the open source community and the No Software Patents organisation. Whenever I mention this to .NET/SQL developers they always assume it is only because of ethical or cost reasons. No Sir! Myth 1 "MySQL's performance sucks" exploded: MySQL's performance is fabulous. It compares very well with Oracle... Posted Apr 08 2005, 06:04 PM by attie with | with 14 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• Don't do it, Linus!

  There is a battle of wills a going on at the moment. It is an age old battle between those who want to empower the people and those who want to empower themselves. You probably already know whose side I'm on! This time the battle is for the soul of Linus Torvalds. Linus, for those of you who don't know, is the viking who started Linux. More importantly though, he is probably the biggest open source advocate on the face of the planet. Anyway Linus has been using open sourced Bitkeeper as his source... Posted Apr 07 2005, 01:28 PM by attie with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Software community

• Telkom name change

  Could it be true? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Apr 06 2005, 05:57 PM by attie with | with no comments Filed under: Software community

• IT salaries in South Africa

  The company (huge global company) I'm consulting for is looking at outsourcing some big projects in 2006/2007. At this stage they're looking primarily at an Indian company they've used before, but the last time round they weren't too happy with the quality of the software. So with that in mind and in the hope of sounding clever I was wondering what South African IT people get paid. Feedback is very welcome, but I'll only be accepting anon feedback. Otherwise figures will be inflated :). If you post... Posted Apr 06 2005, 01:03 PM by attie with | with 34 comment(s) Filed under: Software community