Sharepoint Template

Keep forgetting how to create a Sharepoint web site template ? Here are the instructions.

XML to PDF Converter

If you want to generate sever side reports in PDF from XML data then Ibex PDF Creator is the tool for you. Some of my colleagues have used it and the results (and speed) are very impressive.

Requirements, Requirements, Requirements...

Those are the three most valuable artifacts of a project. Requirements should drive most (if not all) activities in a project. A project should be architectural centric and requirements driven... We have all heard these cliches before but how exactly does one manage requirements in an iterative process? How do we make sure that all team members are rowing the same way?

Supporting Iterative Development Through Requirements Management gives a good insight on how effective requirements management can be accomplished in an iterative process - in this case using the Rational unified Process (RUP). Even if you are using another iterative process (like SCRUM or XP) the article should give some good ideas.

If you are not using an iterative process then forget about the article and read "Why should I be using an iterative process" instead.

I Believe in BLOBs

I'm talking about SQL server Binary Large Objects. Storing files in a database BLOB it's a very clever way of improving your application maintainability and in avoiding possible permissions nightmares. The File Upload with ASP.Net article shows how to upload a file from a browser and store it in a BLOB.

Unit testing made easy

Unit testing has taken a new momentum with the rise of the agile development practices. NUnit is a fantastic and simple unit-testing framework for all .Net languages but if you used it before you have probably come across the difficulty on how to isolate the unit that you want to test. NMock was created to address this issue. Mock Objects to the Rescue is a very good article on how to use this useful tool.

If you have not used NUnit before you will find a good introduction on the Test Driven C# msdn article.

Hosting ASP.NET Web applications

For good practices on how to host multiple ASP applications have a look at chapter 20 of the Improving Web Application Security book from the Microsoft Patterns and Practices series. I quite like their recommendation on isolating applications by identity

Security Contexts in ASP.NET

If you, like me, were confused about the different security contexts in IIS and how can they affect the way that you connect to SQL server look no further, Keith Brown's article A tale of Three Security contexts in ASP.NET tells everything that you need to know. Just remember that in IIS6 things work slightly different (i.e. you now have application pools and the default ASPNET account has been replaced by the "Network Service" account).