In this section of articles, the history and evolution of computer software is discussed. The different usages of various computer programs are also explained, and some articles break down the way programs operate at the most basic level.
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Application security gateway vendor Neoteris extends support of its Access Series application security gateway series to includes most popular wireless device and handheld computing systems.
A lot of small businesses believe that hackers only hunt for large unsecured networks to infiltrate -- nothing could be further from the truth. Hackers look for any unsecured network to exploit, and with Check Point Software you can keep hackers at bay.
Picasa arrives as a handy application for serving the needs of casual digital photo mavens. Picasa can help to find, tweak and share digital images, no matter how inexperienced you may be.
Some IT administrators and analysts say automation is the only answer when it comes to handling the deluge of software patches. Find out why they say manual patching is a major problem and what they (and you) can do to solve patch problems.
If you've ever had a BIOS flash go horribly wrong, we feel your pain. Our tips on BIOS recovery will help you salvage the situation and bounce back from the edge of a disaster.
Implement the generic interface IComparer with some reflection, and .NET will provide sorting that compares just about any property of any object. See how it's done.
Use LINQ to Objects to easily sort and reshape your data.
The .NET Framework's built-in comparison functions don't handle nulls properly. Learn a couple of functions to take care of this for you.
One of the many new libraries included with .NET 2.0 allows for compression and decompression of files using the gzip file format. Find out how to use it.
Learn how to take a string and convert it into an enumeration value.
Converting strings of digits into numeric data types may not always yield the result you expect. Take a look at three ways to convert a string of digits to an integer and learn what you need to watch out for with each method.
Overloading the constructor of a class, which is the method called when you instantiate an object, ensures that your object is populated with all the information it needs to operate properly.
Creating a custom configuration section in your configuration class will make it more modular and not reliant on the generic appSettings section in the configuration file.
The generic collection introduced with .NET 2.0 allows you to create collections of your objects without having to design a new class.
By using the Ping class, one of the many classes included in the .NET Framework Library, you can create a simple server monitor that ensures your servers are all responding to network traffic.
The singleton pattern can be used in a wide variety of situations. This tip will show you how to create a thread-safe version of a singleton.
Want to make managing the sequence of events within a Web page easier? Simply register for a custom event and run your code when the event occurs.
Here is encapsulation, one of the very basic tenets of object-oriented programming. Using properties instead of public variables helps insulate the users of your class from change, provides you more flexibility, and will ease maintenance of your class.
Are you tired of hard-coding function names in trace messages? Have you ever used cut and paste to copy a trace statement and forgot to change the function name? There'll be no more wild goose chases because of bad function names when you determine the function name dynamically.
Learn how to display all of the fields and properties of any object. By using a little reflection, you can expose the internals of your objects.
Discover how to display the public information for an assembly. This will allow you to get a complete view of the assemblies you are using or creating.
Have you ever needed to execute a system command from your application? You can accomplish this easily with C#.
If you use a return statement within a Try/Catch block, there's a behavior you need to be aware of in your code.
Most applications developers build have lists or dropdowns that need to be filled with values for the user to select. This tip will show you how to use an enumeration to populate your lists.
Use LINQ's from clause to easily traverse the relationships in your database.
Be a good resource citizen by implementing IDisposable. You will be able to ensure that your objects have the opportunity to release all of their managed and unmanaged resources.
The system event log is a good place to store information about your .NET application, and writing entries to the event log is fairly straightforward. You can easily add the code for it to a utility class.
If you use one server to develop your applications and another to deploy them, you probably have to change your database connection settings each time you deploy your configuration files. Learn a quick fix for this problem.
Take control of the lifetime of your objects. Release your object's resources on your schedule, not when the CLR determines they are no longer needed.
Take a look at a couple of the language enhancements in C# 3 (VS2008) that can speed up your development and make your code cleaner: automatic properties and initializers.
Have you ever not known how many parameters a method would need to accept? The C# params keyword lets you pass a variable number of arguments to a method.
Do you need to know when a file or directory has been updated? The FileSystemWatcher class gives you a very easy means to monitor the file system.
Stop unwanted changes to your properties! Discover how to you can stop worrying about accidentally changing values, while still allowing multiple views into your classes!
What do you do when you need to read in an entire file and process it as a string? Here is a simple solution.
Allow a single call to your method to return multiple objects using the ref keyword with parameters.
The .NET Framework 2.0 gets very fussy when you try to run both ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 sites in the same application pool. Learn how to support both versions on the same Windows 2003 machine.
System event logs can provide valuable information, but manually finding the worthwhile details in them can be difficult. Learn the easy, automated ways .NET provides for reading and searching event logs.
Provide your own comparison algorithm when sorting by implementing the IComparer interface.
Allow your classes to easily be sorted they way you would like by implementing the IComparable interface.
Use @-quoted strings to avoid escape characters in your string literals.
Stop writing more code than needed. You can streamline your code if you use interfaces. You will be able to write simpler, more flexible, and more maintainable applications when you apply interfaces.
The TcpClient class enables you to test whether services such as FTP and SMTP/POP3 mail are running and responding properly.
Use custom exceptions to add information that will be more meaningful to your users when exceptions occur. And, you still can maintain all the information from the original exception.
Handling exceptions can sometimes be a little tricky. If you are not careful, your code may act on the wrong information. Learn how to bubble up exceptions while keeping the original exception information intact.
Use some of the language's lesser known features for safe type casting and comparison.
When you're creating a function that needs a variable list of arguments, use a parameter array.
Extension methods allow you to create utility functions and have them appear to be part or your classes or the built-in classes. You'll learn by making a method from an earlier tip available as an extension method.
LINQ can be used for much more than just accessing data stored in your database. Learn how you can use the from clause with other types of data.
Create a class to add Error, Warning, and Information entries in the Windows event log.
Would you like your life to go much smoother? Follow these rule and you can make it happen.
The Yahoo user interface (YUI) library allows you to easily develop cool web tricks with less code. Discover how you can create a faux lightbox, create transition effects on page elements, add widgets to your pages, and easily make AJAX requests using a single JavaScript library set.
Are you hesitant to initiate an SOA project? Follow these ten steps and you'll be on your way to success.
A program that leverages Windows terminal services and provides individual application publishing with seamless windows to remote machines.
Platform provides for the central management of thin client devices, including the ability to convert existing/older PCs for thin client use. Now with configuration redundancy and PXE boot load balancing/HA features.
3D-FTP brings a refreshing new look to a venerable protocol most often served by equally venerable clients.
5200 Series Tool Aggregator both aggregates and distributes SPAN port traffic to all those devices that need it.
Designing an administration solution for your real-time data warehouse is important to the long-term success of your BizTalk solution. Picking a platform your users are comfortable with is a good start.
This article is a brief overview of the evolution of Microsoft Windows from its earliest days with Windows Me to its latest program Windows XP. Additionally, the article explains the future of Windows.
Discover the conceptual framework where customers, iterative and incremental delivery are key.
Get started on the path to taking programmatic control of your files and adding value to OpenOffice.org's no-cost price tag by using XML.
Discover how reporting applications can adapt to changing reports by shifting its report-related information into a database.
Looking for a powerful concept that works with any existing Java web application and makes the process of web remoting easier?
Discover a unique way of Ajax-enabling existing Java server-side code by exposing it in JavaScript.
SQL Server Everywhere you will have an extremely lightweight (under 2MB disk footprint), easy-to-redistribute, free database from Microsoft with a syntax that's a subset of full SQL Server Transact-SQL.
The Visual Studio team has taken a first step toward integrating the BI (Business Intelligence) Report Wizard—a baby step.
See what Visual Studio 2008 Shell has to offer and how it can help you.
Look into the image-filtering classes of the Java 2D API. Also learn how to write a framework program that makes it easy to use those image-filtering classes to modify the pixels in an image and to display the modified image.
Putting objects in the right place can help performance in the short term, allowing your existing configuration to do more, as well as setting you up for larger horizontal scaling options with server farms.
To begin writing raw PDF files, you need a solid working knowledge of PostScript—and that's not pretty. In reality, you need a complete PDF library that handles all your document-creation needs.
Windows Communication Foundation is set to become the platform for all .NET communication and therefore the underpinning for future versions of Microsoft products. Where should you begin? With this article.
Take a quick look at the upcoming release of the new Visual C++ release slated for release in late 2008—Visual C++ Orcas. The Orcas release builds on the heritage of C++, offering great new features for achieving deep integrating with Windows Vista and better support for interoperating with managed code.
Use this interactive workbench to gain a better understanding of the behavior of digital recursive filters. Then learn how to write the code to do recursive filtering as well as to evaluate recursive filters using a workbench-style program.
Discover a few ideas that will help make schedules more realistic.
Don't overlook the productivity gains you can achieve when you use Visual Basic.NET and skilled Visual Basic developers.
Reliability is a big issue in Internet Web services integration. Learn how to mitigate Web service reliability problems by using an asynchronous messaging approach.
A line of document management tools that allows the conversion between document formats. The programs can also split and combine PDF files.
Able Fax Tif View is a document viewer and converter for Windows; enabling you to view, edit, print, save, and convert compatible files. It can show all kinds of FAX images, multipage FAX and TIFF images.
Multiple products offer business management and groupware tools, including scheduling, appointment management, planning and forecasting.
PC-based network acceleration software leverages compression, application-level optimizations, and a proprietary transport protocol.
Take a look at XFire, a Java SOAP framework that makes working with web services fast and simple. You will create a SOAP client and see how easy it is to use XFire.
Application security gateway vendor Neoteris extends support of its Access Series application security gateway series to includes most popular wireless device and handheld computing systems.
The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 has made several improvements to the System.DirectoryServices namespace. They expand your ability to interact with your enterprise Active Directory.
ACDSee is an extremely quick graphics image viewer with support for a wide variety of graphics formats, including JPEG, BMP, GIF, PCD, PCX, PNG, TGA and TIF images.
Don't let blind spots on your project impede its success! See how architecture view points can be used to gain a holistic view of the project and to successfully identify and partner with stakeholders.
One of the challenges faced by larger enterprises is their ability to meet the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements outlined in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between Service Providers and Service Consumers. See how Virtualization can assist the enterprise meet this supply-and-demand predicament.
Discover an architecture pattern that can be leveraged by Enterprise Architects to promote the re-use of business services without having to overlook or override the variances encountered in the business rules that govern individual business units of a multi-faceted company.
Tools that report NTFS and share security configurations of Windows servers. The software is designed to provide reports on folders and security.
Acronis Snap Deploy provides image-based bare metal deployment utility for Windows platforms.
Product line includes offerings for data and system backup/restore for corporate workstations
So what is ACT!, anyway? I find that one of the hardest things that I have to do with ACT! is to explain exactly what it is. I like to initially explain ACT! by using very politically correct terminology.
Dashboards for customer relationship management (CRM) programs give you a visual snapshot of the information compiled and stored in the program - in effect, a snapshot of how your business is running. Act, the small business CRM and sales force automation software from Sage Software, has added dashboarding in an important version upgrade.
Line of E-commerce and shopping cart software products offered in several flavors targeting entry level to advanced sites.
This article explains how to activate and exploit the operating system's Wireless Zero Configuration service.
Active Desktop Calendar is a PIM that appears on your desktop wallpaper. This customizable calendar with notes, tasks, alarms and contacts provides integration and interactivity with the desktop background.
Utilities provide multiple capabilities primarily for the management of Active Directory; including deleted object restoration, GPO enhancements, self-service reset, and reporting.
Storage platform designed primarily for use with clustered Linux computers features a parallel access file system.
Centralized repository for the collection of events from multiple 3rd party platforms (firewalls, scanners, system logs, etc.) with reporting, dashboards, forensics, etc