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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Deep Freeze provides protective capabilities to individual PCs by remembering and restoring their configurations to a known, clean state each time the machine is restarted.
Digipass offers authentication platform allowing for one-time password, challenge and response, and digital signature generation via hardware-based tokens.
Micro Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition is spyware monitoring and cleansing software that is installed on individual desktops throughout the enterprise but can be centrally deployed and managed.
Retrospect's server-based backup platform introduces new features including support for user-initiated restores and the ability to read from disk-based backups while in progress.
Vulnerability protection platform from Determina VPS combines Memory Firewall technology with the protection software of LiveShield.
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.
5200 Series Tool Aggregator both aggregates and distributes SPAN port traffic to all those devices that need it.
Learn how object-based JavaScript can be used to clone and fix the position of a grid header, handling runtime changes in the associated grid's appearance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Utilities provide multiple capabilities primarily for the management of Active Directory; including deleted object restoration, GPO enhancements, self-service reset, and reporting.
Dependency properties and activity binding allow a developer to create custom activities that are indistinguishable from the out-of-the-box activities provided by Windows Workflow Foundation.
Learn how to write a Java program that illustrates adaptive identification filtering and adaptive inverse filtering. Exercise the program for different scenarios.
Learn how to use a general-purpose LMS (least-mean-square) adaptive engine to write a Java program that illustrates the use of adaptive filtering for noise cancellation.
Learn how to use a Java adaptive filter to predict future values in a time
series. Discover the relationship between the properties of the time
series and the quality of the prediction.
The technology has arrived. These articles will show you how to take advantage of it.
Considering using your own socket-based protocol without an interface? Do you need to extend BREW's IWeb to support your own protocol? Look no further!
Sometimes, it's just easier to use your Visual Basic skills to incorporate complex logic in a report expression.
Apply the advanced trace log features of ADO.NET and improve your data access code.
Now integrated with Adobe Photoshop, ImageReady originally debuted as the perfect companion to Photoshop for creating & optimizing web graphics
A shift in DRM strategy to appease publishers.
The new version of Adobe's Enterprise DRM product features plug-ins for Word and Excel, while Microsoft integrates its solution with content management.
In another sign of a revitalized eBook market, Adobe releases Digital Editions, its next-generation digital publishing platform.
Adobe achieves DRM feature parity with Microsoft's Silverlight.