Review: SoftArtisans OfficeWriter v3   22 Aug 2005 00:00 GMT
Softartisans OfficeWriter for the .NET Framework provides developers with the capability of dynamically creating Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets and Microsoft Word documents. In this review, I will talk about how the OfficeWriter may suite your application requirements.
Source: AspAlliance

A Crash Course on Custom ASP.NET Data-bound Controls   20 Aug 2005 02:15 GMT
Data-bound controls require a data source property and a set of string properties that link to particular columns of the data source. In addition, they need an Items collection property to track all the building blocks of the control's user interface. Finally, a well-done data-bound control supports styles and custom events.
Source: DevX

Get the Windows Mobile 5.0 Developer Evaluation Kit   20 Aug 2005 01:22 GMT
Get the Windows Mobile 5.0 Developer Evaluation Kit and start developing applications for Windows Mobile 5.0 now. This kit includes developer tools and technical resources, including Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDKs.
Source: MSDN

Learn Navigation in "Avalon"—the Windows Presentation Foundation   19 Aug 2005 00:14 GMT
Windows Presentation Foundation, the nascent framework for building next-generation user interfaces in Windows Vista, is available now in beta, but you don't have to wait for Vista to get started. In this second article in the series, we show you how to use the new navigation model.
Source: DevX

Creating an Installation Page That Automatically Detects the .NET Framework Version   18 Aug 2005 23:09 GMT
Shows how you can create an installation page that uses the userAgent string to detect which .NET Framework components are installed on a computer.
Source: MSDN

Free ASP.NET Learning Challenges for Visual Basic.NET Developers.   18 Aug 2005 20:45 GMT
InnerWorkings presents a collection of ASP.NET learning challenges for Visual Basic .NET developers. InnerWorkings offers migration resources for VB developers – FREE to MSDN users for a limited time! Also get 3 technical articles and an eBook on VB.NET.
Source: MSDN

Give the Visual Studio Snippet Format a Whirl with 10 Pre-packaged Snippets   18 Aug 2005 18:57 GMT
You aren't limited to using the snippets that ship with Visual Studio .NET 2005; you can convert your own. As a start, here are two in-depth examples showing how to convert existing tip code to snippets, as well as eight other useful tips—already "snippetized" and ready for you to use.
Source: DevX

An Introduction to the New Visual Studio Snippet Format   18 Aug 2005 18:46 GMT
Visual Studio 2005 ships with a pre-built—and extensible—personal code library that it makes available as "snippets" in the IDE so you can drop pre-tested chunks of code into your projects easily.
Source: DevX

MSDN Magazine: What Every Dev Must Know About Multithreaded Apps   17 Aug 2005 17:05 GMT
Vance Morrison talks about creating multithreaded applications and all the problems you need to be aware of.
Source: MSDN

Encrypting Sensitive Data in a Database   17 Aug 2005 00:00 GMT

Every couple of weeks or so tech news sites like News.com or ZDNet tell an increasingly common tale - some big name company's databases have been hacked, resulting in the hackers discovering oodles of personal information about the company's customers. If you build public-facing, data-driven web applications, stories like these can easily send shivers down your spine. What steps are you taking to secure your application's data from outside threats?

There are a plethora of steps one can take to harden their data-drive applications from malicious hackers. The first and most important step is to harden your database software. Do you have the latest service packs installed? If you're using Microsoft SQL Server, have you chosen a sufficiently complex password for the sa account? Is your database configured only to accept Windows authentication? For more information on improving your database's security see 10 Steps to Help Secure SQL Server 2000. Even if you lock down SQL server as best you can, the unthinkable might still happen, and your data might fall into the hands of ne'er-do-wells. If you have particularly sensitive information - financial records, social-security numbers, and so on - it might behoove you to add an additional layer of security and actually encrypt the extremely sensitive data.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions do not include a way to automatically encrypt the contents of your database tables. (SQL Server 2005, which is still in beta at the time of this writing, will provide native encryption capabilities; see SQL Server 2005 Security - Encryption for more information.) Therefore, if you want to encrypt the contents of your tables, you'll need to do it yourself. There are a variety of techniques; the one we'll be examining in this article is how to use code in the .NET layer to encrypt the sensitive data before writing it to SQL Server and how to decrypt it back to its plain-text form when reading the encrypted content from SQL Server. Read on to learn more!
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Source: 4GuysFromRolla