Examining ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 4   03 May 2006 00:00 GMT

Part 1 - learn about how the membership features make providing user accounts on your website a breeze. This article covers the basics of membership, including why it is needed, along with a look at the SqlMembershipProvider and the security Web controls.

Part 2 - master how to create roles and assign users to roles. This article shows how to setup roles, using role-based authorization, and displaying output on a page depending upon the visitor's roles.

Part 3 - see how to add the membership-related schemas to an existing database using the ASP.NET SQL Server Registration Tool (aspnet_regsql.exe).

Part 4 - improve the login experience by showing more informative messages for users who log on with invalid credentials; also, see how to keep a log of invalid login attempts.

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A Multipart Series on ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles, and Profile
This article is one in a series of articles on ASP.NET 2.0's membership, roles, and profile functionality.

The ASP.NET 2.0 Membership class provides a ValidateUser(userName, password) method that returns a Boolean value indicating whether or not a user's supplied credentials are valid. This method is automatically utilized from the Login Web control and can also be used programmatically, if needed. In the Membership system, there are multiple scenarios by which a user's credentials can be invalid:

• The username supplied might not exist in the membership directory
• The username may exist, but the supplied password might be incorrect
• The username and password may be correct, but:
  • The user may not yet be approved
  • The user may be locked out; this can happen if the user attempts to login with an invalid password for a specified number of tries (five, by default)

Unfortunately, the ValidateUser(userName, password) method just returns False if the credentials are invalid, and does not include information as to why, exactly, the credentials are invalid. For the Login control, when ValidateUser(userName, password) returns False the message, "Your login attempt was not successful. Please try again." is displayed, by default. If a user is locked out or their account not yet approved, such a message - which will be shown even in the face of the correct username and password - can easily lead to a confused and frustrated user.

In this article we'll see how to provide additional feedback during the login process to help alleviate any such confusion. Moreover, we'll see how to audit invalid logins and present the data in a report. Read on to learn more!
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Source: 4GuysFromRolla

Scaling Out SQL Server 2005   02 May 2006 23:38 GMT
This article explains the different technologies that are available for scaling out a SQL Server 2005 database application, focusing on the factors that go into deciding which solution(s) to use in your application.
Source: MSDN

An Overview of Windows Presentation Foundation   01 May 2006 22:31 GMT
Among the numerous new technologies in Vista is the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly codenamed Avalon). This article takes you on a whirlwind tour of WPF and shows how you can start preparing for Vista by developing applications today using the available SDK.
Source: DevX

Download the Microsoft Component Installer SDK 2.0   01 May 2006 20:27 GMT
Download MCISDK2 today and create simple multilanguage installaiton pakcages to get necessary runtime components to your customer computer. MCISDK2 support several runtime component such as the .NET Framework, MSI, MDAC, DirectX, J#, SSE and more.
Source: MSDN