Leadership musings and hackery from the Perl generation...
So you may or may not have heard about some of the great features coming out in Internet explorer 9. One of these new features that many developers will be interested in, is Pinned Sites. Although some of you may be a little upset by Microsoft’s decision to deviate from web standards once again, others may like the added functionality this allows you to provide your users – either way let’s take a look.
MS SQL Server has a habit of sprouting enormous appendages in the form of log files. Like the infamous Tree Man from Indonesia, sometimes this can be a situation that gets out of control. The SQL error log is one of these sources of pain, but there are a few tricks to pull out of your sleave that’ll save the day.
A very quick one for today – There are times when you need to run alternative services on port 80 other than IIS. In instances like this it would seem logical that it simply requires two separate IP addresses and you’re done. IIS thinks your plans are shit, and says in it’s best Soup Nazi voice “No port 80 for you!”.
Writing quality software for clients is difficult at the best of times. Planning a timeline, planning resources and making sure you have the skills to complete the job, along with a myriad of other things to worry about – If your company is a solution provider, not an integrator (a digital agency) you also have to factor in the end result, and expected return that the client will even get out of the project (the end game) before you even start. So the question is, with so many things that require careful planning, why do software development timelines always appear to carry less weight with management than projects in other mediums?
I have been written a number of posts recently taking a look at Microsoft SQL and some items of it's more obtuse feature set – Microsoft SQL CLR support is one of these hidden gems. Whether you want to add SHA256 hashing to SQL or add managed code features to your database functions (MSMQ support?) this will get you there.
So It’s been about a year or so since I've written any Facebook applications for clients, and in that time quite a lot has changed in the space. There are quite a list of available libraries you can use to write Facebook applications in .Net with, so it can be sometime daunting to pick one as your favourite. This can be further complicated by the fact that for a lot of people, when they first go to write a Facebook application some of the jargon thrown around can be confusing when you know nothing about the Facebook API – what approach should you take? does having ASP.Net MVC or Silverlight support make the library a good one?
Microsoft was good to the people of interwebs land when they released IIS 7.5; The added functionality that allows you to map wildcard SSL certificates to multiple websites on a single IP really helps keep the need for IP address wastage down when running multiple SSL sites on multiple child sub domains. There a slight road block you need to look out for and that is the GUI itself.
So in today's day and age stored procedures are not a new thing at all. DotNet Developers seem to put themselves in one of two camps, those that think they are awesome and use them for everything, and those that think they only have certain times when they are needed and only use them when the absolute need arises (these days, not regularly).
In the modern world we live in with Web Services, RPC calls and the like, SQL server has had a lot of work on its hands trying to keep its followers from leaving to newer ways to store data such as document databases. Microsoft SQL server is like an old friend that developers have either come to love or hate – but like old friends, they may have been keeping some secrets. One of these hidden gems appears in the shape of native XML output support for queries.
So tomorrow is my last day at Alpha Salmon. I am moving on to new and exciting things, at a new workplace, and felt a blog post was in order. The decision to leave was not an easy one. I enjoy my work and all of the pluses it delivers such as boozy Friday afternoons at the work bar (they have an open bar in the building – win). I walk to work, so adding a commute will drastically change my daily life/amount of sleep as well. I have stayed here long enough that i am starting to become a grey hair member of the staff. Management has given me great flexibility to implement change, and i really enjoy(ed) the opportunities they gave me.