IRequiresSessionState and long running Asynchronous HTTP Handlers

The other day I learned something interesting about the inner workings of ASP .Nets session state management.  One of the nice features it provides is automatically making usage of the session state thread safe between the various threads which may be handling requests from the same user (with the same sessionId). Apparently the way it …

Setting up SSL on a Microsoft Azure application

Recently I as involved with adding SSL to a site which is hosted within Microsft’s Aure platform.  Overall the process went pretty smoothly having used the guide from MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff795779.aspx   The one thing it forgets to mention is that along with server certificate you also need all of the certificates along the chain of trust back …

Updating large quantities of data in SQL Azure

Recently I ran into a scenario where I had a production database which contained a table with 1.4 million records in which I wanted to convert a varchar column containing numbers to a bigint column. I used a backup of the database to try out a few different methods; at first I tried simply running …

Handy String Parsing Extension Methods

Since I’ve never particularly liked the feel of C#’s int.TryParse and bool.TryParse methods I decided to create some extension methods for strings which I feel like make the code using them much more readable:   /// <summary> /// Converts a string to an int, if the string cant be parsed then null is returned /// </summary> /// …

MetroStar Systems Supports the 36th Marine Corps Marathon

It was 3:45a.m., Sunday October 30th…Theresa and I sat in my car with the heat on full blast gearing up to be outside for the next six hours (at least!). It was still dark as night, but not far in the distance you could see the buzz and commotion of people setting up for one …

Linq to SharePoint vs. CAML vs. SQL Performance

On a project I’ve just recently started I was tasked to create some SharePoint web services which would serve up data stored in lists.  Having learned recently about a new tool for SharePoint 2010 called Linq to SharePoint I decided I would give it a try rather than taking my normal approach of using CAML …

FedTalks2011

I had the pleasure of attending FedTalks2011 – an event held October 11, 2011 at the Warner Theater in Washington D.C. The event was hosted by FedScoop and brought together “the greatest minds in government and business technology to discuss how innovation can aid in the way government works.” I was introduced to top White …

Jenny’s SharePoint Tip: Rollup items across a site collection by creating a cross list data view web part.

While working on a client project I had a request to rollup all  calendar items across a single site collection on the home page of the root site.  After reviewing several blogs describing how to create a cross list data view web part (dvwp) I was able to successfully create a solution per the client …

Jenny’s SharePoint Tip: How to display “This Month” birthdays in a list using an XSLT filter

Anyone who has ever worked with SharePoint knows that creating filters on date values is not as straight forward as one would expect.  This example explains how to compile employee birthdays in a custom list that automatically displays only the current month’s birthdays.  With a few calculated columns, a data view, and minor XSLT this is easy to …

Using PowerShell to Update Content Editor Web Parts

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to programmatically update the content in Content Editor Web Part (CEWP)? Maybe you added some HTML that is breaking your page or maybe you’re moving your content to another domain and you have some hard coded links in your CEWP’s.

Well it turns out that it isn’t really that hard. In my situation we were working with the latter scenario above and within our environment we have many administrators who have created hard coded links within CEWP’s and in order to streamline the upgrade process I thought I would create a PowerShell script…