Coding, content and startups

I’ve just posted my latest article on Developer Fusion – Tree structures in ASP.NET and SQL Server, which takes a look at how you can store tree structures in SQL Server – and then doing something useful with them such as creating a web-directory like interface such as the one below.

I’d really appreciate any comments you might have …! :,,)

(Also – if you’ve got any articles you’d like to see on Developer Fusion, please do drop me a line)

Let me just say that my thoughts are with all those affected by the terrible events in Asia today and their families.

I’ve finally managed to get hold of a copy of the November CTP, but have hit a strange problem when editing any web.config file – with a message box stating “Method not found: ‘Int32 Microsoft.VisualStudio. TextManager.Interop. IVsTextViewEx.IsExpansionUIActive()’.” whenever I try to cut/paste/delete (and trying to type in the file just doesn’t do anything). The other source files seem to edit fine. Has anyone else experienced this, or got any clue as to what might be causing it?

Also, has anyone experienced problems with the solution explorer jumping to the top of the project when you’ve got multiple projects and switch between source files in different projects? (See this bug report ) I’ve been experiencing that both in Beta 1, and in the November CTP – Microsoft haven’t been able to repro it yet, but 10 people have validated the bug so far…

XML Serialization in .NET provides an incredibly useful (and easy) way to turn objects into XML and back again. However, in some situations, you may need more control over how your object is serialized. Recently, I found myself needing to serialize an object that contained a number of property name/values – stored using a NameValueCollection. However, you can’t serialize this using the XmlSerializer class in .NET. I could have switched to using an array  - at least for the serialization part – but this would have serialized the whole lot as a series of elements – and I wanted to do this using attributes.

[Apologies - I've had to snip the code from here, as the layout kept messing around]

Read more here: Customize XML Serialization using IXmlSerializable.

I’m back home for Christmas now (yes, I know – its barely december… what can I say…?), so I thought I’d finally update my various blogs! It’s been a busy past few months…

In mid-October, I attended the first Microsoft “Connect” event held in Barcelona. The idea behind this was to bring together community leaders from around Europe – along with Microsoft – to discuss what Microsoft can do to help the communities, and to promote their new Codezone initiative. Around 80 people attended, half of which were community leaders. It was a great few days, with some very interesting debates sparking off. The weather was gorgeous too – I took the opportunity to stay on for a few days to see the sights – though had to downgrade from the hotel Microsoft put us up in to a somewhat less classy hostel!

Next up (literally 2 days after getting back from Barcelona) was the first Microsoft Student Partner meeting of the 04/05. For those of you unfamiliar with the programme – it basically targets the most enthusiastic students around the UK taking Computer-related degrees, and encourages them to promote Microsoft initiatives such as the Imagine Cup and MSDN AA – with a few goodies such as a years MSDN Universal subscription to help them on their way! The first day included some team building exercises to break the ice – these actually worked very well, despite my initial scepticism – plus an evening out in Reading (with an almost-open bar). Unfortunately I had to miss the second day of the more interesting technology stuff, but it was great fun – thanks to everyone in the Academic team for a great day!

Towards the end of November we had the third community leaders meeting in the UK. The meeting in Barcelona really made me appreciate how ahead of the game the UK DPE team are – so thanks go out to them once again! During the day we were updated as to what the other community leaders in the UK have been up to – and what Microsoft has been up to on our behalf. We also had a 30 minute slot with Alistair Baker – MD of Microsoft UK, and a marketing session discussing how to write “copy’ that had been requested at earlier meetings. There were also further discussions as to what exactly Codezone should be – especially in the UK where the language issue simply doesn’t apply, given our easy access to a wealth of material in the states.

The following week I headed off to Copenhagen to discuss just that,with a smaller group of community “influencers’ around Europe,and a collection of Microsoft people, including the Codezone program manager Doug Seven (of dotnetjunkies and sqljunkies). It’s been great that Microsoft are actually bothering to ask the community how best they can support us – rather than assuming whatever they do is good for everyone! During the meeting we bashed out the various issues of how to make sure Codezone supports the existing communities as best as possible, without competing – how best to support federating content on the site, what features the codezone platform should offer to third party sites, how offline events can be promoted, and whether the site should be used to track things such as individual’s contributions to the community. As soon as I’ve got a proper summary of everything discussed, I’ll post it here! Also, keep an eye on Doug’s blog.

So, time for a bit of relaxation now! I’m also starting to vaguely plan a 6 month trip around the world – but sadly not until early 2006! I figured after exams every summer for the last 7 years, I’ll deserve a break!