Archive for the ‘.NET’ Category

Windows 10 breaks .NET date parsing in certain locales

If you’re running an app in Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 under .NET 4.0 or newer, you will see date parsing errors under seven locales. This blog post will explain the issue, the fix (it’s coming!) and the workarounds. First off, I would like to thank the .NET Framework team at Microsoft for fixing […]

August 27, 2015 · Jouni Heikniemi · 69 Comments
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Upcoming: SANKO Event on VS2013 tooling wave

If you’re a Finnish developer interested in Microsoft technology and tools of the trade in year 2013, you should join us at local Microsoft premises on 16th December for a free user group session. We will cover a broad array of topics. Right now, the agenda looks like this: An overview of the VS2013 wave, […]

December 3, 2013 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: .NET, Misc. programming

Encrypting connection strings in Windows Azure web applications

You may not want your connection strings embedded in your web.config in plaintext – that will expose your database credentials to all the world. This blog post shows how to secure the connection strings. It is ugly, but quite doable. Note: SQL Azure team has posted a four-part series on this in September 2010. Some […]

June 12, 2013 · Jouni Heikniemi · 66 Comments
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Valio.fi deep dive #8: Resources and ORM

Now we’re standing at the edge of the code pool. Let’s dive in! Good background reading: Deep dive #4 on ORM choice, deep dive #7 on database schema. The resource model As I described in my previous post, we ended up storing all different types of resources in one table. However, we model each of […]

January 10, 2012 · Jouni Heikniemi · 3 Comments
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What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5? [poster]

.NET Framework 4.5 had its CTP released in Build, and RTM is coming next year. The key improvement areas are asynchronous programming, performance and support for Windows 8/WinRT – but worry not, it’s not all about those new thingies. Instead of just listing it all out, here’s a poster you can hang on your wall […]

October 29, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · 37 Comments
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Valio.fi deep dive #4: Solving the ORM dilemma

In my series on valio.fi deep dives, I’ll return to the original fields of Offbeat and discuss some backend solutions. We won’t dive into the code today, but will take a look at some hard architectural choices. Essentials of your ORM decision We chose to build a reasonably large web site using NHibernate. A few […]

May 27, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · One Comment
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Scott Guthrie moves on to lead the Azure Application Platform team

What could be important enough to interrupt the flow of posts on practical project experience? It is the reorganization that will throw every .NET developer’s favorite übergeek to a new position. Yes, Scott Guthrie is leaving his post as the head honcho for many things such as IIS, ASP.NET, Silverlight and a slew of other […]

May 3, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: .NET, Cloud

MIX’11 keynote summary, day 1

It’s time for MIX again! Microsoft’s number one conference for web and phone enthusiasts kicked off in Las Vegas. The first keynote day covered web development, the second one will zero in on phone thingies. Here are the highlights from the first day’s keynotes. Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch kicks off the keynote – and he’s […]

April 12, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · 2 Comments
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Out of the dark

It’s been a silent couple of months. Offbeat Solutions has been heads down programming, debugging, optimizing – and then, finally shipping. Now it’s time to look back. In TechDays Finland 2011 we finally talked about our latest customer project, the www.valio.fi web site (slides available, in Finnish). In case you’re not from around here, Valio […]

April 8, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · 7 Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: .NET, Web

Finnish municipalities list published in OData!

In an attempt to contribute something back to the community, Offbeat Solutions has published a list of Finnish municipalities, regions, electoral districts and whatnot. And of course, in the modern spirit, using the OData protocol. Check out the actual material at http://www.offbeat.fi/kunnat.aspx. The description of the data is only available in Finnish, but the data […]

January 14, 2011 · Jouni Heikniemi · 2 Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: .NET