Archive for the ‘Web’ Category
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 · 
73 Comments
Tags: ASP.NET, Azure, security, Web · Posted in: .NET, Cloud, Web
My talk on ASP.NET and modern web development
On 18th January I was speaking in an HTML5 seminar arranged by Microsoft Finland (agenda in Finnish). Although my presentation was in Finnish, you can find a short link-annotated recap of the presentation – and links to the material – here. The material (partly in Finnish) My PowerPoint slide deck Demo #1: HTML5 Editor templates, […]
January 20, 2012
· Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Tags: ASP.NET MVC, HTML5, JavaScript, OData, presentations, SignalR, WebSockets · Posted in: Web
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
Tags: data access, NHibernate, valio.fi · Posted in: .NET, Web
Valio.fi deep dive #7: The resource data storage model
After the previous post on how our CMS works on a concept level, it’s time to explain the technical details. Note that remembering the previous post’s concepts is pretty much mandatory for understanding this discussion. Oh, and this gets quite detailed; unless you’re designing a content management platform, you probably don’t care enough to read […]
November 19, 2011
· Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Tags: CMS, database, valio.fi · Posted in: Web
Valio.fi deep dive #6: Features of our custom CMS
In the last post, I touched on the choice of using a CMS product or writing your platform yourself. We picked the custom platform approach, and this time I’ll tell you what that led into. What’s in a Content Management System? Wikipedia defines CMS in a very clumsy and overgeneric way. Let’s not go there. […]
November 5, 2011
· Jouni Heikniemi · One Comment
Tags: CMS, valio.fi · Posted in: Web
Valio.fi deep dive #5: Content Management Systems as platforms
After a brief hiatus, it’s time to look at the Valio case again. This time, I’ll explain a few decisions behind our content management model. I’m sure some of this sounds familiar to almost every web site developer, although most won’t probably dive as deep as we did. The setup So you’re developing an ASP.NET […]
October 20, 2011
· Jouni Heikniemi · 3 Comments
Tags: CMS, valio.fi · Posted in: Web
Valio.fi featured on the Vierityspalkki blog
A step aside from the deep dives! The valio.fi project is now also presented in the famous Finnish Vierityspalkki.fi blog. If you can read Finnish, check out my guest post detailing the site and project from a general web developer (non-backend) perspective. Meanwhile, deep dive #4 is cooking. The topic will be OR mapping, and […]
May 20, 2011
· Jouni Heikniemi · 5 Comments
Tags: valio.fi · Posted in: Web
Valio.fi deep dive #1: Understanding our JavaScript philosophy
In this first part of my series of postings on the Valio.fi project, I’ll discuss some design aspects of our use of JavaScript. We outlined these principles in the TechDays presentation, but the guidelines are worth repeating in print as well. What drove us to this? First, let us reiterate the project background and goals. […]
April 18, 2011
· Jouni Heikniemi · 2 Comments
Tags: JavaScript, valio.fi · Posted in: Web
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
Tags: ASP.NET MVC, Azure, IE, MIX, Orchard, PDC11, WebMatrix · Posted in: .NET, Web
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: ASP.NET MVC, valio.fi · Posted in: .NET, Web