Search Results

Search found 5632 results on 226 pages for 'msdn geek'.

Page 157/226 | < Previous Page | 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164  | Next Page >

• How to determine whether a database has been changed or not ?

  - by Locksfree

  I have a need to determine if a database on a MS SQL Server has changed between two distinct moments. The change can be structural or data-related and the check should be generic (i.e. independant of the structure of the database). Preferably, I'd like the check to be T-SQL based or with SMOs, not file based. I checked on MSDN but I haven't found anything relevant so far.

  Read the article

• useUnsafeHeaderParsing in winndows service application

  - by j d

  have a VS2005 windows service where i have the need to use 'useUnsafeHeaderParsing' as per documentation from MSDN. as this is a library used within my windows service, i do not have a web.config to add httpwebrequest element and set useUnsafeHeaderParsing to true. How would i go about achieving this in code. I tried link text and link text but that was a no show.

  Read the article

• What is the significance of Thread.Join method in c sharp .net ?

  - by Techee

  What is the significance of Thread.Join method in c sharp .net ? MSDN says that it blocks the calling thread until a thread terminates. Can anybody explain this with a simple example ?

  Read the article

• is it that easy working with ADO.NET Entity framework in real programming?

  - by sam

  HI Guys, I was watching these videos series about Entity Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ff191186.aspx is that easy building application in real world programming??? and is it ....reliable...has good performance... "I am a graduate.." thanks

  Read the article

• C# Attribute.isDefined() example?

  - by UpTheCreek

  Can someone please give me an example of using Attribute.isDefined() to check if a particular custom attribute has been applied to a given class? I've checked msdn, but only see possiblities for attributes applied to assemblies, members etc. I'm also open to alternative methods for achieving the same thing!

  Read the article

• TextInfo.ToTitleCase does not work as expected for ALL CAPS strings

  - by NimsDotNet

  I was trying to use TextInfo.ToTitleCase to convert some names to proper case. it works fine for strings in lowercase and mixed case but for strings with all characters in Upper case, it returns the input string as is. Nothing about this behavior is mentioned in MSDN documentation, any insights?

  Read the article

• Need a scenario where would fail Array.ConstrainedCopy()

  - by Sir Psycho

  Hi, Just playing around with some of the APIs in .NET and I can't seem to find a way to cause Array.ConstrainedCopy() fail. According to MSDN, it's treated as an atomic operation. If it fails during the copy, the entire call fails resulting in no elements being copied as opposed to its Array.Copy() counterpart. Can someone demonstrate this or tell me how to do this?

  Read the article

• Usercontrol and Border Style

  - by Ram

  Hi, I have created a user control ( custom data grid view control). I have used the code specified at MSDN [site][1] [1]: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316574 to set the border style . I am able to see the selected border style in designer. Like None, FixedSingle or Fixed3D. But when I set the border style to FixedSingle, the border does not appear at runtime. Do I need to draw it manually in the OnPaint method?

  Read the article

• Can't get up with RIA demo

  - by Budda

  Based the article (http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/03/17/mix09-building-amazing-business-applications-with-silverlight-3.aspx) I've tried to start-up the RIA services. At the moment there are 2 blockers: 1. On the client side I don't have " Could anybody help to resolve problems? Thank you. P.S. I have VS2008, SP1, Silverlight, RIA Services installed.

  Read the article

• What does the GDI+ background thread do?

  - by uj

  Upon initialization, GDI+ (non .NET) creates a background thread, which can optionally be suppressed subject to calling some hook functions. MSDN, however, doesn't say what this thread actually does. Google doesn't seem to know either. What is it for?

  Read the article

• CComModule::Unlock();

  - by Tony

  I've been trying to determine what this function does, however I cannot seem to find it anywhere under the MSDN documentation of the CComModule class. Could anyone tell me what it is used for?

  Read the article

• Why is there no Sum() extension for IEnumerable<uint>

  - by dss539

  It seems that Sum not defined for IEnumerable<uint> (and other unsigned integers, for that matter) var s = new int[] { 1, 2, 3 }; s.Sum(); //works fine var us = new uint[] { 1, 2, 3 }; us.Sum(); //missing method I would like to know: Have I done something fundamentally wrong/misunderstood the situation? What design decisions might cause the omission of IEnumerable<uint>.Sum()? MSDN: Enumerable.Sum

  Read the article

• Are the double forward/backward pipe operators documented?

  - by Daniel

  I remember reading about the double pipe operators -- || and <|| -- somewhere and now I can't remember where. I can't find them on MSDN or in the language spec. Are they documented anywhere? Example let print a b = sprintf "%O %O" a b (1, 2) ||> print // val it : string = "1 2"

  Read the article

• NetUserAdd() to Remote Desktop Group?

  - by Brett Powell

  Is there anyway to give a newly created user from NetUserAdd() remote desktop access and/or administrative rights? I know it is possible, at least for Remote Desktop, and I have been reading through the MSDN but nothing seems to hint at what is required to be set for it to work.

  Read the article

• WM_KEYDOWN confusion

  - by user146780

  I'm trying to get my application to do something when CTRL+S is pressed. I'm just not sure how the W and L params work for WM_KEYDOWN. MSDN has something about bit fields which i'm not sure about. How can I detect CTRL and S? Thanks

  Read the article

• Powershell script to change screen Orientation

  - by user161964

  I wrote a script to change Primary screen orientation to portrait. my screen is 1920X1200 It runs and no error reported. But the screen does not rotated as i expected. The code was modified from Set-ScreenResolution (Andy Schneider) Does anybody can help me take a look? some reference site: 1.set-screenresolution http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/2a631d72-206d-4036-a3f2-2e150f297515/ 2.C code for change oridentation (MSDN) Changing Screen Orientation Programmatically http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms812499.aspx my code as below: Function Set-ScreenOrientation { $pinvokeCode = @" using System; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace Resolution { [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public struct DEVMODE1 { [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 32)] public string dmDeviceName; public short dmSpecVersion; public short dmDriverVersion; public short dmSize; public short dmDriverExtra; public int dmFields; public short dmOrientation; public short dmPaperSize; public short dmPaperLength; public short dmPaperWidth; public short dmScale; public short dmCopies; public short dmDefaultSource; public short dmPrintQuality; public short dmColor; public short dmDuplex; public short dmYResolution; public short dmTTOption; public short dmCollate; [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 32)] public string dmFormName; [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] public short dmDisplayOrientation public short dmLogPixels; public short dmBitsPerPel; public int dmPelsWidth; public int dmPelsHeight; public int dmDisplayFlags; public int dmDisplayFrequency; public int dmICMMethod; public int dmICMIntent; public int dmMediaType; public int dmDitherType; public int dmReserved1; public int dmReserved2; public int dmPanningWidth; public int dmPanningHeight; }; class User_32 { [DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern int EnumDisplaySettings(string deviceName, int modeNum, ref DEVMODE1 devMode); [DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern int ChangeDisplaySettings(ref DEVMODE1 devMode, int flags); public const int ENUM_CURRENT_SETTINGS = -1; public const int CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY = 0x01; public const int CDS_TEST = 0x02; public const int DISP_CHANGE_SUCCESSFUL = 0; public const int DISP_CHANGE_RESTART = 1; public const int DISP_CHANGE_FAILED = -1; } public class PrmaryScreenOrientation { static public string ChangeOrientation() { DEVMODE1 dm = GetDevMode1(); if (0 != User_32.EnumDisplaySettings(null, User_32.ENUM_CURRENT_SETTINGS, ref dm)) { dm.dmDisplayOrientation = DMDO_90 dm.dmPelsWidth = 1200; dm.dmPelsHeight = 1920; int iRet = User_32.ChangeDisplaySettings(ref dm, User_32.CDS_TEST); if (iRet == User_32.DISP_CHANGE_FAILED) { return "Unable To Process Your Request. Sorry For This Inconvenience."; } else { iRet = User_32.ChangeDisplaySettings(ref dm, User_32.CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY); switch (iRet) { case User_32.DISP_CHANGE_SUCCESSFUL: { return "Success"; } case User_32.DISP_CHANGE_RESTART: { return "You Need To Reboot For The Change To Happen.\n If You Feel Any Problem After Rebooting Your Machine\nThen Try To Change Resolution In Safe Mode."; } default: { return "Failed"; } } } } else { return "Failed To Change."; } } private static DEVMODE1 GetDevMode1() { DEVMODE1 dm = new DEVMODE1(); dm.dmDeviceName = new String(new char[32]); dm.dmFormName = new String(new char[32]); dm.dmSize = (short)Marshal.SizeOf(dm); return dm; } } } "@ Add-Type $pinvokeCode -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue [Resolution.PrmaryScreenOrientation]::ChangeOrientation() }

  Read the article

• PC runs very slowly for no apparent reason

  - by GalacticCowboy

  I have a Dell Latitude D820 that I've owned for about 2.5 years. It is a Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz, with 2 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive and an NVidia Quadro 120M video card. The computer was purchased in late November of 2006 with XP Pro, and included a free upgrade to Vista Business. (Vista was available on MSDN but not yet via retail, so the Vista Business upgrades weren't shipped until March of '07.) Since we had an MSDN subscription at the time, I installed Vista Ultimate on it pretty much as soon as I got it. It ran happily until sometime in the spring of 2007 when Media Center (which I had never used except to watch DVDs) started throwing some kind of bizarre SQL (CE?) error. This error would pop up at random times just while using the computer. Furthermore, Media Center would no longer start. I never identified the cause of this error. I had the Vista Business upgrade by this time, so I nuked the machine, installed XP and all the drivers, and then the Vista Business upgrade. Again, it ran happily for a few months and then started behaving badly once again. Vista Business doesn't have Media Center, so this exhibited completely unrelated symptoms. For no apparent reason and at fairly random times, the machine would suddenly appear to freeze up or run very slowly. For example, launching a new application window (any app) might take 30-45 seconds to paint fully. However, Task Manager showed very low CPU load, memory, etc. I tried all the normal stuff (chkdsk, defrag, etc.) and ran several diagnostic programs to try to identify any problems, but none found anything. It eventually reached the point that the computer was all but unusable, so I nuked it again and installed XP. This time I decided to stick with XP instead of going to Vista. However, within the past couple of months it has started to exhibit the same symptoms in XP that I used to see in Vista. The computer is still under Dell warranty until December, but so far they aren't any help unless I can identify a specific problem. A friend (partner in a now-dead business) has an identical machine that was purchased at the same time. His machine exhibits none of these symptoms, which leads me to believe it is a hardware issue, but I can't figure out how to identify it. Any ideas? Utilities? Seen something similar? At this point I can't even identify any pattern to the behavior, but would be willing to run a "stress test"-style app for as long as a couple days if I had any hope that it would find something. EDIT July 17 I'm testing jerryjvl's answer regarding the video card, though I'm not sure it fully explains the symptoms yet. This morning I ran a video stress test. The test itself ran fine, but immediately afterward the PC started acting up again. I left ProcExp open and various system processes were consuming 50-60% of the CPU but with no apparent reason. For example, "services.exe" was eating about 40%, but the sum of its child processes wasn't higher than about 5%. I left it alone for several minutes to settle down, and then it was fine again. I used the "video card stability test" from firestone-group.com. Its output isn't very detailed, but it at least exercises the hardware pretty hard. EDIT July 22 Thanks for your excellent suggestions. Here is an update on what I have tried so far. Ran memtest86, SeaTools (Seagate), Hitachi drive fitness test, video card stability test (mentioned above). The video card test was the only one that seemed to produce any results, though it didn't occur during the actual test. I defragged the drive (again...) with JkDefrag I dropped the video card

  Read the article

• Can squid forward DNS queries to a DNS server?

  - by pravin

  This might something be completely impossible to achieve, but before I give it a shot thought I might get some advice from a fellow geek. Would squid proxy DNS queries as well? I would like to forward DNS queries to go through squid and use squid's DNS error page, of course by customizing it. I see the DNS queries are hitting my squid box on UDP port 53. I can setup a port forwarding so that all these queries get sent to squid's port 3128. But would squid understand its a DNS query and forward those queries to the dns server set in squid.conf? I hope my question is clear but please shout up and I would be glad to give you some more info if needed. Thanks guys!

  Read the article

• How do I find/make programming friends?

  - by Anton

  I recently got my first programming internship and was extremely excited to finally be able to talk with and interact with fellow programmers. I had this assumption that I would find a bunch of like minded individuals who enjoyed programming and other aspects of geek culture. Unfortunately, I find myself working with normal people who program for a living and never discuss or show interest in programming outside of their work. It is incredibly disappointing, because I do think one of the best ways to progress in life and as a programmer is to talk about what you enjoy with others and to build bonds with people who enjoy similar things. So how do I go about finding/making programmer friends?

  Read the article

• How can programmers get the quiet working environment they need? [closed]

  - by Richard

  We have an open plan office with all our programmers, web designers and client service team. Problem is my programmer team has to put up with dance music and wailing guitars all day due to the fact that designers and client services team think this makes the office a better environment. When I turn it off (by blocking the streaming of music on the router, he-he-he) they complain that its so quiet and dull. How do I explain to them that programmers need a calm quiet environment without coming across like a really annoying geek? Any other thoughts or ideas appreciated.

  Read the article

• Tips on installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  - by Jon Galloway

  Visual Studio SP1 went up on MSDN downloads (here) on March 8, and will be released publicly on March 10 here. Release announcements: Soma: Visual Studio 2010 enhancements Jason Zander: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 I started on this post with tips on installing VS2010 SP1 when I realized I’ve been writing these up for Visual Studio and .NET framework SP releases for a while (e.g. VS2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 post, VS2005 SP1 post). Looking back the years of Visual Studio SP installs (and remembering when we’d get up to SP6 for a Visual Studio release), I’m happy to see that it just keeps getting easier. Service Packs are a lot less finicky about requiring beta software to be uninstalled, install more quickly, and are just generally a lot less scary. If I can’t have a jetpack, at least my future provided me faster, easier service packs. Disclaimer: These tips are just general things I've picked up over the years. I don't have any inside knowledge here. If you see anything wrong, be sure to let me know in the comments. You may want to check the readme file before installing - it's short, and it's in that new-fangled HTML format. On with the tips! Before starting, uninstall Visual Studio features you don't use Visual Studio service packs (and other Microsoft service packs as well) install patches for the specific features you’ve got installed. This is a big reason to always do a custom install when you first install Visual Studio, but it’s not difficult to update your existing installation. Here’s the quick way to do that: Tap the windows key and type “add or remove programs” and press enter (or click on the “Add or remove programs” link if you must).   Type “Visual Studio 2010” in the search box in the upper right corner, click on the Visual Studio program (the one with the VS infinity looking logo) and click on Uninstall/Change. Click on Add or Remove Features The next part’s up to you – what features do you actually use? I’ve been doing primarily ASP.NET MVC development in C# lately, so I selected Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. Remember that you can install features later if needed, and can also install the express versions if you want. Selecting everything just because it’s there - or you paid for it – means that you install updates for everything, every time. When you’ve made your changes, click on the Update button to uninstall unused features. Shut down all instances of Visual Studio It probably goes without saying that you should close a program down before installing it, partly to avoid the file-in-use-reboot-after-install horror. Additional "hunch / works on my machine" quality tip: On one computer I saw a note in the setup log about Visual Studio a prompt for user input to close Visual Studio, although I never saw the prompt. Just to  be sure, I'd personally open up Task Manager and kill any devenv.exe processes I saw running, as it couldn't hurt. Use the web installer I use the Web Installers whenever possible. There’s no point in downloading the DVD unless you’re doing multiple installs or won’t have internet access. The DVD IS is 1.5GB, since it needs to be able to service every possible supported installation option on both x86 and x64. The web installer is 776 KB (smaller than calc.exe), so you can start the installation right away. Like other web installers, the real benefit is that it only installs the updates you need (hence the reason for step 1 – uninstalling unused components). Instead of 1.5GB, my download was roughly 530MB. If you’re installing from MSDN (this link takes you right to the Visual Studio installs), select the first one on the list: The first step in the installation process is to analyze the machine configuration and tell you what needs to be installed. Since I've trimmed down my features, that's a pretty short list. The time's not far off where I may not install SQL Server on my dev machines, just using SQL Server Compact - that would shorten the list further. When I hit next, you can see that the download size has shrunk considerably. When I start the install, note that the installation begins while other components are downloading - another benefit of the web install. On my mid-range desktop machine, the install took 25 minutes. What if it takes longer? According to Heath Stewart (Visual Studio installer guru), average SP1 installs take roughly 45 minutes. An installation which takes hours to complete may be a sign of a problem: see his post Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem. Why so long? Yes, even 25 minutes is a while. Heath's got another blog post explaining why the update can take longer than the initial install (see: A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product) which explains all the additional steps and complexities a patch needs to deal with, as well as some mitigation steps that deployment authors can take to mitigate the impact. Other things to know about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installs over Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta That's nice. Previous Visual Studio versions did a number of annoying things when you installed SP's over beta's - fail with weird errors, get part way through and tell you needed to cancel and uninstall first, etc. I've installed this on two machines that had random beta stuff installed without tears. That Readme file you didn't read I mentioned the readme file earlier (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210711 ). Some interesting things I picked up in there: 2.1.3. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installation may fail when a USB drive or other removeable drive is connected 2.1.4. Visual Studio must be restarted after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 tooling for SQL Server Compact (Compact) 4.0 is installed 2.2.1. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled to restore certain components 2.2.2. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled before SP1 can be installed again 2.4.3.1. Async CTP If you installed the pre-SP1 version of Async CTP but did not uninstall it before you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, then your computer will be in a state in which the version of the C# compiler in the .NET Framework does not match the C# compiler in Visual Studio. To resolve this issue: After you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, reinstall the SP1 version of the Async CTP from here. Hardware acceleration for Visual Studio is disabled on Windows XP Visual Studio 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP (only on XP). You can turn it back on in the Visual Studio options, under Environment / General, as shown below. See Jason Zander's post titled Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change.

  Read the article

• .NET Reflector Pro Coming…

  The very best software is almost always originally the creation of a single person. Readers of our 'Geek of the Week' will know of a few of them.  Even behemoths such as MS Word or Excel started out with one programmer.  There comes a time with any software that it starts to grow up, and has to move from this form of close parenting to being developed by a team.  This has happened several times within Red-Gate: SQL Refactor, SQL Compare, and SQL Dependency Tracker, not to mention SQL Backup, were all originally the work of a lone coder, who subsequently handed over the development to a structured team of programmers, test engineers and usability designers. Because we loved .NET Reflector when Lutz Roeder wrote and nurtured it, and, like many other .NET developers, used it as a development tool ourselves, .NET Reflector's progress from being the apple of Lutz's eye to being a Red-Gate team-based development  seemed natural.  Lutz, after all, eventually felt he couldn't afford the time to develop it to the extent it deserved. Why, then, did we want to take on .NET Reflector?  Different people may give you different answers, but for us in the .NET team, it just seemed a natural progression. We're always very surprised when anyone suggests that we want to change the nature of the tool since it seems right just as it is. .NET Reflector will stay very much the tool we all use and appreciate, although the new version will support .NET 4, and will have many improvements in the accuracy of its decompiling. Whilst we've made a lot of improvements to Reflector, the radical addition, which we hope you'll want to try out as well, is '.NET Reflector Pro'. This is an extension to .NET Reflector that allows the debugging of decompiled code using the Visual Studio debugger. It is an add-in, but we'll be charging for it, mainly because we prefer to live indoors with a warm meal, rather than outside in tents, particularly when the winter's been as cold as this one has. We're hoping (we're even pretty confident!) that you'll share our excitement about .NET Reflector Pro. .NET Reflector Pro integrates .NET Reflector into Visual Studio, allowing you to seamlessly debug into third-party code and assemblies, even if you don't have the source code for them. You can now treat decompiled assemblies much like your own code: you can step through them and use all the debugging techniques that you would use on your own code. Try the beta now. span.fullpost {display:none;}

  Read the article

• Silverlight Cream for April 01, 2010 -- #827

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Hassan, Viktor Larsson, Fons Sonnemans, Jim McCurdy, Scott Marlowe, Mike Taulty, Brad Abrams, Jesse Liberty, Scott Barnes, Christopher Bennage, and John Papa and Ward Bell. Shoutouts: Tim Heuer posted a survey: What tools are the minimum to get started in Silverlight?... have you responded yet? Don't want to miss this discussion: Channel 9 Live at MIX10: Bill Buxton & Erik Meijer - Perspectives on Design Bookmark this... Jesse Liberty has moved his site: Silverlight Geek I stand with Tim Heuer on this: Congratulations to latest 2nd quarter Silverlight MVPs From SilverlightCream.com: Wizards. Prototype of sketching Wizard for WPF - 1 Max Paulousky is creating a SketchFlow WPF wizard in Expression Blend... looks like good Expression Blend and SketchFlow no matter what the target is Windows Phone 7 Navigation Hassan has another WP7 Video up, and this one is on Navigation and passing data from page to page. Silverlight 4 PathListBox Viktor Larsson is blogging about the PathListBox, and definitely had a good time doing so.. lots of fun examples. CountDown Clock in Silverlight 4 Fons Sonnemans has reworked his Sivlerlight 3 FlipClock to be this Silverlight 4 CountDown Clock utilizing the Viewbox control to make it scalable. Generic class for deep clone of Silverlight and CLR objects Jim McCurdy has a Silverlight 3 and 4-tested CloneObject class that he's using for creating a deep copy of an object and all it's properties... think drag/drop or undo/redo. Animating the Fill Color of a Silverlight Ellipse Scott Marlowe has a tutorial up that animates a pass/fail indicator with a smooth transition from a red to a green state... all with code. Silverlight 4, Blend 4, MVVM, Binding, DependencyObject Mike Taulty has a great tutorial up on Blend4 and binding... he's got a somewhat contrived example going, but it certainly looks good to me :) Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Authentication and Personalization Next up in Brad Abrams' series is Authentication and Personalization. RIA Services makes this easy to do... let Brad show you! An Annotated Line of Business Application Jesse Liberty is walking through the design and delivery of his HyperVideo project with this mini tutorial. Want to understand the thought process behind the LOB app, check this out. How to hack Expression Blend Seems like there was just some discussion about some of this today and here Scott Barnes posts this hack job for Expression Blend... pretty cool actually :) d:DesignInstance in Blend 4 Christopher Bennage has a follow-on post about using d:DesignInstance in Blend 4, and this is a very nice tutorial on the subject Silverlight TV 19: Hidden Gems from MIX10, UFC's Multi-Touch App John Papa and Ward Bell front and center for Silverlight TV number 19... and check out those threads! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

  Read the article

• Selling Solutions, Not Products

  - by David Dorf

  When I think about next-generation retailers, the names that come to mind are Apple, Whole Foods, Lulu Lemon, and IKEA.  They may not be the biggest retailers, but they are certainly growing fast. Success is never defined by just one dimension, and these retailers execute well across many dimensions, but the one that stands out for me is customer experience.  These stores feel...approachable...part of the community...local.  Customers are not intimidated to ask questions, and staff seem to go out of their way to help. What's makes these retailers stand out in the industry?  These retailers aren't selling products -- they're selling solutions.  Think about that.  You think you're going to the Apple store to buy a phone, but you're actually buying a communications solution that handles much, much more.  If you carry an iPhone, your life has changed.  The way you do things is different.  The impacts go much beyond a simple phone. Solutions start with a problem, which is why these retailers greet customers with "what brought you in today," or "can I answer any questions for you?"  Good retailers establish a relationship, even if it lasts only a few minutes. You don't walk into Whole Foods looking for cans of soup.  You are looking for meals: healthy snacks, interesting lunches, exotic dinners.  Its a learning experience where you might discover solutions to problems you didn't know you had.  Mention what foods you like, and you'll get a list of similar items you had not considered.  I didn't know I needed a closet organizer until I visited an IKEA and learned about all the options.  They were able to customize the solution to meet my needs, and now I'm much more organized. One of the differences between selling products and selling solutions is training.  Visit any of these retailers' sites and you'll see a long list of in-store events for the benefit of customers.  You can buy exercise clothing from Lulu Lemon, and also learn new yoga techniques, meet like-minded people, and branch off to other fitness regimes via their ambassadors.  You can visit the Geek Bar at Apple, eat lunch at IKEA, and learn to cook at Whole Foods. These retailers are making an investment in a relationship with their customers.  They are showing loyalty to their customers before asking for it back.  In the long-run, this strategic approach will outlive any scan-and-bag mentality.

  Read the article

• Create PDF document using iTextSharp in ASP.Net 4.0 and MemoryMappedFile

  - by sreejukg

  In this article I am going to demonstrate how ASP.Net developers can programmatically create PDF documents using iTextSharp. iTextSharp is a software component, that allows developers to programmatically create or manipulate PDF documents. Also this article discusses the process of creating in-memory file, read/write data from/to the in-memory file utilizing the new feature MemoryMappedFile. I have a database of users, where I need to send a notice to all my users as a PDF document. The sending mail part of it is not covered in this article. The PDF document will contain the company letter head, to make it more official. I have a list of users stored in a database table named “tblusers”. For each user I need to send customized message addressed to them personally. The database structure for the users is give below. id Title Full Name 1 Mr. Sreeju Nair K. G. 2 Dr. Alberto Mathews 3 Prof. Venketachalam Now I am going to generate the pdf document that contains some message to the user, in the following format. Dear <Title> <FullName>, The message for the user. Regards, Administrator Also I have an image, bg.jpg that contains the background for the document generated. I have created .Net 4.0 empty web application project named “iTextSharpSample”. First thing I need to do is to download the iTextSharp dll from the source forge. You can find the url for the download here. http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/files/ I have extracted the Zip file and added the itextsharp.dll as a reference to my project. Also I have added a web form named default.aspx to my project. After doing all this, the solution explorer have the following view. In the default.aspx page, I inserted one grid view and associated it with a SQL Data source control that bind data from tblusers. I have added a button column in the grid view with text “generate pdf”. The output of the page in the browser is as follows. Now I am going to create a pdf document when the user clicking on the Generate PDF button. As I mentioned before, I am going to work with the file in memory, I am not going to create a file in the disk. I added an event handler for button by specifying onrowcommand event handler. My gridview source looks like <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" Width="481px" CellPadding="4" ForeColor="#333333" GridLines="None" onrowcommand="Generate_PDF" > ………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………….. </asp:GridView> In the code behind, I wrote the corresponding event handler. protected void Generate_PDF(object sender, GridViewCommandEventArgs e) { // The button click event handler code. // I am going to explain the code for this section in the remaining part of the article } The Generate_PDF method is straight forward, It get the title, fullname and message to some variables, then create the pdf using these variables. The code for getting data from the grid view is as follows // get the row index stored in the CommandArgument property int index = Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument); // get the GridViewRow where the command is raised GridViewRow selectedRow = ((GridView)e.CommandSource).Rows[index]; string title = selectedRow.Cells[1].Text; string fullname = selectedRow.Cells[2].Text; string msg = @"There are some changes in the company policy, due to this matter you need to submit your latest address to us. Please update your contact details / personnal details by visiting the member area of the website. ................................... "; since I don’t want to save the file in the disk, I am going the new feature introduced in .Net framework 4, called Memory-Mapped Files. Using Memory-Mapped mapped file, you can created non-persisted memory mapped files, that are not associated with a file in a disk. So I am going to create a temporary file in memory, add the pdf content to it, then write it to the output stream. To read more about MemoryMappedFile, read this msdn article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997372.aspx The below portion of the code using MemoryMappedFile object to create a test pdf document in memory and perform read/write operation on file. The CreateViewStream() object will give you a stream that can be used to read or write data to/from file. The code is very straight forward and I included comment so that you can understand the code. using (MemoryMappedFile mmf = MemoryMappedFile.CreateNew("test1.pdf", 1000000)) { // Create a new pdf document object using the constructor. The parameters passed are document size, left margin, right margin, top margin and bottom margin. iTextSharp.text.Document d = new iTextSharp.text.Document(PageSize.A4, 72,72,172,72); //get an instance of the memory mapped file to stream object so that user can write to this using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { // associate the document to the stream. PdfWriter.GetInstance(d, stream); /* add an image as bg*/ iTextSharp.text.Image jpg = iTextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(Server.MapPath("Image/bg.png")); jpg.Alignment = iTextSharp.text.Image.UNDERLYING; jpg.SetAbsolutePosition(0, 0); //this is the size of my background letter head image. the size is in points. this will fit to A4 size document. jpg.ScaleToFit(595, 842); d.Open(); d.Add(jpg); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Dear {0} {1},", title, fullname))); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(msg)); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Administrator"))); d.Close(); } //read the file data byte[] b; using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { BinaryReader rdr = new BinaryReader(stream); b = new byte[mmf.CreateViewStream().Length]; rdr.Read(b, 0, (int)mmf.CreateViewStream().Length); } Response.Clear(); Response.ContentType = "Application/pdf"; Response.BinaryWrite(b); Response.End(); } Press ctrl + f5 to run the application. First I got the user list. Click on the generate pdf icon. The created looks as follows. Summary: Creating pdf document using iTextSharp is easy. You will get lot of information while surfing the www. Some useful resources and references are mentioned below http://itextsharp.com/ http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/82/iTextSharp-Adding-Text-with-Chunks-Phrases-and-Paragraphs http://somewebguy.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/itextsharp-simplify-your-html-to-pdf-creation/ Hope you enjoyed the article.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164  | Next Page >