I get emailed questions from users all the time. Quite often it is a new or barely known technology and I am asked if VistaDB will work with it. Many times I already know the answer, but occasionally I get thrown a curveball. Silverlight was one example. We had users emailing us arcane press releases...

Continue reading "Microsoft Volta – technology, IDE, tool, what is it?"

As most of you know, VistaDB does obfuscate the assemblies we ship. Why? Well, sometimes I ask myself that question. Most of the de-compilers worth their salt can still rip apart the obfuscated DLL. Sure, you lost the variable names, and it replaces them with DefaultClass1 and things like that, but you...

Continue reading "Protect and Authenticate .NET applications"

Wow, Microsoft is once again doing something people said they never would, releasing source code. This is not the same as Open Sourcing the .NET Framework, not even close. Take a look at Scott's Blog entry about the release and the technology behind how it works. Microsoft is releasing the source code...

Continue reading "Reference Source Code Availability for the .NET Framework"

David Sceppa provided me some updated answers to my questions from other members of his team. Thank you David for taking the time to follow through on this great information. You may want to read the original blog entry first. Q: Will one or the other be dropped in the future? (referring to LINQ to SQL...

Continue reading "An update on LINQ Entity Framework interview"

Yes, you read that correctly. Microsoft is going to work with Novell's Mono Project on their Silverlight clone called Moonlight. With the release to the Web of Silverlight 1.0, the cool new cross-browser, cross-platform technology for developing rich media experiences and interactive applications, Microsoft...

Continue reading "Microsoft working with Mono for Silverlight?"

Today I would like to present an interview with David Sceppa from the ADO.NET team. Q: What is your position within Microsoft? [David] – I am a Program Manager on the ADO.NET team. I'm also the author of Microsoft Press' recent titles on ADO.NET and ADO. Q: LINQ to SQL seems to overlap wit h the ADO...

Continue reading "An interview with David Sceppa about the LINQ Entity Framework"

I got a lot of responses about the previous Silverlight blog, so I wanted to expand it a little here from follow up talks with Microsoft and answer a few questions I saw over and over. What is it? Silverlight is a new technology that runs in your browser as a plugin. But it does NOT just have to be IE...

Continue reading "Silverlight and CLR functionality"

I recently attended a seminar about code coverage and testing. I have used the Compuware BoundsChecker product for years on unmanaged code (it works great). And the presenter spoke about their newer DevPartner products also, but he mentioned a number of open source or low cost alternatives that I didn...

Continue reading "NCover and code coverage analysis"