Author Archives: Vidya Vrat

About Vidya Vrat

Microsoft certifications. I am a hands-on architect with proven 19+ years of experience in architecting, designing, and developing distributed software solutions for large enterprises. At Microsoft, as a Principal Software Engineering Manager, I own the Platform team. I see software development as a craft, and I am a big proponent of software architecture and clean code discipline-n-practices. I like to see the bigger picture and make a broader impact. I was also a Microsoft MVP for the past 7 years on Visual Studio and Dev Technologies

If you recall the way we use intellisense while coding is just to press .(prriod) after the object name and we see an entire list of methods and properties associated with that object. As shown in the figure below.

Even though the Intellisense has been a great feature for more than a decade by now, but the disadvantage of this is that it hides the code whenever the Intellisense popup comes over, and sometimes if we need to look at the code behind the pop-up we need to press ESC key and the reopen it.

The Visual Studio 2008 Code Editor comes with this long lived issue, and you can just make the Intellisense pop-up Transparent by holding the CTRL key and look at the code which was covered by the intellisense pop-up, and release the CTRL when you are done.

See the following figure which shows the enhanced Code Editor with new Intellisense feature, which becomes transparent if CTRL key is pressed.

 

Release the CTRL key to bring it back to the normal. Isn’t it a cool feature.

TechMela-On-the-Road – Free Event

August 23rd, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

The TechMela 2007 (formerly known as TechED) is happening again in 4 major cities, starting from 14th-Sep-07.

The good news is that the event will be free unlike before if you have attened in the month of June 2007.

Follow the link for more details: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/hi-in/bb735929.aspx

Enjoy

Orcas New Feature – Split View (Web Applications)

August 19th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

Visual Studio Developers spend a lot of time in switching from Desgin view to Source view while developing an application, as they need to see what they are developing will appear in what manner.

With the release of Orcas/Visual Studio 2008 this problem is going to resolved, as Orcas ASP .NET Web Application Project Template comes up with a brand new feature called Split (split view).

This new Split functionality will sit in between of Design and Source view at the bottom of the Visual Studio IDE while developing a Web Application. Please referto the Figure shown below.

 

If you look at the Figure shown above, you will notice that the developers can look at the code and the design simultaneously.

Split view does not reflect the changes along, as we type the code in the code editor part. If it will do so the development speed will be very slow as the process of reflecting code change effect needs some time to be applied/reflected in the design view.

To serve this purpose Orcas have an inbuilt mechanism to allow you keep on playing with the code part, and then a pop-up will prompt you to Synchronize the code changes into the Design View, as shown in the Figure below.

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Understanding the Virtual Machine Technology

August 13th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

The Orcas March CTP came in Virtual Image format and so the Beta-1 and Beta-2. For many people Virtual Machine is a new teminorlogy. In this post I am trying to help you understand what does this Virtual Machie mean.

While downloading the Virtual Machine files, you must have noticed that Orcas virtual machine requires Virtual PC 2004 SP1 or Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2 to work with downloaded files. Any of this software will help to achieve the concept of virtualization; as Orcas CTP/Beta comes in the form of virtual image, so virtualization concept is required to run the Orcas CTP/Beta.

Normally, computers run only one operating system at a time. Applications run on top of the operating system. The operating system uses device drivers to address the computer’s hardware. And the hardware includes every single piece of hardware for example, the mouse and keyboard, processor, memory, disk drives and drive controllers, video cards, network cards, sound card and other physical devices etc. In other words, a computer contains one set of devices, runs one operating system at a time, and has one set of applications on that operating system.

The concept of exclusive device ownership typically precludes the possibility of running more than one operating system concurrently on a computer. One approach to overcoming this limitation is virtual machine technology. Virtual machine technology applies to both server and client hardware

Virtualization involves redirecting interactions with device resources at lower levels in such a way that higher-level application layers are unaffected. With virtual machine technology, a user can run multiple operating systems concurrently on a single physical system and remain isolated from any other running virtual machine and even from the host operating system. By the virtue of being isolated from any other running virtual machines and Host OS, virtual machine technology plays an important role if you want to test potentially unstable prerelease software in a safe, isolated environment.

Running virtual machines will share the hardware resources available with your host machine especially the hard-disk space, RAM and CPU etc. For example, if you have 2.8 GHZ processor, 60GB disk space and 1GB memory in your host machine and you are planning to run a virtual machine then you should be aware of the fact that the same amount of hardware resources will be shared between the virtual machine and your host machine, so you need to ensure that you have enough disk space to store virtual image files on your host machine’s disk drive. You can also configure the amount of RAM you want to allocate to the virtual machine and the amount of memory you want to keep for the host machine operations as your host machine will be supporting all the running virtual machine on its top.

As mentioned above if you have 1GB physical RAM which is also a minimum requirement for Orcas CTP/Beta, you need to share the available memory with Orcas CTP/Beta virtual machine. While running the virtual machine if you feel that either virtual machine or your host machine is running slow then you can adjust the RAM, by either increasing the RAM for virtual machine, or by releasing some more RAM for host OS from the amount of RAM which is assigned for virtual machine operations. But your adjustments must not affect the minimum requirement of either a virtual machine or your host machine. Your CPU will also be under pressure as it will be busy in taking care of your host machine and virtual machine operations, so speed of CPU also plays a very important role in the world of virtualization.

 

Visual Studio 2008 Beta-2

August 9th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

The VS 2008 Beta 2 is available for dowload.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/default.aspx

This product is planned to ship in Feburary 2008.

SQL Server 2008 code named “Katmai”

June 11th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

Are you ready for the next release of SQL Server 2008, with great features. To read more follow the link http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx

To download the SQL Server 2008 CTP follow the link https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

Orcas Beta 1 Released

April 21st, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

Beta 1 of Orcas is available for download

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

Windows Splash Screens from 1.01 to Vista

April 13th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

Here is a link to show you all the Splash Screens Microsoft Windows have used from its 1st version 1.01 to Vista.

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-61343-1.html

Pictorial History of Microsoft

April 10th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Visual Studio - (0 Comments)

I found a link which shows the progression of Microsoft from 1994 till date.

http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/archive/2007/04/09/why-design-matters-a-pictorial-history-of-microsoft-com.aspx

In Defence of Books

April 6th, 2007 | Posted by Vidya Vrat in Career Advice - (0 Comments)

I love reading books and I am a bibliophile (great lover of books). I have also noticed that many IT professionals don’t like reading books as they have someone who does all the work for them, and provides direct solutions, so they do not need to put long hours in reading and learning; thanks to Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com

But I am feeling that in order to grow someone has to learn constantly and books are the best medium to do so.

I came across a link which contains an article about “In Defence of Books” and this article is written by Douglas Reilly, he himself has shared his experience about books in the article.

This article talks about that why software professionals need books

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/sql-training/sql-server-and-.net-training-and-career-development-part-3/