Visual Studio 2005 – first impressions

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May 082005
 

I’m not sure why they call this product a beta, but it already is a very complete and stable product. Installation went without a glitch, opening one of the starterkits and running it was without problems. I just converted E-Sync to Visual Studio 2005, and the conversion was without any problems. Two warnings about deprecated properties with a suggestion what to change the code to. After that, no warnings or errors and the program runs fine. So for the future, changing to the .NET Framework 2.0 will not be a problem.

To keep E-Sync’s code clean, I need to experiment with C# 2.0’s generics. Now I have two different functions (methods) to basically do the same thing, but with different parameters. It’s ugly.

Update: Errr…I mixed up overloading with generics. Overloading was already possible with C# 1.x.

 Posted by at 13:01

Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 is here!

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May 072005
 

Included are 4 DVD’s:
– Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite beta 2
– SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition CTP (365-day limit on use)
– Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server beta 2
– WeFly247.net (the training application)

 Posted by at 23:53

OpenOffice beta versus Microsoft Office

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May 062005
 

Microsoft beware! The new beta of OpenOffice has features to be a Microsoft Office killer. It opens and saves Microsoft Office documents flawlessly. It has the option to export to PDF, without a need to buy extra software. It includes an Access-like database product BASE (Access is only available in bigger Office versions, or as a standalone product). Most of all: OpenOffice is free.
True, it lacks a good email program like Outlook, but if you can’t live without it, buy it seperately for about $110. Free OpenOffice + $110 <<< MS Office Standard!

Click on the title for a review of the new beta.

As a sidenote, OASIS (an organisation defining/approving e-business standards) has approved the OpenDocument format, a minor extension of the format OpenOffice 2.0 beta uses. The OpenDocument format will save you from the vendor lock-in, since you can switch Office applications without losing your documents.

 Posted by at 22:36

E-Sync creates custom Outlook fields

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May 062005
 

To be able to quickly recognize if an appointment from the ERP-software was already synchronised to Outlook, E-Sync had to be able to recognize the appointments already in Outlook. Since all fields I filled until now are standard-fields that anyone can fill or change in Outlook, I needed custom-fields. For C#, this is not a very well documented area, like more Office development stuff. Lot’s of code reference and samples in VBA or VB, if you’re lucky VB.NET, but C# is scarce. I’m not sure why this is, C# has been around long enough now.

Anyways, E-Sync now recognizes the appointments it made in Outlook by the same unique number that is used in the ERP-software. And since there is no default-form in Outlook showing custom-fields, the user can’t see or change it.

I’ll have to talk to the manufacturer of the ERP-software first, but I guess this is the basis for 2-way synchronisation. And since the user can’t see/change the custom-field, the appointment has to be created in the ERP-software.

 Posted by at 22:27

Growing an Oak

 2 Responses »
May 032005
 

While gardening last weekend, I’ve found an Acorn with a little tiny root coming out of it. So, I planted it in a pot with some nice fresh soil, and after hardly a week, it already looks like this:

It’s about 13-15cm high, and the biggest leaf is about 5cm. I like it. Now where’s that online Bonsai tutorial???

 Posted by at 23:40

E-Sync

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May 032005
 

E-Sync already proved it’s value before being in a production-state, because one company (in the same business as I’m building it for) asked for more information and about the price. They were definitely interested in buying tool and putting it to good use (saving on hours secretaries have to make manually synchronizing calendars from the ERP application to Outlook).

This is so cool!

For the moment, there will be no “real” information about E-Sync on this blog or on other parts of this webserver. If you need info, just send me an e-mail and we’ll go from there. The application is created for one type of ERP application (which stores it’s data in Oracle), but you can always hire me to create a custom version for your (ERP) application.

 Posted by at 23:22

Where is Michael Slinn?

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Apr 292005
 

I’m not sure what happened, but Michael only just entered the Borland-buildings when he blogged his revolutionairy ideas about new Delphi2005 SKU’s. The discussion (in the comments) soon was removed, and all that was left was a “thanks, it was a contributing discussion”. I’m not sure contributing to what, since his blog is empty now….

I sure hope he’s not fired or something?!

Update (11-05-2005): it’s almost 2 weeks later, and no sign of Michael yet. No blogentry, no nothing.

 Posted by at 13:55

Wiki spam

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Apr 282005
 

It’s sick to see what spammers do to get attention, or to trick search-engines. My wiki (nothing special) is here, but lately it seems to be under attack. First it had an extra page with a lot (couple of hundred) pharmaceutical/poker/enlargement-sites on it, today I found the mainpage replaced with a page with a lot of links. Furtunately, a restore of a previous version is a wiki-builtin feature, but I think I will switch to another wiki (password protected) or switch FlexWiki off completely.

 Posted by at 14:14
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