Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008

Yes, Microsoft is releasing another version of these two biggie softwares. And they do have some real cool stuff. With .Net Framework 3.5, VS 2008 is just about to release. Apart from have Ajax version in there, the new VS will now have intellisense for Javascript...Yoohoo!! and better javascript debugging capability. Well, I just attended the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas and this is where I got a whole lot of information regarding the 2008 versions of these applications.
Even SQL Server will now have intellisense. Anything to make a programmer code faster. VS 2008 now also has something called LINQ that allows you to write SQL statements directly in code. I didn't pick up a whole lot on this issue. Not sure if I will be using it immediately.
I am actually looking forward to install the 2008 versions and play around in there.

.NET 1.1 applications on IIS7

Vista is finally here and so is IIS7. It might be time to port some old .NET 1.1 applications over to IIS7 but sometimes you may run into problems like "page cannot be displayed" or other errors.
Most errors can be solved by changing default application pool and allowing .NET 1.1 extensibility on ISAPI and CGI restrictions.
However if you still cannot get your application default page to display, check if .NET framework 1.1 service pack 1 is installed on that machine? The SP1 adds support for Vista/Longhorn.

.NET Framework 2.0

Now that the .NET 2.0 versions is out, I finally decided to give the microsoft certification for .NET. With the updated exams, now one has to give two exams to obtain a MCTS - Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. One is about .NET Framework 2.0 Fundamentals(Exam 70-536) and the other can be from Web-based client development (Exam 70-528), Windows-Based Client Development (Exam 70-526) or Distributed Application Development(Exam 70-529). You can obtain MCTS in SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.
I am planning to go for MCTS in Web applications. I am starting with the framework fundamental exam. Since these exams are new, not many exam books have come out. I did find a couple of sites useful in preparing for the framework exam.
The blog site is by Bill Bozeman. He has given lots of posts about each topic that is covered in the 70-536 exam. It is not complete but very useful I also found that the posts are written nicely and are easy to understand.
Another site by Clarke Scott does have some posts. It has a work document with links to other sites or msdn articles for all the skills measured by this exam.
There are couple of books I am referring to but they are by no mean complete in terms of this exam.
I wish the 70-528 book for the web-based development comes out soon. I hear the Amit Kalani books are pretty good.

Google Google Everywhere

In the past couple of days, Google has come out with as many news things. First the updated and improved Google Desktop. Ah well!! So I never installed the first version and therefore thought to give Version 2 a try. The sidebar idea seems pretty good. Good to have news and weather and stock information on your desktop without having to open the browser. But there was some annoying stuff too. Well, the Quick view stores all the recent or most viewed pages you have visited. That means any logout pages, popup pages or just some image files, things that are useless and you would never want to view quickly. My news feed kept saying "Loading..." And the weather feed kept saying "Server is unavailable". Yes, I know its in Beta.
Then after rumors yesterday on Slashdot which incidentally turned out to be true, Google is out with Google Talk. There have been quite a lot of speculation here and there. I haven't downloaded the IM yet. I would have to get a Gmail account first. Yes, I did get an invitation and I had created one. But I didn't use it for some time and then I tried to log in. Obviously, I forgot my password so I tried to do the usual "forgot my password" stuff, but for some reason, google never let me reset my password. It kept saying to try after 5 days. I am sure now my account has gone :-(.
Oh, and last but not the least, I wish someone would gift me Google stock, atleast a 100 of them.

Update on ShDocVw.dll Issue

So finally found a solution to the shDocVw.dll issue. Well, actually a co-worker found it. Because there is another web service using an older reference of the shDocVw.dll, for consistency, I had to use the same. The solution is to remove the Interop references under the project references and add them again but this time pointing to the version you want. The version already generated by the previous web service in my case. So let the web browser control remain as it is, that is we do not need to remove the web browser component. We can directly refer to the interop dlls as a .NET reference instead of letting the web browser control generate and update them everytime we build the project.
Make Sense?

ShDocVw.dll Issue

I am having a strange issue. I have an .NET class library application which references the Microsoft Web Browser control, shDocVw. dll located in the System32 folder. When I integrate my library into another main application that already has the Interop DLLs created by an earlier reference, navigation to the browser gives error saying that Navigate2 method was not found. If I then update the Interop DLLs with the one created in my build path or the bin folder, everything works fine. I noticed that the main application DLLs have timestamp of April whereas my System32 dll and hence the Interop dlls have a timestamp of May. Does this mean that because I am probably referencing an updated version of the DLL, the navigation doesn't work with the older files? Do I have to update any client machine using the application with the updated Interop DLLs in order to get everything working smoothly. Or can I replace my system dll with the same version that was used for the main application and then try? What would be the ideal solution? Any answers?

Learning ASP.NET 2.0

For those of you out there wanting to start learning ASP.NET 2.0, there are great resources on MSDN. You can watch the live webcasts presented by Fritz Onion on MSDN by going to http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/essentialaspnet.mspx . These just started on 4th August 2005, so its not too late. I have seen almost the whole webcast series on ASP.NET 1.0 available on-demand. The webcasts are pretty good and basic for beginners. They are available in c# and VB both. The book Essential ASP.NET by Fritz Onion should be used along with the webcasts for more detailed information.
I know many people out there are anti-Microsoft and some of it is valid, but I think all the free study materials microsoft provides is great. Whatever their intention, if you have to learn these or use the particular platform, you might as well take advantage of the free tutorials. It helps one to get started and is bit less boring the just reading a book.