Ojith's Technology Blog

So you want to know how to become a .NET developer either because there is a position you want that requires you to have these skills or perhaps you’re just interested in .NET development. It is after all one of the mostly widely used languages for development. This article will server as a How To guide for anyone wanting to become a .NET developer through the use of resources such as: books, development tools, and links. These are the absolute must haves for aspiring .NET developers:

Learning .NET Development

The latest version of the .NET framework is 3.5. The Beginner’s Guide to Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB is part of a series of books written by programmers for programmers. It’s a comprehensive book on development using .NET 3.5. It’s very comprehensive and its written for people who have never done any programming. It takes you step by step, teaching you first the basics, then the more complex tasks, and also some best practices. Even though 3.5 is the latest version, .NET 2.0 is still widely used. The examples are in both C# and VB, I’m personally more of a fan of C# but some are partial to VB. By reading this book you could literally build a web site from scratch in which ever one you choose.

ASP.NET 3.5 In C# and VB

.NET Development Tools

The Integrated Development Environment or IDE used for .NET Development is Microsoft Visual Studio. The latest version is Visual Studio 2008. There are many editions of this tool but I’ll just focus on two: the free one and the not so free one. For those of you with a few hundred or maybe thousand to spend or an organization willing to spend that much there is Visual Studio 2008:

Visual Studio 2008

While you could down grade and get the now cheaper 2005 version of Visual Studio, in order to maximize .NET 3.5’s programming features you will have to the 2008 version. It can range any where from a $200+ for the Standard Edition to $4,000+ for the Team System Edition. OR if you’re not so inclined to spend your money, you have two options: download the trial version or Visual Studio Express which is FREE:

Visual Studio 2008 Express
The Express version is definitely good enough to create and launch a web application, but it does have its limitations. So beware. See the at the end of this article for some free tools that make up for some of these limitiation.

Database Tools

While .NET applications can use many different types of database such as Oracle, Access, or MySQL, the most commonly used is Microsoft SQL Server. The latest version is SQL Server 2008.

SQL Server 2008

Once again you have the choice of buying one of the official version of SQL Server, these range anywhere from $40+ to $1600+ depending on which version you get; or downloading the free version SQL Server Management Studio Express.

SQL Server Management Studio Express

There are limitations in the free version, of course, but I’ve discovered that using the Express version poses little trouble for use only on your development machine or small applications. Once you get into bigger applications or running jobs and other complicated process, a pricier version of SQL Server might be required.

BONUS: Top 5 FREE Tools for .NET Development

If you’re a complete novice to programming you might want to bookmark this page and comeback to this list later. These tools will come in handy once you actually get into development.

As you might or might not already know, .NET development can get rather expensive; compared to the other languages like Java, which has a free IDE: Eclipse. In any case, here are some most free open source tools that will make your life A LOT easier, trust me.

1. NUnit

Unit Testing is a must for any serious developer who wants to put out functional, bug free applications. Microsoft offers its tool for unit testing, MSTest, but only in certain versions of Visual Studio. NUnit is the .NET version of Java’s JUnit, an open source unit testing framework.

2. NAnt

Deploying a website can be a hassle. There are connection strings to update, configuration files to change. NAnt makes these things easier by automating these various changes. Like NUnit, its the .NET version of Java Ant.

3. CruiseControl.NET

As your application grows and you continue adding new features, it always important to integrate your new code with your old code and ensure that everything works. CruiseControl.NET helps with this through its Automated Continuous Integration Server. CruiseControl.NET, you guessed it the .NET version of CruiseControl for Java, is amazing. It works in conjunction with NAnt to anything from run your unit tests each time you add new code to emailing you if someone checks in bad code the breaks the build.

4. NHibernate

This isn’t necessarily a tool, so much as it’s a framework, but I had to put it on the list because it’s made me significantly more efficient. Once again this is a .NET port of the Java based Hibernate. NHiberante acts as the persistence layer between your application and its database. For those of you who hate writing long complicated SQL statements like me, NHibernate is perfect. It allows you to write the usually tedious select statements or the very complex join statements in a fraction of the team. Micrsoft’s LINQ can also be used in the same way. I do, however, think that it needs time to mature and grow before it is on the level of NHibernate.

5. Mono

Last but definitely not least is Mono. Do you for whatever reason not have IIS or do you want to use other platforms like Linux or OS X? Well you’re in luck, Mono, which is sponsored by Novell, offers an alternative to IIS for those not using Windows.

In closing…

.NET is an awesome framework. Its very powerful and there are tons of libraries that allow you to do some amazing things. Once you learn it, you’ll be able to do a lot. One thing to note though: some lists of system requirements might tell you that you only need to have 1 GB of memory to run all of the tools such as SQL Server and Visual Studio. My suggestion is that you at least get 2 GB of memory on your development machine. As cool as they are, the applications can be resource hogs and you want to make sure you’re developing efficiently.

Zenful Development is a simple guide for any aspiring developer. We offer resources that will help you regardless of what language you want to learn. From .NET to RoR to Java. Find us at http://www.zenfuldevelopment.com

Author: Sonia Denis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Not long ago, like 10s of millions of Americans I upgraded my Microsoft Office Program to the Professional Office 2007, which has Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Explorer, etc, etc. Then, today as I was going through my personal business library I noticed that I had an old copy of “Discovering Microsoft Office 2000″ a program that I used nearly everyday for 7 years and you know what?

In paging through this book that came with the program for about 15-minutes, while sipping on some coffee, I noted at least 5 things that the program is capable of doing, but I never realized it, never used those features and now feel somewhat embarrassed about it. So, I ask you have you untapped all the features of your Microsoft Programs, they are truly feature rich.

Why is this significant? Well, many people go and buy add-on software to do various things when in reality their current Microsoft Software already has such features. Even worse, sometimes you hear people bad mouth Microsoft and the truth is they really do not know how to work the software they have. Microsoft has all sorts of free tutorials online to help you with your productivity and teach you all the great components and abilities of your software.

May I make a suggestion to you? Before complaining about your Microsoft Software, check out all the great features, spend some extra time studying up on it and checking out the valuable tutorials that come with it and those that are online for free. The latest Microsoft Office 2007 is incredible and I guarantee you, I will not make the same mistake I did with Office 2000, this time, I am going to unlock my productivity and potential with Microsoft Office 2007.

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Author: Lance Winslow
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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I was searching for some information on the strategy on how to move just an individual site from Sharepoint 2003/WSS V2.0 to Sharepoint 2007/WSS V3.0. I found a lot of information on how to do an In-Place and Gradual upgrade but nothing on how to just move a single site. This article is written based on moving a single site from a single server instance of Sharepoint 2003/WSS V2.0 to a single server installation of Sharepoint 2007/WSS V3.0. If your environment is different some of the steps below will need to be modified for your purposes. Below are the steps on how to
move just a single Sharepoint 2003/WSS V2.0 site to Sharepoint 2007/WSS V3.0:

1. You will need to run the prescan.exe tool from Sharepoint 2007 on the Sharepoint 2003 database first. Since this will create errors on the 2003 site I would recommend making a backup of the site and restoring the backup of the site to run the prescan on. Use the stsadm tool in 2003 to make your backup and do the restore of the site.
2. When the site has been restored copy the Prescan tool from the sever running Sharepoint 2007 to the server running Sharepoint 2003. The Prescan tool is located in Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12BIN.

3. On the server running Sharepoint 2003 open a command prompt and navigate to the directory that you copied the Prescan tool to.
4. On the command prompt run the Prescan tool with the following command: prescan /V
   NOTE: if you use the /ALL option this will run the prescan on your entire farm.

5. Once the prescan has completed make a backup of the content database for the virtual server we just ran the prescan on.
6. Copy the database backup to the server running Sharepoint 2007
7. Restore the database backup onto the SQL server that Sharepoint 2007 is using.
8. Open the Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration site. This can be located at
   Start->Administrative Tools->Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration.
9. Click on the Application Management tab at the top of the screen
10. Go to “Create or extend Web Application” under the “Sharepoint Web Application Management” section.
11. Click on “Create a new Web application” to create the new Web Application where we are going to restore our Sharepoint 2003/WSS V2.0 site to.
12. Fill in the appropriate information to create a Sharepoint 2007/WSS V3.0 Web Application in your environment and click “OK”
13. Once the “Operation in Progress” screen has disappeared and the create operation is completed you will be taken to the “Application Created” screen. Do not go to “Create Site Collection”.
14. Open a command prompt.
15. Run the Sharepoint stsadm tool with the following command line:
    stsadm -o addcontentdb -url -databasename
    NOTE: We need to use the stsadm command line tool to add the new content database because the web application may timeout if you use it to add the content database.

16. Click “Enter” and the content database will be added to the site.
17. Return to the Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration application and click on the “Application Management” tab.
18. Click on the “Content databases” link under the “Sharepoint Web Application Management”
19. You will be redirected back to the “Content databases” screen
20. Make sure that the Web Application you just created is selected in the drop-down list of Web Applications.
21. Click on the content database that was initially created when you created the web application.
22. On the screen that appears click the check box next to “Remove content database”.
23. Click “OK”. This will remove the initial database from the SQL Server.
24. Your site is not ready to access. However if you are moving to a machine that has different user accounts you may have a problem logging into the new site. If you do follow the rest of the steps in the article.
25. Go to the “Application Management” tab in the Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration application.
26. Click on “Site Collection Owners” located under “Sharepoint Site Management”
27. Make sure the correct Web Application is selected in the drop-down
28. Set the Primary and Secondary site collection owners to the correct user accounts and click “OK”
29. Your site will now be ready to access with primary or secondary site collection owner account.

Jason Fortner is co-founder of Total Productivity Solutions. Total Productivity Solutions is an Atlanta based company that provides custom SharePoint, webpart and .NET development; and solutions to common software development issues are also provided on the site.

Sharepoint sites, Sharepoint webparts and .NET Development

www.totalproductivitysolutions.com

www.totalproductivitysolutions.com/ProgrammingTips/Sharepoint2007_Database_Migrate_Single_Site.aspx [http://www.totalproductivitysolutions.com/ProgrammingTips/Sharepoint2007_Database_Migrate_Single_Site.aspx]

Author: Jason Fortner
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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