Andy's blog

The Revolving HashSet

Andrew Best — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:09:13 GMT

A project I was working on had a fairly unique storage requirement: I needed a storage medium in which I could query its contents VERY quickly with Contains(), even when the set was relatively large; and when it reached a set size, it should start replacing its oldest values with incoming values – essentially a queue where the oldest values get trimmed once the queue reaches a certain size. Lets take a look at the solution achieved.

Web.config transforms (XDT) with Visual Studio setup and deployment packages (vdproj) and Team Build 2010

Andrew Best — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:39:04 GMT

I have spent some time binging for solutions to the following issue: You have a product which leverages visual studio setup and deployment packages. You wish to build the MSI as part of your automated build process in Team Build 2010, and you want the built MSI to include transformed configuration files.

Web.config transforms (XDT) in Team Build 2010

Andrew Best — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:10:29 GMT

I thought I would do a short but sweet blog post about getting web.config transforms (and any other XDT transform) working when automating your project builds with Team Build 2010.

WaitControl / Loading Spinner / Progress Display not showing / not visible / not displaying with ReportViewer 10.0 for ASP.NET

Andrew Best — Mon, 23 May 2011 02:48:23 GMT

Now there is a fragmented headline! The reason for it is to hopefully guide people searching on this issue to this post, because it took me about a day of flexing my Bing-Fu before I finally came up with the correct search term that directed me to a solution.

Securing your online identity

Andrew Best — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 10:55:57 GMT

Today I did something I should have done a long time ago. I took the steps that everyone (yes, that means you) who has a significant amount of information stored online should do – I researched and then implemented a password manager. This allows us to create strong, unique passwords for each individual portal we sign in to online, from banking to email to the various forums many of us frequent.

The last RegEx tool you will ever need

Andrew Best — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 10:42:18 GMT

This is just a quick post – but one I hope helps many people. It seems every time I return to regex, it is after not using it for 6+ months, and I have to separately look up code examples, find a tool to verify the somewhat dodgy regex I knock up, test it out in code to see if it verifies my input the way I intend it to… sound familiar? If so, your problems have now been solved. Check out http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/ – a FANTASTIC online regex builder / tester / expression repository, all combined into one neat little interface.

Unit Testing Entity Framework 4.0 – An architectural solution

Andrew Best — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 02:26:22 GMT

It being a beautiful Sunday morning at the moment, I figured it would be as fine a time as any to compile my thoughts on the solution I have implemented to provide a testable EF4 architecture. Edit: Its not Sunday anymore :(

Unit Testing Entity Framework 4.0 – A Solution?

Andrew Best — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:36:38 GMT

I will update this once I have had a chance to test the proposed solution out, but I have a feeling that Moses Of Egypt, although his english may be at times hard to piece together, may be my saviour with this post on TypeMock Isolator.

Unit Testing Entity Framework 4.0 – A Critique

Andrew Best — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:17:40 GMT

I’ve spent the past few days looking at (and in some ways implementing) unit and integration testing in Entity Framework 4. In this article I am going to talk about unit testing. So for those currently researching the same topic, I figured I would save you some time and compile my thoughts on the matter.

Idiot’s guide to Entity Framework POCO Default Values

Andrew Best — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:56:57 GMT

I thought I would write a short post with a very specific title in the hopes that it can serve as a beacon, a shining light for fellow ‘idiots’ who are wasting time on a relatively simple, yet mostly undocumented matter.