Projects

These are some of my latest projects, which I take great pride in posting.

Tools used: ASP.NET, C#, ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, Javascript, CSS

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Grocery List

Eight 8-oz Glasses of Water

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Development Tools

If you manage a start-up, and can't afford to pay for software development tools, then these are for you. They are very popular in the open-source community. There is also plenty of help on these tools on the web to help you get started. I am currently using these for my projects as well, and they're really good.

NUnit

NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current production release, version 2.4, is the fifth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities. NUnit brings xUnit to all .NET languages.

NAnt

NAnt is a free .NET build tool. In theory it is kind of like make without make's wrinkles. In practice it's a lot like Ant. A

TortoiseSVN

Subversion client, implemented as a windows shell extension.

TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.
Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.
TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don't need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.

DBVisualizer

DbVisualizer is a database tool useful for developers and database administrators to aid develop and maintain their databases. It is the perfect solution since the same tool can be used on all major operating systems accessing a wide range of databases.

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is a free, downloadable version of the world's most capable relational database.

Oracle Database XE is easy to install and easy to manage. With Oracle Database XE, you use the Database Home Page, an intuitive browser-based interface, to administer the database; create tables, views, and other schema objects; import, export, and view table data; run queries and SQL scripts; and generate reports.

Oracle Database XE includes Oracle HTML DB 2.1, a declarative, graphical development environment for creating database-centric Web applications. In addition to HTML DB 2.1, you can use popular Oracle and third-party languages and tools to develop your Oracle Database XE applications.

Links

http://www.nunit.org/index.php
http://nant.sourceforge.net/
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
http://www.minq.se/products/dbvis/
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/xe/index.html

Firefox 3 Broke My Code

Yesterday, I had to install Firefox 3, because my most recent work stopped functioning properly in the new Firefox. I wanted to wait a little longer for Firefox 3 to be more stable, but had no other choice. Who would have thought the new version of my beloved Firefox would break my code? Basically, it had to do with my 3 Javascript functions that I wrote: OnMouseOver, OnMouseOut and OnClick. In the OnMouseOver function, I used the innerHTML property to replace some div text. I'm not sure if anybody else had this problem with the new Firefox, but the innerHTML property prevented my OnClick function from being called. I figured this out using my favorite Javascript debug method: alert('test'); It took me the whole day yesterday debugging and researching on Google, but still came out clueless. I ended up throwing away the innerHTML code and used the image src property instead. From experience, I've found sometimes it's best to throw away my current non-working solution and start fresh.

My New Office

Moved into new office last night, because my officemate found another job. It's smaller and windowless, but I can now call it my own. :)

Avoid these Meeting Mistakes

These are terrible meeting mistakes that one definitely need to avoid:

• Being Unprepared


• Showing Up Late


• Being a Meeting Hog


• Sitting Silently


• Expressing Rude Body Language


• Conducting Sidebar Conversations


• Arguing or Putting Others Down


• Leaving Your Cell Phone On


• Chewing Gum


• Shutting Down After the Meeting

I think most of these mistakes can be dealt with by using common sense, but you can read more about these at CNN.com.

Latest AJAX Project

Group effort really paid off for this project. It helped me learn a lot about AJAX, ASP.NET 2.0, and AJAX Control Toolkit.

New Genesant Office in Tyson Corners

New Genesant Office

Moving date is sometime in July.

Office and Gym in the same building? It doesn't get any better than this! :)

How To Be a Good Boss

According to wikihow.com:

1. Realize that management succeeds via the efforts of the workers


2. Delegate responsibility and then trust your people


3. Know your employees to know your strength


4. Clone yourself - many times


5. Empower your staff to make critical decisions, and don't second-guess them


6. Create a clear chain of command


7. Help them learn to work out issues without your intervention


8. Deal with any problems quickly and directly


9. Tell your staff how much you appreciate them - in front of customers if possible


10. Show your appreciation by doing things for them


11. Share your goals with your employees

So it's not easy to be a good boss, but don't we all want to become one someday? :)

Matrix Derived from 2 DataTables

My latest project required the creation of a matrix derived from two DataTables, DT1 and DT2, returned from two separate stored procedures. It was an interesting problem and took me a couple days to come up with a solution. Basically, I had to create a temporary table or matrix, DT, with the top row being the data returned from DT1 and the left-most column being the data returned from DT2.

Then, I initialized the PrimaryKey property of DT as follows:

DataColumn[] keys = new DataColumn[1];
keys[0] = DT.Columns["column_name"];
DT.PrimaryKey = keys;

The initialization of PrimaryKey was required, because I wanted to a search in DT and populate its cells as follows:

DataRow dr = DT.Rows.Find("search_string");
dr["column_name"] = "cell_value";

It is interesting to note that as the DataRow dr is changed, DT is also changed, because dr is a reference to a row in DT.

The last step was to bind DT the DataSource property of the DataGrid and execute its DataBind() event.

I also had to generate a CVS file for DT to be downloaded.

Here is a screenshot of the report:

First Week at Genesant Technologies

Been busy in the last few days setting up my development machine. Everything is going well. Thanks to everyone at Genesant for helping me get started.

Check out my new office. :)

One Project…Done

Over the last three months I have been working really hard on this one project called Personnel Management System. It is an ASP.NET 2.0/C#/SQL Server 2000 web application. I had to create everything from scratch, so it was challenging and fun at the same time. I felt pretty good for having completed it well and right on schedule. The least enjoyable part was doing the documentation, which I'm glad to say is finished.

My new project is an Asset Inventory System, which is a combination of a Windows Desktop Application written in C# and a Mobile App written in C++ running on Windows CE OS. I got to use virtual machine and work with embedded applications in this project. I'm pretty excited even though Window Desktop and Mobile Applications are not my expertise.