I've finally managed to finish reading this great book, Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. The book takes a use-case based approach to architecting solutions using Microsoft technologies. Real-world business challenges provide examples of how to use the latest technologies from Microsoft and importantly how to choose the right technology for the task at hand, which can be challenging given the number of choices now available.

I guess a lot of people know about LINQPad and what a great tool it is for LINQ queries, but it’s definitely worth another mention even if you have heard some already. I’ve been using it recently and want to give an overview of what you can do with this great tool.

I ran into this issue today and it’s the second time this has burned me. It didn’t take as long to figure out this time, but hopefully typing this up will ingrain it into my brain further.

I want to introduce you to web service mocking and a tool you can use to mock web services, soapUI.

Today I was generating a typed DataSet, using the Data Source Configuration Wizard in Visual Studio (“Add New Data Source…” from the Data Sources window or Data menu). I had two stored procedures, accessing a linked server, in my database that I wanted added to my DataSet.

I recently had cause to re-visit a solution already deployed and in live production. The solution is a BizTalk application that accepts orders from our clients and then loads them into our Order Management System.