Create stored procedures with Output parameters and return values and use them in .NET

Thom Robbins, from Microsoft New England, provides a quick overview of all the data source controls: SqlDataSource, AccessDataSource, XmlDataSource, ObjectDataSource, and SiteMapDataSource as well as the declarative caching properties you can use with the controls.

I've been working on a financial reporting project lately and came upon the idea of bringing our charts from ChartFX.NET to life. The idea being that we could dynamically review each pixel's color in the chart in order to generate an HTML image map on the fly. This would enable us to apply supporting documentation in the form of links or JavaScript functions to perform some sort of action when the user moves their mouse over the chart or clicks a section of it.

Recently, I had a requirement to put together a website that deals with taking somewhat elaborate financial surveys. While the questions and answers themselves are good candidates for being database driven, there were a large number of nuiances ranging from UI items, business rules, and calculations that just didn't fit into a database driven strategy. With this in mind, my initial strategy was to create version specific classes and reference them in version specific ASP.NET pages. Of course, this accomplished the initial requirement. However, whenever a new version needs to be implemented, I had to copy all of the ASP.NET pages and modify the references to the appropriate version specific class name. Refactoring provides a better alternative and here's how:

At my place of employment, I work a great deal with somewhat complex hierarchical data as part of our measurement and analysis software. Thus, recursion and I have become rather close friends over the last few years. While rewriting an old website, I needed to turn a set of four relational tables into a hierarchical data structure. The top level table held self-referencing relationships as well as child relationships to table 2. Tables 3 and 4 were your basic "run of the mill" child tables up through table2.

Learn how to serialize .NET classes to Xml at runtime using System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer. Then, use SQL Server's OPENXML functionality to bulk load hundreds of records across multiple tables in a single stored procedure call.

The control offers a very user friendly mobile device experience in that it allows the user to use their stylus / mouse to adjust the weight for a given decision criteria instead of typing the numbers.

Learn how to extend an ASP.NET control to hold an unlimited number of additional values in ViewState to avoid expensive re-querying of the database.

ASP.Net's introduction of the web.config file went a long way to filling the configuration hole we had to deal with in classic ASP. We actually went from having very little (global.asa was the closest thing) to a well-structured, change on the fly XML file. For the most part, the web.config file does the trick fine. However there are some limitations and constraints with using it, which you are probably already aware of. What you might not know is how easy is it to surmount those issues by creating a far more flexible alternative.

With a solid foundation created in Part 1, we now turn our attention to more advanced topics. We’ll use context rewriting for some professional looking and hassle free state-management, talk about good database design with respect to multilingual applications, and dive into more advanced Localized controls for ultimate flexibility and productivity.