The DaxMindMapper Reloaded

Awesome looking videos released from Øredev Conference 2010.

These are a whole of bunch of really useful looking subjects and I’ll be going through them as and when I have time.

I’ve been looking more closely into SEO for the last week or so. I’m attempting to build up an SEO Consultany Framework for a client I’m working with. To test this new process I’ll be creating a new site and following the process all the way through. I will also follow the process through with a real client but can’t predict which parts of the process they’ll buy into.

From a technical perspective I’m interested in how best to include location specific keywords for services being offered, funnily enough, in particular locations. For instance: Website Design services in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Again from a technical perspective, I’m also looking at how changes to a domain name can influence search engine results, for instance: I need a company to redesign my website.

Selling SEO to a client seems to be both easy, everyone wants it, to being fraught with difficulties, from industry sectors swapped with competition to the large amount of time SEO can eat up.

We’ll see how it goes .. if nothing else I’m learning a lot more about the online environment we all live in.

Looking at the S#arp Architecture for a new project I’m working on.

The example it supplies requires the Northwind database. Hey no problem I think .. it comes with SQL Server so shouldnt be an issue. First problem .. Microsoft no longer install this example database with their later SQL Server versions (actually this no bad thing for a whole bunch of reasons so I’m not angry at this point). However they then go onto make it rather difficult to actually recreate this standard example database.

Googling for “northwind database for sql 2005″ will come up with links to the old Microsoft download area, which then directs you to codeplex, which then offers you a large download for all of the old example databases that, unfortunately, does not actually include the bl**dy Northwind database.

Finally found this link .. looks like the way to go. I’ll try out the SQL script install and see how it goes.

Struct Examples and Tricks in C# - actually worthwhile reading.

I’d known that structs can be used to group some related items together (to aid understanding, reduce bugs etc) and I knew that they can be an aid for performance (less of an overhead compared to objects). But I didn’t really know why .. this article is a pretty clear introduction to the advantages of structs.

If you have an object type mapped to table1 and you need a piece of info from a related object type (thats mapped to a table2) then you can use a view (rather than a table) to make this attribute available in object type1. However this can cause issues with updates. So instead of a view you can use a computed column within object type 1 to gather the related data from the other table. This computed column uses the formula attribute within the nhibernate XML mapping file for object type 1.

Example

Object of type 1 requires a value from a related object of type 2. in this example the data type is a string and the relationship between the two objects is a one to one (so no issues with non existant records or multiple instances). This relation is actually already mapped but uses lazy loading becuase of the size of type 2 class (we don’t want to load the other type becuase it takes too long). However we still require this one string from the type 2 class in certain circumstances but dont want the performance hit of loading type 2.

We could use a view rather than the table within the NHibernate XML mapping file for type 1 but NHibernate will break if we need to perform an update - even if we are not updating this extra column (we do want to perform an update and we don’t need to update the string but the update = “false” has no effect).

So instead, within the object/table1 mapping file, add a new property to inform NHibernate of this new attribute within object type1. Please note the use of qualifiers within the SQL as NHibernate uses alias’s when it emits SQL to the datastore and that SQL will break if you don’t follow the syntax below exactly.

<property name="Name" type="String" formula="(SELECT <tableName2>.<columnName> FROM <tableName2> WHERE tableName2.<primaryKey> = <foreignKey>)" update="false" insert="false"/>

On Sunday I added the full Microsoft web development stack (ASP.NET v3.5, Silverlight, MS SQL 2005) to the hosting options I can now offer clients.

First client to make use of this new capability was Tiered Solutions Hosting itself - I knocked up the web site and published it in a few hours. It was great to be using VS2008 and all of the lovely ASP.NET features rather than the PHP I’ve been using for the last 8 years.

Eric Wise’s Post on how to enable Windows Authentication within Firefox

Update your about:config settings

Looks like an excellent overview to indexes

Always difficult to find good info on the technology that goes into databases (ie stuff thats detailed enough but not so dry that you fall asleep trying to wade through it). So this appears to be an good article for developers wanting more info on Indexes.

Mosso - Rackspace cloud hosting. Very sexy.
GoGrid - More cloud hosting.

Brinkster

Free
30 mb web space, 500 MB WEB TRAFFIC (limited to 16.7 mb web traffic per day), Brinkster control panel, ASP 3.0 , ASP.NET
xml 4.0
wap enabled
flash enabled
ssi - server side includes
MDAC 2.8
MS ACCESS
.NET MOBILE INTERNET TOOLKIT
ONLINE FILE MANAGER

Advanced
• 5 Free Domain Names
• 500 GB Web Space
• 6000 GB Web Traffic
• 2000 Email Accounts
• ASP/.NET/PHP
• 250 MB MySQL DB
• 250 MB SQL Server DB
• Website Builder
$28 per month

Pro
• 2 Free Domain Names
• 350 GB Web Space
• 3500 GB Web Traffic
• 500 Email Accounts
• ASP/.NET/PHP
• 250 MB MySQL DB
• MS Access/MySQL
• Website Builder
$10 per month

M6.Net

Both Brinkster and M6 seem to offer ASP.NET + PHP side by side.

In the second week of July I’ll be ending my current role with Intergraph (.NET 3.5, C#, WinForms, Oracle, TDD, UML, Enterprise Architect) and looking for new work, be it role or project based.

As my new web hosting service enters its 6th successful month I’m also interested in talking with anyone that might want help starting up/or updating their online business, anything from simple websites to online shop fronts.