Today I was trying to figure out how to get the assembly and type of the class that was calling a method from within the method itself. Since I have MSN Search installed I typed it into my MSN Search box in IE. After several tries without finding anything useful I fired up Google and did one search and came across this great blog post by Michael Ames:

The Call Stack is an indispensable and familiar tool for debugging applications.  Sometimes it is helpful to programmatically access the call stack at run-time.  For example, a generic logging function could detect and output the name of the class and method that called it.  The .NET Framework provides this functionality through the StackTrace, StackFrame and MethodBase classes.

He goes on to demonstrate how to use the call stack which was exactly what I was looking for (thanks Michael!). So why did MSN miss this?

From the Write Ahead Blog:

Over the past week I have been planning to launch the first open to public Service Broker. At the same time, my dev team was having a discussion regarding how we can do something cool and interesting to get the community involved in our product. So I decided to setup simple services on my public Service Broker to let people tinker around with it. This is the zeroth in a series of BrokerChalleges; zero since it requires hardly any skill, just the motivation to play with cool technology.

The challenge is pretty fun and will get you started with some Service Broker stuff. Here is the link to the instructions and if you complete the challenge your name will be posted in the Broker Hall of Fame. Have fun!

I found this cool button on Greg's blog:

Bummer I missed Tech*Ed, but I'm glad I have PDC to look forward to. At first I didn't think the PDC was going to be that great this year, but it seems like there is some momentum building for it.

Update: Want to go to the PDC without paying the price? Check these links out [via Tim Sneath]:

I'm sure I'll write more about the PDC as it gets closer - I think I posted about 50 blog entries from the PDC last time, covering all manner of sessions - but for now I wanted to share a few other fun PDC-related resources:

• Convince the Boss. A fun attempt to give you some ammo to convince the "powers that be" that your attendance at the PDC is the most critical business decision that they'll have to make this year, with a direct effect on the bottom line that will have shareholders dancing for joy!
• Code Your Way to the PDC. The next step is to stand at the street corner with a "will code for food" sign, but Jeff's team (in particular Mike Lehman) have put together a shareware contest where you can enter Whidbey code into a competition to win an all-expenses paid trip to the PDC.
• Blog Your Way to the PDC. Ready to be a paid shill like me :) ? You can tell the world your sob story - why your wife, children and cat left you because you were spending too much time in front of a computer, and if you can extract a tear from a panel of stony-hearted judges, that might be enough to get you there...
• Vote Underwear. If you do nothing else, for the sake of your fellow attendees, please bring your underwear...

See you around!

 

via Paul Thurrott:

With MSN Search Toolbar with WDS installed, IE gains the new tabbed browsing functionality, which is similar to tabbed browsing on other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox. It includes a My Tabs feature that lets you easily bookmark a set of Web site addresses, each of which will open in individual tabs when selected. Also, the feature lets you open MSN Search results in background tabs, which don't disrupt the current window display.

I was skeptical of this update since I didn't really care for the last version. However, it looked interesting so I took it for a spin and it is pretty nice. One of the features I appreciate the most is how configurable everything is. For instance, you can configure the toolbar to use Google's search instead of MSN's search:

The tabbed browsing is also a nice feature. I can open up one browser and use tabs to open all my various web email accounts. Or you can search and open a bunch of different finds in different tabs for easy reference. I haven't tried the desktop search yet so I can't comment on that, but the search bar is great.

http://toolbar.msn.com/

via David Hurtado:

There is a new whitepaper on MSDN about messaging. It's called BizTalk Server 2004: A Messaging Engine Overview,  but it's quite a deep dive into messaging. From my point of view, the most interesting stuff is how it explains the Pub/Sub internals in terms of MessageBox flow and stored procs involved in publishing and subscribing.

I'm about halfway through this paper and it is an excellent read. It is well written in that it flows and is easy to understand. If you're working with BizTalk then I would suggest taking a look. For me it filled in a lot of missing pieces in my understanding of BizTalk.

Marty Wasznicky, who was doing the BizTalk Deep Dive training at the local Microsoft Santa Monica office and who is a former colleague of mine, has started posting lots of good stuff to his blog in the last two days. There are some good posts about Dynamic Mapping,  App Domains, and he's posted the slide decks and sample projects as well. Go check it out!

I got my new DSL router installed today. It seems like it is faster than my old DSL modem + LinkSys router setup. Let me know if you see an improvement. Hopefully this brings the service outages to an end.

I also fixed Vinod's gallery issue. It was some kind of bug in the HabaHaba skin. So his galleries work now.

Update: Just when I get everything back in order I forget to renew the sqlxml.org domain. And once I get the domain back in order I get bit by the .Text bug again. Sheesh! Hopefully everything is back in order now...

If you're like me and can't attend Tech*Ed becuase you're too busy or if you're  too cheap, you can still get the content [via Angus Logan]:

Why attend TechEd US when you can just watch all the Simulcasts?

Via http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/teched2005.mspx

Cool!

Unfortunately I had to cancel on Tech*Ed. I was looking forward to it and I didn't want to miss it. However, since Hisham and I are both on the same project and they didn't think it would work for us both to be gone for the same week. So even though I got my cool badge (staff even) in the mail, I won't be there. :(

But I will be going to PDC05 which both Euan and Fitz are already promoting. I actually started this blog right before heading to PDC03 which was a great event even though it totally overwhelmed me with tons of new stuff. Funny how two years later 90% is still in beta so I really didn't need to be overwhelmed.

So if you're going to Tech*Ed have a great time and learn some stuff for me. If not, get ready to sign up for PDC05 (5 days until the registration opens). See you in October (or maybe in September at PASS).

If you're enabling/disabling receive locations in BizTalk using the BizTalk object model explorer (example here) then you need to be aware of the Cache Refresh Interval property. The importance of this property is explained here:

The receive location is disabled after the cache refresh interval passes. The default value for the cache refresh interval is 60 seconds. For more information about setting the Cache Refresh Interval property, see About the BizTalk Group.

What this means is that when you make a change, such as disabling a receive location, it may take up to 60 seconds before that change is actually realized (hence Jon says it tends to be 30 seconds on average). This can make your tests quite long (since you are testing your code right?). In order to shorten this you can open up the BizTalk Server Administration and select the properties of your BizTalk Server. In that dialog you can set this to something that make sense for your environment.

 

Hopefully this saves someone some time as it took me awhile to catch on to what BizTalk was doing...

I am a Scorched Earth Tank. When I have a mission, it consumes me; I will not be satisfied until the job is done. I have a strong sense of duty, and a strong sense of direction. Changes in the tide don't phase me - I always know which way the wind blows, and I know how to compensate for it. I get on poorly with people like myself. What Video Game Character Are You? [via Marquee de Sells] Update: Looks like Dare and Luke are also Scorched Earth Tanks. Does this mean we shouldn't get along?