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When was .NET announced?
Bill Gates delivered a keynote at Forum 2000, held June 22, 2000, outlining the .NET 'vision'. The
July 2000 PDC had a number of sessions on .NET technology, and delegates were given CDs
containing a pre-release version of the .NET framework/SDK and Visual Studio.NET.
What is IL?
IL = Intermediate Language. Also known as MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) or CIL
(Common Intermediate Language). All .NET source code (of any language) is compiled to IL. The
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IL is then converted to machine code at the point where the software is installed, or at run-time by
a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler.
What is reflection?
All .NET compilers produce metadata about the types defined in the modules they produce. This
metadata is packaged along with the module (modules in turn are packaged together in
assemblies), and can be accessed by a mechanism called reflection. The System.Reflection
namespace contains classes that can be used to interrogate the types for a module/assembly.
Using reflection to access .NET metadata is very similar to using ITypeLib/ITypeInfo to access
type library data in COM, and it is used for similar purposes - e.g. determining data type sizes for
marshaling data across context/process/machine boundaries.
Reflection can also be used to dynamically invoke methods (see System.Type.InvokeMember ) ,
or even create types dynamically at run-time (see System.Reflection.Emit.TypeBuilder).
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What is Partial Assembly References?
Full Assembly reference: A full assembly reference includes the assembly's text name, version,
culture, and public key token (if the assembly has a strong name). A full assembly reference is
required if you reference any assembly that is part of the common
language runtime or any assembly located in the global assembly cache.
Partial Assembly reference: We can dynamically reference an assembly by providing only partial
information, such as specifying only the assembly name. When you specify a partial assembly
reference, the runtime looks for the assembly only in the application
directory.
We can make partial references to an assembly in your code one of the following ways:
-> Use a method such as System.Reflection.Assembly.Load and specify only a partial reference.
The runtime checks for the assembly in the application directory.
-> Use the System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadWithPartialName method and specify only a partial
reference. The runtime checks for the assembly in the application directory and in the global
assembly cache
What is side-by-side execution? Can two application one using private assembly and other
using Shared assembly be stated as a side-by-side executables?
Side-by-side execution is the ability to run multiple versions of an application or component on the
same computer. You can have multiple versions of the common language runtime, and multiple
versions of applications and components that use a version of the runtime, on the same computer
at the same time. Since versioning is only applied to shared assemblies, and not to private
assemblies, two application one using private assembly and one using shared assembly cannot
be stated as side-by-side
executables.
What's the difference between the Debug class and Trace class?
Documentation looks the same. Use Debug class for debug builds, use Trace class for both
debug and release builds.
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risk of overloading the machine and the hard drive. Five levels range from None to Verbose,
allowing you to fine-tune the tracing activities.
What is serialization?
Serialization is the process of converting an object into a stream of bytes. Deserialization is the
opposite process of creating an object from a stream of bytes. Serialization / Deserialization is
mostly used to transport objects (e.g. during remoting), or to persist
objects (e.g. to a file or database).
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SoapFormatter/BinaryFormatter. Microsoft uses XmlSerializer for Web Services, and uses
SoapFormatter/BinaryFormatter for remoting. Both are available for use in your own code.
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1.6. StrongName - 0024000004800000940000000602000000240000525341310004000003
000000CFCB3291AA715FE99D40D49040336F9056D7886FED46775BC7BB5430BA4444FEF8
348EBD06
F962F39776AE4DC3B7B04A7FE6F49F25F740423EBF2C0B89698D8D08AC48D69CED0FC8F
83B465E08
07AC11EC1DCC7D054E807A43336DDE408A5393A48556123272CEEEE72F1660B71927D385
61AABF5C
AC1DF1734633C602F8F2D5:
Note the hierarchy of code groups - the top of the hierarchy is the most general ('All code'), which
is then sub-divided into several
groups, each of which in turn can be sub-divided. Also note that (somewhat counter-intuitively) a
sub-group can be associated with a more permissive permission set than its parent.
Note that the numeric label (1.3.1) is just a caspol invention to make the code groups easy to
manipulate from the command-line. The underlying runtime never sees it.
I can't be bothered with all this CAS stuff. Can I turn it off?
Yes, as long as you are an administrator. Just run: caspol -s off
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Is there built-in support for tracing/logging?
Yes, in the System.Diagnostics namespace. There are two main classes that deal with tracing -
Debug and Trace. They both work in a similar way - the difference is that tracing from the Debug
class only works in builds that have the DEBUG symbol defined, whereas tracing from the Trace
class only works in builds that have the TRACE symbol defined. Typically this means that you
should use System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine for tracing that you want to work in debug and
release builds, and System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine for tracing that you want to work only in
debug builds.
Heap:
A portion of memory reserved for a program to use for the temporary storage of data structures
whose existence or size cannot be determined until the program is running.
Un-Managed Code:
Code that is created without regard for the conventions and requirements of the common
language runtime. Unmanaged code executes in the common language runtime environment with
minimal services (for example, no garbage collection, limited debugging, and so on).
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MSIL: (Microsoft intermediate language)
When compiling to managed code, the compiler translates your source code into Microsoft
intermediate language (MSIL), which is a CPU-independent set of instructions that can be
efficiently converted to native code. MSIL includes instructions for loading, storing, initializing, and
calling methods on objects, as well as instructions for arithmetic and logical operations, control
flow, direct memory access, exception handling, and other operations. Before code can be
executed, MSIL must be converted to CPU-specific code, usually by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler.
Because the common language runtime supplies one or more JIT compilers for each computer
architecture it supports, the same set of MSIL can be JIT-compiled and executed on any
supported architecture.
When a compiler produces MSIL, it also produces metadata. Metadata describes the types in
your code, including the definition of
each type, the signatures of each type's members, the members that your code references, and
other data that the runtime uses at
execution time. The MSIL and metadata are contained in a portable executable (PE) file that is
based on and extends the published
Microsoft PE and Common Object File Format (COFF) used historically for executable content.
This file format, which accommodates
MSIL or native code as well as metadata, enables the operating system to recognize common
language runtime images. The
presence of metadata in the file along with the MSIL enables your code to describe itself, which
means that there is no need for type libraries or Interface Definition Language (IDL). The runtime
locates and extracts the metadata from the file as needed during
execution.
Value Type:
Value types are allocated on the stack just like primitive types in VBScript, VB6 and C/C++. Value
types are not instantiated using new go out of scope when the function they are defined within
returns.
Value types in the CLR are defined as types that derive from system.valueType.
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A data type that fully describes a value by specifying the sequence of bits that constitutes the
value's representation. Type information for a value type instance is not stored with the instance
at run time, but it is available in metadata. Value type instances can be treated as objects using
boxing.
Un-Boxing:
The conversion of an object instance to a value type.
What is namespace used for loading assemblies at run time and name the methods?
System.Reflection
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3. Passport
This has to be declared in web.config file.
Explain encapsulation ?
The implementation is hidden, the interface is exposed.
What data type should you use if you want an 8-bit value that's signed?
sbyte.
What is the difference between the value-type variables and reference-type variables in
terms of garbage collection?
The value-type variables are not garbage-collected, they just fall off the stack when they fall out of
scope, the reference-type objects
are picked up by GC when their references go null.
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How do you box a primitive data type variable?
Assign it to the object, pass an object.
What happens when you encounter a continue statement inside the for loop?
The code for the rest of the loop is ignored, the control is transferred back to the beginning of the
loop.
How can you sort the elements of the array in descending order?
By calling Sort() and then Reverse() methods.
What's the .NET datatype that allows the retrieval of data by a unique key?
HashTable.
Will finally block get executed if the exception had not occurred?
Yes.
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Why is it a bad idea to throw your own exceptions?
Well, if at that point you know that an error has occurred, then why not write the proper code to
handle that error instead of passing a new Exception object to the catch block? Throwing your
own exceptions signifies some design flaws in the project.
What's a delegate?
A delegate object encapsulates a reference to a method. In C++ they were referred to as function
pointers.
What's the difference between the Debug class and Trace class?
Documentation looks the same. Use Debug class for debug builds, use Trace class for
both debug and release builds.
What are three test cases you should go through in unit testing?
Positive test cases (correct data, correct output), negative test cases (broken or
missing data, proper handling), exception test
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cases (exceptions are thrown and caught properly).
What's the implicit name of the parameter that gets passed into the class'
set method?
Value, and it's datatype depends on whatever variable we're changing.
Can you declare the override method static while the original method is
non-static?
No, you can't, the signature of the virtual method must remain the same, only the
keyword virtual is changed to keyword override.
Can you prevent your class from being inherited and becoming a base class
for some other classes?
Yes, that's what keyword sealed in the class definition is for. The developer trying to
derive from your class will get a message: cannot inherit from Sealed class
WhateverBaseClassName. It's the same concept as final class in Java.
Can you allow class to be inherited, but prevent the method from being
over-ridden?
Yes, just leave the class public and make the method sealed.
Why can't you specify the accessibility modifier for methods inside the
interface?
They all must be public. Therefore, to prevent you from getting the false impression
that you have any freedom of choice, you are not allowed to specify any accessibility,
it's public by default.
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Can you inherit multiple interfaces?
Yes, why not.
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manipulation. Strings are immutable, so each time it's being operated on, a new
instance is created.
What's the .NET class that allows the retrieval of a data element using a
unique key?
HashTable.
Will the finally block get executed if an exception has not occurred?
Yes.
What's an interface?
It's an abstract class with public abstract methods all of which must be implemented
in the inherited classes.
Why can't you specify the accessibility modifier for methods inside the
interface?
They all must be public. Therefore, to prevent you from getting the false impression
that you have any freedom of choice,
you are not allowed to specify any accessibility, it's public by default.
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Yes, you can, then the class belongs to global namespace which has no name. For
commercial products, naturally, you wouldn't want global namespace.
What is a formatter?
A formatter is an object that is responsible for encoding and serializing data into
messages on one end, and deserializing and decoding messages into data on the
other end.
Vendor Neutrality
The .NET platform is not vendor neutral, it is tied to the Microsoft operating systems.
But neither are any of the J2EE implementations
Many companies buy into J2EE believing that it will give them vendor neutrality. And,
in fact, this is a stated goal of Sun's vision:
A wide variety of J2EE product configurations and implementations, all of which meet
the requirements of this specification, are possible. A portable J2EE application will
function correctly when successfully deployed in any of these products. (ref : Java 2
Platform Enterprise Edition Specification, v1.3, page 2-7 available at
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/)
Overall Maturity
Given that the .NET platform has a three year lead over J2EE, it should be no surprise
to learn that the .NET platform is far more mature than the J2EE platform. Whereas
we have high volume highly reliable web sites using .NET technologies (NASDAQ and
Dell being among many examples)
The .NET platform eCollaboration model is, as I have discussed at length, based on
the UDDI and SOAP standards. These standards are widely supported by more than
100 companies. Microsoft, along with IBM and Ariba, are the leaders in this area. Sun
is a member of the UDDI consortium and recognizes the importance of the UDDI
standards. In a recent press release, Sun's George Paolini, Vice President for the Java
Community Development, says:
"Sun has always worked to help establish and support open, standards-based
technologies that facilitate the growth of network-based applications, and we see
UDDI as an important project to establish a registry framework for business-to-
business e-commerce
But while Sun publicly says it believes in the UDDI standards, in reality, Sun has done
nothing whatsoever to incorporate any of the UDDI standards into J2EE.
Scalability
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Typical Comparision w.r.t Systems and their costs
J2EE
Framework Support
The .NET platform includes such an eCommerce framework called Commerce Server.
At this point, there is no equivalent vendor-neutral framework in the J2EE space. With
J2EE, you should assume that you will be building your new eCommerce solution from
scratch
Moreover, no matter what [J2EE] vendor you choose, if you expect a component
framework that will allow you to quickly field complete e-business applications, you
are in for a frustrating experience
Language
In the language arena, the choice is about as simple as it gets. J2EE supports Java,
and only Java. It will not support any other language in the foreseeable future. The
.NET platform supports every language except Java (although it does support a
language that is syntactically and functionally equivalent to Java, C#). In fact, given
the importance of the .NET platform as a language independent vehicle, it is likely
that any language that comes out in the near future will include support for the .NET
platform.
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Some companies are under the impression that J2EE supports other languages.
Although both IBM's WebSphere and BEA's WebLogic support other languages,
neither does it through their J2EE technology. There are only two official ways in the
J2EE platform to access other languages, one through the Java Native Interface and
the other through CORBA interoperability. Sun recommends the later approach. As
Sun's Distinguished Scientist and Java Architect Rick Cattell said in a recent
interview.
Portability
The reason that operating system portability is a possibility with J2EE is not so much
because of any inherent portability of J2EE, as it is that most of the J2EE vendors
support multiple operating systems. Therefore as long as one sticks with a given J2EE
vendor and a given database vendor, moving from one operating system to another
should be possible. This is probably the single most important benefit in favor of J2EE
over the .NET platform, which is limited to the Windows operating system. It is worth
noting, however, that Microsoft has submitted the specifications for C# and a subset
of the .NET Framework (called the common language infrastructure) to ECMA, the
group that standardizes JavaScript.
J2EE offers an acceptable solution to ISVs when the product must be marketed to
non-Windows customers, particularly when the J2EE platform itself can be bundled
with the ISV's product as an integrated offering.
If the primary customer base for the ISV is Windows customers, then the .NET
platform should be chosen. It will provide much better performance at a much lower
cost.
The major difference being that with Java, it is the presentation tier programmer that
determines the ultimate HTML that will be delivered to the client, and with .NET, it is
a Visual Studio.NET control.
This Java approach has three problems. First, it requires a lot of code on the
presentation tier, since every possible thin client system requires a different code
path. Second, it is very difficult to test the code with every possible thin client
system. Third, it is very difficult to add new thin clients to an existing application,
since to do so involves searching through, and modifying a tremendous amount of
presentation tier logic.
The .NET Framework approach is to write device independent code that interacts with
visual controls. It is the control, not the programmer, that is responsible for
determining what HTML to deliver, based on the capabilities of the client device.. In
the .NET Framework model, one can forget that such a thing as HTML even exists!
Contd ....
Conclusion
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Sun's J2EE vision is based on a family of specifications that can be implemented by
many vendors. It is open in the sense that any company can license and implement
the technology, but closed in the sense that it is controlled by a single vendor, and a
self contained architectural island with very limited ability to interact outside of itself.
One of J2EE's major disadvantages is that the choice of the platform dictates the use
of a single programming language, and a programming language that is not well
suited for most businesses. One of J2EE's major advantages is that most of the J2EE
vendors do offer operating system portability.
Microsoft's .NET platform vision is a family of products rather than specifications, with
specifications used primarily to define points of interoperability. The major
disadvantage of this approach is that if is limited to the Windows platform, so
applications written for the .NET platform can only be run on .NET platforms. Their
are several important advantages to the .NET platform:
* The ability to scale up is much greater, with the proved ability to support at least
ten times the number of clients any J2EE platform has shown itself able to support.
Assemblies
Defines the concept of assemblies, which are collections of types and resources that
form logical units of functionality. Assemblies are the fundamental units of
deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and security permissions.
Application Domains
Explains how to use application domains to provide isolation between applications.
Runtime Hosts
Describes the runtime hosts supported by the .NET Framework, including ASP.NET,
Internet Explorer, and shell executables.
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Metadata and Self-Describing Components
Explains how the .NET Framework simplifies component interoperation by allowing
compilers to emit additional declarative information, or metadata, into all modules
and assemblies.
Cross-Language Interoperability
Explains how managed objects created in different programming languages can
interact with one another.
Because the common language runtime supplies a JIT compiler for each supported
CPU architecture, developers can write a set of MSIL that can be JIT-compiled and run
on computers with different architectures. However, your managed code will run only
on a specific operating system if it calls platform-specific native APIs, or a platform-
specific class library.
JIT compilation takes into account the fact that some code might never get called
during execution. Rather than using time and memory to convert all the MSIL in a
portable executable (PE) file to native code, it converts the MSIL as needed during
execution and stores the resulting native code so that it is accessible for subsequent
calls. The loader creates and attaches a stub to each of a type's methods when the
type is loaded. On the initial call to the method, the stub passes control to the JIT
compiler, which converts the MSIL for that method into native code and modifies the
stub to direct execution to the location of the native code. Subsequent calls of the JIT-
compiled method proceed directly to the native code that was previously generated,
reducing the time it takes to JIT-compile and run the code.
What meant of assembly & global assembly cache (gac) & Meta data.
Assembly :-- An assembly is the primary building block of a .NET based application. It
is a collection of functionality that is built, versioned, and deployed as a single
implementation unit (as one or more files). All managed types and resources are
marked either as accessible only within their implementation unit, or as accessible by
code outside that unit. It overcomes the problem of 'dll Hell'.The .NET Framework
uses assemblies as the fundamental unit for several purposes:
• Security
• Type Identity
• Reference Scope
• Versioning
• Deployment
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Global Assembly Cache :-- Assemblies can be shared among multiple applications on
the machine by registering them in global Assembly cache(GAC). GAC is a machine
wide a local cache of assemblies maintained by the .NET Framework. We can register
the assembly to global assembly cache by using gacutil command.
We can Navigate to the GAC directory, C:\winnt\Assembly in explore. In the tools
menu select the cache properties; in the windows displayed you can set the memory
limit in MB used by the GAC
MetaData :--Assemblies have Manifests. This Manifest contains Metadata information
of the Module/Assembly as well as it contains detailed Metadata of other
assemblies/modules references (exported). It's the Assembly Manifest which
differentiates between an Assembly and a Module.
GUIDs can be created in a number of ways, but usually they are a combination of a
few unique settings based on specific point in time (e.g., an IP address, network MAC
address, clock date/time, etc.).
Describe the difference between inline and code behind - which is best in a
loosely coupled solution
ASP.NET supports two modes of page development: Page logic code that is written
inside runat="server"> blocks within an .aspx file and dynamically compiled the first
time the page is requested on the server. Page logic code that is written within an
external class that is compiled prior to deployment on a server and linked ""behind""
the .aspx file at run time.
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Before Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) can be executed it, must be
converted by the .NET Framework just-in-time (JIT) compiler to native code. This is
CPU-specific code that runs on the same computer architecture as the JIT compiler.
Rather than using time and memory to convert all of the MSIL in a portable
executable (PE) file to native code. It converts the MSIL as needed whilst executing,
then caches the resulting native code so its accessible for any subsequent calls.
Both XmlReader and XmlWriter are abstract base classes, which define the
functionality that all derived classes must support.
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Is it possible to use multipe inheritance in .net?
Multiple Inheritance is an ability to inherit from more than one base class i.e. ability of a class to
have more than one superclass, by inheriting from different sources and thus combine
separately-defined behaviors in a single class. There are two types of multiple inheritance:
multiple type/interface inheritance and multiple implementation inheritance. C# & VB.NET
supports only multiple type/interface inheritance, i.e.
you can derive an class/interface from multiple interfaces. There is no support for multiple
implementation inheritance in .NET. That means a class can only derived from one class.
Code that runs outside the CLR is referred to as "unmanaged code." COM components, ActiveX
components, and Win32 API functions are examples of unmanaged code.
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the data get changed. In .NET we basically require them storing culture specific informations by
localizing application's resources. You can deploy your resources using satellite assemblies.
What is encapsulation ?
Encapsulation is the ability to hide the internal workings of an object's behavior and its data. For
instance, let's say you have a object named Bike and this object has a method named start().
When you create an instance of a Bike object and call its start() method you are not worried about
what happens to accomplish this, you just want to make sure the state of the bike is changed to
'running' afterwards. This kind of behavior hiding is encapsulation and it makes programming
much easier.
class Moon:Planet
{
//Not allowed as base class is sealed
}
What is GUID and why we need to use it and in what condition? How this is created.
A GUID is a 128-bit integer (16 bytes) that can be used across all computers and networks
wherever a unique identifier is required. Such an identifier has a very low probability of being
duplicated. Visual Studio .NET IDE has a utility under the tools menu to generate GUIDs.
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Describe the advantages of writing a managed code application instead of unmanaged
one. What's involved in certain piece of code being managed?
"Advantage includes automatic garbage collection,memory management,security,type
checking,versioning
Managed code is compiled for the .NET run-time environment. It runs in the Common Language
Runtime (CLR), which is the heart of the .NET Framework. The CLR provides services such as
security,
memory management, and cross-language integration. Managed applications written to take
advantage of the features of the CLR perform more efficiently and safely, and take better
advantage of developers existing expertise in languages that support the .NET Framework.
Unmanaged code includes all code written before the .NET Framework was introduced—this
includes code written to use COM, native Win32, and Visual Basic 6. Because it does not run
inside the .NET environment, unmanaged code cannot make use of any .NET managed
facilities."
using System;
namespace SampleMultiCastDelegate
{
class MultiCast
{
public delegate string strMultiCast(string s);
}
}
namespace SampleMultiCastDelegate
{
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public static string Walk(string s)
{
Console.WriteLine("Walk");
return String.Empty;
}
}
}
using System;
using System.Threading;
namespace SampleMultiCastDelegate
{
MultiCast.strMultiCast myDelegate;
}
}
}
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What is strong-typing versus weak-typing? Which is preferred? Why?
Strong typing implies that the types of variables involved in operations are associated to the
variable, checked at compile-time, and require explicit conversion; weak typing implies that they
are associated to the value, checked at run-time, and are implicitly converted as required. (Which
is preferred is a disputable point, but I personally prefer strong typing because I like my errors to
be found as soon as possible.)
Whats an assembly?
Assemblies are the building blocks of .NET Framework applications; they form the
fundamental unit of deployment, version control, reuse, activation scoping, and
security permissions. An assembly is a collection of types and resources that are built
to work together and form a logical unit of functionality. An assembly provides the
common language runtime with the information it needs to be aware of type
implementations. To the runtime, a type does not exist outside the context of an
assembly.
What is manifest?
It is the metadata that describes the assemblies.
What is metadata?
Metadata is machine-readable information about a resource, or ""data about data.""
Such information might include details on content, format, size, or other
characteristics of a data
source. In .NET, metadata includes type definitions, version information, external
assembly references, and other standardized information.
Static assemblies
These are the .NET PE files that you create at compile time.
Dynamic assemblies
These are PE-formatted, in-memory assemblies that you dynamically create at
runtime using the classes in the System.Reflection.Emit namespace.
Private assemblies
These are static assemblies used by a specific application.
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Public or shared assemblies
These are static assemblies that must have a unique shared name and can be used
by any application.
In .NET, an assembly is the smallest unit to which you can associate a version
number;
Eg:-
Consider the following declaration of a value-type variable:
int i = 123;
object o = (object) i;
Boxing Conversion
UnBoxing :- Unboxing is an explicit conversion from the type object to a value type
Eg:
int i = 123; // A value type
object box = i; // Boxing
int j = (int)box; // Unboxing
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What is Value type and refernce type in .Net?.
Value Type : A variable of a value type always contains a value of that type. The
assignment to a variable of a value type creates a copy of the assigned value, while
the assignment to a variable of a reference type creates a copy of the reference but
not of the referenced object.
Enum->An enum type is a distinct type that declares a set of named constants.They
are strongly typed constants. They are unique types that allow to declare symbolic
names to integral values. Enums are value types, which means they contain their
own value, can't inherit or be inherited from and assignment copies the value of one
enum to another.
What is namespaces?.
Namespace is a logical naming scheme for group related types.Some class types that
logically belong together they can be put into a common namespace. They prevent
namespace collisions and they provide scoping. They are imported as "using" in C#
or "Imports" in Visual Basic. It seems as if these directives specify a particular
assembly, but they don't. A namespace can span multiple assemblies, and an
assembly can define multiple namespaces. When the compiler needs the definition
for a class type, it tracks through each of the different imported namespaces to the
type name and searches each referenced assembly until it is found.
Namespaces can be nested. This is very similar to packages in Java as far as scoping
is concerned.
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How do you create shared assemblies?.
Just look through the definition of Assemblies..
* An Assembly is a logical unit of code
* Assembly physically exist as DLLs or EXEs
* One assembly can contain one or more files
* The constituent files can include any file types like image files, text files etc.
along with DLLs or EXEs
* When you compile your source code by default the exe/dll generated is actually
an assembly
* Unless your code is bundled as assembly it can not be used in any other
application
* When you talk about version of a component you are actually talking about
version of the assembly to which the component belongs.
* Every assembly file contains information about itself. This information is called as
Assembly Manifest.
What is MSIL?.
When compiling to managed code, the compiler translates your source code into
Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL), which is a CPU-independent set of
instructions that can be efficiently converted to native code. MSIL includes
instructions for loading, storing, initializing, and calling methods on objects, as well
as instructions for arithmetic and logical operations, control flow, direct memory
access, exception handling, and other operations. Before code can be run, MSIL must
be converted to CPU-specific code, usually by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. Because
the common language runtime supplies one or more JIT compilers for each computer
architecture it supports, the same set of MSIL can be JIT-compiled and run on any
supported architecture.
When a compiler produces MSIL, it also produces metadata. Metadata describes the
types in your code, including the definition of each type, the signatures of each
type's members, the members that your code references, and other data that the
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runtime uses at execution time. The MSIL and metadata are contained in a portable
executable (PE) file that is based on and extends the published Microsoft PE and
common object file format (COFF) used historically for executable content. This file
format, which accommodates MSIL or native code as well as metadata, enables the
operating system to recognize common language runtime images. The presence of
metadata in the file along with the MSIL enables your code to describe itself, which
means that there is no need for type libraries or Interface Definition Language (IDL).
The runtime locates and extracts the metadata from the file as needed during
execution.
In .NET we have objects called Trace Listeners. A listener is an object that receives
the trace output and outputs it somewhere; that somewhere could be a window in
your development environment, a file on your hard drive, a Windows Event log, a SQL
Server or Oracle database, or any other customized data store.
All Trace Listeners have the following functions. Functionality of these functions is
same except that the target media for the tracing output is determined by the Trace
Listener.
Method Name
Result Fail Outputs the specified text with the Call Stack.
Write Outputs the specified text.
WriteLine Outputs the specified text and a carriage return.
Flush Flushes the output buffer to the target media.
Close Closes the output stream in order to not receive the tracing/debugging
output.
The PID (Process ID) a unique number for each item on the Process Tab, Image Name list. How
do you get the PID to appear? In Task Manger, select the View menu, then select columns and
check PID (Process Identifier).
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In Linux, PID is used to debug a process explicitly. However we cannot do this in a windows
environment.
Microsoft has launched a SDK called as Microsoft Operations Management (MOM). This uses the
PID to find out which dll’s have been loaded by a process in the memory. This is essentially
helpful in situations where the Process which has a memory leak is to be traced to a erring dll.
Personally I have never used a PID, our Windows debugger does the things required to find out.
All the assemblies that need to be shared across applications need to be done
through the Global assembly Cache only. However it is not necessary to install
assemblies into the global assembly cache to make them accessible to COM interop
or unmanaged code.
There are several ways to deploy an assembly into the global assembly cache:
· Use an installer designed to work with the global assembly cache. This is the
preferred option for installing assemblies into the global assembly cache.
· Use a developer tool called the Global Assembly Cache tool (Gacutil.exe), provided
by the .NET Framework SDK.
· Use Windows Explorer to drag assemblies into the cache.
GAC solves the problem of DLL Hell and DLL versioning. Unlike earlier situations, GAC
can hold two assemblies of the same name but different version. This ensures that
the applications which access a particular assembly continue to access the same
assembly even if another version of that assembly is installed on that machine.
Identifier is the name of the interface and InterfaceBody refers to the abstract
methods and static final variables that make up the interface. Because it is assumed
that all the methods in an interface are abstract, it isn't necessary to use the abstract
keyword
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But what does it mean to implement an interface. The interface acts as a contract or
promise. If a class implements an interface, then it must have the properties and
methods of the interface defined in the class. This is enforced by the compiler.
What is the difference between XML Web Services using ASMX and .NET
Remoting using SOAP?
ASP.NET Web services and .NET Remoting provide a full suite of design options for
cross-process and cross-plaform communication in distributed applications. In
general, ASP.NET Web services provide the highest levels of interoperability with full
support for WSDL and SOAP over HTTP, while .NET Remoting is designed for common
language runtime type-system fidelity and supports additional data format and
communication channels. Hence if we looking cross-platform communication than
web services is the choice coz for .NET remoting .Net framework is requried which
may or may not present for the other platform.
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Distributed Application Design: ASP.NET Web Services vs. .NET Remoting
ASP.NET Web services favor the XML Schema type system, and provide a simple
programming model with broad cross-platform reach. .NET Remoting favors the
runtime type system, and provides a more complex programming model with much
more limited reach. This essential difference is the primary factor in determining
which technology to use. However, there are a wide range of other design factors,
including transport protocols, host processes, security, performance, state
management, and support for transactions to consider as well.
Security
Since ASP.NET Web services rely on HTTP, they integrate with the standard Internet
security infrastructure. ASP.NET leverages the security features available with IIS to
provide strong support for standard HTTP authentication schemes including Basic,
Digest, digital certificates, and even Microsoft® .NET Passport. (You can also use
Windows Integrated authentication, but only for clients in a trusted domain.) One
advantage of using the available HTTP authentication schemes is that no code
change is required in a Web service; IIS performs authentication before the ASP.NET
Web services are called. ASP.NET also provides support for .NET Passport-based
authentication and other custom authentication schemes. ASP.NET supports access
control based on target URLs, and by integrating with the .NET code access security
(CAS) infrastructure. SSL can be used to ensure private communication over the wire.
Although these standard transport-level techniques to secure Web services are quite
effective, they only go so far. In complex scenarios involving multiple Web services in
different trust domains, you have to build custom ad hoc solutions. Microsoft and
others are working on a set of security specifications that build on the extensibility of
SOAP messages to offer message-level security capabilities. One of these is the XML
Web Services Security Language (WS-Security), which defines a framework for
message-level credential transfer, message integrity, and message confidentiality.
As noted in the previous section, the .NET Remoting plumbing does not secure cross-
process invocations in the general case. A .NET Remoting endpoint hosted in IIS with
ASP.NET can leverage all the same security features available to ASP.NET Web
services, including support for secure communication over the wire using SSL. If you
are using the TCP channel or the HTTP channel hosted in processes other than
aspnet_wp.exe, you have to implement authentication, authorization and privacy
mechanisms yourself.
One additional security concern is the ability to execute code from a semi-trusted
environment without having to change the default security policy. ASP.NET Web
Services client proxies work in these environments, but .NET Remoting proxies do
not. In order to use a .NET Remoting proxy from a semi-trusted environment, you
need a special serialization permission that is not given to code loaded from your
intranet or the Internet by default. If you want to use a .NET Remoting client from
within a semi-trusted environment, you have to alter the default security policy for
code loaded from those zones. In situations where you are connecting to systems
from clients running in a sandbox—like a downloaded Windows Forms application, for
instance—ASP.NET Web Services are a simpler choice because security policy
changes are not required.
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Early binding implies that the class of the called object is known at compile-time;
late-binding implies that the class is not known until run-time, such as a call through
an interface or via Reflection.
Early binding is the preferred method. It is the best performer because your
application binds directly to the address of the function being called and there is no
extra overhead in doing a run-time lookup. In terms of overall execution speed, it is
at least twice as fast as late binding.
Early binding also provides type safety. When you have a reference set to the
component's type library, Visual Basic provides IntelliSense support to help you code
each function correctly. Visual Basic also warns you if the data type of a parameter or
return value is incorrect, saving a lot of time when writing and debugging code.
Late binding is still useful in situations where the exact interface of an object is not
known at design-time. If your application seeks to talk with multiple unknown servers
or needs to invoke functions by name (using the Visual Basic 6.0 CallByName
function for example) then you need to use late binding. Late binding is also useful to
work around compatibility problems between multiple versions of a component that
has improperly modified or adapted its interface between versions.
Strong names are implemented using standard public key cryptography. In general,
the process works as follows: The author of an assembly generates a key pair (or
uses an existing one), signs the file containing the manifest with the private key, and
makes the public key available to callers. When references are made to the
assembly, the caller records the public key corresponding to the private key used to
generate the strong name.
Weak named assemblies are not suitable to be added in GAC and shared. It is
essential for an assembly to be strong named.
36
Strong naming prevents tampering and enables assemblies to be placed in the GAC
alongside other assemblies of the same name.
How does the generational garbage collector in the .NET CLR manage
object lifetime? What is non-deterministic finalization?
The hugely simplistic version is that every time it garbage-collects, it starts by
assuming everything to be garbage, then goes through and builds a list of everything
reachable. Those become not-garbage, everything else doesn't, and gets thrown
away. What makes it generational is that every time an object goes through this
process and survives, it is noted as being a member of an older generation (up to 2,
right now). When the garbage-collector is trying to free memory, it starts with the
lowest generation (0) and only works up to higher ones if it can't free up enough
space, on the grounds that shorter-lived objects are more likely to have been freed
than longer-lived ones.
Non-deterministic finalization implies that the destructor (if any) of an object will not
necessarily be run (nor its memory cleaned up, but that's a relatively minor issue)
immediately upon its going out of scope. Instead, it will wait until first the garbage
collector gets around to finding it, and then the finalisation queue empties down to it;
and if the process ends before this happens, it may not be finalised at all. (Although
the operating system will usually clean up any process-external resources left open -
note the usually there, especially as the exceptions tend to hurt a lot.)
How is the using() pattern useful? What is IDisposable? How does it support
deterministic finalization?
The using() pattern is useful because it ensures that Dispose() will always be called
when a disposable object (defined as one that implements IDisposable, and thus the
Dispose() method) goes out of scope, even if it does so by an exception being
thrown, and thus that resources are always released.
What are PDBs? Where must they be located for debugging to work?
A program database (PDB) files holds debugging and project state information that
allows incremental linking of debug configuration of your program.There are several
different types of symbolic debugging information. The default type for Microsoft
compiler is the so-called PDB file. The compiler setting for creating this file is /Zi,
37
or /ZI for C/C++(which creates a PDB file with additional information that enables a
feature called ""Edit and Continue"") or a Visual Basic/C#/JScript .NET program
with /debug.
A PDB file is a separate file, placed by default in the Debug project subdirectory, that
has the same name as the executable file with the extension .pdb. Note that the
Visual C++ compiler by default creates an additional PDB file called VC60.pdb for
VisulaC++6.0 and VC70.PDB file for VisulaC++7.0. The compiler creates this file
during compilation of the source code, when the compiler isn't aware of the final
name of the executable. The linker can merge this temporary PDB file into the main
one if you tell it to, but it won't do it by default. The PDB file can be useful to display
the detailed stack trace with source files and line numbers.
38
What is the difference between a Debug and Release build? Is there a significant
speed difference? Why or why not?
The Debug build is the program compiled with full symbolic debug information and
no optimization. The Release build is the program compiled employing optimization
and contains no symbolic debug information. These settings can be changed as per
need from Project Configuration properties. The release runs faster since it does not
have any debug symbols and is optimized.
Sealed: It can be applied on a class and methods. It stops the type from further
derivation i.e no one can derive class
from a sealed class,ie A sealed class cannot be inherited.A sealed class cannot be a
abstract class.A compile time error is thrown if you try to specify sealed class as a
base class.
When an instance method declaration includes a sealed modifier, that method is said
to be a sealed method. If an instance method declaration includes the sealed
modifier, it must also include the override modifier. Use of the sealed modifier
prevents a derived class from further overriding the method For Egs: sealed override
public void Sample() { Console.WriteLine("Sealed Method"); }
Virtual & Override: Virtual & Override keywords provides runtime polymorphism. A
base class can make some of its methods
as virtual which allows the derived class a chance to override the base class
implementation by using override keyword.
class Rectangle:Shape
{
public override void Display()
{
Console.WriteLine("Derived");
}
}
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Explain the importance and use of each, Version, Culture and
PublicKeyToken for an assembly.
This three alongwith name of the assembly provide a strong name or fully qualified
name to the assembly. When a assebly is referenced with all three.
PublicKeyToken: Each assembly can have a public key embedded in its manifest that
identifies the developer. This ensures that once the assembly ships, no one can
modify the code or other resources contained in the assembly.
Public: Allows class, methods, fields to be accessible from anywhere i.e. within and
outside an assembly.
Private: When applied to field and method allows to be accessible within a class.
Protected: Similar to private but can be accessed by members of derived class also.
Internal: They are public within the assembly i.e. they can be accessed by anyone
within an assembly but outside assembly they are not visible.
40
}
}
/*
*/
1. Combine fragments from different documents without any naming conflicts. (See
example below.)
2. Write reusable code modules that can be invoked for specific elements and
attributes. Universally unique names guarantee that
such modules are invoked only for the correct elements and attributes.
3. Define elements and attributes that can be reused in other schemas or instance
documents without fear of name collisions. For
example, you might use XHTML elements in a parts catalog to provide part
descriptions. Or you might use the nil attribute
defined in XML Schemas to indicate a missing value.
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What is difference between MetaData and Manifest ?
Metadata and Manifest forms an integral part of an assembly( dll / exe ) in .net
framework .
Out of which Metadata is a mandatory component , which as the name suggests
gives the details about various components of IL code viz : Methods , properties ,
fields , class etc.
Essentially Metadata maintains details in form of tables like Methods Metadata tables
, Properties Metadata tables , which maintains the list of given type and other details
like access specifier , return type etc.
Now Manifest is a part of metadata only , fully called as “manifest metadata tables” ,
it contains the details of the references needed by the assembly of any other
external assembly / type , it could be a custom assembly or standard System
namespace .
Now for an assembly that can independently exists and used in the .Net world both
the things ( Metadata with Manifest ) are mandatory , so that it can be fully described
assembly and can be ported anywhere without any system dependency .
Essentially .Net framework can read all assembly related information from assembly
itself at runtime .
But for .Net modules , that can’t be used independently , until they are being
packaged as a part of an assembly , they don’t contain Manifest but their complete
structure is defined by their respective metadata .
Ultimately . .Net modules use Manifest Metadata tables of parent assembly which
contain them .
a. Check up the total space if there’s any free space on the declared list .
b. If yes add the new item and increase count by 1 .
c. If No Copy the whole thing to a temporary Array of Last Max. Size .
d. Create new Array with size ( Last Array Size + Increase Value )
e. Copy back values from temp and reference this new array as original array .
f. Must doing Method updates too , need to check it up .
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What is Boxing and unboxing? Does it occure automaatically or u need to
write code to box and unbox?
Boxing – Process of converting a System.ValueType to Reference Type , Mostly base
class System.Object type and allocating it memory on Heap .Reverse is unboxing ,
but can only be done with prior boxed variables.
Boxing is always implicit but Unboxing needs to be explicitly done via casting , thus
ensuring the value type contained inside .
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ASP.Net
44
What is view state and use of it?
The current property settings of an ASP.NET page and those of any ASP.NET server controls
contained within the page. ASP.NET can detect when a form is requested for the first time versus
when the form is posted (sent to the server), which allows you to program accordingly.
User Controls:
In ASP.NET: A user-authored server control that enables an ASP.NET page to be re-used as a
server control. An ASP.NET user control is authored declaratively and persisted as a text file
with an .ascx extension. The ASP.NET page framework compiles a user control on the fly to a
class that derives from the System.Web.UI.UserControl class.
Where does the Web page belong in the .NET Framework class hierarchy?
System.Web.UI.Page
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What are the different types of caching?
Caching is a technique widely used in computing to increase performance by keeping frequently
accessed or expensive data in memory. In context of web application, caching is used to retain
the pages or data across HTTP requests and reuse them without the expense of recreating
them.ASP.NET has 3 kinds of caching strategiesOutput CachingFragment CachingData
CachingOutput Caching: Caches the dynamic output generated by a request. Some times it
is useful to cache the output of a website even for a minute, which will result in a
better performance. For caching the whole page the page should have OutputCache directive.<
%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="state" %>
Fragment Caching: Caches the portion of the page generated by the request. Some times it is
not practical to cache the entire page, in such cases we can cache a portion of page<%@
OutputCache Duration="120" VaryByParam="CategoryID;SelectedID"%>
Data Caching: Caches the objects programmatically. For data caching asp.net provides a
cache object for eg: cache["States"] = dsStates;
How do I debug an ASP.NET application that wasn't written with Visual Studio.NET and
that doesn't use code-behind?
Start the DbgClr debugger that comes with the .NET Framework SDK, open the file containing
the code you want to debug, and set your breakpoints. Start the ASP.NET application. Go back to
DbgClr, choose Debug Processes from the Tools menu, and select aspnet_wp.exe from the list
of processes. (If aspnet_wp.exe doesn't appear in the list,check the "Show system processes"
box.) Click the Attach button to attach to aspnet_wp.exe and begin debugging.
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Be sure to enable debugging in the ASPX file before debugging it with DbgClr. You can enable
tell ASP.NET to build debug executables by placing a
<%@ Page Debug="true" %> statement at the top of an ASPX file or a <COMPILATION
debug="true" />statement in a Web.config file.
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message.From = <email>;
message.To = <email>;
message.Subject = "Scheduled Power Outage";
message.Body = "Our servers will be down tonight.";
SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "localhost";
SmtpMail.Send (message);
MailMessage and SmtpMail are classes defined in the .NET Framework Class
Library's System.Web.Mail namespace. Due to a security change made to ASP.NET
just before it shipped, you need to set SmtpMail's SmtpServer property to "localhost"
even though "localhost" is the default. In addition, you must use the IIS configuration
applet to enable localhost (127.0.0.1) to relay messages through the local SMTP
service.
VSDISCO files are DISCO files that support dynamic discovery of Web services. If you
place the following VSDISCO file in a directory on your Web server, for example, it
returns references to all ASMX and DISCO files in the host directory and any
subdirectories not noted in <exclude> elements:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<dynamicDiscovery
xmlns="urn:schemas-dynamicdiscovery:disco.2000-03-17">
<exclude path="_vti_cnf" />
<exclude path="_vti_pvt" />
<exclude path="_vti_log" />
<exclude path="_vti_script" />
<exclude path="_vti_txt" />
</dynamicDiscovery>
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</body>
</html>
Setting AspCompat to true does two things. First, it makes intrinsic ASP objects
available to the COM components by placing unmanaged wrappers around the
equivalent ASP.NET objects. Second, it improves the performance of calls that the
page places to apartment- threaded COM objects by ensuring that the page (actually,
the thread that processes the request for the page) and the COM objects it creates
share an apartment. AspCompat="true" forces ASP.NET request threads into single-
threaded apartments (STAs). If those threads create COM objects marked
ThreadingModel=Apartment, then the objects are created in the same STAs as the
threads that created them. Without AspCompat="true," request threads run in a
multithreaded apartment (MTA) and each call to an STA-based COM object incurs a
performance hit when it's marshaled across apartment boundaries.
Do not set AspCompat to true if your page uses no COM objects or if it uses COM
objects that don't access ASP intrinsic objects and that are registered
ThreadingModel=Free or ThreadingModel=Both.
Should validation (did the user enter a real date) occur server-side or
client-side? Why?
Client-side validation because there is no need to request a server side date when
you could obtain a date from the client machine.
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What are ASP.NET Web Forms? How is this technology different than what
is available though ASP?
Web Forms are the heart and soul of ASP.NET. Web Forms are the User Interface (UI)
elements that give your Web applications their look and feel. Web Forms are similar
to Windows Forms in that they provide properties, methods, and events for the
controls that are placed onto them. However, these UI elements render themselves
in the appropriate markup language required by the request, e.g. HTML. If you use
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, you will also get the familiar drag-and-drop interface
used to create your UI for your Web application.
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computer. The Configuration system first searches settings in machine.config file &
then looks in application configuration files.Web.config, can appear in multiple
directories on an ASP.NET Web application server. Each Web.config file applies
configuration settings to its own directory and all child directories below it. There is
only Machine.config file on a web server.
Where would you use an iHTTPModule, and what are the limitations of any approach
you might take in implementing one
"One of ASP.NET's most useful features is the extensibility of the HTTP pipeline, the
path that data takes between client and server. You can use them to extend your
ASP.NET applications by adding pre- and post-processing to each HTTP request
coming into your application. For example, if you wanted custom authentication
facilities for your application, the best technique would be to intercept the request
when it comes in and process the request in a custom HTTP module.
How do you turn off cookies for one page in your site?
Since no Page Level directive is present, I am afraid that cant be done.
Which method do you use to redirect the user to another page without
performing a round trip to the client?
Server.Transfer and Server.Execute
What property do you have to set to tell the grid which page to go to when
using the Pager object?
CurrentPageIndex
Should validation (did the user enter a real date) occur server-side or
client-side? Why?
It should occur both at client-side and Server side.By using expression validator
control with the specified expression ie.. the regular expression provides the facility
of only validatating the date specified is in the correct format or not. But for checking
the date where it is the real data or not should be done at the server side, by getting
51
the system date ranges and checking the date whether it is in between that range or
not.
Response.Dedirect() :client know the physical location (page name and query string
as well). Context.Items loses the persisitance when nevigate to destination page. In
earlier versions of IIS, if we wanted to send a user to a new Web page, the only
option we had was Response.Redirect. While this method does accomplish our goal, it
has several important drawbacks. The biggest problem is that this method causes
each page to be treated as a separate transaction. Besides making it difficult to
maintain your transactional integrity, Response.Redirect introduces some additional
headaches. First, it prevents good encapsulation of code. Second, you lose access to
all of the properties in the Request object. Sure, there are workarounds, but they're
difficult. Finally, Response.Redirect necessitates a round trip to the client, which, on
high-volume sites, causes scalability problems. As you might suspect, Server.Transfer
fixes all of these problems. It does this by performing the transfer on the server
without requiring a roundtrip to the client.
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• Software Reuse This takes place at multiple levels. Code Reuse at the Source
code level or binary componet-based resuse. The limiting factor here is that
you can reuse the code but not the data behind it. Webservice overcome this
limitation. A scenario could be when you are building an app that aggregates
the functionality of serveral other Applicatons. Each of these functions could
be performed by individual apps, but there is value in perhaps combining the
the multiple apps to present a unifiend view in a Portal or Intranet.
• When not to use Web Services: Single machine Applicatons When the apps
are running on the same machine and need to communicate with each other
use a native API. You also have the options of using component technologies
such as COM or .NET Componets as there is very little overhead.
• Homogeneous Applications on a LAN If you have Win32 or Winforms apps that
want to communicate to their server counterpart. It is much more efficient to
use DCOM in the case of Win32 apps and .NET Remoting in the case of .NET
Apps
Can you give an example of what might be best suited to place in the
Application_Start and Session_Start subroutines?
The Application_Start event is guaranteed to occur only once throughout the lifetime
of the application. It's a good place to initialize global variables. For example, you
might want to retrieve a list of products from a database table and place the list in
application state or the Cache object. SessionStateModule exposes both
Session_Start and Session_End events.
1. Simplicity. There is no need to write possibly complex code to store form data
between page submissions.
2. Flexibility. It is possible to enable, configure, and disable ViewState on a control-
by-control basis, choosing to persist the values of some fields but not others.
There are, however a few disadvantages that are worth pointing out:
1. Does not track across pages. ViewState information does not automatically
transfer from page to page. With the session
approach, values can be stored in the session and accessed from other pages. This is
not possible with ViewState, so storing
data into the session must be done explicitly.
2. ViewState is not suitable for transferring data for back-end systems. That is, data
still has to be transferred to the back
end using some form of data object.
Describe session handling in a webfarm, how does it work and what are the
limits?
ASP.NET Session supports storing of session data in 3 ways, i] in In-Process ( in the
same memory that ASP.NET uses) , ii] out-of-process using Windows NT Service )in
separate memory from ASP.NET ) or iii] in SQL Server (persistent storage). Both the
Windows Service and SQL Server solution support a webfarm scenario where all the
web-servers can be configured to share common session state store.
1. Windows Service :
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We can start this service by Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services | .
In that we service names ASP.NET State Service. We can start or stop service by
manually or configure to start automatically. Then we have to configure our
web.config file
<CONFIGURATION><configuration>
<system.web>
<SessionState
mode = “StateServer”
stateConnectionString = “tcpip=127.0.0.1:42424”
stateNetworkTimeout = “10”
sqlConnectionString=”data source = 127.0.0.1; uid=sa;pwd=”
cookieless =”Flase”
timeout= “20” />
</system.web>
</configuration> </SYSTEM.WEB>
</CONFIGURATION>
Here ASP.Net Session is directed to use Windows Service for state management on
local server (address : 127.0.0.1 is TCP/IP loop-back address). The default port is
42424. we can configure to any port but for that we have to manually edit the
registry.
Follow these simple steps
- In a webfarm make sure you have the same config file in all your web servers.
- Also make sure your objects are serializable.
- For session state to be maintained across different web servers in the webfarm, the
application path of the web-site in the IIS Metabase should be identical in all the web-
servers in the webfarm.
What property must you set, and what method must you call in your code,
in order to bind the data from some data source to the Repeater control?
Set the DataMember property to the name of the table to bind to. (If this property is
not set, by default the first table in the dataset is used.)
DataBind method, use this method to bind data from a source to a server control.
This method is commonly used after retrieving a data set through a database query.
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ASP.NET automatically deletes a user's Session object, dumping its contents, after it
has been idle for a configurable timeout interval. This interval, in minutes, is set in
the <SESSIONSTATE>section of the web.config file. The default is 20 minutes.
How do you turn off cookies for one page in your site?
Use Cookie.Discard property, Gets or sets the discard flag set by the server. When
true, this property instructs the client application not to save the Cookie on the user's
hard disk when a session ends.
What tags do you need to add within the asp:datagrid tags to bind columns
manually?
Which method do you use to redirect the user to another page without
performing a round trip to the client?
Server.transfer
What is the transport protocol you use to call a Web service SOAP ?
HTTP Protocol
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role in the organization.In Windows NT and Windows XP, roles map to names used to
identify user groups. Windows defines several built-in groups, including
Administrators, Users, and Guests.To allow or deny access to certain groups of users,
add the <ROLES>element to the authorization list in your Web application's
Web.config file.e.g.
<AUTHORIZATION>< authorization >
< allow roles="Domain Name\Administrators" / > < !-- Allow Administrators in
domain. -- >
< deny users="*" / > < !-- Deny anyone else. -- >
< /authorization >
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What is advantage of viewstate and what are benefits?
When a form is submitted in classic ASP, all form values are cleared. Suppose you
have submitted a form with a lot of information and the server comes back with an
error. You will have to go back to the form and correct the information. You click the
back button, and what happens.......ALL form values are CLEARED, and you will have
to start all over again! The site did not maintain your ViewState.With ASP .NET, the
form reappears in the browser window together with all form values.This is because
ASP .NET maintains your ViewState. The ViewState indicates the status of the page
when submitted to the server.
What tags do you need to add within the asp:datagrid tags to bind columns
manually?
Set AutoGenerateColumns Property to false on the datagrid tag and then use
Column tag and an ASP:databound tag
Which control would you use if you needed to make sure the values in two
different controls matched?
CompareValidator is used to ensure that two fields are identical.
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Load - every time
ProcessData2 - Only on Postback
RaiseChangedEvent - Only on Postback
RaisePostBackEvent - Only on Postback
PreRender - everytime
BuildTraceTree - only if tracing is enabled
SaveViewState - every time
Render - Everytime
End Transaction - only if the request is transacted
Trace.EndRequest - only when tracing is enabled
UnloadRecursive - Every request
What are the various ways of securing a web site that could prevent from
hacking etc .. ?
1) Authentication/Authorization
2) Encryption/Decryption
3) Maintaining web servers outside the corporate firewall. etc.,
On Windows 2003 in IIS 5.0 emulation mode, 2000, or XP, it's running within the IIS
helper process whose name I do not remember, it being quite a while since I last
used IIS 5.0.
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When multiple versions of the .NET Framework are executing side-by-side on a single
computer, the ASP.NET ISAPI version mapped to an ASP.NET application determines
which version of the common language runtime is used for the application.
The tool can be launched with a set of optional parameters. Option "i" Installs the
version of ASP.NET associated with Aspnet_regiis.exe and updates the script maps at
the IIS metabase root and below. Note that only applications that are currently
mapped to an earlier version of ASP.NET are affected
What is a PostBack?
The process in which a Web page sends data back to the same page on the server.
What is the < machinekey > element and what two ASP.NET technologies is
it used for?
Configures keys to use for encryption and decryption of forms authentication cookie
data and view state data, and for verification of out-of-process session state
identification.There fore 2 ASP.Net technique in which it is used are
Encryption/Decryption & Verification
What three Session State providers are available in ASP.NET 1.1? What are
the pros and cons of each?
ASP.NET provides three distinct ways to store session data for your application: in-
process session state, out-of-process session state as a Windows service, and out-of-
process session state in a SQL Server database. Each has it advantages.
2. The State Server simply stores session state in memory when in out-of-proc mode.
In this mode the worker process talks directly to the State Server
3. SQL mode, session states are stored in a SQL Server database and the worker
process talks directly to SQL. The ASP.NET worker processes are then able to take
advantage of this simple storage service by serializing and saving (using .NET
59
serialization services) all objects within a client's Session collection at the end of each
Web request
Both these out-of-process solutions are useful primarily if you scale your application
across multiple processors or multiple computers, or where data cannot be lost if a
server or process is restarted.
Name and describe some HTTP Status Codes and what they express to the
requesting client.
When users try to access content on a server that is running Internet Information
Services (IIS) through HTTP or File Transfer Protocol (FTP), IIS returns a numeric code
that indicates the status of the request. This status code is recorded in the IIS log,
and it may also be displayed in the Web browser or FTP client. The status code can
indicate whether a particular request is successful or unsuccessful and can also
reveal the exact reason why a request is unsuccessful. There are 5 groups ranging
from 1xx - 5xx of http status codes exists.
101 - Switching protocols.
200 - OK. The client request has succeeded
302 - Object moved.
400 - Bad request.
500.13 - Web server is too busy.
The Repeater class is not derived from the WebControl class, like the DataGrid and
DataList. Therefore, the Repeater lacks the stylistic properties common to both the
DataGrid and DataList. What this boils down to is that if you want to format the data
displayed in the Repeater, you must do so in the HTML markup.
The Repeater control provides the maximum amount of flexibility over the HTML
60
produced. Whereas the DataGrid wraps the DataSource contents in an HTML < table
>, and the DataList wraps the contents in either an HTML < table > or < span > tags
(depending on the DataList's RepeatLayout property), the Repeater adds absolutely
no HTML content other than what you explicitly specify in the templates.
While using Repeater control, If we wanted to display the employee names in a bold
font we'd have to alter the "ItemTemplate" to include an HTML bold tag, Whereas
with the DataGrid or DataList, we could have made the text appear in a bold font by
setting the control's ItemStyle-Font-Bold property to True.
The Repeater's lack of stylistic properties can drastically add to the development
time metric. For example, imagine that you decide to use the Repeater to display
data that needs to be bold, centered, and displayed in a particular font-face with a
particular background color. While all this can be specified using a few HTML tags,
these tags will quickly clutter the Repeater's templates. Such clutter makes it much
harder to change the look at a later date. Along with its increased development time,
the Repeater also lacks any built-in functionality to assist in supporting paging,
editing, or editing of data. Due to this lack of feature-support, the Repeater scores
poorly on the usability scale.
However, The Repeater's performance is slightly better than that of the DataList's,
and is more noticeably better than that of the DataGrid's. Following figure shows the
number of requests per second the Repeater could handle versus the DataGrid and
DataList
Can we handle the error and redirect to some pages using web.config?
Yes, we can do this, but to handle errors, we must know the error codes; only then
we can take the user to a proper error message page, else it may confuse the user.
CustomErrors Configuration section in web.config file:
The default configuration is:
< customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="Customerror.aspx" >
< error statusCode="404" redirect="Notfound.aspx" / >
< /customErrors >
If mode is set to Off, custom error messages will be disabled. Users will receive
detailed exception error messages.
If mode is set to On, custom error messages will be enabled.
If mode is set to RemoteOnly, then users will receive custom errors, but users
accessing the site locally will receive detailed error messages.
Add an < error > tag for each error you want to handle. The error tag will redirect the
user to the Notfound.aspx page when the site returns the 404 (Page not found) error.
[Example]
[Web.Config]
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< customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="Error.aspx"/ >
' a simple redirect will take the user to Error.aspx [user defined] error file.
The DataGrid provides the means to display a group of records from the data source
(for example, the first 10), and then navigate to the "page" containing the next 10
records, and so on through the data.
Using Ado.Net we can explicit control over the number of records returned from the
data source, as well as how much data is to be cached locally in the DataSet.
1.Using DataAdapter.fill method give the value of 'Maxrecords' parameter
(Note: - Don't use it because query will return all records but fill the dataset based on
value of 'maxrecords' parameter).
2.For SQL server database, combines a WHERE clause and a ORDER BY clause with
TOP predicate.
3.If Data does not change often just cache records locally in DataSet and just take
some records from the DataSet to display.
Server.Transfer() : client is shown as it is on the requesting page only, but the all the
content is of the requested page. Data can be persist across the pages using
Context.Item collection, which is one of the best way to transfer data from one page
to another keeping the page state alive.
Response.Dedirect() :client knows the physical location (page name and query string
as well). Context.Items loses the persistence when navigate to destination page. In
earlier versions of IIS, if we wanted to send a user to a new Web page, the only
option we had was Response.Redirect. While this method does accomplish our goal, it
has several important drawbacks. The biggest problem is that this method causes
each page to be treated as a separate transaction. Besides making it difficult to
maintain your transactional integrity, Response.Redirect introduces some additional
headaches. First, it prevents good encapsulation of code. Second, you lose access to
all of the properties in the Request object. Sure, there are workarounds, but they're
difficult. Finally, Response.Redirect necessitates a round trip to the client, which, on
high-volume sites, causes scalability problems. As you might suspect, Server.Transfer
fixes all of these problems. It does this by performing the transfer on the server
without requiring a roundtrip to the client.
Response.Redirect sends a response to the client browser instructing it to request the
second page. This requires a round-trip to the client, and the client initiates the
Request for the second page. Server.Transfer transfers the process to the second
page without making a round-trip to the client. It also transfers the HttpContext to
the second page, enabling the second page access to all the values in the
HttpContext of the first page.
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Yes, We can create user app domain by calling on of the following overload static
methods of the System.AppDomain class
1. Public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String friendlyName)
2. Public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String friendlyName, Evidence
securityInfo)
3. Public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String friendlyName, Evidence securityInfo,
AppDomainSetup info)
4. Public static AppDomain CreateDomain(String friendlyName, Evidence securityInfo,
String appBasePath, String appRelativeSearchPath, bool shadowCopyFiles)
What are the various security methods which IIS Provides apart from .NET ?
a) Authentication Modes
b) IP Address and Domain Name Restriction
c) DNS Lookups DNS Lookups
d) The Network ID and Subnet Mask
e) SSL
Two attributes in the section affect the Web garden model. They are webGarden and
cpuMask. The webGarden attribute takes a Boolean value that indicates whether or
not multiple worker processes (one per each affinitized CPU) have to be used. The
attribute is set to false by default. The cpuMask attribute stores a DWORD value
whose binary representation provides a bit mask for the CPUs that are eligible to run
the ASP.NET worker process. The default value is -1 (0xFFFFFF), which means that all
available CPUs can be used. The contents of the cpuMask attribute is ignored when
the webGarden attribute is false. The cpuMask attribute also sets an upper bound to
the number of copies of aspnet_wp.exe that are running.
Web gardening enables multiple worker processes to run at the same time. However,
you should note that all processes will have their own copy of application state, in-
process session state, ASP.NET cache, static data, and all that is needed to run
applications. When the Web garden mode is enabled, the ASP.NET ISAPI launches as
many worker processes as there are CPUs, each a full clone of the next (and each
affinitized with the corresponding CPU). To balance the workload, incoming requests
are partitioned among running processes in a round-robin manner. Worker processes
get recycled as in the single processor case. Note that ASP.NET inherits any CPU
usage restriction from the operating system and doesn't include any custom
semantics for doing this.
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All in all, the Web garden model is not necessarily a big win for all applications. The
more stateful applications are, the more they risk to pay in terms of real
performance. Working data is stored in blocks of shared memory so that any changes
entered by a process are immediately visible to others. However, for the time it takes
to service a request, working data is copied in the context of the process. Each
worker process, therefore, will handle its own copy of working data, and the more
stateful the application, the higher the cost in performance. In this context, careful
and savvy application benchmarking is an absolute must.
Changes made to the section of the configuration file are effective only after IIS is
restarted. In IIS 6, Web gardening parameters are stored in the IIS metabase; the
webGarden and cpuMask attributes are ignored.
ViewState value is temporarily saved in the client's browser.ViewState can be disabled for a
single control, for an entire page orfor an entire web application. The syntax is:
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Web Services
65
Can you give an example of when it would be appropriate to use a web service as opposed
to non-serviced .NET component
Web service is one of main component in Service Oriented Architecture. You could use web
services when your clients and servers are running on different networks and also different
platforms. This provides a loosely coupled system. And also if the client is behind the firewall it
would be easy to use web service since it runs on port 80 (by default) instead of having some
thing else in Service Oriented Architecture applications.
What is the standard you use to wrap up a call to a Web service
"SOAP.
"
What is the transport protocol you use to call a Web service SOAP
HTTP with SOAP
True or False: To test a Web service you must create a windows application or Web
application to consume this service?
False.
2.Synchronous Call
Application has to wait until execution has completed.
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<DYNAMICDISCOVERY
xmlns="urn:schemas-dynamicdiscovery:disco.2000-03-17">
<EXCLUDE path="_vti_cnf" />
<EXCLUDE path="_vti_pvt" />
<EXCLUDE path="_vti_log" />
<EXCLUDE path="_vti_script" />
<EXCLUDE path="_vti_txt" />
</DYNAMICDISCOVERY>
Note that VSDISCO files are disabled in the release version of ASP.NET. You can reenable them
by uncommenting the line in the <HTTPHANDLERS>section of Machine.config that maps
*.vsdisco to System.Web.Services.Discovery.DiscoveryRequestHandler and granting the
ASPNET user account permission to read the IIS metabase. However, Microsoft is actively
discouraging the use of VSDISCO files because they could represent a threat to Web server
security.
<%
Response.Cache.SetNoStore ();
Response.Write (DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString ());
%>
SetNoStore works by returning a Cache-Control: private, no-store header in the HTTP response.
In this example, it prevents caching of a Web page that shows the current time.
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(MTA) and each call to an STA-based COM object incurs a performance hit when it's marshaled
across apartment boundaries.
Do not set AspCompat to true if your page uses no COM objects or if it uses COM objects that
don't access ASP intrinsic objects and that are registered ThreadingModel=Free or
ThreadingModel=Both.
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(Namespace="http://tempuri.org/",
IsNullable=false)]
public class AuthToken : SoapHeader { public string Token; }}
In this case, when you create an instance of the proxy in your main application file, you'll also
create an instance of the AuthToken class and assign the string:
Service1 objSvc = new Service1();
processingobjSvc.AuthTokenValue = new AuthToken();
objSvc.AuthTokenValue.Token = <ACTUAL token value>;
Web Servicestring strResult = objSvc.MyBillableWebMethod();
What is WSDL?
WSDL is the Web Service Description Language, and it is implemented as a specific XML
vocabulary. While it's very much more complex than what can be described here, there are two
important aspects to WSDL with which you should be aware. First, WSDL provides instructions to
consumers of Web Services to describe the layout and contents of the SOAP packets the Web
Service intends to issue. It's an interface description document, of sorts. And second, it isn't
intended that you read and interpret the WSDL. Rather, WSDL should be processed by machine,
typically to generate proxy source code (.NET) or create dynamic proxies on the fly (the SOAP
Toolkit or Web Service Behavior).
What is a Windows Service and how does its lifecycle differ from a
"standard" EXE?
Windows service is a application that runs in the background. It is equivalent to a NT service.
The executable created is not a Windows application, and hence you can't just click and run it . it
needs to be installed as a service, VB.Net has a facility where we can add an installer to our
program and then use a utility to install the service. Where as this is not the case with standard
exe
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Can you debug a Windows Service? How ?
Yes we can debug a Windows Service.
Attach the WinDbg debugger to a service after the service starts
This method is similar to the method that you can use to attach a debugger to a process and then
debug a process.
Use the process ID of the process that hosts the service that you want to debug
1 To determine the process ID (PID) of the process that hosts the service that you want to debug,
use one of the following methods.
• Method 1: Use the Task Manager
a. Right-click the taskbar, and then click Task Manager. The Windows Task Manager dialog box
appears.
b. Click the Processes tab of the Windows Task Manager dialog box.
c. Under Image Name, click the image name of the process that hosts the service that you want
to debug. Note the process ID of this process as specified by the value of the corresponding PID
field.
• Method 2: Use the Task List Utility (tlist.exe)
a. Click Start, and then click Run. The Run dialog box appears.
b. In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK.
c. At the command prompt, change the directory path to reflect the location of the tlist.exe file on
your computer.
Note The tlist.exe file is typically located in the following directory: C:\Program Files\Debugging
Tools for Windows
d. At the command prompt, type tlist to list the image names and the process IDs of all
processes that are currently running on your computer.
Note Make a note of the process ID of the process that hosts the service that you want to
debug.
2 At a command prompt, change the directory path to reflect the location of the windbg.exe file on
your computer.
Note If a command prompt is not open, follow steps a and b of Method 1. The windbg.exe file is
typically located in the following directory: C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows.
3 At the command prompt, type windbg –p ProcessID to attach the WinDbg debugger to the
process that hosts the service that you want to debug.
Note ProcessID is a placeholder for the process ID of the process that hosts the service that you
want to debug.
Use the image name of the process that hosts the service that you want to debug
You can use this method only if there is exactly one running instance of the process that hosts
the service that you want to run. To do this, follow these steps:
1 Click Start, and then click Run. The Run dialog box appears.
2 In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK to open a command prompt.
3 At the command prompt, change the directory path to reflect the location of the windbg.exe file
on your computer.
Note The windbg.exe file is typically located in the following directory: C:\Program
Files\Debugging Tools for Windows.
4 At the command prompt, type windbg –pn ImageName to attach the WinDbg debugger to the
process that hosts the service that you want to debug.
NoteImageName is a placeholder for the image name of the process that hosts the service that
you want to debug. The "-pn" command-line option specifies that the ImageName command-line
69
argument is the image name of a process.
back to the top
Start the WinDbg debugger and attach to the process that hosts the service that you want to
debug
Note The windbg.exe file is typically located in the following directory: C:\Program
Files\Debugging Tools for Windows
3 Run the windbg.exe file to start the WinDbg debugger.
4 On the File menu, click Attach to a Process to display the Attach to Process dialog box.
5 Click to select the node that corresponds to the process that hosts the service that you want to
debug, and then click OK.
6 In the dialog box that appears, click Yes to save base workspace information. Notice that you
can now debug the disassembled code of your service.
Configure a service to start with the WinDbg debugger attached
You can use this method to debug services if you want to troubleshoot service-startup-related
problems.
1 Configure the "Image File Execution" options. To do this, use one of the following methods:
• Method 1: Use the Global Flags Editor (gflags.exe)
a. Start Windows Explorer.
b. Locate the gflags.exe file on your computer.
Note The gflags.exe file is typically located in the following directory: C:\Program
Files\Debugging Tools for Windows.
c. Run the gflags.exe file to start the Global Flags Editor.
d. In the Image File Name text box, type the image name of the process that hosts the service
that you want to debug. For example, if you want to debug a service that is hosted by a process
that has MyService.exe as the image name, type MyService.exe.
e. Under Destination, click to select the Image File Options option.
f. Under Image Debugger Options, click to select the Debugger check box.
g. In the Debugger text box, type the full path of the debugger that you want to use. For
example, if you want to use the WinDbg debugger to debug a service, you can type a full path
that is similar to the following: C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows\windbg.exe
h. Click Apply, and then click OK to quit the Global Flags Editor.
• Method 2: Use Registry Editor
a. Click Start, and then click Run. The Run dialog box appears.
b. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK to start Registry Editor.
c. Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may
require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve
problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
In Registry Editor, locate, and then right-click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File
Execution Options
d. Point to New, and then click Key. In the left pane of Registry Editor, notice that New Key #1
(the name of a new registry subkey) is selected for editing.
e. Type ImageName to replace New Key #1, and then press ENTER.
Note ImageName is a placeholder for the image name of the process that hosts the service that
you want to debug. For example, if you want to debug a service that is hosted by a process that
has MyService.exe as the image name, type MyService.exe.
f. Right-click the registry subkey that you created in step e.
g. Point to New, and then click String Value. In the right pane of Registry Editor, notice that New
Value #1, the name of a new registry entry, is selected for editing.
70
h. Replace New Value #1 with Debugger, and then press ENTER.
i. Right-click the Debugger registry entry that you created in step h, and then click Modify. The
Edit String dialog box appears.
j. In the Value data text box, type DebuggerPath, and then click OK.
Note DebuggerPath is a placeholder for the full path of the debugger that you want to use. For
example, if you want to use the WinDbg debugger to debug a service, you can type a full path
that is similar to the following: C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows\windbg.exe
2 For the debugger window to appear on your desktop, and to interact with the debugger, make
your service interactive. If you do not make your service interactive, the debugger will start but
you cannot see it and you cannot issue commands. To make your service interactive, use one of
the following methods:
• Method 1: Use the Services console
a. Click Start, and then point to Programs.
b. On the Programs menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services. The Services
console appears.
c. In the right pane of the Services console, right-click ServiceName, and then click Properties.
Note ServiceName is a placeholder for the name of the service that you want to debug.
d. On the Log On tab, click to select the Allow service to interact with desktop check box under
Local System account, and then click OK.
• Method 2: Use Registry Editor
a. In Registry Editor, locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ServiceName
Note Replace ServiceName with the name of the service that you want to debug. For example,
if you want to debug a service named MyService, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MyService
b. Under the Name field in the right pane of Registry Editor, right-click Type, and then click
Modify. The Edit DWORD Value dialog box appears.
c. Change the text in the Value data text box to the result of the binary OR operation with the
binary value of the current text and the binary value, 0x00000100, as the two operands. The
binary value, 0x00000100, corresponds to the SERVICE_INTERACTIVE_PROCESS constant
that is defined in the WinNT.h header file on your computer. This constant specifies that a service
is interactive in nature.
3 When a service starts, the service communicates to the Service Control Manager how long the
service must have to start (the time-out period for the service). If the Service Control Manager
does not receive a "service started" notice from the service within this time-out period, the Service
Control Manager terminates the process that hosts the service. This time-out period is typically
less than 30 seconds. If you do not adjust this time-out period, the Service Control Manager ends
the process and the attached debugger while you are trying to debug. To adjust this time-out
period, follow these steps:
a. In Registry Editor, locate, and then right-click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
b. Point to New, and then click DWORD Value. In the right pane of Registry Editor, notice that
New Value #1 (the name of a new registry entry) is selected for editing.
c. Type ServicesPipeTimeout to replace New Value #1, and then press ENTER.
d. Right-click the ServicesPipeTimeout registry entry that you created in step c, and then click
Modify. The Edit DWORD Value dialog box appears.
e. In the Value data text box, type TimeoutPeriod, and then click OK
Note TimeoutPeriod is a placeholder for the value of the time-out period (in milliseconds) that
you want to set for the service. For example, if you want to set the time-out period to 24 hours
(86400000 milliseconds), type 86400000.
f. Restart the computer. You must restart the computer for Service Control Manager to apply this
change.
4 Start your Windows service. To do this, follow these steps:
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a. Click Start, and then point to Programs.
b. On the Programs menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services. The Services
console appears.
c. In the right pane of the Services console, right-click ServiceName, and then click Start.
Note ServiceName is a placeholder for the name of the service that you want to debug.
72
Remoting
73
What distributed process frameworks outside .NET do you know?
Distributed Computing Environment/Remote Procedure Calls (DEC/RPC), Microsoft Distributed
Component Object Model (DCOM), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), and
Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI).
When would you use .NET Remoting and when Web services?
Use remoting for more efficient exchange of information when you control both ends of the
application. Use Web services for open-protocol-based information exchange when you are
just a client or a server with the other end belonging to someone else.
What is a formatter?
A formatter is an object that is responsible for encoding and serializing data into messages on
one end, and deserializing and decoding messages into data on the other end.
Choosing between HTTP and TCP for protocols and Binary and SOAP for formatters, what
are the trade-offs?
Binary over TCP is the most effiecient, SOAP over HTTP is the most interoperable.
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Yes, via machine.config and application level .config file (or web.config in ASP.NET). Application-
level XML settings take precedence over machine.config.
How can you automatically generate interface for the remotable object in .NET with
Microsoft tools?
Use the Soapsuds tool.
How can objects in two diff. App Doimains communicate with each other?
.Net framework provides various ways to communicate with objects in different app domains.
First is XML Web Service on internet, its good method because it is built using HTTP protocol and
SOAP formatting.
If the performance is the main concern then go for second option which is .Net remoting because
it gives you the option of using binary encoding and the default TcpChannel, which offers the best
interprocess communication performance
What is the difference between .Net Remoting and Web Services?
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Although we can develop an application using both technologies, each of them has its distinct
advantages. Yes you can look at them in terms of performance but you need to consider your
need first. There are many other factors such authentications, authorizing in process that need to
be considered.
Point Remoting Webservices
If your application needs
Yes, Choose Web Services
interoperability with No because it is more flexible in
other platforms or that they are support SOAP.
operating systems
If performance is the You should use the TCP
main requirement with channel and the binary No
security formatter
Complex Programming Yes No
Supports a range of state
Its stateless service
management, depending on
management (does not
State Management what object lifetime scheme
inherently correlate multiple
you choose (single call or
calls from the same user)
singleton call).
It can access through TCP or It can be access only
Transport Protocol
HTTP channel. through HTTP channel.
Disabled: - There is no transaction. COM+ does not provide transaction support for
this component.
Not Supported: - Component does not support transactions. Hence even if the
calling component in the hierarchy is transaction enabled this component will not
participate in the transaction.
Required: - Components with this attribute require a transaction i.e. either the
calling should have a transaction in place else this component will start a new
transaction.
Required New: - Components enabled with this transaction type always require a
new transaction. Components with required new transaction type instantiate a new
transaction for themselves every time.
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COM components have different internal architecture from .NET components hence
they are not innately compatible. However .NET framework supports invocation of
unmanaged code from managed code (and vice-versa) through COM/.NET
interoperability. .NET application communicates with a COM component through a
managed wrapper of the component called Runtime Callable Wrapper (RCW); it acts
as managed proxy to the unmanaged COM component. When a method call is made
to COM object, it goes onto RCW and not the object itself. RCW manages the lifetime
management of the COM component. Implementation Steps -
Create Runtime Callable Wrapper out of COM component. Reference the metadata
assembly Dll in the project and use its methods & properties RCW can be created
using Type Library Importer utility or through VS.NET. Using VS.NET, add reference
through COM tab to select the desired DLL. VS.NET automatically generates
metadata assembly putting the classes provided by that component into a
namespace with the same name as COM dll (XYZRCW.dll)
2.Secondly, .NET class, which is to be visible to COM clients must be declared public.
The tools that create the CCW only define types based
on public classes. The same rule applies to methods, properties, and events that will
be used by COM clients.
Implementation Steps -
1. Generate type library of .NET component, using TLBExporter utility. A type library
is the COM equivalent of the metadata contained within
a .NET assembly. Type libraries are generally contained in files with the extension
.tlb. A type library contains the necessary information to allow a COM client to
determine which classes are located in a particular server, as well as the methods,
properties, and events supported by those classes.
2. Secondly, use Assembly Registration tool (regasm) to create the type library and
register it.
3. Lastly install .NET assembly in GAC, so it is available as shared assembly.
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What is Com Callable wrapper?when it will created?
.NET components are accessed from COM via a COM Callable Wrapper (CCW). This is
similar to a RCW, but works in the opposite direction. Again, if the wrapper cannot be
automatically generated by the .NET development tools, or if the automatic
behaviour is not desirable, a custom CCW can be developed. Also, for COM to 'see'
the .NET component, the .NET component must be registered in the registry.CCWs
also manage the object identity and object lifetime of the managed objects they
wrap.
What benefit do you get from using a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA)?
PIAs are important because they provide unique type identity. The PIA distinguishes
the official type definitions from counterfeit definitions provided by other interop
assemblies. Having a single type identity ensures type compatibility between
applications that share the types defined in the PIA. Because the PIA is signed by its
publisher and labeled with the PrimaryInteropAssembly attribute, it can be
differentiated from other interop assemblies that define the same types.
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ADO.NET
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Explain what a diffgram is and its usage ?
A DiffGram is an XML format that is used to identify current and original versions of
data elements. The DataSet uses the DiffGram format to load and persist its
contents, and to serialize its contents for transport across a network connection.
When a DataSet is written as a DiffGram, it populates the DiffGram with all the
necessary information to accurately recreate the contents, though not the schema, of
the DataSet, including column values from both the Original and Current row
versions, row error information, and row order.
When sending and retrieving a DataSet from an XML Web service, the DiffGram
format is implicitly used. Additionally, when loading the contents of a DataSet from
XML using the ReadXml method, or when writing the contents of a DataSet in XML
using the WriteXml method, you can select that the contents be read or written as a
DiffGram.
The DiffGram format is divided into three sections: the current data, the original (or
"before") data, and an errors section, as shown in the following example.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<diffgr:diffgram
xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata"
xmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<DataInstance>
</DataInstance>
<diffgr:before>
</diffgr:before>
<diffgr:errors>
</diffgr:errors>
</diffgr:diffgram>
<DataInstance>
The name of this element, DataInstance, is used for explanation purposes in this
documentation. A DataInstance element represents a DataSet or a row of a
DataTable. Instead of DataInstance, the element would contain the name of the
DataSet or DataTable. This block of the DiffGram format contains the current data,
whether it has been modified or not. An element, or row, that has been modified is
identified with the diffgr:hasChanges annotation.
<diffgr:before>
This block of the DiffGram format contains the original version of a row. Elements in
this block are matched to elements in the DataInstance block using the diffgr:id
annotation.
<diffgr:errors>
This block of the DiffGram format contains error information for a particular row in
the DataInstance block. Elements in this block are matched to elements in the
DataInstance block using the diffgr:id annotation.
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Which method do you invoke on the DataAdapter control to load your generated
dataset with data?
You have to use the Fill method of the DataAdapter control and pass the dataset
object as an argument to load the generated data.
Default :
The row the default version for the current DataRowState. For a DataRowState value
of Added, Modified or Current, the default version is Current. For a DataRowState of
Deleted, the version is Original. For a DataRowState value of Detached, the version is
Proposed.
Original:
The row contains its original values.
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Proposed:
The proposed values for the row. This row version exists during an edit operation on
a row, or for a row that is not part of a DataRowCollection
Atomicity
A transaction is a unit of work in which a series of operations occur between the
BEGIN TRANSACTION and END TRANSACTION statements of an application. A
transaction executes exactly once and is atomic — all the work is done or none of it
is.
Operations associated with a transaction usually share a common intent and are
interdependent. By performing only a subset of these operations, the system could
compromise the overall intent of the transaction. Atomicity eliminates the chance of
processing a subset of operations.
Consistency
A transaction is a unit of integrity because it preserves the consistency of data,
transforming one consistent state of data into another consistent state of data.
Isolation
A transaction is a unit of isolation — allowing concurrent transactions to behave as
though each were the only transaction running in the system.
Transactions attain the highest level of isolation when they are serializable. At this
level, the results obtained from a set of concurrent transactions are identical to the
results obtained by running each transaction serially. Because a high degree of
isolation can limit the number of concurrent transactions, some applications reduce
the isolation level in exchange for better throughput.
Durability
A transaction is also a unit of recovery. If a transaction succeeds, the system
guarantees that its updates will persist, even if the computer crashes immediately
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after the commit. Specialized logging allows the system's restart procedure to
complete unfinished operations, making the transaction durable.
What is a Dataset?
Datasets are the result of bringing together ADO and XML. A dataset contains one or
more data of tabular XML, known as DataTables, these data can be treated
separately, or can have relationships defined between them. Indeed these
relationships give you ADO data SHAPING without needing to master the SHAPE
language, which many people are not comfortable with.
The dataset is a disconnected in-memory cache database. The dataset object model
looks like this:
Dataset
DataTableCollection
DataTable
DataView
DataRowCollection
DataRow
DataColumnCollection
DataColumn
ChildRelations
ParentRelations
Constraints
PrimaryKey
DataRelationCollection
DataView: The way we have views in database, same way we can have DataViews.
We can use these DataViews to do Sort, filter data.
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DataColumn: To represent each and every Column of the DataColumnCollection, we
have DataColumn.
PrimaryKey: Dataset defines Primary key for the table and the primary key validation
will take place without going to the database.
Constraints: We can define various constraints on the Tables, and can use
Dataset.Tables(0).enforceConstraints. This will execute all the constraints, whenever
we enter data in DataTable.
The .NET Framework includes the .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server (for
Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0 or later), the .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE
DB, and the .NET Framework Data Provider for ODBC.
The .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server: The .NET Framework Data
Provider for SQL Server uses its own protocol to communicate with SQL Server. It is
lightweight and performs well because it is optimized to access a SQL Server directly
without adding an OLE DB or Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) layer. The
following illustration contrasts the .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server with
the .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB. The .NET Framework Data Provider for
OLE DB communicates to an OLE DB data source through both the OLE DB Service
component, which provides connection pooling and transaction services, and the OLE
DB Provider for the data source
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The .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB: The .NET Framework Data Provider
for OLE DB uses native OLE DB through COM interoperability to enable data access.
The .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB supports both local and distributed
transactions. For distributed transactions, the .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE
DB, by default, automatically enlists in a transaction and obtains transaction details
from Windows 2000 Component Services.
The .NET Framework Data Provider for ODBC: The .NET Framework Data Provider for
ODBC uses native ODBC Driver Manager (DM) through COM interoperability to enable
data access. The ODBC data provider supports both local and distributed
transactions. For distributed transactions, the ODBC data provider, by default,
automatically enlists in a transaction and obtains transaction details from Windows
2000 Component Services.
The .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle: The .NET Framework Data Provider for
Oracle enables data access to Oracle data sources through Oracle client connectivity
software. The data provider supports Oracle client software version 8.1.7 and later.
The data provider supports both local and distributed transactions (the data provider
automatically enlists in existing distributed transactions, but does not currently
support the EnlistDistributedTransaction method).
The .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle requires that Oracle client software
(version 8.1.7 or later) be installed on the system before you can use it to connect to
an Oracle data source.
.NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle classes are located in the
System.Data.OracleClient namespace and are contained in the
System.Data.OracleClient.dll assembly. You will need to reference both the
System.Data.dll and the System.Data.OracleClient.dll when compiling an application
that uses the data provider.
Choosing a .NET Framework Data Provider
.NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server: Recommended for middle-tier
applications using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or later. Recommended for single-tier
applications using Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) or Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or later.
Recommended over use of the OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB) with
the .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB. For Microsoft SQL Server version 6.5
and earlier, you must use the OLE DB Provider for SQL Server with the .NET
Framework Data Provider for OLE DB.
.NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB: Recommended for middle-tier
applications using Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or earlier, or any OLE DB provider. For
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or later, the .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server is
recommended. Recommended for single-tier applications using Microsoft Access
databases. Use of a Microsoft Access database for a middle-tier application is not
recommended.
.NET Framework Data Provider for ODBC: Recommended for middle-tier applications
using ODBC data sources. Recommended for single-tier applications using ODBC data
sources.
.NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle: Recommended for middle-tier applications
using Oracle data sources. Recommended for single-tier applications using Oracle
data sources. Supports Oracle client software version 8.1.7 and later. The .NET
Framework Data Provider for Oracle classes are located in the
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System.Data.OracleClient namespace and are contained in the
System.Data.OracleClient.dll assembly. You need to reference both the
System.Data.dll and the System.Data.OracleClient.dll when compiling an application
that uses the data provider.
Can you explain the difference between an ADO.NET Dataset and an ADO Recordset?
Let’s take a look at the differences between ADO Recordset and ADO.Net DataSet:
1. Table Collection: ADO Recordset provides the ability to navigate through a single
table of information. That table would have been formed with a join of multiple tables
and returning columns from multiple tables. ADO.NET DataSet is capable of holding
instances of multiple tables. It has got a Table Collection, which holds multiple tables
in it. If the tables are having a relation, then it can be manipulated on a Parent-Child
relationship. It has the ability to support multiple tables with keys, constraints and
interconnected relationships. With this ability the DataSet can be considered as a
small, in-memory relational database cache.
3. Connectivity Model: The ADO Recordset was originally designed without the ability
to operate in a disconnected environment. ADO.NET DataSet is specifically designed
to be a disconnected in-memory database. ADO.NET DataSet follows a pure
disconnected connectivity model and this gives it much more scalability and
versatility in the amount of things it can do and how easily it can do that.
4. Marshalling and Serialization: In COM, through Marshalling, we can pass data from
1 COM component to another component at any time. Marshalling involves copying
and processing data so that a complex type can appear to the receiving component
the same as it appeared to the sending component. Marshalling is an expensive
operation. ADO.NET Dataset and DataTable components support Remoting in the
form of XML serialization. Rather than doing expensive Marshalling, it uses XML and
sent data across boundaries.
5. Firewalls and DCOM and Remoting: Those who have worked with DCOM know that
how difficult it is to marshal a DCOM component across a router. People generally
came up with workarounds to solve this issue. ADO.NET DataSet uses Remoting,
through which a DataSet / DataTable component can be serialized into XML, sent
across the wire to a new AppDomain, and then Desterilized back to a fully functional
DataSet. As the DataSet is completely disconnected, and it has no dependency, we
lose absolutely nothing by serializing and transferring it through Remoting.
One of the key features of the ADO.NET DataSet is that it can be a self-contained and
disconnected data store. It can contain the schema and data from several rowsets in
DataTable objects as well as information about how to relate the DataTable objects-
all in memory. The DataSet neither knows nor cares where the data came from, nor
does it need a link to an underlying data source. Because it is data source agnostic
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you can pass the DataSet around networks or even serialize it to XML and pass it
across the Internet without losing any of its features. However, in a disconnected
model, concurrency obviously becomes a much bigger problem than it is in a
connected model.
In this column, I'll explore how ADO.NET is equipped to detect and handle
concurrency violations. I'll begin by discussing scenarios in which concurrency
violations can occur using the ADO.NET disconnected model. Then I will walk through
an ASP.NET application that handles concurrency violations by giving the user the
choice to overwrite the changes or to refresh the out-of-sync data and begin editing
again. Because part of managing an optimistic concurrency model can involve
keeping a timestamp (rowversion) or another type of flag that indicates when a row
was last updated, I will show how to implement this type of flag and how to maintain
its value after each database update.
There are three common techniques for managing what happens when users try to
modify the same data at the same time: pessimistic, optimistic, and last-in wins.
They each handle concurrency issues differently.
The pessimistic approach says: "Nobody can cause a concurrency violation with my
data if I do not let them get at the data while I have it." This tactic prevents
concurrency in the first place but it limits scalability because it prevents all
concurrent access. Pessimistic concurrency generally locks a row from the time it is
retrieved until the time updates are flushed to the database. Since this requires a
connection to remain open during the entire process, pessimistic concurrency cannot
successfully be implemented in a disconnected model like the ADO.NET DataSet,
which opens a connection only long enough to populate the DataSet then releases
and closes, so a database lock cannot be held.
Another technique for dealing with concurrency is the last-in wins approach. This
model is pretty straightforward and easy to implement-whatever data modification
was made last is what gets written to the database. To implement this technique you
only need to put the primary key fields of the row in the UPDATE statement's WHERE
clause. No matter what is changed, the UPDATE statement will overwrite the changes
with its own changes since all it is looking for is the row that matches the primary key
values. Unlike the pessimistic model, the last-in wins approach allows users to read
the data while it is being edited on screen. However, problems can occur when users
try to modify the same data at the same time because users can overwrite each
other's changes without being notified of the collision. The last-in wins approach does
not detect or notify the user of violations because it does not care. However the
optimistic technique does detect violations. Contd....
In optimistic concurrency models, a row is only locked during the update to the
database. Therefore the data can be retrieved and updated by other users at any
time other than during the actual row update operation. Optimistic concurrency
allows the data to be read simultaneously by multiple users and blocks other users
less often than its pessimistic counterpart, making it a good choice for ADO.NET. In
optimistic models, it is important to implement some type of concurrency violation
detection that will catch any additional attempt to modify records that have already
been modified but not committed. You can write your code to handle the violation by
always rejecting and canceling the change request or by overwriting the request
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based on some business rules. Another way to handle the concurrency violation is to
let the user decide what to do. The sample application that is shown in Figure 1
illustrates some of the options that can be presented to the user in the event of a
concurrency violation.
When users are likely to overwrite each other's changes, control mechanisms should
be put in place. Otherwise, changes could be lost. If the technique you're using is the
last-in wins approach, then these types of overwrites are entirely possible.For
example, imagine Julie wants to edit an employee's last name to correct the spelling.
She navigates to a screen which loads the employee's information into a DataSet and
has it presented to her in a Web page. Meanwhile, Scott is notified that the same
employee's phone extension has changed. While Julie is correcting the employee's
last name, Scott begins to correct his extension. Julie saves her changes first and
then Scott saves his.Assuming that the application uses the last-in wins approach and
updates the row using a SQL WHERE clause containing only the primary key's value,
and assuming a change to one column requires the entire row to be updated, neither
Julie nor Scott may immediatelyrealize the concurrency issue that just occurred. In
this particular situation, Julie's changes were overwritten by Scott's changes because
he saved last, and the last name reverted to the misspelled version.
So as you can see, even though the users changed different fields, their changes
collided and caused Julie's changes to be lost. Without some sort of concurrency
detection and handling, these types of overwrites can occur and even go
unnoticed.When you run the sample application included in this column's download,
you should open two separate instances of Microsoft® Internet Explorer. When I
generated the conflict, I opened two instances to simulate two users with two
separate sessions so that a concurrency violation would occur in the sample
application. When you do this, be careful not to use Ctrl+N because if you open one
instance and then use the Ctrl+N technique to open another instance, both windows
will share the same session.
Detecting Violations
The concurrency violation reported to the user in Figure 1 demonstrates what can
happen when multiple users edit the same data at the same time. In Figure 1, the
user attempted to modify the first name to "Joe" but since someone else had already
modified the last name to "Fuller III," a concurrency violation was detected and
reported. ADO.NET detects a concurrency violation when a DataSet containing
changed values is passed to a SqlDataAdapter's Update method and no rows are
actually modified. Simply using the primary key (in this case the EmployeeID) in the
UPDATE statement's WHERE clause will not cause a violation to be detected because
it still updates the row (in fact, this technique has the same outcome as the last-in
wins technique). Instead, more conditions must be specified in the WHERE clause in
order for ADO.NET to detect the violation.
The key here is to make the WHERE clause explicit enough so that it not only checks
the primary key but that it also checks for another appropriate condition. One way to
accomplish this is to pass in all modifiable fields to the WHERE clause in addition to
the primary key. For example, the application shown in Figure 1 could have its
UPDATE statement look like the stored procedure that's shown in Figure 2.
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Notice that in the code in Figure 2 nullable columns are also checked to see if the
value passed in is NULL. This technique is not only messy but it can be difficult to
maintain by hand and it requires you to test for a significant number of WHERE
conditions just to update a row. This yields the desired result of only updating rows
where none of the values have changed since the last time the user got the data, but
there are other techniques that do not require such a huge WHERE clause.
Another way to make sure that the row is only updated if it has not been modified by
another user since you got the data is to add a timestamp column to the table. The
SQL Server(tm) TIMESTAMP datatype automatically updates itself with a new value
every time a value in its row is modified. This makes it a very simple and convenient
tool to help detect concurrency violations.
A third technique is to use a DATETIME column in which to track changes to its row.
In my sample application I added a column called LastUpdateDateTime to the
Employees table.
The binary TIMESTAMP column is simple to create and use since it automatically
regenerates its value each time its row is modified, but since the DATETIME column
technique is easier to display on screen and demonstrate when the change was
made, I chose it for my sample application. Both of these are solid choices, but I
prefer the TIMESTAMP technique since it does not involve any additional code to
update its value.
I prefer to use the output parameter technique since it is the fastest and incurs the
least overhead. Using the RowUpdated event works well, but it requires me to make
a second call from the application to the database. The following code snippet adds
an output parameter to the SqlCommand object that is used to update the Employee
information:
oUpdCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@NewLastUpdateDateTime",
SqlDbType.DateTime, 8, ParameterDirection.Output,
oUpdCmd.UpdatedRowSource = UpdateRowSource.OutputParameters;
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The output parameter has its sourcecolumn and sourceversion arguments set to
point the output parameter's return value back to the current value of the
LastUpdateDateTime column of the DataSet. This way the updated DATETIME value is
retrieved and can be returned to the user's .aspx page. Contd....
Saving Changes
Now that the Employees table has the tracking field (LastUpdateDateTime) and the
stored procedure has been created to use both the primary key and the tracking field
in the WHERE clause of the UPDATE statement, let's take a look at the role of
ADO.NET. In order to trap the event when the user changes the values in the
textboxes, I created an event handler for the TextChanged event for each TextBox
control:
// do a Find)
dsEmployee.EmployeeRow oEmpRow =
(dsEmployee.EmployeeRow)oDsEmployee.Employee.Rows[0];
oEmpRow.LastName = txtLastName.Text;
Session["oDsEmployee"] = oDsEmployee;
This event retrieves the row and sets the appropriate field's value from the TextBox.
(Another way of getting the changed values is to grab them when the user clicks the
Save button.) Each TextChanged event executes after the Page_Load event fires on a
postback, so assuming the user changed the first and last names, when the user
clicks the Save button, the events could fire in this order: Page_Load,
txtFirstName_TextChanged, txtLastName_TextChanged, and btnSave_Click.
The Page_Load event grabs the row from the DataSet in the Session object; the
TextChanged events update the DataRow with the new values; and the btnSave_Click
event attempts to save the record to the database. The btnSave_Click event calls the
SaveEmployee method (shown in Figure 3) and passes it a bLastInWins value of false
since we want to attempt a standard save first. If the SaveEmployee method detects
that changes were made to the row (using the HasChanges method on the DataSet,
or alternatively using the RowState property on the row), it creates an instance of the
Employee class and passes the DataSet to its SaveEmployee method. The Employee
class could live in a logical or physical middle tier. (I wanted to make this a separate
class so it would be easy to pull the code out and separate it from the presentation
logic.)
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Notice that I did not use the GetChanges method to pull out only the modified rows
and pass them to the Employee object's Save method. I skipped this step here since
there is only one row. However, if there were multiple rows in the DataSet's
DataTable, it would be better to use the GetChanges method to create a DataSet that
contains only the modified rows.
Reporting Violations
The DataSet not only stores the schema and the current data, it also tracks changes
that have been made to its data. It knows which rows and columns have been
modified and it keeps track of the before and after versions of these values. When
accessing a column's value via the DataRow's indexer, in addition to the column
index you can also specify a value using the DataRowVersion enumerator. For
example, after a user changes the value of the last name of an employee, the
following lines of C# code will retrieve the original and current values stored in the
LastName column:
User's Choice
Once the user has been notified of the concurrency issue, you could leave it up to her
to decide how to handle it. Another alternative is to code a specific way to deal with
concurrency, such as always handling the exception to let the user know (but
refreshing the data from the database). In this sample application I let the user
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decide what to do next. She can either cancel changes, cancel and reload from the
database, save changes, or save anyway.
The option to cancel changes simply calls the RejectChanges method of the DataSet
and rebinds the DataSet to the controls in the ASP.NET page. The RejectChanges
method reverts the changes that the user made back to its original state by setting
all of the current field values to the original field values. The option to cancel changes
and reload the data from the database also rejects the changes but additionally goes
back to the database via the Employee class in order to get a fresh copy of the data
before rebinding to the control on the ASP.NET page.
The option to save changes attempts to save the changes but will fail if a
concurrency violation is encountered. Finally, I included a "save anyway" option. This
option takes the values the user attempted to save and uses the last-in wins
technique, overwriting whatever is in the database. It does this by calling a different
command object associated with a stored procedure that only uses the primary key
field (EmployeeID) in the WHERE clause of the UPDATE statement. This technique
should be used with caution as it will overwrite the record.
If you want a more automatic way of dealing with the changes, you could get a fresh
copy from the database. Then overwrite just the fields that the current user modified,
such as the Extension field. That way, in the example I used the proper LastName
would not be overwritten. Use this with caution as well, however, because if the same
field was modified by both users, you may want to just back out or ask the user what
to do next. What is obvious here is that there are several ways to deal with
concurrency violations, each of which must be carefully weighed before you decide
on the one you will use in your application.
Wrapping It Up
I have split the topic of concurrency violation management into two parts. Next time I
will focus on what to do when multiple rows could cause concurrency violations. I will
also discuss how the DataViewRowState enumerators can be used to show what
changes have been made to a DataSet.
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C# and VB.net
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Explain the differences between Server-side and Client-side code?
Server side code executes on the server.For this to occur page has to be submitted
or posted back.Events fired by the controls are executed on the server.Client side
code executes in the browser of the client without submitting the page.
e.g. In ASP.NET for webcontrols like asp:button the click event of the button is
executed on the server hence the event handler for the same in a part of the code-
behind (server-side code). Along the server-side code events one can also attach
client side events which are executed in the clients browser i.e. javascript events.
C# allows multiple interface inheritance. It means that a class can implement more
than one interface. The methods declared in an interface are implicitly abstract. If a
class implements an interface, it becomes mandatory for the class to override all the
methods declared in the interface, otherwise the derived class would become
abstract.
Can you explain what inheritance is and an example of when you might use it?
The savingaccount class has two data members-accno that stores account number,
and trans that keeps track of the number of transactions. We can create an object of
savingaccount class as shown below.
We can write our own definition of a method that already exists in a base class. This
is called method overriding. We have overridden the deposit( ) and withdraw( )
methods in the savingaccount class so that we can make sure that each account
maintains a minimum balance of Rs. 500 and the total number of transactions do not
exceed 10. From these methods we have called the base class's methods to update
the balance using the base keyword. We have also overridden the display( ) method
to display additional information, i.e. account number.
Using the derived class's object, if we call a method that is not overridden in the
derived class, the base class method gets executed. Using derived class's object we
can call base class's methods, but the reverse is not allowed.
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Unlike C++, C# does not support multiple inheritance. So, in C# every class has
exactly one base class.
Now, suppose we declare reference to the base class and store in it the address of
instance of derived class as shown below.
If we don't want to override base class's virtual method, we can declare it with new
modifier in derived class. The new modifier indicates that the method is new to this
class and is not an override of a base class method.
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Get Return mPropertyName
End Get
End Property
In C#
Hiding is also called as Shadowing. This is the concept of Overriding the methods. It
is a concept used in the Object Oriented Programming.
E.g.
public class ClassA {
public virtual void MethodA() {
Trace.WriteLine("ClassA Method");
}
}
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What does it meant to say “the canonical” form of XML?
"The purpose of Canonical XML is to define a standard format for an XML document.
Canonical XML is a very strict XML syntax, which lets documents in canonical XML be
compared directly.
Using this strict syntax makes it easier to see whether two XML documents are the
same. For example, a section of text in one document might read Black & White,
whereas the same section of text might read Black & White in another document,
and even in another. If you compare those three documents byte by byte, they'll be
different. But if you write them all in canonical XML, which specifies every aspect of
the syntax you can use, these three documents would all have the same version of
this text (which would be Black & White) and could be compared without problem.
This Comparison is especially critical when xml documents are digitally signed. The
digital signal may be interpreted in different way and the document may be rejected.
Why is the XML InfoSet specification different from the Xml DOM? What
does the InfoSet attempt to solve?
"The XML Information Set (Infoset) defines a data model for XML. The Infoset
describes the abstract representation of an XML Document. Infoset is the generalized
representation of the XML Document, which is primarily meant to act as a set of
definitions used by XML technologies to formally describe what parts of an XML
document they operate upon.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is one technology for representing an XML
Document in memory and to programmatically read, modify and manipulate a xml
document.
Infoset helps defining generalized standards on how to use XML that is not dependent
or tied to a particular XML specification or API. The Infoset tells us what part of XML
Document should be considered as significant information.
Contrast DTDs versus XSDs. What are their similarities and differences?
Which is preferred and why?
Document Type Definition (DTD) describes a model or set of rules for an XML
document. XML Schema Definition (XSD) also describes the structure of an XML
document but XSDs are much more powerful.
The disadvantage with the Document Type Definition is it doesn’t support data types
beyond the basic 10 primitive types. It cannot properly define the type of data
contained by the tag.
An Xml Schema provides an Object Oriented approach to defining the format of an
xml document. The Xml schema support most basic programming types like integer,
byte, string, float etc., We can also define complex types of our own which can be
used to define a xml document.
Xml Schemas are always preferred over DTDs as a document can be more precisely
defined using the XML Schemas because of its rich support for data representation.
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when the memory will be cleaned up, plus, it introduces additional load on the
garbage collector.
What happens when you encounter a continue statement inside the for
loop?
The code for the rest of the loop is ignored, the control is transferred back to the
beginning of the loop.
How can you sort the elements of the array in descending order?
By calling Sort() and then Reverse() methods.
Will finally block get executed if the exception had not occurred?
Yes.
What's the C# equivalent of C++ catch (…), which was a catch-all statement
for any possible exception?
A catch block that catches the exception of type System.Exception. You can also omit
the parameter data type in this case and just write catch {}.
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What's the difference between // comments, /* */ comments and ///
comments?
Single-line, multi-line and XML documentation comments.
What's the implicit name of the parameter that gets passed into the class'
set method?
Value, and it's datatype depends on whatever variable we're changing.
An array has a rank that determines the number of indices associated with each
array element. The rank of an array is also referred to as the dimensions of the array.
An array with a rank of one is called a single-dimensional array. An array with a rank
greater than one is called a multi-dimensional array. Specific sized multidimensional
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arrays are often referred to as two-dimensional arrays, three-dimensional arrays, and
so on.
When you create a jagged array you declare the number of rows in your array. Each
row will hold an array that will be on any length. Before filling the values in the inner
arrays you must declare them.
Note that while declaring the array the second dimension is not supplied because this
you will declare later on in the code.
Jagged array are created out of single dimensional arrays so be careful while using
them. Don’t confuse it with multi-dimensional arrays because unlike them jagged
arrays are not rectangular arrays.
What is a delegate, why should you use it and how do you call it ?
A delegate is a reference type that refers to a Shared method of a type or to an
instance method of an object. Delegate is like a function pointer in C and C++.
Pointers are used to store the address of a thing. Delegate lets some other code call
your function without needing to know where your function is actually located. All
events in .NET actually use delegates in the background to wire up events. Events
are really just a modified form of a delegate.
It should give you an idea of some different areas in which delegates may be
appropriate:
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• Use delegates to facilitate asynchronous processing for methods that do not
offer asynchronous behavior.
• Events use delegates so clients can give the application events to call when
the event is fired. Exposing custom events within your applications requires
the use of delegates.
If you define integer variable and a object variable and a structure then
how those will be plotted in memory.
[C#]
[Serializable]
public struct Int32 : IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
So , it’s a struct by definition , which is the same case with various other value types .
Object – Base class , that is by default reference type , so at runtime JIT compiler
allocates memory on the “Heap” Data structure .
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Winforms
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What base class do all Web Forms inherit from?
System.Windows.Forms.Form
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Yes, you can, then the class belongs to global namespace which has no name. For
commercial products, naturally, you wouldn't want global namespace.
You are designing a GUI application with a windows and several widgets on
it. The user then resizes the app window and sees a lot of grey space, while
the widgets stay in place. What's the problem?
One should use anchoring for correct resizing. Otherwise the default property of a
widget on a form is top-left, so it stays at the same location when resized.
How can you save the desired properties of Windows Forms application?
.config files in .NET are supported through the API to allow storing and retrieving
information. They are nothing more than simple XML files, sort of like what .ini files
were before for Win32 apps.
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set the FormBorderStyle to FormBorderStyle.None, which will remove the contour
and contents of the form.
With these events, why wouldn't Microsoft combine Invalidate and Paint, so
that you wouldn't have to tell it to repaint, and then to force it to repaint?
Painting is the slowest thing the OS does, so usually telling it to repaint, but not
forcing it allows for the process to take place in the background.
Before in my VB app I would just load the icons from DLL. How can I load
the icons provided by .NET dynamically?
By using System.Drawing.SystemIcons class, for example
System.Drawing.SystemIcons.Warning produces an Icon with a warning sign in it.
When displaying fonts, what's the difference between pixels, points and
ems?
A pixel is the lowest-resolution dot the computer monitor supports. Its size depends
on user's settings and monitor size. A point is always 1/72 of an inch. An em is the
number of pixels that it takes to display the letter M.
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