By Kent Sharkey on 5/27/2008 3:44 PM

While not every application needs some degree of database flexibility, the need to change your database does happen some times. You may be attempting to create a reusable data access framework that may be used to connect to multiple different databases in different applications, or you may have a change in plans, leading to the requirement of connecting to some new database (or database version). When that happens, do you:

1. Rewrite all your code from scratch
2. Go through your data access code, changing it as needed for the new database provider
3. Make a change in your configuration file and continue without code changes

Avoiding code changes is the ideal scenario, and there are two main ways you can achieve it in your code.

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By Kent Sharkey on 5/14/2008 4:30 PM

The new ASP.NET MVC framework provides developers with an alternative to the traditional WebForm model. It enables developers to more easily create highly testable Web sites with clean URLs and structure.

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By Kent Sharkey on 5/2/2008 2:14 PM

You frequently need to store important information in your application's configuration files, such as connection strings, user IDs or paths to files. Therefore, it would be a good idea to secure these files — or at least the sections needing security — to prevent unauthorized access. With Visual Studio 2005 and above, you can encrypt the contents of your configuration file — either from the command-line or your own code — and the resulting configuration file works normally.

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By Kent Sharkey on 5/2/2008 2:09 PM

While many developers are comfortable creating Web sites with ASP.NET or other technologies, users continually want more responsive applications. Silverlight is a new technology from Microsoft that attempts to bridge the gap between the reach of a Web application, and the responsiveness of a Windows application.

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