EPiServer property getter cleaner-upper

Just a daily time saver, for reuse at another time. Any old time windows developer, will remember the fun of using the ini files with GetPrivateProfileString. As much as ini files sucked there is one nice aspect of that call - you can setup a default value it is to return in case a value is not specified in the file. Similarly in a daily episerver programming you usually want to read a value but if one is not epcified you will usually want to use another value and just move along with the progress, and not really care to have an if there to do the filling in. Not to limit the property to any specific type - the task can be nicely solved with generics to handle pretty much any type of property.

Nokia N95 - Just because I'm cheap!

Some time ago, with a little help of TDI some time ago I’ve successfully switched all my outgoing calls to Voipdiscount, while at the same time moving my incoming calls’ number to mobile provider through a Sagem base station, all of this nicely integrated in a Linksys SPA3102 gateway in a way that a regular person grabbing a phone at my desk cannot realize that at the current moment it’s a hybrid not really having much in common with the POTS, they expect to be using. All of this effectively reducing the monthly phone spending to a negligible monthly fee, just in time when my eldest starts to spend hours on the phone - great!

Misadventures with Database Engine Tuning Advisor

I’ve been on a sole task today to improve a database performance of the project we’ve been working on. As much as I enjoyed the task there is one thing that costed me quite a bit of head scratching. Being a standard nerd I usually have about 20-30 applications running on my machine at a time, I didn’t immediately associated the error with the tuning advisor but rather assumed it’s one of my other 29 applications/servers/daemons/services in background did something stupid, probably even some of my code craving for a bit of attention, right? So I moved to tune the database on the server via remote desktop, but when I hit a wall there I’ve looked around for the solution and it looks like that it’s been known to MS for almost 2 years now.

Is EpiServer a hard-shelled clam or what?

As much as I seem to be enjoying my trip with EpiServer there are some little things I don’t seem to appreciate all that much and I’m not quite sure how to work around some of them in an elegant way.

EpiServer has a fairly advanced way of dealing with properties but it also seems to be a bit tough on the developer whenever you try to do something more than just strictly using its API-s. One of the areas I don’t really enjoy is the dealing with the pages that are expired or generally unavailable for the user for various reasons.

The great missing feature of EPiServer

As we’ve been debating with Steve in the EpiCode IRC channel (Come on, join us there! You know you want it!) a few days ago, probably one of the biggest missing features in EPiServer is multi-page property.

Yes there seems to be a fairly robust implementation of a similar functionality on EpiCode however it’s got 2 serious drawbacks:

1. adding a great number of consecutive pages is a tedious process
2. it’s not native to EPiServer, meaning - if I use it in my module that I would like to distribute later I need to put the control there. Short of potential licensing issues, this introduces an unnecessary complication level for such distributable modules

Another big issue with the page selecting dialog - apart form being unable to select multiple pages is its inability to root it anywhere outside the original EPiServer repository root. This really limits its quality in terms of re-using of its functionality to be able to use it for selecting of a limited set of pages.

Database-based paged EPiServer searches

Searches paged in the database have posed a problem in SQL Server at least prior to version 2005. I’ve found some solution to the problem on the net but they were so cludgy that I would never really put anything like that in a production server. I hope the following will shed some light on how they work in general by using in in EPiServer context.

Theoretically in EPiServer you can pull the pages that match the criteria from the database with EPiServer.Global.EPDataFactory.FindPagesWithCriteria() into the PageList but that seemed to be imposing a strong performance penalty with increased number of pages meeting the criteria. Since this search is sometimes done even multiple times on a page request in our project we needed something better.

Interesting job for EPiServer developers, are you up for a change?

Our friends at EPiServer AB has just let us know that they are in need of EPiServer CMS specialists that might be looking forward to working with them directly, so if you’re an EPiServer professional and meet the requirements specified on the recruitment page give them a shout! If you’re not already familiar with EPiServer you’re probably not going to make it this round, but then again I suggest you start looking at it now. EPiServer AB is a really dynamic company recently expanding aggresively on the international markets - and rightly so. EPiServer is deserving every credit it can get. I can say that my journey with it so far has been really smooth and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. So if you’re not up to it, get ready for the next round, in the mean time, grab yourself a login - download a copy of the documentation from the Knowledge Center, a demo license and join us on the Developer Forum. It’s a great bunch, really fun to work with.

EPiCode hits IRC

I’ve discovered yesterday on Steve’s blog that him and our other friends on EpiCode have gathered on IRC (something I’ve been lobbying here at our company for quite a while). Come, drop by, let’s meet! I’ll definitely try to hang out there as much as I can. great to meet you guys. As Steve suggests - grab yourself a copy of XChat or aMirc, connect to irc.freenode.net and /join #epicode What a great idea!

Common Language Runtime, now even more common

There seems to be a storm over at over at the Internet about Microsoft going Cross platform and “opening the common language runtime to a multitude of platforms”. What seems to be a false perception that even such respectable podcasts as Buzz Out Loud or even TWIT fail to realize and mislead people on is that this has NOTHING to do with portable .Net desktop applications. Someone even suggested at one of the BOL podcasts that it’s Microsoft’s attempt to put .Net Framework on Linux servers. (Huh? Beg your pardon?) You may have not noticed it but when they say about cross-platform capability of Silverlight it always says Windows, Mac.. and then on a single breath they start enumerating browsers. A casual listener just measures the quantity and the list has an impressive 5-6 bullets. heh… wait… erm… not really… it’s actually only 2 platforms. You cannot enumerate browsers as platforms! You share 99% implementation between them, the only cross-browser thing is the interaction between the plugin and the host browser!

Generic types conversion for the old System.Collections namespace

I’ve recently been asked by one of our new dotNet developers whether it’s possible to cast your regular everyday .Net 1.x System.Collections.ArrayList or the like onto a generic System.Collections.Generic.List . I have to admit, I seem to suffer from some kind of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when it comes to programming problems. I mean my original reaction is usually “Of course not, what kind of frivolous idea is that?”, but then I cannot go about without solving the problem. So it was this time.