/tags/microsoft-internship/Recent content in Microsoft Internship on David CumpsHugoen-usCopyright &copy; 2026Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-05-01-pocket-pc/Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-05-01-pocket-pc/<p>On the client-side, a <i>Pocket PC</i> application was used. Since this has no guaranteed connectivity, some additional techniques had to be used to improve the end-user experience.</p>/archive/2005-05-01-sqlce/Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-05-01-sqlce/<p>Instead of making a webservice call each time certain data was needed, the data was stored in the <i>SqlCe</i> database on the <i>Pocket PC</i>, to retrieve when needed. This allowed quickly displaying data after having retrieved it once, while still giving the possibility to retrieve the latest data, and update the local cache with it as well.</p>/archive/2005-04-25-data-layer-sqlserver/Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-25-data-layer-sqlserver/<p>After having implemented a data layer in the Data project, it was time to make a real data implementation. A <i>Sql Server 2000</i> implementation was the default data source, located in the <i>Data.SqlServer</i> project.</p>/archive/2005-04-24-data-layer/Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-24-data-layer/<p>Any application using data benefits from having a separate data layer. This enables the administrator to select which data source to use. It also makes your application have an advantage, making it easier to sell.</p>/archive/2005-04-09-configuration/Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-09-configuration/<p>To configure the solution, <i>Enterprise Library</i> was used. This contained a <i>Configuration Application Block</i> which allowed defining various configuration sources externally from the application. This approach gave to ability to switch from XML configuration files to a database without having to change anything in the code. Because of this, it was also possible to distribute the application, and let an administrator choose where it should read the configuration from. An additional advantage of using the application block was the ability to automatically detect when the configuration had changed and retrieve the new values.</p>/archive/2005-04-09-logging/Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-09-logging/<p>When developing an application it’s possible to use debug mode to figure out why something is wrong, but when it’s time to deploy the application something else has to be integrated. To solution to this is logging. Implementing good logging functionality will make the Operations people who have to deploy your application happy as well, because they can integrate it into existing monitoring systems.</p>/archive/2005-04-03-eid/Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-03-eid/<p>Another thing I had to do was a feasibility study on eID. This means I had to look into this technology, research what the possible uses are, if they can be implemented and how they have to be implemented.</p>/archive/2005-04-03-eid-chat/Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-03-eid-chat/<p>To demonstrate the possible use of eID in Windows applications, I created a small client/server application. This application contains a central server, which listens on a certain port for possible clients. After a client connects, it has to authenticate with the user’s eID card. The server then validates the certificate and checks if it is in the list of allowed users to connect.</p>/archive/2005-04-03-remoting-client-side/Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-03-remoting-client-side/<p>After everything was done on the server-side of the <i>Remoting</i> implementation, inside the <i>Windows Service</i>, it was time to add the consumer side. In the case of this project, the consumer was an <i>ASP.NET Webservice</i> running on the same machine.</p>/archive/2005-04-03-remoting-server-side/Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-03-remoting-server-side/<p>When the Windows Service was successfully running, a way had to be found to control it. There was a <i>ServiceController</i> class which allowed controlling a service and sending messages to it trough the <i>ExecuteCommand</i> method. This method was limited to sending integers without getting anything back. A better solution was to use <i>Remoting</i> to control the service.</p>/archive/2005-04-03-windows-services/Sun, 03 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0200/archive/2005-04-03-windows-services/<p>Normally, a windows service is used to provide a system service to other applications, such as an antivirus service for example. The best practice for a business application providing a service would be to create a <i>Windows Forms</i> application, which runs on the desktop of a server. A user would be used to login to the server, start the application, and lock the server. At which point the application would provide a service to other systems. This is because a business application normally isn’t part of operating system infrastructure, while all windows services are.</p>/archive/2005-03-08-virtual-pc-differencing-disks/Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-03-08-virtual-pc-differencing-disks/<p>During my internship I had to test against different kinds of products, and to be sure everything worked on a clean install of this product, I had to create multiple virtual PC’s. One method of doing this was to create one clean Windows 2003 installation inside Virtual PC and copy this image to a new folder for every different server I needed. This was the method I started with, but one disadvantage was that it required a lot of disk space, as the base image already required 1.8 GB.</p>/archive/2005-03-06-asp-net-2-0-on-tour/Sun, 06 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-03-06-asp-net-2-0-on-tour/<img src="truck.jpg" /> <p>On March 2, 2005 the ASP.NET 2.0 On Tour came to Belgium, Brussels. This is an international tour, all about the latest Microsoft technology, featuring speakers such as <i>David Platt</i> and <i>Dave Webster</i>.</p>/archive/2005-02-27-blogging/Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-27-blogging/<p>Blogs are a new communication medium, mainly used as a single-direction information channel. On a blog, the owner publishes new posts, which can be read and commented on by readers.</p>/archive/2005-02-25-virtual-pc/Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-25-virtual-pc/<p>Another tool I had at my disposal was Microsoft Virtual PC. This is a product that enables you to run several operating systems inside your existing one, each one of them acting as a real PC.</p>/archive/2005-02-22-nsurvey-mappoint-integration/Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-22-nsurvey-mappoint-integration/<p>NSurvey provides charting reporting by default, but this could be enhanced by using the <em>Country List</em> control together with the added <em>Belgian Regions</em>. With this question in a survey, as a required question, every entry would have location information. Together with MapPoint a graphical overview could be made, showing additional information per country and region.</p>/archive/2005-02-22-nsurvey-pie-charts/Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-22-nsurvey-pie-charts/<p>NSurvey already provides general charts displaying the results, but it uses a bar chart and I had to output pie charts as well. So, I implemented them as well.</p>/archive/2005-02-22-sharepoint/Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-22-sharepoint/<p>For the Microsoft Student Council, I decided to write a small database application that would keep track of the users their points. The council has access to a SharePoint site, so I decided to create a WebPart that would use existing user data and integrate nicely into the existing infrastructure.</p>/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-answer-types/Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-answer-types/<p>By default NSurvey provides different kinds of answer types. These are for example <i>Basic Field, Rich Field, Calendar Field, Email Field, Hidden Field, Password Field, Large Field</i> and dropdown lists which use XML files as data source. NSurvey, however, also allows you to extend on these types to create new answer types, with specific functionality.</p>/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-belgian-regions/Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-belgian-regions/<p>One of the standard controls of NSurvey is the Country List, which provides a dropdown list of countries. Belgium is one of these countries, but when you select Belgium, it doesn’t display the possible regions for Belgium.</p>/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-matrix-questions/Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-matrix-questions/<p>NSurvey supports matrix questions in its surveys. The only problem with this type of question was that in the reporting section of NSurvey, it listed each row of a matrix question as a possible selection, but it didn’t include which matrix it belonged to. This leaded to a very confusing list, when you have several identical matrix questions which only differentiated in the main question asked.</p>/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-microsoft-layout/Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-microsoft-layout/<p>As this application was going to collect feedback from Microsoft events, it had to look like it belonged to Microsoft, and it had to be designed professionally. To do this, I visited the Microsoft site, and saved the page to my dev pc. There I stripped all the content and created a template with two user controls, <i>SiteHeader</i> and <i>SiteFooter</i>.</p>/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-survey-overview/Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-21-nsurvey-survey-overview/<p>The first thing I noticed is the small dropdown in the admin section listing all available surveys. This would become my starting point for users, a perfect place to choose the survey they want to take.</p>/archive/2005-02-20-nsurvey/Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-20-nsurvey/<p>For one of the projects I had to do, I had to create an online survey application, which would be used to gather feedback from Microsoft events. Up until then, feedback was collected by handing out a form and entering the data manually.</p>/archive/2005-02-15-reflector/Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-15-reflector/<p>One of the tools I had in my toolbox was Reflector. This tool is written by Lutz Roeder and allows you to examine a .NET assembly. Through the use of reflection it can display all namespaces, classes, methods, properties, events and fields in the dll.</p>/archive/2005-02-14-boxing-unboxing-in-net/Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-14-boxing-unboxing-in-net/<p>In the .NET Framework there is a feature called <strong>boxing</strong>, which goes hand in hand with <strong>unboxing</strong>. Boxing is an implicit conversion of a value-type to the object type. While this is a very nice feature when programming normal applications, this overhead becomes a big performance hit when working with algorithms that need to do lots of operations, such as path finding.</p>/archive/2005-02-13-imagine-cup/Sun, 13 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-13-imagine-cup/<p><b>Important note</b> (to not get confused): The text below (and the future ones) is written in the past tense, because they are text that have to go into a book for school, which you have to write after your internship, giving info about what you did. But I&rsquo;m writing it piece by piece, because otherwise it will be too much to remember, and a lot less detailed :)</p>/archive/2005-02-12-a-algorithm/Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-12-a-algorithm/<p>The A* algorithm works with two lists, an open-list and a closed-list. The open-list is the list of nodes <i>to be checked,</i> while the closed-list already has been checked. Each node also gets scored with F, G and H-scores.</p>/archive/2005-02-12-binary-heaps/Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-12-binary-heaps/<p>A pathfinder has to be very fast, but when we take a look at the performance we notice that working with the open-list is the bottleneck.</p>/archive/2005-02-12-day-one/Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-12-day-one/<p>The first task I got during my internship was to manage a meeting of the Microsoft Student Council. This was also the start of my internship, the real thing from the beginning.</p>/archive/2005-02-12-internship-at-microsoft/Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0100/archive/2005-02-12-internship-at-microsoft/<p>As some of you might now, I&rsquo;ll be doing my internship at Microsoft.</p>