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Developers using .NET often make memory leak tracking a low priority because the common language runtime takes care of garbage collection. What few developers realize, however, is that their objects’ lifespans, along with their size and what other objects have been instantiated, all affect how they are cleaned up. Depending on the particular circumstances, these combinations can negatively affect performance, especially over the lifetime of an application

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Design: Inspect and Optimize Your Program’s Memory Usage with the .NET Profiler API

In a previous article, the author devised a simple method to detect Graphical Device Interface (GDI) objects that are not properly released by Win32-based applications on Windows 9x platforms. Because some newer versions of Windows require a slightly different approach to GDI leaks, the author has updated his techniques for those operating systems. He builds and explains two tools designed to detect and eradicate GDI leaks in applications running on Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT

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Debug: Detect and Plug GDI Leaks in Your Code with Two Powerful Tools for Windows XP

With the release of .NET, the Microsoft scripting strategy has evolved. Script engines can now compile or interpret code for the Microsoft common language runtime (CLR) instead of integrating debugging capabilities directly into apps through Active Scripting. With that change comes a new set of published services for including debugging functionality in a custom host application.

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CLR Debugging: Improve Your Understanding of .NET Internals by Building a Debugger for Managed Code

The .NET Framework Class Library and the common language runtime (CLR) serve as the foundation for all .NET-based applications. But how much do you know about any of the thousands of CLR classes in the library and where do you begin to learn about them?In this article, the author uses the number of relationships with other types to determine which types are going to affect your programming most frequently and how often you’ll encounter them

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CLR Types: Use Reflection to Discover and Assess the Most Common Types in the .NET Framework

The common language runtime of the .NET Framework has its own secure execution model that isn’t bound by the limitations of the operating system it’s running on. In addition, unlike the old principal-based security, the CLR enforces security policy based on where code is coming from rather than who the user is

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Security in .NET: The Security Infrastructure of the CLR Provides Evidence, Policy, Permissions, and Enforcement Services

Application service providers often must send information to clients automatically rather than on-demand. For example, a manufacturer may want to know each day how many of their products were sold by a retail chain. While SQL Server is ideal for maintaining this type of database, you have to write scripts to get the data out in a client-friendly format.

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Scripting SQL: VBScript Interfaces in SQL Server 2000 Let You Transform Data and Provide Reports to Your Users

Building on his article published in the June issue, which demonstrated several ways to get process and DLL-related information from APIs such as PSAPI, NTDLL, and TOOLHELP32, the author presents some unusual ways to get system-oriented info that you can easily integrate in your own toolkit. There are three tools included as samples: LoadLibrarySpy, which monitors an application and detects which DLLs are really loaded; WindowDump, which retrieves the content and a detailed description of any window; and FileUsage, which redirects console-mode applications to tell you which process is using any opened file. Christophe Nasarre MSDN Magazine August 2002

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Windows XP: Escape from DLL Hell with Custom Debugging and Instrumentation Tools and Utilities, Part 2

If you’re planning to build an e-commerce site, you’ll be pleased to see that ASP.NET makes it easier than ever. Existing controls can be used and extended to add a great deal more functionality than you might expect. In this article, forms-based authentication is used to verify the identity of users and make certain areas of the site, such as the check-out page, inaccessible to unauthorized users.

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Commerce with ASP.NET: Leverage the Authentication and Form Validation Features of ASP.NET to Bolster Your Commerce App

DirectShow is an API that enables Windows applications to control a wide variety of audio/video input devices including (but not limited to) DV camcorders, Web cams, DVD drives, and TV tuner cards. It provides out-of-the-box support for a variety of formats, from WAV and AVI to Windows Media. DirectShow is also extensible, enabling third parties to support their own specialized devices, formats, or processing components.

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DirectShow: Core Media Technology in Windows XP Empowers You to Create Custom Audio/Video Processing Components

How would an English speaker feel if his car’s owner’s manual was written in German or if the dash board markings were written in Japanese because the car was manufactured in that country? This is an experience common to computer users all over the world who don’t speak English as their primary language, and it’s becomming more important. The Microsoft .NET Framework not only makes it possible to build international applications, but many of the tools such as Visual Studio .NET make it quite easy.

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Go International!: Let Your Apps Span the Globe with Windows Forms and Visual Studio .NET

Rich clients employ many of the features and conveniences of the operating system they run on, and the list of these features has been growing since the dawn of the PC. But as apps have migrated to the Web, the trend towards increasing client-side functionality has ground to a virtual halt. There are several reasons for this; chief among them are security and deployment problems.

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Return of the Rich Client: Code Access Security and Distribution Features in .NET Enhance Client-Side Apps

Windows Script Host (WSH) 5.6, a major upgrade for the WSH environment, provides some significant improvements over previous versions. A brand new security model that is tightly integrated with security in Windows XP allows administrators to place fine-grained restrictions on scripts reducing the risk from malicious code. In addition, local scripts can now run on remote machines, and enhancements to the object model reduce the amount of boilerplate code needed when writing professional code

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Scripting: Windows Script Host 5.6 Boasts Windows XP Integration, Security, New Object Model

XML is becoming the ubiquitous data format on the Web, and XML support in SQL Server is evolving to meet the additional demand. Using XML, SOAP, HTTP, and SQL Server, you can now build powerful Web Services easily. To show just how simple it is with SQLXML 3.0, this article walks the reader through the process step by step, from setting up a virtual directory enabling data access via HTTP to executing queries and building Web Services.

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SQLXML 3.0: Build Data-Driven Web Services with Updated XML Support for SQL Server 2000

Forms authentication is one of the most compelling and useful new features of ASP.NET. It enables developers to declaratively specify which files on their site can be accessed and by whom, and allows identification of a login page. When an unauthenticated user attempts to retrieve a page protected by forms authentication, ASP.NET automatically redirects them to the login page and asks them to identify themselves.

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ASP.NET Security: An Introductory Guide to Building and Deploying More Secure Sites with ASP.NET and IIS, Part 2

Visual Studio .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK provide a new set of APIs and tools that let you consume Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) data and events from managed .NET applications. After presenting an overview of what’s new for WMI in the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio .NET environment, the author provides an in-depth exploration of the Management Extensions in Visual Studio .NET for Server Explorer. These extensions help you develop management-aware software and come in handy in a variety of distributed application development scenarios

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WMI and .NET: System.Management Lets You Take Advantage of WMI APIs within Managed Code

ASP.NET and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) work together to make building secure Web sites a breeze. But to do it right, you have to know how the two interrelate and what options they provide for securing access to a Web site’s resources. This article, the first in a two-part series, explains the ABCs of Web security as seen through the eyes of ASP.NET and includes a hands-on tutorial demonstrating Windows authentication and ACL authorizations

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ASP.NET Security: An Introductory Guide to Building and Deploying More Secure Sites with ASP.NET and IIS

The new version of COM+ that ships as part of Windows XP includes APIs for low-level context programming. These functions allow you to create contexts that use COM+ runtime services, independent of objects and without registering anything in the COM+ Catalog. Designed for advanced COM+ developers who understand the COM+ context model, these APIs make it easy to integrate runtime services with code in nonstandard ways.

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COM+ 1.5: Discover Powerful Low-Level Programming in Windows XP with New COM+ APIs

To help stop the spread of worms, viruses, and other hostile activity, it is important to track down and report the servers used in these attacks along with those used to send spam. Many Web administrators, however, don’t take the time to track them because the manual process can be quite cumbersome. The Microsoft .NET Framework comes to the rescue with several networking classes, including the Dns class and the TcpClient class, that abstract away the complexity of performing DNS and WHOIS lookups.

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Virus Hunting: Track and Report Server Attacks Quickly and Easily with the .NET Networking Classes

Smart Device Extensions (SDE) for Visual Studio .NET allow programmers to develop applications for the .NET Compact Framework, a new platform that maintains many of the features of the .NET Framework in a version optimized for handheld devices. This article shows how SDE provides access through Visual Studio .NET to a variety of .NET classes for devices running Windows CE, including classes for creating user interfaces

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Windows CE: Develop Handheld Apps for the .NET Compact Framework with Visual Studio .NET

Web Services are a great way to accept and manage contributions to a public clip art library, digital music catalog, or corporate knowledge base. Since the SOAP interface to a Web method operates over HTTP, contributors can easily publish content any time, from anywhere across the Internet. However, accepting binary content and managing content metadata through SOAP over HTTP presents Web Service developers with some interesting design decisions.

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.NET Web Services: Web Methods Make it Easy to Publish Your App’s Interface over the Internet