Hello, I'm   Jason

According to several resources including eWeek, the MIX 06 will introduce a “Go-Live” license for Atlas, Microsoft’s AJAX library. Other interesting technology is supposed to be announced and/or released at the conference. Stay tuned to Mix06.com for more details.

Microsoft has put together a pretty good series of videos, tutorials, and code for ASP.NET 2.0. You can access this material at http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/learning/learn/newtodevelopment/default.aspx.

I have a really good question that I’d love to pose to Business Objects: Will there ever be a stable version of Crystal Reports that doesn’t crash, deploys easily with .NET, and generates everything you need? Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to deploy an application that uses the Crystal merge module with Crystal 11. We purchased Crystal 11 because Crystal .NET was having its own issues. At random times, the merge module kicks off an error during builds. It seems as though if you use an embedded report and don’t touch the code, the error occurs. Weird huh? That’s not all. Today, on a completely different machine, I attempted to Suppress a Group Header. Crystal locked up and then kicked me out. Unfortunately, Crystal is not like Word and does not save your report during a critical error. So, I had to continue from mid point. Then, when you try to go through their support, you’re talking to 3 different people via an email-based helpdesk and that have no clue what .NET is. Argh! I wish the apps I’m using can use MS SQL Reporting or something else!

I just came across an article referenced in ASP.NET Pro about .NET Professionals being in demand. Check it out at http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/03/pf/pay_hike_jobseeker/index.htm.

As some of you may already know, I’ve been swamped lately. Unfortunately, I haven’t been doing a lot of programming. If you’ve ever heard the expression when it rains, it pours, it’s definitely true! During November and December of 2005, we migrated our accounting systems successfully from Microsoft Navision 2.01 to Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006. In theory, that should be a step back. However, thanks to the SBA SDK, it was a step forward. We were able to offer integration with other applications that we utilize, something that Navision using the Navision database and file structure, really couldn’t do. Our goal is that within the next 2 years that we’ll upgrade to the new Microsoft Dynamics system. Then, we received notice that we were acquiring a fairly large portion of another company. This acquisition nearly doubled the size of the same department within our organization. Thus, I’ve been traveling between the two places every week since January. Hopefully April will bring more than just Spring showers and I’ll be able to build apps on 2.0 once again. :)

One of my good friends from our area, Doug Reilly, recently wrote an article regarding his illness over the past few years. I’ve known Doug since 2003 and he’s always been a great resource for information and a good friend. We run into each other from time to time at events in Philadelphia. You can read more about Doug here: http://www.simple-talk.com/2006/03/06/coming-out-as-a-cancer-survivor-a-guide-for-software-developers/.

This event will be held at Luzerne County Community College, Nanticoke on February 22nd, 2006. For directions to the facility and for room information, click here. The event will begin at 6:00pm. Here is the schedule:

An error occurs in SBA when the No. Field has data longer than 20 characters…

Ever receive an error message similar to: “Can’t create file: FILE NAME.pdf. Right-click the folder you want to create the file in, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu to check your permissions for the folder.”? Well, I have the solution. It appears that when you install any Microsoft Small Business products (including Small Business Accounting 2006 and Business Contact Manager), the OutlookSecureTempFolder key in the registry is changed from ..\\Temp\\... to ...\\Temporary Internet Files\\....

I posted the question on the ASPAdvice.com technical list and received a response from a good friend, Paul Murphy. His solution is documented at http://aspadvice.com/blogs/pmurphy/archive/2005/02/09/2084.aspx. I haven’t tried it yet, but it just might work. Looks like I’ll have to try it sometime soon.