When working with 3rd party xml web services (UPS, stamps.com, Chase, etc) it's often valuable to record the exact xml request and response communication between the service and integration client (your app).  This information may be needed for auditing or debugging unexpected exceptions.

Since web services are xml based, SQL Server's xml datatype is the ideal solution to write the exact xml request and response values to.

If you're implementing the services using HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse calls, you already have the xml in-hand, and you simply need to write that to the database.  However, if you are using proxy objects ...

It isn't often that I do development anymore, but from time to time, I brush the dust from Visual Studio and jump back into the trenches. This time I found myself needing to create some functionality in the wonderful world of MOSS.

I have built out a dev machine many times in the past and although it is time consuming I would have never foreseen all the problems I experienced this time around.

My current machine is a Compaq laptop, model 6720s with 4Gb of RAM and running Windows 7 x86. One thing about this laptop is that it doesn't ...

We're going to discuss techniques that you can use to start digitally painting your first illustration using the soft and hard edge brush, pen tool, burn and dodge tool, and levels adjustment.  A really helpful hardware tool to have is a Wacom Tablet, which can help make your digital airbrushing go a little smoother.

You can digitally paint almost any image, but in order to achieve success, it helps to go back to the drawing board, literally. Before you start applying color and definition to your artwork, you need to have a good looking sketch.

The following sample ...

The HTML 5 Specification and You

You know that feeling that you sometimes get when you're using a rotary phone to update your Facebook status?  Me neither--but I think I can imagine.  Our usage of the Web has advanced aggressively over the past decade, pushing its limits as a development platform.  And it's getting a touch awkward for those of us still using <blink>, <font>, and <center> tags to really punch up our table-based layouts.

Enter HTML 5. The latest version of the Hypertext specification from our friends at the World Wide Web Consortium defines ...

NOTE: This article is one of a three-part series based on the same code. As such, some of the code in the referenced download is not specifically targeted at this topic. The other two topics are Declarative Databinding of Nested Object Properties to GridView Columns and Dynamic Rendering of Images in ASP.NET.

Another NOTE:  The code provided has been written to use the AdventureWorks database for SQL 2005, which can be found on Codeplex here.

The GridView is arguably one of the most powerful and widely-used controls in the ASP.NET developer's  toolbox.  Particularly in the realm of business software, ...