Monthly Archives: November 2006

The top 10 mistakes when using AJAX

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Here is an interesting list of the top 10 things people do wrong when using AJAX.

http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2006/11/20/the-top-10-mistakes-when-using-ajax.aspx

  1. Don’t use AJAX to update the complete page by putting everything in a UpdatePanel. You want to save time and traffic when running the web page. Never update parts of the web site that can be changed using JavaScript and DHTML (DOM).
  2. Have in mind that there are a couple of visitors that have JavaScript disabled or using a web browser with an older or less JavaScript implementation like the most mobile devices have. What does your visitor see if everything is disabled? I don’t recommend to have the full web site available as a JavaScript disabled version!
  3. Cache the same requests on client-side web browser or implement any caching on the web server. The most used scenarios like AutoComplete or DropDown fields are filled everytime the same. A wrong written AutoComplete can slow down your web server (database server) because there more requests done than the version before using PostBacks. Think of pressing F5 (reload) all the time with your old web site. If you have cascading DropDown you can save more traffic/requests!
  4. Don’t run concurrent or long running AJAX requests when using CSS or JavaScript to change the UI. There are only two concurrent http connections possible with all common web browsers (I know you can change this, but the default behavior is set to two). If there are running to many AJAX requests running loading of images will be slow down.
  5. Use everytime the asynchrouns invoke of the send method of XMLHttpRequest. There is no issue where you want to use the synchronous one. Your web browser will not be forozen when having network problems or slow connections.
  6. Try your web application using a very slow internet connection. Try it again using a TCP/IP connection with a very high latency for each paket.
  7. Is your web application running as a desktop replacement? Have a look at the memory usage of common web browsers if you run your application one hour, two hours or couple of days. Not everybody has a development machine like yours!
  8. Check the http status code you will get back from XMLHttpRequest. There are a couple of common network errors like DNS not available, http server error 500. Did you ever checked for the status code which tells you if your web browser is in offline mode?
  9. Try to disable the XMLHttpRequest object! With IE7 you can use the native object instead of the ActiveX object, but you can still disable the native object, too.
  10. Check your AJAX requests for security issues! Did you simple open all your data access layers? Make use of FormsAuthentication and PrincipalPermissions on ASP.NET. Can anybody create requests (not only by clicking on a link)?

Copying SQL Server Results With Column Headers

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I just came across this nice tip:

One change with SQL Server 2005 is a new option to copy column headers along with the data results.  This option gets set using the query options setting.  To access this setting from SQL Server Management Studio, select Query | Query Options from the menus

You can then paste the columns into excel and you will get the headers as well.

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1107

 

Client Side Modal Dialogs (SubModal)

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One thing that I really like about IE, but is not available in other browsers is the client side modal dialog.

A modal dialog is a popup window that must be acted on (or closed) before you can do anything else on the window underneath.

I came across a nice modal dialog being used on the forums.asp.net site.  I ended up emailing the guy who wrote the editor I was using, and he directed me to the original creator of the dialog “submodal.”

Some people have made updates and extensions to submodal, and there has been a google group created for the discussion of submodal.

It is still not clear to me if this technique will allow you to pass back a value from the modal dialog to the opening page, because I think that is a very important feature, but I don’t see any direct reference to it.

Dealing with WinForms Combobox and name/value items.

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I just read this article on aspalliance.com by Sandeep Archarya.

I think the article had 2 main points.  One was that databinding a combobox is not “bug free” because the act of manually databinding to a combobox causes the SelectedIndexChanged event to fire.  The second point was to show how to create a simple namevalue class to be added to the combobox items collection to get around the “problem” of combobox’s taking an object as the item in it’s list (as opposed to a name value pair).

I would point out the following:

First, I am not sure that I would call the SelectedIndexChanged event firing a bug.  When you manually databind a list, the first item become selected by default, and thus the selectedindex HAS changed, from -1 to 0.

Second, if you consider this a problem you can get around it a couple different ways.

1) Don’t use manual databinding.

In the designer, select a datasource or create a new one.  I created a simple employee object and created an object datasource for this employee.  This creates a EmployeeBindingSource object that I bind my employee list to.  Using this method, I didn’t experience the SelectedIndexChanged event firing on the databind.

Private list As New System.Collections.Generic.List(Of employee)
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    ‘*** create some fake employee objects
   For i As Integer = 70 To 80
      list.Add(New employee(i, Chr(i)))
   Next

    ‘*** this will populate our control (Combobox1)
   Me.EmployeeBindingSource.DataSource = list

End Sub

2) You can use manual databinding, and manually detach and attach the event handler for this event.

Private list As New System.Collections.Generic.List(Of employee)

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
    
    ‘*** create some fake employee objects
   For i As Integer = 70 To 80
      list.Add(New employee(i, Chr(i)))
   Next

    ‘*** remove the handler
    RemoveHandler ComboBox1.SelectedIndexChanged, AddressOf ComboBox1_SelectedIndexChanged
    ‘*** databind
    Me.ComboBox1.ValueMember = “id”
    Me.ComboBox1.DisplayMember = “name”
    Me.ComboBox1.DataSource = list
    ‘*** add the handler back
    AddHandler ComboBox1.SelectedIndexChanged, AddressOf ComboBox1_SelectedIndexChanged
End Sub

 

Red Gate SQL Refactor Tool Looks Cool

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Red Gate has a pretty interesting tool called SQL Refactor:

http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql_refactor/index.htm

 

The “Layout Code” feature looks awesome.  It basically takes a terrible looking select statement and turns it into a nicely formatted block.

 

Here is a code project article that shows some of these features:

http://www.codeproject.com/showcase/SQLRefactor.asp