Free SQL Server 2008 Hosting

Again, MaximumASP has comeup with free SQL Server 2008 hosting like Free IIS 7 hosting account. This SQL Server 2008 account comes with 100 MB Space. Worth to try!!

http://www.sqlserverbeta.com/

Silverlight inside NOKIA

Nokial has annouced to support Silverlight in its Series 60 applications.

.Net 3.5

The new .Net Framework is 3.5. Even it comes with Visual Studio 2008, with which can start developing applications. Still I could see people thinking .Net 3.5 is a new Framework with new Architecture(s).

Unlike .Net 2.0 & .Net 1.1, .Net 2.0, 3.0 & 3.5 are closed integrated. We can tell .Net 2.0 is a subset of .Net 3.0 which in turn is a subset of .Net 3.5!

Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Computer ZEN presents the updated list of tools. Many tools, from the List is what Im using, and also the list is only making me to learn those-which are mostly new to me!! Thanks to Scott.

  Link to Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

C# Threading

Found a great site/article for C# Threading. Its really good, and very simple and covers threading to make you an expert. 

[Link]

Taking your ASP.Net Web Application Offline

My work mostly revolves around ASP.Net based Projects, and so I frequently come across a situation where I release the application (or a part of it - may be dll ) for Testing, when someone is accessing. Generally I used to delete the web folder and install the new one after a informal notification. For this I cant stop or pause the Web server, as some other web application is running side by side will get affected. In times, I will just replace the web folder as such (taking advantage of the xcopy deployment). Its not the exact way to do so!!

At last I found the solution for this : Simply add a file called app_offline.htm to your root of the web folder. The application wont respond to any of the further requests. It just throws  404 - Error ( The resource cannot be found. )

app_offline.htm  - can be a empty file. This is a simple way to bring your application Offline!

To bring it back (making it online is so simple - deleting the file app_offline.htm will do!

I have checked with ASP.Net 2.0, and not tried with ASP.Net 1.1 Even I dont know whether this feature is there in ASP.Net 1.1

[Source]