Because I keep getting spammed comments to my blog posts advertising crap products I have decided to change my approach to dealing with them.  Instead of simply deleting them like I have been, from now on I will edit those posts and point out what unscrupulous crooks the websites are that the spam is for.  For an example, check out the comments of this post:

http://www.netsplore.com/PublicPortal/blog.aspx?EntryID=51

So spammers, if you want your little ads turned ugly on you, keep it up!  Or, leave my site alone.

I just recently wrote a Code Project article (my first) on how to rotate text in a browser.  My solution involves creating an HttpHandler with ASP.NET that generates a dynamic image from the text and streams it to the browser.  You can read all the details at Code Project here:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/TextToImageWithRotation.aspx

Controlling Collation Order On DB2/400

I recently had the need to control collation order on DB2/400.  Essentially I had a multi-column data grid on a web page and one of the columns contained data that was alphanumeric.  The data in the data grid was ordered on this column.  By default, on DB2/400 the collation order for sorting the table I was querying is determined by the hexadecimal EBCDIC value.  This caused letters to come before numbers like this:

Specifying the QAQQINI Library For the OLEDB IBMDA400 Provider

I recently needed to modify the IGNORE_DERIVED_INDEX setting in the QAQQINI file for my ASP.NET web site.  I didn't want the change I needed to affect any other applications though.  There doesn't seem to be much on the internet telling anyone how to do this, but I finally found a way to do it through the database connection string.

You can add a "QUERY OPTIONS FILE LIBRARY=mylibrary" section to your IBMDA400 connection string to specify the library from which the QAQQINI file should be read.  This allows you to have very granular control over which QAQQINI file is used for any particular database connection.  This allowed me to have a QAQQINI file specifically for my application.

You should be aware though that there was a bug preventing this from working in some versions.  You can read more about it here:

Consuming a RESTful Web Service Using HTTP POST from .NET

I recently had the need to consume a RESTful web service with .NET.  What made this less typical than most articles I found on the internet is that instead of retrieving data with the web service via an HTTP GET, I needed to send data with the web service via an HTTP POST.  I didn't see anyone doing that.

So this blog post is here for three purposes.  First, it is here to help others needing to call any RESTful web service from .NET using an HTTP POST.  Second, it is here so that next time I need to do it, I can find it quickly.  Third, anyone else needing to consume the specific Taxcient web service that I was consuming may find this a helpful starting point.

The web service I needed to call is hosted by a company named Taxcient.  Their web service allows me to pass customer data to it using an HTTP POST.  Here is the b ...

ASP.NET MVC

This is just a test.

Problems Caused by User Agent String Too Long

I recently had something happen to my machine that has caused me all sorts of havoc.  There are many symptoms of the same problem.  This all seems to have begun after a Windows security update (KB958687) was installed on my machine.  Interestingly, even after uninstalling that update, I still have the problem.  I haven't fully researched why that update caused this to happen, so maybe the update isn't exactly the culprit, but at this time, I believe it is.

Part of what made this so difficult to resolve is that there are so many symptoms of the problem.  With so many symptoms, there are many vectors to research that are so vague, it is difficult to isolate the actual problem.

I will begin with the symptoms I had in the order that may make it most easy to identify.

1.  The About box in Internet Explorer (IE, IE6, ...

- Solving the Problem No One Seems to Care About

I subtitled this post with the tongue-in-cheek phrase "Solving the Problem No One Seems to Care About" because I recently discovered what I would consider to be a flaw in the design of ASP.NET user controls, but I seem to be the only one who cares.

The flaw is that there is no HTML emitted for an ASP.NET user control.  Don't be mislead by my previous statement though.  Certainly the contents of the user control are emitted, but if your user control contains nothing, there will be no HTML emitted by it.  Here is some example ASP.NET markup for a page:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"  CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %& ...

As many times as I have googled DB2 and .NET topics and never recall a hit at this forum certainly qualifies it as a secret in my book:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=467