An Extensive Examination of LINQ: Introducing LINQ to XML
XML is an increasingly popular way to encode documents, data, and electronic messages. There are a number of ways to programmatically create, modify, and search XML files. Since its inception, the .NET Framework's System.Xml namespace has included classes for programmatically working with XML documents. For instance, the XmlReader and XmlWriter classes offer developers a mean

Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Adding Statistical Formulas
The Microsoft Chart controls make it easy to take data from a database or some other data store and present it as a chart. As discussed in Plotting Chart Data, the Chart controls offer a myriad of ways to get data into a chart. You can add the data programmatically, point-by-point, or you can bind an ADO.NET DataTable directly to the Chart. You can even use declarative data source controls, like the SqlDataSource or ObjectDataSource controls. In addition to converting your specified data points into a chart image, the Chart controls also include a wealth of statistical formulae that you can use to an

Using Transactions with SqlBulkCopy
The SqlBulkCopy class provides a mechanism for efficiently importing large amounts of data into a Microsoft SQL Server database. Compared to importing data by executing one INSERT statement for each record to import, SqlBulkCopy is noticeably faster when importing thousands (or more) records. In a nutshell, importing data using SqlBulkCopy entails creating a SqlBulkCopy object, specifying the destination database and table, and providing the data to import in the form of a DataTable, DataRow, or DataRea

Examining ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 17
Many of the web applications I help build can be classified as in-production line of business applications that receive frequent and ongoing feature enhancements. Typically, these applications have dozens if not hundreds of users who rely on the site each and every day to accomplish tasks necessary to keep the company running smoothly. Every week or so the latest code is deployed to the production servers, bringing with it bug fixes and, very often, new features or changes to existing features. One challenge I've bumped into when working on such applications is how to best alert users of the new features and the changes to existing features? One useful way to announce any impor

Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Creating Drill Down Reports
Each series in a chart is composed of a set of data points, which are modeled via the DataPoint class. For most chart types, the two key attributes of a data point are its X and Y value. For example, in a line chart the X value indicates the position of the data point along the X axis, while the Y value represents the position of the data point along the Y axis. Ditto for a column chart, although it may help to think of the Y value as the height of the column. In addition to X and Y values, data points can include additional bits of information, including an associated URL. As you would expect, when a data point has an associated URL it becomes click-able in the ren