Author Archives: Josh

Azure Functions & .NET 5 – State of Play

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Josh

.NET 5 was released on November 10th 2020 and contains features (specifically C#9 support and thus Record Types) that we were keen to use in our products at Matchnet. As we’re heavily based on Azure Functions, I was happy to … Continue reading →

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Referencing a .NET assembly in a compile time safe manner

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Josh

If you need to provide a System.Reflection.Assembly instance to an API [1], there are several mechanisms for doing so. They roughly split into two camps: Run-time assembly loading Assemblies known at compile time The run-time assembly loading includes scenarios such … Continue reading →

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Entity Framework Performance Tip for Creating Entities

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Josh

This tip is applicable if you’re using Entity Framework Code First with dynamic proxies and you have a lot of objects attached to your context, for whatever reason (e.g. within a batch job). The first thing to note is that … Continue reading →

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Tightening Injected Dependencies on Entity Framework

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Josh

Dependency injection as a pattern provides a lot of useful nudges to get you to produce easily readable and maintainable code. One way in which it does this is to make dependencies explicit so you can see exactly what services a … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, laZook | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

laZook Microstore

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Josh

Six months ago I joined a team working on a new start-up called laZook. It’s an online distributor, providing brands with a single route to many existing eCommerce channels and some that we’re helping to develop from scratch. We handle … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, laZook, Personal | Leave a comment

Quartz.net persistent job store LAST_MODIFIED_TIME issue

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Josh

I’m playing around with Quartz.net and adding support for a persistent job store via the ADO.NET Job Store. As per the recommendation, I’m instructing the job store to persist job parameters in plain text rather than BLOBs, using the configuration: <add key=”quartz.jobStore.useProperties” … Continue reading →

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Installing Balanced Data Distributor on SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Josh

Edit: This post refers to an older version of the BDD installer. As per JasonH’s comment below, Microsoft has released a new installation package which should hopefully fix the installation bug. It can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4123 Original post: Microsoft’s Balanced Data … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, SQL Server | 12 Comments

Deploying ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor – Missing System.Web.Helpers (and others)

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Josh

Last week I was racing against time to complete a QA deployment of an ASP.NET MVC 3 application that uses the Razor view engine. The deployment was to a clean Windows Server 2008 R2 box. I had already completed the … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Syncing Visual Studio Database Project With Entity Framework

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Josh

Or: Quirks of Using Entity Designer Database Generation Power Pack If you’re searching for a way to synchronise a “Visual Studio Database Project” (also known as “SQL Server Database Project” or “TSData Project”) with an Entity Framework model, you’ve probably … Continue reading →

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New UK Electricity Pylons?

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Josh

This video on new pylon designs misses the option of putting the cables underground (or underwater) instead. This would have a higher up front cost but lead to much better looking countryside and probably lower total cost of ownership. The lower total … Continue reading →

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