One of the interesting features of C# is the ability to add custom user controls to your forms. If you have some specific functionality centered around a group of form controls that you use repeatedly, you can save it as a custom control in a class library and then add it to other applications. This…
Using JavaScript with ASP.NET
Why Use JavaScript? There are a few technologies that you must be comfortable with if you want to do any serious web development. HTML for content, CSS for formatting and JavaScript for dynamic programming are recognized as the three foundation skills that any good web designer needs. ASP.NET programmers might be tempted to do away…
My Virtual Vacation and Free Stuff
Summer vacation has mercifully arrived for me and my students. Unlike many teachers, I’m at the school through most of the Summer. My students get three weeks off – I get one week followed by a couple weeks of what will essentially be teacher workdays. Judging from the sympathetic looks I was getting from other…
The Accidental Teacher
The following is the text from my speech to the Ocala Early Bird Toastmasters on May 19, 2018. My name is Andrew Comeau and I am … a public school teacher? I say it that way because It’s been a study in irony for me. If you told me just a couple years ago that…
How to Convert Between Roman and Arabic Numerals in C#
The Challenge My latest challenge to my database programming students was to create a C# class that would perform various number conversions, starting with Arabic numbers (0 to 3999) to Roman numerals and vice versa. I required that all public functions in the class needed to be declared as static, so that they could be…
How to Create Lookup Fields in C#
I started my (more or less) serious database development training many years ago in Microsoft Access. One of my favorite controls was the Combo Box, a nice little drop-down field that enabled the user to select one of many values but collapsed down onto a single line. The Combo Box control in Access was very…
How to Retrieve Data from SQL Server into C#
The .NET framework has a few different automated methods for managing connections to SQL Server and other databases. The framework has been around since 2003 and various versions have introduced new, improved data management tools while maintaining the old ones for backward compatibility. It’s still possible, however to retrieve data from SQL Server and other…
How to Convert Between Decimal and Binary in T-SQL
For the past six months, I’ve been teaching night classes in database programming and my students are just about ready to take Microsoft’s 98-364 exam. Now, we’re transitioning over to C# programming for the next phase of the program but I have to keep their SQL skills fresh for the exam. Tonight, it was time to…
Performing a Basic Install of MySQL or MariaDB in Windows
One of the great things about MySQL and MariaDB are their versatility of installation. They can be setup as a Windows services and trimmed out with some extra utilities or it can be installed on a flash drive as a portable server. The easiest installation is certainly the Windows Installer with a wizard for MySQL…
Unplugging to Reconnect – The Technology Sabbath
It Started With a Game … By now, you’re probably familiar with Pokemon Go, the game where people search for Pokemon characters around town with their smartphones. In 2015, I played a forerunner of this game called Ingress. The basic idea was the same – run around town accessing game spots, collect digital items, compete with…