#1: Believe in your team’s objectives

Do you believe in what you want the team to accomplish? Do you think your goals are realistic? If not, rethink your position, because your team will sense your uncertainty. You may say the right words, but your body language and overall demeanor will give you away. On the other hand, if you truly are dedicated and believe in your goals, your team will sense it and will react accordingly.

#2: Model the behavior you want from the team

Don’t be a hypocrite — lead by example. You want your team to interact courteously and professionally with others, but do you do so yourself? If you ask them to put in extra hours, are you there along with them? Country artist Rodney Atkins sings about how one day, his four-year-old son said “a four-letter word,” but how later that night, all by himself he got on his knees and prayed. What did the son say when asked about how he learned to do both things? “I’ve been watchin’ you.”

#3: Keep a positive attitude

Don’t laugh. If you have these attitudes, how do you think your team will react? If you model a negative attitude, your team will pick it up. I know it sounds trite, but try to stay upbeat.

Doing so doesn’t mean being unrealistic. It does mean, however, that you try to look at the glass as being half full rather than half empty. Instead of saying, for example, “This project will never succeed because of issues 1, 2, and 3,” consider saying, “If we want this project to succeed, it’s critical that we resolve issues 1, 2, and 3.”

#4: Be clear about your goals

It’s hard for your team to accomplish its goals if those goals are unclear or unknown to them. More important, it’s hard to get them even to agree with those goals if they don’t know what they are. Make sure your team knows what you are expecting of them. If you can quantify your goals so that you can measure how well you did compared to what you expected, so much the better.

#5: Get feedback from the team members

Unless you hear from your team members, you may have little or no idea of how effective or clear you are. Few of us enjoy hearing bad news or criticism, but if there’s a problem in what we’re doing, it’s important that we hear it.

When discussing issues with the team, don’t shoot the messenger. When listening to a team member, try to separate the message and issue from the person. Similarly, when someone is offering suggestions or discussing issues, try to separate your own self and ego from the discussion. If you do shoot the messenger, all you will have done is make your team even more reluctant to talk frankly with you in the future.

#6: Set expectations

Make sure your team knows what to expect of you. If they do, there’s less chance that they’ll be unpleasantly surprised or disappointed.

Suppose, from the previous point, you had a discussion with a team member, who made a few suggestions. Some of them are workable (so that you could act on them), but others aren’t. Before having this discussion, it would be good to let your team know that while you will listen to them, you may or may not adopt all of their suggestions. One would hope they’d realize this already, but it’s best to be explicit. Furthermore, if you do adopt a suggestion, make sure everyone knows about it.

#7: Avoid mixed messages

Consultant and trainer Robert Mager, in his book Analyzing Performance Problems, discusses the uses of consequences and rewards in shaping human behavior. Specifically, he points out that to encourage desirable behavior, there must be positive rewards for it. Conversely, to discourage undesirable behavior, there must be consequences that result from it. Believe it or not, some people mix up these two points. Have you, as a parent, ever said to your child, “Any time you have problem, you can talk to Mommy or Daddy”? What happens when they do? You become irritated and yell at them, “Come back later! Can’t you see I’m busy?!” If you send similar mixed messages to your staff, you will make it harder for them to act the way you want.

#8: Know the difference between exhorting and belittling

It’s fine and good for you to want greater and higher quality results from your team. However, be aware of the line between exhorting someone to do better and belittling them because they aren’t right now. The latter might work, but the chances are greater that it might only create resentment and turn out to be counterproductive.

A couple of weeks ago, after a rehearsal of the choir I direct, I said to two young men, “I want to see confidence in your eyes when you’re singing.” I didn’t say to them, “You idiots, you don’t know the music.” In other words, in keeping with the positive/negative point discussed earlier, I focused on where I wanted them to be, rather than on the fact that they weren’t there right now.

#9: Correct in private

If personal issues of a team member are becoming a problem, address them with the person in private. Don’t embarrass the person by bringing it up in public. Such issues include attendance and punctuality, dress, and general professionalism.

What about a mistake involving work? Use discretion here. Using the choir example again: Suppose a person has an incorrect rhythm in a measure. I will just take a moment and work it out with that person in front of the group. If he or she gets it, fine. However, if he or she were consistently missing notes and rhythms, I would need to talk privately with that person to see what’s going on.

#10: Praise in public

When someone does something right, you probably are happy and want that person to continue doing it. You also probably want to make that person look good in front of the others, and for the others to be motivated to improve their own performance. For those reasons, recognize good work in public, rather than in private.

Other things being equal, of course, most people would prefer money and praise rather than praise alone. However, praise alone still can motivate, as long as you’re sincere and specific in what you’re praising. Generalities are unhelpful. Rather, focus on the specific action, and how it benefited the group.

In the case of the young men I mentioned earlier, I spoke to them again just a few days ago, after our last rehearsal, which went really well. I said to one of them, “Remember I told you I wanted to see confidence in your eyes? Well, I see it now.” To the other, I said, “You’ve been practicing, right?” When he nodded yes, I continued, “See what a difference it makes?”

The Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 have just gone live at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C8174C14-A27D-4148-BF01-86C2E0953EAB&displaylang=en. If you downloaded a previous version, you might want to upgrade as there have been several bug fixes and improvements made to several of the tools.

What’s New

Many here are likely familiar with Remote Performance Monitor which shipped as a part of .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP1 and the Heap Viewer extension that shipped 2.0 SP2. This time we’ve added the CLR Profiler based on the desktop tool, NetCF SVCUtil for making it easy to consume WCF services on device, and the App Config tool for creating config files on the fly. We’ve improved our remote tools platform to make it significantly easier to use: client side tools components now deploy automatically so tools “just work”, everything works with emulators and a common device manager UI is provided to keep tabs on all your remote devices.

Comprehensive documentation for the tools is now also provided out of the box in the form of a chm file.

The Tools

NETCF CLR Profiler – CLR Profiler is an instrumenting allocation profiler for NETCF applications. It provides detailed allocation visualizations, allocation callstacks and other views of the managed heap for diagnosing various memory management issues.

NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Tool – The .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool (netcfsvcutil.exe) allows you to generate a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client proxy to help developers consume WCF services on device. Like svcutil.exe, which is the desktop version of the utility, netcfsvcutil.exe is a command-line tool that generates service model code from metadata documents and generates metadata documents from service model code.

App Configuration Tool - On-device tool for specifying what version of NETCF an application will run against (ie. Create config file), displaying installed versions of NETCF and displaying info about DLLs in the GAC.

Remote Logging Configuration Tool– The Logging Configuration Tool enables users to easily configure logging options on a NETCF device including: loader, interop, network, error and finalizer logs. (used to be a part of RPM)

Remote Performance Monitor and GC Heap Viewer – Provides real time counter data (ranging from Garbage Collector activity to type loading info) on a running NETCF application. The GC Heap Viewer feature allows you to capture the managed heap at any moment your app is running to view live references, and allows you to compare multiple snapshots to find memory leaks.

NETCF Network Log Viewer – A utility for viewing NETCF network log data.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) is a rollup of the hotfixes and updates released since the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). It does not include any new features.

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 supports the same product key range available in the SP2c release. System builders who updated their images with SP2c will not have to re-image in order for the product keys on SP3 Certificates of Authenticity (COAs) to install the software successfully.

2. No extended product key range is available for Microsoft Windows XP Home and Starter editions. These two products will not have the product key range extended with this release. You can continue to use existing images without any issues.

3. No integrated SP3 release is available for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition or Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. The SP3 releases for these products will be available only through Windows Update.

http://oem.microsof t.com/script/ ContentPage. aspx?pageid= 564232&wa=wsignin1. 0

Formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna is the successor of Windows Vista. Windows 7 is expected to be released sometime in 2010

Windows 7 (formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna) is the working name for the next major version of Microsoft Windows as the successor of Windows Vista.[1] Microsoft has announced that it is "scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year timeframe", and that "the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar."[2] Windows 7 is expected to be released sometime in 2010.[3] The client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.[2] A server variant, codenamed Windows Server 7, is also under development.

Fill a String with Repeating Characters:

To fill a string with repeating characters, use the string class constructor. For example, to fill a string with twenty asterisks:

string s = new string( '*', 20 );

Check for Blank String:

A blank string can be represented by a null reference or empty string (String.Empty or ""). If you attempt to call a method on a null string, an exception will occur. Hence, to check for a blank string, you should use the new .NET v2.0 static function String.IsNullOrEmpty:

String.IsNullOrEmpty( s )

Reverse a String:

There has been extensive analysis on algorithms to reverse a string. The following is a good balance between speed and clarity and works well with Unicode and alternate character sets:

static public string Reverse( string s )
{
   char[] charArray = s.ToCharArray();
   Array.Reverse( charArray );
   return new string( charArray );

}

Compare Strings:

Because a string reference can be null, you should avoid using the equality symbol == or the Compare member function when comparing strings. Instead, use the static String.Compare method. This method has the advantage that it can handle null string references, compare strings ignoring case, and compare strings using a specific culture:

if (String.Compare( s1, s2, true ) == 0)

Convert String to Numeric Value:

Each numeric data type such as int, Int32, double, etc. has a static TryParse method that converts a string to that data type without throwing an exception. The method returns a bool whether the string contained a value with the specified data type. For example:

string s = "42″;
int i;
int.TryParse( s, out i );

String Right:

Noticeably absent from the string class is the Right method. But you can replicate it easily using the Substring method. Here is a simple method that wraps this up nicely:

static string Right( string s, int count )
{
   string newString = String.Empty;
   if (s != null && count > 0)
   {
       int startIndex = s.Length - count;
       if (startIndex > 0)
           newString = s.Substring( startIndex, count );
       else
            newString = s;
   }
   return newString;
}

IndexOf Ignoring Case:

The string's IndexOf methods are all case-sensitive. Fortunately, the Globalization namespace contains the CompareInfo class that includes a case-insensitive IndexOf method. For example:

using System.Globalization;

string s1 = "C# is a GREAT programming language.";
string s2 = "great";

CompareInfo Compare = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.CompareInfo;
int i = Compare.IndexOf( s1, s2, CompareOptions.IgnoreCase );

Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).

We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the beta here.

SQL Prompt now has automatic code layout for easy code readability. No more eye-strain viewing unfamiliar scripts.

Combined with SQL Prompt parsing your queries as you type and suggesting keywords, table names, and join conditions (amongst others), writing and editing queries just got even easier.

Below shows some code before and after layout - the formatting can be customized to your own preferred style if desired.

Find out more about SQL Prompt Pro or try it for yourself.

Convert .NET data types using Parse and TryParse

All base types in .NET Framework offer Parse method which is used to convert string value to different types. For example, you can convert string into int, double, short, float, boolean etc. Parse methods are very useful because programmers don’t need to write any of their own conversion routines for common input scenarios. However, these methods also have some problems which programmers must need to keep in mind when they are writing their code which is using Parse methods.

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