Tips and tricks in C# .NET
March 24, 2015 1 Comment
The BitConverter class has a static GetBytes method that has overloads to accepts all the primitive types in C#: int, long, uint, char, bool, ulong, double, float, short, ushort. The method returns the byte array representation if the supplied primitive type.
Here comes an example:
private static void ReadByteArrayFromTypes()
{
int value = 15;
byte[] bytesOfValue = BitConverter.GetBytes(value);
}
March 23, 2015 2 Comments
Introduction
In the previous post of this series we quickly looked at what a massively parallel processing database is. We also launched our first Amazon RedShift cluster.
In this post we’ll connect to the master node and start issuing Postgresql commands.
If you don’t have any RedShift cluster available at this point then you can follow the steps in the previous post so that you can try the example code.
Connecting to RedShift
March 20, 2015 2 Comments
In this post we saw how to extract system-level information using the Environment class in .NET. Another group of methods and properties of the Environment class lets you easily extract directory level information. Here come a couple of examples.
Here’s how to find the directory that the application is currently running in:
string currentDirectory = Environment.CurrentDirectory;
If you call the above method from a .NET app in Visual Studio then this will point to the deploy folder configured for the project, e.g. “C:\TestProjects\VariousCSharpLanguageConstructs\Various\Various\bin\Debug”
The GetFolderPath method accepts an Environment.SpecialFolder enumeration. Using this method will help you easily get a full file path reference to some well-known Windows folders like the MyDocuments folder:
string myDocumentsFolder = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments); string startMenuFolder = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.StartMenu); string userProfileFolder = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.UserProfile);
It’s worth exploring the SpecialFolder enumeration and see what’s available there using IntelliSense.
Finally here’s how to find the location of the System directory:
string systemDirectory = Environment.SystemDirectory;
In my case it’s c:\Windows\system32
View all posts related to diagnostics here.
March 19, 2015 5 Comments
Introduction
In the previous post we went through Amazon RedShift at an introductory level. In general we can say that it is a highly efficient data storage and data mining tool especially suited for Big Data scenarios. However, it also comes with serious limitations regarding the available Postgresql language features.
In this post we’ll first summarise an important term in conjunction with RedShift: MPP. We’ll then go on and create our first database in the RedShift GUI.
March 18, 2015 1 Comment
In the previous post we looked at some more values in the NumberStyles enumeration. In this finishing post we’ll look at some more compact enumeration values and how you can pass in your own number format provider for customised and culture-independent solutions.
We’ve seen that you can combine the NumberStyles enumeration values like here:
string rawNumber = "$(14)"; int parsedNumber = int.Parse(rawNumber, NumberStyles.AllowParentheses | NumberStyles.AllowCurrencySymbol);
March 17, 2015 1 Comment
It’s easy to override the mathemtical operators like + or – in C# to build custom operations.
Consider the following simple Rectangle class:
public class Rectangle
{
public Rectangle(int width, int height)
{
Height = height;
Width = width;
}
public int Width
{
get;
set;
}
public int Height
{
get;
set;
}
}
March 16, 2015 3 Comments
Introduction
Amazon RedShift is Amazon’s data warehousing solution and is especially well-suited for Big Data scenarios where petabytes of data must be stored and analysed. It follows a columnar DBMS architecture and it was designed especially for heavy data mining requests.
This is the fifth – and probably for a while the last – installment of a series dedicated to out-of-the-box components built and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) enabling Big Data handling. The components we have looked at so far are the following:
March 13, 2015 1 Comment
In the previous post we looked at some basic usage of the NumberStyles enumeration. The enumeration allows to parse other representations of numeric values.
Occasionally negative numbers are shown with a trailing negative sign like this: “13-“. There’s a solution for that:
string number = "13-"; int parsed = int.Parse(number, NumberStyles.AllowTrailingSign);
“parsed” will be -13 as expected.
March 12, 2015 Leave a comment
Introduction
In the previous post we saw how to start an Amazon EMR cluster and have it execute a Hive script which performs a basic aggregation step.
This post will take up the Big Data thread where we left off at the end of the previous 2 series on the blob storage component Amazon S3 and the NoSql data store DynamoDb. Therefore the pre-requisite of following the code examples in this post is familiarity with what we discussed in those topics.
March 11, 2015 1 Comment
There are a lot of number formats out there depending on the industry we’re looking at. E.g. negative numbers can be represented in several different ways:
…and so on. Accounting, finance and other, highly “numeric” fields will have their own standards to represent numbers. Your application may need to parse all these strings and convert them into proper numeric values. The static Parse method of the numeric classes, like int, double, decimal all accept a NumberStyles enumeration. This enumeration is located in the System.Globalization namespace.
A directory of wonderful thoughts
Web development
Various tidbits
WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TUTORIALS WITH OPEN-SOURCE PROJECTS
ARCHIVED: Bite-size insight on Cyber Security for the not too technical.
Exercises in .NET with Andras Nemes 