Customizing Report Manager Home Page

Customizing Report Manager Home Page 

Reporting Services provides default cascading style sheets (.css) files that define styles for the report toolbar in HTML Viewer and for Report Manager’s homepage. In this post we are going to modify the default styles to change the colours, fonts, and layout of the tool bar or Report Manager.

Simple ASP.NET MVC 4 explanation

This post is mainly to assist developers to understand how ASP.NET MVC 4 works and how it fits together to create one AWESOME solution.

I was sceptic at first about ASP.NET MVC (coming from a drag drop ASP.NET Web Forms background) and thought it was just another way of trying to complicate the life of a developer until I started researching ASP.NET MVC.

This example project does not have any fancy styling, I want to put more focus on the MVC.

Each section contain examples on how to get your MVC project up and running as fast as possible.

The topics covered in this post:

• Starting your project
• Models
• Views
• Controllers
• How ASP.NET MVC makes your life easier

New Virtual Labs for Power BI and SQL Server 2014

I am sure I am not the only one with the dilemma of testing out the new functionality released in the latest versions of the Microsoft SQL Server Stack.

Many times I don`t have the Software handy or I simply don`t have the time/space/willpower to install and configure the toolsets required. 

In comes the Microsoft TechNet Virtual Labs. 

Phone 8 & Azure Mobile Services - Toast Notifications

Plugging in notification services for Windows8, using azure was easy. So it should be the same for phone 8 right? Well we were wrong. A day later we got it waxed, but for the life of me i cant figure out why it has to be like this - perhaps i missed something.

Performance on large tables

Data volumes are exploding in every business where a Database or BI professional might find himself. Subsequently data warehouse and decision support systems to keep up with this growth,  and are expected to perform at the same levels while offering even deeper insights into what the data is actually saying.

ToExcel() Extension Method

I recently had a migraine inducing problem where I needed to save an object to an Excel file which, at first glance I thought would be something easy and simple to do... However Nu-Get's Excel libraries are not as abundant as one would think. After doing some research I finally found a library worth its salt, presenting ExtremeML.

ASP.NET Web API <#= Proxy to T4 #>

One of the coolest new features of ASP.NET is Web API, which allows you to build powerful RESTful services exposed over HTTP. HTTP is not just for serving up web pages, but it provides a platform for building APIs that expose services and data. It is simple, flexible, and ubiquitous.

ASP.NET Web API is all about REST HTTP Services. Unlike Web Services, it does not expose an end-point for meta-data exchange. When consuming a HTTP Service, you will have to create your own client-side code that must serve as a proxy for interfacing with the API.

Like any other WCF junkie out there, I've been working with Windows Communication Foundation for quite some time now implementing Web Services. Not only is it flexible and extensible, but it offers inter-operability, multiple message patterns, transactions and  meta-data exchange etc.

The nice thing about WCF is meta-data exchange, which allows you to generate the client-side proxy-code, contracts and classes used for talking to the service. On the other hand, ASP.NET Web API is more light-weight, operates only via HTTP and is used more for serving CRUD-based operations. The latter, however, does not have functionality (yet) for exposing service meta-data. Until now...