A few years ago, I was sitting at a table playing a game of poker with a few colleagues from Microsoft who had all been involved at various times in the development of Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET (WSE). Don Box, Mark Fussell, Kirill Gavrylyuk, and I played the hands while showman extraordinaire Doug Purdy engaged us with...

Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an exceptional programming language and environment. The language has grown out of a need to have a programming language that would allow more business-focused individuals to write programs, but equally support the programming features that developers look for in a product. The...

"This is my favorite book on ADO.NET. The author clearly has an extensive understanding of the subject matter. It is useful not only for expert data access programmers but also for weekend code warriors."
—Glenn Thimmes, Senior Software Engineer, New Dawn Technologies.Formerly Develop Support Engineer (WebData),...

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a groundbreaking approach to writing and executing programs. WF programs are assembled out of resumable program statements called activities, which provide encapsulation of both domainspecific logic and control flow patterns reflective of real-world...

Since the appearance in 1975 of this work, the field of combinatorial algorithms has continued its rapid evolution. We have substantially rewritten several of the chapters in order to take account of theoretical or algorithmic improvements, and to clarify the presentation.

The result has been that a number of speedups,...

Beginning SQL Server...

The jQuery library has become increasingly popular with web application developers because of its simplicity and ease of use. The library is supported by an active community of developers and has grown significantly over the years after its inception in 2006 by John Resig. Using this library eases complicated tasks and adds to the interactive...

Geospatial mapping applications have become hugely popular in recent years. With smart-phone and tablet numbers snow-balling this trend looks set to continue well into the future. Indeed, it is true to say that in today’s mobile world location-aware apps are becoming the norm rather than the exception. 

In...