Developing with the .Net Framework quite often we have to sign our assemblies and sometimes it could be nice also to know the Public Key Token from our own signed assembly.

To do that we have to use the “sn.exe” utility, provided with the .Net Framework and located usually in “the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\vX.XX\Bin\" folder. The problem is that we have to use the command prompt (the one provided with Visual Studio not the normal one), add some parameters to the command line and this is, I know, something that a lot of people won’t really like it (me too actually). It’s not our fault, but Visual Studio really spoiled us so why don’t try to find another way to read the Public Key Token of a signed assembly from inside the IDE?

Not so a big deal. A couple of step and we can do it. I think all the developers used at least once the “Tools” menu’ inside Visual Studio. Quite close to the bottom of this menu’ list, there is a link that allow us to customize the tools listed in our own menu’: the “External Tools…” one.

Clicking on this Visual Studio will open a new window like the one showed in the following picture and it will allow us to enter our data to set up the new link that we want to add to menu:

As shown in the picture, the more important data are the arguments:

• -T: ask the sn utility to actually display the token
• $(TargetDir)$(TargetName)$(TargetExt): the Visual Studio variables that will point to our project output
• enable the check “Use Output window” to enable Visual Studio to show the output result from the command in the output window

And we done it!

Now we can develop our own signed assemblies and we could expect a result like this after invoking our new link:

I found a very interesting blog post in which the author collect a series of posts and data about how the .Net Entity Framework Designer use the public API in the System.Data.Entity.Design assembly.

I think it’s useful to stick it also here.

Check it out: Model and Code Generation Uncovered

PHP.. a lot of time that I don’t use it.. and still one of the simplest platform for an easy web develop.

And now is also more integrated in .Net environment and IIS.. this link is a very good collection of resources:

The Daily WTF: PHP on Windows

I like the HOL (Hands on Labs). I really find them useful to introduce or to help delving into technologies or tools. And this time they just released the HOL on something really interesting, at least for me:

HOL Enterprise Library 4.1

HOL Unity App Block 1.2

At least some good stuff instead the last bad news from Microsoft (like the Live Labs closed and so on.. :( ).

I need to stick these link cause now I don't have enough spare time to see them.

And maybe this post can be useful for other people:

Microsoft Sync Framework 101 Samples 

.Net 3.5 Framework SP1 and training kit

I think this is a very nice example of an open source project that can help to better understand the features that come with the new Asp.Net and the new 3.5 Framework.

On this blog, the author, explain better all the project.

So.. check it out. ;)

Asp.Net 3.5 Open source portal

I found some nice and interesting free resources about the new very interesting features of Asp.Net 3.5.

Here are four free chapters of the book "Asp.Net 3.5 for Dummies".

Ok.. Sometimes I did it. Sometimes, especially now that I'm a novice working with WCF, studying all the sample code and trying to develop my first services, I found some problem consuming some resources, and to solve then I gave the administrator's permission to the service (or the host application).

In this article he explain to us why it's not so good to do it, and how to configure well our WCF services.

But not only the article is good. I think that all this blog can be useful like WCF's resource..

I'm studying this new technologies (mainly WCF), so I think this collection of source code can help me.

I hope it.. and in everycase this is the link