Welcome to the portfolio of Michael Stark
I have created this site to showcase various technologies that you may find
useful and interesting. The selections here are not the total embodiment of all
my skills but highlight my implementation of the latest technologies.
The visual results of some of the demonstrations may seem simple, but the underlying technology is
complex. The benefit lies in the technology underneath the examples. The benefits
include easy implementations to easy maintainability.
These samples use the latest technology from Microsoft.
Silverlight, SQLServer 2008, .Net 4 sp1, ASP.net, and Infragistics.
Spatial Capabilities of SQLServer 2008
VirtualEarth or maps.live.com offers a very robust and friendly mapping experience for web users. Microsoft has an SDK available for adding maps on your webpages. You can add pushpin layers to you maps using an
XML file in georss format.
SQLServer has 2 new datatypes in the 2008 version.
The two new
types are Geometry and Geography. Geometry is for flat geometry and Geography brings in the shape of the earth which is generally not flat. With these two datatype come built in functions that are very useful.
These functions replace what was many lines of intricate code to create the same functionality. One of the functions used in the example is STDistance which returns the distance from a provided point on the globe to the point in the row on the table in the database.
Bring the two together.
As mentioned at the top, you can load pushpins into VirtualEarth with an XML file and we can find geographic locations in the SQLServer 2008 database. Now, the demonstration I provide here creates the XML file on the fly. I use an httpHandler to intercept
the javascripts' request for the xml file. The handler then makes the call to the database using the geo coordinates of the zipcode and the new SQLServer 2008 functions to return the data. The handler then formats it in the proper XML format so the javascript never knew what happened.
Smart Search Box
Smart Search is a text box that retrieves from a database as the user types. This is handy because the user knows things exist before waiting for the full search to return.
Smart Search is an extention of the AJAX toolkit. I have added a call to a webservice that queries the database based upon the content of the textbox.
List View feature of .Net4
List View is a new control included in .Net 4. While it can be similar to the gridview it is much more extensible and customizable. In the example, I have the listview listing 3 columns of information. Each cell contains the information that would be on a single row in a gridview.