Here's something interesting that I discovered. I decided to switch my client/server PCs so that the host was running on my Win2003 machine and the client was running on my Win7 machine. It worked! I was able to receive messages across the network. So it's something about Windows 7 or my computer that's causing the problem. But what could it be?

I would give the same estimate for a given project regardless of methodology. When I give an estimate, I am essentially saying "I think this will take N days if done using reasonable development techniques." These do not have to be the exact development techniques used previously. Methodologies evolve, and what you're describing is the kind of incremental adjustment in methodology which is assumed to be going on all the time in any good shop. Hopefully you will get faster over time, and the estimating model should always be updated as discrepancies are observed, but there's no immediate need that I perceive for you to adjust it right now. Also, I do not think I have ever seen or heard anyone claiming to use the "waterfall method." It's considered a perjorative term these days, almost like saying "my coding style is spaghetti" or "our team's style is garage hacker." When you say "my estimating technique works for waterfall" you're basically saying it's an estimating model for bad techniques. Finally, I think Agile is much better than waterfall, or (as proponents of Agile might say) it's much better than BDUF (Big Design Up Front). I don't think there's much value anymore to the style (call it waterfall, BDUF, or just mid-90s orthodoxy) in which the architect types spend weeks or months dicking around with object hierarchies, UML, etc. before coding ever starts. That time almost always ends up wasted, in my experience. In the absence of code, the architects don't have any real basis for their decisions. Programming instructors are quite wise when they implore us to use natural language, pencil and paper, diagrams, etc., but I think many of us in the 90s went too far in this direction. Also, I think people attempted to over-formalize good technique. What emerged from this effort was a bunch of simplistic, canned methodologies that isolated "design" into its own step at the beginning of the process, performed by an elite cadre of non-programmers. Hopefully we have left, or are leaving, this era! modified on Thursday, December 4, 2008 4:57 PM

Sorry to revisit an old thread, but I happened to stumble across an article that relates to this topic. According to Microsoft's Design Guidelines for Exceptions: "Do not overuse catch. Exceptions should often be allowed to propagate up the call stack." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229005.aspx Of course, this guideline is in reference to .NET code and not SQL, but it's still good advice.

Well it is generally safe to develop an asp.net application using ajax for IE and firefox. As previsouly said, simply take care of the home made js code from your developers. As an advice, I would also recommend that you split your dev team into 2 parts, one using IE and one using firefox. While not a great project management method (!!), this has proven to reduce the number of problems in projects I've been involved into. ______________________ Dominic Goulet FroggedSoft

There is nothing that will rename variables during the upgrade. It's just too dangerous to the functionality of the code. emunews wrote: I can't be the first developer who's faced this problem. No, but you're going to end up doing what everybody else does and just re-write the code. emunews wrote: I figure that someone somewhere has already written some sort of utility or script that handles changes like this. Not that I've ever seen. A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^] Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP Visual Developer - Visual Basic      2006, 2007, 2008