I have had an odd request and just cant find any info on how (or even if) this can be done. I am using the wpf toolkit charting controls to create a column chart. This bit is simple enough but what about showing columns in columns. The data i am using is like this: Group - GroupName - Strength - GroupItems() GroupItem - ItemName - ItemStrength So i have an observble collection of 'Groups' which is the itemsource for my column chart using the groupname as the independent and the Strength as the dependent. This works fine. What you can see though is that each group also has a collection of 'GroupItems' (there can be 2 to 5 of these per group). What i would like is that within the outline of the 'Group' column i can see the columns for the 'GroupItems' that belong to that group. Is this even possible?

I am just doing some testing with RIA services for a new app. Most of the fields have validation so i thought the validation attributes in RIA services would work well. The app involves taking user input and creating an xml file that validates against an xsd. The xsd specifies regular expressions to validate some of the fields so i thought i could copy them and use them as regularexpression attributes in RIA services but its not working. For example according to the info i was given this regex: ([A-Z0-9\(\)\-/'&]+)|([A-Z0-9\(\)\-/'&][A-Z 0-9\(\)\-/'&]*[A-Z0-9\(\)\-/'&]) should allow upper case alpha and numbers plus some specific characters but when tested it alows either upper or lower case alpha. any ideas on why its not working or what it actually breaks down to. Jon

What you are looking for is a cursor (at least if you are using sql server). cursors allow you to iterate through a set of results returned by a select statement and perform any number of sql actions on each iteration. Be careful though as SQL is designed for Set based actions not iterative procedures so the performance overhead against a properly designed query (if one would be possible for what you want to do) is huge. Just google for 'SQL Cursor' and you should find what you want. Jonathan

Its really weird sometimes the way these interviews go. Only a couple of months back i had a phone interview for a dotnet dev position (i didn't know at the time it would be about 80% asp.net stuff) and they asked me a load of questions about the dotnet framework, ASP.NET, SQL Server and application design. I did really well on everything apart from the ASP stuff which i totally messed up (as i don't really do web dev). They offered me the job (and a really good salary)and it wasnt just a dev position but a lead position. You can imagine my jaw hit the floor. Turns out what was more important to them was was someone with a sound knowledge of the framework, good SQL skills and most importantly good OO design skills to take some of their desktop and older ASP.NET apps forward. After much deliberation i turned them down. The role just seemed way too much for me. Jon

I voted you a 5 because there is a very obvious trend developing (particularly over the past 12 months) and it is seriously devaluing the site. I used to use CP a lot and post frequently but haven't done so for several months. I start using it again and i am amazed by the number of totally pointless articles being posted. The first thing i do on CP is look at the latest articles. Did you know it is now common to see 2 or 3 articles by a single developer appear in one day? I do take the time to have a look at most of them and have reported several in the past couple of weeks that have since been removed. Yes they are (without exception so far) from Indian or Pakistan contributors. There always has been some great stuff on CP but it seems to me that the vast majority of new postings probably should be deleted. Jon

I never knew about that bug. I have a few tests of String.IsNullOrEmpty in a VB app that has been live on a customers site for about 6 months and never had a problem. Jon

SE W880i I really like the way it can stream music to a bluetooth stereo headset. Unfortunately like most SE phones it is plagued by software problems. I have only had it 2 months and it just arrived back from the vodafone repair center this morning after having a firmware update. i dont know if it will have actually fixed the problem it went back for but i can but hope. Jon

At the moment XNA game studio express just works with C#. There is no technical reason why you cant use the XNA framework with VB.NET because XNA is basically just an extension of the dotnet 2 runtime. The things you will be missing most using VB.NET is the game templates but as long as you add the correct references to your VB project you should still be able to use XNA. I will just add a slight correction to what i have just said. It applies to XNA dev for the PC only. VB.NEt automatically adds references to the microsoft.visualbasic namespace which is not available on the 360. The link below should provide all the info you need. http://www.alanphipps.com/VisualBasicdotNET-XNA.html[^] Jon

It could be they feel you are just too damn useful to be going away for three days. Jon

Am i correct in thinking Application_contact is a field name and AC.[text] is the text within a textbox named AC? If i am correct then the SQL code is wrong. This part

Ronak085 wrote:

VALUES (AC.[text])

will do nothing. For example if you wanted to insert the text 'AC.[text]' then the code would need to look like: VALUES ('AC.[text]') (note a string literal must be enclosed '') if AC.[text] is a variable (which i think it is) it needs to be: VALUES ( '" & AC.[text] & "') string variables must be enclosed '" & & "' Numerics are " & & " and with Access dates are #" & & "# #EDIT# And before anyone else nags me about it. I know parameterized queries are better. Jon

I see it now. Its not on any of the menu's though. Its also empty. I guess there aren't a lot of CP ers interested in games. I might write the first article for it. It might spark a bit of interest. Jon

How about a forum or at least a survey to get an idea of how many people are using XNA. I havent noticed any articles using XNA but i guess there must be a few people using it. Jon

If you were using directX i would have suggested having a look at XNA. Its for games programming really but it should be quite good for any 3D application. In fact i would probably suggest you at least have a look at anyway. Jon

No, You cant do it that way. The way your SQL is structured the subquery is in effect a single field. you cant just put several values into one field. I see what you are trying to do but i dont think there is a way to do it with a single SQL statement (although i may be wrong about that).

The message relates to the subquery. In this example the subquery can only return one row. I would run the subquery only and see how many rows it is returning. If it returns more than one then you have a problem Jon

If i was staying in the industry then i wouldn't have bothered (even though a degree helps if you want to move into management or the higher paying jobs) but a degree is the base requirement for teaching in the UK so i didn't have much choice. Jon

Mainly VB.NET but also some VB6 (going back to VB6 gets a bit confusing), more and more C# these days also which is good, TSQL and PLSQL (swapping between those two really messes me up). I can also do XHTML and CSS but i am not very artsy so whatever i do in XHTML might be technically correct but it still looks like crap.:^) Jon

Probably. I recently went back to college. Although i have been in the industry for years i felt i was at a bit of a disadvantage not having a degree, especially since i want to go into teaching. The degree course i am doing can lead to 5 different awards based on your choice of final year modules. Its probably quite sensible really as it allows you to specialize in the final year (Which most degrees do anyway) but the name of the award you get is a bit more relevant to what you actually studied. We don't have a BSc in Web Development but there is one for Internet and Multimedia. My final year is made up of mainly modules covering database development, application development, systems analysis and methodologies etc so i will get a BSc (hons) in Computing and Information Technology. others could be more Networking or classic CS based. Jon

Sony Ericsson make some great phones but they do always seem to have issues. I used to have a W800i walkman phone that you just couldnt get any music on. The file transfer was totally unreliable. This was a common fault that SE said would be fixed in the next firmware update etc but it never was. Now i have a W880i and the file transfer system is totally different (you have to set the phone to file-transfer mode) so there obviously was a problem with the system used in the earlier phones. Unfortunately this one keeps turning itself off. SE say firmware update again. Yep, heard it all before

Thats not as bad an idea as some people may think. Back in college (a fair few years ago) we took the casing of a drive to see how sensitive it was (after being told all the bull about a grain of dust screwing the whole drive etc). In reality its almost impossible to cause a head crash by pulling the power (the arm swings back to park so fast) and we had to physically gouge one of the platters before it failed to read/write (a few scratches didnt make to much difference). Jon