Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

Love it or hate it, XML is everywhere and for data and objects, it can be extremely useful. On one of my last projects, a colleague introduced me to the useful XSD2Code project, which creates a .Net object from an XSD. This made it easy for him to build a structure that could be compiled into code to ensure everyone followed the same structure. This is extremely valuable if someone gives you an XSD as a format to write to and you want to populate it using an object. In a more recent project, we needed to share details from a component with another calling application via a web service. Enter XMLSerializer, the .Net equivalent of taking an object and dumping it into XML. Dim s As XmlSerializer = New XmlSerializer(Object) Dim w As New StringWriter() s.Serialize(w, Object) return w.tostring Sounds great, right? It was for a short time, but as the object got bigger, it contained more collections and references to other objects. Eventually, the Serialize method took up 100% of

Here's an innovative way to show your customers where certain features are at in the development cycle. FreeAgent Depot — A furtive glance behind the wizard's curtain How well do you communicate with your clients about upcoming features?