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.NET 1.1 Service Pack 1 available for download

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 available for download.

The primary focus of Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is improved security. In addition, the service pack includes roll-ups of all reported customer issues found after the release of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1. Of particular note, SP1 provides better support for consuming WSDL documents, Data Execution prevention and protection from security issues such as buffer overruns.

SP1 also provides support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 to provide a safer, more reliable experience for customers using Windows XP.

SP1 is available in 22 languages

Update; looks like Microsoft has a busy day as they have posted some more .NET updates:

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3:

The primary focus of Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3 (SP3) is improved security. In addition, the service pack includes roll-ups of all reported customer issues found after the release of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0. Of particular note, SP3 provides better support for consuming WSDL documents, Data Execution prevention and protection from security issues such as buffer overruns.

SP3 also provides support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 to provide a safer, more reliable experience for customers using Windows XP.

SP3 is available in 23 languages

 

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 is also avaialable for download.

I will give it a try tomorrow on my laptop (Win 2k3 Server) and a few non-production environments.

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Real World WebServices book online

This looks like a pretty good introduction to Web Services in general and Web Services in .NET in particular. Plenty of examples like in any good dev book. I would have preffered C# examples but the intended audience are the ASP, VB 6, VB.NET developers so the examples are in are VB.NET.

Yasser Shohoud  has put the Real World WebServices book and source code online at http://www.learnxmlws.com/book/

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BEA in trouble?

I guess the BEA bosses know something we don't as the management seems to be leaving a sinking ship:

BEA Systems' chief marketing officer and executive vice president has resigned, in the latest of a string of high-level executive departures at the struggling software company.
...
Nielsen's departure is the sixth confirmed executive departure in the past two months from BEA

via news.com

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Selecting a random record from SQL

Today I needed a way to extract a random record from a small table. My first thought was to try something like:

SELECT TOP 1 OfferTitle, OfferDescription, OfferURL
FROM SpecialOffers WITH (NOLOCK)
ORDER BY Rand()

Close but no cigar. It doesn't work as SQL Server evaluates the Rand() function once and uses the same value for all the records.

The trick is to use NewID(). It's slower as the new ID is a GUID but for a few records it's no problem:

SELECT TOP 1 OfferTitle, OfferDescription, OfferURL
FROM SpecialOffers WITH (NOLOCK)
ORDER BY NewID()