<select id="myList">
   <option value="0" selected>Select One</option>
   <option value="1">One</option>
   <option value="2">Two</option>
</select>

If you wanted to figure out what the very first element of the drop down was, you could use this line of jQuery to get it.

$('#myList option:first-child')

Suppose that you wanted to update all the selects or dropdown menus on your page to the first item in the list… You could do that by executing this line of jQuery.

$('select option:first-child').attr("selected", "selected");

EF Classes / Model

public class Partner
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [MinLength(5)]
    [MaxLength(300)]
    public String Name { get; set; }

    [Required]
    public int PartnerTypeId { get; set; }
    public PartnerType PartnerType { get; set; }

    public int PartnerSubTypeId { get; set; }
    public PartnerSubType PartnerSubType { get; set; }

}

public class PartnerType
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Required]
    [MaxLength(40)]
    public String Name { get; set; }

    [Required]
    public bool IsActive { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Partner> Partners { get; set; }
}

VIEW

<fieldset>
        <legend>Partner</legend>

        <div class="editor-label">
            @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name)
        </div>
        <div class="editor-field">
            @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name)
            @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name)
        </div>

        <div class="editor-label">
            @Html.LabelFor(model => model.PartnerTypeId)
        </div>
        <div class="editor-field">
            @Html.EditorFor(model => model.PartnerTypeId)
            @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.PartnerTypeId)
        </div>

        <div class="editor-label">
            @Html.LabelFor(model => model.PartnerSubTypeId)
        </div>
        <div class="editor-field">
            @Html.EditorFor(model => model.PartnerSubTypeId)
            @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.PartnerSubTypeId)
        </div>
</fieldset>

Then i found Datejs… What a savior! I started off by reading their blog post titled “Getting Started With Datejs“…. Hopefully you’ll find the tool as useful as I did.

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It wasn’t that many years ago that it seemed like I’d create a new ASP.NET website a few times a week.  Some for rapid prototyping and others for release.  At the time, the applications felt really easy to manage.  That is until they grew and became a beast with all kinds of integration needs.

As soon as you start needing to integrate with other systems, databases, applications, etc. the ability to use namespaces and existing components becomes a requirement.  Without it, your code would become completley unmanageable with a complete lack of reuse of components and functions.  I’m not saying that you can’t maintain some good coding practices within an ASP.NET website, but when the app grows and its being integrated with, I absolutely hate code sprawl.   My philosphy on coding is rather simple:  Code it once so that you can reuse it at least twice.

Obviously not every code block you write will be reused, but say you have a function to get a contact’s name from your CRM system…  It would seem like this is something you’ll do over and over and over again, so code it once, use it at least twice…

With all that said, the need arose to be able to convert these growing ASP.NET websites into ASP.NET Web Applications.  When I got to that point, I was able to find a great resource by Mohamed Meligy on this very topic.

Essentially it comes down to a few steps…

1. Create a new blank solution within Visual Studio
2. Add a new Web Application Project to the newly created solution
3. Import existing website files into newly created Web Application project (overwrite files as needed)
4. Manually add references into the new project that you had in your old website
5. Once all refernces are added, you likely have many namespace errors.  Create the new namespaces as required.
6. Now we need to perform a conversion process on the web application project, right click on the new Web Application Project and select “Convert To Web Application”.  This should fix missinging designer.cs or designer.vb.

The above steps will still keep all of your code within a single project in Visual Studio.  Depending on what the application is, does, etc. you may be better off adding a few different projects to seperate database connectivity, data models, and classes that interact with the DB.

Over the past few years our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database has become our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This system tells our staff everything they need to know about our customers, potential customers, and what activities need to be completed and when. This system is an ASP.NET web application with a SQL database on the back end. In the days leading up to our busy season, we had an Internet outage (thanks to some meth tweakers for digging up some copper!) and only one of our offices had access to our system. At this time, I knew that our business required us to rethink the hosting of our server and services.

After working with various technical partners, we determined we could collocate our existing server in a data center for a mere $400 per month. While this was a workable solution, the only perk this would really provide us was redundant power and internet access which we didn’t have in our primary location. We still had huge redundancy issues with our server in general, and by huge I mean non-existent. In other words, if a hard disk failed, we were SOL until Dell was able to get us a replacement. Since our busy season of work had just begun, I decided that we’d roll the dice and address the concerns in the 1Q of 2012.

Enter Azure

When Azure was announced from Microsoft, I initially brushed off the platform. I found the Azure pricing model way too difficult to comprehend and I really wasn’t willing to spend the hours, weeks, or months trying to put it all together. Things have changed though!

On February 14th, 2012 Microsoft announced that it was reducing the pricing of SQL Azure and I decided to see if I could figure out what that meant. While digging into this, I came across a nice article written by Steven Martin that did a good job explaining the costs.  After reading the article, I decided to evaluate the pricing calculator again.  Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

I could move our entire database to the SQL Azure platform for $9.99 per month!  This would at least handle some of the disaster recovery and scalability concerns.  The only other piece to the puzzle would be our ASP.NET web application.  While I have scalability concerns with that, disaster recovery isn’t really a concern because the data drives the app.  In other words, a Windows PC can running IIS would work until the server is fixed.  But what if the cost wasn’t an issue on the Azure platform?  Would it be worth it?  Five months ago, I couldn’t have told you the cost.  With the updated pricing calculator, I can see that running 2 extra-small instances of our ASP.NET web app will cost $60.00 per month.  VERY AFFORDABLE!

While I’ve not deployed our solutions to Azure yet, it is something that I’ve got on the list to complete within the next 60 days.  Hosting our entire application for less than $70 per month (ok, a penny less… but still!) is amazing!  I’ll write another blog entry once we’ve tested the Azure system out, but very promising!!!!!

What if your database was 30GB?

Obviously something that has so much to give at $99 would be in hot demand. HP sold through their inventory very quickly. Most national and global retailers removed their stock to send back to HP. This left just a few folks whom were selling them through other channels like the re-seller platform through Amazon. On Sunday I came across a tweet alerting folks that the $99 HP TouchPad was available on Amazon. I logged onto Amazon as quickly as I could and ordered 3 of them. Again at the $99 price point, these would offer incredible value and make fantastic gifts. I then decided to pony up the extra coin to have the shipment expedited. After receiving the confirmation emails, etc. from OnSale, the re-seller, I got pretty darn excited.

Normally ordering something on Amazon and selecting next day delivery goes off without a hitch. On Monday, I full expected to see a shipment notification from OnSale. Monday came and went and so did Tuesday and still not shipment notification. On Wednesday morning I checked my order status and saw “Shipping Soon.” I figured, this must be good news… I then saw some tweets from people suggesting their order had been cancelled from OnSale since the item was on back order. From the way folks were describing the situation, OnSale apparently oversold their inventory by the thousands.

I decided to call Amazon just to make sure everything with my order was OK and they said, “YES” and to call OnSale with questions. I tried, dozens of times throughout the day. I’m guessing thousands of others were as well since all I got was “All circuits are busy, please try your call again later”… Clearly there was a big mess going on. Finally near 5PM I was able to get through to OnSale and they told me that they had no record of my order and that Amazon failed to send it to them. After publicly defending them and Amazon for the mess, I decided I was mad. I called Amazon and they again said, “everything looked fine” and that OnSale probably needed more time to catch up. About fifteen minutes later, I received my cancellation notice.

Clearly there was an inventory management issue somewhere in the supply chain for Amazon.com. While I know Amazon.com is not fully responsible for the re-seller channel, especially in terms of inventory, there wasn’t nearly enough communication. People were checking their front door days after ordering only to find cancellation emails. The communication on this was atrocious. If I were running the show at Amazon.com, I’d send out an email to all those customers whom tried to purchase the device with a recap of what happened, why, and what Amazon.com is doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again. While this fiasco won’t change my shopping habits, sometimes accountability will go a very long ways. If I were running the show, I’d also try to get in touch with HP and work something out. Supposedly HP may have some more inventory available within the week and a large retailer like Amazon may have enough clout to cut a deal on getting devices out to those whom ordered.

While the updates have been sparse, the fun we’ve been having has been far from sparse. The highlight of the past 6 months for our family has to be getting adjusted to life in our new home. Moving from an 1150 SQ/FT condo to a 3300 SQ/FT house is significant. We have rooms with NOTHING in them! What a change. I’ll add more beef to this post later, but back to work I go. Enjoy the pictures below.

I’ll keep the mushy talk to a minimum, but here is Owen at almost 3 months wearing the outfit that I wore (and filled out) at 6 weeks. He clearly has some growing to do. (sorry mom, I guess I was a HUGE baby?)