How to stop and start IIS websites using C#
IIS (Internet Information Services) remains a widely used web server for hosting websites, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, and other applications on Windows servers. While the graphical IIS Manager interface is great for setting things up initially and for providing a visual overview of your web configuration, there are also some great use cases for…
Implementing an async Repository and Unit of Work with Entity Framework Core
Implementing the Repository pattern in conjunction with the Unit of Work pattern is a best practice for data access that can bring a number of benefits to your application codebase when implemented correctly. Given the ease of use and scalability advantages that async .NET code offers, it makes sense to ensure that your data access…
InSQL
SQL Server Database Mail setup via SQL
Setting up SQL Server Database Mail is relatively simple when using SQL Server Management Studio, thanks to the graphical setup wizard it provides for most SQL Server editions. However, SQL Server Express, the free edition of SQL Server, does not offer the facility to configure Database Mail via a user interface. Thankfully, once you understand…
InSQL
SQL Server Database Mail setup simplified
Having the facility to send emails directly from your database engine is a hugely useful feature and this is exactly what the Database Mail functionality in SQL Server provides. With Database Mail, you can send email alerts when specific database events occur, or send query results and reports to users automatically on a scheduled basis….
How to create and load an IdentityServer signing certificate for Azure
IdentityServer is the de-facto security token service for ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core web applications and it is hugely popular within the .NET community. One of the most important security requirements to consider when setting up IdentityServer is the creation of a key (typically an X.509 certificate) which is used to cryptographically sign and validate tokens…
Monitoring application debug output with DebugView
Once your applications are running in a production environment, it is important to be able to monitor what is happening under the hood. Quite often this is achieved by logging output to a file, to a database, or to some other medium. However, it is also possible to intercept live debug and trace output using…
How to debug a .NET Windows Service from Visual Studio
While developing a Windows Service, it is important to be able to debug it like you would a regular desktop or web application. Debugging Windows Services isn’t quite as straightforward as debugging standard Windows, Console, or Web applications. However, when developing a .NET Windows Service it isn’t difficult to set up your project to support…
InSQL
Find out how many IDs are left for your SQL Server database tables
If you are administering a very large SQL Server database that uses integer IDs, you may have cause to be concerned about how many identity values you have left for your tables. This is a particular concern for heavy transactional tables where new rows are constantly being inserted and there are other reasons why identity…
