Cool Cool JS toolbox

Just found this good website having tons of cool JavaScript tools - free for commercial use too.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/
Check out the dynamic menus - always needed in any web-site development.

Should we call Dispose() on a Dataset?

During one of my code reviews, I saw that the development team had called 'Dispose()' on all the datasets used in the application. I knew that the Dataset was a disconnected managed object and could not understand what the dispose method would actually be doing? Dispose() is typically called to release unmanaged resources such as file-pointers, streams, socket connections, etc. In most cases, such classes also expose a Close() method that is more appropriate.

Discussions with the developers revealed that FxCop also throws an error when Dispose() is not called on Datasets.
Further investigation revleaded that the Dataset exposes the Dispose() method as a side effect of inheritance. The Dataset class inherits from the MarshalByValueComponent which implements the IDisposable interface because it is a component. The method is not overridden in the System.Data.Dataset class and the default implementation is in the MarshalByValueComponent class. The default implementation just removes the component from the parent container it is in. But in case of Dataset, there are no parent containers and hence the Dispose() method does nothing useful.

Conclusion: It is not necessary to call Dispose() on Datasets. Developers can safely ignore the FxCop warnings too :)

Ruminating over XML Schema concepts

In a recent discussion with my team members, I sensed a lot of confusion over basic concepts on XML Schemas and namespaces - especially over targetNamespace, DefaultNamespace, elements vs types, etc. Well first, lets get the fundamentals right.

A XML schema defines and declares types (complex and simple) and elements. All elements have a type. If the type has not been specified, it defaults to xsd:anyType. It's easy to understand this by drawing an anology between a class and an object. New elements can be created by referencing existing elements.

In a WSDL message description, a WSDL part may reference an element or a type. If the SOAP binding specifies style="document", then the WSDL part must reference an element. If the SOAP binding specifies style="rpc", then the WSDL part must reference a type.
Now coming to namespaces, users typically get confused over the difference between a targetNamespace and defaultNamespace. The 'targetNamespace' attribute is typically used in schema files to identify and select the namespace into which new elements that are defined are created in. It is the namespace an instance is going to use to access the types it declares. For e.g. An XML document may use this schema as the default schema. Default schema is defined simply by using 'xmlns=' without a prefix.
It is important to remember that XML schema is itself an XML document. Hence a schema can contain a namespace attribute and also a targetNamespace attribute. Typically they are the same.

Jotting down links where more explanation is given:
http://www.coderanch.com/
http://www.oracle.com/technology/