Developing .NET Applications

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Web Development

Web development category contains skills used to develop web applications. In most cases web application is an application running in the user’s browser and hosted on a server (hosting). Web applications are easily accessible by the end user (they simply enter URL in the browser, and can use web application). Almost all companies move their applications to the web. For example there is a web version of Word, Photoshop, Excel and etc.
Most common web applications are: Web Site, Forum, E-commerce web shop, Blogs and many more.

ASP.NET

Experience 6 years.

All versions of ASP.NET (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0) using C#. This includes ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC.

JavaScript

Experience 4.5 years.

We use JavaScript to create rich client side web applications. This means validation of input, helping to select values (stars rating, calendars, color picker and etc.). Web applications which include JavaScript help user to avoid unneeded round-trips between client and server.

AJAX

Experience 4 years.

AJAX is a technology based on JavaScript and asynchronous web request from browser to server (without page reloading). Most popular implementation of this pattern is Microsoft Ajax and a set of ready to use controls called Microsoft Ajax Toolkit. Also there are famous frameworks which easy use of AJAX such as jQuery, Prototype, Mootools and etc. But if clients wishes to create a unique web application, part of functionality or even simple control we can provide solution which doesn’t rely on any AJAX implementation and allows to create fully custom controls, consume web services and in the end user will get fast, lightweight, cross-browser application.

jQuery

Experience 2.5 years.

jQuery is a JavaScript framework. This means that its purpose is to help writing web applications which use JavaScript. Although this means that any JavaScript solution can be written in plain JavaScript (without using jQuery, Prototype, MooTools or anything else) using jQuery helps to create applications faster, better and avoid cross-browser problems. So OctoberSoft really recommends using jQuery in rich JavaScript/Ajax applications.

Web Services/Windows Communication Foundation(WCF)

Experience 5 years

In nowadays almost all web applications consume web services, either their own or 3rd party. For example there are web sites which provide web service to get currency exchange course, horoscope or find a place on map (Google Maps). We have a great experience of creating and consuming web services. In conjunction with Ajax, web services allow us to create dynamic web sites with pages that do not reload, dependant drop down controls (you’ve seen them, when you chose option in one drop down and possible values are changed in the drop down below), rating and vote controls (when you click vote and your voice is counted without taking you to other page), and many more.

XML

Experience 5 years

XML is currently a standard used for passing data between 2 endpoints. XML allows describing almost any data and doesn’t depend on a platform, language used or the way you pass it. Although there are formats which are more compact (JavaScript Object Notation or JSON for example) XML is still most commonly used format for web services and sending/retrieving information in the internet.

HTML, XHTML, DHTML, …

Experience 10 years

New technologies in web design come and go, but using HTML to represent data in the browser is the only way for almost 20 years. Writing good (compact, cross-browser, easy to change) HTML code is first thing you need to do in your web application. Some web sites can be written the plain HTML, and if you add some JavaScript and AJAX you can write a very complicated data-driven web site.

CSS

Experience 10 years

CSS is a very powerful technology used to customize your web site, you can write HTML skeleton, and then change greatly. CSS has 2 main advantages: 1st is that you can change your web site without changing its skeleton (structure) and 2nd is that CSS is cached in client browser, so you can be sure next time user will visit your web site he will only download required data. Most of the people agree that CSS is great!

Silverlight

Experience 2 years

Silverlight is a very young technology, proposed by Microsoft as a platform for unified development of web and desktop applications. Silverlight uses a subset of technology called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and can be used for providing rich user interface inside the browser window.

Flash

Experience 2 years

Flash technology allows you to create rich client side applications, play media files and communicate with server without reloading page. But currently almost everything can be done using AJAX, and to use AJAX user doesn’t have to install plug-ins required for Flash to run, taking these facts in to account we recommend using flash only for media players, web cameras and rich graphical applications (such as games).

Desktop Development

Applications which are installed or copied to user PC are called desktop applications. Examples of such applications are Microsoft Office Word, Photoshop, Paint, Windows Media Player, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and ICQ.

.NET WinForms

Experience 6 years

This is most widely used technology for creating windows applications. It allows to create standard windows applications with windows, buttons and forms. Also we have experience in creating custom controls such as lists, grids and trees.

Window Services

Experience 4 years

Windows services are system processes which run in background and started at windows startup. Such services either provide some resources (accessing database, mail sender service, printing service) or run some process at specific moments (using schedule). Most typical service which we created was looking into database and sent notification e-mails to the users.

Client-Server (.NET Remoting, WCF, Sockets, …)

Experience 8 years

Client-server architecture means that we have server and client which connects to server. Samples of client-server architecture are yahoo messenger, icq, ftp servers and etc. The goal of client-server applications is to provide fast and fully customizable communication between 2 or more users or applications. For example you might want to provide application for fast photography uploading, if you do so based on web file uploading you will get slow speed, maximum file restriction and user interface based on HTML controls, but if you use WinForms client-server architecture you will be able to use full power of TCP/IP protocol, fast and fully customizable solution.

Microsoft Office Add-ins (Outlook, Word, Excel, …)

Experience 3 years

Sometimes you need to extend some great program. For example you have Microsoft Outlook which is great, but you think it lacks some functional. For example you wish so that every e-mail sent to a specific address was exported to some web site and was accessible from any place on the planet. Then you need to extend Outlook by writing custom add-in which will do required actions. You will be surprised how far can you go when extending Microsoft Office applications.
The most commonly used technology to achive this is VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office), which allow to create MS Office Add-ins in no time.

Mobile Development

Mobile development is a development of applications which either way work with mobile/portable devices. Our company provides applications for Windows Mobile based devices and Mobile Web Development - applications hosted on a normal service, but users with mobile devices can access pages from any mobile device.

Windows Mobile (using .NET Compact Framework)

Experience 1 year

We have experience creating applications which run on a Windows Mobile based devices. For example we have created accounting software, where user can keep track of his/her expenses/incomes. Also we have done several small applications like RSS reader, dictionary and etc.

SQL Server Compact Edition

Experience 1 year

This is the only database that we’re using when developing mobile applications. Although it is called compact edition, this server almost as powerful as normal version.

Mobile Web Development (using ASP.NET Mobile Controls)

Experience 1 year

When you develop web site which can be accessed by mobile devices you can go 2 ways. 1st is to use as little functional as you can, plain HTML, no JavaScript, stretchy design and etc. and hope that your web site will be displayed correctly in most mobile browsers. The second approach is to use powerful ASP.NET Mobile Controls, then you can create web site which will automatically (under the hood) detect mobile device, browser and its capabilities and even render web page to HTML, WML or XHTML version to be best viewed by the user and the most fascinating thing that you don’t have to worry about this.

Databases

Database is an organized storage of data. Almost any serious web or desktop application uses database. You need database to store information used by web site, for example information about prices, text for parts of your web site, user information and etc. So in most cases your application or web site will require a database.
Creation of any database starts with design. Design of the database is very important! We have a great experience of designing and maintaining databases, so you can be sure that database designed by us will be easy maintainable, easy to modify and will be optimized for fast speed and lesser disk usage. Most of Database Management Systems (DBMS) use Structured Query Language (SQL), but different implementations can implement SQL differently.

Microsoft SQL Server

Experience 8 years

Developers in our company started using MS SQL Server starting from MS SQL Server 2000, currently most of our projects are based on MS SQL Server 2008 (latest version of server by Microsoft). To access old version of MS SQL Server we used ADO consumed from C++ applications. Currently we have much better tools such as ADO.NET or LINQ which provide richer functional and easier to use.

Microsoft Access

Experience 6 years

Access databases are easy to deploy and move, but of course they lack speed in comparison to server databases such as MS SQL Server or MySQL. Access databases are best option for desktop applications installed on user PC.

MySQL

Experience 4 years

MySQL is an alternative database used mostly on a *nix (Linux, FreeBSD and etc.) platforms. It has poorer performance in comparison to MS SQL Server, but it has free versions that can be used. There are realizations of ADO.NET and LINQ for this database so consuming it from .NET (ASP.NET, WinForms) is almost as easy as consuming MS SQL Server.

PostgreSQL

Experience 1 year

Not very popular database, but we have implemented several projects based on it.

SQLIte

Experience 0.5 year

This database is fully described by its name. It is lite it can be used as embedded DB (without server). I would say that this is analog of Access database.

Firebird

Experience 1 year

We’ve done several projects based on this database. This database was mostly used from applications written on Borland Delphi or Borland C++.

Content Management Systems

Content Management system is a system which allows user (administrator, owner) to change content of its web site, portal or e-commerce. In most cases you should login as a privileged user to administrative area and use some tools to change content, add/remove pages, add news, change appearance of web site and etc.

Custom CMS

Experience 5 years

Instead of using any public free/non-free CMS like DotNetNuke, Joomla, AspDotNetStoreFront and other we recommend our clients to write custom CMS for their web site.

Having our own CMS has several advantages:

1. Fully customizable. You don’t have be limited with functional of some CMS, which was made to fit as many needs as possible, so it cannot have some specific functional needed by you.

2. Custom CMS will use your data. Perhaps you have a Database or your business/web site requires some specific organization of Database, if you use public CMS you will have to use their Database and organize data in the way CMS requires. For example if you want so that your product had 5 images and CMS allows product to have only 3 images you will have either to modify CMS (and this means you will not be able to upgrade it later, and this a serious problem, see below(3)).

3. Security. Most of the public CMS are either open source or you can buy them with source code(and this means that you can find source code on some torrent tracker or pirate web site), this means anyone can find some bug in the code and publish a program which will allow anyone to hack your web site(exploit, script, manual how to hack). Most of the public CMS fix such bugs very fast, but this means you will have to update your web site weekly(and this is a problem if you modified functional for your specific needs, see above(2)), and if you don’t update them often sooner or later you will be hacked.
When we write custom CMS we don’t open source codes, this means none can find a bug by browsing a source code.

4. Finely tuned and optimized. Because this custom CMS will be written for your data and needs it will work faster than any public CMS.

5. Warranty and Support. If you experience any problem with CMS written for your web site you simply can contact us and we’ll fix it within very short time and you don’t need to have any knowledge in system administration, because we’ll upgrade the code, apply patches and etc. ourselves.

DotNetNuke

Experience 2 years

Most popular ASP.NET CMS. It is free and customizable. We have experience in creating custom modules for DotNetNuke, so we can create any web site based on this platform.

AspDotNetStoreFront

Experience 2 months

We’ve done a single project using ASPDNSF, but it included writing custom code using ASPDNSF extension API, so our experience level in this CMS is above normal.

Forums & Blogs

Any form of blog, forum, social network or anything related to messages exchange.

YetAnotherForum

Experience 2 years

This is most popular forum. We use it almost in any web site which requires forum. Our company has a great experience integrating this forum into custom web sites (auto login feature, common user profiles and etc.).

Custom Forums/Blogs

Experience 2 years

Some of our clients required very specific versions of blogs, so we decided to write custom versions of blogs, instead of using some public blog/forum engine. Clients were very happy with this custom blogs and using them for a significant amount of time without any bugs or issues.

Payment Systems

There are lots of scenarios when you might need payment system: e-commerce, premium membership, auctions and etc. One thing is common - you have to provide a way for a user to pay, either by credit card or using his paypal account or some other payment option. We have used this payment systems many times in projects, but we are always open to some new services.

PayPal

Experience 3 years

We’ve integrated PayPal in 5 web-sites (e-commerce, premium services)

LinkPoint

Experience 2 years

We’ve used LinkPoint to provide service with monthly payment (using their recurrent transactions)

Authorize.net

Experience 6 months

System which is easy to integrate.

Assist.ru

Experience 6 months

We’ve used it in 1 or 2 projects

WorldPay

Experience 1-2 projects

Really uncomfortable and hardly customizable system. But we’ve reviewed all of its options and now can integrate it in any web site.

General and Miscellaneous skills

In this category we gathered all skills, languages and technologies not listed in any category above.

Visual Studio

Experience 10 years

We use Visual Studio for 99% of our projects. Developers in our company started using Visual Studio from versions 5 and 6. Currently we use Visual Studio 2008.

Internet Information Services (IIS)

Experience 7 years

Most popular Web Server for Windows Platform. Used to host ASP.NET applications (Web Forms, MVC, Web Services, WCF). Can also host PHP, Perl and of course plain HTML + JavaScript (AJAX) Applications.

Subversion (SVN)

Experience 4 years

Version Control System, it allows several developers to work on the same project, merges changes made by different developers and can be used to track changes. If you don’t use version control system your project becomes a mess within few months of development.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

Experience 12 years

Yes, we use OOP in our programs. After all currently we write code using C#, which is Object Oriented language.

N-tier applications design and implementation

Experience 10 years

Applications split in several tiers allow you to separate User Interface (UI) from business logic, transporting model and etc. Our company has great experience in designing and implementing n-tier applications, which are easily scalable and extensible.

Unified Markup Language (UML)

Experience 4 years

UML is used to design data, user interface and many other things. Sometimes it is good to have UML diagram of the project.

TCP/IP

Experience 8 years

We have great experience in TCP/IP stack. Our developers have written many low level applications working with TCP/IP. We have NDIS drivers, firewals and custom protocols in our portfolio.

Active Directory

Experience 3 years

If you need to use Active Directory (AD) in your web site (intranet web site in most cases) then you’ve found a right company, we have a great experience integrating Active Directory in our applications.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Experience 3 years

We use SEO in all of our web sites.

SQL (T-SQL, PL/SQL)

Experience 7 years

Our company has great experience in SQL. If some query can be written, then it can be written by our developers. We are using SQL in a huge amount of our applications. In nowadays you cannot imagine web site which doesn’t have a database and SQL is the language which helps you communicate with database. Of course there are currently many ways that allow developers not to use SQL (LINQ for example), but if you know SQL you can tune your queries to be much faster and less resource consuming.

VSS (Visual SourceSafe)

Experience 1 year

We prefer working with Subversion (SVN) but if for some reasons you use VSS or other source control, we can use it.

RSS

Experience 0.5 year

We have written RSS for several web sites and also an RSS reader.

Redemption

Experience 1.5 year

We used this library in our Outlook projects, it significantly speeds up development time.

Reflector.net

Experience 3 years

If you have a project in .NET from the previous developer as a DLL (with no source code), and it is not Obfuscated, we can use this tool to obtain original (well almost original source code).

Xenocode obfuscator

Experience 2 years

If you wish to keep internals of your .NET application secure you have to obfuscated your applications. And Xenocode is one of the best obfuscators.

9Rays.Net - Spices.Net Obfuscator

Experience 0.5 year

Another good obfuscator

Google Services

Experience 2 years

Do you need to integrate Google Maps? Or any other services, we can do it in no time.

MSN

Experience 0.5 year

We have done 2 projects with MSN messenger protocol. A MSN bot and Web site which messages to administrator MSN account all important logs.

Web Crawlers

Experience 1 year

Do you need to gather information from a list of web sites? Or get data from 1 web site? Web crawler can automate this process.

Windows Administration/Server Configuration

Experience 3 year

We have experienced windows administers, so we can setup our web site, configure mail server, firewall and security settings on your server. However we don’t take administrative only works.

COM

Experience 4 years

There is a lot of legacy components written using COM technology. We have experience in writing COM components (in C++) and consuming them from (.NET).

RED5

Experience 1 project

Flash media server for integrating web camera into site.

Web camera

Experience 1 year

We are using web camera custom flash components to allow people to communicate with each other.