August 2005 - Posts
I'm not entirely convinced ORM is the way to go in production oriented applications, again, the real answer is "It depends". However, sure helps for rapid prototyping and reducing building V1 and Tech Previews. Of course, just like VB4 - VB6 should only have been used for prototyping it eventually made it's way into enormous enterprise applications that basically suck the life out of maintenance and support organizations.
Update: Back up & Running host now accessible - The reference to www.EasyObjects.net is no longer a dead host.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=79317848-ca30-4388-b964-1bccb123e238
EasyObjects.NET is an Object/Relational Mapper architecture built on top of the Enterprise Library (June Release). Using code generation, you can build your data and business layer in a matter of minutes, including standard CRUD stored procedures. Included in the zip is a snapshot of the source code and a QuickStart example. Code generation templates are available for the popular MyGeneration code generator. See http://www.easyobjects.net for instructions on how to obtain the latest source code.
Very cool and useful tool!!
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0fc1154-c975-4814-9649-cce41af06eb7&DisplayLang=en
Overview
SyncToy v1.0 is available as a free download on the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.
There are new sources of files coming from every direction: digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store and retrieve files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to get copies of files from one place; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping a mental card catalog in their heads. Others use one or more applications to provide this functionality for them.
Now there is an easier way. SyncToy is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP that provides is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without added complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.
We listened to your feedback. SyncToy was released as a beta in early August 2005. We collected feedback from the discussion forum on the Windows XP Professional Photography web site, from the customer feedback survey in the product (to access the online survey, open SyncToy and select Help, then select Customer Feedback), from a large number of professional and hobbyist photographers at Microsoft, and from various world-wide forums, sites, reviews and blogs on the web. Most of you (55%) asked for the ability to type in a UNC path to select a folder. We added this feature between the beta release and the current v1.0 release. Features we added in response to customer feedback include:
- The ability to type in a UNC path;
- Support for longer folder pair names and ability to widen the left pane to see those longer names;
- The ability to support the maximum length for folder paths, and documentation was added to the help file about how to set up a share to be able to sync deep folder pairs;
- Better handling of the difference in precision between NTFS and FAT timestamps;
- More discoverable link to the help file for information on how to schedule SyncToy using the Windows XP Task Scheduler;
- Support for 800x600 screen resolution;
- Added a warning for users if the selected action will take some time to complete;
- Added brief explanations of the actions in the user interface;
- Improved behavior when choosing folders to include or exclude when there are large numbers of folders involved;
- Improved support for accessibility modes.
Please continue to send us feedback about our tool, using the Professional Photography forum or the online feedback survey available from the SyncToy Help menu.
Note: We've taken great care to ensure that this tool operates as it should, but it is not part of Windows and is not supported by Microsoft Technical Support. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about SyncToy. To speak to other users and contribute feedback about your experiences with SyncToy, please use the forums accessible from the Professional Photography web site at http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto.
Updated: August 29, 2005
This is a simple Windows Explorer Shell Extension, much based upon the ShellCmd sample that comes with the .NET SDK.
It provides a way to simply right-click a folder and up pops a dialog box that allows you to rapidly map an IIS Virtual directory to that path without having to jump into IIS Manager. Also allows you to remove mappings as well.
An installer is included in the Zip file with full source code.
To run, just click on the executable and choose "Register" to enable the Shell Extension; or UnRegister to remove the Shell Extension. Please note that in order to remove fully from memory it requires Explorer.exe to be restarted. One way is a reboot; the other way is to Kill Explorer.exe then restart using taskmanager.
This Shell extension doesn't currently enable the registry setting "DesktopProcess" which allows multiple Explorer processes (one for taskbar & desktop - others in their own process) for stability reasons.
Download Installer
Download full Project Solution
Enjoy!!!
| Running & Shell Registration |
 |
| Context Menu Item |
 |
| Contextual IIS Virtual Mapping |
 |
V1.0.0.0 - 8/25/2005 Initial Release
V1.0.0.2 - 8/27/2005 Extended control over IIS Settings; added warning message for existing sites
V1.0.3 - 8/28 - Minor updates - faster initial load
This is a promising tool. Open Source (under GPL) and works with the majore DB vendors although "optimized" for MySQL.
http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/index.php
General Information - What is DBDesigner 4?
DBDesigner 4 is a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.
It combines professional features and a clear and simple user interface to offer the most efficient way to handle your databases.
DBDesigner 4 compares to products like Oracle's Designer©, IBM's Rational Rose©, Computer Associates's ERwin© and theKompany's DataArchitect© but is an Open Source Project available for Microsoft Windows© 2k/XP and Linux KDE/Gnome. It is release on the GPL.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2cc30a64-ea15-4661-8da4-55bbc145c30e&DisplayLang=en
Overview
The WMI Code Creator tool generates code that uses WMI to obtain management information or perform management tasks. You can use the tool to learn how to manage computers using WMI scripting and WMI .NET. The tool generates code that runs on the local computer, a remote computer, or a group of remote computers based on your selection from the Target Computer menu on the tool. You can also execute the generated code directly from the tool.
The tool is meant to help IT Professionals quickly create management scripts and to help developers learn WMI scripting and WMI .NET. The tool helps take the complexity out of writing code that uses WMI and helps developers and IT Professionals understand how powerful and useful WMI can be for managing computers.
Using the tool, you can query for management information such as the name and version of an operating system, how much free disk space is on a hard drive, or the state of a service. You can also use the tool to execute a method from a WMI class to perform a management task. For example, you can create code that executes the Create method of the Win32_Process class to create a new process such as Notepad or another executable. The tool also allows you to generate code to receive event notifications using WMI. For example, you can select to receive an event every time a process is started or stopped, or when a computer shuts down.
The tool also allows you to browse through the available WMI namespaces and classes on the local computer to find their descriptions, properties, methods, and qualifiers.
The code that creates the tool is also included in the download. The tool was created using WMI .NET, and the code for the tool can help developers understand how WMI .NET is used to create applications and manage information. Be sure to read the end-user license agreement that is included in the download.
Not really, but it certaintly feels that way when you're trying to get it working in an environment that involves more than one machine. Thankfully, MSFT does provide a couple of utilities to help diagnose and here's an article on use.
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/ckempster/debuggingmsdtcissues.asp
1) DTCPing - download from and documented at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306843
2) DTCTester - download from and documented at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293799
3) NetMon - found on Windows setup disks or resource kit
Interesting tool, now distributed as part of .NET 2.0, for testing, performance, unit, etc. Web Services. Cool graphics, like ACT on steroids...
http://www.amberpoint.com/
Just a whitepaper at this point... Expected August 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=49818cf1-2287-40ea-8a6f-57bd8695f23d&DisplayLang=en
Synchronizing Images and Files in Windows XP Using Microsoft SyncToy
Overview
Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store and retrieve files. There are new sources of files coming from every direction: digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to move files from one place to another; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping a mental card catalog in their heads. Others use one or more applications of one sort or another to provide this functionality for them.
I've got 5 machines running at home and 3 notebook computers. It'd be nice to keep things sync between them. Over the years I made extensive use of the Notes in Outlook 2000, XP, 2003 and I'm tired of using my Axim to sync. I now have a Smart phone but it doesn't sync the notes.
Here's a solution:
http://www.synchpst.com/
SynchPst for Outlook - the easy way to synchronize data between personal folders. Choose either single or multiple folders, with or without subfolders, and synchronize them quickly and efficiently.
Don't go through the elaborate process of copying and replacing your pst files - synchronize them intelligently.
If the selected folder does not exist in the target pst file the entire folder is copied, otherwise the source and target files are compared and the entries are synchronized based on creation time and/or subject.
Do you travel and sometimes receive email to your laptop as well as your desktop? Synchronize your info with SynchPst for Outlook and you will always be up to date.
Do you want to merge your info from several archived pst files to a single pst file? It's easy with SynchPst.