Category Archives: Tools

Office12 Video

Tools

Over  month ago, Markus Egger pointed out this video of Office12 features that is on the Microsoft Office site. I finally got a chance to take a look at it today and am now inspired to reinstall my beta copy on my mobile pc (translation: my tablet) and play with it more.

One of the things I think is cool about Office 12’s  ribbon is that it is going to make using Office 12 really comfortable with a stylus. The tablet apps that I have written are light on drop down menus and heavy on single click functionality. That design came from dogfooding my own apps until they felt good to use with the stylus.



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Red-Gate SQL Bundle Version 5 released

Tools

I seem to have found myself answering "check Red Gate" to a number of questions lately, so I thought I would share this recent email from them:

I wanted to let you know that we have just released version 5 of the SQL Bundle. This is a major new version and includes:

 §         SQL Compare Standard (with completely re-designed UI, ability to see object dependencies and numerous other enhancements)

§         SQL Data Compare Standard (with improved side-by-side comparison of column values, added support, etc)

§         DTS Package Compare

More information on specific changes to each of the products can be found at: http://www.red-gate.com/support/versions/index.htm

In parallel, we have also released SQL Bundle Pro 5, which comprises of:

§         SQL Compare Pro

§         SQL Data Compare Pro

§         SQL Packager Pro

§         SQL Toolkit (removed command-line interface)

§         DTS Package Compare

The Pro editions of the Bundle tools come with a command-line interface for easier scheduling and tasks automation.

For more information on our Bundles, please visit http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql_bundles/index.htm

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

VPC Multiple Files

Tools

I had to back up one of my VPC’s to DVD – a just in case measure as I head down to Florida or DevConnections with a VPC dependent demo. In my folder was the VPC drive file and an extra file, I thought a backup. The main file was about 4GB and the second about 3GB. So I backed up the main file and the vpc settings file and then went to test the backup which gave me hard drive errors – I couldn’t boot up. Out ofcuriousity, I made a copy of the VPC file on my hard drive.Same problem. Then I dropped that "backup" (V01 extension) file in there and it worked.

A little googling tought me that the drive capacity for a VPC is 4 GB nnd my 7GB file was split into two drives. Aha! Here is a good explanation from JoeN at Microsoft who had learned the hard way, too.

So, I had already made he back up of the first part of the VPC at 7:12 pm. Now the timestamp of the two files that are in use are past that. Whichmight have meant having to reburn both files so that I had a matching pair. I did a little experimenting with mismatched files (that had no changes, just had been opened up) and the VPC disk went through a big repair but then booted up  just fine. I still may just toss that frst DVD and have a matched backup. Just in case.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

How many vpcs?

Tools

I now have built three VPCs to be used as bases for various testing. I can make a copy of a VPC and then use that copy to install “dangerous” bits – eg betas, ctps etc.

My first VPC is a clean Windows XP SP2 system with all of the current updates.

My second VPC is that plus .NET 2.0,  VS2005 RTM and SQL Server Express RTM. I can the throw things like Atlas or WinFX on top of them. It took quite a long time to install this. So I won’t have to do that again.

My third VPC is #2 PLUS the WinFX February CTP Components , SDK and VS2005 Extensions for WinFX. I plan to experiment with WCF (and need a very clean copy of this for a DevConnections session) with and without Atlas installed on top of it (ergo I want two) and also WPF.

I spent about two days creating them and then tucked them away onto my 200GB drive. Then I can make a copy on my external hard drive and go to town.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Upgrade ISA Server blocking some requests? Check HTTP filtering first!

Tools

One of my clients just had their ISA 2000 Server upgraded to ISA 2004 and were having some weird problems and finally got to the bottom of it – HTTP Request Filtering.

Symptoms

1) There was one ASP.NET 1.1 app that was having problems with buttons on new records that did a server.transfer. But on pre-existing records, the server.transfer worked.

2) In one of the ASP classic apps, we saw a pattern (pointed out by a non-programmer who asked “what about that ampersand?”!) where hyperlink requests with multiple query parameters failed but single query parameters succeeded.

The Pattern

Thanks to the eagle eyes of that user, I went back and looked more carefully at the asp.net app. Though the server.transfer involved only one query parameter, it was the page it was coming from that was the issue since the url doesn’t change with a server.transfer. And indeed, the new records had multiple parameters but the pre-existing ones did not. (I wrote this app over 3 years ago, so I definitely wasn’t too fresh on it!)

The Solution

So we went back to the i.t. guy and asked him to check the HTTP Filtering in ISA for either URL length or the ampersand and wouldn’t you know it – the ampersand had come over from ISA 2000 (where it was ignored) and fallen into the list of forbidden URL characters!

Ha!!



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

How telerik and Red-Gate made me a hero

Tools

I have a client who is a programmer with a small company that is creating a really cool on-line product. And I mean kew-well!

His background is very strong in architecture and also he and his team have done a ton with WinForms but his ASP skills hark back to the pre.NET days. But he’s doing the app in ASP.NET 2.0 and I am mentoring him with this and a variety of other related things.

Along the way, he was frustrated with some of the limitations of the built in ASP.NET 2.0 controls (a post for another day). Even though I have never used them, I knew that based on the particular tools he was seeking, I have heard such great things about telerik from people I trust, so I recommended that they be on the top of the list of 3rd party controls to check out. Needless to say, the report back from him is that he is now using 3 or 4 of those controls and is so happy that he’s (no, not buying the company) but subscribing to their full package.

A few weeks later he was ready to start synching between his development sql server and he online sql server as he got deeper into his tests. Though I have only played with them a little, I am still quite familiar with Red-Gate‘s tools and also know so many people (that I trust) who think they are awesome. So once again, I gave him a strong recommendation to try them out. A few days later, I got another very happy email from him saying that the Red-Gate tools were fantastic and he is definitely sticking with them.

There’s a lot to gain from just knowing what’s out there and paying attention to what people say about them (and who it is that’s saying them and what the context is) even if you don’t have hands on experience with every tool out there.

So thanks Red-Gate. Thanks telerik. (And thanks ASPInsiders, too.)

p.s. no, this is NOT a sponsored post! 🙂



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org