Patrick's Bites: Software

Extending SQL Server Reporting Services

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 07:34:40 GMT

Reporting tools typically seem to do just enough to get you to a certain point, then leave you to find workarounds to solve more complex issues.

That is my experience with SQL Server Reporting Services especially in terms of rendering complex data where I want to present my information on a special ways.

Below is some reference on how to extend capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services

Extending Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services with Custom Code

Display Your Data Your Way with Custom Renderers for Reporting Services (This is the best one)

Report Controls in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services

ROI on Software Quality Assurance

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 07:32:47 GMT

This one of the rare ocation where people talk about how buggy codes will effect project costing and how to control and measure codes quality using regression test tool

Khaled El Emam, Professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada is the author of the book "The ROI from Software Quality". Khaled's research looks very deeply at how bugs and software defects introduced in software development impact an organization after purchase and deployment. His assertion, the more bugs and issues in deployed software, the more downtime, support and maintenace costs are incurred post-purchase.

Port25 interviewed him and the link is here.

TechEd 2006: Select communication channel on realtime

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 17:55:22 GMT

I just attended a talk by Chris Auld about mobile client where by the syncronization of data in a Compact Framework(CF) application can be control with the concepts of stamp and which network channel (ie. GPRS, Bluetooth, Wifi or Cradle) to use in order to control cost and data volume of the syncronization.

On mid tier application layer this inspire me to think about creating a data passing layer where by the layer should determine how huge a data is to be passed and the network condition then dynamically select the network channel (ie. MSMQ, COM+ or WS) to send the data to. This will even create another abstraction where the application should take care of the communication channle without use thinking which channel to use. So the above concept can be achieved by using a similar Stamp concept in CF applications.

The dynamic determination of communication channel is made possible with WCF but now I need to investigate how to change the app.config/ web.config setting on real time basis and make sure the data passing work accordingly.

SQL Server 2005 SP1 March 2006 CTP

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 14:43:48 GMT

With SQL Server 2005 having few annoying but not critical bugs (as usual with any software) Microsoft just release a CTP version of its supposed Service Pack 1.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ctp_sp1.mspx

Life after Delphi with Chrome

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 10:50:22 GMT

Now that Borland plans to sell off its IDE business, Delphi's future becomes a question mark. Luckily there is Chrome, a Object Pascal plugin to VS2005/2003 to the rescue.

http://www.chromesville.com/page.asp?id={537132C6-5B3A-4CF9-B3EB-087E7CEC25DB}

How To: Crack TestRunner 2005 Trial

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 11:17:31 GMT

TestRunner 2005 is a great Unit Testing addin for Visual Studio 2005. Adrian apparently discover a way to crack the trial software and let it run for forever. Below is the extract from his blog.

The method calls Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.DialogPage.SaveSettingsToStorage method to save the First Run attribute. A litte look on the XML documentation, I found that the method does save to the registry by default. So I stroll around the registry under HKCU, grab a search for "vsip", and it returns this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\DialogPage\TestRunner.Vsip.Options

It saves basically everything you can find in the Options page AND also the First Run date. Try editing this registry key to some other date, and see what happens with the Expires value. Don't forget to do this while Visual Studio is not running.

Sample code to change the date programatically:

'Change the line below to your preferred first run date and time.
Dim firstRunDate As DateTime = DateTime.Now
Try
Dim subKey As Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey = My.Computer.Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\DialogPage\TestRunner.Vsip.Options", True)
subKey.SetValue("FirstRun", firstRunDate.ToString, Microsoft.Win32.RegistryValueKind.String)
subKey.SetValue("Expires", "", Microsoft.Win32.RegistryValueKind.String)
Console.WriteLine("Operation successfull!")
Catch ex As Exception
Console.WriteLine("Operation failed.")
End Try
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue...")
Console.ReadLine()

How To: Get Windows Live! Mail Beta

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 09:04:54 GMT

Curious about Windows new Live! Program that's been running for sometime now? Well, here's an interesting hack that will get you a Windows Live! Mail account.

Before you proceed, please remember that we can't help you in reversing this back to your regular Hotmail version, and when Microsoft says Beta, it definitely means it, since there are a plethora of bugs which might irk you.

You will also need to have Internet Explorer 6 for this hack to work. Note that it will not work with anything other than IE6, not even IE7.

Steps:
1. You need to have a @hotmail.com account (it currently does not work with an @msn.com account). If you have one, simply login and click on Options, which is located towards the top right hand corner of the webpage.
2. Go to Options --> Personal Settings --> My Profile
3. Change the country name to United States and state to Florida --> click Save but don't quit the webpage
4. Next, copy-and-paste the following string into your browser (make sure there are no spaces between the URL):
http://by101fd.bay101.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/BetaOptIn?page=option&curmbox=00000000%2d0000
%2d0000%
2d0000%d000000000001&a=b9a426ebd4880ad9d14db4b4c55a69f8bb8dea2282102422220030b2b6bb98c8

You will now be taken to a webpage welcoming you to Windows Live! Mail Beta. You will be presented with an EULA, which you should accept, and click on Join.

That's it, you will now be redirected to your new Inbox with the account upgraded to the new Windows Live! Mail Beta. It might not work until you log out and re-login though.

As you can tell, Microsoft's upcoming interface looks more or less like a web-based version Outlook 2003, which is a major overhaul from the current interface. Once Microsoft debuts the new interface, Google's GMail would have to compete against a considerably better solution.

By Varun Dubey

Visual Studio 2005 Launch

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 04:26:25 GMT

Went to the Visual Studio 2005 Launch in Penang last week. It was held in PG12 facility in Intel. Many thanks to the INETA folks for bringing the exciting event to my home town. The presentation by Sin Min, Azali, Ramesh and PCK was great and got me fire up for SQL Server 2005, Biztalk 2006 and the new VS2005 Team System.

As with any big companies product launch, there were lots of goodies got grab like Starbucks voucher, free Microsoft cert exams, discounted tranings, and YES YES YES; I won a original copy of Visual Studio 2005 Pro, SQL Server 2005 Standard, and Biztalk 2006 Developer. All together the licenses cost around USD 1600. Many thanks to Azali's question on what are the 4 diagrams found in VS2005 Architect Team Edition. The correct answer is Class Diagram, Deployment Diagram, Application Diagram and Logical Diagram.

Do check out the pictures in the blog here. They are sent to me bu Sin Min as taking photo is not allowed inside Intel facilities...

Windows XP Paging file

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 05:16:57 GMT

I learnt something new today from the below article.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/tulloch_partition.mspx

It is about your paging file; normally advice from MS is that you should keep your paging file in a separate HDD than the C: drive. Now there is even a new advice: format you paging file partition using FAT32 for performance. The advice:

"Format it using the FAT32 file system. Although the version of NTFS in Windows XP has features that make it perform better than earlier versions of NTFS, you can still eek out some performance gains for small volumes by formatting them as FAT32 instead of NTFS. I'm not overly concerned about the lack of security from not having pagefile.sys protected by NTFS permissions since it's an unreadable binary file. If someone hacked into my system, they wouldn't need to bother with the paging file anyway."

Good side about .NET programming.

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10:29:36 GMT

IDesign componentware download is a set of tools and utilities developed by IDesign associates for over four years of applying .NET and educating the industry about it. The componentware downloads cover C# 1.1 and C# 2.0 programming, essential .NET concepts, .NET application frameworks 1.1 and 2.0, system issues and Enterprise Services. The utilities are a productivity-enhancing tools, or they compensate for some oversight in the original design of .NET or its application frameworks.

Visual Studio going Hawaii

Sun, 29 May 2005 10:30:46 GMT

While I am eagerly waiting for VS.NET 2005 (Whidbey) to be released, information about a version totally revamped version of Visual Studio has been released into the web. I read about this new version (code named Hawaii) on eWeek's website. According to the article, this is how the name 'Hawaii' comes about:

"Although Microsoft had been using the names of Pacific Northwest islands, such as Whidbey and Orcas, to code-name new versions of Visual Studio, developers chose the code name Hawaii because it takes developers much further than the other two versions and also because the team plans to celebrate redesigning the IDE (integrated development environment) in Hawaii, sources close to the company said."

Hawaii will most likely be release after Longhorn because another version codenamed Orcas will comes out first to take advantage of Longhorn's new API such as Avalon and Indigo.

IntelliJ 5.0 coming soon

Sun, 29 May 2005 09:48:19 GMT

JetBrains will release their new major update to the popular Java IDE IntelliJ. Among my favourite upcoming features are:

Javascript support
XML support
Refactoring to include JSP codes
Improved editor tab groups

But unfortunately some of the features I hope to see available is not in :(

J2EE support for more App Server esp. Websphere and JBoss
JSF support

But still over one year of using IntelliJ I still find it as one of the most productive Java IDE in the market. But with Netbeans and Eclipse gaining J2EE support in their open source version; Jetbrains must do more for users to convience management to dig out $$ from the pocket to buy the product.

But still there are more to see when the IDE is officially available. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile you can have a look on the lastest features here

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/newfeatures.html

Netscape Browser 8.0 Released

Sat, 21 May 2005 18:07:48 GMT

New Features:

1) No more mail and news client
2) Render engine based on either IE or Mozilla
3) Site Control - Per site security setting
4) Multibar - A tool bar of personalized content

More news

Flash Features Tour

Download

Software Introduction : Enterprise Architect 4.51

Fri, 13 May 2005 15:20:19 GMT

I have been playing around with Borland's TogetherJ for quite sometime but I find it hard to justify to my management to buy it for the company with its thousand dollars price tag.

Lately one of my manager CP introduced me to Sparx System's Enterprise Architect to do my UML based design documents. After using it for almost a week, I found that EA is fast (it is Win32 based compared to other Java based UML tools) and it has tonnes of features such as integration with various languages (.NET, Java, Delphi and PHP) and databases (MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, PostgreSQL) reverse/ forward engineering and like its expensives cousins in the market there are templates for enterprise design patterns, it supports UML 2.0 notations.

Another neat feature is the ability to generate Use Case Metrics to calculate the complexity of a design as well as estimation of man hour. This is one feature I have yet see on other UML tools.

At last is my impression on Sparx System fast and prompt technical support which help me solve my Chinese character display problem within 2 days. I am glad with their helpful support and this help me confirm and EA is multi-language compatible. The last time I try out TogetherJ, they faces problem with Chinese language display and no solution is available yet. Kudos to Sparx System and I definitely recommend this tool to anyone doing system design.

http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/