Blake Niemyjski

.netTiers 2.3.0 Beta 1

Blake Niemyjski — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:20:00 GMT

The .netTiers team released .netTiers 2.3.0 Beta 1 the other day. .netTiers 2.3.0 is a maintenance release containing many bug fixes and patches. We have also added various requested features like Enterprise Library version 4 as well as support for Visual Studio 2008.

You can download the 2.3.0 Beta 1 templates at the following locations. You can download it the following locations: SVN, Google code, or www.nettiers.com. Please submit all bug reports to http://code.google.com/p/nettiers/issues/list.

Tips & Tricks: Resetting the CodeSmith Sample Templates

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:11:00 GMT

A tip that not a lot of people know is that the samples are not reset during every new release of CodeSmith. New versions of templates are added to the CodeSmith template directory for the Major and Minor versions. However that is not the case for regular builds (identified via the assembly build number) for example: 4.1.x. Please note that this will also work if you want to reset your templates for the fun of it.

You might be asking yourself, well why doesn�??t CodeSmith automatically update my templates for me. Well there is a pretty good reason behind this. There is no way to know if you modified the current set of templates on your machine. If we were to just overwrite the files with the new templates that contain bug fixes, you could lose a lot of unsaved work.

So if you are experiencing a template related bug and you didn�??t cleanly install CodeSmith for the very first time on your machine. The chances are your templates are out of date and need to be saved manually and updated following the steps below.

The following steps below will reset your samples to the version that of CodeSmith that you updated to, or installed to. If the samples still do not show up in CodeSmith Explorer. Then you can find the sample templates located in two zip files: samples.zip and maps.zip, located in Program Files\CodeSmith folder, and you can extract these to the correct folder inside of you�??re my documents folder (Documents\CodeSmith\Samples\v4.1\Templates).

PLEASE CREATE A BACKUP OF ALL YOUR TEMPLATES BEFORE PROCEEDING!!!

First you will need to exit all CodeSmith related applications (CodeSmith Studio, Visual Studio) and follow the steps below.

Open the Windows Run dialog box by hitting the Windows Key and R. or by going to the Start menu and clicking on run. or start -> run) dialog box and type �??cmd�?? and click the �??OK�?? key.
Next type �??cs /resetsamples�?? into the Command Prompt window and hit enter.
Finally type �??y�?? to confirm that you want to reset your templates and hit enter.

Congratulations your CodeSmith templates have been reset.

How-to: Delete dangling files from a Community Server database

Blake Niemyjski — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:13:00 GMT

The other day I came across a bug when upgrading my site to Community Server 2008. The Community Server 2008 upgrade tool would throw an exception when trying to move my files into CFS. The exception was result of the upgrade tool trying to pull down post attachments where the Section or Post didn't exist.

This might not seem like such a bad thing, but it is for two reasons:

You have a file that is taking up database space that isn�??t accessible within Community Server.
Community Server appends the SectionID to file name. Since the SectionID is null an exception will be thrown when creating the file name.

I created the following SQL statement that will delete all cs_PostAttachments where the SectionID and ApplicationType is NULL and the section doesn't exist in the cs_sections table.

DELETE
    cs_PostAttachments
FROM
    cs_PostAttachments
LEFT JOIN
    cs_Sections
ON
    cs_Sections.SectionID = cs_PostAttachments.SectionID
WHERE
    cs_PostAttachments.Content NOT LIKE 0x AND
    cs_Sections.SectionID IS NULL AND
    cs_Sections.ApplicationType IS NULL

-Blake Niemyjski

How-to: Reset a CodeSmith license.

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:26:00 GMT

Every once in a while you might run into a licensing problem when using CodeSmith. This can be when the Visual Studio add-in becomes corrupted, or you encounter some kind of licensing problem and you have problems activating. You can fix these related problems by resetting the license file and reactivating your copy of CodeSmith.

First you will need to exit all CodeSmith related applications (CodeSmith Studio, Visual Studio) and follow the steps below.

1)    Open the windows run (windows key + r or start -> run) dialog box and type �??cmd�??

2)    And type �??cs /resetlicense�?? hit enter and type �??y�?? and hit enter again. This will remove any CodeSmith license files from your computer.
Your command prompt window should look something like this.

C:\Users\Administrator>cs /resetlicense
CodeSmith Console v4.1.3.3349
Copyright (c) 2002-2008 CodeSmith Tools, LLC. All rights reserved.
WARNING: This will reset your license files and you will need to re-register and activate your license. It will not extend your trial period.
Press Y to confirm that you would like to reset your license: y
Reset license complete.

3)    Next launch CodeSmith studio and try to register your key. You should now see the activation prompt.

Microsoft's 2008 Lang.NET Symposium Videos

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:32:00 GMT

Check out the screen casts / videos of the Microsoft 2008 Lang.NET Symposium event. They have some pretty interesting videos available for everyone, granted you have Silverlight installed.

View ( 2008 Lang.NET Symposium Videos )

Microsoft�??s DreamSpark Program for Students

Blake Niemyjski — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:42:00 GMT

"Welcome to Microsoft DreamSpark Professional Developer and Designer tools for students at no charge" ( Microsoft ).

I think this is really a great thing that Microsoft did for the students of the present and future. It allows students to get enriched in a great platform and at the same time use the leading tools of today to create their dreams. I am hoping that they open this program up to more students.

"Microsoft launch DreamSpark - a program to give students all over the world access to Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge. It's available through channel 8, our student community and can be found at http://channel8.msdn.com. The idea behind this is really straight forward - provide professional tools to students and empower them to make incredible breakthroughs and get a head start on a cool career in technology.
This program is currently being rolled out to 10 countries around the world including United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium.
Students will be able to download any of the following software products via Channel 8 (channel8.msdn.com) and will have to go through a quick online third party-driven authentication process to validate their student status. Once this is done, they will be able to download the software of their choice- one title or all.
Microsoft developer tools.
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
XNA Game Studio 2.0 ( 12 months free membership in the XNA Creators Club )
Microsoft designer tools.
Expression Studio, including:
Expression Web
Expression Blend
Expression Design
Expression Media
Microsoft platform resources.
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
Windows Server, Standard Edition" ( FREE Developer & Designer Tools for Students )

Visit ( DreamSpark )

Silverlight 2.0 is almost here!

Blake Niemyjski — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:18:00 GMT

Over the past week there has been some talk on Scott Guthrie and Shawn Burke blog about Silverlight 2.0. Please check out Scott�??s blog for included freatures and eight walk throughs pertaining to Silverlight 2.0, and Shawn�??s for more information on what we can expect while developing Silverlight 2.0 enabled applications.

Continue reading Scott Guthrie�??s blog ( First Look at Silverlight 2 )
Continue reading Shawn Burke�??s blog ( Getting to know Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 )

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition Power Tools

Blake Niemyjski — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:09:00 GMT

"This release updates the Power Tools for the Database Edition to work with Visual Studio 2008 and provides several new features. The new features include two custom unit test conditions, a new Data Generation Wizard, and new MSBuild tasks to support running TSQL Static Code Analysis from the command line. The updated features include 5 refactoring types, a dependency viewer, additional data generators and editors, 2 MSBuild tasks for Schema and Data Compare and the TSQL Static Code Analysis feature
New Test Conditions for Database Unit Tests
�?� ChecksumCondition �?? You can use this test condition to verify that the checksum of the data set returned by a database unit test matches the checksum of an expected data set.
�?� ExpectedSchemaTestCondition �?? You can use this test condition to verify that the column names and data types of the returned data set match expected values.

Data Generator Improvements
�?� New Data Generator Wizard �?? This new wizard creates a data generation plan that is configured to copy data from a source database. You can use this wizard when you need to copy most of your data from a live source, but need to make small changes to ensure privacy.

MSBuild Task Improvements
�?� SqlAnalysis Task �?? You can use this build task to run T-SQL Static Code Analysis from MSBuild.
TSQL Static Code Analysis
�?� Static Code Analysis - A precursor to the functionality that will be in future versions of VSTS that will allow you to perform Static Code Analysis on T-SQL code.

Refactoring
�?� �??Move Schema�?? Refactoring - Allows a user to right click on an object and move it to a different but existing schema
�?� SP Rename Generation - Generate a new script that will contain sp_renames for all rename refactored objects that the user can then execute.
�?� Wildcard Expansion - Automatically expand the wildcard in a select to the appropriate columns.
�?� Fully-Qualified Name Support - Automatically inject fully-qualified names when absent in a script
�?� Refactoring extended to Dataset - Refactor into strongly typed dataset definitions

MSBuild Tasks
�?� Data / Schema Compare Build Tasks - MSBuild tasks that can generate scripts as if the user had run the Data / Schema compare UI

Schema View
�?� API Access to Schema View - Insert / Update / Delete to schema View and list schema objects and their associated files

Dependency Tool Window
�?� Dependency Tree - Show the dependencies ( incoming / outgoing ) for selected schema objects in a new tool window

Miscellaneous Tools
�?� Script Preprocessor - Expand SQLCMD variables and include files and command line version (sqlspp.exe) & an MSBuild version ( wraps the command line version )" ( Microsoft ) .

Download at Source ( Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition Power Tools )

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 February CTP

Blake Niemyjski — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:55:00 GMT

The February CTP of SQL Server 2008 has been released on Microsoft Download Cetner. From what I understand this CTP of SQL Server 2008 is feature complete. Please also check out the following article "Breaking API changes in the February '08 CTP". The download link to the CTP can be found below.

"Overview
Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the next release of Microsoft SQL Server, provides a comprehensive data platform that is more secure, reliable, manageable and scalable for your mission critical applications, while enabling developers to create new applications that can store and consume any type of data on any device, and enabling all your users to make informed decisions with relevant insights."
System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP Service Pack 2
For all download types
32-bit systems: Computer with Intel or compatible Pentium III 600 MHz or faster processor (1 GHz or faster is recommended)
64-bit systems: 1 GHz or higher processor
Minimum of 512 MB of RAM (1 GB or more is recommended)
675 MB of available hard disk space" ( Microsoft ).

Download ( 32Bit | 64Bit )

XSLT Profiler Addin for VS 2008

Blake Niemyjski — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:00:00 GMT

"XML Tools team has released the XSLT Profiler Addin for VS 2008 - a quick and reliable performance analysis profiler tool that assists in the development and debugging of XSLT documents. The XSLT Profiler Addin for VS 2008 allows developers to measure, evaluate, and target performance-related problems in XSLT code by creating detailed XSLT performance reports. The XSLT Profiler includes a wealth of useful hints for XSL and XSLT style sheet optimizations, which are essential for XSLT-based applications that demand maximum performance.

If you need to develop reliable and robust software, the XSLT Profiler is capable of detecting the performance errors and defects in coding so that they are corrected at an early stage in the development. This is essential in reducing the overall cost of developing software applications." Announcing the XSLT Profiler Addin for VS 2008

Download ( XSLT Profiler Addin )

Visual Studio Themes

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:20:00 GMT

Scott Hanselman has created a nice Visual Studio Programmer Themes Gallery that allows you to quickly pick a color scheme for your Visual Studio 2005/2008 IDE. I personally like a black theme, what about you?

View ( Visual Studio Programmer Themes Gallery )

Use Windows Server 2008 as a workstation.

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:03:00 GMT

Windows Server 2008 is the fastest OS I have ever used. It�??s truly amazing at how fast it performs every task I throw at it. With this said, below is a guide on how you can customize it to look just like vista. Making it a great looking development machine!!!

"1. Enable Hardware Virtualization
My workstation is a x64 machine with hardware virtualization capabilities. This means I can run Hyper-V on my machine. Even if your machine's hardware supports virtualization it is most likely not going to be enabled by default. You have to enable it via your BIOS setup.
2. Install the latest Graphics and Audio drivers
Being a server OS Windows 2008 carries with it basic graphics and audio drivers. To utilize the full strength of your hardware ensure you install the latest drivers for both graphics and audio hardware. Only with the proper graphics drivers will you be able to enable the "Aero" experience on Windows 2008.
3. Desktop Experience Feature
The Desktop Experience Feature enables a bunch of stuff that is by default present on a desktop OS. Most importantly it includes Themes, Windows Media player and the Aero related features. You will have to enable it form the Server Manager. The "Turn Windows features on or off" / "Add remove windows components" has all been rolled into the Server Manager now.
Server Manager > Features > Desktop Experience
Installing the Desktop Experience feature does not enable them. You have to manually set them up.
4. Themes
To enable Themes you will basically have to enable the Themes Service. Again being a server OS it is not enabled by default.
Services.MSC > Themes
Set the start up type to Automatic
Enabling the Aero Theme.
For this go to Control Panel > Personalization >Theme and select Windows Aero
5. Search
Search is also disabled by default on Windows 2008. Searching is important for me as I use it a lot to find my emails. To enable search you will have to add the File Services Role via Server Manager.
Server Manager > Roles > File Services > Windows Search
Outlook relies on this search service.
6. Disable Shutdown Event Tracker
Since I am using it as a workstation I do not want to keep a track of all the Shutdowns. The Shutdown Event Tracker is the pop up that you get asking you for a shutdown reason. To disable it
Open mmc.msc
Add the Group Policy snap-in
Under Administrative Templates expand System
Set Display Shutdown Event Tracer to Disabled
7. Audio
For audio you need to enable the Windows Audio service. You do this by setting the startup type to Automatic.
Services.msc > Windows Audio
Ensure you have proper drivers for your audio hardware... for me the default driver was not enabling the headphones ... it started working fine after I got the proper driver.
8. SuperFetch
As a workstation, enabling SupertFetch will give you that additional bit of responsiveness. The SuperFetch services is disabled by default and when you try to enable it you will most likely get an error message "The operating system is not presently configured to run this application"
You will have to make two registry changes to enable this service. I basically copied them over from my Vista machine.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
EnablePrefetcher DWORD 3
EnableSuperfetch DWORD 3
9. Get a codec pack.
For media hungry buffs download a codec pack. This will ensure you can play all media files.
10. Enable Hyper-V
With Hyper-V you can run virtual machines on your workstation. This is useful if you want to run your tests on older OS versions. Enabling Hyper-V is easy
Server Manager > Roles > Hyper-V
Remember you need a Hyper-V enabled Windows 2008 licence and also your hardware has to support virtualization.
Also If you are using an existing VHD it may ask you to re-Activate Windows as it detected hardware changes.
One good thing about Windows Server 2008 is that it no longer asks for the i386 folder like Windows 2003 while you enable features.
11. Processor Scheduling

As pointed out in a comment on my previous post; On Windows Server 2008 background services are given preference over interactive programs. You can change this behavior by

Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Processor Scheduling

Setting this to Programs will make foreground programs more responsive.

12. Visual Effects

One thing you will notice on Windows Server 2008 is that by default you will not see Preview Thumbnails in your Documents / Music / Video folders. This has to be enabled explicitly.

Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Visual Effects

Based on your preference you can tweak these settings.

13. Power Options

Do your bit for a Green World! The Balanced (default) power plan on Windows Server 2008 does not turn off hard disks by default. On Vista hard disks are turned off after 20 mins. You can change this by

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings

It does take a bit to kick start the hard disks when you resume work but that's a sacrifice worth making for a greener world."

Source ( Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS )

Top Three Reasons I cannot wait for Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Blake Niemyjski — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:50:00 GMT

There are many new features that are being shipped with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. But there were only a couple on that list that really stood out as a reason for me to upgrade to SQL Server 2008. What features are you most excited about in the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 release?

Data Compression: Enable data to be stored more effectively and reduce the storage requirements for your data. Data Compression also provides significant performance improvements for large I/O bound workloads like data warehousing.
Backup Compression: Keeping disk-based backups online is expensive and time consuming. With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, less storage is required to keep backups online and backups run significantly faster since less disk I/O is required.
T-SQL Intellisense: It is about time that SQL Management Studio gets Intellisense. Source ( Is SQL2K8 Really a dot Release )

For a list of more features that will be included in Microsoft SQL Server 2008, please visit the source.

Source ( What's New in SQL Server 2008? )

Got Posters?

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:26:00 GMT

Chris Bowen�??s did a search last month for all posters available on Microsoft Downloads. This is what he found:

.NET 3.5 Namespaces Poster
The .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster
Visual Basic 2008 Keybinding Poster
Printable wall poster containing list of useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual Basic 2008 developers
Visual C++ 2008 Keybinding Poster
List of keybindings for Visual C++ language within Visual Studio and Visual C++ Express 2008
Visual C# 2008 Poster
Wall chart showing useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual C# programming language
2007 Office System: Developer Posters
Download these posters to learn more about the new features and enhancement to the 2007 Microsoft Office System.
Windows Server 2008 Component Posters
Windows Server 2008 Component Posters, originally printed in the July 2007 issue of TechNet Magazine.
Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 (Ed: Make that 2.0) Developer Reference Poster
Microsoft Silverlight Developer Reference Poster
PnP Overview Poster
Patterns & Practices Overview Poster
Smart Client Poster
Patterns & Practices Smart Client Poster
Visual C# 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default keybindings for Visual C# 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.
Visual Basic 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default key bindings for Visual Basic 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.
Visual C++ 2005 Keyboard Shortcut Reference Poster
This poster contains the default keybindings for Visual C++ 2005, and is available as a PDF download in either color or grayscale for you to print.

Source ( Got Tech Posters? )

I also just did a search for myself and only came up with four results.

Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0

Blake Niemyjski — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:17:00 GMT

Overview

Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0 is the third publicly released version of the Device Emulator for ARM-based devices. This emulator will also release with Visual Studio 2008. Device Emulator 3.0 will replace the executables and DLLs from previous releases (1.0 and 2.0). The main addition with Device Emulator 3.0 is the new automation API for the device emulator manager, which allows developers programmatic access to perform the same operations on installed emulator images that can be performed interactively on the Device Emulator Manager drop-down and context menus.

Download ( Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0 )