Software Development

Code To Live

Bill Graziano — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:04:32 GMT

The Code To Live video starts with an All-Girl AC/DC cover band. I'm not really sure what else you need to know.

Steve Loethen is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft here in Kansas City (or some such related job -- I never really remember what he does). We used to work together at this odd little company years ago. I'm certain he would be voted the Microsoft employee most likely to be mistaken for a biker. He and his co-host travel the country talking to developers. With a Harley. Dressed like bikers. I'm not sure who cast Steve in that role but it's sheer brilliance. The other guy is no slouch in the biker category either.

The video after the All-Girl AC/DC cover band is actually pretty cool. The first episode covers gaming and XNA. I'm afraid my game programming skills stop at turning on an XBOX but I certainly appreciate those that write them. I'm kind of curious where this will go. Steve tends to get himself into some interesting predicaments so who knows what will happen.

Did I mention "Hells Bells", the All-Girl AC/DC cover band yet?

Technorati tags: codetolive

LINQ Article on MSDN

Bill Graziano — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:45:39 GMT

MSDN has one of the better articles I've read on LINQ: The Evolution Of LINQ And Its Impact On The Design Of C#. It really helped to see the design history to understand why things are the way they are. Very good article.

SQL Server 2005 object scripting tool source code

Bill Graziano — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 18:05:00 GMT

I posted the source code for my SQL Server 2005 object scripting tool. The code reads like something I threw together to see if I could really do this. Because that's what it is. You can read a prior post that describes a little of what it does.

The ClickOnce deployment is available here: http://www.sqlteam.com/publish/scriptio/

It's at version 0.5.1 as I type this. New features include:

Connect to SQL Server using SQL Server accounts
Option to include collation in the script
Can optionally qualify creates, drops foreign keys with the schema

Update: Most recent install and source code: http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/billg/archive/2006/06/13/10208.aspx

Scripting Objects in SQL Server 2005

Bill Graziano — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:58:00 GMT

After working with SQL Server 2005 I've discovered that I can't script out one object per file and include both the DROP and CREATE in the same file. Which is driving me absolutely crazy! So I wrote a little utility and thought I'd share it. If you'd like to see this functionality included in a future service pack you can vote for this feature through MSDN Feedback Center.

This utility requires .NET 2.0 and the SQL Server 2005 client tools installed on the machine. The application is deployed as a ClickOnce application. It can be installed at:

http://www.sqlteam.com/publish/scriptio/ (Location Updated)

I haven't released the source code yet but will soon. The application is still fairly limited in terms of error handling and such. I also don't have the automatic error reporting wired up yet. I haven't done as much work as I'd like testing the scripting of CLR objects yet. It does do a darn good job of creating scripts though. If you'd like to test it or have need of this functionality give it a whirl.

The ClickOnce install only works if you view the page through IE. ClickOnce apparently doesn't support FireFox yet. Oh well. The application will automatically update as I roll out new releases.

If you have comments or feature requests please email me or post them in the comments here. Let me know what you think.

Automatic bug reporting using FogBugz 4.0

Bill Graziano — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 13:19:00 GMT

I had a previous post about automatic bug reporting using FogBugz 3.0. I recently upgraded to FogBugz 4.0 so I had to go through the process of setting this up again. (You can read the previous post to see why I did it this way.) Everything worked as before except the file list was slightly different. You can find the files you'll need listed in preheader.asp and FogBugzClasses.inc. After copying those everything worked perfectly.

More SQL Server NAnt Tasks

Bill Graziano — Sun, 08 May 2005 19:26:00 GMT

I've updated my NAnt tasks to 0.94 (source and binary). I've added three new tasks.

The first is a task to load an Excel spreadsheet into a SQL Server table. We've found this to be a fair way to manage code tables. They're easy to edit and print out for review. They don't handle the foreign key checking until we load them in but that's been a fair trade-off for their ease of use.

The second task imports an image file into SQL Server. It's basically a mirror image of TEXTCOPY.EXE except that it's a NAnt task and the trust connection works.

The last task is an updated SQL task from NAntContrib. This version adds back proper column formatting for result sets. They should come out nice and lined up. We have SELECT statements in our build that we wanted to see in a readable format.

I'm considering writing a task that will execute a series of SQL files against SQL Server to create stored procedures. The key being that it will sequence them properly. I've got a rough draft working but it's not very fast at this point. It will also process the command files that Visual Studio generates.

NAnt Task to Restore a SQL Server Database

Bill Graziano — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:52:00 GMT

In my long tradition of releasing odd utilities (ok, utility) that no one but me uses I think I've come up with a winner. On one of my projects we've created an extensive database build process using NAnt. This process creates the database with all its objects and runs a series of jobs to populate data. Much of that data comes from other databases on the same server. At the start of the build process we need to restore a series of database backups as of specific dates. Since this script can run against a variety of developer workstations, test servers, QA servers, etc. we need to restore these backups into a variety of directories.

This NAnt task will restore a database backup onto the target server. The task will query the server to determine the proper location for the data files and log files and move them to the proper directory. It will also rename the files based on the database name. It can set the database to simple recovery mode and shrink it. It handles multiple data and log files but only restores the first backup in a backup file.

You can download the binary and the source code. It is a NAnt task so you'll need to be using NAnt to use it. Installation is as simple as dropping the DLL into NAnt's bin directory.

If you're running any kind of build script in your development process and aren't using NAnt I'd encourage you to look at it. It's a great tool!

UPDATE: I've release 0.92 which you can download here: (binary and source code)

UPDATE: I've released 0.94.

Setting up a separate web site for automatic error reports in FogBUGZ

Bill Graziano — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 18:02:00 GMT

That has to be most cumbersome title I've ever used but it describes what I'm doing. We recently started using FogBUGZ for our bug and inquiry tracking for a couple of applications we've developed. We're running it on a server behind a firewall. FogBUGZ gives you a way for your application to automatically submit any untrapped errors through a special ASP page. Instead of trying to make just that ASP page available through our firewall I wanted to create web site with only that page. It turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought but it works great now. Here's what I did:

First, I created a new folder called websubmit in C:\Program Files\FogBUGZ. This is right next to the default FogBUGZ web site which is cleverly called “website“.

Second, I copied the following files to that directory:

adovbs.inc
CArea.asp
CAreaList.asp
CBug.asp
CBugEvent.asp
CBugEventList.asp
CBugList.asp
CBugScoutInfo.asp
CCategory.asp
CCategoryList.asp
CCVSList.asp
CDuplicates.asp
CFileUpload.asp
CFilter.asp
CFilterList.asp
CFixFor.asp
CFixForList.asp
CMailbox.asp
CMailboxList.asp
CPerson.asp
CPersonList.asp
CPriority.asp
CPriorityList.asp
CProject.asp
CProjectList.asp
CSiteConfiguration.asp
CStatus.asp
CStatusList.asp
dbUpgrade.asp
dlg.asp
icons.asp
lang.asp
langfunc.asp
preheader.asp
scoutsample.html **
scoutSubmit.asp
util.asp

** Scoutsample.html is a sample HTML file for testing bug submission to scoutSubmit.asp. Delete it when you're done testing.

Third, I created a web site for the new directory. I changed it to use the same login as the main FogBUGZ web site. Choose Directory Security -> Anonymous Authentication -> Edit and change the user for anonymous access to whatever the regular web site uses.

Fourth, I created a new registry key to for the database login. I exported the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Fog Creek Software\FogBUGZ\C:/Program Files/FogBUGZ/website. I removed the subkey information for Dispatcho at the bottom and updated the key to be the path to my new directory (i.e. replaced website with websubmit). I reimported this back into the registry.

After a quick test using scoutsample.html everything is working fine. Now I can make this site public and be reasonbly safe against people getting into my bug database.

(See the related post for FogBugz 4.0)

Easy Multi-Threaded Client

Bill Graziano — Wed, 19 May 2004 16:27:00 GMT

Here's a great little tool that helps you write a simple multi-threaded app. It gives you an easy way to move certain tasks to a background thread. Neat idea! Now I can move much of the database stuff to a background thread on one of the apps I'm working on.

A Sneak Preview of Visual C# Whidbey

Bill Graziano — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 18:10:00 GMT

MSDN has an article about some of the new features in C#/Whidbey. It's a pretty neat article that talks about the language enchancements and new features in Visual Studio. I'm most interested in Generics and Partial Types at this point. Generics will give me an easy way to create custom collections of business objects. I'll be able to define one “generic” collection that all my business objects can use. Right now I'm creating type specific collections.

Partial Types will really help with code generation. Partial Types allow a class to be defined in more than one physical file. I can use a code generator to provide some of the basic functions and properties to match my database. Then I can add additional code in a second file. Any changes to my database or cod generation template will only affect the generated file and not my addtions in the second file. It's a minor point but it's becoming a pain as I do more and more with CodeSmith.

Visual Studio gains a feature called Expansions. Basically this allows you to easily copy in code snippets and then update certain parameters. For example, I could have a snippet to create a simple public property and then just change the name and datatype. Damian linked to a similar tool called QuickCode.NET the other day. I haven't had a chance to play with it but it looks interesting.

So I'm ready for Whidbey. Can I have it now please? :)