Rudolf Henning

It's sunday evening and quess what I'm doing?

Playing with SQL server manipulating a database with 13 000 000 rows in it. I must be mad or something, I know. Problem with this db it is totally unnormalized consisting of one single table with just nvarchar fields. It took 4-5 hours to just add an index on one field and then add another field to the table. This all one my 'little' home pc (P4 2.4GHz, 1 GB Ram).

Where are the days when we still only worked in the Megabytes to count database sizes? This 'little' toy database started out at over 5GB and after the index and new field it's almost 12 GB big. The transaction log was something like 9 GB big before I managed to truncate it. I ran out of space once on a 30GB partition.

I still have to get some any useful data out of this database so i hope it was worth it. For those that wonder it contains some details on all voters in the last election - had a family member that is in politics that got hold of the data in some access databases. And the less impressive part of this story is that its only about 2/3 of all the data. Some 'provinces' data is not even included so the database can grow even more...

Well, wish me luck to do something useful with the data. I've tested SQL server on my machine to its limits. It passed the tests except for taking a long time.

Another tool released by the VS powertoys team is the Threat Modeling Tool

http://blogs.msdn.com/powertoys/archive/2004/05/25/141796.aspx

The Threat Modeling Tool allows users to create threat model documents for applications. It organizes relevant data points, such as entry points, assets, trust levels, data flow diagrams, threats, threat trees, and vulnerabilities into an easy-to-use tree-based view. The tool saves the document as XML, and will export to HTML and MHT using the included XSLTs, or a custom transform supplied by the user.

Could be very useful for auditing your applications

The VS Powertoys guys have created yet another very useful tool to help developers. How many times have you copied source code from say a web page and tried to paste it into the IDE - only to have it squashed by the IDE trying to 'understand' thwe format?

This tool can help you specify more how you want the pasted text to appear.

Check it out http://blogs.msdn.com/powertoys/archive/2004/05/25/141718.aspx 

The hectic pace of GPU development in the recent history seems to have taken its toll on the top dogs in the business.  Nvidia have been in talks to slow down the pace of their breakneck dash for graphics technology. This can only mean that we will not be getting all the wonderful new cards at lower prices soon. Something smells fishy around here...

Check out the article on <a href=”http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16111”>theinquirer</a>

If it was April I would have thought it was an aprilsfool joke but alas its not....

Furniture are not the kind of things I buy on a daily basis so it was a bit of a shock to find out what a table size piece of wood costs! Ok so it was'nt exactly a small piece but not even two meters long and not even a meter wide and it costs over R400 - just for the one piece. Now I still need to assemble the workbench inmy study room once I get some time after work to do it.

Where are the days when stuff was still affordable....

Until recently I did'nt pay much attention to them. I was aware of them and even built a sample or so just to see how VS.Net works but now I have started realy enjoying them.

The one thing that still concerns me about them is security or rather the lack thereof. I know the W3c is or was working on a standard for webservices security but I have'nt heard anything much of that yet.

For those that know me or at least my development preferences it may sound strange that I like to embrace some web technology but the only thing I have against web is when you try to build an application UI with web stuff. It always sucks as a desent application UI. Presentation of data etc. is another matter as long as it's fairly static. If only we had proper connectivity in this country then perhaps that could have worked but imagine a page refresh for every little change that happens on a ASP.Net app. Anyway, enough of that...

I have been thinking of using web interaction as an API for a while (even before web services were available). With the introduction of SQL Reporting services and the Application updater technology that use web services I got interested in the idea again. I'll definitely will be using them more from now.

Anyone know more about how to secure web services?

For all those interested in astronomy and science the web site Space.com now also have a rss feed for all their news articles. I'll be watching them.

http://space.com/syn/space.xml

Dev days CT is finish and we had a lot of fun! Too bad I did'nt won any of the fancy prizes like a MS wireless keyboard, X box or ticket to Tech Ed but I enjoyed it.

For those that did not know (after this you will) I have build a Winform control/library for viewing reporting services reports in a windows app.

What I found was the most interesting (but I've seen some of it before) was the application updater component. I suspect I'll be using it for my own apps in the future.

Well, now I have to catch up to the days emails, forum posts and my UT2004 that is waiting...

With the workshop behind us we all feel a bit wiser and more informed about SQL reporting services (well at least the whole 3 of us that attended). Thanks to Ruari and David for showing up. We all got rewarded with a little LAN party (ok, just two players at a time) to end of the evening on a relaxed but tired note.

It seems people in the Western Cape is easy to say they want to attend events but if it comes to actuall attendance its a different story. This concept of small workshop training will pick up I'm sure. It just needs to developed a bit more. For one thing, I think all participants must have some pc/laptop of their own to work on. Setting up demos or the software could take time and it probably will help if everyone has it ready before the event start.

What did we achieve?

Since we were only 3 and all of us have played/worked before on the product we probably did nog learn as mush new things as we could. Thanks to Ruari and his older laptop we discover the minimum specs of RS require at least 200MB RAM or else the server components are not available to install.

At least I had some samples and knowledge that the other participants did not have about how to programmatically access reporting services from an assembly based on the samples included with the product. I used these to create a Winforms report viewer class that can be used by winform applications to provided reporting facilities.

The next workshop should not be totally free which might discourage people from participating but at least those that say they are coming will have a incentive not to cancel at number 99%.

We. I'm looking forward to the next workshop which will be held at a proper training facility with proper resources like a lab of pc's for our use.

There's an article about the possible Server version of longhorn that is on the horison. Some interesting stuff they talk about and how/when they plan to release what (yes I know the time tables usually are wrong but...)

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5211424.html 

The last while I've been doing daily late nights (24:00) and then getting up at just before 6:00. Trouble is that even during those times it is not uncommon to be waken by my two year old daughter who sleeps inly until 3:00 AM and then wants to get in bed with us. Mom tries to do the standup thing but I can't help waking up...

Well, why the late nights? Because it's the only quiet times I have on my own pc when everyone else sleeps and I can play with new technologies or prepare for workshops like the one we're gona have this friday at my place. I thing SQL reporting services could be a huge success if only MS pushes it right and fix a couple of annoying little bugs (which could be overcome with tweaking and stuff)

I must admit, I have'nt even gotten to all the available functionality of this product like the pushing mechanisms to get reports to clients instead of them browsing dot it. The work MS has done to the reporting engine is fantastic altough I already have to suggestions to extensions or improvements. For one, have the export functionality to various other formats be extensable to developers can create 'plug-ins' or something to provide custom export formats that the reporting engine can use.

Anyway, is late now 00:06 and I need to go and sleep.

A web site I use to go very often to find development related stuff like articles, samples and so on is

http://www.developersdex.com

They have now extensive coverage of .Net. The C# section has expanded since I was there last.

Check them out.

I just posted my first article on my blog. It is a follow up or version 2 of my article in sorting columns of a listview control. This time the it has been rewritten in C# and sports some additional functionality plus ist a lot easier to use.

Check out my article http://dotnet.org.za/rudolf/articles/1431.aspx

I found a utility that I have been looking for for some time. When you go to a LAN party you usually end up having to change you personal pc's network settings and when you return home you have to change it all back. This could be a pain if you have multiple settings to set up.

I've been looking for a easier way to save/reset/restore these settings without having to open multiple network settings dialog boxes etc. Now I've found an article on codeproject that was intended for guys with laptops that also have to change network settings everytime they get to a new network. It saves profiles of your different network settings so you can with one click (or so) change all network settings like your IP/dhcp, subnet, gateway and dns.

Find the article on codeproject here