DotNetRaj

Trying to set up CS blog

Rajendra S Rawat — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:22:01 GMT

MS enters Robotics market

Rajendra S Rawat — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:45:41 GMT

Microsoft today released the CTP of a software toolkit for building robot applications, pledging to ignite the robot market in the same way it did the PC market some 20 years ago.(WoW!)

Download Microsoft Robotics Studio June 2006 CTP here

Selling TDD concept

Rajendra S Rawat — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:44:28 GMT

I saw a a very simple demonstration of TDD Approach by Clarke Ching using as simple tools as MS Excel! (yes its in plain VBA). Download his sixteen page walkthrough TDD for managers and non programmers using Excel and VBA .

google excel?

Rajendra S Rawat — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:23:33 GMT

Just tried Google Spreadsheets (here is a tour ).

It has got basic functionality of a spreadsheet with adding/deliting sheets, formatting, (weird) sorting, formulae, 'save as xls/csv' and 'sharing the sheet with friends.

Yet...a looong way to go, if it’s targeting Excel.

You can signup for Google spreadsheet here

Microsoft recent/future code names demystified

Rajendra S Rawat — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:45:27 GMT

Here I tried to compile a list of recent and future MS codenames...

Operating System

Longhorn Windows Vista

Fiji Windows OS/update after Vista but before Vienna

Vienna Code name ‘Blackcomb renamed’. Windows OS after Vista.

Singularity A research OS written in Managed code (C#)

Bigtop Experimental grid computing operating system

Development Frameworks

WinFX .Net Framework 3.0(.NET Framework 2.0 + WCF+ WPF+ WWF+ WCS)

Indigo WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)

Avalon WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)

InfoCard WCS (Windows CardSpace)

WWF WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation)

Monad MSH/Windows Power Shell

Atlas AJAX in ASP.NET 2.0

Programming Languages

LINQ Language Integrated Query Language (C#3.0/VB9.0) with C-omega -like data access features that Microsoft is proposing for the next release of Visual Studio

Communication

Kahuna Windows live mail

Database

Yukon SQL Server 2005

Designer

Sparkle EID (Expression Interactive Designer)

Acrylic EGD (Expression Graphic Designer)

Quartz EWD (Expression Web Designer)

IDE

Whidbey Visual Studio 2005

Whitehorse Set of Web services-based business-process modeling tools in Whidbey

Burton VSTS (Visual Studio 2005 Team System)

Cider Visual Studio Designer for WPF

Orcas Visual Studio (2008?) after Whidbey

Hawaii Visual Studio (2010?) After orcas

Mobility

Magneto Windows Mobile 5.0

Origami UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PCs)

Yamazaki Windows CE 6.0

Crossbow Windows Mobile 5.0 Second Edition

Photon Windows Mobile 6.0

Gaming

Xenon Xbox360

trouble posting

Rajendra S Rawat — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:31:59 GMT

hi was quite busy to post for past couple of months... kept postponing quite some good posts due to time constraints and now that I tried to blog

1. Firstly IE7 to my surprise didn't showed Text tabs (Posts, Articles, Feedback, Links, galleries ...) I wanted to get to the Galleries tab for uploading some screenshots...

2. Well I tried Firefox.. I was able to see the tab (as expected) but cant see that switch to html thing (if I'm right) during posting

3. I tried to upload the screenshots (some 80kb jpeg) and got another error: TODO...The error message related to this problem was as follows: Access to the path "D:\Developers R2\blogs\images\developers_ie\rrawat\95\o_ie7err.JPG" is denied

Is there some quota management thing going on for bloggers? There was a rich text editing tool too.. i guess.. which firefox is not in a mood to show:(

Windows Live Mail Beta

Rajendra S Rawat — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:50:00 GMT

Used this today : at last... a 2 GB Storage from Microsoft!!

and other features as

- Outlook like Reading Pane

- Right Click/Context Menus

- Drag and Drop Emails

- Address AutoComplete

see complete list of features here

What's inside a .NET PE?

Rajendra S Rawat — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:47:00 GMT

Besides 'PE/COFF header' and 'Native Image sections' which are present in typical windows Portable Executable(PE) files - a .Net Assembly adds 'CLR Header' and 'CLR data sections' to the PE.

Lets look inside a .NET PE

1. Create and compile a Console Project at say :\TestConsoleApp

using System;

namespace TestConsoleApp

{

class HelloClass

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

Console.WriteLine("{0}","Hello, World");

}

2. Open Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt

3. Run

:\TestConsoleApp\bin\Debug>dumpbin TestConsoleApp.exe /all

output is something like this

Microsoft (R) COFF/PE Dumper Version 7.10.3077

Dump of file c:\TestConsoleApp\bin\Debug\TestConsoleApp.exe

PE signature found

File Type: EXECUTABLE IMAGE

FILE HEADER VALUES

14C machine (x86)

3 number of sections

...

OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES

10B magic # (PE32)

...

SECTION HEADER #1

.text name

5A4 virtual size

...

Code

Execute Read

RAW DATA #1

00402000: 80 25 00 00 00 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 .%......H.......

....

clr Header:

...

Section contains the following imports:

mscoree.dll

402000 Import Address Table

402570 Import Name Table

...

0 _CorExeMain

SECTION HEADER #2

...

RAW DATA #2

...

Summary

2000 .reloc

2000 .rsrc

2000 .text

The main function called when CLR header is found is _CorExeMain implemented by mscoree.dll ( MS .NET core/runtime execution engine of CLR - an inprocess COM Server) found in %WinDir%\system32

For looking inside CLR Data (metadata and code) we can use any de-assembler (ildasm.exe ) or programmatically query the .net assembly via Reflection

or better even reverse engineer the source code itself using a decompiler ('.NET Reflector' )

NOTE:

1. dumpbin.exe utility is located at :\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE

it requires

link.exe (in same directory)

mspdb71.dll (in :\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE directory)

incase You are not using VS 2003 Command Prompt make sure these files are in your PATH

2. COFF is Microsoft Common Object File Format specifications which are publicly available

Reverse Engineering SQL 2005 DB from Visio

Rajendra S Rawat — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:01:00 GMT

When you try to Reverse Engineer SQL 2005 DB from Visio 2003. You may get this error “The currently selected Visio driver is not compatible with the data source."

I think SQL Server 2005 compatible driver will be shiped later.

However, you may use Generic OLE DB Provider, and then select Microsoft
OLE DB Provider for ODBC drivers, it can successfully interpret tables with
from SQL Server 2005.

Registry Fix

Rajendra S Rawat — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 18:46:00 GMT

I got to see a old server box running sql server 2000 with no service pack. On recommending to install SP4, I was given a SP3a CD. Anyways I tried to install it... but while installing it received an error "A previous program installation created pending file operations. You must retart the computer before running setup." ok you will say what a big deal-just restart the box. But probelm was it came up no matter how many times you reboot.

the solution was just deleting PendingFileRenameOperations key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

then repeating for ControlSet001, ControlSet002 ... if required

This may solve this problem but might give other problems like I got (error running script: sp3_serv_uni.sql(1) etc.)

but better solution - just installing latest SP4