.NET From India

Enhanced Data Generators

I just finished creating a new version of the Enhanced Data Generators for use with Visual Studio Team System Database Edition (aka Data Dude), GDR R2.

This new version has the added ability to generate Chinese first and last names and also valid IBAN numbers. Also quite a bit of performance tweaks and bug fixes.

Instead of just writing blog posts about this, I have setup a mini website, with a couple of html pages that I can update and use for providing information about these components.

You can find the new website at

 http://www.dotnetindia.com/EnhancedDataGenerator/index.html

You can also find my older posts about these components at

 http://www.dotnetindia.com/enhanced-data-generator/

 

Please use the contact form to provide feedback about this component.

 

Technorati Tags: Enhanced Data Generators,Custom Data Generators,VSTS,GDR R2,Data Edition

Polaris .NET Journal – New Issue

A new version of the Polaris .NET Journal is now available.

This issue contains a number of article on:

MOSS Security Integration with Federated System
Get-PowerShell
Advanced Metadata Search Web Part
Integrating Visual Studio 2008 with Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2005

You can download this issue from http://www.polaris.co.in/credentials/dotnet-journal.htm (Requires providing name and email id).

Win 7 Folder Shortcut – The so called GodMode

There has been a number of posts around the so called Windows 7 GodMode. This is nothing but a particular GUID that when used as a folder name creates a shortcut to a specific control panel screen. The special thing here is that this particular screen/panelet is not accessible from anywhere else.

The secret code is {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.

So all you need to do is to create a folder and name it like <any string>.<GUID> and you get this access to the associated cpls. So to get access to GodMode, you can create a folder named like Special.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and open the folder. And now you are in GodMode!!

According to MS this is a shortcut for use by developers to change settings etc during development.

The same technique can be used to access a number of other control panel items from explorer. Below is a list of other options I found searching around the net.

 

ID	Usage	Screenshot
{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}	Location Settings
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}	Biometric Panel
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}	Power Options
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}	Notification Settings
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}	Windows Vault
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}	Install a Program from Network
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}	Default Program Settings
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}	GAC
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}	Manage Wireless Networks
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}	Network
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}	My Computer
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}	Printers
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}	Connect to Remote Systems
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}	Windows Firewall Setting
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}	Computer Performance

The mysterious RegExString Class

As some of you may have noticed I have been writing a number of custom Data Generators for the VSTS Database Edition over the last couple of months.

During this time I have learnt quite a bit about the way these work and about writing these components. There is scarce documentation and I couldn't find too much information around writing these in the blogosphere too. Any information out there seems to be put out when VSTS Database edition was released and obviously a lot has changed since then with the release of multiple updates (with the latest being GDR R2).

One of the things that makes a lot of sense to me is to try and reuse some the Generators that Microsoft has written to create more complex Generators. One of the most interesting Generators is the RegEx Generator. I did quite a bit of searching around and am yet to find any code/freeware that does the equivalent and from a data generation perspective it is absolutely important to have the ability to generate random data based on a pattern.

The class that does this work is called RegExString. (I look at the Microsoft.Data.Schema.Generators.Extensions.xml found in the VSTSDB\Extensions directory will give you this information). If you search around for information on this class you will find a lone MSDN entry and most probably one of my forum posts.

If you just add the dll specified in the Microsoft.Data.Schema.Generators.Extensions.xml to your reference you will find no RegExString Class that you can use. A little bit of sleuthing will show you that the namespaces between the Dll and the MSDN entry are wrong. Well this is because, the namespaces have changed with GDR R2(I am not sure if it changed with R2 or GDR R1) and now all Generators are internal (or friend) and not public. So only Visual Studio can create instances of these classes.

Well now what about the MSDN documentation, which does not talk about the class being internal. Well that is for the older DLL, Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Data.Generators.dll. You should still be able to find this dll in the DBPRo\Extensions directory inside Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0. This is the older version where the Generators are still public.

So I decided to use those in one of the newer Generators I am writing (hope to get a new release out sometime later this week). I know this is a risk as most probably this is going to disappear when moving to VS 2010, but as of now, this is the easiest way for me to generate some pattern based data.

This Dll also requires a reference to the Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.Data.dll, which can be found in the DBPro directory.

Once this is referenced you should be able to create an instance of the class. So I created an instance and took the class for a spin,

regx.Expression = exp
regx.MaximumLength = length
regx.GenerateNextValues()
value=regx.Result

Well this looks like this should work. If you try this you will get an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error. Searches and forum posts did not turn up any solution.

I had almost given up on this when I actually found the solution when playing around with the code searching for something else. The secret is to Initialize the Generator:

regx.Initialize(New GeneratorInit(conn))

This call just needs a valid connection object. This needs not be connected to a database.

So once the Generator is initialized, everything should work fine. This actually is true for some of the other inbuilt generators I tried too…

I really hope Microsoft makes the inbuilt Generators public again so that it is easier for people to develop custom generators and not reinvent the wheel every time.

Enhanced Data Generator – Bank Routing Number Generator

I have updated the custom Data Generator component I wrote sometime back. I have added a new generator to generate US Bank Routing Number aka ABA numbers.

This component can generate both the MICR format and the Fraction formats of the number. If you don’t know the difference then you can use the default which is the MICR format.

This can also generate the checksum digit correctly (so your checksum validation code can be tested) if required based on the GenerateChecksum property.

Note: Since the Fraction format does not support Checksum, it is automatically set to false when you change formats. But the IDE does not seem to correctly update this, so you may need to change the Checksum property twice after changing to the MICR format.

Just replace the DLL and related files with the new set of files and that is it. I have not built the setup kit this time.

Download DataGenerator v1.1.zip (1000.3K)

Note: Works with VS 2008 SP1 and Data Edition GDR R2

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio Data Edition,Custom Data Generators

Win 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

I have always been interested in keyboard shortcuts in apps I use often as these can help you use the software more easily and a lot faster.

I found this list of Win 7 Keyboard shortcuts that is very exhaustive and very useful for most users…

Media Sharing and PS3

I have always had a number of computers at home, but till recently all media(videos/music) etc was always centralized on my main desktop. Then around six months ago, I upgraded an old disposed computer and installed Windows Home Server (currently running Power Pack 3) on it. I love the automatic backup and centralization that Home Server provides and slowly started moving some of my media over to the home server. Everything was fine as the main desktop was still the place where I watch the media from and I just integrated the home server path into my Windows 7 Videos library and everything was fine.

Then I got a PS3 (mostly for the BR functionality) as a part of a bundled offer and there I had a media extender connected to my TV. So obviously I wanted to now watch my videos on my TV rather than my monitor (which was smaller).

It was a no brainer with the Win 7 desktop. You turn on Media Sharing and then if required you can select which devices to allow etc. I just set it to allow all devices on my home network and everything was fine. My PS3 was able to find all the videos in my Library (This is a really cool feature of Windows 7. So all my different folders of Videos are now available in a single place and easy to find). No problems there. (From what I read online, looks like it was a little more complicated with Vista and Windows 7 and the latest firmware upgrade of PS3 actually make this integration easy).

PS3 was also able to find my Home Server easily as a media source, but was not able to load all the videos from my videos share. I was able to find only a couple of folders (actually only 2 from around 7 folders in my video share got listed). I searched online, did all kinds of setting changes, but even after 2-3 weeks I was unable to get my all home server videos streaming to the PS3.

So in the end I gave up trying to get the home server to stream the videos and decided to install a new media server software on my home server to do it right. I ended choosing PS3 Media Server, just because of the name.. This is a open source DNLA compliant UPnP server, targeted to work for PS3. One of the main features of this media server is that it would actually transcode videos that are in a format that cannot be handled by the PS3. Obviously if you need to transcode videos, then you better have the CPU power to do that. My home server built from a old PC, cannot actually support this, but almost all of my videos are in PS3 compliant format (esp since PS3 now supports DivX). Another cool feature of PS3 Media Server is that it has an option to run it as a service. This is the option I use as it is not always that I am logged into my home server.

 

With this setup, I am now able to stream all of my videos out of my home server into my TV via the PS3…

Technorati Tags: PS3,Windows Home Server,Media Sharing

Creating a Wireless Access Point on the Fly

Most WiFi networks are setup with WPA or related security and you are able to connect to it from most devices. But connections in places like airports have special login pages which prevent some devices from being used. Also sometimes, you have a wired connection, but your other devices (phone etc) do not have a way to connect.

This is where the new tool called Connectify helps. Connectify creates a virtual wireless connection based on the network connection you have on your laptop/desktop. It just uses your existing Wireless Card and does not need any other hardware. The only caveat is that it will run only on Windows 7, as it uses technologies that are part of the Windows 7 stack.

So once you are connected to a network on your computer, you run the tool and you can then setup the properties of your WiFi connection, including the type of security setting you want, WPA2 or WEP, and the connection name.

 

Start your hotspot and there you have a new WiFi hotspot. Connectify is still in beta and the initial versions had a number of problems that would not allow me to even start the hotspot due to some IP problems with my router. But the current version seems to have solved most of these problems.

 

There are still a number of small problems and mostly it will tell you reset your wireless connection and restart, but this is still a cool tool and really useful in a number of scenarios.

Under the scenes this use the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) built into Windows 7 to  enable you to share the internet connection.

Once you connect to the access point, you are on the network, your laptop/desktop is on. The desktop app also shows the clients connected to this hotspot, so you can monitor to make sure there are no hop-ons.

Test Data Generation - EnhancedDataGenerator

One of the most problematic part of any new development is to make sure that you test your application with data that is near real life. 90% of the cases developers just test with a couple of rows of data that they enter and the data is rarely diverse enough or similar to real life data.

There are a number of data generator tools out there in the market, but they are costly and development teams rarely get the budget to buy these tools. There are a number of random data generation free-wares, but most of these are developed over a weekend hacks and though they generate random data, I don’t think they are representative of most real life data (Who actually has a name like “$ssoghetn2u#a”).

Few people know that Visual Studio Database Edition has a set of tools to generate test data. Called Data Generators, you can add a data generation plan to your database project and use that to generate test data. It ships with multiple data generators and you can also write custom data generators very easily. Since the Database Edition is now available with the developer and some of the other editions, it is easy to use by most developers.

I actually started writing a data generation application that can generate real life representative data a couple of years back. As is the fate of a number of those weekend projects, this went into hibernation once I ran into time issues and then was forgotten.

Then a couple of months back I started playing around with the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Database Edition and then remembered I had some code that I had written for the original data generator and so started looking into writing custom data generators for VSTS DB. There is not too much data on writing custom generators and most of the blogs are out of date. So if you want to write custom generators, I would point you to MSDN.(That information is quite good and you should be able to get up and running quickly)

I was surprised at how the VSTS DB custom generator interface was so similar to what I had come up with and so started writing a couple of data generators based on the code I already had. After a couple of weekends, I had my first couple of custom data generators.

Note: These are written for VS 2008 SP1 and Database Edition GDR R2. I am not sure if this will work for GDR 1. (I suspect it will as the interface for custom data generators have not changed).

This EnhancedDataGenerator currently contains two DataGenerators:

1. FirstNameGenerator – Generates real-life First Names

2. LastNameGenerator – Generates real-life Last Names

These are also locale aware and currently support two locales en-US and de-DE. So based on the locale this generates different kinds of First and Last Names. (Locale is a property in each generator, so you can generate English first names and German last names, if that is what you want). If you have data for common First and Last names in other cultures, please send them to me and I will update the database to handle those cultures too. (The maximum time I actually spent was to search for and get the base data into a format that I can import into the database)

The FirstName Generator is also Gender aware.

A couple of screenshots of these at work:

en-US	de-DE

EnhancedDataGenerator – DLL and config Files. For people who know how to do a manual deploy of custom extensions.

EnhancedDataGenerator Setup – Setup File that will deploy the files to the default VS install location (Don't use if you had used a custom path to install Visual Studio)

Other Things to Notes

1. Error Handling is not great. I have not yet found a way to report errors to the IDE user. So as of now if there are any errors, nothing happens. E.g. if you set the locale to anything other than en-US or de-DE, you just get empty data back. So if no data appears, that means you have an error .

2. The setup kit has not be fully tested. So if this does not work for you, use the DLL kit and do a manual deploy

3. Retain the directory structure inside the zip file when doing manual deploy

3. If your Visual Studio is installed to a custom path (not <prog Files x86>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0, then you will have do a couple of more things.

a. Use the manual depoy method and get the Extensions deployed in the VSTSDB\Extensions

b. Change the config file setting DBPath to point to the Database directory inside your custom extensions directory.

4. The .Extensions.xml file is already created with the correct data, so you will not have to create those again when doing a manual deploy.

Office 2010 Enters Beta

Office 2010 has been in technical preview available for invited testers till now. It has now moved into Beta.

It is now available for download for MSDN and Technet subscribers. When I checked it looked like it was uploaded on the 16th, but I am yet to get an official mail from the Connect site on the beta being available. So looks like MS wants to keep the hype low so as to not crash their servers.

Anyway, no information on public availability of the beta as of now.

The more exciting news is that SharePoint 2010 has also gone into beta. I see that the SharePoint 2010 Foundation download is now available in MSDN.

Update: It is official now and you can download the beta from http://office.microsoft.com/beta. As of now this seems to still lead to the MSDN or TechNet sites, but I assume this will be available to everybody soon.