.NET From India

Windows 8 Developers have a sense of humor!!

Now that the Windows 8 Developer Preview is out, I got it installed on a VirtualBox instance. As I was reading thru some of the dialogs that popup during installation, I got a sense that since this is an early release, the developers got more freedom and have displayed a sense of humor in some of the messages.

Here are some of the ones that I found interesting:

I liked this the best (something you don’t say often for a license dialog )

 

This one, though not humorous, seems to be less formal that what you usually see

Home Server 2011 Connector and Problems with .NET Framework..

I had setup the new Home Server 2011 on one of my servers and have been transitioning stuff off my Home Server v1.

So after all of the data has been transferred and I had setup the server in a way that makes sense to me (given that Drive Extender, DE, is not there anymore and how much I miss that… That is a completely separate post by itself)

Then I started moving my client machines over. I left my main desktop off till the last and I came to it yesterday.

The Connect installation is quite simple and it just asks around 2-3 simple questions and that’s it. The problem is that they have made it so simple that it becomes very difficult when there is a problem. So the only error the setup reports is a wonderfully descriptive – “The Windows Home Server 2011 Connector has encountered an unexpected error” or something like that (Well everyone knows what an unexpected error is and can easily fix that. Right )..

After some searching, I found an KB article saying that a few services need to be running and I was still getting this error after I confirmed those services were good.

Then I came upon this post on the forum that talks about this problem occurring if a beta .NET 4.0 was installed..

Then it stuck me.. I had installed the VS 2010 Beta on this machine a long time back and then after playing around for a few days, forgotten about that (as I rarely use that machine for any development). So I uninstalled all the pieces that was installed with VS 2010 Beta and then also uninstalled .NET 4.0 Beta.

Only problem was, half way thru the uninstall something happened and my machine blue screened. The Beta disappeared from the Program and Features screen. So I went ahead and installed the full .NET 4.0 RTM. But still Connector will not install. Same Problem as before.

So I tried to uninstall .NET 4.0 RTM thinking I will clean everything and try again. Now it wouldn’t uninstall cleanly. It would go half way and crash. So basically I got stuck with a half installed .NET 4.0.

Then I came upon the .NET cleanup utility. Downloaded the latest version and set it up to clean up .NET 4.0. It actually went half way and then the system re-booted. Not sure if this was the planned way, but when I checked the log, it seemed as if there was an error. So I just ran the utility again and it went through fine.

Then I went and installed the full .NET 4.0 RTM and then the Connector install went thru fine with no problems.

It would have been a lot easier and saved me around 5+ hours if the setup had just said, there was a wrong version of the .NET Framework, instead of the great “unexpected error”…

Windows Virtual PC–Launching Virtual Machine Wizard Manually

I use Windows Virtual PC for running some of the test VPCs and also for learning new features etc. Since I also play around with multiple versions of virtualization software (VirtBox, VMWare etc), I suddenly found that my Virtual PC directory settings were kind of screwed up (after many installs/uninstall of multiple virtualization software). So now I do not get the options to create a new virtual machine.

The good thing is that Windows Virtual PC is made up of multiple EXEs and you can manually launch then as required.

The easiest way is to directly type the command into the run bar as all of these EXEs reside in the system32 directory.

The command to launch the new virtual machine wizard is vpcwizard.exe.

You can find more about the different EXEs that ship with Windows Virtual PC on this post: Windows Virtual PC Executable

IE9 Released!!!

Download it from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie/home

 

 

There are also some nice updated demos of the capabilities at http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/ including a nice interactive video mixer app called Firework Interactive Video.

Enhanced Data Generator v 1.4

I just uploaded a new version of the Enhanced Data Generators over the weekend. This new version 1.4 contains misc. bug fixes and the addition of a new data generator, XMLGenerator (Note: v1.3 and above support only Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0).

The XML Generator is based on the XML Generator MSDN sample code and wraps it to work as a data generator. You basically provide an XSD and it generates XML that fits that XSD. Should be useful to fill XML type columns with valid data that fits a XSD.

Note: Since I use the MSDN sample, this does not support very complex XSD patterns. But I think, this should satisfy most of the common scenarios.

Download Enhanced Data Generator v1.4

Read More on Enhanced Data Generators

A Few IE9 RC Features

As I use the new RC the more changes/feature I come across. Below are a few I came across over the weekend.

One of the new popup messages I came across was a new “cross-site scripting” dialog shown below

I don’t know what this does, but it was at a well know site. I assume this is to do with XSS Filter setting and I could not find anything more on this on the web.

The other is when you download a exe or other executable files. I am quite sure this feature was not there in the Beta as today is the first time I came across this. This is a prompt I got when I tried to download an exe file.

If you see, there is no run option in the popup bar. I clicked on Action and I got another dialog

Again here the “Run anyway” option becomes available only if you click a expander button (those small arrow’y things). The default action available is only “Don’t run” and “Delete”.

This is quite a good thing as it basically adds a layer of protection and requires user action to actually run an executable from a unknown site. Also if the download is from a source that is marked as reputable, then this dialog does not popup.

More details on this feature at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/10/13/stranger-danger-introducing-smartscreen-application-reputation.aspx

IE9 Tracking Protection and Tracking Lists

Obviously one of the most talked about option of the new IE9 RC is about the new feature called Tracking Protection. This allows you to control what kind of tracking options you will accept and also as a by product can help you stop all those distracting Ads from showing up. Do note, this is turned off by default and you need to turn it on and also subscribe to lists that contains sites to be blocked.

As soon as I installed the RC, I set this up and then went ahead and subscribed to all the recommended lists. I figured more the lists, better my chance of catching an Ad site.

But according to this article (Privacy protection and IE9: who can you trust?), the lists can contain both allow and disallow rules and allow rules win when there is a contention. So basically, it now becomes important that you choose the right lists or you are going to pretty much be without any tracking protection. Based on the article, the current list rate as follows (as of Feb 12th list):

Publisher	Block	Allow
EasyList	2,189	47
PrivacyChoice	463	1
Abine	94	0
TRUSTe	0	3,958

 

So going anywhere near TRUSTe, basically negates tracking protection as of now.

And PrivacyChoice does not actually allow any site, it just has a sample whitelist entry and that seems to have been counted as a false positive.

Certification – uCertify Preparation Kit Review

Certifications have been an area of interest for me for quite some time. I see certifications as showing a persons expertise in a certain area. There was a time a few years ago when Microsoft certifications were so easy that I almost stopped considering it. I have heard from people that it is better now and that newer certifications does focus on testing knowledge. (Given the prevalence of braindumps, I still am not 100% sure about that yet)

But given personal experience I would say if you take time out from a hectic life to go an take an certification, it at least shows some kind of initiative to learn from your side..

I was offered a license to review a certification product called uCertify recently. It is basically a preparation kit. It is not really a kit that will take you from no knowledge to certification. It is more of a tool that will help you get prepared for the exam if you already have knowledge of/experience in  the specified area.

So it basically provides you with study tips and simulated exams that will help your confidence and also refresh topics. Also if you find that you score poorly in certain topics, those may be areas you need to brush up on.

The kit also has a few articles, but I did not find then exhaustive of too helpful. So I would recommend, you study up for the exam and use the tool to check out your preparedness for the exam, before you actually get to the exam. (the kit I got for review had 4 prebuilt exams with around 230+ questions and study tips)

The UI is quite clean and usable, but I did get a few crashes when it automatically updates the engine or the exam kit. Also I have not seem updates for quite sometime now and so am not sure how regular these are.

 

Bottom Line: This is a good tool to test your preparedness for the exam and not something that will teach you for the exam.

Moving Applications to Azure

I was reading this post about how they are moving TFS to Azure to provide a cloud based version of TFS.

I find this very interesting as it provides you with a view of what kinds of problems you may face if you are moving an existing application on to the cloud (esp. Azure)

Some issues like security can have a major impact on your application design, while others like SELECT INTO support may also drain a lot of effort to fix.

And the final big thing that may weigh on your overall effort is testing. Because, now all your previous test results are out of the window and you will have to do a complete regression to make sure that everything works find.

Microsoft BI – ‘hard to beat pricewise’ – Forrester

A recent Forrester Report on the BI space puts Microsoft BI on the leaders quadrant and also says the value of Microsoft BI is ‘hard to beat pricewise’.

I have been seeing an increasing trend among customers in adopting Microsoft BI over the past year or so and this seems to be led strongly from two fronts:

1. Price – Since the price of most of the elements required for BI is encapsulated in things that most enterprises already have (SQL Server, SharePoint (for PPS) and Office (Excel+PowerPivot).

2. New UI power in PowerPivot and SharePoint PPS services seem to also add to the overall trend.

(Source : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ragnarh/archive/2010/10/26/forrester-research-calls-microsoft-s-business-intelligence-value-proposition-hard-to-beat-pricewise.aspx)