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Creating Linked-server in MSSQL

2011-08-09T12:41:00.000+08:00

I come across a situation where I need to import the data from one instance to another, in MSSQL. So, I add the steps here to see it might help.

1) At source DB where we want to retrieve the data, create a new login account, eg. "test" with password "123".

2) Use the neccesary authetication, choose to untick "Enforce password policy" for our testing purpose.

3) If the db name in source DB is called "testing", maps the test account "test" to this db, with appropriate schema. In this case, it's "dbo". Add the role as "db_datareader" as well.

4) At destination DB where we want to store the data, create a same new login account created in step (1), eg. "test" with password "123", using SA account.

5) Use the neccesary authetication, choose to untick "Enforce password policy" for our testing purpose.

6) If the db name in destination DB is called "testDB", maps the test account "test" to this db, with appropriate schema. In this case, it's "dbo".

7) Add a linked-server in destination DB, you can either use SQL script or GUI.

8) You can verify the available linked-server in the destination DB, thru' Catalog Views: sys.servers

9) Now, log-in as "test" user.

10) So, you should be able to query the source DB data by using a fully-qualified name.

You can get my projects at Softpedia now, hehe

2010-05-12T21:29:00.001+08:00

Softpedia Editorial Team informed me that they have included my projects in their sites.

1) Analog Clock - A small desktop gadget that will display the current time (Downloads: 44)

2) SQL Management Console 0.1.1.29977 -Query pane and result pane (Downloads: 50)

Again, really thanks to them.

Print Zebra barcode label thru' ASP .NET

2010-02-24T23:48:00.014+08:00

Recently, one of the projects I am maintaining required me to enhance the existing feature, which is printing the Zebra barcode label through ASP .NET. The old staff who developed it left the company long time ago, and there's no other colleagues know how it was developed and worked.

Printing it as WinForm application is not uncommon with the SerialPort Class, as there's a lot of resources out there, but not so true for ASP .NET.

So I needed to google around and posted question to the forums. With some lucks and googling skills, i managed to let it works and add enhancement on that. But i found not full steps on web, so just to post this to help someone who might need it in the future.

1.a) Set the "Generic/Text Only" as default printer driver. Yes, you see it correctly, it's not zebra printer driver that match your zebra printer, since it's printed through web.

1.b.i) If you do not have it, you can go to any existing printer property page (right-click on any other printer driver) and add this driver.

1.b.ii) Browse to driver list start with "G", then you will find it. Finish this installation process.

2) Once you have the driver, setup the ASP designer with Zebra programming language (ZPL) like this (The buttons are for user to trigger the ZPL to send).

3) By calling the undocumented print() function (not window.print(), and I think it works on IE only) in javascript, you can print the zebra bar-code label through ASP.NET.

4) Keep the web form as clean code as possible, you will send it as ZPL and ZPL only to printer.

5) Print it! You should get it ;)

Google lauches Chrome OS

2009-07-10T00:15:00.004+08:00

Few days ago, Google launches Chrome OS at its official blog, and it quotes:

"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks."

There's more from John O'Conner's Blog:

"Google Chrome OS will be a slightly more beefy Android OS ..."

And from the FAQ session of the main site, there's a screenshot of this OS (this image does not belong to me):

It's not weird Google target on netbooks, since netbooks has stronger sales recently.
Personally I think it's still too early to judge the impact of it towards Windows OS on desktop.

MSSQL 2008 System View release!

2009-02-07T12:33:00.014+08:00

Are you a DBA? Want to know how the overall architecture of MSSQL? Ever wonder how you can manage the databases easily? How you can create a version of simple MSSQL Management Console better than mine? Yes, now you can see how it works through the entity-relationship model (ERM) at here.

Start from sys.objects, sys.columns, ..., you can easily manipulate your T-SQL scripts within the following categories of component:

Objects, Types and Indexes
Trace and Eventing
Linked Servers
Common Language Runtime
Partitioning
Database Mirroring
EndPoints
Database and Storage
Execution Environment
Service Broker
Security
Transaction Information
Resource Governor
Server-Wide Information
Full Text Search
Extended Events

p/s: During last year PDC 2008, .NET FX team has released a selection of new types and namespaces introduce in FX4 at Brad Abrams's blog. From there, you can download 2 versions:

Running Windows 7 Beta in Virtual PC 2007

2009-01-11T12:57:00.016+08:00

After taking more than 12 hours (yes, I subscribed a low cost package from ISP) to download the Windows 7 Beta ISO (see my previous post), finally i can play around with it. Installing it on my existing OS will be too risky, thus Virtual PC comes to my mind.

As rumour says, I tried it using a guest OS as Windows Vista and it works. Say not more and let's see some steps and screenshots.

1) After creating a new vmc & vhc files, capture the ISO downloaded. You can follow tutorial here. The setup will be started. When it asks for guest OS, choose Windows Vista.

2) You might need to adjust the RAM for installation to run smoothly.

3) Now, you see it is loading files and starting Windows.

4) Choose the language to install, ..., etc.

5) And Windows 7 Beta is installed successfully.

6) ScreenSaver cannot be loaded for Virtual PC with standard VGA virtualized.

7) Some basic themes for customization. I see it as a competition with wincustomize.

8) MS Paint get a Ribbon-look.

9) Our "Show Desktop" now resides on bottom-right.

10) And we can try the Internet Explorer 8 Beta as well.

Mixed fortune for Mobile OSes

2009-01-10T23:23:00.010+08:00

This week is a week with full emotion, for OS developers. For UIQ lover, they saw UIQ finally filed bankruptcy. While Palm OS lovers, Palm makes a comeback at CES.

UIQ:
Quoted from theregister:

"Motorola had 11 UIQ phones (or variants) planned for release next year, and now all have been cancelled in the most recent company reorganisation."

Sure Nokia purchase of Symbian was not a simple business move.
I wonder what will happen to MotoDev Studio for UIQ, an integrated development environment based on the Eclipse IDE, and Sony Ecrisson's Symbian OS Docs & Tools. They could be phased out soon and extinct anytime. Will Sony Ericsson & Motorola embrace Windows Mobile OS fully since the only Symbian OS is now totally owns by another competitor (a.k.a. Nokia), like Samsung?

Palm:

With new OS("WebOS"), new handset ("Palm pre") introduction at CES, it revives the hope of Palm Inc. to gain the market once they dominant, and it tries to woo more developer to it:

"It was built with developers in mind,"

and:

"The entire UI is based on a "desktop + cards" paradigm, where "cards" replace "windows" or even "apps." You start with a display area that contains a blank desktop and an iPhone-style dock at the bottom."

And more news of Palm at CES is covered by engadget:

1) Live from Palm's CES press conference

2) Palm Pre: First Look and Details

3) Palm announces webOS platform

Windows 7 Beta is out

2009-01-10T16:51:00.005+08:00

So fast, Microsoft released Windows Vista 2 years ago, now we have another new Windows OS release, a.k.a Windows 7, in beta form to public. You can get it here:

a) Windows 7 Beta 32-bit (downloading)

b) Windows 7 Beta 64-bit (not yet tested)

For more information, you can visit this site.

This site have offered various tips to let you play around with it.

1) How to Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista

2) Windows 7 Product Keys Available--for Some

#p/s: For Windows developer, the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: BETA, or the so called Platform SDK v7.0, is released as well.

Carbide C++ IDE is free, even for Professional Edition

2008-12-18T22:44:00.028+08:00

Yes, you are not wrong. Under the stiff competition from Apple's iPhone & Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1, Nokia decides to release their native app builder, Carbide C++ IDE for free, for OEM, Professional & Developer Edition (seems there's no need for Expression Edition anymore).

New features added on this versions are:

Sensor APIs allow applications to connect to and receive data from various sensors on an S60 device.
Tactile Feedback Client API is used for producing tactile feedback for different touch events.
Touch UI Utilities API provides a mechanism to detect long-tap events on the touch screen.
Title Pane Touch Observer API allows an application to observe the user tapping on the title pane.

Here's some simple steps for settings up the development environment:
1) Get the Carbide C++ IDE version 2.0 & Nokia S60 5th SDK.

2) Install the S60 5th SDK first by extracting the zip & running the setup.exe.

3) Here's the content of the installation package if customized installation. Choose the one that meet you needs.

4) Point the Eclipse installation path for plug in if you want integration with it.

5) After S60 5th SDK installed, you can start installing Carbide C++ IDE version 2.0, and this is the Welcome screen.

6) And yes, this screen telling you it's free for all editions!

7) You can either choose OEM, Professional or Developer Edition here. I wonder who will need Developer Ed. when you have at least Professional Ed. Save disk space?

8) After Carbide C++ IDE installed, you can start it from "Start" menu and you will be welcomed with splash screen.

9) Carbide IDE is based on Eclipse, so those Eclipse user should familiar with it. You can either choose "Workbench", "Tutorials", .... Here're tutorials available.

10) Go back "Workbench", and you can start coding. Choose "New" from "File" menu. Here're the available templates. Take note on "S60 GUI Application with UI Designer". This feature is not available when i played around with Expression Edition 2~3 years ago. How envy i was last time for this feature of Rapid Application Development (RAD).

11) "UI Design Selection" for type of app.

12) Screenshot of Form Designer & Toolbox (in Visual Studio term)

13) After you build the project (yes, even without adding any feature, it's runnable with basic skeleton), a desktop emulator version of exe will be built.

14) Epoc will be trigger if you run or debug, and here's the simple application from S60 GUI application.

Online library get be reached here.

#p/s: Microsoft has launched a new project, for running apps in Apple's iPhone, named SeaDragon. The future of computing is on mobile!

Application.StartupPath != Environment.CurrentDirectory

2008-12-14T22:03:00.008+08:00

When developing the .NET app, you are not only creating an .exe. Most of the time, you will need some other files like .bmp, App.Config, and .xml. For those resource files(data or images), you could simply embed into the main exe and access it class "ResourceManager", though it might increase the size tremendously. But what if for those XML file that need user customization? You might put them along with your main executable file during deployment, for initialization. Thus you will need to find where your .exe starts, and to read XML file that relative to it. So now you might think you got at least two choices, "Environment.CurrentDirectory" & "Application.StartupPath".

From the MSDN, the definition of:
a) Environment.CurrentDirectory
Gets or sets the fully qualified path of the current working directory.
b) Application.StartupPath
Gets the path for the executable file that started the application, not including the executable name.

They look similar & match your purpose. "Environment.CurrentDirectory" looks good, especially it is located inside "System" namespace, so you no need to add any reference; while "Application.StartupPath" needs to add reference to assembly "System.Windows.Forms". You might think the former one is better for console application, and even windows service! Windows service does not need any GUI and would suppress any messagebox from pop-up. So using "Environment.CurrentDirectory" seems a good choice to prevent the developers simply calling messagebox in windows service if without adding reference to assembly "System.Windows.Forms", from design perspective.

So I decided to use "Environment.CurrentDirectory" for my dll, which is eventually called by the windows service, and the code to load the XML file would be similar to this:

Dim strXMLFile As String = Environment.CurrentDirectory & "\" & INITIALIZATION_XML
If Not File.Exists(strXMLFile) Then
    Throw New FileNotFoundException("The initialization file " & INITIALIZATION_XML & " does not exist.")
End If

I created a WinForm for test harness of the dll, and everything was fine. Then this dll consumed by the windows services. Bang! I get an "FileNotFoundException" exception. I use Debug.Print to find that my XML look-up path was at: "C:\WINDOWS\system32"???

Why? It's because Windows service applications run in their own security context.
and more definition for "Environment.CurrentDirectory":

Gets and sets the fully qualified path of the current directory; that is, the directory from which this process starts.

Using the Reflector:
a) Environment.CurrentDirectory

b) Application.StartupPath

So, the "Environment.CurrentDirectory" is equivalent to "Application.StartupPath" when running as WinForm/console app and will become variable "%SystemDirectory%" eventually if run under windows service! A lesson learned.

p/s: You could use reflection from class Assembly as well, to find the start-up path.

Free booklets from Symbian

2008-11-28T16:02:00.005+08:00

Symbian has published few booklets online, for free in SDN (Symbian Developer Network). You might ask, what the heck the booklet is. They are probably books contains small amount of pages.

Quoted from one of the booklets:
This booklet is targeted at absolute beginners wishing to develop C++ code on Symbian OS. We help you to choose the right tools and development environment, and list everything you’ll need - from the software development kits you’ll use,to the hardware you’ll work with.

These booklets are essentially the starting guide for the absolute beginner, who are getting started with the coding in Symbian OS, either UIQ or S60. Though most of them are less than hundred page, i think it inspires the community to grow bigger. There are under three categories (I don't count translated category as one, though i listed it):
a) Essential Symbian OS booklets

Coding Tips
Performance Tips
Coding Standards

b) Using Symbian OS booklets Essential

Getting started
P.I.P.S.
Carbide.c++
Ready for ROM
Platform security for all

c) Essential UI booklets

Essential UIQ: Getting Started
Essential S60:Getting Started
Creating Location-Aware Applications

d) Translated booklets

Chinese Getting Started
Chinese Coding Tips
Japanese Coding Tips
Chinese Essential UIQ Getting Started
Chinese Performance Tips
Japanese Performance Tips
Korean Coding Tips
Japanese Data Sharing Tips
Japanese P.I.P.S.
Spanish Getting Started
Japanese Carbide.c++
Chinese P.I.P.S.
Japanese Getting Started
Korean Getting Started
Russian Getting Started
Chinese Coding Standards
Japanese Coding Standards
Chinese Platform security for all
Persian Getting Started
Russian Carbide.c++
Italian Quick Recipes Taster

Personally, i think these 2 books are not bad:
a)"Essential S60:Getting Started" and

b) "Carbide.c++"

And actually you could get more at Forum Nokia, under section "Documentation". While you might interest to develop Symbian-based apps using C#, you might be a bit disappointed, this booklet is purely based on Net60, which is a propriety tool of Red Five Labs, and you got to pay for it.

So, why wait, get a copy of S60 Platform SDKs & Carbide.c++ Express (free IDE), and start coding!

#p/s: I think I am going to buy a Nokia N95 and create some simple apps as well, it looks great.
another #p/s: Nowadays, it becomes a common practice for every OS vendors host their sites, with the name like "XXX Developer Network", and "XXX Platform SDK". Familiar? See Microsoft Developer Network(MSDN) & Windows Platform SDK.

Screenshots from VS2010 CTP

2008-11-04T21:32:00.012+08:00

After several days of suspension due to internal problem, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP was up again to public on Monday. It's recommended for you to get the latest information from the Connect mainpage, instead of the link I provided on last post.

The downloads for vhd file are around 7GB and after extraction, it consumes nearly 24GB. What a huge space it takes. While still going thru' all the new features, here are some screenshot for dear readers :

VHD is using OS Windows Server 2008 SP1; 54 days left to activate

Now you know why it used up 24 GB; It comes with MS Office, MSSQL 2008, VS2008 & of course, VS2010

The start page got a face-lift.

About box of VS2010. We got 103 day left for trying.

WiX-based Windows Installer MSI file is came along with this CTP.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP released

2008-10-29T21:31:00.004+08:00

Almost one month after Microsoft unveiled the press release, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP can be downloaded from here: Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview(CTP), and it is available in VHD format.

Here're some overview:

Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
Enabling emerging trends
Inspiring developer delight
Riding the next generation platform wave.

Pick it up fast, and you could be the next MVP!
(Following image is external link)

Will Microsoft targets Autodesk Next?

2008-10-27T21:05:00.004+08:00

Autodesk has acquired Softimage recently. This might not an important news to those programmers/software developers. But it might make a huge impact to those 3D Modellers, since now we sees 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage are now under one roof. How are Autodesk going to position each of them, since they share so much similarities among them?

(From left to right: Autodesk 3ds Max, Softimage, Autodesk Maya)

So do you still remember these names?

1) WordStar (word processor application)
2) Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet program)
3) Borland & Watcom C Compiler (C compiler)
4) OpenGL (3D graphics API)

These are the software products that once lead in its own fields, and now Microsoft had beat them with its own products, with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Visual C++ & Direct 3D, respectively.

After defeating several software giants, MS is targeting Adobe, with its SilverLight & Expression Studio. How long will Adobe (and Flash) last? Will Microsoft targets Autodesk next, especially MS has bought Carigari, the creator of trueSpace? Let's wait and see.

p/s: Dear developers, you might interest to see how .NET can be used in Autodesk product as well, at here: Developing for AutoCAD® Using F#
Gentle reminder, you might need to prepare yourself for it sooner or later :)

How much difference between your salary with geek in googleplex

2008-10-25T17:34:00.002+08:00

Feel your annual salary is low?

Think you are smart?

Sad why google not hire you?

Before all that, this might interest you: Salaries At Google, Microsoft And Yahoo .

(This image is external link, and I hold no rights)

10 Developer-must-have apps

2008-10-22T21:06:00.047+08:00

While so many bloggers have suggested the usable tools to their audience, how could i lag? Although Scott Hanselman have covered most, and it's a mountain high to climb, let me introduce my favourite top 10 developer-must-have apps:

1) Notepad++ (Language: neutral)
when you need it?
a) View Unix files in Windows platform, especially during Java development.

when you open a come-with-JDK Java file using notepad

when you open it using Notepad++, it's well-formatted

b) Need to probe the _ViewState of ASP .NET web page to see how stateless HTTP retains value after post-back, using base64 decode. (you can try it here)

A normal ASP .NET with its HTML source

Copy the content to Notepad++

Decode it to base64, you can see your state retained

c) Determine Byte-Order-Mark of a file, whether it's saved in following formats: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 (LE), UTF-32 (BE), UTF-32 (LE), UTF-7, UTF-1, UTF-EBCDIC, SCSU, BOCU-1. And it's exactly .Net method GetPreamble trying to do.

Did you see extra three bytes ahead your file content?

d) it's lightweight, unlike Visual Studio IDE, although Noah Coad might beg to differ.
e) Hey! "All I've mentioned above, other editors have the same features as well". Well, simply I like its UI also.

2) Unlocker (Language: neutral)
when you need it?
a) When you want to delete a file which is being viewed/locked by hidden host. That's nothing more annoyed than this.

b) When a file get locked by your app, especially using class File.IO to write it without closing the stream properly.
c) When you try to delete an old ASP .NET version 1.1 web projects in "Inetpub" that's being locked by IIS.

3) Dependency Walker (Language: native)
when you need it?
a) When you need to determine a EXE is a native exe or .NET managed exe. Why, because you can decompile the source accordingly later :)

A .NET exe

A VB6 dll

b) Of course, find the exe/dll dependencies, as the name implies. When you were in the pre-NET era with only Visual C++/Visual Basic 6 & Package Deployment Wizard, there's no such thing called MSI technology, which can help you to determine most of the dependencies for you.

4) Process Explorer (Language: neutral)
when you need it?
a) When you need to find out what process/apps/service is running secretly. You'll never know your employer have planted a window service for software inventory control on your laptop, until you run it.

b) Check the thread state of a stopped thread, probably due to Timeout of Three-Way Handshake in FTP uploading/downloading, when you suppose to have a multi-threaded app run without stopping FTP upload/download.

5) Microsoft Network Monitor (Language: neutral)

when you need it?
a) When you have written a FTP client app running well on uploading files, but FTP server complaint it never receive. You can show this to prove.

b) When you need to sniff network traffic, especially on FTP since all the commands are transferred thru' Cleartext.

Wow, you can see user-name and password!

6) Reflector (Language: .NET)
when you need it?
a) When you need to re-generate the source that lost and you do not have any source control previously, with the aid from plug-in, FileDisassembler

b) When you need to find the difference between the exe/dll you deployed, with the another aid from plug-in, Diff

7) DebugView (Language: native/.NET)
when you need it?
a) When your app only with issue happens intermittently, you need your app to run in verbose mode using Debug.Print without additional tracer running side-by-side, that might affect the performance, or introduce new bug/maintenance issue. This works well for native app too, using Win32.

8) 7Z (Language: neutral)
when you need it?
a) It supports most of the commercial format, yet without asking you to purchase every time it loads, eg. WinZip, Winrar. Furthermore, it able to compress more to save your disk-space.

b) When you need to find out how the zip file is created. Either SharpZipLib or Windows built-in zipping tool; compression method is either DEFLATE, Implode, or Store. You can get the Host OS and CRC as well.

this zip file is compressed using SharpZipLib with DEFLATE method

this zip file is compressed using Store method

this zip file is compressed using Windows built-in zipping tool

9) Microsoft Virtual PC (Language: neutral)
when you need it?
a) When you wish to be beta tester yet you do not want to jeopardize your existing system.
b) When you found virus, and you need to cultivate it in order to trace the originator, so that... counter-hack!
c) When you need to test your web app in different OS. MS has prepared it for you to use it until January, 2009. Flavours available: Windows XP SP3 with IE6 VHD file, Windows XP SP2 with IE7 VHD file, Windows XP SP3 with IE8 Beta 2 VHD file, and Vista Image with IE7 VHD file. (see: Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image)
d) When you wish to play around with different *-nix OS.

10) Windiff (Language: neutral)
a) Basically for file compare and directory compare. I have used it since development in Visual C++ 6.0. Though it might not user-friendly, eg, cannot compare in separate panes, cannot compare Unicode/UTF-8 files. But it comes with Visual C++ 6.0 and have been with me so long, I feel hard to say goodbye to it.

Review of notorious bugs on Windows pre-WU era

2008-10-11T12:30:00.004+08:00

Remember these: Code Red, The SQL Slammer bug, The Blaster Worm bug, The Sasser bug? This article : Worst Windows flaws of the past decade , bring you back to the notorious moments on Windows OS platform, pre-WU(Windows Update) era!

NET 2.0 FtpWebRequest class is far from perfect as self-contained class

2008-09-27T12:33:00.006+08:00

In .NET framework 2.0, Microsoft introduced a new class for FTP- FtpWebRequest Class. This class can consider as high-level wrapper class so that developers should no longer need to deal with socket programming and FTP raw command:

ABOR - abort a file transfer
CWD - change working directory
DELE - delete a remote file
LIST - list remote files
MDTM - return the modification time of a file
MKD - make a remote directory
NLST - name list of remote directory
PASS - send password
PASV - enter passive mode
PORT - open a data port
PWD - print working directory
QUIT - terminate the connection
RETR - retrieve a remote file
RMD - remove a remote directory
RNFR - rename from
RNTO - rename to
SITE - site-specific commands
SIZE - return the size of a file
STOR - store a file on the remote host
TYPE - set transfer type
USER - send username

But after applying it in the real application to connect to a Unix FTP server, as a class or dll, with the reference from the sample "FTP Explorer" in MSDN, I found that I have trouble navigating to parent directory, where I would hit error:

System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (550) File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access).

(See List of FTP server return codes) but I could do it without any problem using FileZilla. Excluding the problem might come from .NET framework, since FTP is under RFC 959, I was recommended by someone to use the WireShark, a Packet sniffer tool, to check the message sent and received between server and client.

I just realized that the FtpWebRequest class itself could not simply navigate to any path in the server if the default directory is not root path, since with WebRequestMethods.Ftp Members, you only got these raw commands that it wrapped (where's FTP CWD protocol ?):

FTP APPE protocol
FTP DELE protocol
FTP RETR protocol
FTP MDTM protocol
FTP SIZE protocol
FTP NLIST protocol
FTP LIST protocol
FTP MKD protocol
FTP PWD protocol
FTP RMD protocol
FTP RENAME protocol
FTP STOR protocol
FTP STOU protocol

(Even using "PrintWorkingDirectory", only empty string returned)

From Mariya Atanasova's Blog:

The above example will bring you to your user's directory and list all the contents there. Now let's say you want to go 2 directories backwards and list the contents there (provided your user has permissions to do that). You close the previous FtpWebRequest and issue a new one with this uri
uri = "ftp://myFtpUserName:myFtpUserPassword@myFtpUrl/%2E%2E/%2E%2E";
This is equivalent to logging in with your user's credentials and then using cd ../../

But one strange thing: what if user (or even you, the developer) does not know the default directory and current directory? Then you might need WinINet Functions or even worst, go back to socket programming.

p/s: For those who prefer to have hand dirty, there's a free e-book available in scribd: TCP/IP Sockets in C# .

Why we need different version of MSXML dlls installed?

2008-09-25T18:04:00.010+08:00

While still supporting VB6 legacy system that reference to MSXML 4.0, user (and even layman like me) curious why some PCs have installed MSXML 6.0, yet still need to install MSXML 4.0 (or SP2). We thought this should have backward compatibility or new version should act as a superset of old version, as most of the Microsoft's products do.

From VB6 MSXML sample (you can get it here), if MSXML 4.0 is installed and "DllTest.dll" is registered and this app is ran, you will get:

if "DllTest.dll" is not registered on PC without MSXML 4.0 installed, you might get :

After "DllTest.dll" registration on PC without MSXML 4.0 installed, you will still get:

(you might get: "Object variable or With block variable not set" as well for some other cases)

From explanation of MSDN:

Version-Dependent ProgIDs
Prior to version 4.0 of MSXML, there was a notion of version independent ProgIDs. This meant that you could write a script that instantiated an instance of MSXML, and when a new version of MSXML was installed on your machine, you automatically would get the new version. However, this sometimes created problems. Replacing one version of MSXML with another version of MSXML created situations where the user's program would stop working due to changes in the programming interface.

Since version 4.0 of MSXML, each version has a unique ProgID for each interface in MSXML. This means that when you are using a scripting language, you will not suddenly be using a much newer version than you were previously. This is a much better approach - specifying exactly which version you want to run against, then coding specifically for that version, and being certain that the version would not change when the user updates their machine means that MSXML applications are much more reliable.

There is a situation where you will automatically be using MSXML version 3.0. If the computer that is fully patched uses MSXML as part of a web application in Internet Explorer using the MIME viewer, you automatically will be using MSXML 3.0. If you are using MSXML via a scripting language, and if you specify a version independent ProgID (such as Msxml2.DOMDocument), then you will be using MSXML 3.0. However, if you are using MSXML via a scripting language, and if you specify a version dependent ProgID (such as MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0), then you will be using the version of MSXML corresponds to the specified ProgID.

Windows OS 7: A milestone 3 (build 6780) release?

2008-09-20T11:48:00.003+08:00

Time flies, now we have Windows OS 7 milestone 3 (build 6780) release. From the screenshots, we can see MS have revamped the MS WordPad, MS Paint, MS Calculator to a Office-like application. Soon, all the apps in OS 7 will be filled with ribbons. (Following images are external links from UX Evangelist, I hold no rights)

Details of multi-touch technology is discussed here as well.

Codepage and Compression/DEFLATE

2008-09-17T20:40:00.011+08:00

While data compression is great to reduce the file size/content significantly, the code-page of the PC will affect the compression/decompression or INFLATE/DEFLATE too. If you compress the data in code-page A, you might not able to get it back through de-compression in code-page B. Some of the compression algorithms involves Huffman coding(here), thus making byte-encoding significant.

Here's the sample code executed using zLib:

0) Within the same PC, INFLATE/DEFLATE is ok.

1) DEFLATE under PC with code-page 1252 (XP: Control Panel->Regional and Language Options), compare with what you get from (2) later

(From wiki: Windows-1252 is a character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows in English and some other Western languages. It is one version within the group of Windows code pages.)

2) DEFLATE under PC with code-page 936 (XP: Control Panel->Regional and Language Options), compare with what you get from (1) previously

(From wiki: A character is encoded as 1 or 2 bytes. A byte in the range 00–7F is a single byte that means the same thing as it does in ASCII. Strictly speaking, there are 96 characters and 32 control codes in this range.
A byte with the high bit set indicates that it is the first of 2 bytes. Loosely speaking, the first byte is in the range 81–FE (that is, never 80 or FF, and the second byte is 40–FE for some areas and 80–FE for others.)

You can check your PC's code-page using Win API: GetACP.
You also can get the VC++ zLib sample here, and VB6 GetACP sample here.

Launch of Adobe Creative Suite 4

2008-09-09T21:35:00.006+08:00

Probably less than 2 years of launching Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3), yet the world is still digesting its Creative Suite 2(CS2), Adobe is going to launch its new suite of software, Creative Suite 4, on Sept 23. You can catch the webcast on the following days, depending on the continent you are.

Don't miss it and register at: http://adobe.istreamplanet.com/

Probing thread state in .NET application

2008-08-31T01:09:00.008+08:00

In multi-threaded application, some threads could be running fine, others might have problem. While trouble-shooting bug in a multi-threaded application, someone pointed me out that there are 2 set of thread id and thread state can be probed:
1) ThreadState Enumeration in System.Diagnostics (in system.dll)
2) ThreadState Enumeration in System.Threading (in mscorlib.dll)

While the enumerate members can be found in MSDN easily, the associate integer value is a bit tricky. And using Reflector, its values are:

and

While it's easy to use "Thread.CurrentThread" to check the state of the current thread, most of the time we need to monitor all the threads. Furthermore you will get a whole different set of thread id, if using property "Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId". Thus, classes like "ProcessThreadCollection":

For Each threCurr As ProcessThread In Process.GetCurrentProcess().Threads
Console.WriteLine("ID : " + CStr(threCurr.Id) + " ; State : " + CStr(threCurr.ThreadState))
Next

will be useful to enumerate all the threads in your application, especially you can simply use any other third party tool like Process-Explorer to probe all the thread easily, in real-time:

Red Gate has acquired .NET Reflector

2008-08-29T22:28:00.003+08:00

Reflector is an useful tool for developer to figure out the inner work of .NET framework, and Red Gate, a software company that famous with the SQL tool likes SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, SQL Data Compare, has acquired it last week. Here's what's on Lutz Roeder's weblog. Hope it can remain free: The Future of Reflector

Impersonation in VB6

2008-08-17T15:24:00.032+08:00

Since VB6 is released around 1998 or earlier, and now we are on year 2008, this topic might be obsolete for some to discuss. Since supporting legacy system is inevitable, I have something simple but might useful to share, on impersonation.

(Sample source discussed can be downloaded here.)

When an application needs to perform any operation on a network folder, using UNC path, it's not like what we can simply do anything in our own drives. Let's say we try to do file copy with vb6 app using:

FileCopy App.Path & "\HelloWorld.txt", txtCurrNetworkPath.Text & "\HelloWorld.txt"

You will get this:

Some folders in the network only permit for certain personnel to access, to deal with it you must able to prove you are authorized to access it. By using LogonUser() API function, you can achieve it.

Visual Basic 6 provides an Win32 API viewer for you to invoke (copy-and-paste in source) it, it's normally located at: "Start">"All Programs">"Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0">"Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Tools">"API Text Viewer".

For the first-time user, you might need to load the look-up files or database before you can see the available API.

Type the API that you are looking for and the result will be filtered in real-time. Now you can get what you want, but beware the gotcha. It mentions you need to add reference with "Kernel32.lib":

From MSDN mentioned earlier, the actual library you need is "Advapi32.lib". OK, now you refer it using the correct library in the source with:

Private Declare Function LogonUser Lib "advapi32.dll" Alias _

"LogonUserA" _

(ByVal lpszUsername As String, _

ByVal lpszDomain As String, _

ByVal lpszPassword As String, _

ByVal dwLogonType As Long, _

ByVal dwLogonProvider As Long, _

phToken As Long) As Long

And we find a remote pc with a folder shared.

Let set "everybody" can access on it.

using this account in system account database, as shown in "Computer Management":

Next if you follow this tutorial (How to impersonate a user from Active Server Pages) or another tutorial (How to start a process as another user from Visual Basic), and apply it on a simple "Standard EXE".

You might use "LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE" as parameter "dwLogonType". Now you try to run it and you will get this error message:

What the heck?

Could it be this parameter "dwLogonType" that casue the error? So we browse to Win32 header file (usually at: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\PlatformSDK\Include) first and check the possible value for parameter "dwLogonType" since we know the domain/user/password are all correct. From "winbase.h", "9" represent another constant for "LOGON32_LOGON_NEW_CREDENTIALS".

Declaring it at our VB6 application:

Private Const LOGON32_LOGON_NEW_CREDENTIALS = 9

replaces "LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE" with it as parameter "dwLogonType" for LogonUser() function and eventually it works.

Note that in some pc, the impersonation might take long time.

Also, the allowed user for accessing the shared folder must be taken note as well. Previously we use PC name or IP address as our domain for a shared folder that can be accessed by "everyone"; if only a particular user in Active Directory (AD) can access a network folder, then you must provide AD account to impersonate, instead of account in system account database.

If you have logon-ed the remote shared folder from "Run" before, the previous example might be useless to prove its worth. Try reboot your pc before you try example above.

Finally, MSSQL 2008 is RTM-ed.

2008-08-08T07:56:00.004+08:00

After its initial launch on February, MSSQL 2008 reaches RTM. With the new logo,

it comes with a lots of useful resources:
1) Quick-Start Installation of SQL Server 2008
2) Installing SQL Server 2008
3) Editions and Components of SQL Server 2008
4) Webcasts
5) What's New
6) how can we forget the most important one: Tutorials
Wait no more, start your engine with full-throttle and go!

I think I found a bug in JBoss Native

2008-07-25T22:06:00.012+08:00

With the VPC usage on deployment testing is becoming a common practice, software bug can be traced more easily, and more important, early.

When involving in company project that uses the JBoss Application Server, I found a strange behaviour in JBoss. I install of the necessary Java installers and eventually I could not start my window service, using JBoss Native.

This is the way you can simulate.

1) Download VPC 2007 and Windows XP virtual harddisk to re-test, can be obtained here free from Microsoft (valid till September 2008): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en

2) Install JDK & JRE from Sun Java, using default path ( I used jdk1.5.0_15 Windows x86) without restart PC.

3) Configure JAVA_HOME system variables:

4) Install Ant at C-drive ( I used apache-ant-1.7.0) and configure ANT_HOME system variables:

5) Install JBoss at C-drive ( I used jboss-4.2.2.GA):

6) Run the "run.bat" in the "%JBoss_HOME%\bin" directory to verify everything is installed properly. Go to IE and type: http://localhost:8080/jmx-console/

6) Shut down the JBoss in step(5) by pressing Ctrl-C. Install JBoss Native (I used JBoss Native 2.0.4 Win32 x86), even using a new command prompt.

7) run "service.bat install" in command prompt from "%JBoss_HOME%\bin" directory:

7) run "net start JBAS50SVC", you will hit error here.

8) Open "run.log" produced in "%JBoss_HOME%\bin" directory and you will see this:

Starting JBoss Application Server 5.0 [2008-07-24 04:18:06]

ECHO is off.

JAVA_HOME is not set. Unexpected results may occur.

Set JAVA_HOME to the directory of your local JDK to avoid this message. ===============================================================================
JBoss Bootstrap Environment
JBOSS_HOME: C:\jboss-4.2.2.GA
JAVA: java
JAVA_OPTS: -Xrs -Dprogram.name=run.bat -server -Xms128m -Xmx512m -Dsun.rmi.dgc.client.gcInterval=3600000 -Dsun.rmi.dgc.server.gcInterval=3600000
CLASSPATH: C:\jboss-4.2.2.GA\bin\run.jar
===============================================================================
Error: no `server' JVM at `C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_15\bin\server\jvm.dll'. Shutdown JBoss Application Server 5.0 service [2008-07-24 04:18:07]

And I reported this strange behaviour (or could be bug) to JIRA (kinda JBoss version of BugZilla), and update the JBoss Wiki :)

How to capture the output from Console.WriteLine

2008-07-15T18:13:00.007+08:00

Sometimes, windows/console application needs to capture the output from console.writeline for debugging purpose. It's useful if the application can run in verbose mode, so that we can know at which point the system crashes. Maybe you might think we can implement ConsoleTraceListener Class in .Net 2.0.

While doing some tutorials on Linq on .Net 3.0, I found the sample have another simpler way to achieve that. Here are the steps:

1) Create a windows application

2) Design a simple GUI. Button represents you business logic and multiline textbox means the trace information.

3) Set the StreamWriter to the Console output, re-capture it with TextWriter will do.

Imports System.IO

Public Class Form1
Private ReadOnly _OutputStreamWriter As StreamWriter = New StreamWriter(New MemoryStream())

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
' Capture console output
Dim writer As StreamWriter = _OutputStreamWriter
Dim oldConsoleOut As TextWriter = Console.Out
Console.SetOut(writer)
Dim stream As MemoryStream = CType(writer.BaseStream, MemoryStream)
stream.SetLength(0)
DoSomething
' set to result pane
writer.Flush()
Console.SetOut(oldConsoleOut)
TextBox1.Text += writer.Encoding.GetString(stream.ToArray())
End Sub

Private Sub DoSomething()
Console.WriteLine("Hello world!")
End Sub
End Class

4) Here's the final result:

Getting started with Installation of Windows XP Embedded (2)

2008-06-30T21:20:00.042+08:00

From the last post, we now proceed to build the XPe image.

Part (C) Building Windows XP Embedded Image:
1) (Actually you need it since Part (A)) Get the CD installer from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/downloads/default.mspx

2) You might need to register to get the product key at MS: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/embedded/eval/getregistration.mspx

3) Insert the Dics 1. Browse to "Tools Setup" in left pane. Click to install.

4) You might need to insert product key, mentioned at step (4).

5) Browse to "Database Engine Setup" and click to install. This will install MSDE.

6) Browse to "Database Setup" this time. Click to install.

7) If you did not follow step (5) & (6), you might get this error message.

8) Once the installation done, launch the Microsoft Component Designer.

9) Import the hardware information xml file we created on Part (B).

10) Go to "Select Prototype Component", expand the Software/Test & Development node and select the Selector Prototype component. From the File menu, choose Save to save your component. A file with extension SLD is created with your component definition

11) From the Tools menu, choose Component Database Manager to open this tool.

12) Select Import and choose the SLD file that you just create. Make sure it imports successfully.

13) Now we launch the Microsoft Target Designer. Create new configuration.

14) From the list of component, right-click on the component we newly create and select "Add".

15) Add extra component, We will use the Kiosk/Gaming Console macro component, a design template that can be found under Design Templates.

16) Add the Runtime Quick Start Helper Component that will speed up the process..

17) To build our image, press F5 to check dependencies. All necessary underlying components are added to the image.

18) Expand the User Interface Core component and select settings. The settings appear in the details pane. Select to Show Run on Start Menu, Show All Programs List on Start Menu, and any other settings you want to apply.

19) We can now build the image. Hit F7. You might be asked for dependencies check.

20) Once the image building success, we got the file we want.

21) We need to copy the image file to the root drive of VPC we created and formatted at Part (A). You can download it from MSDN.

22) We can exit the command prompt in VPC by typing EXIT to reboot. Detach the CD installer. Here we got Windows XP Embeded.

23) The first boot will go through the First Boot Agent (FBA) process, which builds the machine registry, enumerates the device drivers, registers all components, and so on..

24) Reboot done and we got our desktop.

25) We also can browse to root folder. Done.

26) Whew! what a lengthy installation. Luckily, MS have simplify it.

Getting started with Installation of Windows XP Embedded

2008-06-29T21:10:00.031+08:00

Recently I am busy with table partitioning and JBoss/Hibernate projects, thus I could not post any new post. While the project approaching the end of completion, I found there's an article on Windows XP Embedded (XPe) installation setup: How to Demonstrate Windows XP Embedded using Virtual PC . Thus I go to my CD rack and find back my installation CD I get last time (1 year ago), from a seminar organized by local MS.

From a beginner perspective, I found this tutorial is quite useful, but could be better. Thus I came out with this setup guide to patch the missing part of the link above. Without more words, let get started:

Part (A) VPC setup

(This part I won't elaborate more, here are steps exerpt from link above):

1) To create a new Virtual PC (VPC) machine, click the New button in the Virtual PC console.

2) A New Virtual Machine Wizard opens (Figure 2). This wizard will guide you through the steps to configure your virtual machine.

3) Because we are creating a new operating system from scratch, choose the Create a virtual machine button.
4) In the Name and location field, enter the path and file name for your project. The file will be saved with the .vmc extension.

5) In the Operating System field, choose Windows XP as the operating system for the VPC machine. Windows XP Embedded and Windows XP Professional use the same binary files.

6) Select the RAM amount for the virtual machine. The default amount (128 MB) is sufficient; however, you can adjust the amount.

7) Choose the A new virtual hard disk button to create a new virtual hard disk that will store the operating system image.

8) In the Name and location field, type the name and path for the file that will contain your Virtual PC machine's hard disk. This file will be approximately 300 MB in size.

9) (From this part onwards is for partitioning the disk) Type the following command from a command prompt:

DISKPART

10) Type the following commands to create the partition:

SELECT DISK 0
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

11) Type the following command to verify the partition:

LIST PARTITION

12) Type the following commands to verify that the partition is active:

SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE

13) Type EXIT to quit DISKPART.

14) Type EXIT again to reboot Windows PE.

Part (B) Capturing the Hardware Information:

1) From VPC console, start the vpc setup from part (A). Insert Disc 1 into CD-Rom and capture it through VPC menu: CD>Use physical drive .

2) Once it captures the installer, the installation starts.

3) Read the EULA.txt for legal acknowledgement.

4) Back to your host machine, open command prompt and type "IPCONFIG" to get your local IP address.

5) Back to the VPC and try to ping from it, you might need to turn off the Firewall.

6) Back to host machine again, and right-click the CD-Rom and select "Share".

7) Click "Advanced Sharing"

8) Check the "Share this folder". Click "OK" to exit.

9) You can confirm again by typing the UNC address, to verify the CD installer can be accessed from network sharing.

10) You also need a admin account with password. Go to "Control Panel">"User Accounts" to create password, if you did not set it previously.

11) Create a folder at host machine, let's say: C:\VPC\XPe\XPeImages (try to use a folder without space between it, you can reduce your trouble later), and right-click, select "Share":

11) Select the appropriate user.

11) Now, use the "net use" command for the subsequent command to access it. (From TechNet) The function of "net use" is : Connects a computer to or disconnects a computer from a shared resource, or displays information about computer connections. The command also controls persistent net connections. Used without parameters, net use retrieves a list of network connections.

12) "Shared Folders" cannot be used since Virtual Machine Additions have not installed yet.

12) Execute the "TAP command to generate the hardware component information to the shared folder mentioned in step (11). This file is an XML files with all the virtual hardware information for this VPC. We are going to use this file in the part (C) for building Windows XPe image file.

13) You are done for this part (B).

Will continue part (C) to a new post ...

Cannot resolve the collation conflict on temporary table?(2) Problem solved.

2008-05-25T21:38:00.016+08:00

(Please backup all your database if you are going to try this)

From my last post, I proceed to install my MSSQL 2005 again, I found a strange behaviour this time. The length of the instance name is only limited to certain amount of value.

From BOL/MSDN:

Instance names are limited to 16 characters.

I feel something is wrong last time, during the command I issued:

start /wait setup.exe /qb INSTANCENAME={my SS2005 instance name} REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 SAPWD={my SS2005 instance sa password} SQLCOLLATION=SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI

I mistreated the server name as SS2005 instance name. Actually the server name is:

"server name" = "PC name"\"instance name".

So this time, I re-used the same setting to install the SS2005. For the first time, I copied out the content from the image I clone from installer, using PowerISO

I issued the command, with the correct instance name, and I get this. Wow, this is not available last time. It proved I was wrong last time, on the term of "Instance Name".

But after this I get this error message:

"An installation package for the product Microsoft SQL Server 2005 cannot be found. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package 'SqlRun_SLQ.msi".

I think the image is corrupted, during I mounted it virtually and copying it. Thus I inserted the original CD. And I issued the same command.

Yes, it ran successfully and I checked my SQL Instance collation. Although it's AI(Accent Insensitive), but I can do the same thing again to change to AS(Accent Sensitive).

And I checked all the database. All the database is dropped.

So I need to attached them back.

But at least I have learnt something today.

Cannot resolve the collation conflict on temporary table?

2008-05-20T21:09:00.032+08:00

"Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "Collation_A" and "Collation_B" in the equal to operation."

When I am using MSSQL 2000, it's normal when I hit this kind of collation problem on physically-existed table. Either the source database is conflict with new database, due to an upgrade from older version of customized database, or from other production site from different country.

But recently, I hit this issue at Temporary Tables (because I changed a new job and performed a new installation on my company laptop).

Let's say you have a following scripts written at stored procedure(SP):

-- Use AdventureWorks
create table #tempTable (ID int IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL ,
column1 varchar(200) NOT NULL)
INSERT INTO #tempTable
Values('test')
create table tempTable (ID int IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL ,
column2 varchar(200) NOT NULL)
INSERT INTO tempTable
Values('test')
Select * from #tempTable t
inner join tempTable p
on t.ID = p.ID
where t.column1 = p.column2

--drop table #tempTable
--drop table tempTable

and when you execute it, you will get the following error message:

Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 10
Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation.

At the first look, I was confused what went wrong. ( Of course you can suggest assign the associate collation will do, but what if there's tons of SP you need to modify? And even worst, they are decrypted!)

Of course the best practice would be something like this:

CREATE TABLE #TestTempTab
(PrimaryKey int PRIMARY KEY,
Col1 nchar COLLATE database_default
)
as in Setting and Changing the Column Collation, but I doubt most people do that.

So first I traced down from the definition of the Temporary Tables. From MSDN:

You can create local and global temporary tables. Local temporary tables are visible only in the current session; global temporary tables are visible to all sessions. Prefix local temporary table names with single number sign (#table_name), and prefix global temporary table names with a double number sign (##table_name).
...

The full name of a temporary table as stored in the sysobjects table in tempdb consists of table name specified in the CREATE TABLE statement and the system-generated numeric suffix.

I queried from tempdb at System Databases with this query: (Note: you must use "Like" statement for the name)

use tempdb
Select collation, * from sysobjects so
inner join syscolumns sc
on so.id = sc.id
where so.name like '#tempTable%'

Why? Why it's collated in "Latin1_General_CI_AS"? Then I checked the database collation for this "tempdb" database and server instance:

Why all in "Latin1_General_CI_AS" collation? Then I went through the screenshot I took when I installed the MSSQL 2005 Developer Edition long long time ago (I have a habit to store the installation settings for future purpose, as in this case), I found this:

I switched the collation to Collation designator, which default to "Latin1_General_CI_AS" collation, as in my OS culture! I just realized I misused the in-appropriated collation with the current database (in this case "AdventureWorks", which uses "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" collation.

So now, what is the solution?

I thought the faster way should be alter the "tempdb" database collation like this :

or from script:

USE [master]
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
GO

But I get this error message:

I searched the MSDN/BOL, and I found this: Setting and Changing the Server Collation

So I inserted my installer in CD-ROM and tried to use this command:

start /wait setup.exe /qb INSTANCENAME={my SS2005 instance name} REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 SAPWD={my SS2005 instance sa password} SQLCOLLATION=SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI

but the wizard came and went but nothing happened:

So I tried to look at the summary.txt produced, as suggested in SQL Server 2005 Setup Log File. Nothing too!

Then "SQLSetup0011_(pcName)_Core.log":

..
Error: Action "LaunchPatchedBootstrapAction" threw an exception during execution. Error information reported during run:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\setup.exe" finished and returned: 0Aborting queue processing as nested installer has completed.

I also try to repair it. But there's no such options.

Eventually I uninstalled it. Haha.

Confuse with pointer? Learn it in Zen-way!

2008-05-16T17:41:00.003+08:00

Are you confused with pointer in C/C++? Now, you can learn it in Zen-way!

In this article, you can know the actual meaning of pointer, through 5 pillars:

1) The First Pillar: What is an Address?

2) The Second Pillar: What is a Variable Name?

3) The Third Pillar: Finding the Address of a Variable Name

4) The Fourth Pillar: Declaring Pointer Variables

5) The Fifth Pillar: Declaring References

Amitabha! Does it enlighten you??

Windows 7 Milestone 1 Release 2 ???

2008-05-08T20:44:00.007+08:00

After posting a video on the latest OS windows 7, no longer people called it an hoax. Now it is one of the hottest place to see the latest deveopment of the windows 7: 刀枪Blue

And he also claimed this is 2nd release of Windows 7 Milestone 1. (this image is an external link.)

If you are an fan on the windows OS latest developement, sure you must save this site in your favourite folder!

Just curious if he's a beta tester, he should not allow to expose any of the content, right?

Think you're smart? Then crack it!

2008-05-08T07:38:00.009+08:00

You think you are smart in programming? In job place, everyone seems seek you for the answer whenever there's a problem? Then go and try : crackthecode, by MSDN Canada.

And the prize is (who knows, maybe Microsoft Canada is hiring potential developer?):

And now for the bounty: Two $500 Future Shop gift cards can be won on April 29, 2008 and May 15, 2008. The $4000 Grand Prize gift card draw will be on June 13, 2008. The winners will receive a call, so keep an eye on your phone.

While I was trying yesterday, I only managed to answer first and third questions correctly.

Here are some hints:
Question 1: The answer got something to do with what you see when you entered the page! And I solved it.

Question 2: (I do not know. Most of my time was doing windows programming! Maybe you can download Microsoft Script Debugger and see, or even Visual Studio 2005/2008???)

Question 3 : This is a mathematics question, all those C-like languages programmer should be able to answer it easily. What's a waste to put this as question 3. :( And I lost my key because of slow Internet connection, WTF!

Question 4 : (I do not have the key!)

Maybe I need to apply another hotmail account! And it's your turn now.

Update:
After going thru' the rules and regulations:

1) THE CONTEST AND THE CONTEST PERIOD : The Microsoft "Crack the Code" contest commences at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on April 1, 2008 and concludes at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on May 31, 2008.

2) ELIGIBITY : The Contest is open to residents of Canada, excluding Quebec, who have reached the age of majority in his or her province of residence, but excluding employees, directors and officers of, Vortxt Interactive Inc. and any affiliate (as defined in the Canada Business Corporations Act), employees, directors and officers of Microsoft Canada Co. (the "Sponsor"), employees, directors and officers of their respective advertising and promotional agencies, as well as family members of any of the foregoing.

It's SQL injection, Not IIS vulnerability

2008-05-04T15:23:00.006+08:00

Half A Million Microsoft-powered Sites Hit With SQL Injection.

Few days ago, people thought it was an IIS vulnerability but eventually it is a SQL injection. And Aaron Bertrand have few pieces of advices for web developers:
1) Do not expose your SQL Server to the Internet directly.

From TechNet: A common step in troubleshooting connectivity problems is to use the Ping tool to ping the address of the computer to which you are trying to connect. When you ping, you send an ICMP Echo message and get an ICMP Echo Reply message in response. By default, Windows Firewall does not allow incoming ICMP Echo messages and therefore the computer cannot send an ICMP Echo Reply in response. To configure Windows Firewall to allow the incoming ICMP Echo message, you must enable the Allow incoming echo request setting.
Beware if you turn this on!

2) Make your passwords strong.
3) Follow the principle of least privilege Always use stored procedures, or at least parameterized statements .
4) Use TRY/CATCH to return more generic error messages.
5) Do not store passwords in your Users table.

And some tips from Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), there're few ways for testing the SQL Server:
1: Testing for SQL Injection in a GET request.
2: Testing for SQL Injection in a GET request (2).
3: Testing in a POST request
4: Yet another (useful) GET example
5: custom xp_cmdshell (Especially those who are still using MSSQL 2000!)
6: Referer / User-Agent
7: SQL Server as a port scanner
8: Upload of executables
9: bruteforce of sysadmin password.

Have you tried it on your server?

How To Get Hired

2008-05-02T21:54:00.007+08:00

As a software developer for three years, I have changed several jobs. If you were same as me, go thru' it before you go for inteview, to know how much chance you stand!

1. Employers look for people who are Smart and Get Things Done
2. Employers look for people who Have Already Done Things .
3. You can't get a job doing something you haven't done before.
4. Employers Google your name to see what you've said and done .

Get XP Service Pack 3

2008-04-30T21:35:00.007+08:00

No more long wait. After Windows XP service pack 3 has reached RTM at beginning of this month, now you can get it via direct download or WU. Though I am using Windows Vista for my machine, my company laptop and virtual environment are still using Windows XP. It's quite stable after service pack 2. And it's hard to change to the new environment when you already familiar with existing one. For Direct OEM and Retail License Availability, the support end date is June 30, 2008. Yes, 2 more months. Let's see will support of Windows XP be extended by Microsoft.

First release of SQL Management Console

2008-04-20T17:22:00.010+08:00

Finally, I decided to release the second .NET application I am developing: SQL Management Console, now. This version 0.1, which is still in beta phase, still has a lot of room for improvement. Use at your own risk.

Here are some of the screenshots of it:
1) Login screen

2) Main GUI with MSSQL 2005 in action

3) Main GUI with MySQL 5.0 in action

4) Object scripting

5) Dependency viewer

For this version, it will suport MSSQL 2000 & 2005, MySQL 5.0. I am planning to include PostgreSQL connector in the next version. The features include in this version are :

(IDE-wise) Open/Save/Drag-and-Drop file
(IDE-wise) query pane and result pane
(MS SQL 2000 & 2005) Object browser for system objects (Scalar function, Stored procedure, System table, Table function, Trigger, User table, View)
(MS SQL 2000 & 2005) Object browser for security (Users, Roles, Schemas)
(MS SQL 2000 & 2005) Object browser for constraints, columns, parameters (Columns, Keys, Constraints, Triggers, Indexes, Parameters)
(MS SQL 2000 & 2005) Dependencies viewer for objects (Scalar function, Stored procedure, System table, Table function, Trigger, User table, View)
(MS SQL 2000 & 2005) Object scripting for non-encrypted objects (Scalar function, Stored procedure, Table function, Trigger, View)
(MySQL 5.0) Object browser for system objects (Scalar function, Stored procedure, System table, Trigger, User table, View)
(MySQL 5.0) Object browser for security (Users, Privilege)
(MySQL 5.0) Object browser for constraints, columns (Columns, Keys, Triggers)
(MySQL 5.0) Object scripting for non-encrypted objects (Scalar function, Stored procedure, Trigger, View)

Since parts of the source code is came from MSDN, thus I think it's good to release it under Microsoft Public license (Ms-PL) to prevent any infringement, though the chance are very little.

Since I am not an expert on database, feel free to give to any constructive comment and recommendation. I will try to improve it.

You can get the source code at here and executable files at here.

Preview of another project I am developing - SQL Management Console

2008-04-18T07:50:00.006+08:00

For the past two months, I am busy developing my second .net app. - SQL Management Console. It comes with a MSSQL-like object explorer/browser and a simple analyzer. All my time after working hours and weekends is devoted for this project. (The first one is widget-like analog clock; anyway first and second in context here means specially made with purpose).

Actually I first come out the idea on last year, when I was involved in a business project interface with different kind of RDBMS databases, eg. MSSQL, MySQL, FireBird, Oracle, OleDB, ODBC, .... Due to some personal reason, I was unable to continue it. With more exposure on interface design, suddenly I found it's interesting to start this project on my own. With the classes in namespace System.Data.Common, the ADO .NET programming becomes easier. Now It support MSSQL and MySQL. PostgreSQL is my next target.

While developing it, I also found few famous tools available on the market, like myLittleAdmin, Red-gate software. I hope one day my SQL tool can on-par with them. By the way, myLittleAdmin costs US$299.00.

Forget about the intro, let you all see some screenshot of it.

MSSQL 2005

MSSQL 2000

MySQL 5.0

The full-source version 0.1 should be ready to download within these two weeks.

MSSQLSERVER & SQLSERVERAGENT (MS SQL 2000) failed after changing the password in active directory

2008-04-07T15:56:00.000+08:00

PC must change the password periodically to maintain security, though you still have choice to not to do so if you work alone in default Windows domain. But when it comes to active directory, most MIS guys enforce user to change it through the AD management tools. Thus those softwares in your PC that ties to this AD account for login should be smart enough to changed accordingly.

But in MSSQL 2000, this is not the case. After changing the new AD password, the MSSQLSERVER & SQLSERVERAGENT will not be updated and it will give you error message (if you start it from SQL Server Enterprise Manager: Server Group->[Instance]->Management->SQL Server Agent):

"An error 1609 - (The service did not start due to a logon failure) occurred while performing this service operation on the SQLServerAgent service."

If you start it from Services.msc(Go to command prompt, type: "services.msc"), you will get the same logon error:

Due to the login account has changed, now MSSQL and SQL Server Agent cannot identify you correctly anymore, since the password it keeps is the one you saved last time. You must change the password to let it works.

1) Right-click the particular service (MSSQLSERVER or SQLSERVERAGENT).

2) Choose "Properties"

3) Select "Log On" tab.

4) Change the new AD password as shown, that is!

Decrypt the stored procedure, and etc

2008-03-25T07:46:00.000+08:00

When you try to hide something from someone, people always have their own way to dig it out. Just like you thought 128-bit encryption is un-decryptable, especially on symmetric encryption , people still can know you initialization vector (IV) by de-compiling your source-code using deflector, if you did not obfuscate it (Oops, or even obfuscation is not safe too?). Then all your effort on encryption/information-hiding is wasted. Same goes to MSSQL 2000 built-in encryption for stored procedures (SPs/sprocs), etc.

The syntax for MSSQL 2000 built-in encryption on CREATE PROCEDURE is:

CREATE PROC [ EDURE ] procedure_name [ ; number ]
[ { @parameter data_type }
[ VARYING ] [ = default ] [ OUTPUT ]
] [ ,...n ]
[ WITH
{ RECOMPILE ENCRYPTION RECOMPILE , ENCRYPTION } ]
[ FOR REPLICATION ]
AS sql_statement [ ...n ]

To decrypt it, for novice user, you can download the freeware (Unless you wanna pay the money for this software?) called "dSQLSRVD", just log in and find those SPs with checkboxes checked, highlight it and click "Save", you can get the content of the stored procedure you desire. Easy, huh?

For average developer, maybe you can go to this site (please take note this method seems have limitation on the size of nvarchar(4000), you might need to roll back if your encrypted SP is long), or this site, and try to come out your version of freeware, though you can find a ready-made workable sql script if through a thorough search.

Final piece, Windows applications is too common and thus make it too popular for developers to crack it. You better depend on your own.

p/s: In MSSQL 2005, there's few new features added,
1) EncryptByAsymKey
2) EncryptByCert
3) EncryptByKey
maybe it's worth for try.

Resize the virtual harddisk size (2) : expand C-drive

2008-03-02T15:42:00.000+08:00

From last week, I expanded the hard-disk size successfully. But I am not satisfied with the end result, what if I just want to expand the main primary partition (aka C drive), not adding another secondary partition?

I found the PartitionMagic and it seems able to do the job by merging the partitions, but it is not free. I need a free software to achieve that and I found GParted. Since it's used mainly for *nix environment, I knew it not gonna be user-friendly. There's not executable files for you to run it on Windows. Lucky, the liveCD is designed to solve this problem across the platform.

So, here are the steps to merge the partitions using GParted:

1) Capture the GParted liveCD iso image from the Virtual PC Console.

2) Reboot the OS.

3) After reboot, the Gnome Partition Editor will be loaded. Select the "GParted-liveCD Force VESA Driver" (If you have problem on "GParted-liveCD XXX (auto-configuration)", you better select this one, how do you know? Your screen will totally blank later.)"

4) You will be asked to key-in the keymap twice. Hit enter to proceed.

5) Now the main app will load. Since there is some reading problem on the PS/2 mouse, you would not be able to use the mouse. Quoted from Arcane Code:

"First, let me take a second to explain what the issue is. There was a bug in the kernel code that affected many different distros of Linux. Apparently the kernel was not finding PS/2 style mice. Some work has been done and now most PS/2 style mice are now being found.
Except, sadly for the ones being emulated. Both VMWare and VirtualPC emulate a PS/2 style mouse, and are not getting found by the kernel. Remember, it doesn’t matter what type of mouse you have hooked up to the host box (I have two mice, a Logitech MediaPlay and Microsoft Travel mouse, both USB). It only matters what the virtual machine is telling the guest OS (Ubuntu), which is PS/2 style mouse."

Now you have to go back to old day practice : using keyboard.

6) Press "Tab" key until the main drive is selected. You will know when the row is highlighted.

7) Now press "Alt-P" and "Down" arrow key to select the "Resize/Move" menu.

8) Leave the "Free Spacing Preceding" and key-in how much size you want to expand in "New Size" textbox. The "Resize/Move" button will be enabled once you made changes. Use "Tab" to move the focus to "Resize/Move" button and hit "Enter".

9) Use "Alt-E" and "Down" arrow key to select the "Apply All Operations". Partition merging will be started.

10) Once it's done, turn-off the Virtual PC and reboot.

11) This time, select "Boot partition #1 on the first hard drive". (You need to scroll down if you did not see it from the Gnome Partition Editor.

12) Windows will load and check for the disk consistency. Let it do the dirty job and it will reboot twice.

13) Eventually, the partition merge is done and now you will see the extra hard-disk space increase on the main primary partition. (You might need to release the iso image captured on step 1 after done)

Here's the link where you can capture the screen-shoot on VPC.

Resize the virtual harddisk size

2008-02-28T07:58:00.000+08:00

As a developer, I need to test the applications written in different version of Windows OSs, sometimes also need to try out the new beta products, and of course, to run the application without the Vista's UAC. I need to cultivate the environment for simple virus as well (very dangerous for a beginner like me). I like to use Virtual PC since i can get all these advantages.

If the disk space is running out, the virtual OS will keep notifying you to clean up more space. It is quite annoying to clean up the space to move on.With the VHD Resizer, you can add more space to extend the life span of your virtual environment.

1. After download and install the VHD Resizer, you will be greeted with Open File Dialog:

2. then you will come to the VHD Resizer main UI, insert the new vhd file you want with the new file size, the disk space allocation will start.

3. After minutes, the allocation will finish. But your job is not done yet. You would not get the result instantly. You need to go to Disk Management and partition the new disk space.

4. You will be greeted another wizard : New Partition Wizard. Use the default values for each settings.

5. The disk formatting will be completed fast and easily.

6. The actual file size for the vhd resized is not increased tremendously, I think 70 MB is used for partition the disk space, since later the hard disk space will expand dynamically.

7. Done. You will be freed from the virtual disk space problem!

Little Update for C# Clock widget

2008-02-18T07:52:00.000+08:00

Several months after posting the C# Clock widget on CodeProject, finally I managed to add some useful features into it. There are:

1) Customizable/Load and save user settings. User will be able to customize the application based on the feature they like, and it will load also on every start. In this case, the color of the hands and alarm message. (Part of the UI design refers from CodingForFun)

2) Localization, although it will no longer standalone (it will need satellite assemblies for localization). Currently it supports english and simplified chinese, other locales will fall back the english version though.

3) Alarm. User can enable the alarm so that this widget will notify the user on certain occasion.

4) Call the system clock. This is a context-menu to summon the system clock, maybe it's redundant, since user can by-pass it through the taskbar

You can get the source-code and installer here.

550: Access is denied. Why cannot delete files on FTP server?

2008-02-04T07:48:00.000+08:00

FTP is quite popular for transfering the large files since old days. One of the problem that I face previously is this: 550 (foo.txt) : Access is denied, when issuing a delete command from application on client side.

After looking the setting level for the FTP at IIS, I found the user has the right to read/write, but this problem still happens on issuing a delete command. I wonder what went wrong???

A check on the file properties on the server side, I found this file has a read-only attribute!

By modifying the attribute, the delete command is able to delete the file again. I think the application on client side does not have the ability to check the file's attribute, at least for Windows FTP service (Unix should have such ability, using: ls -l ). So the workout is the server side must set the attribute implicitly, through FileAttributes Enumeration.

Reflector Addins

2008-01-25T13:15:00.000+08:00

Last blog, I talked about the Reflector. After looking for more tool to smooth the work flow of debugging task, I found there are several add-ins that can make you life easier. Scott Hanselman even compiled the list of Codeplex-hosted add-ins in his site.
Well, I personally like the Diff and FileDisassembler, another add-in which is not hosted at the CodePlex. Diff is a tool that act like Windiff to your file compare, but it's used for assembly compare; while the FileDisassembler allows you to reverse-engineer the assembly to the source file, in case you loss your source code (and of course, if you wanna see how people code :-D), althought it might not 100% identical to the original code. (But hey, what you can ask for, since it is free!)

(Image from Reflector.FileDisassembler)

Must-have and go get it!

Encryption is not safe in .Net, even it encrypts 128-bit blocks, if you do normal compilation!

2008-01-13T21:02:00.000+08:00

With the release of .Net Reflector from Lutz Roeder, even dummy developer can de-compile your 10-years-effort application within seconds. It has become a open secret in the NET developers group and I think this is the main reason Microsoft releases some of the source code of framework libraries, although they often claim .NET is open architecture.

Reverse-engineering of your application is possible, when your source code is not obfuscated. For security purpose, developer maybe will use cryptographic services to encrypt user name & password and store it in clients'(users themselves) PC for reloading purpose. (So the application can log-in again for the same user without asking user name & password). This kind of information often could be a .ini/.config/.xml or any other ASCII file.

Cryptographic services help your client stores private and confidential information from others. The higher the bits used to perform encryption/decryption, the more difficult the hackers can hack your code. But now the problem is not coming from the algorithm but the .NET itself, if you are writing normal codes without obfuscating it.

Let's have a sample from MSDN using RijndaelManaged Class:

(The demo here is to urge the developers to tighten-up the security, not to encourage hackers!)

1) Go to download .Net Relector from Lutz Roeder

2) Browse to the .NET application you wish to de-compile. Drag-and-drop it to the .Net Reflector. (Sample provided; remove the "Config.ini" file to re-generate)

3) Browse to the default namespace. You might ask: How do you know it is default namespace? Normally it is same name with the application. If not sure, just browse one-by-one, since you can de-compile all the them :-D

4) Browse to default class. You might ask again: How do you know it is default class? Same answer with step (3).

Browse to default form/module. You might ask for 3rd time: How do you know it is default form/module? For C#, normally developers will name it as frmMain/frmMDI/frmLogin. In VB .Net, the entry point should be modmain module. Else, just follow step (3) :-)

5) Until here, maybe you have no choice but to look into all the possible methods (sometimes you can find the possible method like : frmLogin_Load, btnLogin_Click, etc). Click the methods to check the disassembler in the right pane.

Now you can see the user name & password are decrypted, before they are used to validate/compare with the user input.

6) Remember the configuration file in the form constructor. It's useful later to find out the where the encrypted information stored.

7) Click on the any method on the disassembler pane to drill down. If it requires additional assembly, message box will be prompted. Just click OK.

8) Again, Click on the method on the disassembler. You can find the decryption method. It uses Rijndael algorithm.

9) Oh, my God! It comes with IV and key, embeded in the application.

10) Copy decryption method, IV, key and build a simple console application. (Sample provided)

11) Pass-in the encrypted string to the console application built previously.

Done! Now you are a hacker! Oops, sorry, I meant you must tighten-up you source code compilation for security purpose.

p/s: Even in java, there're tons of de-compiler tools available. It's not surprise, since .NET is modeling from Java.

Trivial but also Tricky : Result of using "is NULL" & "= NULL" in T-SQL is different

2008-01-12T12:05:00.000+08:00

For the T-SQL (here I use MS-SQL), especially when you write stored procedure, you will normally receive parameter(s) from .NET/Java or any equivalent language to manipulate your client records. This is a normal design of three-tier application (Presentation Layer represents the UI that interact with user; Business Logic layer to code all your business logic; Data Access layer to deal with various kind of data storage apps)

For these received parameters, normally you will use some of it to retrieve (or perform checking or validation) some other data from other tables. You will write any T-SQL to perform SIUD(Select/Insert/Update/Delete) on records based on the business logic in database. In order to SUID on these records, your WHERE-statement must be written precisely, and of concisely. If the WHERE-statement is wrong, then the records SUID-ed will be corrupted.

Let's have simple example:

1) Create a simple table with nullable columns

if exists (select * from dbo.sysobjects where id = object_id(N'[dbo].[_Test]') and

OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1)drop table [dbo].[_Test]

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[_Test] (

[col1] [varchar] (100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,

[status] [int] NULL ) ON [PRIMARY]

2) Insert 2 sample records into it

insert into _Test(col1, status)

values('First row', NULL)

insert into _Test(col1, status)

values('Second row', 1)

3) Create a stored procedure to determine the record could be found in database or not

IF EXISTS (Select * from sysobjects where name = '_spTest' and xtype = 'P')

DROP PROCEDURE _spTest

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo._spTest

@p1 int

IF EXISTS ( Select * from _Test where status = @p1)

PRINT 'Records found !'

ELSE

PRINT 'No records found !'
GO

4) Now try to execute it

execute _spTest 1

execute _spTest NULL

Oh, where's another records?

6) And this is quoted from MSSQL BOL (Book On-Line) / T-SQL Reference:
To determine if an expression is NULL, use IS NULL or IS NOT NULL rather than comparison operators (such as = or !=). Comparison operators return UNKNOWN if either or both arguments are NULL.

Now, you realized you used the comparison operators to execute it unknowingly!

7) So, in order to access the particular data accurately, the correct stored procedure should be written (Of course, this is simple scripts only, COALESCE or any other keywords can help you to SIUD the huge records efficiently) as

IF EXISTS (Select * from sysobjects where name = '_spTest' and xtype = 'P')

DROP PROCEDURE _spTest

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo._spTest

@p1 int

IF (@p1 IS NULL)

BEGIN

IF EXISTS ( Select * from _Test where status IS NULL)

PRINT 'Records found, with status is null!'

ELSE

PRINT 'No records found with status is null!'

END

ELSE

BEGIN

IF EXISTS ( Select * from _Test where status = @p1)

PRINT 'Records found!'

ELSE

PRINT 'No records found!'

END
GO

8) Now try to execute it again

execute _spTest 1
execute _spTest NULL

9) Correct!

Hype of Windows OS 7 started!

2007-12-19T20:42:00.000+08:00

While the developments of Windows OS 7 is still in infancy state, ppl have already started monitoring its development, as usual. More info at Apcmag.com. Of course, how can we forget the MinWin:

SQL Server 2008 introduces new data type : HierarchyId

2007-12-05T22:48:00.000+08:00

I think this introduction of new data type is to help to re-construct the records back to hierarchical view easily (remember the "Using APPLY" sample that need to call the function recursively ?). With the syntax like GetAncestor(), GetDescendant(), IsDescendant() , etc, you can discover the level of the records easily (why it seems gearing towards CLR coding??).

There're few articles with samples:

The CTP version of MS SQL 2008 can be downloaded from here.

Make remote connection for MS SQL Express 2005

2007-11-23T13:06:00.000+08:00

When one of my company's client uses the application that tries to connect to MS SQL Express 2005 in the main server that resides in LAN, he keeps receiving this error message:

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.

After a thorough search using Google, I found the MS SQL Express, Evaluation and Developer editions only allow to local connection, be default.

By setting the steps (from MSDN, using "SQL Server Surface Area Configuration") to allow it to make remote connection from remote PC, it works fines for some of the PCs only, using connection string likes:

Data Source=[pc name]\SQLEXPRESS; database=[database name]; uid=[user name]; pwd=[user password]

, when there's only MS SQL Express 2005 resides on PC.

But those PCs which have both MS SQL 2000 & MS SQL Express 2005 and the default instance is MS SQL 2000, it still hits the error message when I try to connect to MS SQL Express 2005:

SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

If connect to MS SQL 2000 using the IP, it works fine again. So I found the root cause again. This time the solution is from connectionstrings.com. By giving the port number used by MS SQL Express 2005 to the connection string, it works and here are the steps:

1) Go to: All Programs>Microsoft SQL Server 2005>Configuration Tools>SQL Server Configuration Manager

2) Then under: SQL Server 2005 Network Configuration>Protocols for SQLEXPRESS

3) Double-click the "TCP/IP", under the "IP Addresses", find the "TCP Dynamic Ports".

4) Use the port number (I think port no. 1433 is used by default MS SQL instance) as part of the connection string likes:

Data Source=[pc name]\SQLEXPRESS, [port number] ; database=[database name =]; uid=[user name]; pwd=[user password]

5) Success!

My CodeProject's article being referred!

2007-11-22T23:05:00.000+08:00

While googling on other developers create clock application, I found my CodeProject's article being referred. :-) But it is only read 60+ times at the time of reading :-( . I think this dotnet-news.com read all the news (or RSS) from CodeProject and channel it to all their audience.

Anyway, I MUST continue to come out new application.

Which OS are You?

2007-11-14T13:22:00.000+08:00

I just found this BBspot website. This is the result of the personality test:

Wah, there're few more test can be conducted :
Which File Extension Are You?
Which Nigerian Spammer Are You?
Which Programming Language Are You?
Which Website Are You?

Halo 3 Flash tour

2007-11-05T13:23:00.000+08:00

I come across this Halo3 website and found interesting stuff! You can navigate in 3D environment. It's a good website for those avid gamers, before you play the game in XBox.

After entering your DOB,

You can choose to autoplay :Or you can browse with your mouse and keyboard.
And even better, you can take the screenshot at any point, and make it as your wallpaper.

Here's the one I made:

My article published on CodeProject!

2007-10-25T12:51:00.000+08:00

In order to boost the site-visit , I posted my old blog to CodeProject, haha. Thanks to the guys at CodeProject, to allow my article published, although it's a simple one. Hope can exchange valuable pointers with rest of the developers from all over the world.

p/s: My monitor have sent to repair, due to roof leaking. Got to post this blog using company's PC. Also not so free to develop new program or enhance existing article, sigh!

My first .Net app : C# Analog Clock

2007-09-26T22:28:00.000+08:00

Finally, my first try on a simple .NET app is done. I created a analog clock widget using C#. I think it's quite challenging for a beginner because it will require simple background of Math, image processing, and 3D graphics programming.

With the mouse hit-test, anti-aliasing graphics and flicker-free double buffering, you couldn't even tell the difference between it and Sidebar gadget. Yet it is in C#, and it reduces the pain to deal with Win32 API directly.

To draw the hour-hand, minute-hand and second-hand needs a little trick.

1) Set the origin of form to center, from left-top (so that following rotation can be taken place)
2) Save the current state

3) Rotate the new graphics objects

4) Draw the second-hand (or any hands) at new origin, new orientation

5) Restore the saved state

6) Rotate the new graphics objects
7) Draw the minute-hand (or any hands left) at new origin, new orientation

8) Reload the identity / Reset the origin and orientation (Restore the saved state seems failed)
9) Rotate the new graphics objects

10) Draw the hour-hand (or any hands left) at new origin, new orientation

Voila!

You can get the source here or get the exe here!

#p/s: thanks for the Fasticon for its free icon provided.

How to compete with Microsoft

2007-09-18T23:03:00.000+08:00

I just happend to come across to this the Inquirer (It is famous of MS-bashing), ironic but true.
Qoute:

Plan B: Start by developing a killer ap. If you can't think of one, don't worry - simply write a copy of an existing piece of software. It doesn't even have to do anything. When people point out that your product is rubbish, issue a press release blaming Microsoft for refusing to give you its proprietary code for free.
...
If you persevere for long enough, you may even convince the European Union that your product would be a world beater if only those bastards at Microsoft would give you the code to make it work properly.
...

Wow, write an OS!!

2007-09-17T22:29:00.000+08:00

While surfing on OSNews, I come across to this site. Know what, you also can write your own OS.

With the QEMU processor emulator, anyone one can write & test OS written. Start from doc here and here, now. I wish i could do it now, but not yet master ASP.NET, NET Framework, NET CF, ... , to name a few. OMG.

Bumblebee I am?

2007-09-16T22:00:00.000+08:00

While reading the Mike Hall's Windows Embeded blog, I also take part in the Which Transformer are you? quiz.
Haha, I get this:

I AM
61%
BUMBLEBEE Take the Transformers Quiz

But I still prefer the Bumblebee in the anime I watched during the time I was a kid.

SQL CE database upgrade

2007-09-11T23:17:00.000+08:00

This blog will talk about SQL CE database upgrade.
Actually, SQL CE database upgrade is briefly discussed in BOL (Book On-Line). And this blog is just to fill the missing link.

Normally, You can create a brand new application to use .NET CF 2.0 & SQL CE 3.0. Then what's the big deal about the SQL CE database upgrade, you might ask. Well,What you actually face in real-life situation is you are .NET CF 1.0 & SQL CE 2.0 application developer. Due to performance issue (SqlCeResultSet Class) or new functionality that only available in SQL CE 3.0, you need to meet the new requirement yet need to maintain the records that already keep in existing SQL CE 2.0 database. You do not want to create a new SQL CE 3.0 database and import back all the records, ain't you? Then, this is where SQL CE database upgrade comes in.

How will one know the database file (*.sdf) is not workable in SQL CE 3.0 ? Simple, open it from MSSQL Management Studio (Sorry, you need full version to run it). If you see this message, clearly you need to upgrade your database.

Now I will show you how to upgrade it within the emulator environment, specifically for OS PPC 2003. It can be done in actual device in the similar way. First, copy all the cabinet files of SQL CE run-time components for SQL CE 2.0 and 3.0 into you emulator, using Windows CE Remote File Viewer. The default location of the SQL CE 2.0 run-time components is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\SDK\SQL Server\Mobile\v2.0\[platform]\[processor] & the default location of the SQL CE 3.0 run-time components is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\SDK\SQL Server\Mobile\v3.0\[platform]\[processor]. You also need a upgrade.exe. This files is located in the same folder with SQL CE 3.0 run-time components.

Then you need to download the Pocket Shell in Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys. It is the PPC version of you desktop command prompt. The default location is in C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys\PPC_Command_Shell\arm. Copy the console.dll to emulator's \WINDOWS directory and copy the shell to emulator root folder for less programming later.

So now you should have 5 cabinet files(sqlce20.dev.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab, sqlce20.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab, sqlce30.dev.ENU.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab, sqlce30.dev.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab, sqlce30.rep.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab), 3 executable files (upgrade.exe, cmd.exe & shell.exe from Power Toy) and one SQL CE 2.0 database (oldDB.sdf). Install all the 5 cabinet files & click on the cmd.exe to run it. You will be prompt to enter command.

Type something like: upgrade.exe /s oldDB.sdf /d newDB.sdf

viola! (You need to wait a while if your database is huge)

Try to open it with desktop MSSQL:

If you have missed any cabinet file during installation (eg. you did not install "sqlce30.rep.ppc.wce4.armv4.cab"), you will get this error message:

Try to export the upgrade.log file to analyze:

In this case, you will get:

Connecting to source databaseCreating destination databaseUnable to instantiate SQL CE 3.0 provider
HRESULT: 0x80040154Database upgrade failed

First blog

2007-09-11T21:56:00.000+08:00

Hi, this is my first blog. Since my hobby is programming, of course most of the blogs will relate to programming. Haha.