Your Evacuation Plan – Do you have one? The time to make one is now, BEFORE you really need it…

LA Metblog - The 5+ Things I Would Grab In Case of an Evacuation

“Driving back from Fresno yesterday evening, I could see the hazy, hot pink sky and billowing smoke as I headed towards LA proper.  Nasty.  And scary.  If you’re within striking distance of any of the four major fires and are packing your things in case of a forced (or unforced) evacuation, the Red Cross has a handy guide of important items to pack.  Please don’t forget that your pets need evacuation kits too – the ASPCA has a great list here.

The Red Cross’ list includes:

MATERIALS

…”

American Red Cross - Your Evacuation Plan

“Local government officials, not the Red Cross, issue evacuation orders when disaster threatens. Listen to local radio and television reports when disaster threatens. If local officials ask you to leave, do so immediately!

If you have only moments before leaving, grab these things and go!

• Medical supplies: prescription medications and dentures.
• Disaster supplies: flashlight, batteries, radio, first aid kit, bottled water
• Clothing and bedding: a change of clothes and a sleeping bag or bedroll and pillow for each household member
• Car keys and keys to the place you may be going (friend's or relative's home)

If local officials haven't advised an immediate evacuation:

If there's a chance the weather may get worse or flooding may happen, take steps now to protect your home and belongings. Do this only if local officials have not asked you to leave

…

Gather essential supplies and papers.

You will need the following supplies when you leave your home; put them all together in a duffle bag or other large container in advance:

• Flashlight with plenty of extra batteries
• Battery-powered radio with extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Prescription medications in their original bottle, plus copies of the prescriptions
• Eyeglasses (with a copy of the prescription)
• Water (at least one gallon per person is recommended; more is better)
• Foods that do not require refrigeration or cooking
• Items that infants and elderly household members may require
• Medical equipment and devices, such as dentures, crutches, prostheses, etc.
• Change of clothes for each household member
• Sleeping bag or bedroll and pillow for each household member
• Checkbook, cash, and credit cards
• Map of the area

Important papers to take with you:

• Driver's license or personal identification
• Social Security card
• Proof of residence (deed or lease)
• Insurance policies
• Birth and marriage certificates
• Stocks, bonds, and other negotiable certificates
• Wills, deeds, and copies of recent tax returns

…”

The time to prepare is BEFORE you need to prepare. When it comes down to it, you’ll almost always be surprised and in a rush. To keep it from becoming a panic, try to prepare before hand (cough… like… um… now). The more you’re prepared, the less stressful it will be for you and your family. This will let you focus on the important things, like keeping everyone safe and sound…

CodeRush Xpress 9.2 Released – Better (memory usage), Faster (performance) and still free…

Charlie Calvert's Community Blog - CodeRush Xpress 9.2 Ships

“The free CodeRush Xpress from DevExpress provides C# and VB developers with powerful extensions to Visual Studio. These features include editing and refactoring tools that make it easier for you to quickly produce well designed code. Version 9.2 of CodeRush Xpress, which shipped on August 25, 2009, has greatly improved memory and performance characteristics.

…

The new features in CodeRush Xpress 9.2 include:

• Faster Performance
• Reduced Memory Consumption
• Support for Preprocessor Directives
• Background Processing Progress Bar 

…”

Mark Miller - What's New in CodeRush 9.2

“Here's what you can expect in the CodeRush 9.2 release.

Faster Performance

A new symbol cache, built the first time you open a solution improves the speed of subsequent solution parses dramatically. Now the speed to go from opening a solution to being able to refactor anywhere in that code base increases by 200%-500% for large solutions. More details on the performance improvements can be found here.

Additional performance enhancements:

• First startup after install is now significantly faster -- plug-in profile data now ships with the install and the plug-in profiling step is no longer part of the first startup.

• Background parsing, if running, is now suppressed during a solution build.

• …

Reduced Memory Consumption

CodeRush 9.2 uses dramatically less memory. Project symbols are now cached, and only loaded when needed. Recently-accessed members are kept in memory, while stale members are aggressively released. As a result, customers with large solutions can expect reductions in overall memory consumption by 100MB-200MB…

Manual Load and Unload

Normally CodeRush loads on startup, and unloads when Visual Studio shuts down. CodeRush 9.2 adds the ability to defer loading to another time after startup, and also adds the ability to unload CodeRush while Visual Studio remains running. This may be useful for developers running into memory issues

…”

DevExpress - CodeRush Xpress for C# and VB

“CodeRush Xpress is freely available to all Visual Studio 2008 developers and offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enable you and your team to simplify and shape complex code - making it easier to read and less costly to maintain.

Quick Info
File Name:	CodeRushXpress-9.2.4.exe
Download Size:	32.5 MB
Date Published:	25-Aug-2009
Version:	2009.2.4
Supported IDEs:	Visual Studio 2008

…

…”

Some of my coding is done on a lower end machine, so performance and memory improvements are officially a “good thing” for me. :)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
CodeRush Xpress not just for C#’ers anymore - CodeRush Xpress for C# AND VB now available and still free

Turn your intranet into a training “Productivity Hub” – A SharePoint site collection prefilled with Microsoft Office and SharePoint training materials (optional reg-ware)

Chris Bortlik's Blog - Free Office, SharePoint and Windows training resources for your Intranet

“We have recently released the Productivity Hub as a free download. A number of my customers have been beta testing this Hub over the past few months and it has received great feedback and helped to accelerate the deployment, adoption and training for Office and SharePoint 2007.

The Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection that serves as a learning community and is fully customizable. It provides a central place for your training efforts, and includes training content from Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft also provides ongoing and updated content packs.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking capabilities, such as blogs and discussion groups. In addition, it offers the Coach program, a change management feature to help you train end users to self-help, reducing the burden on your training and IT staff. The Coach program impacts productivity in a collaborative and positive way.

…”

Microsoft Downloads - Productivity Hub

“…

Version:	08-2009
Date Published:	8/28/2009
Language:	English
Download Size:	35 KB - 465.4 MB*
*Download size depends on selected download components.

 

What the Productivity Hub is:

• Format: Pre-loaded SharePoint site collection, optimized for Web 2.0 functionality and easily deployed within SharePoint Server 2007 environment.
• Content: Convenient end user productivity training in a variety of formats (documents, videos, podcasts, etc.). Receive free quarterly updates of content that you will learn about through the Productivity blog.
• Blog: The Productivity blog offers tips and tricks for end user productivity. Use it as is, or your training staff can use the posts as their own to help them get started in running an internal blog.
• Train the trainer: Includes IT/Manager section to aid with deployment of the site collection, and guidance to develop the Coach program.
• Products: Office 2007 System applications including SharePoint Server 2007. Windows 7 and others will be added in the future.

You can also download additional content packages that expand the training materials you can make available through the Hub.

…

Add-on Content Package
This content package contains more than 200 additional training materials that you can add to the Microsoft Productivity Hub. The package includes materials for five new products -- Live Meeting, OneNote, Project, Publisher, and Visio -- as well as additional content for Access, Communicator, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, SharePoint, and Word. Install the Hub before using this content package.

…

Files in This Download

The links in this section correspond to separate files available in this download. Download the files most appropriate for you.

File Name:	File Size
Microsoft Productivity Hub Installation Guide.docx	35 KB
ProductivityHub.EXE	383.1 MB
ProductivityHub_August09_Content.EXE	82.2 MB

…”

Free training materials, help in training your users, training management, etc. Not a bad deal at all… :p

I do wish there was a sample site, example screenshots, etc, so I could see it without having to actually install it (since I don’t have a dev SharePoint Server nor the juju to try it on our stage/prod servers, so would have to get “others” involved, submit tickets, etc, etc, etc… sigh).

An official “bunch” free of SQL Server 2008 R2 / SQL Server 2008 Express web sessions and how-to’s videos coming starting in September

msdev.com - MSDev Courses (RSS Feed)

SQL Server 2008 R2: Building Your ISV ETL Application

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
The process of extracting, transforming and loading data from ERP systems to your BI environment is a critical step in any BI solution. This session will introduce how this process is managed in SQL 2008 R2.

SQL Server 2008 R2: Building Your ISV Operational Applications

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
This session will cover Microsoft's tools that can be used to support operational decisions, such as Reporting Services and SharePoint.

SQL Server 2008 R2: Building Your ISV Tactical Applications

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
This session will cover Microsoft's tools that can be used to support tactical decisions, such as Excel Services and PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics.

SQL Server 2008 R2: Building Your ISV Strategic Applications

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
This session will cover Microsoft’s tools that can be used to support strategic decisions, such as PerformancePoint Planning. We will also discuss different Corporate Performance Management methodologies.

SQL Server 2008 R2: Building Your ISV Corporate Performance Management Application

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
Corporate performance management is a very important component of how to measure overall strategy accomplishment. This session will cover Microsoft's PM vision and tools.

SQL Server 2008 R2: Report Builder 3.0

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
This session will look at Report Builder 3.0 in SQL Server 2008 R2 and the new features now available in this latest release.

SQL Server 2008 R2: What SQL Server 2008 R2 Edition is right for me?

Available On Demand Starting on November 9th!
This session will highlight key issues to consider when selecting the right SQL Server R2 Edition for your organization.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I execute multiple SQL statements in one transaction?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to execute multiple SQL statements in one transaction.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I secure a SQL Server by assigning dedicated permissions to different users?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to secure a SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How can I increase the speed of a SQL query (CREATE INDEX)?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to increase the speed of a SQL query.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I profile SQL queries?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to profile SQL queries.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I update a Live SQL Server Database (when the Development Database has changed)?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to update a Live SQL Server Database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How can I test SQL queries?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to test SQL queries.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How to deploy a WPF application including a database?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to deploy a WPF application.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I search in PDFs which are stored in SQL Server?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to search PDFs stored in SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I search in Office documents which are stored in SQL Server?

Available On Demand Starting on October 19th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to search Office documents stored in SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I update data in a database?

Available On Demand Starting on October 5th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to update data in a database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I delete data in a database?

Available On Demand Starting on October 5th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to delete data in a database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I join data in a database?

Available On Demand Starting on October 5th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to join data in a database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I sort, group, etc. queries?

Available On Demand Starting on October 5th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to sort and group queries.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I create sub queries?

Available On Demand Starting on October 5th!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to create sub queries.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I install SQL Express tools after VS Pro install?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This short how-to-video will contain targeted information on installing SQL Server Express 2008 tools.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I backup a SQL Express database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to backup a SQL Server 2008 Express database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I backup a remote SQL Express database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to backup a remote SQL Server 2008 Express database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I restore a SQL Express database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to restore a SQL Server 2008 Express database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I import data from another source (Excel, Access, XML, MySQL, ...) into a SQL Server Database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to import data into a SQL Server database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I update SQL Server Express 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to update SQL Server Express 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I upsize from SQL Server Express 2005 to Workgroup 2005 or Standard 2005?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to upsize from SQL Server Express 2005.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I upsize from SQL Server Express 2005 to Workgroup 2008, Standard 2008, or Web Edition 2008?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to upsize from SQL Server Express 2005.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I insert data into a database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to insert data into a database.

SQL Server 2008 Express: How do I query data in a database?

Available On Demand Starting on September 21st!
This how-to-video contains targeted information on how to query data in a database.

…”

From beginner to ISV, I thought the scope of all this free training was pretty cool.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
How about 716, or so, free live and on-demand development training courses/web sessions? Then head on over to msdev.com…

Mapping your SkyDrive – Windows Explorer your SkyDrive

Windows 7 Hacker - How to Map Windows Live SkyDrive to Get Free 25GB Storage Space

“We have talked about getting Windows Live Essential tools for free, Windows Live SkyDrive is another great feel tool from Microsoft. It can store and backup your data  up to 25GB free cloud space. Here is a way to make the most out of the 25GB free space, by mapping it on your computer as virtual directory.

Step 1

Download the freeware called Gladinet Drive

…

When it done you should see the new Network Drive on your Windows Explorer.

…

”

Okay, that’s officially awesome!

Not being able to map a drive to SkyDrive has made it much harder for me to accept and use it day to day. Sure I use it, but only when I have to, know what I mean? If I could map a drive to it, then I’d be ALL over it (which may be why we can’t map a drive to it? :/ )

I’m going to have to give Gladinet Drive a try… (BTW, make sure you check out all the OTHER “cloud” services Gladinet Drive supports… Now that’s cool! )

A couple interesting Visual Studio Add-ins - Markup Tamer to tame your XML layout and Configuration Section Designer, a visual design surface for Configuration Sections

Howard van Rooijen's Blog - 2 Visual Studio Add-ins you probably weren't aware of

“The Visual Studio Add-in ecosystem is not as rich as it should be, especially compared with Eclipse, but it looks like the work that is going in to Visual Studio 2010 is going to change that. Microsoft's investment in MEF and updating core components of Visual Studio from COM to the managed world should make extensibility a much easier affair. That said, there are a few wonderful add-ins out there and here are 2 that I've randomly (and delightfully) stumbled upon:

Markup Tamer

On previous projects, we've adopted the following convention for mark-up (extract):

…

It was a bit of a pain having to manually format the mark-up to make it merge friendly. Then I stumbled upon Markup Tamer, which can automatically apply this convention to ASP.NET, Silverlight & WPF. Thus

From:

 

To:

…

Configuration Section Designer

It’s a visual designer for creating ConfigurationSections, which generates the code, config xml and an XSD to give you IntelliSense, all through the wonder of T4 Templates:

…”

The Configuration Section Designer I’ve seen and posted on before but deserves a reminder. The Markup Tamer is what really caught my eye. As I get into WPF more XML markup is getting much more “eye time.” Having the WPF attributes mashed together on a single line is hurting my brain and manually reformatting the XML was killing me. Markup Tamer looks like just the thing I was looking for and didn’t know it… ;)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Visual Configuration Section Designer

You’re IT! You are a tech pro, your company is involved in a legal matter and you’re now hearing all about “ESI” “EDD” and E-Discovery. So what is this E-Discovery thing?

Government Technology - E-Discovery: What Technology Professionals Must Know

“In 2006, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure - the court process for civil lawsuits - were changed because more than 95 percent of all information is now electronic. Many other states have followed suit, and litigation in the U.S. is now dominated by electronically stored information (ESI). ESI has spawned a new consulting marketplace of consultants, IT professionals and expert witnesses who specialize in the identification and control of ESI. As a result, IT professionals need to understand the Law of Evidence and Rules of Civil Procedure as much as they do the server technology and storage area networks. [GD: Emphasis added]

Lawyers, on the other hand, have yet to master IT, not just IT lingo, but how IT professionals manage their business. So there is confluence of IT and law that has subsumed litigation in the U.S. Outside the U.S. courts and arbitration systems, we do not subscribe to the open-end litigation which happens in the United States.

In the U.S., litigation is ruled by state or federal courts systems, or by private arbitrations governed by the rules of the American Arbitration Association, or some other organization like Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS), a private alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provider.

This article gives some basic information about e-discovery to help IT professionals understand the law in a straight-forward manner.

What Is Discovery?

Generally after a lawsuit (or arbitration) is filed until just before the trial (or hearing, in an arbitration) is a period of time referred to as discovery. …

…

Records Retention Policies

Because ESI has become fundamental to litigation, organizations need to have a records retention policy; otherwise, how can an organization without such a policy explain to a judge why certain ESI was retained and other deleted? …

…

Disaster Recovery

Everyone in IT knows that each computer will fail at some time since every box has components with a mean time between failures, so failure or disaster are a fundamental part of the use of IT. Accordingly IT plans for these failures or disasters by doing routine backup of systems and data to avoid business interruption. As an example, when my office had a flood on the 33rd floor of our building and our data center was shut down, our business was not adversely impacted since we had good backup procedures already in place.

IT sees backup as a disaster recovery issue; however, judges and lawyers think that copies of ESI are easily available to them since IT does backups regardless of the systems involved. [GD: Emphasis added] …

…

Conclusions

Since ESI is prevalent in litigation today, the discussion about IT and ESI is a part of every lawsuit, and at some in your career it will likely impact you. It is impossible to avoid. [GD: Emphasis added] This article should be a starting point for you to understand IT's role as more lawyers appear and ask for help.”

[Insert standard Greg comment about you, IT, EDD/E-Discovery and how you can’t hide from it, here]

[Insert standard Greg comment that as an IT guy or gal the more you know about EDD, the better of you’ll be when the poop hits the blender (Gross!… Sorry… but a sudden and unexpected EDD emergency can be just as gross as that image…  )]

All kidding aside, as an IT professional you don’t live a closed data center anymore. People beyond your users want the data. All the data they can get… People who are looking for “smoking guns” and people who are trying to help but don’t understand technology or your systems. You just have to look at any case today and you’ll hear about “that email from…”

The more you know about ESI/EDD the less the pain will be, for you and your company.

(via EDD Blog Online - E-Discovery: What Technology Professionals Must Know)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Speaking of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) - “The Know-IT-All's Guide to eDiscovery” free (reg-ware) eBook
A pocket guide I hope you never need, but probably will… The E-Discovery Pocket Guide from the California Bar
Learning About Electronic Data Discovery? RenewData has a free book for ya...
The Pocket Guide to Electronic Discovery for Judges
An Electronic Data Discovery Bible Gets Updated - "The Sedona Principles, Second Edition" (June 2007) Released
A Couple EDD Articles...
EDD Reading List
Litigation Support Technical Standards, Free eBook

Students and Librarians go Bing! 50 Bing tips for you and the students and librarians in your life too ;)

OnlineColleges.net - 50 Fantastic Bing Tricks for Students & Librarians

“Bing has made quite an entrance in the Internet search world. This new way of searching provides quick and easy shortcuts that don’t always require reading through lists of websites and clicking on each one to find what you want. Check out the following tricks to see how Bing can help students and librarians find the information they need in a snap.

Finding Information

From doing math without a calculator to getting definitions, use Bing to find this information quickly and easily.

1. Use the background image. Hovering over different locations on the background image provides an opportunity to learn facts about the image or related topics.
2. Do math. Enter a math calculation directly into the search box to compute anything from simple math to trig functions

…

Research and Collaboration

Bing is great for Internet research and sharing that research for others. Find out how with these suggestions.

1. Save search results. Save your search results to a local folder online to have access to them without having to remember how you performed the search.
2. Share search results. If you have found important information you want to share, email your search results or share via Facebook.
3. Find specific types of files. Use a keyword and "contains: file type" (with file type being the file type you are seeking) to find PDFs, MP3s, and other files

…

Images and Videos

Use images and videos easily and more quickly with Bing to find the information you need.

1. Easily find images. The image search on Bing provides many images that are easily scanable.

…

Travel

Whether you are going home for the holidays or traveling to the next big conference, use these tips to help facilitate your travel with Bing.

1. Find low air fares. Enter "flights from x to y" (with x and y being the cities of travel) to find low air fares as well as predicted fare trends.
2. Get flight status. Enter your flight number along with "flight status" to immediately find out the status of your flight.

…

Mobile

Just because you stepped out of the library or away from class doesn’t mean you can’t still access the benefits of Bing. Find out what you can do with Bing and your mobile.

1. Use their mobile site. The Bing mobile site is specially designed for mobile phone usage.
2. Download the app. From your mobile phone’s browser, go to http://m.bing.com/download/ to download their mobile app.
3. Get mobile with a text. Visit Bing for mobile to enter your phone number and receive a text with the link.

…

Is this bing bling? Or just bing fun? Anyway there were a number of Bing searches and features that were new to me.

Now to remember them… oh wait, since I blogged about it all I have to remember is that I blogged about it. That works… ;)

(via LiveSide - The Bing Blog - 50 Bing Tricks for Students and Librarians (and you))

PDC09 font, how to install and use it in Windows, Blend, Silverlight, etc

 How to install cool, custom fonts (like PDC09) into Windows and use it in your Silverlight application (or even Microsoft Word)

“Whether you are someone who leans more towards design or coding you have probably come across the need for some interesting fonts.  Typography is a fascinating area with a long history dating back to the origins of print.  When we look at creating an engaging user experience today we are often trying to make a connection with our audience.  We “empathize” with our users needs and look to invoke certain feelings.  Fonts can do that in amazing ways and its pretty easy to add them to your own applications.

The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) site has a great art section where you can download wallpapers, blog bling and the font that they used.  Maybe its because I’m such a video gamer but the font really connected with me and brought back memories of playing Wipeout and Star Trek.

Installing the Font into Windows

I keep a local folder in my documents directory of all the fonts I have found intriguing.  Most of these go into my applications or demos I do for that extra sparkle.  You can keep them anywhere you would like however I just find this method the easiest to use.  That way I can zip up all my fonts if I need to use them on a different machine.

…”

Hard to get enough cool fonts… ;) And since it looks like I will be able to attend PDC09 I need to start the bling bing…

 

(via The Road to Know Where - Microsoft's PDC09 Releases Free "StarTrek-Like" Windows 7 Font)

VSTS Rangers Site is now live – A great resource for serious VSTS/TFS users

In search of simplicity, quality and tranquility in software engineering - VSTS Rangers Site is Live

“We have been working to create a home for the VSTS Rangers and their projects, to recognize the phenomenal contributions made by Team System experts and to better understand the interest in our VSTS Rangers projects. Thanks to Sharon, we now have our very own site :)

…”

Team System Developer Center - Team System Rangers

“Team System Rangers deliver out of band solutions for missing features and guidance in the Team System suite of products.

…”

Team System Rangers - Rangers Solutions and Projects

“Current Ranger Solutions

Operations Guidance for Team Foundation Server

…

Project Server 2007 VSTS Connector

…
Sharepoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project

…
Solution and Authored Artifact Development Models for SharePoint Products and Technologies

…

SQL Load Test

…

Team Foundation Server 2008 Branching Guide 2.0

…

Team Test Quick Reference Guide

…

Using TFS to Develop Custom Sharepoint Products and Technologies Applications

…

WCF Load Test

…

 

The VSTS Rangers provide some outstanding and must have information and resources. Their new site is a super resource for the serious VSTS/TFS user. Make sure you click through on the Related Resources links.

 

One comment from the field: I do wish that the site had its own a RSS feed… :/

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The VSTS Ranger Team does it again… Now with the “Visual Studio Team Test 2008 Quick Reference Guide,” 83 free pages all about Team Test
Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance v2 Released
SQL Load Test – Generate Visual Studio unit/load tests from a SQL Server SQL Trace
Branching Guidance on CodePlex
Tons of TFS Stuff - Team System Widgets List from Accentient

Sysinternals 101 – “Notes from the field,” a quick intro to a few Sysinternals utilities (Process Explorer, TCPView, Process Monitor, VMMap)

Dhawan : The One - Working with Sysinternal tools –1

“Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources provides a set of tools to get information about various functionalities on the system. The area of information include , process running on the system, file operations, registry operations, TCP/IP related tasks, security etc. The complete list of the tools available can be found here, Sysinternals Utilities. Though there are separate web-pages to view the introduction of each tool and download the tool, there is a dedicated page to download all the tool at once, Sysinternals Suite .

Sysinternals Live, Sysinternals Live is a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as http://live.sysinternals.com/<toolname> or  \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname>.

You can view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser at http://live.sysinternals.com.

The tools available through Sysinternals are very helpful in various troubleshooting scenarios, and I use some of them on daily basis. Here I will try to explain my understanding about the tool and How to I get a particular information through them. It is not possible to demonstrate all of them at once, so this blog-post will get updated over-time whenever I have something to add or edit to it.

…”

A quick “notes from the field” intro to a few Sysinternals utilities. How he uses, as a Support Engineer at MS, Sysinternals utilities.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Hands On Learning How to Use the Sysinternals Process Monitor Utility
"Fundamental Computer Investigation Guide For Windows"

Sysinternals Suite Refreshed – All the latest Sysinternals Utilities, one tiny zip (well 10MB zip…)
Sysinternals Suite (8MB of Complete Sysinternals Goodness)

The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com
Use the Sysinternals Utilities? The EULA bug dialog you? Then try this…

VsDbCmd UI Utility – A User Interface for VsDbCmd to help with packaging and command line parameter overload

Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.: The Blog - A User Interface for VsDbCmd: Deploy/Import Your Database Schema Without Installing Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition

“There’s an underappreciated feature in Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition (DbPro) and that’s VsDbCmd.exe.  If you’re using DbPro to manage your database schema during development, you’re doing it with Visual Studio installed on your desktop.  When you need to deploy changes to production, you do a Database Comparison between your project and your production database and DbPro generates an update script for you that publishes your changes to the production database. 

This works great if you can connect to your production database from your developer workstation.  What if you can’t connect from your developer workstation?  Do you need to install DbPro on the production machine? 

Thankfully, the answer is no.  This is where VsDbCmd.exe comes in.  VsDbCmd is a command-line tool that you can put on a USB thumb drive (or copy over the network) to a machine that does not have DbPro installed.  Once you’ve copied VsDbCmd to that machine, you have two very helpful features:

…

But there’s a catch.  You’ve got to package up a handful of files that VsDbCmd needs to run.  This step is a little confusing and tedious. Once you get everything packaged up and copied over to your database machine, you have to remember the command-line syntax for doing your Import or Deploy.  Not that hard but there’s some hunting around and tweeking required to get it right.

It would be nice if there were a user interface for VsDbCmd, huh?  Well, I wrote one!  (You’re welcome. <grin />)

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Summary

VsDbCmd is a great feature in Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition.  Hopefully, this UI will make it easier for you to use it so that you can manage your database schema development and deployment just like the rest of your software development efforts.

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Sometimes you just need a little clicky…

This is cool for those who don’t live in Data Data day in and out. Also interesting that it’s deployed as a Click-once application…

 

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