A quick 16 page SQL Azure developing and deploying document for the discerning Dev dude

Microsoft Downloads - Developing and Deploying with SQL Azure

“This document provides guidelines on how to deploy an existing on-premise SQL Server database into SQL Azure. It also discusses best practices related to data migration.

File Name:	Developing and Deploying with SQL Azure.docx
Version:	1.0
Date Published:	5/28/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	4.5 MB

SQL Azure Database is a cloud based relational database service from Microsoft. SQL Azure provides relational database functionality as a utility service. Cloud-based database solutions such as SQL Azure can provide many benefits, including rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability, and reduced management overhead.

This document provides guidelines on how to deploy an existing on-premise SQL Server database into SQL Azure. It also discusses best practices related to data migration.

…”

From the DocX;

“…

Development with SQL Azure

SQL Azure is built on the SQL Server’s core engine, so developing against SQL Azure is very similar to developing against on-premise SQL Server. While there are certain features that are not compatible with SQL Azure, most T-SQL syntax is compatible. The MSDN link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336281.aspx provides a comprehensive description of T-SQL features that are supported, not supported, and partially supported in SQL Azure.

The release of SQL Server 2008 R2 adds client tools support for SQL Azure including added support to Management Studio (SSMS). SQL Server 2008 R2 (and above) have full support for SQL Azure – in terms of seamless connectivity, viewing objects in the object explorer, SMO scripting etc.

At this point of time, if you have an application that needs to be migrated into SQL Azure, there is no way to test it locally to see if it works against SQL Azure. The only way to test is to actually deploy the database into SQL Azure.

…

Deployment into SQL Azure

Deploying your database developed on premise into SQL Azure involves 2 steps – schema migration and data migration. At this time, backing up and restoring an on-premise database into SQL Azure is not supported. Depending on what tools you use to generate the schema, it can be a little tricky. This is because SQL Azure supports only a subset of the TSQL supported by SQL Server 2008. As new features are being added to SQL Azure, the tools supporting the schema generation need to be modified to support those new features. SQL Server 2008 R2 has full support for SQL Azure. You can point the database “Generate Scripts Wizard” to script against a SQL Azure database and the scripts generated can be executed directly on a SQL Azure database. …

…”

Seems like a good mix of information and code to get you started in moving from in-house to SQL Azure. Not an end-all, be-all guide, but easily short enough to read quickly and get your brain going in the right direction…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Getting “Cloud Ready” on demand - Windows Azure FireStarter event recordings now available (We’re talking 8 hours of event video…)
The fast, yet as complete as, possible SQL Azure Start to Finish Guide – aka What is a “DB as a SQL Azure/web service” demo without Northwind?
Free Microsoft SQL Azure training and a cool Migration Wizard utility

SQL Server Management Studio for SQL Azure now available

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster – aka The perfect Hyper-V Geek Cube Wallpaper

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Server 2008 R2: Hyper-V Component Architecture

“This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

File Name:	WindowsServer2008R2Hyper-VComponentArchitecture.pdf
Version:	05/2010
Date Published:	5/26/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	5.6 MB

This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2. It focuses on architecture, snapshots, live migration, virtual networking, storage, and import/export. You can use this poster in conjunction with the previously published Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 component posters (see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=193499 and http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179116). …”

How can you not love a 40x25 inch, make your eyes bleed and brain explode, poster like this? 

 

(via Keith Combs' Blahg - Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster – now available)

Getting Visual Studio to Get GIT

Visual Studio Gallery - Git Source Control Provider

“Visual Studio users are used to see files' source control status right inside the solution explorer, whether it is SourceSafe, Team Foundation Server, Subversion or even Mercurial. This plug-in integrates Git with Visual Studio solution explorer.

…

…”

I’ve not jumped on the Git bandwagon yet, but if I did I’d want this free extension… Plus I just couldn’t pass up being able to title a post like this… LOL

 

Related Past Post XRef:
CodePlex expands source control options with distributed version control support (DVCS) via native Mercurial support

It’s there some new “testing” stuff in VS2010? Yep! Tons! And here’s a free webcast to show you all about it…

Steve Lange - Free Webcast: The Full Testing Experience – Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010

“I hope you can make this Webinar on June 15 - we’ll review all of the great new TESTING functionality of Visual Studio 2010.

If you are using other Testing solutions from HP, IBM or providers (including open source solutions), you will want to learn more about what comes “in the box” with Visual Studio 2010.  Many of you already own the licenses to our new Testing solutions – learn how you can start to leverage them today!

The Full Testing Experience – Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010

• Imagine knowing exactly what manual regression tests you had to run, given the code changes in the recent build…
• Imagine being able to quickly and completely capture bugs in such a way that developers can always reproduce them…
• Imagine being able to record your exploratory testing and turn that exploration into detailed test steps – with just a few commands…
• Imagine taking a manual test run and, in seconds, turning it into an automated test…
• Imagine seeing your testing progress on one simply dashboard, and drilling into critical details…

…” [GD: Post Leach Level:99%]

The Full Testing Experience – Professional Quality Assurance with VS2010

“…

06/15/2010
09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Time Zone: Pacific

…

Featured Products/Topics: Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio Professional Edition

Recommended Audiences: Technology Executives, IT Managers, IT Professionals, Business Executives, Vice Presidents, CEO, CIO, COO, CTO, CFO, IT Directors, Business Managers, Solution Architects, Business Owner, Software Developers, Business Decision Maker, Technical Decision Makers, Developers, Architects

…

Now come see it all. In action. Today.

Join us as we demonstrate the testing and quality assurance lifecycle using Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server. We’ll dive into the testing tools and testing process you can use to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your QA and Test efforts. You’ll see the Microsoft Test and Lab Manager (MTLM) in all its glory as we explore how to manage your test environment, organize test suites, test cases, requirements and bugs, and how to manage both automated and manual test runs. In addition, you’ll see how to easily create an automated test from an existing manual test run. Finally, and most importantly, you’ll discover how insanely easy it is to create bugs that can be simply and reliably reproduced by developers – VS 2010 is that powerful.

This session is geared towards QA managers, technical and non-technical testers, and quality-conscious developers working on cross-functional teams (or, gasp, organizations without testers).

…”

This post’s title could also have been, “VS2010 Is Testing Love…” The shear scope of testing capabilities added in VS2010 is mind blowing. It’s going to take us all a good bit of time to catch up and wrap our heads around all that’s available and how to fit it best into our real world dev/qa lives…

Taken out of context this made me laugh, “…how insanely easy it is to create bugs …” Oh yeah, I create bugs by the dozen!  LOL :p

[Cool Project to Watch of the Day] PSTSDK.Net, a .NET port of PST File Format SDK

When Microsoft released the PST SDK (post), my first thought was “Oh I SO want a Managed/.Net wrapper/port!” It’s pretty obvious I wasn’t the only one with this wish (“Gee no kidding Caption Obvious?” LOL)…

Troy dropped me a comment to let me know he was already on it.

CodePlex - pstsdk.net: .NET port of PST File Format SDK

“Project Description
pstsdk.net makes it easier for .NET developers to access the PST file format. This is a direct C# port of the PST File Format SDK project which is written in C++.

Current Status
Just getting started. So far primitives.cs is the only file with any content. More to come...”

Added to my watch list. Again, thanks for the heads up Troy!

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Open source PST SDK/library… from Microsoft!? Yep!

[Humor] T-SQL your way to a new SyFy Movie Title

 TRUNCATE TABLE master..sysdatabases - SyFy Channel Original Movie Title Generator

“Saw this linked on reddit today and couldn't resist going through all the combinations:

…

…”

TopatoCo - SciFi TV-Movie Title Shirt

Got to love Geek/DBA/TSQL humor… LOL

Some of these combinations gave me a good chuckle (which I could really use right now)

Looking in someone else’s Medicine Cabinet… err… I mean… their Development and Utility Toolbox…

Michael Crump - Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

“

This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.

Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping.

…

Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows.

…

General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system.

…

Blogging – I use the following for my blog.

…

Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management.

…

…”

I can be a nosy guy sometimes (“No! Greg, say it’s not so!  ;) and find these kinds of lists interesting. Especially one as full as Michael's. In every list I seem to find something new and cool… ;)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Scott Hanselman has updated his monster (and must read) “Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows”!
Computer Forensic/EDD Software List
If Santa were a .Net Developer, this might be his “I wish I knew about all these” .Net dev tools list
40 Desert Island (aka Portable) Web Dev Tools

From ZZZ’s to Speed – Finding out what’s taking Windows 7 so long to boot and what to do about it guide

IT Expert Voice - What’s Taking So Long? How to Fight Slow Startup Times in Windows 7

“If your Windows 7 systems need half an eternity to boot up, there’s clearly something odd going on. Dealing with slow boot problems is annoying and – let’s face it – is mostly guesswork. Guesswork that costs money and time. We have got you covered: Learn how to analyze the startup process, find the cause in no time, and get rid of bottlenecks once and for all!

…

Certainly, boot times vary significantly from one computer to another. This is nothing new. But if Windows 7 clients need way longer – and we’re talking way over one or two minutes – then you’re looking at a resource hog. So what could be causing the problem?

• You just installed a new driver, which hasn’t been WHQL-certified and delays the boot up process. It could be a simple driver bug!
• You installed a piece of resource-intense software that initializes a process or a service during startup.
• You updated existing software or Windows 7 itself. Yes, it’s not unheard of that some updates cause a significant boot delay.

Maybe it’s a combination of all three causes. In any case, something is clearly taking up too much resources during startup time. To get to the bottom of the mystery, you need to follow a couple of step-by-step instructions to find and resolve the issue. Ready? Here’s how!

Find Out Exactly How Long Windows 7 Needs to Start Up

Let’s start off by finding out the exact time the Windows 7 client needs to start up. And guess what, no stopwatch is required! Windows 7’s very own Event Viewer does the trick. In the following four steps you learn to measure both the raw boot time and the real life boot time (and what both mean).

…

That’s it! With all the given advice you should be able to handle each and every boot delay that crosses your way. Go back to the Event Viewer to check if and how much all these steps affected raw boot time and real life boot time — I bet there’s a huge difference! On my client’s PCs I was able to cut boot times in half (or even less). A nice side effect that you should also consider: Now that you’ve gotten problematic services and processes out of the way, overall Windows responsiveness and performance probably has gotten a lot of better as well.

…

…”

What I really liked about this guide was that it “teaches how to fish” (Give someone a fish, they eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they are never hungry again). It’s not the usual, here’s how to remove items from start-up guide, but instead in-depth instruction on how to see what’s really taking so long and then it provides guidance on handling that.

For those of us providing “personal tech support services” (i.e. to family and friends) or work working the IT Help Desk, this information and instruction will help you keep your users, and their Window 7 boxes, well fed…

Nirsoft + Sysinternals + One interface = Windows System Control Center

How-To Geek - Control Sysinternals Suite & NirSoft Utilities with a Single Interface

“Sysinternals and NirSoft both provide helpful utilities for your Windows system but may not be very convenient to access. Using the Windows System Control Center you can easily access everything through a single UI front end.

Setup

The first thing to do is set up three new folders in Program Files (or Program Files (x86) if you are using a 64bit system) with the following names (the first two need to exactly match what is shown here):

• Sysinternals Suite
• NirSoft Utilities (create this folder only if you have any of these apps downloaded)
• Windows System Control Center (or WSCC depending on your preferences)

Unzip the contents of the Sysinternals Suite into its’ folder. Then unzip any individual NirSoft Utilities programs that you have downloaded into the NirSoft folder.

…

…

Conclusion

WSCC provides an easy way to access all of the apps in the Sysinternals Suite and NirSoft Utilities in one place.

Note: A PortableApps version is also available.

…

…”

Windows System Control Center is new to me. There are few things cooler than a new cool utility to play with… :p

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Another portable application suite and launcher, NirLauncher (Beta) - 100+ NirSoft utilities + easy Sysinternals integration too

82 Top Free/Open Source Windows Applications, two clicks away via ZeuApp, a portable downloader and installer

It’s a new Sysinternals Tool Day! RAMMap v1.0 released
Sysinternals Suite (8MB of Complete Sysinternals Goodness)
The latest Sysinternals utilities are just a URL away, Live.Sysinternals.com

A handy PowerShell script to keep your Sysinternals Suite up to date
Mesh'ing Live.Sysinternals.com, using Vista Scheduling and Robocopy

Hands On Learning How to Use the Sysinternals Process Monitor Utility
Sysinternals 101 – “Notes from the field,” a quick intro to a few Sysinternals utilities (Process Explorer, TCPView, Process Monitor, VMMap)

Use the Sysinternals Utilities? The EULA bug dialog you? Then try this…

SELECT * FROM Log... with the cool tool that’s been around for years, Log Parser!

Jonathan Allen - Using LogParser - part 1

“I have mentioned LogParser before on my blog and have decided to create a series of walk-through style articles to show someone new to LogParser what it can do and how to use it. It is appropriate to all sorts of job roles in IT, whether you are a System Administrator or a SQL DBA.

LogParser, and all of its documentation, can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en and its a very simple installation process.

For the scripts in this series I will work with these files: Person_Address.csv and Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv, these are available for download from here as individual zip files or in Everything.zip or you can create your own from the AdventureWorks database by running the script LP_SourceData.sql(also in the zip file) and saving the results from SQL Server Management Studio to C:\LP on your own computer.

Downloaded? Installed? Good, Lets go. …

…

OK, that's almost it for this instalment but I'll leave you with the syntax to let you open up some files and see the contents. This is where its at its most simple, you can view data from a file by starting LogParser and typing LOGPARSER "SELECT * FROM C:\LP\person_address.csv" and their contents of the test.csv file will be listed to you.

In the next part of this series we will review some different output formats and how to control what data is selected. …

…”

Log Parser is one of those magical utilities that few seem to know about, but does some awesome things. The important thing is to remember “Log” doesn’t have to mean IIS Log. Think Application Log, Text Log, stuff logged to a file, etc, etc.

Now imagine you have a large log file. Wouldn’t it be cool to easily “query” it, say with a SQL like statement? No importing into a database, etc, we’re talking “querying” the actual file.

We’re talking Log Parser!  :)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The Unofficial Log Parser Support Site
Download details: Log Parser 2.2

IIS Diagnostics Toolkit (January 2006)
SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for IIS Logs

It’s official, I’m a DZone MVB (Most Valuable Blogger)!

Check it out, I’m a DZone MVB (Most Valuable Blogger)!

 

Thanks to the DZone team for approaching me and for getting everything setup and running…

More importantly THANK YOU to everyone I curate. It’s YOUR outstanding content, your excellent work and information, it’s your shoulders I stand on. I hope this step brings us all fame and fortune! (okay… a few more clicks and visits anyway… ;)

DZone - DZone Most Valued Blogger (MVB) Program

“What is DZone's MVB program?

DZone's MVB program builds mutually beneficial partnerships with community bloggers and authors whose articles would likely be of interest to our audience. The program streamlines and simplifies the process of reprinting selected articles by MVB members onto DZone Network websites. This is a win-win scenario for both the MVB member and the DZone audience, connecting them with one another in ways that otherwise might not have occurred. The MVB member enjoys substantially increased visibility, and the DZone audience enjoys great content. Best of all, the process is extremely convenient for MVB members since DZone takes care of all the work.

…

What do I have to do?

Being a MVB member is easy. We ask nothing more from you than to continue doing what you do best, writing quality articles for readers as we continue to provide the well known DZone platform for your articles to gain tremendous exposure and recognition. With that in mind, we would like to ask for your permission to allow DZone to selectively repost full length articles that you have published on your blog, website, and any articles you provide to us. Additionally, we will always provide attribution and include a reference link back to your blog or website.

What do I get out of it?

MVB is a neat role that does not demand responsibility with nice benefits in status, visibility, privileges and cool schwag. As a token of our appreciation, we’d send you special MVB care packages, which include unique DZone goodies and cool schwag. As an MVB, you are also encouraged to join our Refcardz review committee. Refcardz review committee members will gain early access to new Refcardz as they are published, a chance to give us feedback on what you like and don’t like, as well as a chance to voice suggestions for new topics.

…”

(cough.. next step, Microsoft MVP!  LOL … cough  ;)

Open source PST SDK/library… from Microsoft!? Yep!

Microsoft PressPass - Microsoft Delivers on Interoperability Principles With Office Outlook

“REDMOND, Wash. — May 24, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of two new open source projects that complement technical documentation recently released for Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders (.pst). Combined, the documentation and tools advance interoperability with data stored in .pst files, reflecting customer requests for greater access to data stored and shared in digital formats generated by Microsoft Outlook and for enhanced data portability.

Developers can use these resources to more easily build solutions, including competitive products, that run on top of the .pst file format, unlocking data stored in .pst files in simple scenarios, such as extracting photos stored in .pst files to create an album, as well as more complex scenarios, including archive search, e-discovery and corporate compliance, and uploading data to the cloud.

…

Now, two new open source projects, a .pst Data Structure View Tool and a .pst File Format Software Development Kit (SDK), further reduce the complexity of reading and extracting data stored in .pst files for use in new applications across a range of platforms. The .pst Data Structure View Tool is a graphical browser of internal data structures for .pst files that enables a developer to better understand .pst file content. The .pst File Format SDK is a cross-platform library that allows developers to read data stored in .pst files and develop applications accessing the data. In the near future, the capability to write data to .pst files will be added to the SDK.

…”

Interoperability @ Microsoft - Two open source projects to facilitate interoperability with Outlook .pst data files

“Microsoft today announced the availability of two new open source projects that complement technical documentation recently released for Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders (.pst). From the press release:

“Combined, the documentation and tools advance interoperability with data stored in .pst files, reflecting customer requests for greater access to data stored and shared in digital formats generated by Microsoft Outlook and for enhanced data portability.”

The two open source projects, available on Copeplex under the Apache 2.0 license are the following:

• The PST Data Structure View Tool (http://pstviewtool.codeplex.com/) is a graphical tool allowing the developers to browse the internal data structures of a PST file. The primary goal of this tool is to assist people who are learning .pst format and help them to better understand the documentation.
• The PST File Format SDK (http://pstsdk.codeplex.com/) is a cross platform C++ library for reading .pst files that can be incorporated into solutions that run on top of the .pst file format. The capability to write data to .pst files is part of the roadmap will be added to the SDK.

To get more details about how these two projects came to life and understand what type of scenarios they enable, watch this video with Daniel Ko, development manager in the Outlook team.

…

…”

CodePlex - PST Data Structure View Tool

“PST Data Structure View Tool (PSTViewTool) is a tool supporting the PST file format documentation effort. It allows the user to browse the internal structures of a PST file.

PSTViewTool is a MFC/C++ app developed in Visual Studio. Other than MFC, it has no external dependencies.

PSTViewTool is largely complete with respect to its goals, and it is no longer actively being enhanced. However, patches and bug reports are welcome.

For reusable code, you should refer to the PST File Format SDK: http://pstsdk.codeplex.com/”

CodePlex - PST File Format SDK

“PST File Format SDK (pstsdk) is a cross platform header only C++ library for reading PST files.

Quick Start Guide For Developers (for developers working on PST File Format SDK)
Quick Start Guide For Users (for developers using PST File Format SDK in other projects)

…”

PST File Format SDK - Quick Start Guide For Users

“Using PST File Format SDK in your project is extremely simple.

1. Unzip PST File Format SDK into a directory of your choosing (e.g, C:\libraries\pstsdk)
2. Unzip Boost v1.42 into a directory of your choosing (e.g, C:\libraries\boost)
3. Make sure the PST File Format SDK directory is in your compilers include path
4. Make sure the Boost directory is in your compilers include path

See the Documentation page for a quick start guide.

Take a look at pstsdk/doc/html/index.html for an in depth API Reference.

Try to read [MS-PST], the published file format documentation on the PST, if you're doing any serious work. It's also included in pstsdk/doc - I included it because various structures in the SDK are annotated with the section of MS-PST they describe/implement; and such sections numbers are likely to change in the future as the document is updated. The version of the document distributed with PST File Format SDK may be out of date, but the section numbers in it will correspond to the sections the API reference links to.

…”

Most of you probably won’t care about this, but I think this is awesome!

I can’t wait to see some of the stuff that’s going to come from the development community because of this (I’ll be keeping my eyes wide open for a Managed wrapper/implementation).

For my current field (i.e. Litigation support, electronic data discovery [EDD], Electronically stored information [ESI], etc) this could be huge. The MS-PST Doc was one thing, this is a whole other ball of wax.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
MS-PST file format specification released. Yep, the full and complete specification for Outlook PST’s is now just a download away.
PST File Format Documentation coming…

Outlook Redemption 4 Released

I'll Need This Later Note To Self: .Net and MAPI/CDO Don't Mix
VB.NET DLL Wrapper For C MAPIEx Extended MAPI

The Microsoft Office Visualization Tool (OffVis) – Spelunk (view, browse, peek into, etc) Microsoft Office Binary Format files
Microsoft Office (DOC, XLS, PPT) Binary File Format Specifications Released – We’re talking the full technical specification… (The [MS-DOC].pdf alone is 553 pages of very dense specification information)
DOC, XLS and PPT Binary File Format Specifications Released (plus WMF, Windows Compound File [aka OLE 2.0 Structured Storage] and Ink Serialized Format Specifications and Translator to XML news)
Microsoft Office Binary File Format Specifications Coming to a Download Near You...

Want to write Managed IE/Shell Extensions, but thought that was “bad”? That was the past… With .Net 4 the world of Managed Extensions is now open to you.

vcsjones - Writing a Managed Internet Explorer Extension: Part 1

“I’ve recently had the pleasure of writing an Internet Explorer add on. I found this to somewhat difficult for a few reasons and decided to document my findings here.

Managed vs Native

One difficult decision I had to make even before I had to write a single line of code was what do I write it with? I am a C# developer, and would prefer to stay in that world if possible. However, this add-on had the intention of being use commercially, and couldn’t make the decision solely based on preference.

Add-on’s to Internet Explorer are called Browser Helper Objects, often documented as BHOs as well. They are COM types, thus if we were going to do this managed, we will be doing some COM Interop. I’ve done this before, but mostly from a level of tinkering or deciding to go back to native. The .NET Framework had another benefit to me, and that was WPF. My BHO requires an user interface, and doing that natively isn’t as easy or elegant as using native libraries. Ultimately I decided to go with .NET Framework 4.0, and I can only recommend the .NET Framework 4.

Previous versions of the CLR has a serious drawback when exposing the types to COM: They always used the latest version of the CLR on the machine. If you wrote a BHO in the .NET Framework 1.1, and 2.0 was installed, it would load the assembly using the .NET Framework 2.0. This can lead to unexpected behavior. Starting in the .NET Framework 4, COM Visible types are guaranteed to run against the CLR they were compile with.

…

…”

In the recent past, writing Managed Extensions has been frowned upon, and pretty much off limits, due to lack of in-process side-by-side support in the CLR. The first Extension would load the CLR it needed and all later Extensions in the process would have to use that CLR version. Period.

That was the past…

.Net 4’s support for in-process side-by-side CLR versions means that once scary place of writing Managed IE/Windows Shell extensions is now open, available AND supported.

Forget what you knew, you CAN, with .Net 4, write Managed IE/Shell extensions. So what are you waiting for?  ;)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Taking your first steps with spicIE
Spice up your IE with spicIE – Writing IE7/8 Plugins in managed code in minutes (beta)

PSAM (PowerShell Admin Module) = PowerShell Share Fun

Under The Stairs - PowerShell Admin Module

“I’ve been playing a bit with a Codeplex project called PowerShell Admin Modules (PSAM). Developed by Richard Siddaway, PSAM is intended to supply a number of PowerShell modules for use by IT Pros. The first of these modules contains 6 functions that work with shares, as follows:

• …

Using this module is easy. …

…”

CodePlex - PowerShell Admin Modules

“PAM supplies a number of PowerShell modules satisfying the needs of Windows administrators. By pulling together functions for adminsitering files and folders; network connections, users and other admin related tasks you get a one stop shop for admin utilities.

The admin modules will be supplied over time.

First download comprises functions for working with Shares. The following functions are supplied:

• Get-Share
• Get-ShareAccessMask
• Get-ShareSecurity
• New-Share
• Remove-Share
• Set-Share

Each function is supplied with a help file. …”

Given some of the recent file share stuff I’ve blogged about recently this caught my eye. It’s not an ‘uber’ module (i.e. doesn’t have billions of commands, etc) but simple and focused, which it just what you want sometimes… ;)