EntropyZero Blogging Server

Running batch files from within Visual Studio 2008

mike.brockey — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:11:00 GMT

This is pretty easy to setup.

>> All you have to do is, setup command prompt in external tools with following option

Title :MyCommandPrompt
Command c:\windows\System32\cmd.exe
Arguments: /k $(ItemPath)
Initial directory: $(ProjectDir)

http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/hdcornerblogs/archive/2006/03/09/135823.aspx

It does also work in VS2008!!

Now setup a keyboard shortcut for "Tools.ExternalComment0" (it was my first) to something like (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-E) and now you are in business!

Interested in contributing to the deltaRunner project?

mike.brockey — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:21:00 GMT

We've created a new ticket repository on the oh so elegant lighthouseapp.com.

https://ent0.lighthouseapp.com/projects/28937-deltarunner/overview

Come on over and create new tickets or help close out already existing ones!

Interested in contributing to the project?

mike.brockey — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:18:00 GMT

We've created a new ticket repository on the oh so elegant lighthouseapp.com.

https://ent0.lighthouseapp.com/projects/28938-datafresh/overview

Come on over and create new tickets or help close out already existing ones!

dataFresh Update 1.0.4.2049

mike.brockey — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:28:00 GMT

This new version contains various bug fixes and enhancements that have been submitted. This version is compatible with NHibernate. Please report any bugs that you find. Thanks!

Download the dataFresh Update

Buildaroni 1.0 is released!

mike.brockey — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:46:00 GMT

Visit Apple's iTunes App Store today to get your copy!

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=292146767

Introducing the public beta of dataProfiler by EntropyZero

mike.brockey — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:04:00 GMT

We have just released a public beta of our new database profiling tool called dataProfiler. This new tool encompasses data interrogation concepts that we have derived in performance testing and database tuning of large scale applications. Here are some of the main features of dataProfiler:

Generate profiles for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005
Quickly find the top 10 worse offending SQL batches in your system
CruiseControl.NET Server Integration
Developer bookmarks for sniffing out trouble spots in your application
Dynamic filtering

DataProfiler is used by development teams to identity poor performing queries and help identify bottlenecks in your application. Using the dataProfiler WebConnector, you can also quickly find repeated queries within your ASP.NET application. DataProfiler interacts with SQL Server using profiling and tracing techniques to provide an easy to read specialized view of the data that can be used to quickly take control and identify pain points within your data access layer. DataProfiler interacts with SQL Server using profiling and tracing techniques to provide an easy to read specialized view of the data that can be used to quickly take control and identify pain points within your data access layer.

Download the beta today!

dataProfiler Public Beta I has been Released!

mike.brockey — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The long awaited public release of dataProfiler is now here! The first public beta is now avilable for public consumption. Please download the beta and start profiling your data driven applications!

Download the beta today!

EntropyZero is looking for talented individuals.

mike.brockey — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:23:00 GMT

Do you stand out in your organization? Are you excellent at what you do? Are you a team leader? We are hiring yet again and are looking for the very best!

Join our team of professional senior level developers as we continue to grow and learn new ways to implement TDD and other Agile methodologies into enterprise level software.

We are currently looking for a Senior .Net / C# Architect / Developer to work as part of an Agile team in downtown Leesburg, VA. In addition to the requirements below, candidates must be excited about test driven development and work well in a paired programming environment.

Requirements:

• Must be US Citizen and "clearable" for obtaining Secret clearance in the future.

• At least 6+ years experience with full life cycle development in a Software Engineering capacity.

• Demonstrated experience with .NET/C# for 4+ years designing and implementing large, complex, n-tiered applications in a production environment.

• Detailed understanding of the 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.5 Common Language Runtime

• At least 2 to 4+ years experience with ASP.NET.

• At least 1+ years experience in the agile development methodology. TDD and Paired Programming a plus.

• At least 4+ years of in-depth SQL Server development experience, including: Programming with T-SQL to create stored procedures, triggers, user-defined functions, and complex SQL statements. Data Modeling, Design and Implementation, and Optimization.

• Strong experience consulting with clients to define needs or problems.

• Active involvement in the design and implementation of software systems.

• Ability to generate technical documentation

• Strong Consultant oriented skills and responsibilities, including: Excellent interpersonal, communication, and writing skills.

• .Net User Community involvement a plus.

If you are excited about test-driven development, visit http://recruiting.ent0.com to post your resume today!

Reflecting a better approach to repetitive tests in .NET

phil.mcmillan — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:43:00 GMT

You know, it's times when I'm creating a new library of entity classes (or the wholesale modification of a dismayingly large set of existing entities) that I hate unit testing; especially when I simply want to prove that I'm implementing a necessary pattern internally in the entity class. Regardless of the toolsets I've worked with (NUnit, Rhino Mocks, FxCop, VS Team Suite), I really hadn't come up with a solution until I was faced with the prospect of needing to modify and test an existing library of entities for a system encompassing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 property setters requiring change tracking.

The team had been given the task of implementing a new module in an existing system. One set of the use cases and requirements was driving the need to implement a field level change tracking capability for a subset of all entity fields. We looked at a lot of options, including the usual suspects like triggers, diffgrams, etc. Based on a number of factors, including concerns over trigger performance in the current release of the system, we decided to implement the tracking at the entity level. Doing this would require a method in the entity base for tracking field changes, as well as enforcing the requirement that all access to the mapped properties must be through property accessors (and that all property setters must call the base method). To top it off, I'm working on a side-project and faced with the mind-numbing task of writing the tests to drive my implementation of state tracking in a new set of entities.

I like the idea of interaction based tests - especially since I don't necessarily have to run the underlying target code for each test; just ensure it's being called. But really, how many of us actually believe we should abstract an entity to the point that we can mock calls between property setters and internal state management? Might be an interesting exercise in mental masturbation to look at the problem and find an approach to injecting a state provider, but it's going to be an ugly mess. And, honestly, it's taking separation of concerns to the limit given that state tracking for an entity is going to be tightly coupled if not implemented on the back-end data store.

That said; I don't want to write 1000 individual tests to ensure that each setter is calling the underlying base method and changing the state properly. I have nothing against state tests, and in this case they'd be simpler and cleaner to assert, but that's a lot of tests.

So I hit on what I thought was a nice compromise; I'm working in .NET, why not use reflection to introspect the types and assert the validity of expected calls? Pretty easy; with reflection, I could iterate the setters, check their mapping attribute to be sure I should test them, create an instance, invoke the setter and test the result of each call. Even having to create the instance, it's not really a difficult or expensive test. With a good assertion helper, I could literally walk the entities and have a failing test output a list of all failing properties. And then I had a minor epiphany; why was I looking at this from the point of black box state based tests? Static analysis is a useful tool - just one I don't often see associated with unit tests due to the common applications of the technique. But in this case, a static introspection of the classes is probably the most efficient way to attack the problem of ensuring that the pattern is followed and enforced.

Working with 2.0 it's easy to get the IL, in the form of the byte stream, for a given method body. Why actually create an instance and execute 800+ property setters? I could parse the IL and check the instructions against a set of declared expectations. By setting up an introspection based analysis of small, specifically targeted methods, I'm limiting the amount of work the test is required to perform (it's not like I'm parsing the entire sub-system and running simulated execution of the code to look for patterns indicating potential buffer overflows) - it's a straightforward test looking for a specific subset of instructions with a specific operand. Should be no problem...

Somewhat easier said than done given that I hadn't actually read the IL spec (hello - I'm an Elvis; wouldn't mind knowing, but honestly, I can read disassembled IL, it's the byte level I don't really have time for), but with a great jump start on IL parsing from Sorin Serban and his SDIL project over at the The Code Project, I managed to gin up a little tool I call the introspectionAnalyzer. Still cleaning it up to get permission to post it, but probably in a few days I'll have the initial version up. For those interested in stats we're using it in 2 tests right now:

Assert all property setters call the base state change method: setting up 1400+ expectations with verification: ~ 3 secs.
A more ambitious test - assert that none of the attributed fields being change tracked are set outside of the property setters: 100,000+ expectations with verification: ~28 secs. (it takes less than 1 sec to do the IL parsing and the verification - most of the work is the iterative creation of 100,000+ expectations).

IMAP Expunger Service for iPhone and Microsoft Exchange Integration

mike.brockey — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:27:00 GMT

Since the iPhone has what I consider a flaw in it's IMAP implemenation, we built this handy windows service that will wipe away deleted emails from your Microsoft Exchange other other IMAP based mail servers. Now you can use your iPhone and love it too! ;-)

http://blogs.ent0.com/files/folders/other_software/entry236.aspx

Colibri -- QuickSilver for Windows?

mike.brockey — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:04:00 GMT

With the recent switch to use the Intel processor, Steven and I decided it was time to go buy the MacBook Pro as our primary laptops. I am very happy so far. I love what the Mac OS has to offer in terms of UI and how easy it is to get "gadgets" to work.

The first splurge was to buy an AirPort Express mainly for the AirTunes feature. Now I can listen to my iTunes library from my home stereo with out wires. It's friggen sweet!

One of the first utilities you wind up with when playing in the Mac world is a program called QuickSilver. It is an application launcher with some very useful macro capabilities. Since we are still programming in the Windows world, I decided that QuickSilver is a must. Within a few moments of searching I came across a windows based program called Colibri. It is not quite as robust as QuickSilver, but it works great. A must for all those who love to use the keyboard to navigate their way around the desktop.

Consolas for those who don't know ...

mike.brockey — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:19:00 GMT

This post is for those of you who don't already know of this great font pack from Microsoft. The font is called Consolas and it was built specifically for use in programming environments. This pack will automatically install the font pack and set it as the default font for Visual Studio 2005.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displaylang=en

dataFresh is now Open Source!

mike.brockey — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 05:14:00 GMT

I want to thank everyone for your patience as we prepared the codebase for open access, but the wait is finally over. dataFresh is now available to the open source community and can be downloaded here. We have decided that though we are sharing our source, we are not providing access to our internal source code repository. We strongly urge you to use our open source products and enhance them to fit your needs. If you have suggestions or code enhancements, please email them in the form of a patch file to me. mike.brockey@nospam__ent0.com

I look forward to hearing your comments and seeing your enhancements!!

Mike

Cheat Sheets are Indeed Cool!

mike.brockey — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:19:00 GMT

Here are some links to a few really cool cheat sheets.

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2007/01/29/cheat-sheets-for-asp-net-regex-mock-objects-and-more.aspx

Using MetaWeblog API and Windows Live Writer to Manage Dynamic Website Content

mike.brockey — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:05:19 GMT

I built the Miles Ahead Farm Website a few years ago. I built it for a friend of ours with the intention that my wife would manage the content. I built some administrative functionality using the FreeTextBox control as a rich content editor. It worked out great as it allowed Amy to very easily make textual and formatting changes without much hassle. The problem was that any time she wanted to upload images (which was often), I would still have to format, upload and insert the image. It wasn't a painful process, but I'm always looking for ways to make my life a little easier.

I then came across Windows Live Writer.

"Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service. "

It has a few very compelling features including WYSIWYG Authoring, Photo Publishing and a Writer SDK. Now if only I could figure out how to make Writer communicate with my dynamic website engine.

I found that Live Writer supports the MetaWeblog API.

"The MetaWeblog API (MWA) is a programming interface that allows external programs to get and set the text and attributes of weblog posts. It builds on the popular XML-RPC communication protocol, with implementations available in many popular programming environments."

After only a few moments of "using the Google", I across a blog by George Trifonov that explained and provided example C# source of how to implement a blog engine that can communicate via the MetaWeblog API.

It was quickly obvious to me that it would take less code and make more sense to write a new dynamic website engine that reads the website content from the rss formatted file that George's code was already generating.

Using the Global_BeginRequest method in the Global Application Class, I wrote a quick function that inspects the incoming request file path and rewrites the path for server processing. This means that the incoming request of "Facilities.aspx" would be forwarded to page on the server called "ShowPage.aspx" with the url in the query string. i.e. (ShowPage.aspx?url=Facilities.aspx)

        protected void Global_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string filename = Path.GetFileName(HttpContext.Current.Request.FilePath).ToLower();
            switch(filename)
            {
                case "showpage.aspx":
                case "webresource.axd":
                case "metablogapi.ashx":
                    break;
                default:
                    HttpContext.Current.RewritePath("showblog.aspx?url=" + filename);
                    break;
            }
        }

You will notice that I listed ShowPage.aspx and other static files as pages that will be ignored by this function and allow ASP.NET to handle the request as it normally would.

The next step is to build the ShowPage.aspx page that will handle the request for the dynamic page, query the storage file and output the website content.

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string linkId = Server.UrlDecode(Request["url"]);

            XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
            doc.Load(StorageFile);
            XmlNode node = doc.SelectSingleNode("rss/channel/item[link ='" + linkId + "']");
            
            if (node != null)
            {
                string blogContent = node.SelectSingleNode("description").InnerText;
                ContentZone.Controls.AddAt(0, new LiteralControl(blogContent));
            }
        }

The code in the Page_Load method firstly loads the RSS content into an XmlDocument object and performs a search for an item with a link that matches the incoming requested url. If found, we simply grab a reference to the description node as this is where the html content is stored. In my specific implementation for Miles Ahead Farm I've added support for output caching, html page title and also support for loading web user controls for needs such as a contact form.

You can download the Dynamic Website Engine Source Code from our downloads page.

del.icio.us tags: MetaWeblogAPI, WindowsLiveWriter, MilesAheadFarm

Preparing test data with a SETUP script.

mike.brockey — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:22:00 GMT

So you have a database with real data that you want to use in your testing framework and you are looking for a way to get that data out so that it can be maintained in a script and be run as part of your unit tests.

Thycotic Software has a great tool for generating a setup script for your test data.

"Thycotic.DatabaseScripter is a simple utility that generates a stored procedure called "SETUP" which will remove all data from your database and then reinsert it in the correct order. It uses the system tables in the database to identify foreign key dependencies and make sure data is manipulated in the appropriate manner."

deltaHelper Documentation Series -- DELTA_TableExists

mike.brockey — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 06:02:00 GMT

I will start the series with the DELTA_TableExists function that is provided in the deltaHelper script. We have implemented certain guidelines on our team for writing deltas. One guideline required that all delta be repeatable. As you may have already noticed, deltaRunner enforces this policy by executing deltas in development mode two times. Writing deltas in this way force us to think about the database prior to just making changes. We use this function in our delta files to ensure that we are only adding a table to the database once. To make changes to a table, we will use a procedure called DELTA_ColumnAdder or one of a few other variants. More on this in a later post.

The DELTA_TableExists function provides an easy way to determine if a table already exists in the database. Lets say for any number of reasons you wanted to know if a table exists in your database. In this example we will do some work if we know a specified table already exists in the database.

if(dbo.DELTA_TableExists('TABLENAME') = 1)
begin
-- TABLE EXISTS ... DO SOME WORK
end
go

Or you might want to check to see the table does not exists.

if(dbo.DELTA_TableExists('TABLENAME') = 0)
begin
-- TABLE DOES NOT EXIST ... DO SOME WORK
end
go

How to use dataFresh for database unit testing

mike.brockey — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 03:28:00 GMT

In this post I will walk you through the steps of implenting dataFresh into your testing framework. A few of our users have reported issues but as it turns out, dataFresh was simply improperly being called. Here is my attempt to provide more documentation. :)

The first thing you should know is that dataFresh is an API that should be integrated directly into your testing framework. The console application knows how to pass parameters and simply make calls to the API. It is only nessessary to use the console application if you wish to manually execute dataFresh commands against your database.

Step 1 : Prepare your Database

Before you can call any other dataFresh method you must first prepare your database with the nessesary stored procedures, table and triggers.

Step 2 : Create a Snapshot

Whenever your database schema or test data changes you are required to create a snapshot of your database in order to perform a successful rollback. When using a tool like deltaRunner, you can easilly manage updates to your database and automatically create a new snapshot.

Step 3 : Run your Test

You should feel free to write your integration tests that communicate with and make changes to your database.

Step 4 : Refresh the Database

A quick call to the RefreshTheDatabase method and dataFresh will very quickly restore only those tables that were modified during your integration test.

Now in practice, we typically check for modifications and refresh the database during the setup method of our test fixtures. After the test runs, it has been my experience that there is some benefit of being able to run queries to check the state of the database as it were modified after the test. We usually use the tear down method and output a "Database Write" message just so that we have something visual.

We have provided sample code that demonstrates the recommended implementation.

deltaHelpers added to the EntropyZero TDD Developer's Toolkit

mike.brockey — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 17:07:00 GMT

How many times do you have to write a query against the information_schema.tables view before you finally remember the name of it and where that underscore goes?

deltaHelpers are a collection of stored procedures and sql functions that are a direct result of database refactoring. Prior to these functions the code was sprinkled all over my deltas and are now in a single place to remove duplication. With functions like DELTA_ColumnAdder and DELTA_TableExists, these deltaHelpers allow you to write better functioning deltas with fewer lines of code.

I will document the usage of each of these functions in the coming days/weeks in future blog posts. Most of the deltas are pretty well documented and have sample usages and remarks in the downloadable sql script.

deltaRunner signed assemblies are now available!

mike.brockey — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:16:00 GMT

deltaRunner is now available with signed assemblies. This is the only difference in this release. deltaRunner can be used to manage the life cycle of your database from development all the way through production. It helps you manage versions with small incremental changes called deltas.

New release of dataFresh -- Database Unit Testing

mike.brockey — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 03:13:00 GMT

There have been a few requests for us to sign our dataFresh assemblies. This is the only change in this release and it is available here. dataFresh is a database rollback library for unit tests and provides simplified database unit testing for your testing framework.

Excellent Publicity for dataFresh! -- Thanks Roy!

mike.brockey — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:49:00 GMT

First of all, I would like to thank Roy Osherove for his recent blog about dataFresh. Right away we had more exposure for dataFresh than we have ever had! For those who don't know, Roy contributes to the agile/TDD world on his blog and has earned himself the ear of many loyal readers. I encourage you to visit his blog and join in on the TDD bandwagon. Roy -- Send me some feedback once you get a chance to actually try dataFresh.

Just how easy is it to setup dataFresh?

mike.brockey — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:31:00 GMT

dataFresh is extremely easy to implement into your test framework. I will demonstrate just how easy it is by blogging a very simple implemenation using a test fixture base class from which all test fixtures should derive.

[SetUp]
public virtual void Setup()
{
InitializeDatabase();
}

public static void InitializeDatabase()
{
if (DataFreshInstance.HasDatabaseBeenModified())
{
DataFreshInstance.RefreshTheDatabase();
}
}

public static SqlDataFresh DataFreshInstance
{
get
{
    if (dataFresh == null)
    {
      try
      {
        dataFresh = new SqlDataFresh(SampleDatabaseConnectionString, true);
      }
      catch (SqlDataFreshException)
      {
        dataFresh.PrepareDatabaseforDataFresh(false);
      }
    }
    return dataFresh;
}
}

This example assumes that you have already generated the snapshot and that you are not monitoring delta files via your test framework. If you are interested in a solution that does just that please see the downloads section for some sample code on integrating both deltaRunner and dataFresh into your test framework.

Vista RC1 and RC2 Install

steven.buxton — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:10:00 GMT

So I decided it was time to get on the bandwagon and see what Vista has to offer a developer, both good and bad.

Good

Pleasent on the eyes. Vista has a lot of eye candy that can bring some fun to a long day of coding.
There is now a cancel button on whindows explorer when you try to enumerate network locations, no more waiting minutes for the drive drop down to populate
More Secure by default. I like to run as low privlaged users which was not easy in XP. Vista does this by default.
No more rebooting. I have been amazed at the changes I can make without requiring a reboot.

Bad

The new Start menu has got to go. I miss my nice cascading Programs menu.
Constant popups to request privlages to do just about anything.
As a developer you will get very frustrated with all the new security. All the folders are now locked down, debugging is locked down, etc.. You will end up either turning off UAC or you will get very used to right clicking on al programs and running them as administrator.
IIS7 is not a good choice for legacy .Net 1.1 web applications. It becomes to cumbersom to set it up correctly.
VS.Net 2003 Web Applications will not work on Vista, you will need to convert them to class library projects first, then it is possible to set them up.

Overall

Vista is a nice change of shells. Looks nice, seems very stable, and is fun to use. But for developers at this point in time it adds a lot of complexity to setting up a usable development environment. I still have my HDD with XP on it with me and end up throwing it abck in when I need to do some hardcore development, but I do enjoy the eye candy in Vista and find myself putting that HDD back in as soon as I can.

RC2 much better the RC1

The fonts in RC2 seem more crisp.
The response time is much better in starting applications.
And most importantly my HDD does not run 24x7 anymore. Maybe Vista has finally finished indexing my HDD, but I think there was some improvments done there.
My machine suspends again. In RC1 it seemed to be a crap shoot on whether or not it would crash when I closed my screen. RC2 seems to have fixed this.

NO FRIGGEN A2DP!!!

The default windows Bluetooth stack is currently equivlent to the Windows XP stack. Essentially mouse, keyboard, mono headset, and thats it.
I have tried Bluesoleil and WIDCOMM and neither of them work for stereo audio. BOO. I hope there is an update to one of these programs soon as I miss my wireless audio.

IE 7 Issues

Slow inital load of HTTPS sites signed with an internal certificate

Once you set your homepage to be a HTTPS site signed with an internal certificate you will notice that it takes 5-10 seconds for the browser to load the page when you open it. This is becuase of a new "feature" in IE 7 that does SSL Certificate Revocation checks. Well an internally generated cert server is typically not accessable outside of the corporate network so unless you are VPNed into the network you will not be able to access the cert server to check the CRL. For a work around to this, open Internet Options, go to the Advanced tab, and uncheck "check for server certificate revocation" under the security section. NOTE -- This disables IE from checking for Revoked certificates from the public cert issuers as well, so use this work around at your own risk.

Google Toolbar

The latest google toolbar does install and workes in IE7. There is only one issue. The right click context menu no longer lets you click on a menu item in IE. There is a simple work around. If you find yourself in a situation where you need right click functionality, just right click on the google toolbar and uncheck "Google". This temporarly removes the Google toolbar from IE and your right click menu will function. When you are ready for your toolbar back just right click on an exiting toolbar or the Tab strip and re-check "Google".

deltaRunner Supports New CreateDatabase Method

mike.brockey — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:14:00 GMT

When you let deltaRunner create the database for you, you will reduce the amount of time required to get your development environment setup on new machines.

SqlDeltaRunner.CreateDatabase(DatabaseName, MasterConnectionString, false);

Add this line when you are initializing your test fixture and deltaRunner will determine if the database already exists. If not, the database will be created and you can move right into applying deltas and then into development.