Free LiveSupport for Websites

Having a cyber presence or a personal homepage now is a breeze nowadays with lots of free webhosts. I came across a website sometime back called Get1on1. This site offers a unique Live Support Service for websites that too free. Perhaps, personal websites with unique content in technology and articles relating to the same can have this, to further get closer to its visitors. Check it out...

Standardizing JavaScript Validations

Almost any web application we develop has a bit of JavaScript validations that we code into it. But it would really be a re-inventing of the same wheel putting the same logic over and over again. Also, it brings along with it, the difficulties of maintaining multiple code sets, consistency and a lot of problems. I was searching for some JavaScript validations and came across a JavaScript Validation library called fValidate which we can download for free from http://www.peterbailey.net/fValidate/

The Validation Library is very customizable and you can also precisely say how do you want the error messages to be displayed like Scripting Alert Popup, inline DHTML Message (similar to ASP.NET RequiredFieldValidator and ValidationSummary for Microsoft Internet Explorer and uplevel browsers) etc.

Since this library is also a freeware downloadable and quite easy to configure, I hope it would be very useful for development fraternity of web-based applications worldwide.

Quick, Easy and Free Link Checker

The other day, I was searching for a Free Link Checking tool, which could navigate through all the links in the website and give me a summary of broken links, slow redirections etc. There are online services like NetMechanic, which do it for a free trial, but the number of pages that it serves in its free trial is relatively less and also is bit costly.

Just came across this free tool called Xenu, which is downloadable from http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

I hope that this tool would really be useful for web developers to check the links in thier applications and status of the external links, before releasing websites that they are developing. The tool has a nice provision to FTP the status reports to a particular server and store it there. Besides this, it also generates a well-formatted report, which also contains SiteMap for pages with valid titles.

[Imported from Blogdrive]WebLog Updated

WebLog UpdatedPerhaps a WebLog indicates regular updations of a WebSite or schedules of an user. But this post now indicates some significant updates to this WebLog itself. Thanks to BlogDrive's self-explanatory and simple-step comments, that it is quite easy to update the way a posting is rendered. 

If you are viewing the page with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher, the page can be best viewed with stylesheets and JavaScripts. Perhaps some contact information, which went in with every posting, I have tried and moved to a single place near the footer of the page.
<!--
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        Posted at 10:22 am by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

 

 

  Original BlogDrive Post on Saturday, November 22, 2003

[Imported from Blogdrive]Relatively Easier To Navigate Updates for my Homepage

Today for my HomepageToday, I am relatively free and tried to update some easier to navigate content to my homepage. Just added a friendlier 'Tell A Friend' option.
Perhaps then I was playing around sometime with TomCat Server for sometime.&nbsp; Just a kind of Servlet container supporting .ascx files, which I got it and trying to see how it works. I have heard of and seen Halcyonsoft implementation of .NET in J2EE application framework.&nbsp; You can check out Halcyonsoft implementations over their URL at:&nbsp; http://www.halcyonsoft.com/
More updates shortly in my homepage...<!--
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        Posted at 12:51 pm by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

 

 

  Original BlogDrive Post on Friday, November 21, 2003

Refactoring Code

Refactoring is a technique to restructure code in a disciplined way. Perhaps Refactoring has a lot of WebLogs and articles published over the Web that your Search Engine should be able to take you around a tour of the same. Perhaps last week, I needed a tool to automatically maintain namespace organizations and other stuff. Perhaps I felt, that an automated tool would really serve the purpose, other than me doing it manually, which is error-prone.

I just came across the following site: http://www.dotnetrefactoring.com/ 

It really has lots of information to be researched in depth. What's Cool. It adds itself as a Visual Studio .NET Addin, so that a separate program invocation is not required.

---

Well! While I was doing this research on Refactoring Tools, I came across Eclipse -- The Open Source J2EE Application Framework IDE.  Perhaps a study of Refactoring Concepts in Eclipse really helps one in understanding the concepts with more depth.

Perhaps sometime later, I would publish an article for the same in my homepage. Stay Tuned!

Quick Dictionary for your Applications

Just came across this site http://www.loresoft.com/Applications/NetSpell/default.aspx, and it gives Free Dictionary files and Dictionary Component, in full source code form. It can be integrated seemlessly into any application, whether WinForms or WebForms.

Perhaps the sample applications like TraySpell etc are useful for our day to day activities and spell checking from any application also. Check it out...

Easy To Use Package and Deployment Systems

Elegant Package and Deployment of applications has been the concern of people for long time. With the advent of Visual Studio, there was an easy 'Package and Deployment Wizard' with Microsoft Visual Basic. Then with Visual Studio .NET, there came, 'Setup and Deployment Wizard' project, which makes Package and Deployment a breeze.

But whilst searching in Google, I just came across this simple tool called NSIS -- NullSoft Scriptable Installation System, available from http://nsis.sourceforge.net/site/index.php?id=2&backPID=2&tt_news=4

Well! This comes under Open Source license. The beauty is an EXEcutable is made by simply writing a script file, which is so simple like our Windows/DOS batch files or Unix Shell Scripts. I was just browsing through NSIS website and it seems it also supports a wide spectrum of User Interfaces.

Perhaps, if someone was looking for a Scriptable Installation System, where one needs to put custom Scripting, than application supplied wizards, they can give a try to NSIS. Is'nt it?

Leadership Qualities for Personnel in Technical Domains

I was quite in tensed and depressed mood perhaps sometime last week. One of my friend sent me some URL and articles on leadership to keep me motivated and keep up the spirits. I really loved the Leadership Qualities for Personnel in Technical Domains that I almost spent that night till about 3:30 trying to understand it. It is really a very excellent piece of article. In fact, my heart-felt thanks to the author.  Perhaps this ten points on leadership, which I got via mail, I would like to share with the readers of my blog. Perhaps I would consider this as a kind of Ten Commandments for a Leader in Software Industry.  

Out of my own interest and curiosity, I just went to google andput the the first line to find out where this content actually came from. It was from this URL: http://www.isoquantic.com/RandRs/SWLeadership.html

---

1. BUSINESS LITERACY

Software operations leaders who are now technology-oriented must increasingly see themselves as business leaders. To be business literate, leaders must

• be aware of customer needs, competitor activities, and market trends, and how these impact in-house development initiatives;
  
• understand the financial and economic dynamics of the software industry and make well informed decisions about product and technology investment;
  
• set clear and objective business goals and hold people accountable for achieving them; and
  
• take personal responsibility for financial results (good and bad).

2. TECHNOLOGY VISION

To help their companies compete, leaders of software operations must establish a compelling, long-range vision for technology investments. Visionary leaders must

• keep up-to-date on emerging technologies
  
• bring together people from all organizational levels to develop a common vision of success and get their commitment to work toward that vision;
  
• communicate the vision consistently and encourage open discussion and feedback about the company's direction; and
  
• use the vision as a "litmus test" for making decisions about new technology investments.

3. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ORIENTATION

The world of rigid, functional "silos" in most organizations is gone forever. Software operations leaders must become adept at working with people performing various functions across the enterprise, including those in marketing, customer support sales, and so on. To work across functions, leaders must

• understand the roles and interests of all stakeholders in the software development process and how each role contributes to the product's success;
  
• establish effective working relationships with leaders from other functional areas and involve them in decisions that affect their work, and
  
• demand a high level of cross-functional cooperation and teamwork from your own team and the organization as a whole.

4. STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP MANAGEMENT

The need for organizations to establish partnerships and alliances for sharing technologies and developing new products will continue to increase. Managers of software operations will be required to develop partnership strategies and manage them for success. To do this, leaders must

• know when strategic partnerships are required to make a software development effort successful (such as in "make" versus "buy" decisions);
  
• establish an overall strategy that defines specific objectives, benefits, and metrics for using strategic partners;
  
• understand how to identify, negotiate, and select appropriate strategic partnerships;
  
• manage the tension between collaboration and competition that is inherent to most strategic partner relationships; and
  
• recognize when a partnership is no longer advantageous and know how to successfully end the relationship.

5. CUSTOMER RELATIONS

With the move to a competitive, profit-oriented business model in software, leaders must increasingly interact directly and at higher executive levels with both prospective and existing customers. To succeed in this, leaders must

• comfortably interact with customers from a wide range of businesses, industries, and technical backgrounds;
  
• make persuasive, high-level presentations to executives and senior leaders in sales and marketing situations;
  
• translate highly technical information into terms that nontechnical customers and end users can understand;
  
• deal effectively with the technical and public media on behalf of the business; and
  
• act as a customer advocate in all business dealings.

6. TOTAL QUALITY DISCIPLINE

Two factors have increased the urgency of quality improvement at all levels in the software industry: rapidly growing financial investment in software systems and products, and the institution of international software quality standards. To help answer this call, leaders must

• initiate and sponsor efforts to increase product quality;
  
• establish aggressive standards for software quality and customer satisfaction;
  
• encourage people to experiment with innovative technical and work processes that might lead to quality and productivity breakthroughs;
  
• find ways to remove barriers to quality improvement across the enterprise; and
  
• establish firm goals and metrics for software quality, and measure leaders and teams for progress toward goals.

7. MARKET DECISIVENESS

Although time-to-market has always been a critical success factor for any high-technology business, it has become a matter of survival for software enterprises. In an increasingly competitive market, this "need for speed" is placing increasing pressure on leaders to accelerate the development and delivery of new products and services. To contend with this pressure, leaders must

• aggressively seek and take advantage of new business or technology opportunities;
  
• make fast decisions under pressure with incomplete data;
  
• understand how and when to balance the need for analysis and consensus with the pressure to execute;
  
• make tough decisions about where to invest limited resources to achieve the greatest market advantage; and
  
• create an environment where aggressive market orientation and decisive action are recognized and rewarded.

8. TECHNICAL TEAMWORK

Most high-technology organizations are moving toward flatter, team-based work structures. This makes team communication, problem solving, and decisiveness critical; software leaders must both model and reinforce these behaviors. To reinforce team effectiveness, leaders must

• be a role model of effective collaboration with individual leaders and software project teams;
  
• establish mechanisms for consistent information sharing and open communication across development teams, functions, and the entire software operation;
  
• minimize unnecessary project competition and "us versus them" thinking;
  
• delegate authority for technical and business decisions to the lowest logical levels; and
  
• institute team-oriented rewards where appropriate, recognizing both group accomplishments and individual contributions.

9. KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT

Because software is almost exclusively a "knowledge business," software operations are competitive to the extent that they can attract, retain, and develop the best technical and marketing talent. Thus, leaders must provide development opportunities that will ensure the continued professional and career growth of individuals and add to the organization's overall knowledge store. In addition to evaluating and planning for their own technical and professional needs, leaders must

• have an explicit employee training and development strategy, with clear objectives and metrics;
  
• define and develop "core competencies"-key technical and business knowledge areas needed for future success;
  
• identify people with significant technical or management potential and ensure that they have targeted development plans; and
  
• be available to employees for individual coaching.

10. LEADERSHIP VERSATILITY

Software development is getting more diverse and complex on many levels-business, organizational, cultural, and technological. Managers must become versatile to lead effectively across different business models and work settings. To do this, they must

• adjust quickly to changing business needs and organizational requirements;
  
• communicate effectively and comfortably across a range of technical, cultural, and international boundaries;
  
• use various management models and project structures-rather than "one size fits all"-to find the best fit for diverse business and technology strategies;
  
• balance a "loose-tight" management style that encourages experimentation and innovation but also demands accountability for contribution and results; and
  
• create an environment that values and optimizes everyone's intellectual contribution.

Playing around with WebServices

Web Services have been a real useful and innovative stuff to bring in seamless integration of applications. With .NET Framework, WebServices are not just tools to implement and integrate heterogeneous and diversified applications, but also WebServices trigger more interest and tempt us to explore more on them, and assures us a definite promising solution to our business problems related to application integrations.

Well! That describes the usual bla bla! Don't worry! I am not going to bore you with that.  Perhaps you would have encountered a situation that .NET 1.1 now disables Web Service Post testing via Sample Forms generated for Internet Explorer. Of course, if we need, we can enable them back using Web.Config settings for the WebService application, but it not normally recommended on production servers.

But I just got hold of the following tool called Web Service Studio from GotDotNet.com, which provides an interactive GUI to manage with WebServices and also invoke WebMethods interactively by giving inputs to various parameters. Thank you, Sowmy

 You may check and freely download WebServiceStudio from the following URL:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=e51ea6a8-7fa7-4019-825d-14884db0827e  (You need  a .NET Passport account to signin to GotDotNet and download files from there) 

BaseLine Security Analyzer

Just came across this tool called Microsoft BaseLine Security Analyzer which scans the PCs of choice (either the local system) or the PC that you are intending to scan on the network. Of course, you must have privileges to scan the destination PC.

It scans the systems for SQLServer, Windows Security Updates etc. It further analyzes Window User Manager and gives you hint whether the passwords are strong and number of administrators for the system etc.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/Tools/MBSAhome.asp?frame=true

This would be a handy tool to keep the system secure, since the Slammer and similar viruses used the blank and weak passwords of the SA account. Is'nt it? Perhaps a definite tool that must be with any system administrator or helpdesk personnel. Perhaps common users intending to keep their PCs secure, if they want to test and keep thier PCs secure and for them it is really a valuable tool.

Personal Time Manager

How much time you have said 'I forgot', to any of your schedules? How much time you have got delayed? Perhaps here is a simple tool to keep yourself reminded of your schedules right over your desktop.  That too, without nagging you of your schedules and to remind yourself in most friendly ways.

Check out:http://www.turbonote.com/ Perhaps it a is Free Program too. Also the website says you can also send the setup program to your friends etc. The website itself supports 'Mail It' functionality of the Setup Application. Perhaps a nice and elegant tool to keep yourself reminded of schedules.

[Imported from Blogdrive]Keep yourself Reminded Of Your Schedules

Personal Time ManagerHow much time you have said 'I forgot', to any of your schedules? How much time you have got delayed? Perhaps here is a simple tool to keep yourself reminded of your schedules right over your desktop.&nbsp; That too, without nagging you of your schedules and to remind yourself in most friendly ways.

Check out:http://www.turbonote.com/

Perhaps it a is Free Program too. Also the website says you can also send the setup program to your friends etc. The website itself supports 'Mail It' functionality of the Setup Application.
Perhaps a nice and elegant tool to keep yourself reminded of schedules.<!--
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        Posted at 01:58 pm by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

 

 

  Original BlogDrive Post on Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Protect yourself from W32.Swen.A@mm

A new virus/worm seems to be spreading W32.Swen.A@mm I just checked the Symantec URL and here are the details:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.swen.a@mm.html

Perhaps SpamPal is a savior in these cases with its HtmlModify Plugin since all bad attachments are renamed as plain text files that only Notepad can open. The worm seems be bit powerful, since it also deactivates Network Firewalls from being functional, as the Symantec WebPage claims. While SpamPal cordons off one way for the worm spreading (the 70% communication medium), the worm also seems to spread via Network shares. Perhaps care should be taken in exercising logon attempts at remote workstations using logon credentials with administrative privileges like accessing network shares using administrative shares, since if the system used to access administrative share is infected, then the worm may drop a copy of the same onto the target subsystem. I am not sure whether the worm does this, so if you have a comment, why not update as a comment out here.

Making effective use of BITS Windows Service

Windows XP and its successors have a Windows Service called Background Intelligent Transfer Service, shortly known as BITS. The purpose of this Windows Service is to make use of idle network bandwidth for making large transfers, instead of clogging the network and processor time, during effective user interactive session.

I was quite interested in knowing how to use this Windows Service. This will be of significant use while deploying Windows Forms since we can configure the Windows Forms application to automatically updates its data files from a preconfigured datasource. I was just searching for some nice resource, as I mentioned in the start of this paragraph. And just came across this one:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=874CDE91-E95F-47DF-9C75-778F63A4F5CF&displaylang=en


This has complete sourcecode on making large chunks of data transfer using BITS Windows Service.  The following URL also gives a complete description of the sourcecode:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dncodefun/html/code4fun02282003.asp?frame=true

Thank you Duncan Mackenzie, for the really informative article. I hope it would be really useful for Windows Forms developers worldwide. And many thanks to MSDN for a highlight of the same in WindowsForms.net, the definitive WindowsForms developers resource on the web.

Automated Builds in a typical .NET development

A typical .NET development involves regular builds taking latest versions from the respective SourceControl system. To ensure that each build is unique in itself and ensure cross verification of the same, when the build is made, a labelling of the same would be useful on the Source Control level. Perhaps this labelling concept is easy to describe and use as far as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe  is considered. 

Though there may be Build Managers in the Team, to assist in daily builds and sending reports to the team, it would be an effective way to have regular builds moved to an Automated Scheduled Task, so that the system itself would automatically take care of getting the latest versions of the files from the Source Control, make the build and generate appropriate reports. The advantage is that an automated tool ensures accuracy of the sequence of operations, as this would have gone through an exhaustive testing stage, removes monotony that is a bane with human interventions and operations.

Of late, I came across a nice automated BuildTool from MSDN. The tool is cute in almost all the aspects that you see. Some of the salient features of the same (from a core developer's perspective) are:

1. The Tool comes with full Source Code in C#. It is quite well documented in each step of what it does, so that a starting developer also can learn to program and an advanced developer learns more advanced techniques in programming as well refines his programming practices.
   
2. It does not reinvent the wheel in making the Build Operation:
   
   1. The files are automatically checked out by the program itself from Visual SourceSafe, a Label is Set in SourceSafe.
      
   2. The building is done via Visual Studio .NET itself by automating Visual Studio .NET. This way if you had set a previous Build Options in Visual Studio .NET Solution or the project file, they are reused.  Furthermore, from the developer's perspective, we learn about automating Visual Studio .NET programmatically.
      
   3. Application Logging is achieved via Microsoft Application Blocks for Exceptions. All exceptions are logged onto the System EventLog. So some more interesting Exception Handling strategy that we can learn and adopt in our programming practices.

Perhaps, you can try out the free BuildIT Tool from the following URL:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/tdlg_app.asp

In short, BuildIt is just not a Build Tool. It is a developer Guru for Beginners and advanced developers and also for Project and Technical Leads in giving them the exact picture of the daily build status.

Keeping mailbox SpamFree

The mailboxes getting swamped by junk messages these days is not an uncommon scene. We put our email addresses while registering or filling up the Contact Forms of so many websites. Spammers use more sophisticated email harvesting tools that catch these addresses, catalog them into database, perhaps regionwise, Countrywise etc and sell them on CDs too. Perhaps sometimes junk mails keep coming like 'Get CD of 1 Million Addresses'.

The email clients nowadays also come with MessageRules that aide us in filtering out unwanted mails. However, the amount of filtering capability is restricted to the Internet Headers and a limited set of previously stored details regarding the particular sender in question.  Fortunately, we have a few Internet Spam Prevention softwares too. The unfortunate thing is that not all are free and some are bulky and some are too tedious to configure.

Of late, I came across a free software called SpamPal, a free Spam Detection software from http://www.spampal.org.uk/ Once the software is installed, you need to configure your mailclient to connect to your mailserver through SpamPal. SpamPal acts similar to a POP-Proxy. As the message downloads, SpamPal activates its plugins one-by-one, making them to act on the mail, its internet headers and the body.

The address and its parent domain, routing IP addresses that the message was relayed through are all checked and verified against standard DNSBL servers. To protect against network getting clogged from multiple and redundant DNSBL queries, the DNSBL queries are remembered for a specified time, that is configurable from the SpamPal Control Panel Applet.

SpamPal also comes with a host of plugins that help in detecting Bad Attachments (.pif,.bat) and renaming them to .txt etc, BadWords Plugin (that detects bad and indecent words), WebBugs and prohibited JavaScript in messages.

If a message is certified as Spam, the subject of the message is branded as **SPAM** along with an Internet Message Header. Now a message rule in the mail client can be set to delete messages from server without downloading if the subject or Internet Message Header was classifed as **SPAM** as above.

Note:  I am just a normal user of SpamPal. I found SpamPal is really an excellent piece of software.  At the moment, SpamPal is free software and the licensing restrictions could be found from http://www.spampal.org.uk/  For support and help using SpamPal, what I have learnt from using, I can help you, if you would like to contact me. But you may instead check out SpamPal forums and Contact Pages from SpamPal website. However SpamPal comes with a more descriptive and a step-by-step user manual to keep your mailbox clean and spam-free.

Dangers Lurking for Innocent Websites Due to Cross Site Scripting

Often this Cross Site Scripting has been talked during some site updates and been forgotten. Perhaps if you have installed .NET Framework 1.1, then Scripting and HTML tags via QueryStrings or HTML form tags are just stopped by the framework with the message similar to the following one:

A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (DocLinkUrl_Begin="javascript:window.opener...").

Description: Request Validation has detected a potentially dangerous client input value, and processing of the request has been aborted. This value may indicate an attempt to compromise the security of your application, such as a cross-site scripting attack. You can disable request validation by setting validateRequest=false in the Page directive or in the configuration section. However, it is strongly recommended that your application explicitly check all inputs in this case.


Exception Details: System.Web.HttpRequestValidationException: A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (DocLinkUrl_Begin="javascript:window.opener...").

Of course, the framework gives an option to enable the page being exempt from this HTTP Request Validations. But it is strongly recommended to have the framework validate your requests before they are being processed by our scripts. Is'nt it?

Related Links On Cross Site Scripting:

http://httpd.apache.org/info/css-security/
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-02.html

[Imported from Blogdrive]Perils of Cross Site Scripting

Dangers Lurking for Innocent Websites Due to Cross Site ScriptingOften this Cross Site Scripting has been talked during some site updates and been forgotten. Perhaps if you have installed .NET Framework 1.1, then Scripting and HTML tags via QueryStrings or HTML form tags are just stopped by the framework with the message similar to the following one:

 

A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (DocLinkUrl_Begin="javascript:window.opener..."). Description: Request Validation has detected a potentially dangerous client input value, and processing of the request has been aborted. This value may indicate an attempt to compromise the security of your application, such as a cross-site scripting attack. You can disable request validation by setting validateRequest=false in the Page directive or in the configuration section. However, it is strongly recommended that your application explicitly check all inputs in this case.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpRequestValidationException: A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (DocLinkUrl_Begin="javascript:window.opener...").

Of course, the framework gives an option to enable the page being exempt from this HTTP Request Validations. But it is strongly recommended to have the framework validate your requests before they are being processed by our scripts. Is'nt it?

Related Links On Cross Site Scripting:

http://httpd.apache.org/info/css-security/
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-02.html

Online Books @Vijay Mukhi's Technology Cornucopia

Just came across this website http://www.vijaymukhi.com/. Perhaps most of us know Vijay Mukhi, who has been the most popular author of Books on C++ etc. The site has really exhaustive collection of documentation and online tutorials on ASP.NET, ASP, VB.NET, C#, C# and MSIL. The website also covers J2EE topics like J2EE on Mobile etc.

Perhaps you can bookmark this site and visit it often as your reference.

The more elegant and cool feature of this website is the simple and easier to navigate Tree Navigation System, which facilitates quicker access to any of the pages, that we intend to reach.

I can also observe a couple of Sample Projects (with sourcecode).

A surestop reference to all sections of developers, whether J2EE or Microsoft Technology (start or advanced).

CodeReview -- Now along with Visual Studio .NET

A CodeReview Phase always is not that welcome step among developers. Most of us do not want to have faults to be found at us. Is'nt it? But there is a gentle way of indicating faults, so that we can take corrective actions and make our programs more user-friendly (developer-friendly). 

Check out the following URL for a friendly CodeReview Checklist that should be helpful, even from during the development stage. The website also gives a 30 day Trial Edition of the CodeReview AddIn, but not many of us can afford it, to be frank.

http://www.macadamian.com/codereview.htm

There are simple Compiler options that can also make us enforce some discipline like Compiling under 'Type 4 Warning Level'  and 'Treat Warnings As Errors'. A Warning is just not a warning. The dumb and innocent compiler is really helping us to smell something wrong or out of normal sequence. Hence it would be wiser, to have the warnings corrected too.

Perhaps these are simple and trivial things. But in fact, these simple steps go a long way in making programs robust @Runtime and developer-friendly, in future updates and maintenance.

Help Networks

Searching for manuals or help information? Perhaps the following site has lots of information on the same, under diversified category set.

http://www.geocities.com/crmail2000/

But if you want to know some technology and how it works, without delving into details, perhaps HowStuffWorks™  should be able to help you. Check out HowStuffWorks™ at:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

The Definitive COM and ActiveX Reference

Are you searching for in-depth COM and ActiveX fundamentals references? Perhaps the following URL would be helpful to you:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009899899/


The pages are fast, since they don't have advertisements or shockwave or flash movies. It has quite indepth coverage. Perhaps while reading, it may be like reading the Control Systems Book, during the fifth Semester of Computer Science and Engineering degree course. Perhaps you can bookmark this URL and keep for your COM and ActiveX references.

Get Saved from Blaster Worm

Get Saved from Blaster Worm

The BlasterWorm that exploits certain API of DCOM in Windows seems to be very devastating. I can personally observe more than dozens of my close friends complaining of thier Windows systems being infected. I just made a small research on Blaster Worm and thought the following article would help in saving ourselves from the BlasterWorm menace. Check out this step-by-step link from Microsoft: What You Should Know About the Blaster Worm and Its Variants

I would suggest the following tools too, which are from the freeware (for personal/home use) domain, which can help you get saved from BlasterWorm menace.

Kerio Personal Firewall

Kerio Personal Firewall is quite easy to install and configure, according to what I have observed. Since it sits near the TCP layer, it catches almost all packets that sniffs in or tries to sneak out of Windows and barks at bad packets and warns the user that some packets are going crazy. The help pages are also very informative.

Perhaps at this juncture of random threats lurking in the cyberspace for a casual user, a Personal Firewall is mandatory to protect the PCs

In fact, I would also suggest, the following URL, which can help you to find out how protected your PCs are:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/ (which checks your system and gives online reports to you to indicate how vulnerable you are to Online Threats).

Crystal Reports under .NET

VB Developers should be more familiar in interacting with Crystal Reports right? Crystal Reports had been the choicest Reporting Tool for many enterprises worldwide. Starting VB.NET and C#, with its most feature-rich Windows Forms, Crystal Reports for .NET again, no doubt, becomes the choice of most enterprises. 

Here is a simple Tutorial URL, that helps a novice developer in Crystal Reports for .NET to walk through the same.

http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/

The pages are plain-vanilla and load almost fast, since there are'nt much graphics, flash or shockwave movies to slow down the pages. The language is pretty simple too.  Perhaps starting crystal reports developers would be benefitted by this tutorial.

[Imported from Blogdrive]WebService Studio -- Playing Around with Web Services

Playing around with WebServicesWeb Services have been a real useful and innovative stuff to bring in seamless integration of applications. With .NET Framework, WebServices are not just tools to implement and integrate heterogeneous and diversified applications, but also WebServices trigger more interest and tempt us to explore more on them, and assures us a definite promising solution to our business problems related to application integrations.
Well! That describes the usual bla bla! Don't worry! I am not going to bore you with that.&nbsp; Perhaps you would have encountered a situation that .NET 1.1 now disables Web Service Post testing via Sample Forms generated for Internet Explorer. Of course, if we need, we can enable them back using Web.Config settings for the WebService application, but it not normally recommended on production servers.
But I just got hold of the following tool called Web Service Studio from GotDotNet.com, which provides an interactive GUI to manage with WebServices and also invoke WebMethods interactively by giving inputs to various parameters. Thank you, Sowmy

You may check and freely download WebServiceStudio from the following URL:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=e51ea6a8-7fa7-4019-825d-14884db0827e&nbsp; (You&nbsp;need&nbsp; a .NET Passport account to signin to GotDotNet and download files from there)&nbsp;<!--
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         Posted at 12:20 pm by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

 

 

  Original BlogDrive Post on Wednesday, October 08, 2003

[Imported from Blogdrive]A Look Into Refactoring And A Cup Of Coffee

Refactoring CodeRefactoring is a technique to restructure code in a disciplined way. Perhaps Refactoring has a lot of WebLogs and articles published over the Web that your Search Engine should be able to take you around a tour of the same.

Perhaps last week, I needed a tool to automatically maintain namespace organizations and other stuff. Perhaps I felt, that an automated tool would really serve the purpose, other than me doing it manually, which is errorprone.
I just came across the following site:
http://www.dotnetrefactoring.com/
It&nbsp;really has lots of information to be researched in depth. What's Cool. It adds itself as a Visual Studio .NET Addin, so that a separate program invocation is not required.

 

Well! While I was doing this research on Refactoring Tools, I came across Eclipse -- The Open Source J2EE Application Framework IDE.&nbsp; Perhaps a study of Refactoring Concepts in Eclipse really helps one in understanding the concepts with more depth.
Perhaps sometime later, I would publish an article for the same in my homepage. Stay Tuned!<!--
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        Posted at 09:35 am by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

 

 

  Original BlogDrive Post on Wednesday, November 05, 2003