The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2012

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Scott Adams uses a Wacom Cintiq 24HDI for his drawing.

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24

Recently, I noticed that Scott Adams uses a Wacom Cintiq 24HD to do his art work:

I do all of my drawing directly to the computer screen of my Wacom Cintiq 24HD. I literally feel sympathy for any artist who still works with pen and paper. The system cuts my production time in half and allows me to do better work too. If youre an artist, and youre still drawing on paper, youre like the seventy-year old author who swears by his manual typewriter.

Great gadget that has it price, but loved by artists.

–jeroen

via: Scott Adams Blog: Today I Review Everything 02/10/2012.

Posted in LifeHacker, Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »

VMware View Client uses PCoIP; please network admins read the PCoIP checklist!

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24

Somehow, I have the impression that not all VMware View Client network admins fully read and understand the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist”

That checklist is important, as it is easy to get things wrong and dissatisfy your users without reason (heck, they get worse than mediocre RDP performance experience, so you could’ve saved you the work of PCoIP in the first place).

So please do read the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“.

It starts with

The PCoIP protocol provides a real-time delivery of a rich user desktop experience in virtual desktop and remote workstation environments.

To ensure a responsive desktop, the PCoIP protocol must be deployed across a properly architected virtual desktop network infrastructure that meets bandwidth, QoS, latency, jitter, and packet loss requirements.

CheckPoint VPN sometimes can be a dork combined with PCoIP. and at least make sure UDP works well over your VPN.

–jeroen

via: “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist”

(Some more backgorund reading and even more)

(fixed typo: one of the PCoIP occurances was PCiOP, luckily, Google knows better :)

Posted in Power User, View, VMware | 2 Comments »

SQL Server 2000: How do I register multiple databases with Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Manager?

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24

I’m in the midst of a big migration traject.

One class of systems involved in the migration is SQL Server 2000 databases (yes, I know that SQL Server 2000 has been in Extended Support mode since April 8, 2008, that’s one of the grounds for migration).

Sometimes, you need SQL Server Enterprise Manager (a plugin to the Microsoft Management Console) to work on those databases to see what needs to be migrated (yes, this should be in the documentation, of which the ultimate form is the system itself ;-).

SQL Server Enterprise Manager has a nice feature that you can group SQL Server registration into SQL Server Groups.

However, it also has a limitation: you cannot add the same SQL Server to multiple SQL Server Groups. That is: unless you create an alias on the SQL Server, as aliases are not counted in the “unique” criterion.

Below are the top 2 links I found using “multiple databases” “sql server”  “enterprise manager”. Since I’m not sure the content of those will last, below are the full quotes.

Besides adding a SQL Server Alias (which has other uses as well), the most important steps are “6” in the first quote, and “1.6” in the second quote: your alias needs to point to the same IP address (or hostname) as your regular server.

How do I register multiple databases with MS SQL Enterprise Manager?

MS Enterprise Manager does not allow you to register the same database server multiple times. It is sometimes useful to create multiple registrations, if you want to connect to different databases on the same server. To workaround this, follow the steps below.

  1. Go to Start – Programs – Microsoft SQL Server – Select “SQL Server Client Network Utility”
  2. Go to Alias Tab
  3. Click “Add”
  4. In the “Server alias:” text box, enter a name you want to use to distinguish this database server
  5. In the “Network libraries:” section, select “TCP/IP”
  6. In the “Connection parameters” section, change the “Server name:” to your database server, i.e.; mssql01.discountasp.net
  7. Click OK

Once the Alias is created, you can register it using the same method described in this Knowledge Base article.

How can I open multiple databases in SQL Server Enterprise Manager?

  1. Create SQL Server Alias
    (Please repeat the following steps if you want to open mutiple databases)

    1. Open SQL Server Client Network Utility.
    2. When Client Network Utility opens, click on the Alias tab.
    3. Click on the Add button.
    4. In the Server Alias text box enter a name for your SQL connection.
    5. Select TCP/IP under Network libraries
    6. Enter the IP address of the Server your SQL database is located on, in the Server name text box.
    7. Click on the OK button.
    8. Your Server alias will now be configured, click on the Apply button.
    9. Click on the OK button.
  2. Create SQL Server Connection in Enterprise Manager
    (Please repeat following  steps if you want to open mutiple databases)

    1. Open SQL Server Enterprise Manager.
    2. When Enterprise Manager opens, right click SQL Server Group and select New SQL Server Registration.
    3. The Register SQL Server wizard will now open.
    4. Click on the Next button.
    5. From the Available Servers drop down menu, select the server alias you created earlier.
    6. Click on the Add button.
    7. The server should now be listed under Added servers, click on the Next button.
    8. When the next dialog box appears select The SQL Server login information that was assigned to me by the system administrator see above.
    9. Click on the Next button.
    10. Enter your Login name and Password ? this will be used every time you connect to your SQL server.
    11. Click on the Next button.
    12. Ensure that Add the SQL Servers to an existing SQL Server group is selected and SQL Server Group is selected for Group name.
    13. Click on the Next button.
    14. When the next dialog box opens you can click on the Finish button.
    15. Your SQL Connection will now be created.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Database Development, Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000 | 1 Comment »

WordPress XML sourcecode help needed; forum posts gets deleted.

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/23

Please one of the WordPress.com support people, contact me through my contact form.

I tried posting this question, but as you can see it is marked as ‘Topic Closed, This topic has been closed to new replies’, and looks empty on your forums’:

Please stop deleting the XML from my

</h1>
Since WordPress deletes anything but the most basic XML from

tags:

See https://wiert.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/wordpress-html.doc

When I put that in a WordPress post, it deletes the XML.
It does this for anything but the most basic XML.

Please fix that!

–jeroen

Thanks in advance!

–jeroen

Posted in Development, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress, WordPress | 2 Comments »

Bitcricket IP Subnet Calculator

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/23

When routing networks, one of the important things to get right is your IP subnets.

Doing the math from your head is hard, and I usually used some subnet calculator web pages, but recently stumbled over the great [Wayback] Bitcricket IP Subnet Calculator.

IP Subnet Calculators … pioneered byby Bitcricket founder J. Scott Haugdahl …  rewrite of this tool, improving upon the precedent set by the original with a refreshed GUI, native Windows or Mac operation, and support for IPv6.

As the quote tells, it is running on both Windows and Mac, so I took a quick look and found that the underlying technology is Qt with a C++ application layer. That reminds me of the old Kylix days :)

–jeroen

via: [Wayback] IP Subnet Calculator – Overview.

Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »

C#/.NET: Assessing the SqlException severity

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/22

When handling SqlExceptions in C#, it is wise to assess the Class, as it indicates the severity.

Some classes are user error, others are fatal, etc.

This extension class will help you:

using System;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

namespace bo.MsSql
{
    /// <summary>
    /// see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms164086.aspx
    /// </summary>
    public static class SqlExceptionSeverety
    {
        public static bool IsInformational(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return sqlException.Class < 10;
        }

        public static bool IsUserCorractable(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return (sqlException.Class >= 10) && (sqlException.Class < 17);
        }

        public static bool IsSoftwareError(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return (sqlException.Class >= 17) && (sqlException.Class < 20);
        }

        public static bool IsFatalSystemProblem(this SqlException sqlException)
        {
            return sqlException.Class >= 20;
        }
    }
}

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

FireMonkey and (OS X, iOS, Windows) Link Clearance

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/21

Some links that I found useful for doing FireMonkey and development for OS X or iOS:

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, FireMonkey, OS X FMX, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Funny how Google Search tries to interpret version numbers as dates and totally misses the actual date (via: directx runtime – Google Search)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/20

Funny how Google Search tries to interpret number sequences as dates:

Download: DirectX Redist (June 2010) – Microsoft Download Center …

www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109

29 Sep 1974 – The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX …

I almost skipped that search result, as the date was from 1974, but since back then DirectX didn’t even exist, I became curious.

This is the original text from the page that Google tried to interpret: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Funny how StackExchange, StackOverflow, ServerFault, SuperUser and differ in indicating their site outage “We are Offline”

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/18

Tonight these most StackExchange sites have maintenance, including their bogs and meta sites (the chat sites like http://chat.stackoverflow.com/ are on-line). I checked these to be off-line, most of the bigger table below are offline too.

Later I will amend this post with the HTML and try to get some site previews too.

A bit later I got this kind of message from Chrome, that tried to protect one of the sites:

Error 139 (net::ERR_TEMPORARILY_THROTTLED): Requests to the server have been temporarily throttled.

Note that http://askubuntu.com/ is up and running :) Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Pingback, Stackoverflow, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Free .NET Decompiler – JustDecompile from Telerik

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/17

Interesting:

JustDecompile is a new, free developer productivity tool for easy .NET assembly browsing and decompiling.

–jeroen

via: Free .NET Decompiler – JustDecompile.

Posted in .NET, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET | Leave a Comment »

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