The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for 2013

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Salvaging Windows Mail *.eml files to Outlook

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/15

A while ago, I salvaged the Windows Mail *.eml files from a broken Vista machine of a friend to a new machine running Outlook. The Vista machine was so broken that it wouldn’t boot any more (now he knows that porn comes with truckloads of viruses).

Naively I assumed this was a straightforward process (hey, it’s all Microsoft, and they have great interoperability, right?).

Well no (:

  • *.msg files are for Outlook, which does not support *.eml files
  • *.eml files are for Outlook Express and Windows Mail, which supports exporting to Exchange (which is wrong, they mean “Export to the message store that Outlook uses)

So as soon as you have all mail in Windows Mail, then you can export it to Outlook.

You can do the same with *.dbx files from Outlook Express: use Windows Mail as an intermediate store as described here: Importing DBX files into Outlook 2007 – Windows Software.

But first things first.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Office, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Outlook, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Delphi bindings for WebSphere MQ

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/14

The current Delphi bindings for WebSphere MQ (formerly known as MQSeries) are very old.

The MA7Q: WebSphere MQ – MQI for Delphi formal binding from IBM is incomplete. Even though it is from 2005, it doesn’t contain the MQCD definition that was there at least since WebSphere MQ 5.2 (released in 2000). And by now it should be gone, since MQSeries 5.x is not supported any more.

A newer one by Dinko Miljak which is mentioned on Delphi 3000 and mentioned on MQSeries.net, has some errors and is from the WebSphere MQ 5.2 era.
It is available via this posting on MQSeries.net (direct download link), and this author reference on Torry.net (direct download link). Both files are identical.

Since it is much more extensive than the IBM version, I am using it to update it for newer WebSphere versions.
Great help while updating are the Gefira MQ bindings for Python: readable, indexed on nullege, and helpful (for instance on the usage of MQHO_UNUSABLE_HOBJ – which is assigned when calling MQCLOSE, I found out later that it is also explained here). The latest Gefira change was in 2008, but still way better than the Delphi bindings.

Also the Perl bindings for MQSeries together with their ASCII/EBCDIC client demo helped a lot.

A big issue when translating is that the i5/OS API in large part uses different names than the regular API.
For instance MQMD (i5/OS) contains MDENC, MDCSI and MDFMT fields where MQMD (regular) contains and Encoding, CodedCharSetId and Format fields.

As soon as I have done proper translation and upgrading to WebSphere MQ 7.x, I will upload source code.

Source code will be on the BeSharp.net CodePlex repository.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, Software Development, WebSphere MQ | 1 Comment »

Delphi turns 18 today; did it get real undo/redo in the form designer?

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/14

18 years ago, Delphi 1 was launched (still not sure if valentine’s day was a good idea for a product launch).

I wonder – when writing this long before valentine’s day – if the matureness of Delphi finally introduced real undo/redo in the form designer.

Probably still a dream, but still…

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

A couple of notes on NMQ_MQ_LIB

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/13

A couple of notes on NMQ_MQ_LIB and the WebSphere MQ aka MQSeries client libraries:

  • NMQ_MQ_LIB specifies the MQ DLL to use
  • Depending in your interface, the NMQ_MQ_LIB can be an environment variable, application setting, or hardcoded DLL name
  • MQSeries 5.x and WebShpere MQ 6.x require you to specify the bitness in the MQIC DLL name (they don’t accept mqic.dll, but require mqic32.dll) when you access it from the C or Delphi interface.
    MQM DLL does not require bitness: it is mqm.dll in all versions.
  • From client applications, use mqic.dll or mqic32.dll.

And a few links:

I needed this to get some apps talking to MQ on AS/400 aka iSeries aka System i working correctly by getting the DLLs right.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, AS/400 / iSeries / System i, Delphi, Development, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, Software Development, WebSphere MQ | Leave a Comment »

Cool: your own queries on Stack Exchange Data Explorer (StackOverflow: My answers with non Delphi tag)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/12

This is way cool, and has been there for a long time, and I completely missed it until recently (:

On the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, you can write your own queries for any of the StackExchange sites as they share a common database infrastructure.

The queries can even contain an execution plan, and given the large number of questions (the total of Questions (table Posts) is total over 10 million now: select count(*) as QuestionCount from Posts as Questions).

There are many examples, for instance this one by sam.saffron and  TLama that lists posts outside the Delphi area: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Database Development, Delphi, Development, SQL, SQL Server | 2 Comments »

How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager (thanks @ccolotti)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/11

So I won’t forget: How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager.

It describes how to:

  1. enable SSH on your ESXi host
  2. download the patches directly from the VMware Patch Portal
  3. copy them to on your ESXi host using an SCP compatible tool (FileZilla or WinSCP will do fine) to a mounted data store (the ESXi image will be tool small for it)
  4. collect to the ESXi console using SSH
  5. run this esxcli command:
    esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/[DATASTORE]/[PATCH_FILE].zip
  6. Remove the patch file from the datastore after patching

Thanks Chris Colotti for publishing this!

–jeroen

via How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager • Chris Colotti’s Blog.

Posted in ESXi5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | 3 Comments »

How to Set the /3GB Startup Switch in Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/08

Hardly needed any more, but since we are migrating some systems away from Windows Server 2003 x86 but before that need to resolve some capacity issues (and need to get PAE working): How to Set the /3GB Startup Switch in Windows.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Lufthansa does not get that plus (+) is a valid email character. @Lufthansa_DE

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/08

Plus is a valid character in email adresses, but many sites thing otherwise.

From the Lufthansa booking site:

Please review the fields below to continue :

  • Contact Details – E-mail must be 1 to 60 characters (valid characters are a-z, 0-9 and arobase (@), hyphen (-), underscore (_), dot (.)).

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

xkcd: Perl Problems; I got 99 problems. So I used regular expressions.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/08

(:

I got 99 problems. So I used regular expressions...
I got 99 problems. So I used regular expressions…

–jeroen

via: xkcd: Perl Problems.

Posted in Development, Perl, RegEx, Scripting, Software Development | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

USB drive/stick as DataStore is possible, but not recommended (via: VMware Communities)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/08

A long while ago I blogged about Creating vSphere 5 ESXi embedded USB Stick so I could boot ESXi from USB.

Since then, I changed USB sticks to be larger (and faster) ones and thought it might be possible to put a small datastore on it for a small maintenance VM.

The VMware Communities: External USB hard drive detected as… thread on the VMware Communities site shows you can do it for a USB disk, but only from the console or SSH (not from the regular maintenance tools).

The results vary, and don’t sound very stable to me, so it is definitely not recommended.

So I have refrained from going that way.

–jeroen

via: VMware Communities: External USB hard drive detected as….

Posted in ESXi5, Hardware, HP XW6600, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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