Ernst Wolthaus

LOL! Vista provokes user synaptic collapse

Ernst Wolthaus — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:04:00 GMT

Very funny article on The Register: Vista provokes user synaptic collapse

Typical IT/Microsoft humor. Gotta love it :)

RIP CMG...

Ernst Wolthaus — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:57:00 GMT

Oh my, I read this only today... LogicaCMG will be Logica. (dutch article)
Sniff...

When my beloved CMG was taken over by Logica, we knew this was going to happen someday.
But today it's official, the CMG where I had such a great time is now officially gone :-(

Please remember CMG with 1 minute of respectfull silence...

Don't mod your Xbox 360

Ernst Wolthaus — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 13:10:00 GMT

Couldn't resist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvZnTFpip0

;-)

Tagged and didn't know it...

Ernst Wolthaus — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:18:00 GMT

I've been tagged by Bes and didn't even know it.
I was just Googling on my own name (always funny to see what Google comes up with) and saw that Patrick had tagged my.

So now I have to come up with five facts that are hardly known about me (but also not too embarrasing ;)

1.
My first computer was an Atari 800 XL with a whopping 64K of memory. It was the best homecomputer around at that time (this clue might tell you something about my age...).
Unfortunately, the Commodore 64 was so popular that all the software was made for the C64 and software for the Atari was almost none-existant in the Netherlands.

2.
After a while I got tired of listening to the squeecks and hissings sounds of my datarecorder, so I bought a diskdrive. It cost my 1100,- guilders (500 euro's) at that time. For a diskdrive...!!
Eventhough it's gathering dust in the attic, I just cannot bring myself to throw a (working!) diskdrive of 500 euro's away.

So, if anyone is looking for a diskdrive for an Atari 800XL...
I'll make special price for you, you special friend :)

3.
When I joined CMG in 2000, I was originally planned (by Sylvain B.) to join the Java team. But on my first day at work, Sylvain was on holiday and another manager (bless him) needed someone on the WebBOS project.
So that's how I got involved with Microsoft Technology.
Looking back, it's funny how sometimes life can take you by the hand...

4.
I need to mention WebBOS seperately. What a great project that was! Not so much the technology, but it was a great team. I still remember all the fantastic people at that time: Marco Stolk, Eddy de Ridder, Novita Wegbrands, Manfred van Overmeire, Erik van der Wel and lots of others.

Looking back at my CMG period, this was one of the best projects and certainly the most funny. Try keeping a straight face with Stolk, Eddy and van der Wel. It's just not possible!

5.
Fact 5 seems to be reserved for a favourite movie. And who am I to break with tradition...
The best movie and thus my favourite movie is The Shawshank Redemption.
A brilliant movie amd I´m not alone in saying this.
If you haven't seen it, it time you do.

Guess everyone I know in this community is tagged, so I will leave it at that.

Quest comparision suite

Ernst Wolthaus — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:16:00 GMT

Just one of those great tools every develop should know about...

Last week I had to release a new version of an application. The database had changed quite a bit, so I looked around for a tool to script the changes.

In the old days (at LogicaCMG) we used SQL Compare by Redgate. But I took a look at Quest and found that their Comparison Suite is ideal for this kind of task. It can even compare the data in the database or the settings of the database itself...!

I've tried it and it works very well. Good and intuitive UI and nicely generated scripts you can use for your releases. And best of all: free. Have a look at it, you'll like it.

New dual core machine (aka Step up to the plate, Microsoft!)

Ernst Wolthaus — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 20:47:00 GMT

I've got a new machine: a Dell Inspiron 9400 Dual Core.. Woohoo!
I couldn't wait to start my VPC images on this beauty and see how its performance would increase my working 'pleasure'.

What the ***... !?
Performance was dramatic and erratic. Working fine for a couple of seconds or even minutes, then freezing up for up to 30 seconds at a time.
I want my old machine back :(

After googling I came up with this thread. Seems VPC SP1 might have a problem with dual core machines. So I uninstalled VPC SP1 and installed VPC. Works great!

But how is it possible in this day and age, with dual core machines, that Microsoft hasn't updated VPC to deal with this problem? Sure there's a hotfix, but who needs the hassle to get it. Just release SP2 with proper dual core support!

By the way, Microsoft; what about increasing resolution on the VPC?
My laptop is running 1920 by 1200 pixels (widescreen), yet in VPC I can't go higher than 1600 by 1200.

And I haven't even mentioned poor Vista support...

Come on, Microsoft, step up to the plate!

Encrypt your data with TrueCrypt

Ernst Wolthaus — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:24:00 GMT

A colleague of mine found a real gem for encrypting sensitive data!

TrueCrypt is an open source initiative.

Truecrypt encrypts with 256 bits and more...
Truecrypt lets you choose encryption between AES, BlowFish, TwoFish, Serpent and Tripple DES.
You can use 'cascade Ciphering' , using multiple encryptions like AES-TwoFish-Serpent (high security, but slower performance, off course).
Install TrueCrypt by placing the .exe and the .sys files in the root of your USB and the programm will start on every PC where you use the USB stick.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

Thanks to Aram Smith (http://www.aramsmith.com/)

Threading in C#

Ernst Wolthaus — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:50:00 GMT

I stumbled across this site: http://www.albahari.com/threading/
It offers a nice free e-book on threading in C#. I haven't had time to read it but it looks quite good.

Greetz,
Ernst

HTTPPost and HTTPGet

Ernst Wolthaus — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 01:04:00 GMT

This must be well known by all you AJAXians, but I didn't know...

I build a webpage that polled a webservice on a regular basis via a XmlHttPrequest.
Locally, it worked perfect. But when I deployed it to the testsite, it failed miserably.

After some Googling, I found out httpget and httppost should explicitely be added to the web.config because remote posts and gets are disabled BY DEFAULT.

So:

Timeout under Debug

Ernst Wolthaus — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:50:00 GMT

Because we ran into time-out problems on my current project, I'm been looking into more details about time-outs.

First of all:

IIS: time-out value doesn't really matter for ASP.NET apps, because this is set by the web/machine.config. Used for ASP apps and such...
<httpruntime executionTimeout=... />: this can be set in web- or machine.config.

So, I made a winform test app and a webservice which should throw a time-out exception back to the winform. And it didn't...!
Why not?

Simple, really, if you know....
In the config file there's a setting <compilation debug="true">. As long as this debug attribute is set to true, your webservice will not time-out...

Seems that Microsoft decided, for debug purposes, that time-outs like that shouldn't occur in a debug situation. Nice to know!

Transfering large amounts of data via Webservices

Ernst Wolthaus — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 23:46:00 GMT

I'm currently working on a 'SOA' project, using .NET 1.1, BizTalk 2004 and Sharepoint.

My part of the system we're building is generating invoice data. When finished, the data is passed to BizTalk via a webservice.
I checked with a colleague of mine about limitations in BizTalk because in a previous life (NVM anyone?) we came across problems involving the 4MB limits on MSMQ.
Nope, the 4MB limit is gone in BTS2004, so nothing to fear...

Then we tried to transfer 10MB of data via the webservice and it failed... Why?!?!?
Because there is a default maximum length to http requests of 4MB. DOH!!

We've now set the maxRequestLength in the web.config of the webservice to 20MB, but this is just a workaround.

So, we need to redesign our way of delivery to BTS2004. Maybe cutting the data into smaller bits, or using DIME, or dropping the data in a file so Biztalk can pick it up... we'll see.

Free Microsoft E-learning for 90 days

Ernst Wolthaus — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 04:29:00 GMT

Microsoft has made some of its e-learning courses available for free for a period of 90-days.
Some of the technologies covered in these courses include BizTalk Server2004/2006, SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 2.0 etc.

If you are interested click the following link for more details: https://www.microsoftelearning.com/catalog/itprodev.aspx

Transactions on common types

Ernst Wolthaus — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:16:00 GMT

A collegue of mine directed my attention to the following:

Juval Lowy created a nice framework on 2.0 which enables you to do transactions on common types.
So rolling back local variables when exceptions or issues occur! True error handling… J

Love it!

Microsoft WSYP project

Ernst Wolthaus — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:37:00 GMT

Although I'm not in favor of physical punishment, I couldn't help to think this would be a great project for some of my (former) colleagues...

Microsoft WSYP

Have fun!

Proper coding, what do you think?

Ernst Wolthaus — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 02:19:00 GMT

I recently came across code like this of a collegue:

public object SomeMethod
{
DataSet ds = DataService.RetrieveData();

if(ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0)
{
...code...
return prod;
}
throw new Exception("error message");
}

As you can see, the exception is thrown when the dataset is empty.
What I find wrong with this code is the way the throw almost seems unconditional.

public object SomeMethod
{
DataSet ds = DataService.RetrieveData();

if(ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0)
{
  ...code...
  return prod;
}
else
{
  throw new Exception("error message");
}
}

This two ways of handling this functionality both work, but what do you think/prefer?