cheatsheet

Using XPath to select nodes with a missing attribute

kellyb — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:05:58 GMT

The only thing worse than my XPath skills are my RegEx skills. I don’t use XPath all that much these days, but today I needed to. It took me a while to find a code sample that does this. After a playing a bit with SnippetCompiler, I found the solution:

StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
builder.AppendLine("<foo>");
builder.AppendLine("<bar baz=\"a\">1</bar>");
builder.AppendLine("<bar>2</bar>");
builder.AppendLine("<bar baz=\"b\">3</bar>");
builder.AppendLine("<bar>4</bar>");
builder.AppendLine("<bar baz=\"c\">5</bar>");
builder.AppendLine("</foo>");

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(builder.ToString());

XmlNodeList nodes = doc.SelectNodes("//foo/bar[not(@baz)]");

if ( nodes == null )
{
    WL("nodes was null");
}
else
{
    foreach ( XmlNode node in nodes )
    {
        WL("Node: " + node.InnerText);
    }
}

Windows 7 Paving – New Base Image Software List

kellyb — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:23:53 GMT

It’s here… good bye Vista – won’t be missing you. Hello beauty

I just paved my machine with the new RTM of Windows 7 Ultimate. Below is my base image – now it’s time to back everything up to my home server.

Windows Live Mesh	I had to cut Mesh out of my life.... it was hogging too many system resources - especially disk reads. I can't have that on my dev boxes. I moved back to Windows Syn
Windows Sync
Password Agent	OK
AVG Anti-Virus (Free Edition)	OK, but I’ve started to fall out of love with AVG. They seem to be turning into another Norton/McAfee with their annoying attempts to get me to upgrade, feature bloat, and piggish product. I’m trying Microsoft Security Essentials Beta and so far it’s nice (light and free). I found some Comodo fan on Google and tried that – no thanks… way too annoying.
Windows Security Essentials	I'm done with AVG, Norton, and McAfee - they are all pigs. Windows Security Essential is fast, lean and free - I'm sold.
Cisco VPN Client	FAIL NCP offers a Cisco replacement client that I'm strongly considering. They support 64bit as well as Windows 7.
Virtual Clone Drive	OK I’m finally leaving Daemon Tools – it said it supports Windows 7, but it didn’t for me. This package as steadily gotten shadier and shadier (constantly trying to install crap-ware, etc.). I’m happily using the free version of Virtual Clone Drive.
TextPad 5	OK
Launchy	OK
Chrome	OK
Firefox	OK Mandatory Extensions: IETab AdBlock Bit.ly Del.icio.us Firebug
Media Players and Plugins	Silverlight Adobe Flash Foxit PDF Reader - I stay away from Adobe Reader… it’s a pig Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox
Core Development Tools	Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer + SP1 ASP.NET MVC .NET Memory Profiler ReSharper TortoiseSVN VisualSVN SQL Server 2008 Developer Gallio TestDriven.NET Microsoft Silverlight 3 Tools for VS 2008 SP1 Silverlight Toolkit - Release: July 2009 Expression Blend 3
Misc Development Tools	ClipPath Reflector Snippet Compiler Sysinternals Suite
Paint.NET	OK – I’m not sure I need this anymore. The Paint applet that comes with Windows 7 is pretty impressive.
WordWeb Pro	OK – Awesome desktop dictionary
Windows Live Writer	OK
Office Ultimate 2007	Save As PDF for Office 2007
Windows Live Messenger	OK
Virtual Box	OK
iTunes	OK – I wish I didn’t have to, but it’s kind of a must with my iPhone, peer pressure, etc.
Windows Home Server Console	OK
Trillian Pro	I finally gvae this a try and I dig it. It vastly simplify my IM life.
Skype	Stellar VoIP client

Important SQL Server Database Properties and JumpstartTV

kellyb — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:22:21 GMT

JumpstartTV is another one of these sites that are popping up that offer short and sweet tech screen casting. They offer 5-10 minutes videos covering the basics of a narrow technical topic. JumpstartTV focuses primarily on SQL Server topics, but they do have other material from time to time. I like this because I’m not really a database guy. I’ve designed a built a lot of applications, and therefore I fully appreciate the role the RDBMS plays in an system architecture, but my mind thinks in objects – not relational schema.

Today’s topic was SQL Server Properties to Avoid and I’m going to leave a quick crib note summary because this is good stuff to have handy in a checklist format.

File Initial Size and Autogrowth

By default SQL Server picks Initial Size: 2MB and an autogrowth of 1MB. For anything beyond tiny applications, these settings will cause significant I/O thrashing and disk fragmentation as the database grows. Set these properties to values that make sense for the database size you’re anticipating to go into. 10% autogrowth is a good starting point and the number of files should match the number of hard drive spindles you have.

Options – Auto Close

Turn it off. This will close all connections from the pool and deallocate the database from memory and cause the database to spin down. THis will cause performance problems when it has to spin back up for the next user to re-enter

Options – Auto Shrink

Turn it off. It’s best to create a job to do a shrink at night. Auto Shrink will arbitrarily pick a time to doing this resource intensive process, which could be at a bad time for your application.

Options – Recovery Model

Pick the one that makes sense. By default “Full” gives you point-in-time recovery which might be overkill for you application. “Simple” requires much less overhead and yield much greater performance, if it can support your business.

Options – Compatibility Level

While this doesn’t necessarily impact performance or system strain, picking the highest possible level of compatibility for your requirements is the right thing to do. I believe SQL Server will default to the lowest compatibility level (not sure about that).

Governance

You can create Policies in SQL Server 2005 to detect (and correct) issues with servers/dbs of interest. You can also script all of these settings, or apply these changes through SQL Server Management Studio.

ASP.NET States DropDownList

kellyb — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I've had to build one of these a few times over the years. If you want a very quick and dirty dropdown of US states in an ASP.NET app, here is the code

   1: <asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="StatesList">

   2:     <asp:ListItem Value="AL" Text="Alabama"></asp:ListItem>

   3:     <asp:ListItem Value="AK" Text="Alaska"></asp:ListItem>

   4:     <asp:ListItem Value="AZ" Text="Arizona"></asp:ListItem>

   5:     <asp:ListItem Value="AR" Text="Arkansas"></asp:ListItem>

   6:     <asp:ListItem Value="CA" Text="California"></asp:ListItem>

   7:     <asp:ListItem Value="CO" Text="Colorado"></asp:ListItem>

   8:     <asp:ListItem Value="CT" Text="Connecticut"></asp:ListItem>

   9:     <asp:ListItem Value="DE" Text="Delaware"></asp:ListItem>

  10:     <asp:ListItem Value="DC" Text="Dist of Columbia"></asp:ListItem>

  11:     <asp:ListItem Value="FL" Text="Florida"></asp:ListItem>

  12:     <asp:ListItem Value="GA" Text="Georgia"></asp:ListItem>

  13:     <asp:ListItem Value="HI" Text="Hawaii"></asp:ListItem>

  14:     <asp:ListItem Value="ID" Text="Idaho"></asp:ListItem>

  15:     <asp:ListItem Value="IL" Text="Illinois"></asp:ListItem>

  16:     <asp:ListItem Value="IN" Text="Indiana"></asp:ListItem>

  17:     <asp:ListItem Value="IA" Text="Iowa"></asp:ListItem>

  18:     <asp:ListItem Value="KS" Text="Kansas"></asp:ListItem>

  19:     <asp:ListItem Value="KY" Text="Kentucky"></asp:ListItem>

  20:     <asp:ListItem Value="LA" Text="Louisiana"></asp:ListItem>

  21:     <asp:ListItem Value="ME" Text="Maine"></asp:ListItem>

  22:     <asp:ListItem Value="MD" Text="Maryland"></asp:ListItem>

  23:     <asp:ListItem Value="MA" Text="Massachusetts"></asp:ListItem>

  24:     <asp:ListItem Value="MI" Text="Michigan"></asp:ListItem>

  25:     <asp:ListItem Value="MN" Text="Minnesota"></asp:ListItem>

  26:     <asp:ListItem Value="MS" Text="Mississippi"></asp:ListItem>

  27:     <asp:ListItem Value="MO" Text="Missouri"></asp:ListItem>

  28:     <asp:ListItem Value="MT" Text="Montana"></asp:ListItem>

  29:     <asp:ListItem Value="NE" Text="Nebraska"></asp:ListItem>

  30:     <asp:ListItem Value="NV" Text="Nevada"></asp:ListItem>

  31:     <asp:ListItem Value="NH" Text="New Hampshire"></asp:ListItem>

  32:     <asp:ListItem Value="NJ" Text="New Jersey"></asp:ListItem>

  33:     <asp:ListItem Value="NM" Text="New Mexico"></asp:ListItem>

  34:     <asp:ListItem Value="NY" Text="New York"></asp:ListItem>

  35:     <asp:ListItem Value="NC" Text="North Carolina"></asp:ListItem>

  36:     <asp:ListItem Value="ND" Text="North Dakota"></asp:ListItem>

  37:     <asp:ListItem Value="OH" Text="Ohio"></asp:ListItem>

  38:     <asp:ListItem Value="OK" Text="Oklahoma"></asp:ListItem>

  39:     <asp:ListItem Value="OR" Text="Oregon"></asp:ListItem>

  40:     <asp:ListItem Value="PA" Text="Pennsylvania"></asp:ListItem>

  41:     <asp:ListItem Value="RI" Text="Rhode Island"></asp:ListItem>

  42:     <asp:ListItem Value="SC" Text="South Carolina"></asp:ListItem>

  43:     <asp:ListItem Value="SD" Text="South Dakota"></asp:ListItem>

  44:     <asp:ListItem Value="TN" Text="Tennessee"></asp:ListItem>

  45:     <asp:ListItem Value="TX" Text="Texas"></asp:ListItem>

  46:     <asp:ListItem Value="UT" Text="Utah"></asp:ListItem>

  47:     <asp:ListItem Value="VT" Text="Vermont"></asp:ListItem>

  48:     <asp:ListItem Value="VA" Text="Virginia"></asp:ListItem>

  49:     <asp:ListItem Value="WA" Text="Washington"></asp:ListItem>

  50:     <asp:ListItem Value="WV" Text="West Virginia"></asp:ListItem>

  51:     <asp:ListItem Value="WI" Text="Wisconsin"></asp:ListItem>

  52:     <asp:ListItem Value="WY" Text="Wyoming"></asp:ListItem>

  53: </asp:DropDownList>

DOS and VBS Syntax Reminders

kellyb — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT

From time to time I have to break out skills from my past. I needed to solve a few problems today that required a VBS script and a couple of batch scripts. It took me longer than I care to admit to remember how to do this.

So, this post is a reminder for my future self.

Here's how to set a local variable in DOS and use them, as well as how to use a system environment variable (WinDir):

   1: SET INTERNAL_ROOT_PATH=D:\foo\trunk

2:

   3: svn.exe update %INTERNAL_ROOT_PATH%

   4: %WinDir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\msbuild.exe %INTERNAL_ROOT_PATH%\Internal.sln /Property:Config=Release

Here is how to load an XML file into XML DOM and parse it using MSXML2 and VBScript. This is also an example of how to Echo messages to the shell and process arguments

1:

   2:     path = WScript.Arguments(0)

   3:     root = WScript.Arguments(1)

4:

   5:     gacpath = "D:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe"

6:

   7:     If WScript.Arguments.Count = 3 Then

   8:         gacpath = WScript.Arguments(2)

   9:     End If

10:

  11:     WScript.Echo WScript.Arguments.Count

  12:     WScript.Echo "Parsing LibraryManifest: " & path

13:

  14:     Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")

  15:     With xml

  16:         .async = False

  17:         .validateOnParse = False

  18:         .preserveWhiteSpace = True

  19:         .resolveExternals = False

  20:     End With

  21:     result = xml.load(path)

22:

  23:     Set moduleNodes = xml.selectNodes("//LibraryManifest/Module")

24:

  25:     If Not moduleNodes Is Nothing Then

26:

  27:         For Each moduleNode in moduleNodes

28:

  29:             Set assemblyNodes = moduleNode.selectNodes("Assembly")

30:

  31:             For Each assemblyNode in assemblyNodes

32:

  33:                 For Each attribute in assemblyNode.Attributes

34:

  35:                     If attribute.Name = "Name" Then

36:

  37:                         file = root & "\" & attribute.Text

38:

  39:                         'WScript.Echo "file: " & file

40:

  41:                         Set shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

  42:                         gacutil = gacpath & " -uf " & attribute.Text

  43:                         Set out = shell.Exec(gacutil)

44:

  45:                         Do While Not out.StdOut.AtEndOfStream

  46:                             WScript.Echo out.StdOut.ReadLine()

  47:                         Loop

48:

  49:                         Set shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

  50:                         gacutil = gacpath & " -if " & file

51:

  52:                         Set out = shell.Exec(gacutil)

53:

  54:                         Do While Not out.StdOut.AtEndOfStream

  55:                             WScript.Echo out.StdOut.ReadLine()

  56:                         Loop

57:

  58:                         Set shell = Nothing

  59:                         Set out = Nothing

60:

  61:                     End If

  62:                 Next

  63:             Next

  64:         Next

  65:     End If

66: