primoz.tech.blog

Today I installed new version of VMWare server on Windows Vista x64. Looks like that new VMWare fixed all issues with non signed drivers in this new major release 2.0. I recommend that you upgrade version 1.x to 2.0 if you are using Vista x64.

• Problems with versions 1.x on Vista x64.
• VMWare Server

When I changed my job I also switched from Microsoft .NET world to IBM, Oracle and Suns world. I was familiar with SQL Server 2000, 2005 and their Management Studio. Management Studio is OK and you can do most things there. In my new environment I was faced with Oracle, DB2 and MS databases and all of them have their own clients. First of all when I saw  Oracle SQL+ -disaster - productivity 0.
I was forced to find some kind of universal client and I found this great SQuirreL Universal SQL Client. It is free and open source. You can use it with any databse which have available JDBC drivers.

Most important features for me:

• Code completion (intellisense)
• Editing of SQL results
• SQL queries history
• ...

There are also a lot of plugins available:

• SQL scripts
• Syntax Highlighting
• Refactoring Plugin
• Data Import Plugin
• DBCopy Plugin
• ...

Useful links

• http://www.squirrelsql.org/
• IBM Developerworks article about SQuirreL: SQuirreL SQL client: A single, open source front end to interact with your heterogeneous database environment

If you are using Subversion and Eclipse for Java development, you should add exclude rule (**/.svn/) to build process. Go to project Properties -> Java Build Path, choose Source tab and add exclude pattern. Now you will not have any .svn folders in bin.

You can get new major release of Eclipse on eclipse.org download website. There are plenty of eclipse packages and you can compare them here. You can read everything about new features:

• Ganymede site
• Eclipse Ganymede at a glance
• InfoQ
• Eclipse Hidden Treasures
• eclipse Dzone

I'll check this new package for J2EE and BIRT tomorrow morning.

I was testing some wiki engines for business use. I couldn't choose one all-round winner. Wiki must have have workspaces for different teams, hierarchical document organization, must be free and opensource, WYSIWYG editor, import/export (doc, pdf), discussions, ASP.NET or PHP,...

I checked following wiki engines:

MediaWiki

pros: easy to use and install, many plugins, many templates
cons: don't like document management (categories and namespaces), must install a lot of additional plugins

TWiki

pros: more enterprise oriented, like workspaces, good design
cons: I hate perl, confusing install procedure

TikiWiki

a lot out of the box packages, little confusing with all this packages, very ugly templates

XWiki

small amount of plugins, little confusing

Does anyone have any suggestions?

FlatPack is flat file parser that can handles fixed length and custom delimited CSV files. Column mapping is done through XML files and it is fully customizable. With this package you can read and write CSV files, it can handles string, numeric and date values.

Check out FlatPack project website on Sourceforge.

If you work with CSV files in Java, following projects might also be interesting.

• Ostermiller CSV utilities
• JDBC drivers for Excel and CSV files
• Java CSV Library

---UPDATE
User Motion Control on DZone posted a comment that I should also check Super CSV.

In this post I'll show you:

• what applications are required to run umbraco,
• how to configure umbraco,
  
• how to create first simple website.
  

To run umbraco you need Windows operationg system, IIS web server, .NET Framework 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and Microsoft SQL Server. I will  show you how to install everything in video, but first download all required components. You can get .NET Framework 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and SQL Server 2005 Express from Microsoft Download Center.

When all components are installed then you are ready to install umbraco. First download package from umbraco codeplex website. If you have Windows Vista or 2003 you can use installer, otherwise download zip package. It is recommended that you install umbraco as separate webiste. If you have Windows XP I recommend that you use XP PRO IIS Admin application from jetstat. This application allows you to configure more than one website on Windows XP.

You have to configure IIS that http://localhost will point to umbraco website. You can also change port number or create new row in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file. Keep this in mind when you wants to access umbraco for first time.

In the following video you can see how to install umbraco on Windows 2003 and how to create very simple website.



In next post I will show you more advanced scenarios. We will look at document types, template hierarchy, macros (XSLT, user controls)...

If you are going to install VMWare Server 1.0.4 on Vista x64 be prepared. First reboot you machine and press F8 at startup and choose "Driver Signature Enforcment Disable". VMWare server installs a bunch of unsigned drivers and if you don't choose this option it won't work.

I google about this driver enforcment policy and I think that there is no other option to disable this. Windows pathces removes all other workarounds with Bcdedit.exe. People say that VistaBootPRO or EasyBCD can do the trick, but I'm not a fan of 3party tools which mess with system files. If somebody tried, please report.

redFIVElabs developed own Compact Framework which is compatible with Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 and works on Symbian powered mobile phones. This is really great news and it will expand usage of all .NET CF applications. Net60 is redFIVElabs name for their framework. Currently it is in beta stage, I hope they release final version soon.



I hope that there will be a release of Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition for Symbian phones in the future.

If you are receiving unexpected problems with new Visual Studio 2008 it could be that some plugin for VS 2005 is incompatible with VS 2008. We have problems with Visual SVN 1.2.2. The solution is - uninstall plugin or upgrade to new version (1.3.1).



If you see this error, check all your plugins.