May 2004 - Posts
For those of you who don't know, you can create a test certificates on your development machine with Visual Studio! This is done through the makecert.exe program. Grant Killian has an excelent post on its functionality. He also points to another page on how to create a test certificate with makecert.exe. Just in case you're wondering you can use this command line:
makecert -r -pe -n "CN=www.yourserver.com" -b 01/01/2000 -e 01/01/2036 -eku 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1 -ss my -sr localMachine -sky exchange -sp "Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider" -sy 12
Update! - Be sure to download the new version of makecert.exe!
Here is some SQL Server Reporting Services resources.
My man Bill Vaughn will be holding a webcast on Reporting Services: Designing and Deploying Secure Reports on May 19 2:30 Eastern. Don't miss it.
Another webcast will be held on May 26 at 4:00 PM Eastern on Improved Decision Making through Enhanced Reporting Services. Could be interesting.
Reporting Services Books Online: Download - Online
Bryan's Keller's WebLog. Bryan is a Programmer Writer at Microsoft on the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Team.
Ken Tegels' Reporting Services WebLog. Another Reporting Services blog.
Reporting Services Newsgroup. On the msnews.microsoft.com server, newsgroup microsoft.public.sqlserver.reportingsvcs
SQLReportingServices.net - Bill Vaughn and Peter Blackburn's site for their upcoming book Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server Reporting Services.
Recently, we've seen the ASP.Net SQL Server session state acting poorly. It seems that the clean up job was taking an abnormal amount of time. We have decided to move our session database from tempdb to its own database. Microsoft has made a KB available detailing how to persist the session database (Q311209 HOW TO: Configure ASP.NET for Persistent SQL Server Session State Management). Some more resources on ASP.Net session state are: Using SQL server for ASP.Net session state and Peter Bromberg's Session State FAQ.
Recently I've been dabbling in .Net performance tuning. So here is some links. Here's one on ASP.Net Performance Tuning/Analysis. Here's another from MS titled Improving .Net Application Performance and Scalability. Sam Gentile call it "the single best guide I have seen out of Redmond."
Carl Franklin of .Net Rocks! fame asks the community "what is the best Tablet PC?" And the community answers. It seems that the Toshiba m200 is the tablet of choice. Lucy has already promised me one for Christmas. We'll see if that happens.
Yes, I admit it. I've been a bad blogger. I hope to correct this within the next couple of days. I've got a ton of stuff to post and it's about time that I do!
What have I been doing during the past two weeks? Glad you asked! I've been "heads down" at work rewriting an file processing application. (And it works a whole lot better if I say so myself! Object oriented design is a wonderful thing.) This weekend I've installed Microsoft Virtual PC on my home computer. For those of you who don't know Virtual PC is software that emulates a computer on another computer. I've already set up three virtual machines running three different operating systems. In keeping with the Star Wars theme I've named these machines B-Wing (Windows Longhorn), A-Wing (Windows Server 2003) and X-Wing (Windows XP). And all of these virtual machines are running on Falcon a Windows XP Shuttle box. Of course I realize that my geekiness is fully showing but I figure who cares! Popeye said it best "Aye am what aye am." A word to the wise about Virtual PC, have plenty of memory available. I was only running 512MB and things are a bit slow. I've already ordered another 1GB and it should be on it's way soon.
On the home front, Lucy and I are planning a trip this month to St. Augustine for our five year anniversary. We'll be flying up to Jacksonville and then driving down to St. Augustine. And as usual we'll be staying at a bed & breakfast there. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. We'll see if it's better than Run of the River in Leavenworth, Washington. We stayed there for our honeymoon and it was divine!
Time to go...I'll write more soon.