What I have learned the hard way (as usual) with VMWare

Always take snapshots when the guest is powered-down.

Although in VMWare Workstation you can take a snapshot at any time, you cannot clone a snapshot taken of a powered-on guest.

So for example, I patched a new Windows Server 2003 guest OS with dozens of Windows Updates, installed SQL Server, installed and configured SQL Server Reporting Services, etc. It took hours. I made snapshots at each phase, and indeed was able to revert back to one after screwing up royally. However, when I later went to clone the "all patches" snapshot to re-use the guest somewhere else, I was unable to do so because the guest had been on when I took the snapshot. I pulled out all my teeth in frustration and smashed them with a hammer, then began uninstalling everything after the patches.

Check the guest firewall settings if you have host-to-guest network problems

If you have double-checked that the virtual network settings are not to blame for an inability of the host to communicate with the guest, then ensure the guest firewall settings are not blocking incoming requests.

In my case the guest was using bridged networking and could ping the host and connect to the internet via the LAN gateway. The host could not ping the guest, the reason being that the guest firewall disallowed incoming echo requests by default. Further, since I wanted to use the guest as an http server, I needed to allow http requests at the firewall level. The agony preceding this discovery was akin to a hot knife stabbing repeatedly into my liver.

32 bit guests created on a 64 bit host can only be deployed on a 32 bit host if the deployed host hardware supports 64 bit processing

This one is counterintuitive. Just because it's a 32 bit guest doesn't mean it's going to run on a 32 bit host.

Newer machines tend to support 64 bit processing. Older ones don't. It's entirely possible that a host will be running a 32 bit OS but be 64 bit capable. How do you know? Download CPU-Z and it will examine the hardware and tell you. The VMWare CPU Identification Utility might also help, but I'm unclear as to whether it just checks for a 64 bit OS, or hardware 64 bit capability.

TypeMock unit testing

I like free! As Michal Talaga in turn quotes TypeMock's promotion page:

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy. Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers. The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price. Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit. The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement. Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends. Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

Yep, free sounds good. I've not had a chance to try out TypeMock, so this will be a good opportunity.

Inmagic Webpublisher works on Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 RC a few days ago and so far it looks like Inmagic DB/Textworks 11 and Webpublisher Pro 11 are compatible with it. Both must be installed in "run as administrator" mode, of course. See the post related to Vista installs for details and further links. This post for installing Webpublisher on 64 bit IIS 7 is still valid for Windows 7. Also Denise's warning against putting textbases in the Program Files folder still applies. (Virtualization spirits the files away out of the Program Files folder.) One thing unfortunately is insurmountable at this point: there is no WinHlp32 support for Windows 7 RC (though there will be when Windows 7 goes RTM) so no DB/Textworks help for me. I've memorized it anyway.

The importance of beauty

A fine article from the good people at A List Apart (the website for people who make websites). I always strive for aesthetically pleasing design in my work at Andornot. It just feels better when it looks good.

In Defense of Eye Candy
"Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here."

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

MS Office Features for Tracking Revisions

Have you ever sent a Word document or Excel spreadsheet out for review and asked the recipient to please, please, please either turn on Track Changes or insert Comments, so you can see their revisions, only to have the document come back with neither? If so, here are two features available in Word and Excel that will help.

First, before sending a document out for review, you can turn on Track Changes in such a way that the recipient cannot turn it off without knowing a password. To do so in Word 2007:

1. Select the Review tab on the Ribbon Bar, click the Protect Document button, and choose the Restrict Formatting and Editing option.
2. In the panel that appears, ignore option 1, but tick option 2 and change the drop down selector to Tracked Changes (or Comments if you prefer to only allow comments to be made).
3. Click the Yes, Start Enforcing Protection button and enter a password when prompted, to allow you to turn off Tracked Changes or Comments later.
4. Save the document and send it out for review.

The procedure is similar in Excel.

In both applications, you can also be more fine-grained in what editing you allow, such as restricting editing to speciic cells in a spreadsheet or styles in a document (e.g. the user may edit body text but not headings).

The document may be opened by the recipient as usual, but Track Changes or Comments will be enabled and may only be disabled by following the same steps as above, but disabling protection with the password.

If you had forgotten to add Track Changes (with a password) to the document that you sent, you can use the Compare option. Open your original document and the one that was edited without changes being tracked. You can then compare the two and produce a version with changes tracked, which you can then proceed to accept or reject as appropriate.

Errors when attempting to run Database Publishing Wizard on a 64-bit Vista machine

If you're attempting to use Microsoft's Database Publishing Wizard you might run into an error like the following (if you're running SQL Server Express 2005 - don't know if you will run into it with SQL Server 2005 Standard etc.):

This wizard will close because it encountered the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.SqlServer.BatchParser, Version=9.0.242.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

If you do, just download the x64 version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Management Objects Collection located here. This post pointed me in the right direction as the possible solution suggested does in fact resolve the issue.

Genie Label Formatting Tricks

Item Fields Appear After Catalog Fields

When defining a catalog label in MyLabels.config, you can pull data from both the Catalog and Items textbases. Data from Items is wrapped in <ItemInfo> tags

e.g.
<ItemInfo>
  <Field Name="ItemVolume" Header="v." />
  <Field Name="ItemCopyInfo" Header="c." />
</ItemInfo>

While you can place the ItemInfo section anywhere in the label definition, when the label is rendered on screen or printed, the ItemInfo section will always appear last. It's best to place it last in the config file section as well, so it's clear where it will appear on the label.

If you have a strong need to place some Item fields before or in between Catalog fields, it is possible to subdivide one of the boxes on the labels into smaller boxes, one with the Catalog fields and the other with the Item fields. It takes some dedicated work with a ruler and finessing of the label measurements, some trial and error with the printer, and a dose of patience, but it can be done.

Limit Number of Words

If you have a field on the label, such as Title or Subtitle, that tends to have quite a bit of data in it, it may not fit in the available space on the label, and will push other fields down and off the label. One remedy is to limit the amount of data from the field that appears. You can do this by adding this line

UseFunction="NumberOfWords(x)"

to the field (where x is a number).

e.g.
<Field Name="CatTitle" Style="font-weight:bold" UseFunction="NumberOfWords(5)" />

This function is documented in the Inmagic Genie Technical Notes document in relation to the MyReports.config file. However, it works equally well in MyLabels.config.