This Old Code

It's funny this idea that word and excel are good for things such as LOS or Closing/Servicing systems.
Take a look at Financial Services OBA

At the very least the diagrams are interesting.

Add AJAX to ASP.NET

By now everyone  has heard that  Microsoft was going to  pay someone to update Wikipedia entries,  at this time I don't think they did any thing wrong.  If you read the Wikipedia articles many of them have a slant and its a sin for some one with first hand knowledge to make corrections.  I have seen the Wikipedia content zares at work, adding an article  for dasBlog, and one for adding a link to dasblog to the Weblog Software article.  Take a look, I'll wait.

Now tell me how to 3 deletes win over 5 keeps? This is a serious problem many people are starting to rely on Wikipedias data, Its almost like Google where if you or your product does not show up it just doesn't exist.  Yet these self appointed hall monitors are completely unaccountable for the inaccurate information that they allow to be published.  In fact it may be worse considering Wikipedia's preference is for inaccurate information over expert accurate information.  Wikipedia is a flawed resource which is a real danger.  with luck some one will sue and put an end to it.( it was a neat idea and very promising.)

For those of us on Vista some may have noticed there is a new invisible group TrustedInstaller.  If you change ownership of a file from this group to yourself there has been no documentation regarding how to change ownership back,  Irena does a nice job describing WFP and how to restore ownership back to Trusted installer. SYSK 277: How-To Bring Back the TrustedInstaller

I like to keep our applications Strong Named for a multitude of reason which can make finding third party assembly's a pain.  As simple as strong naming is many vendors are to lazy or ignorant to sign the assembly.  Friday I left the office with some unsigned enterprise library DLLs, being lazy I didn't want to recompiling them my strong name signature.  Thankfully I found a nifty little app by Alois Kraus that will add a strong names to unsigned assemblies.  I also happened upon a tool for removing a strong name from codeproject.  Not sure when it would be of use.

Let me start by saying I hate InstallShield,  this probably isn't fair there was a time when I liked them back in the day when the name of the product matched the name of the company they were small and focused.  They installed software and it made life easy.  Now MacoVision has different ideas and IMHO ruined the InstallShield the product. 

I started the other day by reading Shahine's blog regarding InstallShield updater,  he found a nice resource to remove this product.  The trouble is, InstallShield updater keeps coming back.  Case inpoint yesterday evening I saw Steve's post about Nikon's RAW codex in vista so having a Nikon D50 I went and happily down loaded and installed the codex.  This morning I see that installation has once again turned on Install Shield Updater.  I tend to agree with Shahine I hate updaters the only one I don't really mind is windows update (in vista it's almost nice).  On the other hand I have to give credit to MacoVision the idea of one common update framework/resource is compelling(They charge an arm and leg for it though).  But These things should never be silently installed behind the users back.  Getting your customers to stay uptodate is a very difficult problem, I don't think a unique solution per company is the right choice but InstallShield updater sure comes up wanting.

 

ps,

This was my first post from windows live writer.  My initial impression is the spell check could be much better.

One of my coworkers sent me note regarding pagination and Nettiers.

Saw your post:

  Easy server side pagination

If you haven’t noticed, Nettiers does automatic pagination at the stored proc and middle tier levels

This is true and I have noticed this before(all be it on a back-end web-server that didnt need paging), but there are still some projects that are not using Nettiers were the SQL stored procedure will help and there are always the cases that Netteirs doesn't write stored procedures for you. 

Firefox does not seem to like my Logitech MX 1000 Laser mouse.  It refuses to  follow the forward and back  mouse buttons.  I find this very frustrating.  Has any one else seen this, or better yet talked some sense into Firefox and got the mouse working with it?

I found a solution thanks to Don't Back down

I got the new Logitech driver (I prefer unobtrusive generic drivers when posible)(I wonder how the XP driver will work on Vista).

You can also try remapping the forwared and back buttions to ALT+LEFT and ALT+RIGHT

   If you like to work at home and connect to a Corporate VPN sometimes it’s the small things that annoy you like not being able to print to your network printer.  For some reason printing documents out on the office printer while I sit at home does nothing for my productivity.  Thankfully Steve Harman has found a way to route out the VPN's default Gateway

If you like to write client side pagination because its so easy, its time to change that.  Irena's stored procedure for Easy Pagination in SQL

The LazyBastard is at it again, check out his latest contribution to the ReplayTV scene.  WiRNS-RSS

Here is an interesting new beta Microsoft has been working on Relay Service they also have a blog.  The only trouble is you need a windows cardspace to download an sdk.  Since I am still unsure as how i can carry this identity between a multitude of computers, I don't have one and thus cannot down load there sdk.

    Chek out what Xceed is offering.  Free perpetual licenses for their WPF datagrid control.

If you receive the following message from visual studio 2003

---------------------------
Microsoft Development Environment
---------------------------
Project .vcproj' failed to open.
---------------------------
OK  
---------------------------

you can open your *.vcprog file with your favorite xml editor and find the "/VisualStudioProject/References/AssemblyReference" nodes make sure all the paths and files are valid.  One will not be, remove it or edit the path save the file and now open it in Visual Studio.

Why is it possible to target a different version of the DotNet framework? and is it a good idea? If so why can we not do this for the MFC library as well?

I have a new front door!

Mike walker has found a new competitor for Calyx and Ellie Mae.  Its groovy that they are a 2.0 app, really.  It just so doesn't matter.  Just like it doesn't really matter that Encompass is on 2.0. or Byte. It doesn't even matter that Calyx has been using 3.0.

LoanAce is free at the moment so we"ll have to see what the pricing structure turns out to be.  I recall Encompass not charging when it fist arrived as well. 

Typically when the market gets tight companies look for technology to make them more efficient.  They tend to buy when its slow rather then when they are busy.  How much that translates into small broker shops addopting new technology we have yet to see.  They are going to have an interesting challenge with 4 solid LOS systems already on the market.

ASP.NET AJAX download.  And also impressive the Codeplex community AJAX Control Toolkit. 

I know I have done this before,  I won't say how many times ;)

Find out why work is really the vacation.

Rick is looking for a good Steaming Music (Radio) Suggestion, mine check out Sirius or XM they both offer an internet only radio that uses windows media player.  Xm is has a cooler implementation but both cost about 10 bucks a month and give you access to all of the Radio stations.  This is real radio with a dj and many channels to suit your mood.  Unlike every thing else which turn out to be elaborate play lists.  There is just some thing wrong with being able to hit the skip button when listening to radio. Which happens with MSN music/Pandora and yahoo music.

I notice if I go to KQED.org in IE7 vista turns of aero support. Has anyone else seen this?  It looks to be how they are embedding windows media players’ activex control.  I can browse there with FireFox without this behavior so I am at a loss.

I am finding Google Finance very useful looking at Sirius I notice an MSN money story "Sirius Adds CNN to Online Lineup"  I find it pathetic that I find this out second hand rather then directly on Sirius,  I don't think they get how to communicate with their listeners.  Some times an email should be used for more then just new letters and you cannot count on your listeners always having their radio on to here your news.  I admit I haven't been listening to Sirius this week rather NPR and KQED.  I would listen if they offered NPR or PRI via their online Player.

Check out Finance a new beta offering from Google.  Its really to bad Google keeps their betas so hush hush, I Like this much better then Yahoo Finance but never would have known about it if it wasn't for Robert Scoble's blog entry.

BuisinessWeek Reported on January 12th about share prices of XM satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc rising based on speculation of a merger,  BuisinessWeek presume the larger Subscriber base of XM( 7.6 million ) will acquire Sirius with 6 million subscribers.  I think they are wrong.  When SmartMoney.com reports Sirius announced positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter.  I look forward to Sirius acquiring XM. 

Remote controls, pelet guns and computers.

Since I couldn't comment on Mike's Blog I thought I would respond here regarding his post pertaining to Choosing a Loan Message Exchange Standard for Banking.

In defence of MISMO the new standards are in xsd not dtd.  Also MISMO is very good for a few specific Mortgage transactions.  Currently MISMO closing looks the best for use outside of a given transaction.  Also in regards to vendor adoption its quite poor compared to the FNMA format.(compared to IFX however, that's another story)

There is a lot I don't personally care for in MISMO but one on the most important things it provides our area is a common agreed upon vernacular.

Perhaps I am a bit bias because I work at a software company and we sale, software.  But I really don't believe in the "Open Source" movement(software should be open source and free).  I believe in owning the source if I buy a product I should own that revisions source, I should not be dependent upon a specific company for bug fixes. There are Intellectual property right issues with this, but i digress.  I see today that the European Commission in its ill informed and infinite wisdom has announced Open Source (meaning free software.) solutions could provide savings in the long term.(Open source gets European boost)  Being a USA hard core capitalist, I don't get it.  How will open source compete and improve over time what will propel them to the next level?  How will they decide the direction of their "Product"?  From my observation these projects add features based on the whim of their developers.   In the world were software costs money we have customers, typically you want to keep these customers so you listen to them, help make their lives better so you can sale more to them and hopefully others.  It's why we push the cutting edge when we see fit and wait in the back ground while the industry settles on standards.  Its why software companies invest Millions in design and usability research.  Were are the "Open Source" customers?  Even if a "Open Source" project is successful what keeps it together(like after the lead developer, develops a life)?  How would any Company or Government agency keep up with all the forks and what works together on which platform(My only answer, consultants.  And they typically are not cheap).

After long last Microsoft has finally released SQL 2005 Compact Edition (formerly known as SQL Mobile)download link.  The question to be answered is how it took so long to allow support outside of the mobile platform and why it took Microsoft so long to wake up and think this might be a good idea?  When I was looking for a light weight desktop Database I only saw one good prospect SQLite (which also had an update January 9).  At any rate its nice Microsoft has something better then Access DB  to offer Client side programmers.  If you want to compare SQLITE and SQL 2005 Compact Edition.  Also I have found a nice ADO.NET 2.0 data adapter for SQLITE at System.Data.SQLite.  Overall SQLite has been a nice little database that we haven't had any real issues with, unlike our Access db.

Rick Strahl was complaining about component vendors poor selling techniques and I agree. His rant was inspired by Kevin Dente's post How NOT to sell software (Kevin got free license out of his post, oh the power of public forums.) 

I am also getting sick and tired of the licenses hoops we have jump through in order to install third party components on our DEV systems and the crap it entail to get them working on a build system.  I can't count the number of bugs filed from some novel approach to license control screwing up an end build.

As it turns out, If you define and implement your whole class/structure in a .h file a consumer needs to mark it #pragma unmanaged.  If you don't delete will get confused and issue the errors i received from my earlier post.

Would you like to just get some work done in VC++ 2005 or 2007?  Then rename or delete the following file:
<VS root path>\VC\vcpackages\feacp.dll

Beware class view(I don't use it my project is to large) will no longer work.  And c++ winforms will not work.  I have Visual Assist X and CodeRush/Refactor! so i still have all that Intellisense offers only better!

 

With one little mistake comes a nasty memory leak.  We found this in some of the code i wrote

CMenu* CLMI::GetLenderMenu(void)
{
    //test if lender should show up if not
    if ( !ShowLender() )
        return NULL;

    CMenu* clm = new CMenu();......

Sadly clm was never reclaimed, and MFC redraws the Main menu every time you blink so can you say bad :(

This is interesting, I am moving a vc++ project to VS 2005.  When i run it in debug mode i receive this error:

---------------------------
Microsoft Visual C++ Debug Library
---------------------------
Debug Assertion Failed!

Program: c:\Dev\Point\PointMain\Debug\Winpoint.exe
File: dbgdel.cpp
Line: 52

Expression: _BLOCK_TYPE_IS_VALID(pHead->nBlockUse)

For information on how your program can cause an assertion
failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts.

This I can trace back to the call to delete in this function:

    void RemoveIt(CDlgAncItem* item)
    {
        if (item)
        {
            RemoveIt(item->next);
            delete(item);
        }
    }

The CDlgAncItem is a class it has a destructor and a copy constructor.  I am not sure why the debugger is losing track of the memory, Its a pretty simple data structure stored in a dynamically allocated link list.
Edit: I found a solution.

Looks like its time to start playing with Orcas.  After reading this month's CTP download details there finally looks to be some meat.

Download the CTP VPC image at:

Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" - January 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP)

Since I am still working on my blog about what I did for my winter break I thought I would share a couple items that I noticed in this morning.

Alfred Thompson's Blog talks about an issue I think of whenever I hear Spec documentation is being designed without customer involvement. And I found Scott Gu's announcement that the new Yahoo Messenger is build with WPF and .net rather interesting.