Google Gear Vs. Web Browsers

A few days ago, Google released a beta (of course) version of a new open-source project called Gear.

Gear's main aim is to enabled online applications work offline as well.
Notice I didn't say web-based as the Gear API is open for RIA solutions as well - even more - Adobe's Apollo (Adobe's answer to WPF) project manager said it would have integrated support for the Gear API.

What Is This Gear Anyway?
Well its a very good question, since it's current release is really in its early beta stages and is probably due for some major changes, but its basically a browser plugin (currently supports only FireFox & IE under Window) which exposes a complete framework of utilities to store and retrieve... anything!
Whether it's image or script resources or applicative user-data - everything can be stored (per user of course) and retrieved easily like a hash map or using a simple ansi-sql like language!

This really sounds amazing, but what does this really means?
For the last decade or so, web browsers has become allot more that just an html engines, they now offer local cache, storing user-based data using cookies and saving your forms data.

But then Gear came.

But Why Is Gear Better Than My Existing Browser Solutions?

Because it does everything the browser does, only better.
Here's why:
1. Caching: Although client-side cache is a good thing, its one of the web-developer's worst nightmares - think of updating a script file and not knowing if your clients are using the new version, or the old and buggy one since their browser decided to store it.
Using Gear, you get the power to store resource files by version and retrieve them using a simple sql-like query or key-based!
You then not only don't have to worry if a new version is used or not, but you could also force a selected resource to be cached!

2. Cookies: Not only cookies have a limit on size and content data (cookies have a content security policy), but you don't know if cookies are enabled and if they do, if the client decided to delete them or not.
Using Gear you can save your data per-user using a secure manner, and retrieve no matter what browser your client uses.

There are many other reasons why Gear is good, but I haven't got to Gear's main goal - offline accessibility.

One of the biggest web-based mail client draw-backs is the necessity of being connected to the net.
Think of connection to your gmail or hotmail - for that matter - even while not connected to the net! or even better - to your online Google docs!

Summary
Gear is a set of client-side utilities that enable you to get a bigger handle on how and what data is stored on your client machine without worrying about his\hers browsers settings, allowing you to build a complete offline-accessible web-based solution!

Could this be a knockout to Web\RIA based solutions over the smart-client technologies?

A (Not So) New UI Front-End Alternative

When we're going to start a new project, we're accustomed to the standard 3-tier architecture, and although most of us will probably choose the same frameworks for our data and logic tiers, it's because these frameworks gives us everything we expect them to.

But what about our most important tier, the one that will make people buy our products - the UI tier? it looks like we don't have that kind of luxury of choosing a framework and we'll probably use ASP.Net.

And don't get me wrong - I really like ASP.Net and there are many splendid Ajax tool-kits\frameworks out-there that really are great,
But at the end of the day its basically HTML, and HTML is no fun - its too abstract, requires us to use Scripting languages which are hard to maintain and develop, not Object-Oriented, insecure, platform-dependent (each browser has its own engine) and many other cons.

So after cussing for a couple of days we'll probably use ASP.Net and be happy with it, because there is no other option...

Isn't there?


Adobe Flex Flash Developer
For most of us, Flash still sounds like a kids app for funny videos and games.
But apparently its a fully compliant Object-Oriented language!
So here are 3 facts you didn't know about flash:

1. Cross-Platform: Flash is supported for over 10 platforms amongst them are: Windows, Linux, Mac, Nokia (*), Solaris, Palm OS, BeOS and more.

2. Performance: From results of a benchmark done a few weeks ago, (See Benchmark Here) Flash is faster than Microsoft's new alternative - WPF\E, and on certain circumstances even faster than WPF!

3. IDE: Since mid 2004, Flash has a fully featured IDE based on the open-source Eclipse.

The most amazing thing about Flash is that it's absolutely server-side agnostic.
You could build a fully managed .Net back-end and connect your Flash GUI smoothly to it by WebServices or even directly call to your .Net methods.

Yep that's right using Macromedia's Remoting MX technology you can directly call your .Net methods from the flash code (Here's how)


Conclusion:
Before you start developing you next project, you should check reall good if ASP.Net is really the best way...

Sternr's Complete Programmer Tutorial

Many people ask me, "sternr, how can one be like you - such a brilliant, funny yet good looking programmer???" ,

Well my friends, I decided to do my duty to man kind, and reveal my 10 steps to become a hardcore programmer!

Sternr's Complete HowTo Tutorial for Becoming a Hardcore Programmer

1. You're not a programmer, you're a Software Engineer.
And a damn good one if I might say.

2. There is no combination of upper-case letters you haven't heard of.
You simple know it by its earlier code name.

3. The Dual Buzzword Principle - Use as many buzzwords as you can.
but beware - there is a small and extincting specie of bold programmers who might ask you to explain what it means.
But even these rare few will not dare to ask twice - and here comes the duality principle: always save a backup buzzword to explain the buzzword.

4. Every design\idea that is not yours has a flaw.
If you cant find it, than it's a security hole - and besides, you would've done it differently...

5. NEVER argue with the Sysadmin - unlike the programmer next door, he really know what he's talking about.

6. Your code is NOT complex and hard to maintain.
It's simply flexible. very flexible.

7. The future is here - advice and talk as much as you can about technologies & products that still have no release date.
You cant be contradicted, yet no hard question can be asked - the design is not final...

8. Install a Linux on at least one of your computers.
You don't have to study, like or use it. but you must have one.
Note: It is recommended to say once a day (don't overdue else you'd be asked questions you cant answer) why you prefer Linux

9. Command Line - Use it as much as you can.
Everyone knows its stupid, but it looks impressive.

10. This is the last, but most important.
In the Hi-Tech industry - and IT especially, people are measured by 2 things and 2 things only: Self Confidence, and Experience.

It is very unfortunate (one might notice that this has nothing to do with how smart or good one is...) but true.

And because of it, it doesn't matter how much or what mistakes you do, its simply how you react to them, its how you react in meetings, and especially under pressure.

So simply stay cool.

Like me ;)

IIS 6.0 & "Connection Dropped" HTTP.sys Error

If you're an IIS (6.0) admin, you're probably quite familiar with the HTTP.sys error log, and even more with the "Connection Dropped" mysterious error.
Charis Ad has a great post explaining everything about this apparently not so dangerous error, here's his explanation.

Thanks Chris!

Whats Behind W3WP Number Three?

Why?
I mean, they've got different names, different id's maybe even different users, so why on earth does IIS 6.0 makes it so hard to know which w3wp.exe process is running which Application pool?!

Although Microsoft offers us the IISApp.vbs script - which does exactly what I want (and even allows you to do certain actions like pool recycling etc.), this script works only on the current machine and has no support for remote servers.

The quickest - yet dirtiest solution would be to run the script remotely - whether it's by using PSEXEC, or through telnet - it's all the same, but not really recommended, especially not on production...

So, what can we do?

WMI to the Rescue!

After some work, I've found out that each w3wp process hosting an Application pool has some very interesting command-line arguments, I'll discuss these arguments in the future but right now the important thing is - the last argument w3wp gets is - hold your breath - the AppPool name it runs! hooray!

Here's a little code sample on how to implement this using .Net:

using System.Management; // Add reference to System.Management

/* A simple Value Object representing one Application Pool */
public class AppPool()
{
    public int ProcessId;
    public string Name;
    public long UsedMemory;
}

/* Gets remote server's name, returns list of all AppPools */
private List<AppPool> getAppPools(string serverName)
{
    ManagementScope scope;

    /* Change the query to select * if you want more details */
    SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery(
"SELECT ProcessId, CommandLine, WorkingSetSize FROM Win32_Process Where Name = 'w3wp.exe'");

    ManagementObjectSearcher searcher;
    List<AppPool> appPools = new List<AppPool>();

    /* If you do not have sufficient rights, impersonate */
    ConnectionOptions options = new ConnectionOptions();
    options.Username = @"MyDomain\admin";
    options.Password = "pwd";
    options.EnablePrivileges = true;

    scope = new ManagementScope(
        @"\\" + serverName + @"\root\cimv2", options);
    scope.Connect();

    searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(scope, query);

    foreach (ManagementObject mob in searcher.Get())
    {
      AppPool appPool = new AppPool();
      PropertyData property = mob.Properties["CommandLine"];

      int pos;

      /* Now we parse the AppPool name from the args */
      appPool.Name = property.Value.ToString();
      pos = appPool.Name.Length - 1;
      appPool.Name = appPool.Name.Substring(0, pos);
      pos = appPool.Name.LastIndexOf("\"") + 1;
      appPool.Name = appPool.Name.Substring(pos);

      /* And find the processId for this AppPool */
      property = mob.Properties["ProcessId"];
      appPool.ProcessId = Convert.ToInt32(property.Value);

      /* General process info, i.e: memory usage */
      property = mob.Properties["WorkingSetSize"];
      appPool.UsedMemory = int.parse(property.Value.ToString());

      /* Convert from Bytes, to MBs */
      appPool.UsedMemory = appPool.UsedMemory / 1048576;

      appPools.Add(appPool);

    }

    return appPools;

}

Although I've written this code in .Net 2.0, except for the Generics, I think it should work on 1.x too...

T From Type Generics #2

Generics are fun. but from the first day I started playing with it, I was intrigued by one main question: how to really make it dynamic.

The hole problem lays in T - how the hell, do I create an instance of a generic type???

To be more clear, I'll give an example:


Lets say I have the following class:

public class GenericChild
{ /* Some Code Here */ }

Now, I want to be able to create GenericChild objects dynamically - at runtime, like the following:

public static void Main()
{
  object child = CreateChild(Type.GetType("System.Collections.ArrayList");

How will you implement the "CreateChild" method?


Type.MakeGenericType
Thanks to Oliver Sturm, I found out, that the Type object has been quite extended,
Take a look at the answer:

public static object CreateChild(Type t)
{
  Type origType = typeof(GenericChild<>);
  Type genType = origType.MakeGenericType(childType);
  return genType.Assembly.CreateInstance(genType.FullName);
}

Ah, the wonders of Generics ;)

The Search For The Ultimate Icon

In the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a Windows Application,
And while doing so, I've been exposed to the never ending chase after the perfect toolbar icon or tray image, and I have to say - I don't like it.

Well, my dear WinApp friends, search no more!

Thanks to Serge for enlightening us,it turns out M$ has already solve this annoyance for us (though they didn't bother to let us know...).

If you got to the VS.Net (2005) install dir:
***:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary
You'll find a nice zip file containing every icon, image, and even animation you've ever dreamed of! (no, there is no Angelina Jolie animation there...).

Generic Vs. Generated Code

Most IT applications encounter the same challenges - whether its how to implement the best user experience or how to make the application as flexible as possible - these question will raise in every enterprise web application.
Than the only question on stand is - how to implement this?

A couple weeks ago I started a new job.
The first few weeks of a new job - to my opinion - are the most effective if you want to open your mind to new\different implementations - after all there is no one answer for any of these questions - each has its pro's and con's.

But I'd like to focus on one very basic difference between many of the existing solutions out there: should my framework be based on generic code that will know to handle a variety of scenarios and systems, or a set of wizards and code generators?

Why Should I Choose Code Generation?
1. Time: Yep, you can lower you eye-brow and think about it - how much lines of code are there in a framework like NHibernate, and how much are there in Wilson's OR Mapper?
Its not that I'm judging Wilson's complexity, on the contrary - although the time it takes to get a stable beta for a complex code generator is less the half the time it takes writing a generic code, in most cases it will support the same amount of scenarios and maybe even have more features (because it can enjoy the advantages of strongly-typed code).

2. Performance: Because of the nature of generic code, it must support a variety of scenarios, objects, context etc. - hence it will parse configuration files, load assemblies, use reflection, and many other performance killers, whereas when working with code generation, the code generated is designed for the specific page\scenario\object and will use no reflection or type casting whatsoever.

3. Debugging: When I first started using NHibernate, it was on one of the early betas (version 0.7 I think...), needles to say it was very unstable, but the most annoying thing was when I got an exception while using it - to start debug it and understand the cause of the bug took me a couple of hours since I needed to understand the "black-box" code.
In code-gen, the code is as simple as it gets which makes reading it a lot easier.

4. Ease Of Use: Drag N' Drop your entities, check the "Lazy-Loading" check-box, and vuala you've got yourself a fully featured DAL. no config file wars, no xml-schema lookups no tutorials to read.
Simply put - you need to no nothing (is it really an advantage?).
The amount time it takes to teach your users how to use a code-gen wizard is usually less the time it takes them to understand the xml structure of the "black-box" config file.

There are several more pro's to code-generation, and yet still they are usually not taken seriously, why?

There are several reasons, but to sum it all to 3 words: S - O - C. Separation Of Concerns.

In its nature, generated code is not stand-alone, it doesn't matter if it's in separate classes, files or even projects (though it might be enough in some cases), it is still strongly-coupled with your code, hence a change in your code will result in re-generational.

But this is the best-case scenario, think of a bug found in production, you have to re-compile the whole application because of a bug in your framework! whereas in "black-box" (generic code), you simply replace the framework assemblies (with care!).

Conclusion:
It's true, code-generation is sexier (I cant believe I say that!!!), but in real world (enterprise) applications, it's simply too risky.

Problems Installing IIS On Windows XP SP2

Hey,
Recently I've reinstalled XPSP2 on my machine, and had hard time installing IIS on it.
After some crawling on the net, I've found this work-around:

first, make a backup for this file:

%windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb

run this on command line:

esentutl /p %windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb

click ok on the message box, then install the IIS and insert the original winxp installation cd when prompted for files.

And vuala!

(Courtesy of Chaim)