I had previously posted how to Truncate Logs for SQL Server 2005. Unfortunately, this method does not work in SQL Server 2008. The reason is because the “WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY” command is no longer in SQL 2008. Assuming you run in full recovery mode, the new script to do this is:


USE [{DatabaseName}]
GO
ALTER DATABASE [{DatabaseName}] SET RECOVERY SIMPLE
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE({TransactionLogLogicalName})
GO
ALTER DATABASE [{DatabaseName}] SET RECOVERY FULL
GO


Simply setting the database mode into simple recovery mode performs the actual truncation but the file is not shrunk by that. DBCC SHRINKFILE will take care of that second step. And don’t forget to put it back into full recovery mode at the end!!

-Shane

I was recently asked how to identify the user your ASP.NET application uses to authenticate as. This can be a simple question or a bit more involved. Let’s start with the simple answers first.

Default Accounts:
Windows XP, Windows 2000, and earlier (you should NOT be caring about earlier!):
ASPNET – this is created automatically by the .NET Framework

Windows Vista, Windows 2003, and newer:
NETWORK_SERVICE

Overridden Examples:
Just because that is the default, it doesn’t mean that it is that way for your application. The first place to check is in the Advanced Settings for your Application Pool. This should tell you the account your application will default to if you don’t override it within your application.

Next, you can check your web.config to see if you’re application is impersonating a user. This is the next level of defaults to check. (and perhaps machine.config too, but you should probably NOT be overriding it there!) This will override the above defaults.

Now that you have checked there, the next thing to do is identify what type of IIS Authentication is being used. If anonymous, then you’re done – it will default to the above defaults in that overriding order. If you’re using ASP.NET impersonation, then that should default to the above as well. If you’re using Basic, Digest, Forms, or Windows authentication, then the authentication will be based on the user that the end-user logs in as.

Things can get even trickier if you do things in code, but generally this will figure it out for you.

-Shane

I usually keep to technical topics on here but this one is going to take a step back.

In the past I have been a consultant through nearly my entire career. I have gone into new [to me] businesses, listened to what they wanted, helped them learn what they needed, helped them determine the correct solution for their need, often helped create these solutions or worked with the teams who created the solutions, helped the companies implement and deploy these solutions, helped with training, helped with post-deployment support, and anything else you can think of that goes with the territory. I have worked on single-person projects and have worked with teams ranging from 2 to 15 people. I have participated as a supporting developer, the lead developer, a supporting architect, the lead architect, a business analyst, and even a project manager on these different teams.

For the past year and a half, I have been working with the Indiana State Supreme Court on a project called eCWS. On this project I was the architect and lead developer in a team with 8 developers. My team and I designed, created, and maintained this entire system from scratch and won at least 3 international awards with the project. As of the time I rolled off of this project about a month ago the system had logged approximately 1 million citations and warnings, consisted of a laptop-based and PDA-based client (both of which were rock-solid and easily maintainable), a web-based client system, as well as some web-based server components while integrating with various electronic court systems (and of course most of these systems shared a common code-base to keep the code manageable).

Also, for the past year, I have helped to create the Indianapolis ALT.NET user group and have acted as the president of the user group. I have attempted to push a wonderful movement in furthering the community’s education on best practices and broadening the community’s range of thinking to more outside-the-box tools and techniques. As we are now, we are one of the most active and organized ALT.NET user groups in the world (and we’re about to step things up to the next level)!

For the past month I have done some consulting work for an older client of mine while waiting for negotiations and planning for “the big one” to come through. I’ve been ready to advance my career and, in doing so, will be stepping out of the consulting role I have been so successful in for years. Beginning today I will be joining the EnerGenuity team here in Indianapolis. EnerGenuity currently has a great software suite that keeps their customers happy (which include Fortune 500 and other companies). My official title, I think, is something like Technology and Product Development Manager (for the first time I’ll have a legitimate title and not one that I make up on-the-spot as so many software developers/consultants do!). In short, I will be leading the IT team for EnerGenuity. This is sure to be a challenging and rewarding experience in my life and I think EnerGenuity and I are a great match for each other! I think I have so much to offer and they have so much they need and the details in both of these seem like an absolutely perfect match!

So… that’s about it. Just thought I’d give you an update of what I was up to.

-Jax

So I was at work today with my 24″ LCD thinking, “Man, I wish I had a convenient way to organize/resize my windows such that I could see several at once beyond a generic ‘Tile Windows’ configuration.” So I remembered a little utility that kinda did this with a laptop I bought a couple years back by Acer called “Vista Grid”. But that didn’t quite tickle my fancy so I looked for some better alternatives.

The search led me to WinSplit Revolution (WSR). Yeah, it’s kind of a cheap-sounding name (kinda like www.superantispyware.com, which, by the way, is one of the better free anti-spyware apps out there!), but I really like it, plus it’s totally free!

So here were several requirements which I had for this type of utility:

1. It must run on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7
2. It must allow me to configure the various “click-to” zones for windows (so I could, for instance, have one window take up 80% of the screen and 2 other windows share the remaining 20%, or something like that)
3. It must run nicely on multiple monitors (something that several utilities failed to do)
4. It must be free (mostly because there are free options that will be good enough)

How did most of these work?
Well, most of them worked by either doing a special thing with the mouse (such as moving it over a “click-to zone” and hovering in the same place for 5 seconds), or a keyboard shortcut placing the window in focus, or a combination of both. Some of them had special features that allowed you to “auto-tile” all active windows in a grid fashion (not just side-by-side). Some of them had special features similar to Windows 7 with some non-configurable zones. And some of them had some other not-so-important features.

Why did I choose WinSplit Revolution?
WSR wasn’t the flashiest app. It wasn’t even the easiest-to-use app. But it was the best mix of all of the above. This app requires you to type in the locations and sizes for each zone rather than giving you a GUI to configure it with (both good and bad – more flexible but requires actual thought to get it right!). This app misses some of the flashy features that I mentioned above. BUT… This app worked best with a combination of multiple monitors, flexible configuration (even with overlapping zones), and was small and speedy. That was mostly what I was looking for.

So my configuration, for instance, consists of a laptop with a 24″ LCD attached to it above the laptop (this is my “Communication Box” while working). I use it mostly for email, twitter, IM, and feed-reading window. As such, I like to keep Thunderbird in the top screen taking up 2/3 of the screen left-to-right and 100% top-to-bottom. Then the right-most third is shared between a couple Twhirl clients. But sometimes I’ll overlay Thunderbird with other windows when I need to see additional things (PDFs, Word docs, browser windows, etc.). Then on the laptop’s LCD, I mostly just maximize things so it’s not important.

Another configuration I have is a desktop that has a 24″ LCD rotated 90 degrees to the left of a 23″ LCD that’s normal. In this setup, I typically have a couple browser windows open in the rotated LCD, one on top of the other and sometimes maximized. In the main window I’ll often have Visual Studio maximized, two Visual Studios side-by-side, or sometimes a primary Visual Studio on the left half and two Visual Studios sharing the right half (if I need more than 3 instances of Visual Studio, then they move to the left screen, which HAS happened before!).

Anyways, I think you get the point. This utility allows me to make MUCH better use of my high-resolution LCDs whether they’re 19×12 (my 24″ ones) or 20×11 (my 23″ one – yeah, wierd resolution). In the end, it gets two thumbs up! And yes, I realize I posted no screen shots. That’s mostly because there isn’t much to take screenshots of! The most interesting things are textboxes where I type in percentages! If you wanna see, just download and install for yourself.

-Jax

We now have a newly revamped Indy ALT.NET site up and online! While we’re not completely done with it, we are far enough along to go ahead and turn it on for the time being. Very soon we will be filling out some of the interactive portions but for now it is fast and has all of the necessary information there!

So why did we do this? Several reasons…
1. The original site was a wiki system manipulated into being a community-type site. It worked, but was a little strange.
2. The original host was donating their services to us and we had began to overstay our welcome.
3. Our original replacement .NET-based CMS was not as efficient for us to manage as we had hoped.
4. Our original replacement host had very serious availability issues (also donated hosting).

So as a result, we ended up choosing a PHP-based CMS and are paying a little bit of money for some proper hosting. And what you see is the result! A (soon-to-be) proper community site that is very responsive for you, very flexible for everybody, and very easy for us to maintain and update. All-in-all, a good site for the group!

Major kudos go out to Sasha Kotlyar for all of the hard work with getting this up and running! Without him, we’d still have a pretty crappy site!

Have you ever had to send control/alt/delete via Windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services? If you try it, it ends up being caught on your local client machine. I just stumbled upon a nice trick. If you send [CTRL] + [ALT] + [END], then it will have the effect of [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL].

Go try it out!

IndyTechFest registration is now open! This year there is a limit of 500 registrations (I believe last year’s was like 400 and it was booked up within just a couple weeks). So I strongly encourage you to register sooner rather than later!

There is a great lineup of speakers and sessions at this year’s IndyTechFest! Some of the speakers I have seen speak before include Paul Hacker, Larry Clarkin, Michael Eaton, Arie Jones, Tom Pizzato, Dan Rigsby, and Bill Steele. There are many other great speakers that I know or have heard of. This should be an excellent event and one that is worth a good long drive to get to!

Some of the sessions that I’m really looking forwards to include Test Driven Development (TDD) w/ VS 2008, Tips and Tricks for the New C#, Tips and Tricks for the New VB .NET, Duplexing WCF in the Enterprise, and Virtualization of SQL Server. There are many other sessions that I’m going to hope to get to but alas, with it being a one-day event, I doubt I’ll get to most of the ones I really want to see.

Props to the people who worked hard to make this event possible, including Brad Jones, Dave Leininger, John Magnabosco, Mark McClellan, and Bob Walker, as well as all of the support of the local user groups to help drive the event!

Just as I was wrapping this post up, I received a phone call. Apparently as of 1pm (1 hour after registration opened), nearly HALF of all available registration slots were filled! If you read this post and have not registered, go register NOW and don’t wait or you’ll be left out!

A friend and colleague of mine, Eric Willeke, has helped lead a team to create and deploy an interesting new site at www.inkubook.com where an ordinary person can take the pictures they have taken with their digital camera and make a simple and professional-looking bound photo book based on them. Erik has posted a bit more about it here. It’s a great example of a nice, clean, Silverlight 2.0 app that focuses on the end user experience and not on trying to show off the bells and whistles of the platform.

Ignoring the technology, this is a great site and idea! For as little as $14 (softback) to $25 (hardback), you can have the pictures printed and bound into a nice little book. His team has done a wonderful job and this site offers a great little product! If you’ve spent hundreds to thousands of dollars on a trip or vacation, why would you NOT want to dish out another $25 to be able to cherish it and share it with others? Also, if you forgot to buy somebody a souvenir while you were out, this would be a great thing to consider as well!

-Shane

PS. Mom, if you see this and get something like this from my trip to Vegas last weekend, it’s NOT because I forgot to get you something!!

On Tuesday (July 8, 2008) evening, Sasha Kotlyar, Dean Weber, and I made a spontaneous trip to Cincinnati to check out the CinArc group (not to be confused with this CinARC). This group is Cincinnati’s Architecture User Group and seems to be mostly .NET-based. They are a very new group as this was only their second meeting. They meet monthly on the second Tuesday of the month. Their current meeting-format is that of a fishbowl meeting. You can read more on Wikipedia about this here.

I must say, the three of us Hoosiers really enjoyed ourselves at CinArc! Despite the downpours, rush-hour construction, and construction barrels we had to dodge in the middle of the road, it was great! Oh, and I won a door prize as well! I walked out with a VS2008 Pro license (only had MSDN-based licenses before, now I have a permanent license!). The group is led by Mike Wood, who also happens to lead the Cincinnati .NET User Group. Lots of other people were also in attendance (I’m not even going to attempt to name them because I’m horrible with names and I’ll surely forget some of them but turns out I follow lots of them on Twiter). There was a total of 19 people there with 5 chairs in the middle of the fishbowl (1 moderator, 3 speakers, 1 open). It was great that they veered away from the norm where it was a very interactive discussion and almost everybody participated in it.

The agenda for the meeting was different than what I’ve been used to for user group meetings, and I really liked it! I’m used to food before hand, kicking things off with announcements, then going into the discussion for the rest of the night, and door prizes at the end. What they did, instead, was kick things off with the discussion, about an hour into it take a break for food, kick the second half off with announcements, go back into the discussion after the nice little break, and then door prizes at the end. The trick to accomplishing this is timing on the food and if it can be pulled off, I may actually try to assimilate this style into the ALT.NET meetings! However, one important part of the ALT.NET meetings, I feel, is the social time spent before the meeting. Perhaps we can have snacks and drinks available then and real food available at “Halftime”.

One other thing that was really neat was that the meeting attendees were able to choose the topics to discuss. Ideas were put up on a whiteboard as recommended by the people there, and then everybody voted on the ones that they were most interested in participating in discussion with. There were 3 topics that seemed to be the most popular, and it turned out that we had time to discuss 3 topics. So it worked out perfectly!

As I said before, I had a great time at CinArc and I highly recommend it to anybody who is in the area and is interested in best architecture practices and bouncing ideas off of one another! There were some extremely intelligent guys at this group and it’s great that they are trying to expand knowledge in the community and help one another! I can already see this is going to be a very popular user group in the future! I hope some of those guys come visit some of our Indy events, and I just may try and pick up some Reds tickets some second Tuesday of the month afternoon so I have a good excuse to be in town again for another CinArc meeting!

-Shane

I don’t know about you but I’ve got a pretty busy schedule! In about a 1-week period, I will have gone to an IndyNDA meeting, an ITEC conference, an IndyPASS meeting, and an Indy ALT.NET meeting. Trying to get all of these meetings and dates straight is kind of a PITA! Because of that, I just (over the past 5 hours or so) put up www.IndyTechEvents.com as a single site to hopefully consolidate all of the local tech events being put on.

The site is pretty simple and has a forum section and a calendar section. I don’t know how heavy the forums will be used but hopefully the calendar (the main part of it in my little dream world) will be kept up-to-date by the various location user groups and other communities. I plan on giving moderator access to the leaders of the location user groups (and perhaps a representative) so they can be in full control of their events and even any forums focused on their user groups or the technology that their user group focuses on.

I’ve gone ahead and posted all of the June events that I’m aware of but I’m sure I’ve missed some, so if you know of any, please let us know so we can fix it! And if you’re somebody who should have moderator access, let me know and I’ll make it so!

Check it out: http://www.IndyTechEvents.com

-Shane

PS. If I left out your user group, sorry! It’s now 2am and I’m sure I’m sleepier than I should be releasing a new site.