Dressing the Database in Big-Boy Pants, Part 2
Last time I wrote about using dbdeploy to easily create local databases and to automatically apply changes to the development, staging and production databases. The other change I made recently was to add stored procedure unit tests.
I looked briefly at frameworks specifically for testing databases, but didn't see a …
Dressing the Database in Big-Boy Pants, Part 1
I've mentioned previously that I'm in no danger of being mistaken for a DBA, but I've recently made a few changes in how we work with our database that have upped the maturity level a bit.
Previously we had a single development database shared by all. This is an inflexible …
Updating an Amazon Linux AMI to Python 2.7
I've been doing some work with Linux lately, a new thing for me, and feel a bit like I've been thrown into the deep end and told to swim. Today I updated Python to version 2.7 on an EC2 instance.
Amazon Linux (Basic 64-bit Amazon Linux AMI 2011.09 …
The Holiday Amazon Box Problem
By the time Christmas comes around, our house is usually awash with boxes from Amazon. It gets a bit tricky at that point, because I'm never sure if the box is something I ordered to give to my family, or something someone else sent me as a gift. In the …
Batch File Libraries
I've always considered batch files as kind of ghetto. Anything too complex devolves into a morass of gotos and labels. But I recently put together some install batch scripts that I was actually pleased with, including a clean mechanism for sharing common code.
A while back, I used WiX to …
Suppressing CA1062 with a Helper Function
I think Visual Studio's static analysis warning for checking parameters for null before they are used is generally a good idea, but the code to check the parameters can get really tedious.
Before addressing the tedium, though, why does it even matter whether you check for null arguments and throw …
Migrating from TFS to SVN
I've just spent the past few days migrating a Team Foundation Server source repository to Subversion. It took longer and was more difficult than I expected it to be.
Of course, the easy way is to just get the latest from the TFS repository and add all of the files …
IIS Configuration with WiX and Appcmd
I recently spent some time building an install package for a web application using WiX. There are some nice IIS extensions for WiX to help with that, but they're missing the ability to set some advanced properties, like an Application Pool's "Enable 32 Bit Applications" property.
Matt Honeycutt has a …
This solution contains a web site...
I kept getting a message from Visual Studio 2008 when opening a solution saying:
This solution contains a web site at 'http://localhost/Services'. There is already a web site at this location on this computer. Do you wish to use this existing location for your web site (existing files …
Defeating Antivirus System Pro
Antivirus System Pro is an irksome piece of malware that holds your computer hostage until you pay a ransom. It is nothing short of extortion. I just spent a few evenings removing it from a friend's computer, and the dozens of articles on the web (and even YouTube videos) were …