Wednesday, December 30, 2009

MySpace.com uses iBATIS.NET for persistence

iBATIS.NET the .net port of the iBATIS Java ORM is being used by MySpace.com http://www.infoq.com/news/2006/11/iBATIS-MySpace

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Using the free space in one drive to give more space on another

I run into an issue today when I wanted to have something on my C: drive that exceeds the current free space, I have more free space on other drives but I don’t want to go into extending my C: drive by using tools like Partition Magic as I had a bad experience with it before.

I decided to give hard links a try, and after some googling I found that I need to use the junction.exe from Sysinternals because Windows don’t

So, if you need to have a folder on C: drive that points to another folder on D: drive, you just need to call junction like this:

junction C:\MyFolder D:\MyFreeSpace

You will deal with C:\MyFolder as a normal folder, but actually all files will be stored in D:\MyFreeSpace

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Generate (a new) GUID each time you run an MSBuild Script

Sometimes we need to generate a new GUID and use it as part of a build script, for example when building a new version of a Setup project.

MSBuild built-in tasks don’t provide such facility, however there 2 options:

1.MSBuild Community Tasks (Script Task)

The Script task from MSBuild Community Task allows the execution of .net code contained within the task. It will be very simple to call System.Guid.NewGuid() and return the string into an MSBuild Property.

 

<PropertyGroup>
  <GuidGenFunction>
    <![CDATA[
      public static string ScriptMain() {
          return System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString().ToUpper();
      }
      ]]>
  </GuidGenFunction>
</PropertyGroup>

<Script Language="C#" Code="$(GuidGenFunction)">
      <Output TaskParameter="ReturnValue" PropertyName="NewGuid" /> 
</Script> 
<Message Text="Guid: $(NewGuid)" />

 

 

2.Sedodream MSBuild Project (CreateGuid Task)

http://sedodream.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=CreateGuid

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Automating UI Testing

Automating UI testing is one of topics that I recently became interested in, not because I am trying to be a tester yet; but because we are implementing an automated UI test engine as part of my current development project in ITWorx.

I have to thank Dr. James McCaffrey for authoring his book “.NET Test Automation Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach”; this book was really the base that get my foot on the road and encouraged me to dig into this mysterious world.

He was as well very helpful when be contacted and asked; guiding his readers into the right direction.

Someone would ask; why did we go into developing our own thing while there are lots of tools to do the same job ? the answer would take more time if I like to describe the business requirements that lead to this decision, but in short we had to make this as part of another application and hence buying a tool was not an option to avoid expensive licensing costs.

Some of the already existing tools that I stumbled upon are:

  • HP's QuickTest Pro
  • Eggplant
  • IBM Rational Robot

I have also written few posts around this topic, they worth checking here