Alastair Q's Q&A profile

• Visual Studio Express Editions Send Network Message

  I’ts possible to send messages between pc’s like the net send command, how can I do that Don't know about VB EE, but it can launch CMD windows and batch files. See this link if all else fails. http://zeus.osix.net/modules/article/ id=675 ...Show All

• SQL Server Do we really need query based optimisation?

  Hello, I was playing with the Query based optimisation in SQL2005. - it is not available by default, you have to enable the query log in the server properties - it generates 1 out of 10 queries log entry - 1 out of 10 query is still a large number of log entries if you have many users and many cubes, 1 out of 10 does not filter any redundant queries. - I also tried to use this mechanism to create an usage audit log, Log table becomes bloated very quickly. - tried to optimise the partitions based on this mechanism and did not see any performance boost. I wonder in which cases this option really makes a difference. I went through all the dimensions design best practices I could find and I finally came to the conc ...Show All

• Smart Device Development Cradling emulator

  I'd like to know how can I make cradling work. I had it working - it succeeded after manual doing File->Conn.Settings->Connect on ActiveSync 4.1 and cradled PPC5 emulator. I have PPC 5 SDK installed on Win XP SP2 and Win2003 Server SP1 + VS2005 on both. It stopped working after ActiveSync re-installing on 2003Srvr. On XP it had never worked. I hadn't DMA transport in ActiveSync conn. options, only COM1/2 - in all cases. I read that I posiibly will need to install Virtual PC 2004 to add DMA to ActiveSync. Is this right Can you please check if DeviceEmulatorProxy.dll and SerDMAAsPlugin.dll are present in directory from where you are doing the registration ...Show All

• Windows Forms Change Opacity of form...?

  Hi... I want to change the 'Opacity' property of my form when i move my form using mouse from one place to another while application is running. I want same effect as we can see when we get an exception while debugging any application in VS2005. We get one form & if we try to move that form its opacity chnges & that form becomes normal when we stop moving that form. Thank & Regards, Vinay Vinay, You might try throwing a call to Application.DoEvents() in after you set the Opacity to ensure that it gets processed by the form. Dan ...Show All

• .NET Development Interop troubles with excel

  I asked this in the VB forum, but think it is more suited here. My application (VS2005) uses the interop assembly 11.0 to communicate with excel. 11.0 is the version for excel 2003. When I put the application on a client machine, it's fine provided the user has excel 2003 and either the PIAs are installed, or I distribute the dlls with my application. However, I've just tried this on a machine with O2007 and it's not working. I have installed the O2007PIAs on the client machine. Any ideas I assumed the O2007PIAs would be compatable with O2003... Early binding is typically preferable since there is type checking at compile time when references are resolved. With late binding the references are re ...Show All

• Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc. z-order: best sort algorithm

  I was just wondering: We need to sort the objcts to render in z-Order or reverse z-Order to render a scene with transparencey, e.g. 1. solid objects from near to far 2. transparent/semitransparent objects from far to near Of course one could just calculate the distance from the camera and run a quicksort over the list. But considering a really "bad" scene with many objects this might be a huge costfactor in matter of CPU time. So taken this scenario: a relativly static scene with a lot of objects and a moving camera. The sort order will in most cases change only slightly due to the camera movement. So from this thought wouldn't it make sense to keep the sorted lists and just correct them Has anybody used an approach like ...Show All

• Windows Forms Newbie trying to get comboboxes to read from SQL Tables

  Hi. I'm in the process of converting an old app to VB6. I was able to create a ADODB connection to my main SQL Tables without having to drop the ADODC control on my form. But the problem I'm having is I have 25 other smaller tables I built to handle things like States, Inventory Codes, Locations, etc.. but I can't get these tables to connect to the comboboxes I laid out on my form. I've tried the Help files and three different books but haven't been able to get a solution. Can anybody point me in the right direction Thanks in advance..... Hi I understand you have a few controls on your form, and would like to populate data into these controls from SQL. Is this correct If so, you may wish to use Exec ...Show All

• Audio and Video Development unsetProperty and state

  This has come up a couple of times, so I decided to blog about it (and include a little demo app). The fun is yours to be had at http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2006/09/08/746678.aspx ...Show All

• SQL Server What's In A SQL Transaction Log File?

  My LDF file started out at 504K and pretty much maintained it while my dB grew. It became apparent that I needed to delete some records - perhaps no more than 100. Also, I had to do this several times because of poor coding. Well, long story short - the LDF jump to 450MB. The dB also went up an extra 30MB or so, but even though I added many records, the dB didn't grow - obviously, lots of extra space remain unused. Question is, since the data is in the dB and the delete records contained errors... I could possiblely delete the transaction logs - after all, I don't need to deleted transaction records do I Also, is there a free LDF log viewer Normally when you make a backup of the dtabase .. ...Show All

• .NET Development What components end up in the compiled EXE ?

  If I have a program that references 3 dll's that I made, is there any indication of those DLL's in the final, single, EXE after compilation I want to be able to find out what components make up a RUNNING exe program, but if all that information disappears on compilation, I won't be able to find out. Any ideas The dll's which are part of the system namespace DON'T end up to be part of the exe. Yes, sure you can deploy the exe on another PC without the system dll's because these dll's are already installed on that PC (when you installed the .NET framework). And you need to deploy all the dlls which are references directly or indirectly by your exe which aren't net framework system dll's. So, as a conclusion the dlls (syste ...Show All

• .NET Development Windows monitor

  Can I write a windows service in .NET that monitors what happens on a server (e.g.. which applications where started, what files where accessed, registry changes,...) Do you know where I can get some sample code... I need to monitor: Processes Running Files changed ... Thanks ...Show All

• Visual C# Value conversions between datatypes

  I'm migrating a program from C++ unmanaged to C# managed. This software reads from binary encoded files a whole bunch of information. The files are set up to store values in large buffers in the file in a very generic way so any particular DWORD sized segment inside one of these buffers can contain a value of a variety of different simple datatypes. For example, an entry could contain a byte a char a char[4] a uint16 a float etc... Now in the C++ software this was accomplished using a typedef struct with a union in it. The union had a member for all the various datatypes that the entry (DWORD size) would contain. Something like so: typedef struct Generic { union   { DWORD dwdata;     int   intdata; &n ...Show All

• Visual C# using vb6 component ?

  Hi, Is there a way to use vb6 components in C#, just like in old asp (Server.CreateObject)... I tried with Activator.CreateInstance but didn't worked...is continue to as kfor the reference... POC I mean to say, you create your own dll in VB (as you do not have access to the current one) and add a test method in that which might return a simple string. Then check if it is able to return the string value in your c# code.. hope you are getting me.... ...Show All

• .NET Development Generate Dataset VS.Net 2005

  Hi In VS.Net 2003 I could Create an Xml file. Sketch out some nodes. Right click and create an Xsd The Xsd got added to the project I could open the Xsd and right click and Generate Dataset Then use the Strongly Typed Dataset I am using RC0 VS.Net 2005 It seems this flow is no longer there. I've worked around it. It takes several steps. Is the flow hidden somewhere Thanks Hi, John you wrote: The typed dataset will be generated for you Generated where. I did that, but where is it generated. the same xsd file or different. I can t find the generatee file. Thanks. ...Show All

• Visual Studio Report from DataSet

  I still have problem with my testReport. I managed in previous topic to bind report to dataset: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx PostID=1002930&SiteID=1 but I used SetDatabaseLogon method. Do I have to use this method even if the testReport is connected to dataSet and not to DataBase The main goal is to print reports as fast as posible. I wanted to create dataSet that would be sporadically upgraded in background and reports binded to this dataSet... What that probably means is that your dataset does not match what the report was designed off of. If you try viewing the report, you will be prompted for database logon. Best way to test this is to write out the xml file with schema from ...Show All