July 2005 - Posts
Automated EventLog Clearing and Backup Tool
Developers writing Windows Services would normally heavily use Windows EventsLog to log messages from the application to System,Application, Security etc builtin logs or to custom log sources too. During development the amount of messages getting logged would be enormous and sometimes during development and testing, we normally and frequently right click clear individual logs before re-running the service again.
I just thought instead of repeatedly doing this, let us put a small Windows Application, enumerate all the available System Logs. The user has to simply run the application, select the logs he wants to clear, and hit clear button.
Out of my own interest, I wanted to get some feel of GUI tricks in Windows Forms like ProgressBar and have used some tricks like ThreadPool to update the parent thread to update it. Tonight I would try to upload to DaffodilNet page at
http://www45.brinkster.com/daffodilnet/eventlogmanager.aspx
TODO:
There are lot of scope of improvement of this tool. Perhaps significant points to improve upon are:
- Backup target to EVT (EventLog Native File). I am trying to explore the feasibility with WMI Api in .NET like the ones in System.Management namespace.
- Security Checks. If a non-administrative user loads, then instead of attempting the thread and crashing it can proactively say 'Not all sections of the application are executable by the logged on user, since it needs additional administrative privileges'. Remember, when you run Disk Administrator in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Manager, you see this alert.
- Perhaps if you have some suggestion, do send me. I would try to incorporate it.
Dependency Walker
I was trying to figure out what are the dependencies for a OCX file which I was trying to package. Since I had only Visual Studio .NET in my system, I did'nt have a Dependency Walker (depends.exe).
A brief search in Google revealed this website http://www.dependencywalker.com/ which is the same tool that gets shipped with Visual Studio 6.0. I wanted to share this with my readers of the blog too for their use and reference.
QueryExpress -- Tool for Database Updates
A little neat tool from http://www.albahari.com/ which facilitates you to connect to SQLServer, Oracle or any OLEDB Compliant databases. Furthermore, it comes with its source code availability. Its salient features being Threading and Async QueryExecution, plain vanilla XML serializing of connection details and introducing developers to use TypedDataSet.
It was an interesting coincidence that I got to know of QueryExpress sometime about 3 years ago, when we were in a small organization in Chennai executing a portfolio management project for a client based in California. The database was IBM DB2 and there were no friendly database connector tools and the then ignorance of us in DB2 made us very desparate and discouraging.
A brief search in Google revealed this nice tool. This has enthralled me so much. Even me, nowadays try to update the source, to keep it as a supreme product.
Here are the links to QueryExpress:
- QueryExpress home on http://www.albahari.com/ : http://www.albahari.com/query express.html
- QueryExpress with ODBC Support: http://www45.brinkster.com/daffodilnet/queryexpress.aspx
Do send us suggestions on what you would like to see in QueryExpress...