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GotDotNet User Sample: Regex Snippets 1.1.0.1

 Last night I released a new version of RegexSnippets, source code (and app) available at:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=43D952B8-AFC6-491B-8A5F-01EBD32F2A6C

This tool allows you to save patterns to a favourites list.

This build also introduces a new Menu option (under Help) that let's you store links to valuable online resources - just drag a link from your browser onto the TreeView in the category that you want to store it in.

The data for saved patterns and links is stored in your MyDocuments folder.

F(riggin)Readable queue

Ingo's fine Remoting newsletter rolled in yesterday :-) A great read was his article about internals of the Lease based lifetime system implemented by .NET Remoting and how that and Garbage Collection play together. It reminded me reading the Jeff Richter book about the Framework when it first came out, and how much I enjoyed learning about how the GC process works.

     The Mysteries of Distributed Garbage Collection

Cool Macros Snipped

http://dotnetweblogs.com/jan/posts/6168.aspx

RegexSnippets

A couple of months ago I wrote a little regex tool named RegexSnippets and uploaded it to the user samples section on GotDotNet: http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=43d952b8-afc6-491b-8a5f-01ebd32f2a6c

As time has gone by, I've been amazed by the number of downloads that it has received.  The major advantage of this tool over some of the more powerful ones that are out there is that it offers the ability to save patterns to a "Favourites" list.  This is good, because you can easily get at all of your commonly used patterns such as (email, url, decimal, percentage etc).

Over the past couple of nights I've added a new feature to the tool which allows you to drag links to online resources from your browser and onto a TreeView:

If you would like to submit a link to a resource ( site, tool, book or artile ) with a "mouseover" description about the resource, please leave a comment at the bottom of this item with the details and I'll include the resource link in the version that I upload to GDN.  I'll also post a link next week when the updated sample is live on GDN.

Readers Digest

Couple of interesting things that I've digested lately...

AppUpdater article { http://staff.develop.com/gehtland/archives/00000010.html }
This article discusses a couple of the issues that you might need to consider when building AppUpdater into an application.

New MSDN site design { http://msdn.microsoft.com/default.aspx }
Love it! Feels much faster. I'm sure that this layout will reduce the number of clicks to find nuggets in the vault. My only immediate *gripe* was that I couldn't see a link to my most used resource - the BCL documentation - on the .NET Framework developer center! But, all-in-all, MSDN is now even better'er.

A Date with Brad (k) { http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/BradA/permalink.aspx/df970e36-3215-4b22-be69-2b95658216c1 }
I've used this once in a real app already :-)

The Xml Web Services Repertory { http://www.xmlwebservices.cc/index_MSKB.aspx }
If you write Web Services, bookmark this!

From the "There go my chances of ever working for Microsoft" dept.

Found this - and the associated links - to be fascinating reading:

http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/

From the "I wish I'd read this earlier" department

As someone mentioned the other day, there seems to be a lot of great stuff being written at the moment by the "A Teamers".  Here's one such article that just popped into my in-tray:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/04/XMLFiles/

[Reference] Debugging Services

Debugging Services

The long weekend

I'm *still* studying for my Xml Web Services exam (70-310).

I'm nearly comfortable with Windows Services, Serviced Components, and - thanks to Mads - Remoting is also starting to make some sense now. Here's the killer... all along I had fooled myself into beleiving that WebServices would be the easiest part of the exam. Like most people, I've successfully un-commented the HelloWorld() web method that ships with the VS WebService template and consumed it from another ASP.NET application. Over time, I've also done a few other samples: such as AddNumbers(), MultiplyNumbers() and so forth. However, I can tell you that this long-weekend I spent at least 18 hours struggling to consume a single WebService!! Throughout that ordeal has been a real path to enlightenment.

Here are just a couple of foundational things that I had completely discounted before this weekend that I now have a fearful respect for: the discovery process (Disco and WSDL) and SOAP. I'm not really quite sure how I could have been so ignorant, but I'm pleased to say that I'm now reasonably comfortable with how all of the major WebService chunks fit together. I've discovered and built a proxy for a WebService from both VS.NET and the command line, I've altered the WSDL (pronounced "Woozdel") file so that a service hosted over Https can be discovered and referenced via VS.NET.

Here's a list of things that still I cannot do however:

• On a webservice that is served over https, browse to the .asmx file and [Invoke] the test form. What happens?... the new window that opens to display the results opens in Http (as opposed to Https). How do you fix that?
• If I write a custom .wsdl file, how do I get it to be the default file when you request it via: http://servername/MyService.asmx?WSDL. It seems to me that you cannot replace the default one that is generated by ASP.NET and, to reference a custom one, you have to browse directly to it, i.e.: http://servername/MyService.wsdl
• Same for .disco files
• Consume a service over Https with a certificate that I've generated, but is not trusted by Windows. Don't think you can do it?

My main feeling after this weekend is that, at some stage, I'm going to have to devote some time to understanding (I mean *REALLY* understanding) SOAP! Can someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that

Another "Which {insert randomly idiotic entity or object} are you?" quiz...

I thought this might have been the case (snicker):

Mean lil fellow, arn't you?

What Monty Python Character are you?
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