February 2005 - Posts

[Semantic Web] Semantic Web Resource Guide
24 February 05 03:36 PM | CSharpener | with no comments

The Semantic Web Resource Guide is an article I quickly wrote up to introduce a co-worker to some basic information on the Semantic Web.  Perhaps others will find it helpful.  The links have been fixed.

Filed under: [Semantic Web], [General]

[Tools] A New XML Editor: XML Marker
22 February 05 03:28 PM | CSharpener | with no comments

XML Marker is a nice new free XML editor.  Currently, it has very limited support for DTD and none for XML Schema.  I hope Symbol Click will address that weakness very soon.  XML Marker is lightweight and fun to use for simple tasks -- and the price is right!

Filed under: [XML], [Tools], [General]

[Tools] A Free Fast PDF Reader
21 February 05 11:05 AM | CSharpener | 5 comment(s)

Do you, like me, get weary of waiting for Adobe's PDF reader to do whatever it is that it feels that it needs to do at the moment before it lets you read your document?  Try the free Foxit PDF Reader, a lightweight and very fast alternative.  Sorry, Adobe, thanks for all of the free tech, and all that, but, over seven versions of evolution, your venerable Acrobat Reader has become *really* slow.  It used to be wonderful, back in the days when it was a simple PDF reader.  Foxit's contender weighs in at less than 1 MB and is lightning fast by comparison.  This bout was just won in round one by a KO.  New champ:  Foxit Software!

Filed under: [Tools], [General]

[Tools] Another Free Disk Usage Statistics Viewer
17 February 05 11:22 AM | CSharpener | 3 comment(s)

Check out WinDirStat, a new free disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows.  This is a new addition to those mentioned in my previous posts, But Now Competing In The New "Useful UI" Category Is ...., And The Clear "Unusual UI" Winner Is ..., More Harddisk Space Managers, and FolderSizes.

Filed under: [Tools], [General]

[.NET General] .NET on Windows ME and 98
15 February 05 01:29 PM | CSharpener | with no comments

I did not realize that the .NET Framework can be installed on Windows ME and Windows 98 and that much of it, excluding ASP.NET and System.Diagnostics features involving the EventLog, will run on those platforms.  A description of this, including the various caveats, is available on MSDN at  .NET Framework Support on Windows Operating Systems.

Filed under: [.NET General]

[Tools] A Search Engine for Source Code - Codehound.com
10 February 05 02:39 PM | CSharpener | 1 comment(s)

Another great source-code finding search engine is Codehound.  For DotNetters, Codehound also offers a nifty free code-finding VisualStudio.NET Add-in.

Filed under: [.NET General], [Tools], [General]

[Tools] A Search Engine for Source Code - Koders.com
10 February 05 01:50 PM | CSharpener | with no comments

I'm having some fun exploring Koders.com.  This site offers a free "Developers Subscription,"  with periodic Email Updates and Announcements (About Monthly), and a "Professional Subscription," that includes a desktop edition.

Filed under: [Tools], [SoftDev]

[Tools] XSD Inference Utility
10 February 05 08:40 AM | CSharpener | 1 comment(s)

Microsoft has a useful and free XSD Infererence 1.0 utility somewhat hidden on GotDotNet (linked from the worthwhile XML Tools page).  The download contains a core library, a simple command line utility, and source code.  The XSD Infererence 1.0 page (in spite of missing some image links) contains a "workable" Web interface you can use to quickly test the idea by submitting your own small XML file.  The overview page gives some description of the idea and the utility and points to Generate XSD Schemas by Inference and Modeling biz docs in XML, two articles about this technique and tool.  The download link on the is bad, so use the link on the page (or above).  MSDN currently hosts a very solid tutorial article, Using the XSD Inference Utility, that gives you most of what you need to know to go beyond the simple Infer.exe command line utility and use the Microsoft.XSDInference.Infer class from your own code.

Consider your results from using the XSD Infererence 1.0 utility as a starting point rather than an end product.  You should carefully review the inferred schema and intelligently edit it into something real.  What you get from XSD inference probably will not give you a really good schema.  That still takes some thought, however, and the tool certainly can save you some time.  It certainly is cheaper than buying an expensive commercial XML IDE just to autogenerate some XML Schemas!  If you ever worked for a company that bought XMLSpy just for this purpose, you know what I mean.  Be sure to read about the tool's caveats and limitations - particularly, don't miss the 1 MB size limitation part.  The download contains an excellent help file.

I have found this tool useful and certainly recommend adding it to your .NET tool belt.

Also, if you have used the Xsd.exe tool, you may also want to have a look at the XSD Object Code Generator tool on the XML Tools page.  While similar to Xsd.exe, the XSD Object Code Generator tool claims to create an "enhanced class structure" and to handle "many more common schema types."

Filed under: [.NET General], [Tools]

[Languages] Another .NET language list
01 February 05 02:46 PM | CSharpener | with no comments

I just found a new .NET language List at  Brian Ritchie's Dotnetpowered.com site and discovered a couple of .NET languages that are news to me.  In particular, it looks like the ADA community is now on the boat with A#, a port of ADA to .NET, and Microsoft Research is at it again with Comega, an extension of C# that provides "A control flow extension for asynchronous wide-area concurrency (formerly known as Polyphonic C#)" and "A data type extension for XML and table manipulation (formerly known as Xen and as X#)."  I have been wondering whether Xen/X# would eventually develop some traction.  A# has been developed by the Department of Computer Science at the United States Air Force Academy and is "freely distributed" under the GPL.

Thanks to Brian for mentioning this Weblog as one of his "Other Sources!"  I'm only too happy to have contributed something useful.

Filed under: [.NET General], [Languages]