Friday, July 07, 2006

If u forget VSS Admin Password

hmm, thinking of sharing a tip I learnt
Other day, I changed the VSS Admin password and later forgot it. I normally choose words that I can identify easily. I tried to log in using the same.
However, inspite for my umpteen attempts to log in, I could not. Its then that I decided to check Internet for ways to enter the VSS as an admin.
There were different hacks given, out of which, I found the below as simplest:
Create a new VSS database, with the same list of users you have in the original Database.
Go to the data folder of the new database and copy the file "UM.DAT"
go to the data folder of the original database and replace the file "UM.DAT" with the copied file.
You can now log in as the administrator
Side effects:
1. You have to give the password for each user and inform them again
2. You may have to give the permissions to Users for individual folders, if they were in existence.
After some research, I found a way out for #2 also. While creating the users for the new database, if you create them in the same order as you have done for the original database, the permissions would be retained as given.
I hope that this would help some one who forget the VSS Admin password.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Security Developer Center: Using Application Verifier Within Your Software Development Lifecycle

Security Developer Center: Using Application Verifier Within Your Software Development Lifecycle: "The Microsoft� Application Verifier (AppVerifier) is a runtime verification tool for unmanaged code that assists in finding subtle programming errors, security issues and limited user account privilege problems that can be difficult to identify with normal application testing techniques.
Introduction
One of the biggest challenges faced by programmers, software architects, testers, and security consultants is to understand the consequences of their applications when deployed into production. Even with access to source code, it is difficult to grasp everything that will occur during execution due to a variety of dependencies (for example. multiple groups contributing to code or leveraging external components). The Microsoft AppVerifier can play a critical role in helping to manage this complexity and the potential side effects of bugs. The AppVerifierassists in finding subtle programming errors, security issues, and user account privilege problems that can be difficult to identify during a typical test pass."

Visual Studio Magazine - Guest Opinion - Software is Too Darn Hard

Visual Studio Magazine - Guest Opinion - Software is Too Darn Hard: "Software development is too darn hard. As an industry, we spend more time discussing 'plumbing' issues like Java versus .NET, or .NET remoting versus Web services, than we do discussing the design of the actual business functionality itself.
Even when we get to the business functionality, we spend most of our time fighting with the object-oriented design tools, the form-designer tools that 'help' create the UI, the holes in databinding, the data-access code (transactions, concurrency, field/column mapping), and the database design tools"

Friday, April 07, 2006

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006: "NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft (Research) was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.
If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity." ---Thanks to a colleague who forwarded this :-)

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Sharing Lego blocks: Modular software reshapes the computing landscape - Technology - International Herald Tribune

Sharing Lego blocks: Modular software reshapes the computing landscape - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "The Internet is entering its Lego era.

Blocks of interchangeable software components are proliferating on the Web, and developers are joining them together to create a potentially infinite array of useful new programs. This new software represents a marked departure from the inflexible, at times unwieldy, programs of the past, which were designed to run on individual computers.

As a result, computer industry innovation is rapidly becoming decentralized. In the place of large, intricate and self-contained programs like Microsoft Word, written and maintained by armies of programmers, smaller companies, with just a handful of developers, are now producing pioneering software and Web-based services. These new services can be delivered directly to PCs or even to cellphones. Bigger companies are taking note.

For example, Google last month bought Writely, a Web-based word-processing program created by three Silicon Valley programmers. The Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said that Google did not buy the program to compete against Microsoft Word. Rather, he said, it viewed Writely as a key component in hundreds of products it is now developing.

These days, there are inexpensive or free software components speeding the program-writing process. Amazon recently introduced an online storage service called S3, which offers data storage for a monthly fee of 15 cents a gigabyte. That frees a programmer building a new application or service on the Internet from having to create a potentially costly data storage system.

Google now offers eight programmable components - elements that other programmers can turn into new Web services - including Web search, maps, chat and advertising. Yahoo o"

Download details: UIP Application Block

Download details: UIP Application Block: "The User Interface Process Application Block provides a simple yet extensible framework for developing user interface processes. It is designed to abstract the control flow and state management out of the user interface layer into a user interface process layer. This helps you write generic code for the control flow and state management for different applications types (for example, Web and Windows) and helps manage user's tasks in complex scenarios (for example, suspending and resuming tasks)."

Download details: Updater Application Block version 2.0

Download details: Updater Application Block version 2.0: "The Updater Application Block is a .NET Framework component that you can use to detect, download, and apply client application updates deployed in a central location. By using the Updater Application Block, you can keep smart client applications up to date with little or no user intervention. You can also extend the Updater Application Block to use custom classes for downloading files and for performing post-deployment configuration tasks."

Web Service Security

Web Service Security: "To design, develop, and deploy secure Web services, architects and developers must learn new technologies, and consider new threats associated with exposing functionality on potentially hostile networks. To prepare you to meet these challenges (both now on Web Service Enhancements 3.0 and in the future with Windows Communication Foundation), patterns & practices has created the Web Service Security guide. This guide provides a scenario-driven approach to demonstrate where different security patterns are successful, combined with a series of decision matrices to assist you in applying your own criteria for using Web service security patterns in your environment."

MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Management at the Edge in Industry Verticals

MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Management at the Edge in Industry Verticals: "Enterprises today need to be agile and flexible enough to rapidly adapt to changing business conditions by bringing new products and services to market, adjusting internally to support business changes, and tightly controlling risks. Management is critical in achieving these goals. The IT department must be able to monitor systems and discover problems and resolve them before they affect the operations; however, the legacy infrastructure used for management is consuming the majority of the enterprise's IT budget in costly maintenance activities, leaving few resources to make the IT advances required. This paper provides the importance of management at the edge in the industry verticals and how Microsoft products can help in this area. "

MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Extending Enterprise Applications with Microsoft Outlook: Architectural Design Guide

MSDN Solution Architecture Center: Extending Enterprise Applications with Microsoft Outlook: Architectural Design Guide: "Many organizations have made multi-million dollar investments in customer relationship management (CRM) systems and other line of business (LOB) applications over the last decade. Although many of these applications have delivered significant business benefits, some organizations have found that these bespoke systems have not provided the expected returns on investment. One of the argued reasons for this is that specialized enterprise systems, databases, and applications do not integrate well with information worker workflows."