pek.com

Chris Sells (www.sellsbrothers.com) posted a command line parsing utility class (in C#) a while ago. I can't find a link to it now so here's the source.
Based on its use of reflection I created a base class for performance counter providers. Download the source here.

SmartGrid.NET is something i am involved with, independently from my current employer.

finally managed to put together a website for something i worked on a while ago. its a C# implementation of graph scheduler engine toolkit called SmartGraph.NET

NOTE: until the site comes back up the SmartGraph.NET source code can be downloaded from here.

i have started using msi installations for our project. one thing that i found useful is the orca msi tool, which seems to be part of some Microsoft Platform SDK. you cannot download it separately though, unless you go here ;-)

here's some code that shows how to implement a Explorer Shell Extension in C#. it allows you to create custom context menus in directories you want. download source code here.

references for this implementation:

• http://www.codeproject.com/shell/ShellExtGuide1.asp


• http://theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=ShellExtensions


• http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/ratingcolumn.asp

once you build it, use 'regasm /codebase' (i try to stay clear of the GAC as much as possible) to register the assembly for COM interop, that's it!

i have just noticed that in ATL shipped with VS2003 CComBSTR ToUpper() and ToLower() ASSERT when called on an empty (not NULL) string. i have to say i don't understand why that makes sense? surely it is desireable that a conversion to upper/lower on empty string yield an empty string and not an assertion.

fortunately we use our own CComBSTR wrapper, so the fix for this is as easy as:

   HRESULT ToUpper()
   {
      if ( ::SysStringLen(this->m_str) > 0 )
         return CComBSTR::ToUpper();

      return S_OK;
   }

some useful code for manipulating url-type strings. uses ATL::CUrl and allows non-standard url types. examples provided show how to implement a COM url:

   com:///Clsid=0002df01-0000-0000-c000-000000000046&ClsCtx=CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER

and a PubSub url:

   pubsub://localhost:1234/Queue=A.B.C

download sources here.

i decided that soa2wsdl is going to be very useful in helping me deal with web service development (see previous posting on this). i created a simple C# console app which does the transform and which can also execute the 'wsdl.exe' utility to generate C# code from WSDL.
the zipped project is here.

some of my spare time (away from my current employer) is used up developing various ideas, mainly in C# on .NET and C++.

one of the concepts that i frequently re-use is the Directed Acyclic Graph or DAG. this is a simple DAG implementation, part of smartgraph.net (soon to go on-line hopefully :-).

i never really liked WSDL, but, because of its interoperability, i use it frequently. in my current work on service oriented architecture (SOA), i stumbled onto an article on Clemens Vasters' blog. it shows how metadata attributes can be used to embelish an XML Schema. taking Clemens' hint, i created an XSL Transform which generates WSDL from 'embelished schemas'. an example of such a schema (soa-sample-getprice.xsd) is given below. download the other files:

• soa2wsdl.xsl
• soa-metadata.xsd

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xs:schema targetNamespace="urn:soa:sample:price-service" 

            xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 

            xmlns:soa="urn:soa:metadata" 

            xmlns:tns="urn:soa:sample:price-service" 

            xmlns="urn:soa:sample:price-service" 

            elementFormDefault="qualified" 

            soa:service="GetPriceService" soa:url="http://soa1.soahost.net"

>

    <xs:complexType name="GetPriceRequestType">

        <xs:sequence>

            <xs:element name="SessionId" type="xs:string"/>

            <xs:element name="Ric" type="xs:string"/>

        </xs:sequence>

    </xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexType name="GetPriceResponseType">

        <xs:sequence>

            <xs:element name="SessionId" type="xs:string"/>

            <xs:element name="Ric" type="xs:string"/>

            <xs:element name="Value" type="xs:string"/>

        </xs:sequence>

    </xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexType name="GetPriceFaultType">

        <xs:sequence>

            <xs:element name="SessionId" type="xs:string"/>

            <xs:element name="Ric" type="xs:string"/>

            <xs:element name="Reason" type="xs:string"/>

        </xs:sequence>

    </xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexType name="GetPriceMethodType">

        <xs:all>

            <xs:element name="GetPriceRequest" type="tns:GetPriceRequestType" 

                    soa:message="GetPriceRequestMessage" soa:message-type="request"/>

            <xs:element name="GetPriceResponse" type="tns:GetPriceResponseType" 

                    soa:message="GetPriceResponseMessage" soa:message-type="response"/>

            <xs:element name="GetPriceFault" type="tns:GetPriceFaultType" 

                    soa:message="GetPriceFaultMessage" soa:message-type="fault"/>

        </xs:all>

    </xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexType name="GetPriceInterfaceType">

        <xs:all>

            <xs:element name="GetPriceMethod" type="tns:GetPriceMethodType"

                    soa:method="GetPriceMethod"/>

        </xs:all>

    </xs:complexType>

    <xs:element name="GetPriceInterface" type="tns:GetPriceInterfaceType"

                    soa:interface="GetPriceInterface"/>

</xs:schema>