Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Notes from new company launch

A few notes about new company launch found while tidying up my desktop

"Software that works like you do"

benefits of bigger company VS benefits of smaller company


Quality

  • processes / mgmt systems
  • in everything
  • delight customers
Belief
  • believe it can be done
Teamwork
  • meet team objectives
Trust
  • each other
  • the company?
Precision
  • order
  • attention to detail

the people who do it first are remembered (in sport)
- does this hold true for software? - I don't think so

Passionate about software
Proud of the software we make

opportunities for personal development (?)
we have a large customer list, that many would be envious of. But what does that really mean for new customers/users?

Thursday, December 20, 2007

quasimodal shift


The above image is from SourceGear's Vault. It demonstrates a bad use of modes within software because it forces users to remember something they shouldn't have to, if they want to hide this dialog most of the time.
They have to remember that when they select the option which (can/used to) display this dailog they have to press a button if they want more advanced options.

Better would be to hide this dialog and perform the operation based on the default/previously selected option, unless the Shift key (or any other predesiganted key is pressed). This way the functionality is stil available to all and no one needs to remember anything. (A note explaining this feature could be put on the form, rather than the above checkbox and label.)
This is an example of a Quasimode.

NOW() + n in Excel and weekends

In Excel:

Display the current time plus two days:
=TEXT(NOW()+2,"dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss")

Display the current time plus two working days (skip weekends):
=TEXT(WORKDAY(NOW(),2),"dd/mm/yyyy") &TEXT(NOW()," hh:mm:ss")


N.B. If the WORKDAY function is not available, and returns the #NAME? error, install and load the Analysis ToolPak add-in.
  1. On the Tools menu, click Add-Ins.
  2. In the Add-Ins available list, select the Analysis ToolPak box, and then click OK
  3. If necessary, follow the instructions in the setup program.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

MSI to text

Debugging Installshield projects is a right pain. Who changed what to break the install?

Having spent ages trying to work out what had been changed in an InstallShield project so that it no longer upgraded files. I eventually found a solution using MSIDIFF.

This is a brilliant tool which can convert an MSI file to text.

I used it by taking the old and new versions of the MSI files, converting to text and then comparing the files using WinMerge to see what had been changed.
I then went back into the InstallShield project to make the necessary repairs.

Friday, December 07, 2007

cmdline DTS to DTSX

When migrating a command line executed package from SQL Server 2000 to 2005

1. Use the migration wizard to turn the DTS file into a DTSX one

2. Change the command line.

From:

dtsrun /FC:\Scripts\GetLatestDataFromDev /NGetLatestDataFromDev /A"TargetServer:8=(local)"

To:

dtexec /FILE C:\Scripts\GetLatestDataFromDev.DTSX /Set \package.variables[TargetServer].Value;(local)

Wednesday, December 05, 2007