New Stuff
Resources for Your Developer Toolbox
Nancy Michell
Contents
Build Hot Swapping Into Your App
ASP.NET Charting Control
Architected-RAD Environment for .NET
Access Visual SourceSafe Files Over the Web
Create Patch Packages Easily
Dev Tool for .NET Environments
Automate Any PC Task
Create Custom Processes with New Productivity Tool
Ultra Software Protection
Build Hot Swapping Into Your App
Jungo Software Technologies has announced the release of Go-HotSwap 6.22, a complete off-the-shelf software package offering a solution for hardware vendors, system integrators, and operating system vendors, aiming to provide hot-swap capabilities to their users.
Using the Go-HotSwap architecture reduces time to market, enabling developers to focus on core technologies instead of spending their valuable time developing in-house hot-swap software.
Go-HotSwap supports Windows® 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server™ 2003, and Solaris 8 and 9, utilizing the native plug and play capabilities of these operating systems. The Go-HotSwap software infrastructure consists of a low-level operating system extension, the Hot Swap Engine, which has the following capabilities: identifying the insertion or removal of CompactPCI boards, and notifying system services, relevant drivers, and applications of a hot-swap event.
The Go-HotSwap license includes Jungo's WinDriver driver development tool as an integrated component.
ASP.NET Charting Control
Telerik is offering a new member of the r.a.d.controls suite called r.a.d. chart. The new component is a business-oriented charting control designed to simplify the display of graphical data in ASP.NET. The product offers four basic chart types—Pie, Bar, Line, and Area, each of which can be substantially customized. Packed with a Quick-Start framework, numerous running examples, and templates, r.a.d.chart can help you represent data in a way that is very easy to understand.
r.a.d.chart supports all the various browsers capable of displaying PNG files. In order to blend the component into your application, you can customize the appearance and behavior of all the chart elements including gridlines, axes, labels, background, borders, titles, and legends.
Architected-RAD Environment for .NET
Modularis Inc. has announced the release of Modularis Accelerator 6, an Architected-Rapid Application Development (Architected-RAD) Environment for the Microsoft® .NET Framework. By combining a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with software automation technology, Modularis helps organizations address the fundamental shift toward service-oriented enterprise application development and helps to create .NET-compliant software faster.
Modularis Accelerator 6 consists of a variety of components, including Architect, a sophisticated Architected-RAD tool designed specifically for use by experienced software architects to automate the creation of tedious and repetitive infrastructure code.
Other components include powerful productivity tools designed to aid developers in customizing and maintaining applications generated with Architect. Many of these tools are integrated into the Visual Studio® .NET IDE.
Automated code templating that adds customizable header blocks, structured exception handling, and performance profiling to new or existing code, automated code documentation and sophisticated application performance analysis, and bottleneck detection are just some of the various tasks the package performs.
Accelerator also provides a number of administration and monitoring tools that are designed to help developers or system administrators configure, manage, and monitor the performance of enterprise applications.
Finally, Accelerator includes the Accelerator Libraries—a set of proven, tested, and freely distributable .NET assemblies that provide a number of services critical to all enterprise applications. They build upon the .NET Framework to offer a number of high-level features including an application layer, a role-based security model, advanced object state management services, a centralized, asynchronous audit trail, and lots more.
Access Visual SourceSafe Files Over the Web
Acorden Software has just released SourceXT 2.0, a technology for accessing Visual SourceSafe® files across various kinds of boundaries. Based on advanced features of the .NET Framework, SourceXT provides a fast and reliable connection over the Internet to any Visual SourceSafe database.
SourceXT 2.0 features a Windows-based client with the familiar look of the Visual SourceSafe explorer, full integration with Visual Studio .NET, data compression, and support for all major Visual SourceSafe functions.
SourceXT performs very well across a Virtual Private Network, is easy to set up and administer, and works over the HTTP/HTTPS protocol with virtually no firewall issues.
Some of the key SourceSafe operations supported are get, check out, check in, undo check out, create/delete project, recover deleted project or file, search for checked out files, and lots more.
Create Patch Packages Easily
AgenSoft has released PatchFactory 2.1 for Windows, a program that can help developers create instant patch packages for software and file updating.
Enhanced with a variety of features such as an easy-to-use interface with Wizard mode, a powerful patch engine, integrated compression technology, and adjustable multilingual interface, PatchFactory is an efficient software patching and updating tool for both individual developers and software companies.
With Patch Factory 2.1, even a beginner can build an update package in minutes with the help of the step-by-step Patch Building Wizard. It is an easy and effective way to make patches to meet the frequent demand of software updating.
Generated patch packages are small, self-extracting executable update programs with an adjustable user-friendly interface (available in English, German, Italian, French, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Hungarian, and Czech). Patches can modify or replace installed software files to add new features, fix bugs, or add support for new hardware.
Dev Tool for .NET Environments
Sybase Inc. has just announced the availability of Sybase DataWindow .NET, a powerful new development tool for any .NET environment that both simplifies and accelerates the creation of data-driven enterprise applications—including rich-client and smart-client applications.
Based on proven technology that has been awarded six patents, Sybase DataWindow .NET gives developers a single tool to incorporate data access, complex logic, and data presentation into .NET-based applications both quickly and easily.
A user-friendly point-and-click environment enables easy data retrieval and modification, allowing developers to quickly incorporate complex business logic into applications and to modify it when their business needs change.
Sybase DataWindow .NET is engineered for developers using Visual Studio .NET, Borland C#Builder, or any other integrated development environment that supports the .NET Framework.
https://www.sybase.com/datawindow.net
Automate Any PC Task
NeoWise Software has released RoboTask 2.1, a Windows-based application that makes it easy to automate any series of tasks that you can perform on your PC.
Unlike simple programs that capture and play back keystrokes and mouse movements, RoboTask lets you select actions to automate. Without writing any code, you can test Windows conditions, create conditional IF/ELSE statements, perform loops, create custom variables, and quickly automate repetitive tasks. RoboTask's jobs can be launched manually, scheduled to run automatically, or can be designed to be triggered by a wide variety of changes in your computer.
With RoboTask, it's easy to ping your Web host every few minutes to determine if your site is available, check for e-mail every few hours, or perform incremental file backups on a regular basis.
In just minutes, you can set up simple tasks such as launching applications, opening documents, or seeing if the files in a particular folder have changed. You can send letters and files by e-mail, or schedule and run complex FTP operations.
RoboTask can replace a stack of Windows utilities with its own simple tasks. You don't need to buy an alarm clock utility, low-battery checker, Windows auto-shutdown application, or file backup program. RoboTask is capable of easily performing all of these functions.
WIth RoboTask you'll have access to a growing library of free add-ons. You can download a CD/DVD writer, as well as a BASIC language interpreter that makes it easy for programmers to add virtually unlimited functionality to their RoboTask jobs.
RoboTask 2.1 runs under versions of Windows from Windows 98 up to Windows Server 2003.
Create Custom Processes with New Productivity Tool
SharpDeveloper has released Sharp Code Foundry, a developer productivity tool that integrates with the Visual Studio .NET 2003 IDE as an add-in. The tool can be used to generate SQL Server™ stored procedures (for SQL Server 7.0 or SQL Server 2000) or Visual Basic .NET and C# data services based on user-defined templates. With templates, the user can create custom processes and tailor them to meet various coding standards.
The Sharp Code Foundry inserts code directly into the currently active document within the Visual Studio .NET 2003 IDE, enabling it to integrate within the user's workflow rather than forcing workflow on the user.
Ultra Software Protection
Risco Software has released ACProtect 1.35A, an application that allows developers on all Windows systems to protect software with special anti-cracking techniques.
ACProtect can embed software protection codes inside your program. Important code of protected programs can be decrypted before running and encrypted again after it has finished running. This code can even be encrypted such that only registered users can unlock it before it begins executing.
ACProtect can also generate ShareIt.com-compatible key-generation programs. The Key-generation program can generate registration codes, and ShareIt.com will send it to your registered customer.
Send your New Stuff to newstuff@microsoft.com.
Nancy Michell is a developmental editor at MSDN Magazine where she spends her time manipulating bits of string internals for the good of mankind.