New Stuff

Resources for Your Developer Toolbox

Theresa W. Carey

Contents

Generate Bar Codes for Microsoft Access
Agentless Availability Monitoring
Print from .NET Framework Apps
64-bit Support in ctree
Model Data and Generate C# Code
Enterprise Data Backup and Synchronization
Data Warehousing Tools
The Bookshelf

Generate Bar Codes for Microsoft Access

TALtech has announced a new version of its Bar Code ActiveX Control for Microsoft® Access, Excel, and Word. This new limited license version is based on TALtech's Bar Code ActiveX® PLUS version, limited for use on up to five workstations. The new Bar Code ActiveX LL (Limited License) will be useful for small organizations that want to print bar codes on labels or documents from their Microsoft Office applications. The control supports data binding, allowing the user to incorporate bar-coding into database reporting and labeling applications.

Agentless Availability Monitoring

MKS Inc. released MKS AlertCentre 2.0, an agentless monitoring solution for Windows® which includes monitoring wizards for Microsoft Internet Information Services, SQL Server™, and Exchange. AlertCentre 2.0 allows you to monitor unlimited devices and applications from each licensed monitoring station with no limits on the number of users who can access AlertCentre either locally or remotely. Its agentless architecture means there is no software to deploy to the devices you're monitoring.

New features in MKS AlertCentre 2.0 include application monitoring wizards which automatically discover infrastructure and application elements for supported servers, and automatic generation of system and application monitors necessary to comprehensively manage them for availability and performance.

Also included is a Web-based, at-a-glance status-of-operations console with point-and-click drilldown, and toolbar and status frames. AlertCentre 2.0 carries this highly functional, easy interface theme throughout.

There are new monitor types for SNMP devices, UDP ports, incoming and outgoing e-mail services, printers/copiers, files, directories, machine shares, SSL certificates, newsgroups, Web site link integrity, and database queries.

MKS also includes the ability to control when and how actions can be triggered, run pre- and post-action commands or programs, and start, stop, and restart services. Reports include uptime, status of operations, monitor log, and configuration.

Print from .NET Framework Apps

PrintForm for .NET, recently released by TMG Development Ltd., helps you add printing support to an application by printing the Windows Forms you have already designed and coded using Visual Studio® .NET. Reports and printouts can now look the way you want them to look. PrintForm is designed to simplify the process of adding custom printing to Microsoft .NET Framework-based applications, which is a lengthy task involving graphics (GDI+) calls to accurately render their printed output. Key product features include the ability to print the contents of any Windows Form or other container control either directly to the printer or to the PrintPreviewDialog and integration with Visual Studio .NET and the Framework printing architecture. PrintForm is derived from the PrintDocument class in the Framework and plugs directly into the PrintPreviewDialog classes supplied with the Framework. Multipage reports are produced either as repetitions of the same page layout with different data or as entirely different layouts on each page.

PrintForm can render all Windows Forms controls and has support for the majority of controls which use legacy technology (such as those from the Windows common controls DLL—ListView, TreeView, DatePicker, and so on). Because PrintForm can render any control, printouts can contain dynamically created charts, images, and custom user controls.

The program also provides header and footer support and supports printing form controls with an alternative background (for example controls which display on screen with a grey background can be printed with a white background). PrintForm is a fully managed C# component, compatible with all common language runtime-targeted languages and requires the CLR version 1 or above.

64-bit Support in ctree

FairCom Corporation announced that their c-tree Plus embedded database development system and c-tree database Server now support Windows XP 64-bit Edition. This new technology targets customers working in scientific and engineering fields and other industries which involve managing large amounts of complex data.

c-tree Plus includes development servers for all supported platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Unix, and more) as well as free development ODBC and native Seagate Crystal Report drivers.

Model Data and Generate C# Code

Altova Inc. has announced XMLSPY 5 Release 3, which adds developer support for various widely used enterprise technologies, including apps built using the .NET Framework. The XMLSPY 5 Code Generator now supports C# code generation. You can use XMLSPY to model data elements in XML schema, then XMLSPY can auto-generate C# classes (data bindings) corresponding to elements defined in the data model. The generated code uses System.XML, the new .NET Framework API for programmatically accessing XML documents.

The upgrade also includes new data editing and server administration features for Oracle XML DB. XMLSPY's new features enable you to perform common operations on data managed by XML DB.

In addition, the program includes a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) documentation generation utility, allowing you to document and publish a Web Service interface. Any WSDL file can be annotated and published into a Microsoft Word or HTML output file. The stylesheet designer supports visual editing and generation of XSL Formatting Object code, which enables XML content to be rendered into a PDF file.

Enterprise Data Backup and Synchronization

Peer Software Inc. recently released PeerSync Pro 7.0, an enterprise-wide data backup and synchronization solution. The software's data routing technology can be programmed to adapt to circumstances that can compromise data availability and consistency; these include system failure, the inability to access locked or open files, and the out-of-sync data of an organization's mobile workforce.

PeerSync 7.0 monitors connections between storage points (for example, server to server or desktop to desktop). If a connection is down, the software will seek an alternative data path or wait until the connection is resumed to perform the backup/synchronization operation. The new version also incorporates Embedded Open File Manager software developed by St. Bernard Software, which lets you protect files even while they are locked or in use.

In addition to using PeerSync to back up and synchronize standard business documents, users can continue working without interruption as open files are unobtrusively synchronized. New features include the ability to monitor target and source devices for connectivity, and suspend activity until a connection is resumed. This allows PeerSync to ensure that synchronizations are only attempted when a connection exists. Users now have alternate or additional target paths for their data.

The Enhanced Open File Manager feature allows back up and synchronization of open or locked files, including system files and databases. All files that were not correctly synchronized—whether the user is in real-time, scheduled, or interval mode—can be retried.

Data Warehousing Tools

CONNX Solutions has announced CONNX 8.8, the latest release of its data access middleware product. Direct support for Microsoft .NET technology has been added to CONNX 8.8 with the introduction of a pure CONNX OLE DB provider. Users will be able to achieve the performance of a native provider while writing their own applications in managed C# or Visual Basic® .NET code.

The new release also includes the CONNX Data Synchronization Tool, which allows users to move enterprise data from any source location to any target data source. This Windows-based application employs hash keys to quickly detect when records are updated, deleted, or inserted. By storing these hash keys, along with the primary key of each record, in a separate CONNX private data store, the CONNX Data Synchronization tool performs incremental updates from source to target at a fraction of the usual update speed.

Once the target source is populated, CONNX can be used with other tools for ad hoc reporting, application development, and Web development. This engine allows querying either against the data warehouse and data marts or against the live operational data sources.

The Bookshelf

O'Reilly recently published The XSLT Cookbook by Sal Mangano, which contains hundreds of solutions to common problems confronted by XSLT developers. Each recipe walks through a problem and its solution, with explanations of the choices made and techniques used in creating that solution. Some of the topics covered are string manipulation, mathematical processing, and date-and-time handling; interactions between calendar systems; selecting content in source documents converting from XML to plain text; efficient tree manipulation; and XML document tweaking.

You'll also find information regarding using XSLT to query XML documents, generating HTML, C, and XSLT code using XSLT, and creating charts and graphs with SVG and XSLT. For more information about the book see https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/xsltckbk.

Send your New Stuff to Theresa at newstuff@microsoft.com.

Theresa W. Careyis a freelance writer who lives in California. Her byline has appeared in Barron's and PC World.