From the June 2002 issue of MSDN Magazine.

Visual Studio .NET Analysis Tools

      FMS has rolled out five new developer products designed for Microsoft® Visual Studio .NET. Total .NET Analyzer scans Microsoft .NET applications to detect more than 50 potential errors and issues so you can find problems before the application is deployed. Analyzer lets you view errors as the code is written, and also includes extensive built-in report capabilities.
      Total .NET Renamer uses a parser-based Find and Replace engine to make name changes in C# and Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET code. Renamer is ideal for making changes to object-oriented code where the built-in Find and Replace tools don't work well, and is completely integrated with the Visual Studio .NET IDE.
      Total .NET SourceBook provides a collection of ready-to-use source code with a wide range of C# and Visual Basic .NET code, tips, tricks, and knowledge. Because it's integrated with the Visual Studio .NET IDE, developers can insert FMS's code into their applications. Developers can also add their code, tips, and snippets into the SourceBook repository. New techniques can also be acquired through the CodeBase Web service. Multi-user ready, Total .NET SourceBook allows an entire development team to share their code and knowledge.
      Using Total .NET XRef, developers can instantly generate a complete cross-reference of their C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET code. Find all the uses of classes, variables, properties and methods, and navigate through all references so you can debug with ease. Perform real-time impact analysis to see which objects a change actually affects.
      Total SQL Statistics allows you to integrate statistical analysis into Microsoft .NET applications. Using data from Microsoft SQL Server, Total SQL Statistics calculates percentiles, frequency distributions, t-Tests, confidence intervals, regressions, correlations, one and two-way ANOVA, Chi-Square, non-parametric analysis, probability functions, and much more.
      Handling an unlimited number of records in one pass, Total SQL Statistics analyzes data from Microsoft SQL Server tables, views, and stored procedures with all results in SQL Server tables. An interactive Statistics Wizard allows you to create and fine-tune the statistical analysis desired. Once completed, the code to add to a Visual Studio® .NET application is automatically generated.

Catch Those Bugs

      BugAware, published by the company of the same name, is a Web-based issue tracking and helpdesk solution that is designed to be integrated with your company intranet. Users can send helpdesk requests, track issues and bugs, and manage teams. Critical tasks are easily recognized through a color-coded priority task list. Tasks can be sorted by urgency, issue, type, status, and author, and published in a format for hardcopy output.
      Features include e-mail alerts for instant change notification, daily e-mails summarizing the most important tasks, searchable knowledge base support, and user discussions attached to each task. Managers and team leaders are able to view and organize their team tasks. The system configuration is customizable, and tasks can be filtered by user-specified criteria. BugAware's license is for unlimited users within the organization, and the package includes source code so the system can be modified for individual needs.

IDE for SQLXML

      Altova recently updated the XML Spy Suite, with features that support Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SQLXML. XML Spy 4.3 Suite is a suite of developer tools for advanced XML application development, consisting of the XML Spy 4.3 IDE, the XML Spy 4.3 XSLT Designer, and the XML Spy 4.3 Document Editor. The new XML Spy provides enhanced tools support for developers and database administrators. In cooperation with the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 product team, the XML Spy 4 IDE's schema editor now includes support for XML Schemas, including Microsoft SQLXML extensions for mapping XML schemas to relational databases.

Persistent Objects Development Tool

      Pragmatier has released the professional edition of Pragmatier Data Tier Builder for Microsoft Visual Basic 6 and SQL Server. An integrated modeling tool, code, and database generator, it was created to simplify the development of applications requiring persistent objects. Pragmatier allows you to generate a fully functional data tier in four simple steps. Sketch the class model on a napkin, enter it into the modeling tool manually, or using the component definition language, press the build button to generate the underlying database and the data access logic, and finally, compile with Visual Basic 6.0.
      You can program against your database in an object-oriented manner. Additional features include object caching, XML serialization of classes and objects, support of late binding, and access through COM or DCOM. Pragmatier Data Tier Builder is compatible with development tools that are created for the Visual Studio environment. It supports any programming tool or language that can interface to COM/COM+. The noncommercial Personal Edition is available on the Web site.

Distributed n-tier Enterprise Systems

      ModularIS recently added two development toolkits to their product line. The ModularIS Enterprise Framework Version 3, a development framework for distributed n-tier enterprise systems, provides several new tools to the Enterprise Development Studio and enhances the Framework Manager environment.
      With the latest release of the Enterprise Framework, developers have access to both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases. The Framework supplies out-of-the-box enterprise software architecture with the goal of delivering inherent scalability, security, performance, and interoperability.
      The company has also unveiled their ModularIS Enterprise Framework .NET environment. One component of the .NET environment is the ModularIS Architect CASE tool, which generates an n-tier .NET application from a logical business object model. ModularIS was built by extending core Microsoft middleware technologies.

Development Snapshots

      Living Address has introduced a new version of Living Doc, its documentation and application support tool. Living Doc is an intelligent search program that scans applications that use ASP and SQL Server. The information is stored in a meta database and displayed in a browser. A complete scan takes a couple of minutes.
      Living Doc lets the developer take snapshots of the application, documenting how the application looked at that specific time. You can hunt for bugs by comparing two snapshots and determining what has changed in the interim. For each snapshot, all source code is stored in the documentation database. If a snapshot is taken of ASP pages, stored procedures, triggers, views, SQL functions, and COM objects are tracked.

Shipping Automation

      Z-Firm has released OmniRush 5.1, a server-based solution for fat and thin client applications that need marketing, notification, and shipping automation. The new version includes hooks for SQL Server, Oracle, Visual Basic, and all ActiveX®-compatible development tools. With OmniRush, developers can get fulfillment automation without getting mired in the details of shipment transactions or fax logic.
      All OmniRush features can be driven with database records, or using the OmniRush ActiveX control. The database-driven approach of OmniRush allows thin clients, such as wireless and Web applications, to trigger several job types, including UPS and FedEx shipping, fax-merge, e-mail-merge, text-to-speech voice, and credit card charges.

Visual Basic and Visual C++ Module Libraries

      Synthigence Corporation has announced the SI Works Application Development Toolkit, a software package that lets developers working with Visual Basic or Visual C++® speed development by building applications from a library of modules and the engine that controls them. Developers can consider adding real-time audio/video and collaboration to their applications by taking advantage of the components of the library. With this library, a multi-computer text-chat adds 30 lines of Visual Basic; or a microphone slider volume control with real-time signal meter takes up 30 lines of C++; then a waveform display or capture to a WAV file adds just three more lines of code. Because SI Works is a self-contained real-time operating environment, developers can add it to an existing program and get added capabilities without major restructuring. A few lines of code can add modules and direct data flow between them. Then one command puts the real-time system into motion.

The Bookshelf

      No Starch Press recently published The Book of SAX: The Simple API for XML by W. Scott Means and Michael A. Bodie. The authors show readers how to use SAX to solve XML parsing problems which can be difficult to address with tree-based technologies—including real-time parsing, very large documents, and high-performance applications. Bodie and Means teach readers how to get a SAX 2.0 application up and running quickly, parse large XML documents without draining a computer's resources, handle errors, work with InputSources, capture DTD information, and use the namespace facilities added to SAX 2.0. Additional techniques illustrated include building an XML parser using support classes provided in the SAX 2.0 API, and migrating applications and parsers from SAX 1.0 to SAX 2.0. The book also includes the Microsoft MSXML 3.0 API reference. Look over the book's table of contents at https://www.nostarch.com/?sax_toc.
      Apress has published Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers by J. Hank Rainwater. Herding Cats offers a guide to the management challenges of supervising and leading programmers. You'll learn about the varieties of programmer personality traits and be able match personnel to projects for maximum productivity. You'll also learn how to manage your strengths and weaknesses as you improve your leadership skills which will result in dramatic improvements to your team's success. Find out more about this book at https://www.apress.com/catalog/book/1590590171/.

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