This is a Free Add-in for Visio that will help you visualize/diagram the site Topology of the Microsoft Exchange Server environment in your network, including Sites, Servers, and Connections.  I don’t have an Exchange Server environment in my Virtual Developer Network, and the Microsoft IT guys will probably kill me if I ran it inside of my corporate environment, but I thought that some of the people reading this blog might want to download it and see what they thought of it.

Here’s the description of the utility (from the download page):

Although Exchange Management are invaluable tools for managing, monitoring and administer networks, computers, services, and other system components. It does not provide a graphical view of user mailbox details. Administrators has to sift through a tree view to view the members of the Distribution Group in an organizational unit and use embedded data to figure out the details

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) hosts administrative tools that you can use to administer networks, computers, services, and other system components. Exchange Management Console and Exchange Management Shell are used to administer and configure specific settings for Mailbox servers and create and manage Mailbox objects.
The Mailbox server role hosts mailbox databases, which contain users' mailboxes. If you plan to host user mailboxes or public folders, or both, the Mailbox server role is required.

This Microsoft® Office Visio® 2007 Professional Add-In makes it easy for Exchange Administrators to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. Instead of viewing single user data at a time, administrators can create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data at a glance and dramatically increase productivity. You can use it to diagram a Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 site topology, including sites, servers, and connections for an organization.

See the power of Data Visualization at work with this Visio Add-in For Visio 2007 Pro

Download the utility: Here

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Microsoft has just released a free utility to help developers analyze ASP code for SQL Injection vulnerabilities.  Earlier this year, several public sites went down when hackers unleashed a series of bots to find and exploit servers where developers did not correctly code their applications/pages to prevent SQL Injection attacks. 

Here’s what the utility offers (from the original page):

In response to the recent mass SQL injection attacks, Microsoft has developed a new static code analysis tool for finding SQL Injection vulnerabilities in ASP code. Web developers can run the tool on their ASP source code to identify the root cause of the attack and address them to reduce their exposure to future attacks. The tool will scan ASP source code and generate warnings related to first order and second order SQL Injection vulnerabilities. The tool also provides annotation support that can be used to improve the analysis of the code.

Here’s the download location: Click here

~Robert Shelton

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I just finished reading this article which takes you step-by-step in how to simulate an environment (i.e., World) for a Virtual Robot using the Microsoft Robotics Studio Simulator (free to use).  Best of all, it includes a code download!  I am planning to go through this myself later this week, but thought that I would share the post today to for those of you who have the time and interest.

The article outlines the following topics:

• Building the robot animation
• Building the environment
• Driving a robot or simulation
• Creating entities

Take a look at the article and download the code to try it yourself: Click here

~Robert Shelton

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Most people would agree that RSS and ATOM feeds have become as important to the Web as HTML, well almost anyway.  One of the things that we as developers have to consider in our applications is how to report: Data, events, etc., to our users.  We typically choose the route of building reports, or sending emails, occasionally we will build KPI-based Executive Dashboards.  But, there is another option that we rarely think of: RSS/ATOM Feeds. 

For example: Administrators (who are end-users in a sense) are often trying to keep track of a variety of data points about the network: Drive Space on network drives, Email Storage levels, Printers going down, etc.  And typically, they use a variety of tools to inform them about these types of data, mostly (not always) static reports of some sort, delivered on a routine basis.  Well, if you are a .NET Developer you could build RSS/ATOM feeds that constantly keep them appraised of Events, Data, etc.  Because, .NET can access so much information in the Computing Environment, you have the ability to peer into those systems and pull reports (think logs, drive space, files being dropped into a folder, SQL Server events, etc.).

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That’s where the new RSS/ATOM features build in Windows Communication Foundation comes in, and hence the lab that I am giving you a link to.  As you will see it’s pretty straightforward and easy to do with WCF and the lab will take you less than 90 minutes!

Here’s a link to the FREE lab: Click here

~Robert Shelton

I am contemplating building a Vista Sidebar Gadget and was looking for some good resources to start my learning curve and found this one on TechNet.  If anyone reading this blog entry knows of other good resources that might be useful to me, please let me know.

Here’s a link to the Virtual Lab: Click here

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~Robert Shelton

If you are trying to build highly scalable solutions built on the .NET Framework with distributed in-memory caching (Maybe the Twitter guys should look into this ), then you will want to take a look at the Velocity CTP 1.

Here’s the description of the project (from the site):

“Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. Using “Velocity,” applications can store any serializable CLR object without concern for where the object gets stored because data is cached across multiple computers. “Velocity” allows copies of data to be stored across the cache cluster, protecting data against failures. It can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object enabling storage of ASP.NET session objects in the distributed cache without having to write to databases, which increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications.

To download it: Click here

~Robert Shelton

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Although I am not sure that the boss should know or care about the framework that developers are using, unless they are Development Managers or Team leads, I still found the CIO Magazine article interesting. 

The article chooses as the 5 things the boss should know:

1. Developers Can Access New Technologies Without Knowing Much About Them
2. Developers Can Create Complete Applications With Less Code
3. Developers Can Develop Applications in Less Time and With Fewer Errors
4. Combine Data Sources Without Resorting to Odd Programming Tricks
5. Get New Developers Working Faster

Take it for what is’s worth: Here’s the link

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~Robert Shelton