Debugging in the GAC

Robert Bogue August 30, 2005 2 Comments

There are sometimes when your assembly almost has to be in the GAC and when you need to debug it. This was difficult since if you registered a .NET assembly into the GAC the debugger wouldn’t break on it. This is because the .PDB file information didn’t get loaded since it’s not in the same directory as the DLL. Here’s how to work around that.

1) Install the Assembly in the GAC
2) Start-Run, %SYSTEMROOT%\Assembly\GAC
3) Navigate into the folder with name of the DLL that you want to debug
4) Navigate into the folder with the version number and public key that you want
5) Copy the .PDB file into this directory

Now you’ll be able to run a debugger against code running in the GAC.

Creating Artifacts — what you don’t know

Robert Bogue August 30, 2005 No Comments

[Authors Note: There’s a very interesting discussion brewing about what artifacts are good and what artifacts are bad. Check it out.]

Just as artifacts from ancient times give us information about early man, the documents and presentations you create in IT can give insight into your technology initiatives.

We know relatively little about the humans that were roaming the earth thousands of years ago. But because we have the artifacts they left behind–pots, arrowheads, and so forth–we have a glimpse give us a glimpse into their daily lives and who they were.

Artifacts (documents, Powerpoint presentations, spreadsheets, etc.) also allow a glimpse into the processes that are happening in your IT organization. Learning how to encourage the creation of artifacts is an essential part of managing an IT department.

The power of the artifact

An artifact is anything crafted by human hand that is left behind. This can be a product, a training manual, help documentation, project management documentation, or anything else which is tangible. Most of the time artifacts are documentation or diagrams of some sort but they can also be the finished product or some piece of the finished product.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-artifacts-what-you-dont-know/

Developing a data communications strategy

Robert Bogue August 30, 2005 No Comments

Any data communications proposal can look good on paper until you dissect it by evaluating its reliability, expandability, and complexity.

Whether your organization has two sites or two hundred sites, figuring out how to manage the data communications between those sites can be a real challenge. With a vast array of options, it’s often hard to determine what’s best for your organization. Here are three key evaluation criteria you can use to make the right decisions for your connectivity.

Reliability

In most cases the reliability of the network is a critical component to how useful it is. Even in organizations where the ability to communicate between sites isn’t core to the business because there are no central databases to be accessed and no real-time need to share information, loss of connectivity is still very disruptive.

Reliability is measured by the frequency, the duration, and the completeness of outages.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/developing-a-data-communications-strategy/

Public Speaking