Richard Mitchell

5 reasons why I almost loved WPF

2012-01-13T01:14:00Z

Before you read this you should probably read my original post 5 Reasons why I hate WPF. Also "Qwertie" wrote a nice article detail about his overview of why WPF sucks. 1 - Binding There is something so nice about setting a button to be enabled or not enabled based on a property in the view. All the enabling and disabling is handled for you (more or less). I find that using MVVM helps in many ways to separate UI logic from UI appearance. Something I've always found difficult when writing WinForms...(read more)

How "not" to update SQL Azure - continued

2011-09-08T23:01:00Z

So a month ago now I wrote a blog post in a state of fury at Microsoft for updating SQL Azure without a proper announcement, it's time for an update. After the blog post I was e-mailed by somebody in Microsoft to talk through my issues with the way that the SQL Azure update was handled. It seems that I wasn't the only one who was - to put it mildly - a little upset. From what I've heard my blog post created a little stir on the MVP forums (which I can't see). Kudos however goes to Microsoft for...(read more)

Save hours-get a command prompt

2011-08-14T23:01:00Z

Recently somebody showed me a little trick to get a command prompt in any directory. Simply hold down SHIFT whilst pressing right-click on the folder and the menu option containing "Open command window here" appears as if by magic. I know this is simple but it's not something I knew about, or had forgotten about. There seems to be a complete list of short-cuts on MSDN. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449 Hopefully this can save you as much time as it does for me....(read more)

How "not" to update SQL Azure - updated

2011-08-08T20:54:00Z

For an update to this article please read my new blog post. How "not" to update SQL Azure - continued Well what an eventful day in "The Cloud" yesterday was, and I don't reckon today is going to be much better. On Friday 5th August we received an error about SQL Azure Backup from a customer. Suddenly the program would no longer connect to SQL Azure, I assumed something had changed in his database so I postponed investigating until Monday. Also on Friday I was experimenting with the new BACPAC...(read more)

Windows 8 inspired website

2011-07-05T00:42:00Z

Download the zip here Working in New Biz As I work in Red Gate's new business division much of what we do isn't very visible. So along with Marine Barbaroux I decided to try to create an engaging website to capture what we're doing in an easy to digest way. The idea is to create a website that can be used by everybody in Red Gate to get a picture of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. It isn't quite there yet but I thought I'd share the work so far so that anybody can play with it. How it...(read more)

SQL Azure Down - how I got labs.red-gate.com back up

2011-06-23T00:26:00Z

11:06am - Currently SQL Azure in western europe is down How do I know this? Well on labs.red-gate.com (my Azure website) I have elmah installed which started sending me e-mails about connection failures from 10:40am when trying to get the dynamic content from the database (I was too busy playing with my new Eee Pad transformer to notice immediately). Going to the website confirmed the failure and trying to connect to SQL Azure from SQL Server Management studio and the Management confirmed bad...(read more)

5 Reasons why I hate WPF

2011-06-16T03:00:00Z

I decided to use writing a new tool as a way to learn WPF and MVVM and I thought I'd write down a few of my problems as a way of cathartic release. I decided to read a book before attempting WPF for the first time as I've heard others complain about the steep learning curve. I chose the rather excellent "WPF 4 Unleashed" by Adam Nathan to read through and "Pro WPF in C# 2010" by Matthew MacDonald as a reference whilst I programmed. 1 - Poor editing support for XAML The first thing I think any...(read more)

SQL Monitor and "The Cloud"

2010-11-23T04:10:00Z

So, how can we demo this thing? In the beginning there was a product, and it was a good product for the testers had decreed it so, and nobody argues with a tester. But then comes the inevitable question of how can somebody test it out without risk. Red Gate prides itself on the tools being easy for people to trial before they buy, and no cut down trial for you sir, oh no, for you sir only the best will do - a fully functional trial - suits you sir. The problem The problem comes when you get a...(read more)

A weekend with the Samsung Galaxy Tab

2010-11-15T08:42:00Z

This weekend I took one of the Samsung Galaxy Tabs we have lying around the office here home to see how I got on with it as I've been thinking of buying one. Initial impressions The look and feel of the Tab is quite nice. It's a lot smaller than an iPad but that is no bad thing as I imagine they are targeted at different markets. The Tab fits into my inside coat pocket nicely and doesn't feel like it's weighing me down too much. Connecting up the Tab to the network at work was fine, typing in...(read more)

Red Gate Labs on a shoestring

2010-11-02T16:20:13Z

In the Beginning Red Gate in the past has always produced lovely tools, however sometimes things are created which are never quite good enough to become products. So instead of keeping these things to ourselves we started putting them online for others to make the most out of - http://labs.red-gate.com. Being Red Gate the initial site was put up in a hurry using media wiki and languished there for many moons, unloved and unimpressive Project Thus was born a plan, and it was a cunning plan. In...(read more)

When is a Bug NotABug

2009-01-23T01:08:00Z

So we're coding away - as you do - on our lovely new product (Blatant Plug : Exchange Server Archiver). Things are going well code monkeys are ooking nicely, testers are being evil as only they know how.Now I'm all for thoroughly tested products, things weren't always this way and I remember when I started working with full-time testers and took every bug as a personal insult. Afterwards I came to realise that we're all working to get the best product we possibly can in the time available out the...(read more)

Been a bit busy lately

2008-05-22T01:36:00Z

What I learned lately - by Richard Mitchell Aged 32 3/4.1. When you're managing a large project team don't expect to get 4 days coding done a week.2. Designing a UI that people can use is much harder than it seems.3. Hire the right people and they'll work wonders.4. I can't pronounce Hungarian names.5. Or French ones.6. And I get English ones wrong (Clive is pronounced Colin in my head)7. Foam dart guns are fun.8. Splitting work into components allows multiple developers to just get on with it.9....(read more)

Serialization - that annoying little problem

2008-02-21T03:04:00Z

As I've been doing a bit of work on remoting (see my previous blog post) I'm necessarily looking quite a bit into the serialization of messages. Yesterday I found quite a good article on the CodeProject website with a good set of references about remoting it's well worth a read. While I'm on the subject I thought I'd share my variation of Ingo Rammer's RemotingHelper class. This is a class that enables you to create remote classes based on interfaces via the remoting configuration file. Normally...(read more)

Remoting and common classes

2008-02-12T03:42:00Z

I've been playing a bit lately with .NET Remoting and I must say that so far I'm deeply un-impressed. The documentation seems to be sparse at best and downright misleading at worst. So I thought I'd put a few of my discoveries here so that people can learn from my mistakes. .NET Remoting is a technology that allows the .NET runtime to code in another AppDomain or even another remote machine without having to worry about the details. At least that's the theory. The problem is when you want to make...(read more)

SQL Data Compare 6.1 - row level restore comes of age

2008-01-24T05:22:00Z

It took a little longer than expected but "By George I Think We've Cracked It!". Towards the end of last year a bunch of us went out to go ice skating and otherwise spending the company's money - which was nice, earlier in the morning I managed to fall off my bicycle and then when I was showing somebody how to ice skate I fell over and cracked a rib. All this pain because we were out celebrating a whole bunch of cool projects that had come to an end during the year. Not content with merely cracking...(read more)