Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tag 'Tools'

SQL Database Performance Monitoring- Nice Tool

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

"There is some problem with the database server..." is a very common term I hear often from clients who face performance related issue with AX. Well database tuning is very important and impacts performance but is not the only thing that needs to be looked. Some other things are:

Recently I was investigating some DB related issue by using SQL Native tools like DMV's, DTA etc and also looking for some other utilities which would provide some dashboard view of the AX Database and hit upon a nice tool 'SQL Sentry'.
I decided to take it for a spin on the AX 2009 database and the results were kind of impressive. The Performance Advisor for SQL Server Dashboard and the Disk Activity were nice. Really gives a nice overview to the DB Admin for monitoring and troubleshooting. Nice tool to complement with the native SQL Server tools. Attaching some screenshots I did on AX and SQL Sentry. Basically I had the test data in AX 2009 and ran some resource intensive tasks like Master Scheduling, Multiline journal posting and monitored them using this tool and was pretty impressed with the output. The counters are nice and highly informative(DISK IO).
Activity Dashboard:

Disk Activity:

You may like to take it for a spin :)
Happy DAX-ing

LOD Creator improvements

arno — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

The functionality in ModelConverterX to create lower level of detail versions of a model was running very slow for complex objects. I have not fixed that completely (yet), but I have made some changes to this functionality that should at least make it easier to work with. The calculation that simplifies the object is now running on a different thread, so that at least the rest of the tool should remain more responsive. I have also added a progress bar, so that you can see how far in the simplification process the tool is already. See the screenshot of the new dialog below.

As you might see there are some more changes. I have removed the 3D preview from the LOD Creator dialog. Instead the mean 3D preview is used now to display the result of the LOD Creator dialog. You can still select the LOD you want to see from the LOD Creator dialog though.

Optimizing the simplication code further, so that it will run faster is still on my todo list. But at the moment I am also busy with preparing for the new gPoly ground polygon tool. So I am not sure which one will get my attention first. Now that I am talking about the gPoly tool, I would still be happy to receive your input on what you would like to see in a tool for custom ground polygons.

Revival of a tool

arno — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Today I made a new version of a small tool I did some time ago. Actually I redesigned it completely from scratch using C# and .NET this time. The tool I am talking about is CompileHelper. This is a small tool to assist developers in compiling their source files. For many developers using command line compilers like BGLComp, BGLC or SCASM gives quite some trouble. This is mainly because they have not been designed to be used in the drag and drop fashion that is so popular nowadays.

On forum you often read that people get no BGL or MDL file from the compiler and that a little black window showed for a micro-second. That proves to be too short to read the useful information the compiler is throwing at the user. Often that information will tell you exactly why your BGL or MDL file could not be created.

A few years ago I made the first version of CompileHelper to ease this problem a bit. The tool allows you to drag and drop the source file on it, just like you would love to do with the compiler. CompileHelper then calls the compiler in the background, but captures all feedback. Then we the compiler is finished this feedback is presented to you. Besides that the tool will also determine which compiler you need.

So today I made a new version of this tool, because the problem is still as common as a few years ago. And the old version of CompileHelper did not support the FSX BGLComp directly. Therefore I decided it was time for a redesign. So if you want to get the new version, have a look here.

3DS exporter improved

arno — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I have just fixed some bugs in the 3DS exporter of ModelConverterX. The main issue solved is that complex objects often could not be imported into GMax. Without going into too much technical details, this was caused by some variables being stored as a short, allowing a maximum value of 65535. Some object parts had more triangles or vertices than this limit and that resulted in the error when importing. This has now be been fixed and those model parts will be split when exporting.

Another improvement I made to the 3DS exporter is that the night textures and bump textures are now also written to the material when exporting.

For future improvement of the 3DS exporter I still have the wish to add animations as well, but that is a little lower on the priority list at the moment. And another 3DS related wish is to have an importer for the 3DS format as well.

How do YOU like to work?

arno — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

As I posted before, I am planning for a new ground polygon tool. To get more clear how potential end users, yes that is YOU, would prefer to make ground polygons I have setup a poll at the FSDeveloper forum. So please let me know what your ideal way to add ground polygons to a scenery would be. That will help me in creating a tool that is easy to use. I hope to see your vote!

Unions

arno — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

You could say that recently unions have played a role in my life. First there has been my wedding one and a half week ago of course, forming a nice union between me and my wife. But that is not what I want to talk about in this blog post.

I have also been working on some code that allows me to do boolean operations between polygons. This functionality is something that will come in handy when I start working on my new ground polygon tool, It can for example be used to automatically slice the polygons into piece of no more than 100 meters, so that there are no problems with the curvation of the earth within FSX.

Below you see a screenshot of my test application, where I am testing out these boolean functions. The red polygon is polygon A and the green one is polygon B. The four small pictures below show in grey the union of A and B, the intersection of A and B, polygon A minus B and polygon B minus A respectively.

At first I looked around for some library that implements this functionality and although some exist, I still decided to code it myself in the end. The main reason for that was that I wanted to understand how the process works and that why learn a bit more from it (although it might not always be the easiest way). So in the end I used the algorithms described in Geometric tools for computer graphics and make my own implementation, building further onto for example the polygon class I had already made for ModelConverterX.

The boolean operations are not completely bug free yet, I have already found a few polygons that are not processed correctly. So there is still some more work to do and after that I will start with creating the tool for ground polygons that can make use of this logic. So I still have much more fun ahead...

Looking for input on a new ground polygon tool

arno — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

For a while I am thinking about a new tool that will help in the creation of ground polygons, for the moment this tool will have the working name of gPoly. I have now setup a forum at FSDeveloper to discuss the requirements for such a tool. So I would like to invite other developers to provide their inputs and thereby help in shaping this new tool. I for example would love to hear what you see as the biggest issues currently while making ground polygons for your scenery and how you would like a tool to ease the process for you. So let me know what you think...

Windows 7 64bit works!

omar — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Windows 7 64bit finally works! This is the first 64bit OS I could really use in my daily acitvities. I tried Vista 64bit, it was unreliable. It would show blue screen right when I am about to make a presentation to the CEO. Until Microsoft released SP1, Vista 64 bit was not usable at all. Then came Windows 7 beta. I immediately tried the 64bit version of Windows 7 beta. It was even worse than Vista. It would crash every now and then – waking up from standby, trying to do livemeeting share, switching screens, plugging in external USB drives and what not. So, I patiently waited for the final version to come out before I get on installing it on all my laptops. Happy to say, the final version works perfectly on HP tx2000 Tablet PC, DELL Vostro 1500, DELL Inspiron 1520. Once you do a full windows update and install some drivers here and there, it all works perfectly. And let me say, Windows 7 is beautiful. I found back the joy of working on computers again!

Working on 64bit Operating System is challenging. You don’t always find the right printer driver. Your cool external USB speakers won’t work – even if it is made by Microsoft. And above all, there’s that C:\Windows\Winsxs folder which keeps increasing forever. By the time I was done with Vista 64bit (two years approx in business), my Winsxs folder was staggering 26 GB eating up every bit out of my C: partition. I had no choice but to format and start over. It seems like this folder keeps copy of every single DLL version it ever sees. The more windows update I do, the larger it gets. Now on a fresh new Windows 7 installation, after installing VS 2008, Office Applications, Windows Live applications and some handy tools, the Winsxs folder is 5.62 GB. Let’s see how it keeps growing over the year. A useful information for 64bit wannabes, make sure your C partition is at least 60 GB. I just installed Windows 7 64bit 3 days back and it has already taken 31 GB space.

Since I am doing a totally useless post, let me sprinkle some productivity tips on it before you lose interest reading my blog.

I realized I do a lot of context swiching. I get over 200 mails per day, so I pretty much switch focus from Visual Studio/Browser to Outlook once every minute, which is big cencentration killer. So, I tried the above setup on my 25” screen and it works great!

The left half of the screen is visual studio and the right half screen shows Outlook and my todolist. As you see, I can see the emails coming up on Outlook without ever switching. The Visual Studio screen width is the right size to read code without horizontally scrolling. The right bottom half of the screen shows my toodlist so that I am always doing the right task from my todolist and not wondering around heedless. If I browse, I bring up the browser on top of the Visual Studio and keep the right half same so that while browsing I am not missing important mails and I still have an eye on my next actions.

I have been using Toodledo for a year. I love it! It has a geat iPhone app which is the only reason I use Toodledo and not other alternatives. The ajax interface is slick, especially when you use Google Chrome to make an application out of it on your desktop. You can turn on keyboard shortcuts and then the toodledo inside Google Chrome’s application like view becomes the best web based todolist application out there. Whenever I file a task, I hit ‘n’, enter the task title, press tab, 1/2 for priority, hit enter and I am done. How convenient! Especially when I read mails and file actionable tasks at least 40 to 60 times per day.

Problems you face when you do not check features not supported in SQL Server

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Few developers on a client's place raised a question that why they should really be concerned about deprecated features or commands in SQL Server? Until SQL Server 2000 version it used to be a workaround to get the old scripts executed in a way. It is good now that you have complete reference within the documentation (BOL). The question above has got 2 answers, one is yes the user must be concerned and there is a way to come out of the problem by finding the deprecated features on the existing release....(read more)

[VSTS] Integrando Flex con VSTS

ffagas — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Introducción

Este artículo se revisará como integrar una interface hecha en Flex Builder 3.0 con objetos de .Net, en post anteriores se revisó como hacer la integración entre Flex y TFS 2008 utilizando el plugin de teamprise en esta ocasión veremos que al momento que integramos nuestro proyecto de Flex a Visual Studio 2008 automáticamente nos habilita la administración de dicho código.

Ver más: http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas/archive/2009/09/15/vsts-integrando-flex-con-vsts.aspx