Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Log Parser 2.2 is the latest version of the free command-line tool from Microsoft to query & analyze a variety of text-based data including IIS Log files. The results can be viewed in many custom-formats and even as a chart. The Log Parser Support Site is created and maintained by Mike Gunderloy More ^

To keep track of developer related Microsoft webcasts, check out the Program guide for developers and tune in. The Microsoft ASP.NET webcast series covers useful Introductory, Intermediate, Expert Webcasts Webcasts can be downloaded for off-line viewing

The default HTML that comes up when you start building a web form in VS.NET contains meta tags & other stuff that you may not want. To keep the pages lightweight so that they are served fast, you can customize the template as per your need. If you use VB, this is the file you need to modify - C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vb7\VBWizards\WebForm\Templates\1033\WebForm.aspx

Excerpts from a SQLMag article about running SQL Profiler on busy servers - Profiler is a GUI front end that calls a series of functions and procedures collectively called SQL Trace. In most cases, using Profiler to capture system information is more expensive than calling SQL Trace procedures directly. Consider using custom procedures to directly call SQL Trace procedures to stop, start,and control traces Traces, whether you run them through Profiler or through direct calls to SQL Trace, rarely degrade performance unless they grow too big too quickly. Always specify a maximum file size when tracing on a busy server. If a trace starts to grow uncontrollably large and surpasses the maximum file size limit is set, the trace will stop. 50MB is a safe maximum size. The proper maximum size will depend on the hardware and transaction volume. Another way to control the trace file's size and reduce the potential for a trace-induced performance problem is to include only the events and d...

Using the XML HTTP Request object you can find the Last-Modified date of another file, check if an url exists and call a server-side script without refreshing the page.

HTML Tidy is a powerful open source tool to help convert old HTML pages to newer standards such as XML/XHTML .

Windows Authentication is substantially more secure than SQL Server Authentication . Although it is easier to use, SQL Server 2000 Authentication has security vulnerabilities.

The IP addresses of the internet are allocated by four Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). RIPE "Réseaux IP Européens" handles Europeans IP Networks. APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) represents the Asia Pacific region, comprising 62 economies. ARIN or the American Registry for Internet Numbers manages the Internet numbering resources for North America, a portion of the Caribbean, and sub-equatorial Africa.. LACNIC is the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry. Each of these entities manage their IP allocation database and they are publicly available on their web site in text format. Webhosting.info also provides a IP-to-Country database that can be used to determine the location of Internet users in real-time with about 98% accuracy Country recognition can be useful for the following purposes: Providing Location Aware Content (language, currency, etc.) Corporate Websites/E-commerce (think global, act loca...

Vinil Menon has an interesting tip ( Updated: new link ) on sending attachments when mailing restrictions are in place. Over cautious sys admins prevent all emails with zip attachments and doc files fearing virus attacks. So how do we get genuine attachments across? UUEncode converts binary stuff to 7-bit ascii. Winzip can convert a zip file to UUE (Actions -> UUEncode) and the content in the UUE file opened through a text editor can be pasted into your email singly as a message. The receipient has to save the text of the message as a UUE file and it can be opened with Winzip again.

Web Spiders or Robots are WWW search engines that "crawl" across the Internet and index pages on Web servers, catalog that information and make it available to the Internet for searching. A Robots.txt file is a special text file located in your Web server's root directory that contains restrictions for Web Spiders, telling them where they have permission to search. Web Robots are not required to respect Robots.txt files. To disallow all Web Spiders, specify the following in the Robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: / More: How to Write a Robots.txt File