Martin Parry's Community Server

Microsoft announced Azure at the PDC yesterday, and it's got me thinking in all kinds of directions. I've been an occasional visitor to StackOverflow.com since it launched a while ago. I can't say I've been an active participant - my reputation is...

In recent years I've done quite a bit of performance and scalability testing of apps on the Microsoft platform.  I know plenty of people who are more knowledgeable about software performance than I am, but at the same time a little knowledge about...

I have a Mac.  Nothing fancy, just a small MacBook.  I don't think it was a reaction to leaving Microsoft.  In fact, I dual-boot it with Windows Vista.  I need Vista because I am a Windows developer, after all.  Having said that,...

I just saw one of the latest batch of Microsoft TV adverts (I'm in the UK by the way).  As usual, it's banal, and leaves me wondering what the heck it was trying to say.  For such a wealthy company, Microsoft has some shockingly-bad TV commercials. ...

I currently spend a lot of time working on a development project with a client, and on that project we recently changed our source control system.  We were originally using ClearCase, and it's hard to be too critical of ClearCase.  I mean, it's...

Recently in our app we were getting a System.IO.FileNotFoundException.  The trouble was, the exception detail didn't tell us what particular file was missing.  Our .NET app has a dependency on a COM DLL, which in turn has good, old-fashioned,...

When I look at the viewing statistics for my blog I see that last month was the biggest month ever, in spite of the fact that I didn't post much, and that I was on holiday for half of the month.  Actually, there was quite a big increase compared...

I was just reading the lastest MSDN UK Flash newsletter, and was very interested in the survey results.  For the uninitiated, each issue of the Flash contains a survey that readers can respond to.  In the next issue, they show the results of...

One of the things I find most interesting about software development is the people who do it.  I think you can spot personality traits by reading people's code :-)  A few years ago, I was introduced to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and I...

I've been using SQL Server Compact Edition v3.5 for a little while now, and while the database engine has performed faultlessly so far, the same cannot be said of the management tool that's built into VS2008.  Perhaps that has improved with SP1 of...

I'm currently working on an app that has to run on v2.0 of the .NET platform (with no SP applied).  The particular behaviour I'm talking about may have changed in more recent versions - I haven't had time to check - but I was struck by something...

I've started a one-man campaign. In fact I started it years ago when .NET obfuscation first appeared. I don't like any of the .NET obfuscation technologies. I don't think obfuscation is worth bothering with, and it makes the developer's life just a little...

I have two reasons to eschew Windows Forms databinding. Complexity and Performance. As is usually the case, these two are related. You see, Microsoft designed databinding to accommodate a wide variety of controls, and an equally wide variety of datastructures....

I think most of us developers would agree that keeping our software as simple as possible is a noble aim. I guess there are some developers who like to make things unnecessarily complex, but I for one hope not to spend too much of my life maintaining...

Moving away from my normal topic of software development, I just wanted to vent some annoyance about "Quiet Carriages".  On the rail service I use, the operator designates 2 of the 8 carriages in the train as "quiet".  They request that you...

If I was a builder, and there was a tool in my toolbox that I didn't understand, couldn't tell you what it was for, then I think that tool would stay in the box.  I wouldn't decide one day to get that tool out and start trying it out for jobs that...

Earlier, I was looking at this page about quad-core processors from Intel.  I know, I must have been bored :-) Anyway, I spotted something interesting.  Towards the bottom of the page, they publish numbers of "Billions of Operations Per Second",...

In my consulting days, I had quite a few engagements where you might call me a performance troubleshooter.  That is, the client had already built an app, in some cases it was even in the hands of users, but performance was unacceptably bad. ...

No, this isn't a post about Roy Orbison :-) I consider myself lucky to have had what you might call a classical education in software.  I mean, I was taught about principles rather than specific technologies.  That means I was exposed to lambda-calculus,...

In my years at Microsoft, I spent a lot of time in the performance and scalability lab, helping developers to achieve the maximum amounts of performance and concurrency in their applications.  Because of all that experience, for me, it's a no-brainer...

I was looking at the stats for my website in March.  The first month for ages where I didn't post anything to my blog, and the stats were higher than at any time I can remember.  Perhaps the way to drive my stats even higher is never to blog...

Today was my last day at Microsoft.  I've worked at Microsoft in the UK for the last 8 years, and now it's time for something different. I want to say thanks to all the great people I've worked with over the years, including... The ADCs Dave Allen,...

Here's an interesting new product/service from Microsoft.  Let's take the "protection" aspect first... You can purchase things called Permutations.  Each permutation is a new secure virtual machine, or SVM, which is unique to you.  Microsoft...

Recently I wanted a tool that could convert a SID in SDDL format (such as S-1-5-20) into a Windows account name.  I'm sure there must be a lot of utilities out there to do this, but I couldn't find one.  So I wrote one. You can download it here....

I must be mad: three different events in three consecutive days... Building Services on the Microsoft Platform.  Reading, 29th January 2008 Developing on the Windows Live Platform.  Birmingham, 30th January 2008 What's New in Smart Client Development. ...