Paul Fallon's WebLog : - Prescriptive Guidance

Server Performance Advisor V1.0

no1138 — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 00:51:00 GMT

Server Performance Advisor can be found here. It was released a few days ago.

Overview

Service Performance Advisor is a server performance diagnostic tool developed to diagnose root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, particularly performance problems for Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 and the Active Directory® directory service. Server Performance Advisor measures the performance and use of resources by your computer to report on the parts that are stressed under workload.

Other server roles include system overview (hot files, hot TCP clients, top CPU consumed), print spooler, context switch data and preliminary File Server trace data.

</Extract>

Haven't used it yet, put looking the the details in the overview, it looks like it will be very useful. I'll post an update when I have had a chance to use it in anger.

Orginally found a posting on it on denes 's blog.

Testing? Testing? 1-2-3? Testing? - PAG have released some early preview/draft chapters of guidance focusing on testing of .NET application blocks.

no1138 — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 08:24:00 GMT

Whether you are a sound engineer or software engineer, before the big event, you have to go on stage in front of a select few (the diehard fans/users/tester) and make sure that all of your hard work behind the scenes actually works and does what its supposed to, before going live in front of a full audience :)

aaahh testing, that part of the SDLC when you are buzzing going into it ,because you are proud of your efforts and your code; and shattered by the end of it, because some "tweaking" had to be done, deadlines are loaming ,but you are always prouder of your code by the end of it :) I have too many "fond" memories of testing from my freelance days? Too many to mention in this blog post, I'll save them for later?

So getting back to the rather long title for this post :)

Those bastions of patterns and practices within MS, are at it again. They are posting some early previews/drafts of their efforts in developing guidance focusing on testing .NET application blocks. Looking at the initial drafts, I think its going to be a great addition to the MS developer community.

To quote the folks in the PAG QA team, here are their own words about the preview:

"MS patterns and practices group is working on developing guidance focusing on testing of .NET application blocks. We would appreciate your participation in reviewing the table of content and few of the chapters which are in draft stages. Your feedback will help us make this guidance not only relevant but also help us to address the specific requirements of the .NET application block developer and test community.

The current TOC (please refer the releases section) includes some of the common testing areas and techniques we intend to cover.

The guidance will focus on various testing stages that the .NET application block passes through and maps them to the software development life cycle stages. The goal is to make this guidance as actionable as possible and include information such as steps involved in conducting specific types of testing, provide information on the types of defects found at each stage etc.

Please refer the Releases section of this workspace for the TOC and draft of some of the chapters of this guide. "

All of the details are at this site, http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/pagtest.

Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 1.0 - Released last week

no1138 — Mon, 31 May 2004 00:10:00 GMT

This is a great little tool that has been in beta for a long time :). I haven’t seen its release been discussed in any blogs (or at least the ones that I read).

It covers a lot of the low hanging fruit, those small little things that can creep into a DB by accident and can go unnoticed for a while.

e.g. Database File compression, file placement, configuration options, naming conventions of objects of certain types etc....

I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

You can download it from here Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 1.0