Microsoft .NET Framework (version 3.5 SP1)

In times past, Microsoft .NET Framework required a "FullTrust" to be able to run .NET applications from a network share. This architecture was put in place many years ago as a stop gap for hackers getting an exe onto a share and having people click on it.

Microsoft now, with 3.5 SP1, has given the ability to for managed code to run like native code from a network share.

The good:

We no longer need to maintain a list of network shares that users need to have "FullTrust" set up on and the issues around troubleshooting these exceptions has become much easier.

The bad:

This brings us back to a state of being less controlled about deployments. One of the things that our developers have a tendency to do is just point people to a new location for their programs because from the network share, they don't have to go through anyone else to "deploy" their new piece of software.

Aaaarrrrrrggggg ... I love MS Architecture changes ...

Service-Now.com Training

Alright, I have a little bit of time as our SAN has currently taken down my ability to work on my desired projects for this morning, so I thought I would enlighten the world on the Service-Now training that I received last week in San Diego ...

First off, San Diego is a beautiful city and if you are going there for vacation, it's probably worthwhile. Seems like it would be a fun place to hang out and enjoy life a little bit...

Second, the training itself takes place in an old building located about 45 seconds from the beach, nice enough that you can see the beach from the building.

From there, we can discuss the actual class itself...

For starters, the training was held in a large open room, with about a dozen rented tables and roughly 30 plastic chairs. The $15 variety you buy from Wal-Mart. Each table had a LAN cord run to it, but none of them were plugged into anything and there were no computers (as other such training classes I have been to have had at least a cheap computer for everyone to work from).

Upon setting up my laptop, I noticed that they had a wireless connection available, and after about 30 minutes, they finally told us the password to connect ... From there, we were able to crash the airport wireless that they had. Even after setting up the second wireless AP, we were able to crash it as well.

We then, were divided into 3 training regions on the Service-Now training servers (very slow). The wireless network kept dropping our connections.

The training materials didn't exist. The instructor, while nice enough, spent both days kind of rambling through a lot of the same material that the proof of concept demo had gone through. Alot of what was covered, I actually knew going in after playing with the tool for a very limited amount of time.

The workflow portion of the training, which is where I thought I might get the most benefit, was about an hour and a half long and mainly consisted of making some very minor modifications to an existing workflow and creating a very, very light workflow.

As not to sound completely negative about the experience, with a little forethought and some proper materials, I think the training could have been very effective.

The most informative part of the class was having their lead support person in class as he was prompting the instructor for real world examples of some of the things that she was pushing so quickly to get through.

1. A handout ... A reference book or even a reference web page of some sort to follow along step by step with what the instructor was going through.
2. Narratives about how this situation applies in the real world. What times have you seen this go well? When have you seen it go bad?
3. Here are watchouts and places to be careful, places we have seen other customers get themselves into trouble from time to time.
4. You get the idea.

Sungard EAS 10.0 - Client Installation

For those of you that might being trying to build an application package for Sungard EAS, I had to work with Sungard to get the unofficial means by which to install the package silently.

The steps come down to:

1. Install the package normally from the Setup.exe (Installshield) package given by Sungard.
2. Retrieve the EAS Client.msi file from c:\windows\Downloaded Installations\{packageGuid}\EAS Client.msi.
3. Use Wise Packager to build a Transform file for the msi package.
4. Launch "msiexec.exe /i "Eas Client.msi" /qb TRANSFORMS=NewTransform.mst"

This should perform the installation as desired.

For my specific package, because there will be an update from version 8.2 to 10.0, I have added a line to delete the older C:\Windows\EASClnt.ini file. This should work to keep things from causing issues with the update itself.

Good luck

My Silence

I know that some of you have noticed that I have been kind of quiet lately, this is due to my company being involved in purchasing some new software for IT Service Management so I have been laying low ...

This week, however, I'm in San Diego and about ready to start making a little noise about Service-Now ... details to follow soon (as this will consume my life for the next few months, I already know).

Packaging and HKCU ...

One of the problems facing lots of packagers is how to place data into all users' HKCU key for when they log onto a PC once again... Keep in mind that we are using Wise Package Studio 7 and Altiris 6.5 NS packages.

Here we go with the solution that I decided on:

After going through and seeing that there was valid information in the HKCU key, we went and changed the job to run for each logged on user (once)...

Hope this works, if not, you will see more data added to this post.