From time to time it can be very useful to debug applications running on remote machines. This is particularly true when the machine you are debugging your code on features specialised built-in hardware devices, or when your application is behaving differently compared to when it is running on your development machine. Many developers know that…
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Whenever you start to scale things up with SQL Server Merge Replication automation becomes essential. This becomes very apparent when there are many subscribers connected to the publisher or when the number of articles that make up your publication is large. As part of this blog post, I am going to demonstrate how to speed…
MSI packages remain a popular means of distributing applications for installation on Windows devices. On occasion, you may find the need to install or uninstall an MSI package programmatically, for example, whenever you need to automate a software installation or update. In this article, I’m going to show you how you can silently install and…
The Request-Response pattern seems somewhat simple on the surface; send a request, then wait for and receive a response that matches up with the original request. However, implementing this pattern in an efficient manner is something that is easy to get wrong. I’ve found that much of the material online regarding this topic tends to…
SQL Server Merge Replication is a powerful solution for synchronising data between SQL Server databases. It is useful for working offline, for site-to-site data synchronisation, and for backup system scenarios. However, when replication goes wrong, resolving the issue at hand can prove to be challenging. The number of moving parts means that every time you…
As software developers, working with processes is something that we frequently need to do. Whether it’s checking if a specific process is running, stopping a process, or creating a new process, it is useful to have a reference point for how to accomplish each of these tasks. In the sections below, I’m going to cover…
InSecurity
As software developers, we know that SSL certificates are necessary for securing our website traffic. However, in my experience, the process of obtaining and installing an SSL certificate is not something that very many software developers are familiar with. So, if you are a software developer and are looking for some guidance on the process…
PowerShell is an awesome scripting language with many powerful features. This includes integration with SQL Server; a fantastic database engine that is both reliable and battle-tested. If you need to automate repetitive and/or time-consuming DBA processes, connecting PowerShell to your SQL Server instance can be a massive help. In this article, we are going to…