I used Altova's XMLSpy briefly back in the day, and it was a very well thought-out and implemented product. I haven't had a lot of need to look at the company for several years, until today when a co-worker pointed me to their (semi-)new product, DatabaseSpy 2008. It connects to many different databases and has a phenomenal UI (like all Altova products). It has a nice editor, designer, and browser, and has a very powerful import/export mechanism to easily move data between different databases.

It looks like I need to sit down and evaluate the other products that have appeared since the last time I looked.

Note: This post is unsolicited. I do not have a registered copy of any Altova product at this time.

This is a pretty nice summary about what to do to be able to share files between two mortal enemies.

To move a MySQL 5.x database from one machine to another, follow these steps.

On the source machine, type this:

mysqldump -u root db_development > backup.sql 

After copying backup.sql to the destination machine, type this (assuming the database doesn't already exist there):

mysqladmin -u root -p create db_development
mysql -u root -D db_development < backup.sql

References

I used these web pages as inspiration, but it seems that things have gotten out of date.

• http://support.adobe.com/devsup/devsup.nsf/docs/52353.htm
• http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22-5259660.html

The other night, I set out to harden my wireless connection security on my home router by following commonly accepted wisdom and best practices that have been passed down from person to person. Namely, the 2 biggest changes I made were to change my SSID and quit broadcasting the SSID. Setting up my MacBook was about as obvious and painless as could be. However, things did not fare so well on my fairly new work laptop (Lenovo T61).

My wireless connection in the tray area would immediately put an X on it and tell me things weren't connected. However, I could still browse, still had a valid IP address, etc., etc. After about 8-10 minutes, the connection would finally shut down and tell me that it couldn't connect to my work's wireless connection.

After a lot of googling, I came across this article that talked about wireless network issues in a little more depth. It turns out that the Windows Zero Configuration service did not like the fact that I had hidden my SSID so it was trying to be "helpful" by searching for other networks out there that it could see.

In the end, I was able to leave my SSID hidden (despite the fact that it doesn't really matter much that it's hidden) and leave Windows Zero Configuration running. I just had to uncheck the "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network" option in Wireless Networks | Preferred Networks | Properties | Authentication. Who knew?

Chalk this up to yet another "I should have read the man page first" incidents. I kept noticing that my PATH was not set properly in new Terminal sessions, even though I was 100% positive I set it correctly in my ~/.bash_login. It turns out that the man page clearly states that during login, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile are checked, in that order, and executes the first one that it finds. That prompted me to look around to find the ~/.bash_profile file that I had created when following directions to install an application several weeks ago. Merging the files together, everything went back to working as it should. Live and learn.

I've been listening to .NET Rocks for quite a while now. They almost always have good content, and the production value is insanely good. I had problems when they went away from AAC feeds (note: it looks like the AAC feed is back again!) where the entire episode would restart when I would bring my iPod out of a long sleep.

I've also been listening to more audio books as a way to kill time in the car. Most audio books are coming in as mp3, but then you don't get the benefit of speed-up playback or having the iPod remember your position. In order to have iTunes classify a file as an Audiobook, you need to do 1 of the following things:

1. Rip the audio file as AAC rather than mp3 (or convert an existing mp3 file to AAC using iTunes). Afterwards, rename the file extension to .m4b. The default extension for AAC encoding is .m4a, so you need to rename them manually.
2. On Windows, use this free software to do all of the work in one step.
3. On a Macintosh, use this script to do the work for you.

I was getting a strange problem at a client's site recently where on occasion, an ASP.NET application that called a web service would throw different exceptions. The fact that I could claim "It works on my machine" meant little consolation. Stranger still, when debugging the application, it would blow up at different spots. When it finally blew up on a call to Response.Redirect, the client suddenly remembered some code that he used in a similar situation before. The theory was that there is some kind of misconfiguration in the servers somewhere, so this should not be needed, but this work-around has since been added and no additional errors have been reported.

// svc is a WebService that you would use in your ASP.NET application
svc.Proxy = new System.Net.WebProxy("127.0.0.1");
((System.Net.WebProxy)svc.Proxy).BypassList = new string[] { "NameOfLocalMachine" };

After reading David Glassborow's blog on CoRD (a Macintosh application to access Remote Desktop sessions), I decided I needed to document how to use SSH and VNC on a Mac client to access a Windows server. The basic steps are: Create a connection to your server via SSH, Create a tunnel to use over the SSH connection, and use your VNC Viewer over the SSH tunnel.

SSH

I already have SSH set up on the Windows box, using SSH Secure Shell, so I'll just focus on how to get the Mac connected to it. The application I like best right now is Fugu, a freeware, open-source application from the University of Michigan. You need to create a tunnel in Fugu by selecting the SSH | New SSH Tunnel menu item. Once selected, you fill in:

• The remote server's IP address in "Create Tunnel to" (e.g. 192.168.1.76)
• The remote port number for the VNC Server (by default: 5900)
• The local port number that you will use to detect when TCP/IP traffic should be forwarded to the remote server over this tunnel
• The external IP address of your home PC in "Tunnel Host"
• The Username that you will use to login to the Windows server
• The default port for SSH communication, i.e. 22

Once you have all of this set up, and press Start Tunnel, you will have an SSH connection and tunnel running to the Windows box on the other end.

VNC

Now that SSH is setup, we need to connect VNC to the host machine. I'm using the RealVNC viewer for Mac OSX, and it seems to work alright. All you need to do is connect to 127.0.0.1:1 in your VNC Viewer. The 1 tells VNC viewer to run on port 5901, which was the port we wanted to forward to the host PC. I do get a warning message about needing to enable Protocol 3.3 option, so I'll look into setting that on the server since I'm running UltraVNC there. I've also noticed a very significant slow-down when running over SSH compared to running a direct VNC connection to the host PC.

Another option is to run the Java version of VNC Viewer from TightVNC. My limited testing showed that it was an acceptable alternative. Unfortunately, the VNC application on the Mac that everyone talks about, Chicken of the VNC, doesn't work in my setup. I get a rectangle encoding error when connecting to my remote host.

Copying files

One reason I chose to use Fugu is that you can also use it to copy files between the remote host and your local machine. File copying over SSH is done by using the standard SFTP and SCP applications, which Fugu supports. If you absolutely do not need file copying capabilities, then JellyFiSSH) seems to be the SSH application that people talk about a lot.

Another promising way to copy files is by using MacFusion. MacFusion lets you mount a virtual disk on your OSX system and interact with the volume like any other disk. You need to install MacFUSE first, in order to use MacFusion. In the future, I'd probably go with MacFusion and JellyFiSSH, but I was never able to get MacFusion to successfully mount the volume (Error message: "The folder "xyz" could not be opened because you do not have sufficient access privileges.". The credential information I entered was the same as for Fugu and other SSH connections that I have used in the past, so that doesn't make a lot of sense. The log files were less than helpful on the Mac and Windows side, too. On the Mac side, it simply reports "failed to detect remote user ID", and the Windows side didn't show anything in the Event Viewer, despite numerous setting changes in the Local Policy application).

Other Information

This is a good screen cast on how to set your Macintosh up as a VNC server, and walks you through several other general topics. JellyFiSSH and Chicken of the VNC are highlighted in this video.