Develop Reference

Uncovering Mysterious CustomCommand Functionality

Here's my question, how does one "hack" the CustomCommand in Enterprise Architect's API to figure out what it's capabilities are? Here's what I'm currently using it for, which seems to be an accepted (by the community) and usable function:
repository.CustomCommand("Repository", "ImportRefData", xml);
I want to see what else I can do with it, namely some exporting of said reference data.
Also, while Sparx cannot officially support this functionality since it's undocumented, what are the odds that this command will stay functional with updated versions of EA, do they have a history of breaking illegal code like this?
Thanks,
Alex

The answer is: you can't. The few commands I documented were from postings on the Sparx forum. Eventually they originated from Sparx support itself. I remember having read from someone who knew about one of the commands asking for more info. But Sparx did not unveil more than was known. I tried to find the strings in the EXE but to no avail.
Since the function is there for quite some years and Sparx is very reluctant to substantial changes in the API it will likely not change. So it's save to use the function in future. IIRC Sparx itself recommended the use in certain cases. But only on the forum...

Forward error correction in .NET

Are there any libraries (paid or free, though free is obviously better) that provide forward error correction for .NET applications? I've tried looking through the source code of some of the open source C / C++ libraries, but quite frankly, the math is confusing and my inability to read other peoples' C code with any reasonable level of clarity is a major road block.

If you have free C++ libraries why don't you try to build CLI wrapper around them?

Forward Error Correction is for instance used in media streaming.
A quick google search on "forward error correction" does not reveal much, but you could go another way:
Compile the C/C++ implementation (for instance from the list on Christian Schuler's Forward Error Correction (FEC) Page) of your choice into a DLL, then use P/Invoke to call functions in that DLL.
Another option that might fit you is to use the .NET interface to the Windows Media Services 9 series.
It contains the IWMSPublishingPoint interface that has a EnableFEC property.
--jeroen

Have you looked at the PAR2 format specification? PAR2 files provide raid-like parity for downloaded files (mostly popular on usenet binary groups). Although PAR2 is probably the wrong granularity for you, you should be able to change that once you know how it works.

I found a free library on github (made by antiduh):
https://github.com/antiduh/ErrorCorrection
As it said:
A library to implement Reed-Solomon encoding. Reed Solomon is a method of encoding data with extra error correction information built in, so that errors in received data can be corrected without having to retransmit the data; this technique is also known as Forward Error Correction (FEC).

Migrating C# code from Cassandra .5 to .6

I have some some simple code derived from an example that is meant to form a quick write to the Cassandra db, then loop back and read all current entries, everything worked fine. When .6 came out, i upgraded Cassandra and thrift, which threw errors in my code (www[dot]copypastecode[dot]com/26760/) - i was able to iron out the errors by converting the necessary types, however in the version that compiles now only seems to read one item back, im not sure if its not saving db changes or if its only reading back 1 entry. the "fixed" code is here: http://www.copypastecode.com/26752/. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First of all, let me say that you should definitly use TBufferedStream instead of TSocket for the TBinaryProtocol, that will make a huge impact on your application performance.
For the Apache Thrift API documentation that BATCH_INSERT methods is deprecated, so it could have introduced a misleading bug on that operation that actually only insert the first column. Said so, why don't you try to use BATCH_MUTATE instead?
By the way, why are you trying to use Thrift directly? There are some nice c# clients for Cassandra that are actually performing really well. You can find the whole list at http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ClientOptions.
I'm the author of one of them are is pretty much updated with Apache and its being used by some companies on production environment. Take a look at my homepage.

How to compare execution paths in .NET?

I'm debugging into the .NET Framework source code to look for a bug in my application. I have two similar inputs for the code where one exhibits the bug and the other doesn't. However to follow the code path into the .NET source is quite complex.
What I'd like is a tool that can be executed for both inputs and compare the results to see what code paths are taken, how the internal values differ, etc...
Is this available for .NET?

You could try nCover. It can show you code coverage information which might help you work out which branches are taken when the bug occurs.

You could try JetBrains DotTrace and just ignore the timings. They offer a free 30 day trial download.

As Mitch suggests, check out a profiler, perhaps ANTS. It will give you all the method calls so you can see everything that is going on.

The SD C# Test Coverage Tool will show you what code is executed if you run your test cases separately.
It will also compute the difference between the covered code for each case if you ask it to do so. This difference will be the code that one tests executes, that the other does not. Likely that's where your problem is.
It won't help you obtain source for the .NET framework.

Try using a profiler:
EqaTec (free)
ANTS Performance Profiler (14-day Trial)
dotTrace (10-day Trial)
If you have the Enterprise version of Visual Studio 2008 (or other version)
Visual Studio Profiler

Try the free EQATEC Tracer - it does pretty much exactly what you're looking for.
It injects "tracing-code" into your application which will at runtime tell you exactly what methods are executed and what the parameters are. There are sophisticated ways of fine-tuning what methods to trace, since "all" is usually too much, but you can turn on tracing for all methods with just one single click if you really want to.
Take a look at the key features here: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/tracer/features
-and get it here: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/tracer
Edit: Sorry, I missed the part about having to dig into the actual .NET framework code. The tracer can't do that in an easy manner.

Finalizer with CodeDom?

Is it possible to add a Finalizer to a CodeDom generated class (other than using CodeSnippetTypeMember)?
I couldn't find any information about it on MSDN.

This was a known bug in .NET Framework and was reported some time back at
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?feedbackId=FDBK48431
But the link above is currently not working. You can view it using internet archive on the following link
http://web.archive.org/web/20080224200911rn_2/connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=97599
I am not sure whether it was fixed or not.