Tuesday 17 November 2009

PLINQO - Get it, use it, love it

I've stumbled across a LINQ to SQL extension called PLINQO freely downloadable at http://plinqo.com/ and includes source code.

PLINQO is a set of CodeSmith templates that generates code for you around your LINQ to SQL DBML file. It generates Manager classes and Query classes automatically (it does this by looking at your primary keys, indexes and foreign key constraints).

You must buy CodeSmith, which is the template engine, but PLINQO is free.

Its actually quite amazing and saves you tons of time and energy creating boiler plate code. So glad I found it, now I want you to investigate it too. Go check out the video tutorials to see what I mean. Awesome.

Thursday 12 November 2009

Virtual Machine Key Combinations with Hyper-V

Taken from here and kept for prosperity incase the information was ever lost. So all credit for the following information goes to Ben Armstrong.

Standard Windows Key combination Virtual Machine Connection Key Combination Explanation
CTRL + ALT + DEL CTRL + ALT + END Displays the Task Manager or Windows Security dialog box on Windows (or logs in).
ALT + TAB ALT + PAGE UP Switches between programs from left to right.
ALT + SHIFT + TAB ALT + PAGE DOWN Switches between programs from right to left.
ALT + ESC ALT + INSERT Cycles through the programs in the order they were started.
CTRL + ESC ALT + HOME Displays the Windows Start menu.
N/A CTRL + ALT + PAUSE Changes the Virtual Machine Connection window to / from full screen mode.
N/A CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW Releases mouse and keyboard focus from the Virtual Machine Connection window.

Some extra things to know about Virtual Machine Connection key combinations:

  • By default the standard Windows key combinations do not get sent to the virtual machine, unless you are in full screen mode. You can change this so that they are always sent to the virtual machine (if the Virtual Machine Connection has focus) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings... and then Keyboard and selecting the Use on the virtual machine option. I always enable this setting.
    • Note: CTRL + ALT + DEL will always go to the physical computer - so you need to use CTRL + ALT + END no matter what you select for a setting here.

  • You can change the release key combination (CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings... and then Release Key and selecting one of the options from the drop down (I usually change my release key combination to be CTRL + ALT + SHIFT as I find it easier to type).

  • If you use the Virtual Machine Connection under an existing Remote Desktop Connection (not recommended - but I do it all the time) the Remote Desktop Connection will grab all of these key combinations before the Virtual Machine Connection gets to see them (even the release key combination). To deal with this you will need to change the Hyper-V Server setting to allow Windows key combinations to go to the virtual machine, change the release key combination to something other than CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW, and use the toolbar button or Action menu of the Virtual Machine Connection to send CTRL + ALT + DEL to the virtual machine.