Navigation for dotNetTips.com - March, 2005

Great article on generating docs for your VB.NET Application:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa289191(VS.71).aspx

Port Reporter logs TCP and UDP port activity on a local Windows system. Port Reporter is a small application that runs as a service on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 this service is able to log which ports are used, which process is using the port, if the process is a service, which modules the process has loaded and which user account is running the process.

On Windows 2000 systems, this service is limited to logging which ports are used and when. In both cases the information that the service provides can be helpful for security purposes, troubleshooting scenarios, and profiling systems’ port usage.

Click here to download.

WSE 2.0 SP3 simplifies the development and deployment of secure Web services by enabling developers and administrators to more easily apply security policies on Web services running on the .NET Framework. Using WSE, Web services communication can be signed and encrypted using Kerberos tickets, X.509 certificates, username/password credentials, and other custom binary and XML-based security tokens. In addition, an enhanced security model provides a policy-driven foundation for securing Web services across trust domains. WSE also supports the ability to establish a trust-issuing service for retrieval and validation of security tokens, as well as the ability to establish more efficient long-running secure communication via secure conversations.

New support for message-oriented programming enables asynchronous communication for Web services that involve long-lived operations, batch processing, peer to peer programs, or event driven application models. Web services that leverage WSE can now be hosted in multiple environments including ASP.NET, standalone executables, NT Services and can communicate over alternative transports including HTTP or TCP.

WSE provides a foundation for building applications based on Web services specifications published by Microsoft and industry partners including WS-Security (OASIS 2004 standard), WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation and WS-Addressing.

WSE 2.0 SP3 and WSE 1.0 SP1 can be installed side by side. If you had downloaded the 2.0 technology preview, uninstall it before installing WSE 2.0 SP3. Please review the product readme for more information about WSE 2.0 SP3, including API changes from WSE 1.0.

WSE 2.0 SP3 may be redistributed as part of your solution, provided that redistribution is done using the WSE 2.0 SP3 redistribution MSI, Microsoft WSE 2.0 SP3 Runtime.msi. This MSI is available as a separate download and is also included in the complete WSE 2.0 SP3 download.

WSE 2.0 SP3 is built for developers using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the .NET Framework 1.1. The WSE support life-cycle policy is in line with the .NET Framework support life-cycle policy. For additional information on this support policy, please check: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
Click here to download.

With this 3rd party FrontPage add-in, you can create full-featured HTML help files as easily as making a Web site. Help Publisher can produce HTML Help 1.x and MS Help 2.0 format help files as well as publishing help topics to Microsoft Word for proofreading and the production of manuals. Automatically creates the help file’s table of contents from the web's navigation structure and can even create an expandable/collapsible JavaScript contents for website hosted help. Automatic index generation from keywords associated with each topic page. Simple inclusion of context sensitive help and ‘See Also’ menus. Easy import of existing HTML Help Workshop projects and a comprehensive help file and tutorial are provided.

Click here to download.

ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly. ILMerge takes a set of input assemblies and merges them into one target assembly. The first assembly in the list of input assemblies is the primary assembly. When the primary assembly is an executable, then the target assembly is created as an executable with the same entry point as the primary assembly. Also, if the primary assembly has a strong name, and a .snk file is provided, then the target assembly is re-signed with the specified key so that it also has a strong name.

ILMerge is packaged as a console application. But all of its functionality is also available programmatically. While Visual Studio does not allow one to add an executable as a reference, the C# compiler does, so you can write a C# client that uses ILMerge as a library.

There are several options that control the behavior of ILMerge. See the documentation that comes with the tool for details. 

Click here to download.

The MSDN help states that the SystemInformation.Network method in the .NET framework will return back if the machine has a network connection (not necessarily a connection to the Internet). I have tested this method with my cable in and out and it always returns True. So I searched for the "right" way to determine this. I fixed up the code below that I found on the web. It's pretty simple and uses WMI. (If you have not used WMI to get system information, you should really check it out.) Simply add a reference to System.Management to your application and drop in the code below.

C#

private bool IsNetworkConnected()
{
  bool connected = SystemInformation.Network;
  if (connected)
  { 
    connected = false;
    System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT NetConnectionStatus FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter");
    foreach (System.Management.ManagementObject networkAdapter in searcher.Get())
    {
      if (networkAdapter["NetConnectionStatus"] != null)
      {
        if (Convert.ToInt32(networkAdapter["NetConnectionStatus"]).Equals(2))
        {
          connected = true;
          break;
        }
      }
    }
    searcher.Dispose();
  }
  return connected;
}

VB

Private Function IsNetworkConnected() As Boolean
  Dim connected As Boolean = SystemInformation.Network()
  If connected Then
    connected = False
    Dim searcher As New Management.ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT NetConnectionStatus FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter")
    For Each networkAdapter As Management.ManagementObject In searcher.Get()
      If (Not IsNothing(networkAdapter("NetConnectionStatus"))) Then
        If Convert.ToInt32(networkAdapter("NetConnectionStatus")).Equals(2) Then
          connected = True
          Exit For
        End If
      End If
    Next
    searcher.Dispose()
  End If
  Return connected
End Function