SSIS 2005
Flat File Connection Manager Bug-
I was bit shocked to see this bug which MS is still reluctant to fix.

If you change the "data rows to skip" settings under "Preview" tab it will impact how the rows are imported actually using a file and is not just confined to the preview of the data in that window. Essentially, if you set it to say 100, the package when executed will skip 100 rows from the file and guess what not just from beginning but also also the random positions as well.

If MS says this is a minor UI bug then the question is why is it skipping rows from the random positions also and not just from the top?? I am sure no developer will like to skip random rows from the file :)

It is a BUG indeed.

Window Mobile 6.0 e-Wallet

Developed out of absolute necessity, this tool allows you to save confidential data on your windows mobile based device in a highly secure manner. As a software professional and hobbyist I ended up developing this utility instead of buying one from Handango or some other site.

Features-
1. Single sign on based login i.e. allows you to have one password for all your encrypted data.
2. Provision to change your password anytime.
3. Provision to add/modify/delete templates.
4. Provision to add/modify/delete categories.
5. Auto shut down. Application will shut down itself after 5 minutes of your login for safety.
6. Items are encrypted using industry standard “Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)”.
7. Password’s irreversible hash is stored in the application and not the actual password which is the industry standard.

Known Issues-
1. UI needs improvement
2. Field type validation missing
3. Multi wallet functionality is missing
4. Adding field in the item creation/edit screen is not possible
5. Windows integration to take backup of the data securely

Caveats-
1. Password is not stored anywhere so if you forget the password no one can retrieve the information ever.
2. Not everything is encrypted i.e. all item data is encrypted but not the master data like templates, category as they do not contain any critical information. By selectively encrypting critical information tool also operates with higher speed and without  frozen screens.

Installation-
Installation should be quite straight forward, copy the cab files from the link below to your mobile. Double click SQL CE first to install it and then double click the application cab file to install it. 
Default Password: password

I would be happy take further inputs from the users and gradually upgrade the application.

Prerequisite Link: SQL CE 3.5 Cab File

Download Link: Application Cab File

Screen Shots: ScreenShot1, ScreenShot2, ScreenShot3, ScreenShot4, ScreenShot5, ScreenShot6, ScreenShot7, ScreenShot8, ScreenShot9

Whats In Progress-
Some UI improvements like-
A new Settings Screen
Auto Shut Time Configuration and its Sliding Window Shut Time
Ok button on edit screens now trigger the save action, more intuitive
Concise User Help (Inside Application)

Cheers
Suneet

BizTalk project structure does not allow you to use Assembly.Info file to assign version to its assembly. BizTalk project intead uses project properties to assign version number to the assembly. This can be easily done using properties page but problem arises when you want to update version number in automated manner say nightly build or if you have large number of BizTalk projects in a solution.
I was confronted with the similar requirement recently in my current assignment. I looked around on Google a bit and quickly found out the tool to update version number using .exe but unfortunately it did not cater our requirement completely. The primary reason of dropping off that tool was that we have other components like pipeline, functoids etc which also need automated versioning facility.

Finally, I have managed to develop such utility which can update BizTalk project files with new version and also update .net files with the new version.

There are 4 files which are required by this tool they are specified below along with their description-

1. BTSVersionUpdater.exe
This is the application which must be executed to change the version.

2. BTSVersionUpdater.exe.config
This is the app.config file for the application and primarily specifies the manifest file path and the schema file path which is used to validate the manifest file.

3. Manifest.xsd
This is the XSD schema for the manifest.xml. This must NOT be modified as it is used to validate the structure of the manifest file before the application starts processing it.

4. Manifest.xml
This file is the main configuration file which needs to be customised for your solution as it contains different files to be checked out and modified for its version. This works on the regex find and replace pattern so you have to specify different parameters for this as per your requirement. The provided sample manifies file is quite self explanatory but if you still have any queries around it please give me a shout.

Tool Download: http://www.suneet.net/BlogFiles/9f461979-c27a-412d-950e-f4a3a59bba96.zip

Recently, at my present client side I was asked to introduce the new currency code change for Zimbabwe for the MT10x messages coming in from SWIFT. We use Microsoft SWIFT Accelerator to validate and process the SWIFT messages and the current message pack installed does not support this change as quite obviously this change was made recently.

So I started to fiddle around and figured out the way you can do this without having a new message pack until Nov 2009. The accelerator uses two stage validation of the message i.e. schema validation and BRE validation and therefore we will have to modify both in order to succeed in this change.

Caveat: This may not be supported by Microsoft as this is not documented anywhere and must not be changed in normal circumstances.

As you most of you would have guessed the way, I will simply put up the steps used here to change the currency. You can do the similar changes to modify other tit bits in the validation and BRE rules.

Step 1 - Change schema

a. Open SWIFT Base Types.xsd present in your project
b. In the simple type "currencycodePCTType" change enumeration from <xs:enumeration value="ZWD" /> to <xs:enumeration value="ZWR" />
c. In the simple type "currencycodeType" change enumeration from <xs:enumeration value="ZWD" /> to <xs:enumeration value="ZWR" />
d. In the simple type "currencyamountType" change ZWD to ZWR value in the pattern where ever present.

Step 2 - Change BRE

a. Using BRE Deployment Utility (available with SWIFT Accelerator), undeploy the SWIFT policies and corresponding Vocabs.
b. Open the following vocab file "A4SWIFT_CodeLists.xml" present in your SWIFT Accelerator / Message Pack installation folder.
c. Change currency value "ZWD" to "ZWR" where ever present.
d. Also, you will have to change the currency value in the policy and network rules' files present in SWIFT Accelerator / Message Pack installation folder e.g MT103_Validation_Policy.xml etc.
e. Deploy the policies and vocabs again using the same utility.

Interesting part about the string present in A4SWIFT_CodeLists.xml is that they are having some cryptic numeric values associated with them. After opening the CommonFunctions.CheckValidAmount method (which is used to evaluate the rule) in the reflector it became perceptible that these numbers actually suggests the number of decimal places for that currency.


Cheers!