Easy way to copy directory listing in Windows 7 & 8

I have found this very helpful lately, since I have had a need to copy all file names of a directory to a for example an email:

From a command prompt, go to the directory where you want the listing from.

Write: dir /B > listing.txt

And that's it. You can close the command prompt. File names are in the listing.txt file. The /B -switch means "bare", so only names are included, one can of course leave that out or use other switches.

soapUI and SocketException with large data

I tested my WCF service with soapUI and wondered why I always got Socket Exception: Connection reset. I saw with debugger that my service returned what it should. The amount of data returned was big, and I had modified my web.config (maxReceivedMessageSize, maxBufferPoolSize, maxStringContentLength, maxArrayLength)  to allow large data.

After checking the trace files, it turns out I also need to add endpoint behavior to change the maxItemsInObjectGraph setting: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3058202/wcf-service-datacontractserializer-maxitemsinobjectgraph-in-web-config

Links to Entites in Excel Generated by Metadata Document Generator for Dynamics CRM 2011

Metadata Document Generator for Dynamics CRM 2011 is a nice tool  you can create documentation of your CRM entites with.

Created Excel document is even nicer if you add links to tabs, so finding a specific entity is faster. This is how I did that (in Excel 2010):

1. I added new column to the Entities list -tab next to the Entity.
2. I used formula =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE("#'";LEFT(CONCATENATE(A7;" ("; E7; ")"); 31);"'!A7"); A7)
3. I hid the original Entity-column

This formula can of course be applied to any list in Excel that corresponds to tab names.

Business rule vs. functional requirement

I'm taking a course in business analysis, and thought that requirements gathering would be the easy part for me, since I have been documenting and reading requirements before, but now I realize I really don't really get the difference between  a functional requirement and a business rule.

Wikipedia: "a functional requirement defines a function of a software system or its component. A function is described as a set of inputs, the behavior, and outputs. Functional requirements may be calculations, technical details, data manipulation and processing and other specific functionality that define what a system is supposed to accomplish. Behavioral requirements describing all the cases where the system uses the functional requirements are captured in use cases." 

BABOK defines functional requirements as "the product capabilities, or things the product must do for its users."

Wikipedia: "A business rule is a rule of a business, company, or corporation. It is a rule that defines or constrains some aspect of business and always resolves to either true or false. Business rules are intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behavior of the business. Business rules describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an organization. Business rules can apply to people, processes, corporate behavior and computing systems in an organization, and are put in place to help the organization achieve its goals."

The course material describes business rules as obligations concerning actions, processes, and procedures that define, and possibly constrain, some aspect of the business. 

Ok, now it's starting to make sense to me, this is my conclusion:
- Functional requirements often start with "the system shall.." or "the system must..", as they state what the system must be capable of doing,

 - Business rules simply state what rules must be followed,  by the people, processes or systems.

Go back in Word 2010

I've been writing and reading long documents, and am now very much missing a "back" key.


shift-F5 or ctrl-alt-z takes me to last place where text was edited
alt-arrow back helps me after I have followed a cross-reference

Still I would many times just want to go back to where the cursor was even through I didn't edit it. That shortcut still remains to be found.

Word and Non-Breaking Hyphen

I needed to use expression  Yearly calculations -tab (in finnish, so the hyphen needed to be like that). Problem was that Word broke the world to lines like this:

Yearly calculations -
tab


I didn't want that. I found  non-breaking-hyphen from here: http://www.lockergnome.com/windows/2011/03/31/word-keep-text-together-in-one-of-three-ways/, so with ctrl-shift-hyphen I got

Yearly calculations
-tab


Nice.

You know your child is growing up, when..

On our summer vacation we went to a farm and saw some cows, friendly dog and lot of tractors and machines. Veeti, 4 years, was impressed. On our way back to cottage we had this conversation:
V: Maybe I'll be a farmer when I grow up
Me: Living on a farm would be nice. Maybe I and dad could come live with you there.
V: You mean like.. visiting?
Me: No, we could live there with you when we're old.
V: Umm. Yeah... we'll have to consider it then.