Posts on Ash Tewari

All Things Open 2026 - Session Recommendations

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 01:52:51 +0000

All Things Open 2026 is on in Raleigh! With more than 100 sessions and speakers, choosing what to attend is not easy.

I went through the conference program and shortlisted the sessions that caught my attention. My interests lean toward AI agents, software architecture, developer productivity, security, and data engineering, practical engineering challenges, along with a few interesting topics on model training, real-time AI, and emerging user interfaces.

AI coding assistants have evolved considerably. We’re now moving toward autonomous agents that can modify repositories, execute commands, provision infrastructure, and even deploy applications. But giving an agent the ability to write code is relatively easy. Making it reliable, secure, efficient, and useful in a real engineering environment is a much harder problem.

Who needs Surface Ultra RTX?

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 01:38:44 +0000

Microsoft announced the new Surface Ultra RTX Laptop today. Of course I want the RTX Spark Machine! Who doesn’t? It is awesome! I am being nostalgic about my original Microsoft Surface Pro from 2013 though. I have fond memories of developing and testing Windows 8 Apps and Windows Phone Apps(remember those?) on it.

The spec sheet of my Surface Pro 1 from 2013 is ancient: 3rd-gen Intel Core i5, 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD. Windows support ended years ago.

Agentic finetuning using a custom harness

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 02:56:11 +0000

The goal was to figure out whether a small model running on my own hardware could do the job of intent classification and structured parameter extraction well enough for one of my use-cases - read a request like “add 8 spare tent stakes to the camping box” and turn it into something the application can act on.

I created an agentic fine-tuning and evaluation loop with a custom evaluation harness: an AI agent proposes one change at a time, a custom evaluation harness measures it against a frozen test set, and every run gets appended to a log with its settings, result and next decision. The agent does the all the work of dataset generation, training, evaluation and diagnosis.

Giving OpenClaw Secure Access to Cloud Services Without Sharing Your Password

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:48:17 +0000

Device Code Flow has been built into OAuth2 for years, originally designed for TVs and game consoles. It works just as well for a Docker container. It requires no credentials stored on the agent machine. It gives you narrow, revocable access that the agent cannot exceed.

I have OpenClaw deployed in a sandboxed docker container on a dedicated host. I communicate with it via a Telegram bot, in a locked-down chat.

OpenflowSight - Log Analysis for Snowflake Openflow Telemetry

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:10:58 +0000

OpenflowSight is a Streamlit application for searching, filtering, and analyzing Openflow telemetry data, inspired by Azure App Insights Search UX.

It’s a log explorer focused on Openflow telemetry. It helps you quickly identify relevant events, see when they spiked, and which processors were involved. Search, group similar events, and export results for deeper offline analysis.

Openflow is an exciting new unified data integration tool from Snowflake based on Apache NiFi. Logs, traces, and metrics emitted at runtime are written to the Event table which supports the OpenTelemetry data model. OpenflowSight surfaces this data to enable convenient, efficient monitoring and analysis of Openflow operations from a graphical dashboard—instead of using SQL queries.

Understanding RAG @ All Things Open AI 2025

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 02:29:39 +0000

What I learned while creating Bookshelf (open source RAG Application)

I had the opportunity to speak at the AllThingsOpen.ai 2025 Conference recently. It was a wonderful experience to learn from and share with so many amazing fellow presenters and attendees. All Things Open AI 2025 session recordings are available now.

I spoke about several key aspects of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and vector databases. The main topics I addressed included The Core Concepts of RAG, Embedding Models vs. Inference Models, Handling Multiple Embeddings and various Optimizations Beyond Naive RAG such as chunking strategies, enrichment with metadata, auto-merging retriever, and reranking models. Finally, I touched on Local Execution and GPU Utilization.

SPCHR: Speech To Text App for Windows

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 04:32:25 +0000

I’m excited to announce the release of SPCHR. Pronounced as “speaker”. I know, I know. My apologies, it was too late at night and that’s the best I could come up with ;)

It is a Windows desktop application for speech-to-text transcription.
You can use it to “add” voice input to applications that don’t natively support it. It works anywhere you can type or paste text.
You can use it entirely locally on your PC if you like, so it is private and secure.

Key Features

Flexible: SPCHR can use either Azure Speech Services or a local OpenAI Whisper model, giving you the flexibility to choose between cloud-based and local transcription.
Zero Configuration: The application works immediately with local Whisper processing - no account setup required!
Global Hotkey: Start and stop recording from any application with Ctrl+Alt+L.
Seamless Integration: Transcribed text is automatically pasted into your active window.

Getting Started

Clone the repository
Build the solution using Visual Studio and run it
Press Ctrl+Alt+L and start speaking
Watch as your words appear in your active window
For those wanting cloud-based transcription, simply add your Azure Speech Services credentials to the configuration file.

Open Source

SPCHR is released under the MIT License, and I welcome contributions from the community. Whether you’re interested in adding features, fixing bugs, or improving documentation, your help is appreciated.

WhichBox - AI Assistant App

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 17:37:56 +0000

Do you remember which one of those boxes in the garage has your old phone? Or that toy your child wants to play with again? Or the tripod you need for your weekend trip? Oh what about that massager that you could really use right now! You would probably have to dig through those boxes to find it. Same problem when moving. There are always some boxes that you don’t want to open right away, but you wish you could open just the right one when you need something.

AI Powered Bookshelf

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:25:55 +0000

Bookshelf is a Generative AI application built as a rudimentary, but fairly capable, RAG implementation written in python. It can use an open source LLM model (running locally or in the cloud) or a GPT model via OpenAI’s API.

The application is created using streamlit.
I used llama-index for orchestrating the loading of documents into the vector database. Only TokenTextSplitter is currently used. It does not optimize for PDF, html and other formats.
ChromaDb is the vector database to store the embedding vectors and metadata of the document nodes.
You can use any open source embeddings model from HuggingFace.
Bookshelf will automatically use the GPU when creating local embeddings, if the GPU is available on your machine.
You can use OpenAI embeddings as well. There is no way to use a specific OpenAI embedding model or configure the parameters yet.
Use OpenAI API or any OpenAI compatible LLM API (using LMStudio, Ollama or text-generation-webui) of your choice.
There is a live demo on streamlit cloud - https://bookshelf.streamlit.app/
The demo allows only OpenAI integration. You can run it locally for accessing Open Source embedding models and LLMs.

Live demo - https://bookshelf.streamlit.app/

Iterative Prompt Engineering with LLMStudio

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 01:10:11 +0000

Creating the ideal prompt can be the key to transforming a less than average outcome into one that is remarkably relevant. Discovering the right prompt often involves numerous revisions and a method of trial and error. I felt the need to refer to my past attempts, modifications made to prompts, LLM models I tried and other LLM settings as well relative cost of these combinations. There are a few options to help with this : promptflow, langsmith, LLMStudio and others.

Prompt Engineering and Security - Custom GPT

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 23:01:24 +0000

I have been delving into Advanced Prompt Engineering and Security techniques for Large Language Models (LLMs). As an exercise, I have created a custom GPT in ChatGPT to help practice spelling of English words. Spell It GPT is secured with Advanced Prompt Engineering techniques to guard against common attack vectors, including Direct Prompt Injection, Prompt Leaking, Role Playing, Simulation, DAN and Code Injection.

Spell-It-GPT

Play with the Spell It GPT and try to break it. It is not impossible but (probably) fairly difficult to do ;) Regardless, practice spelling and have fun!

Get an NFT at All Things Open 2022

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 22:02:30 +0000

You can get a free commemorative NFT if you met me at All Things Open Conference in Raleigh, NC.

DM me at @ashtewari for the code to redeem your POAP NFT
Visit https://app.poap.xyz/claim/ and enter your code

Enter your Ethereum address (or ENS/Email)

Mint POAP NFT

Check [Free minting on Gnosis] for free minting of NFT on xDAI chain
- If you uncheck this box you can migrate to Ethereum mainnet now but you will have to pay for that transaction. You can also migrate to mainnet later if you wish.
Click on Mint POAP button

Your NFT will be confirmed after the minting is complete.

Security Analysis of Etheruem Smart Contracts with Mythril

Sun, 22 May 2022 23:32:20 +0000

Mythril is an open-source security analysis tool for EVM bytecode, courtesy of ConsenSys. It is also a component of their Security Analysis Service - Mythx. Mythril detects security vulnerabilities in smart contracts built for Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains.

Vulnerabilities found by Mythril are reported with reference to the weaknesses listed on the Smart Contract Weakness Classification Registry (SWC Registry). I will use two entries from SWC Registry for the examples in this article:

KHEL Coin on Ethereum

Tue, 10 May 2022 01:41:59 +0000

KhelCoin (KHEL) is an ERC-20 token available on Ethereum blockchain. It is a Smart Contract created with Solidity, OpenZeppelin, Truffle, Ganache, Remix, web3.js and VSCode. It is currently available on Rinkeby test network. It will be launched on the Mainnet in the near future.

You can get KHEL coins from this website - KHEL Coin ICO

Head over to the ICO website. You will be prompted to install Metamask and connect to your account on Rinkeby testnet. Click on “Buy KHEL Coins” button to get your own coins!

Kusto Queries on AKS Clusters

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 19:40:55 +0000

Kusto query language can be used to get insights into Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters. Container insights collects data from AKS clusters and forwards it to Log Analytics workspace, if enabled for a cluster. This data is available for querying in the Azure Monitor. Here is an example of how you can query the pods not in running state in specific namespaces.

KubePodInventory
| where Namespace in ("dv","test","prod")
| where ContainerStatus != "Running"
| where ContainerStatusReason !in ("", "Completed")
| distinct Namespace, Name

The following query includes the name of the AKS cluster and renders the output as a stacked bar chart.

AKS - Adding SSH Keys to VMSS Nodes

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 03:33:11 +0000

You can connect to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) nodes using ssh. It is documented here: Connect with SSH to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster nodes for maintenance or troubleshooting.

I needed to access nodes on the System node pool for collecting some logs recently, but the process documented above was not working for me. It turns out that there were two different issues, both related to adding your SSH keys to the nodes in a virtual machine scale set (VMSS).

AKS Supported Kubernetes Versions

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 03:08:17 +0000

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) supports specific versions of Kubernetes.
It is necessary to regularly monitor the release of new versions and upgrade your AKS clusters to supported versions in order to remain in compliance with AKS Kubernetes Version Support Policy.

AKS announces the planned date of a new minor version release and corresponding old version deprecation via AKS Release notes at least 30 days prior to removal. An email notification is sent to the subscription administrators with the planned version removal dates. You get 30 days from version removal to upgrade to a supported minor version release. Patch versions can be released anytime and you get 30 days from the removal date to upgrade to a supported patch version.

Universal Windows Platform Application on Raspberry Pi

Sat, 23 May 2020 02:57:40 +0000

Universal Windows Platform (UWP) provides a common app platform on every device that runs Windows 10. The core APIs in UWP are the same on all Windows devices – including Desktop PC, Mobile Phone, XBox, Hololens, IOT devices and others.

You can target specific device capabilities of a device family with extension SDKs, but you don’t have to do that if you are only using core APIs. Those core APIs include a very impressive set of UI capabilities. What that means is that you can create a UWP application using C# and XAML which will run on an ARM based processor on Raspberry Pi – because Windows 10 IOT Core runs on that.

Getting started with Blockchain

Wed, 22 May 2019 14:00:48 +0000

Washington DC - May 2019

In this session, we will introduce you to the world of Blockchain technology. We will start with the fundamentals and explain the characteristics and use cases of Blockchains and Decentralized applications. We will explain public Blockchains as well as permissioned Blockchains - with examples from Ethereum and Hyperledger. You will learn how to create a private blockchain to get started. You will learn about Ethereum and how to program Smart Contracts for Ethereum Blockchain. We will also share best practices for secure and effective Smart Contracts development.

TRINUG - Programming Smart Contracts on Ethereum Blockchain

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 21:30:50 +0000

TRINUG - Main Meeting : Programming Smart Contracts on Ethereum Blockchain - August 2018

In this session, Ash will introduce you to the world of Blockchain programming. You will learn about Ethereum and how to program Smart Contracts for Ethereum Blockchain. You will learn how to deploy and test your Contracts on a public Ethereum Testnet. Ash will share best practices for Smart Contract development. You will be able to participate in a hands-on walk-through in the latter half of the session.

Charlotte IOT - Programming Smart Contracts on Ethereum Blockchain

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 22:00:00 +0000

Charlotte IOT - July 2018

You will not want to miss this chance to learn about Blockchain, a technology enabling an entire IoT ecosystem! It has a distributed database for all the transactions, which eliminates the need for the third party to authenticate the transactions. The database ledger is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Charlotte IoT wants to thank Ash Tewari for traveling from Raleigh to share his extensive knowledge and experience around Blockchain. In this session, Ash will introduce you to the world of Blockchain programming. You will learn about Ethereum and how to program Smart Contracts on Ethereum Blockchain. You will learn how to deploy and test your code on a public Ethereum Testnet. Ash will complete the session with sharing some best practices for Smart Contract development. You will be able to participate in a hands-on walkthrough in the latter half of the session.

Blockchains for Enterprise

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 01:53:28 +0000

Permissioned blockchains are being developed and used in Enterprise scenarios in which higher transaction throughput, lower latency, versatile confidentiality and governance models are more important than supporting low trust levels among participants. These Enterprise requirements are not being met adequately by the public and permission-less blockchain ledgers. Enterprise scenarios typically have known actors and the trust level between these actors is very high. This allows for trade-offs between trust levels and transaction throughput, speed, confidentiality and privacy, which in turn enables alternate solutions via permissioned blockchains.

Paste Table from Microsoft Excel to Confluence Wiki

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 21:52:02 +0000

1. Create the table in Microsoft Excel.

2. Open this page in browser: http://excel2jira.bluurgh.com/

3. Paste the table from Microsoft Excel into the input box on the page.

4. Click on “Convert Me Now” button

5. Place the cursor at the intended insertion point in the wiki document.

6. Click on “Insert more content” (+) button on Wiki toolbar

7. Click on “Markup”

8. Paste converted markup from step 2 in the left pane and verify the preview.

Ethereum Blockchain-As-A-Service in Azure Cloud

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 21:24:56 +0000

Ethereum Blockchain (EBaas) as a Service provided by Microsoft Azure and ConsenSys allows for enterprise customers and partners to play, learn, and fail fast at a low cost in a ready-made dev/test/production environment. It will allow them to create private, public and consortium based Blockchain environments very quickly in Azure. In this session, you will learn how to get started with prototyping building blocks of a decentralized application using EBaas in Windows Azure.

Getting Started with Smart Contracts on Ethereum Blockchain using Visual Studio

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 21:19:11 +0000

Smart Contracts are an exciting innovation built on blockchain technology. It is a way to execute code in a trustless, decentralized and transparent system. Ethereum is a decentralized platform to run smart contracts using a variation of Bitcoin’s blockchain technology.

In this session, you will learn how to write smart contracts in Visual Studio. You will learn how to deploy them to public Ethereum blockchain and a private/consortium blockchain as a service in Azure. You will be introduced you to Solidity- the programming language used to write smart contracts. You will get familiar with the tools and technology around this exciting, promising and relatively new innovation.

KeyNode with Node.js and Microsoft Azure

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 00:23:06 +0000

KeyNode is a application to issue and verify software license keys. Technology stack for KeyNode is Node.j s, MongoDB and Microsoft Azure.

I had built this functionality with C9.io (a cloud-based IDE with a built-in source code repository and debugger), mongohq (MongoDB as a service - now part of compose.io) and appfog (Cloud PAAS built on top of CloudFoundry). It used SMTP/gmail to email license files. That was the version I created a couple of years ago to issue tamper-proof signed xml license files for CodeDemo (a code snippet tool for developers, presenters and instructors).

Using Powershell with Splunk

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 03:20:14 +0000

Splunk Powershell Resource Kit is a convenient and very capable wrapper over Splunk REST API. You can use the Powershell commandlets exposed by this resource kit to deploy, check and manage splunk services as well as execute splunk searches. In this post, you will be introduced to the Splunk Powershell Resource Kit, you will learn how to use powershell commandlets to connect to a splunk instance and execute searches.

1. First, you will need to download the resource kit from github. 2. Installation is very simple. All you have to do is download and extract the files from the zip archive and double click on install.bat to install the splunk powershell module. 3. Open Windows Powershell console from Windows Start menu. 4. Verify that the Splunk module is installed by executing Get-Module commandlet.

PackRaft with Xamarin and Microsoft Azure

Sun, 20 Dec 2015 03:22:26 +0000

PackRaft is a cross-platform mobile application built with Xamarin. It integrates with Microsoft Azure services, such as Azure Table Storage and Azure App Service. It is created with Xamarin.Forms for iOS and Android (Windows version will be coming soon).

The purpose of creating this sample application was to expand expertise in cross-platform mobile development with Windows Azure integration, specifically with Xamarin.Forms and Azure App Service. With Xamarin.Forms, it is possible to achieve close to 100% code reuse across these platforms for certain type of apps. Azure App Service provide a set of rich cloud backend services for your mobile applications.

Does Xamarin have a future?

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 17:33:01 +0000

Xamarin’s cross-platform mobile application framework has Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android at its core. Both Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are based on Mono. Mono is an open source implementation of .NET (CLI and CLS). Xamarin’s customers are Microsoft (.NET) shops. Microsoft is open sourcing .NET itself. What does all this mean for Xamarin?

Is Xamarin’s competitive advantage going to be undermined by the open source .NET? Microsoft’s Universal Application Platform (UAP) and the promise of making .NET applications run on Mac and Linux seems to indicate that Microsoft may be emerging as a threat to Xamarin.

Creating Android Apps using C# and Xamarin

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 17:30:25 +0000

You can create native Android and iOS applications using C#, with Xamarin. I explored the capabilities of Xamarin tools and the development experience with Xamarin to create an Android version of CensusMapper. CensusMapper displays U.S. Census data on a Map. I created the original application for Windows 8 (WinRT) using C#. I have since converted it to an MVVM (C#) application, HTML/Javascript (WinJS) version and more recently to a Universal Windows App running on Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1. In that tradition, now it is faithfully ported to run on Android devices, using C# and Xamarin. CensusMapper is available on Google Play Store.

Universal Apps

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 02:50:36 +0000

The story of Windows Universal Apps is the result of advancements in three areas:

The platform convergence between Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1
The (ongoing) unification of Windows and Windows Phone stores.
Shared Projects and other enhancements in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 to support cross-platform development.

I have written about my experience in converting an existing Windows 8 app, CensusMapper, to a Universal App on the AIS Blog. Read the article here. I have also created another Universal App, LRMS, using Windows App Studio. This app is available in both Windows and Windows Phone Stores.

Should my barber do a technology upgrade?

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 22:57:56 +0000

I noticed a barber shop sign at a local strip mall last year and stepped inside, hoping to get a haircut. The lone barber turned away from the customer in his chair, looked at me and said, “Sorry, man. It is by appointment only”. It was relatively spacious place. There were no other waiting customers there. It felt peaceful and quiet. Local NPR station was playing on the radio. I took his card and left. I got my haircut somewhere else that weekend. Over the next month or so, I called him on Saturdays, for the hair cut appointment. He was booked. Every single weekend. I wised up and called him on Friday. I got the appointment for the next day. I did not get the slot I wanted, but I picked from a couple of open slots. I showed up for my appointment, and I have been going to him ever since.

Announcing New CodeDemo Feature - ZoomIt Integration

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:15:01 +0000

I am very excited to announce a new feature of CodeDemo. This feature integrates with ZoomIt and enables you to use ZoomIt much more fluently.

ZoomIt is a great presentation tool. It helps speakers and presenters deliver very effective presentations. But many presenters are not using this great tool as much and as effectively as it can be used. The reason is that ZoomIt has a bit of a learning curve. It takes practice to use it fluently. You have a lot going on in your mind while you are doing a presentation. Using ZoomIt distracts you from your presentation. Practice helps you get over this distraction. A lot of presenters use ZoomIt very effectively with practice. But for the rest of us, ZoomIt mastery has been elusive.

Do not learn another programming language

Sat, 31 May 2014 22:43:20 +0000

As software developers, many of us agonize over which programming language we should learn next. I have a suggestion - don’t learn another programming language. Learn a creative design skill - graphics design, 3-D modelling or Game Development. Learn basic photo editing skills instead of F#. I know Jamie and Chip will agree with me ;).

I have a bit of a designer inside me. Not a lot. Just a bit. I was probably 15 when I learned how to do architectural perspective drawings. I created a few of the house renovation my dad was doing at the time. One of my dad’s friend asked me to create a drawing for the addition he was doing to his house. More recently, I have designed some logos (for my own use), as well as UI design of Windigo, a Windows Phone app I created a couple of years ago. These are some of the logos I have created :

Extending Bootstrap - Book Review

Mon, 26 May 2014 19:36:36 +0000

Extending Bootstrap is a new Bootstrap book by Christoffer Niska, published by Packt Publishing. The publisher contacted me to review the book after reading my blog post about my experiences with Bootstrap and LESS. I am glad I accepted to do this book review. I learned several ways to extend and use Bootstrap by reading this book.

The book is for intermediate to advanced level users of Bootstrap. It is a quick and to-the-point read. It may feel opinionated to some readers. It is a concise distillation of author’s real-world experience with the current state of the Bootstrap technology. It is perfect for individuals and teams who are looking to go beyond the basics with Bootstrap on their projects.

NoSQL in Windows Azure

Fri, 02 May 2014 19:36:21 +0000

You may have questions like these - What are my NoSQL options in Windows Azure? Can I run MongoDB on linux on Windows Azure? Why would I want to do that? Which one of the NoSQL options are available as managed services? Are all kinds of NoSQL databases available? Are there any limitations? What are options for data analytics? Or may be you have questions like these - Is it true that NoSQL databases don’t have schema? Do they have indexes? What about Views? Should I choose MongoDB or Redis? What is eventual consistency? In this presentation, you will learn all about NoSQL technologies in Windows Azure Cloud Platform. And you will get get answers to questions like these. Carolina Code Camp - 2014

Announcing CodeDemo

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 01:58:22 +0000

It is a challenge to use code snippets in presentations, demos and live coding sessions. I have struggled with this and seen many speakers jumping through hoops to assimilate code snippets in their demos. I had to create something to ease this pain.

Today, I am announcing the general availability of CodeDemo. A tool for instructors, presenters and speakers who create instructional demos, record screen-casts or do live presentations. CodeDemo pastes code snippets into your favorite IDE without getting in your way.

Creating Windows 8 applications with MVVM

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:10:52 +0000

TRINUG January Main Meeting

You will learn how to use MVVM in your own Windows 8 application - desktop/mobile You will learn MVVM fundamentals. You will see the contrast between an MVVM application and a non-MVVM application.

Using Layer Diagrams – Keeping your MVVM code from turning into spaghetti

Sat, 09 Nov 2013 20:46:16 +0000

Raleigh Code Camp 2013 is wrapping up this afternoon. The venue and the crowd was phenomenal. I really enjoyed presenting“Using Layer Diagrams - Keeping your MVVM code from turning into spaghetti”. Thanks to everyone who attended the presentation.

John Sonmez, Our Keynote Speaker, made my day by accepting my request to attend my presentation. It was awesome to have him in the audience and to get feedback from him!

NCDevCon 2013 Schedule

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 21:43:53 +0000

NCDevCon 2013 (tentative) session schedule is up. The topics seem quite interesting and varied : From “Web Penetration and Hacking Tools” (David Epler) to “Better UI/UX with Bootstrap : A Developer’s Primer” (Steve Keator) to “Getting Control of Your Asynchronous JavaScript” (Bucky Schwarz).

I am picking the sessions to attend. Looks like I will be able attend around 11 sessions in 2 days, if that is all I do while I am there. Sometimes, there are good reasons to not attend a session :

DQS - Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 20:22:06 +0000

TRINUG - Data SIG, July 2013

SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) is a knowledge-driven data quality product. DQS enables you to build a knowledge base and use it to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks, including correction, enrichment, standardization, and de-duplication of your data.

Get Your Windows 8 Start Menu Back With Pokki

Fri, 24 May 2013 05:34:39 +0000

I like the new Windows 8 experience. Start screen with live tiles is awesome. But I have been missing the Start Menu when I am on the desktop. There are plenty of rumours that Microsoft will bring back the Start Menu in the next version of Windows - Windows Blue. Until then, you can use one of many third party utilities for that functionality - ClassicShell, Start8 and Pokki.

I started using Pokki. And I love it. It feels like my world is whole again. Pokki is free.

Refactoring to MVVM (Windows 8)

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:47:09 +0000

Carolina Code Camp - 2013 You will learn how to structure your app’s code in a way that - improves maintainability - enables testability of your app’s UI behavior - reduces maintenance cost - enables cross-platform deployment

The Site44 Workflow

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:32:50 +0000

A light weight development workflow with real-time website deployment.

I recently built a sample website to illustrate how clean, semantic html markup can be maintained when using Bootstrap’s grid system. The solution is to use a css pre-processor to incorporate Bootstrap’s LESS based mixins into your own .less files and push the Bootstrap instructions down into your stylesheets. There are two ways to “compile” .less stylesheets - use a stand-alone LESS compiler or use less.js. I found it very convenient to use less.js (note that it is not recommended in production deployment). As I started working on developing the sample code I found it a bit cumbersome to work with an entire web application project in Visual Studio, considering I was working with some really simple sample client-side html, css. As I craved for an alternative, I stumbled on to a development workflow that is incredibly simple and a lot of fun. I call it the Site44 workflow. Site44 turns your dropbox folders into websites. And it is awesome! Here is what you do -

Understanding and Using System.Transactions

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:10:42 +0000

These are some resources to help grasp System.Transactions functionality and use it effectively in your projects:

Features Provided by System.Transactions to create transactional applications
Implementing an Implicit Transaction using Transaction Scope
MSDN Magazine Articles by John Papa:
- ADO.NET and System.Transactions
- Revisiting System.Transactions
These are specific to TransactionScope(the way to go in most cases):
- Here is a practical example of Using TransactionScope to handle transactions in .net.
- This article in MSDN Magazine gets in depth with the way a TransactionScope like functionality can be implemented. Gives you a good understanding of what is happening under the hood when using TransactionScope in some Repository implementations in multi-threaded scenarios.
- This CodeProject article is another example of implementing a transactional repository.
- There are excellent tips here about configuring TransactionScope when using it with SQL Server.
This is a good resource for understanding CommitableTransaction usage.
And this one on the CodeProject has brilliant, in-depth and under-the-hood coverage - Truly Understanding .NET Transactions and WCF Implementation.

Protecting Your Api Keys

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 03:14:38 +0000

I am working on a Windows 8 app (details to follow in a subsequent post) and the code is published in a public repo on github. My app uses third-party APIs and after I committed the first cut to github, I realized that I had included my api keys in the code. The whole world had access to my keys. I did not want to publish the developer keys for those APIs to the entire world.

Favorite Excel Keyboard Shortcuts

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:46:23 +0000

I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. Here are some of my favorites keyboard shortcuts in Excel.

Solution to the fetch puzzle

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:00:38 +0000

Here is a brute force solution to the fetch problem -

Basically, at each step there are three possibilities :

1. You can fill a bucket.

2. You can transfer water from one bucket to the other one.

3. You can dump out the water from a bucket.

In this brute force solution, I try each one of these steps and then try all three again after each one of the previous steps. And on

Solve puzzle with code

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:44:17 +0000

Here is a quite common programming interview puzzle - You have two buckets. A 3 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon bucket. Buckets are not marked or graduated. You are to fetch 4 gallon of water in a single trip to the river. How will you do it?

Obviousy, this question is asked by changing the capacities of the two buckets and the amount of water to be fetched.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a program to solve this puzzle in a generic way. Your program should take 3 inputs - capacities of the two buckets and the amount of water to be fetched. After solving the puzzle, your program must write out the solution step-by-step. You can use any programming language, any platform, any programming technique to write the program. Use whatever you like - C#, VB, C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, F#, Boo, Javascript or any other language of your choice. Use design patterns, TDD, BDD, MVVM, Linq or whatever. Make it blazing fast, exploit multiple cores, use artificial intelligence. Go nuts! If you want to write the whole program in T-sql, powershell script or a batch script, go ahead. Heck ! you can even do it with regular expressions, if that your thing!

Windigo 1.1 Released

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:59:47 +0000

Windigo is a windows phone app to access your diigo account on windows phone 7.

Create, edit and search diigo bookmarks. Slick, to-the-point interface. Browse and search public bookmarks of other diigo users. Tap on the bookmark for details, including tags. Tap on any tag to narrow your search. Trial version is available.

Windigo 1.1 is out on the windows phone marketplace now. Highlights of this update :

- Last SearchScope used is now persistent

Call For Windigo Beta Testers

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:06:36 +0000

Windigo is a windows phone app. It lets you access your Diigo bookmarks on the go from your windows phone. You can browse, edit and create new bookmarks. Search your and other’s (public) bookmarks. Drill-down using tags. Share your bookmarks with your friends.

I have completed developing this app and I would like to get it in the hands of a few more people to get some additional feedback before I submit it in windows phone marketplace. If you have a windows phone and a windows live id, you can help with this. Your phone does not need to be a developer (unlocked) phone.

ChildWindow Positioning

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:23:52 +0000

Silverlight ChildWindow is centered over the parent control. I have extended ChildWindow to open it at a specific position.

Positioned ChildWindow

Here is a live demo : childwindow-positioning-demo

And here is the code :

public partial class ChildWindowEx : ChildWindow
{

 Point _pt = new Point(0,0);

 public ChildWindowEx()
 {
 InitializeComponent();
 }

 public ChildWindowEx(Point pt) : this()
 {
 _pt = pt;
 }

 protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size finalSize)
 {
 Grid grid = Utils.FindChild(this, "ContentRoot");

 if (grid != null)
 {
 grid.Arrange(new Rect(_pt.X, _pt.Y, grid.DesiredSize.Width, grid.DesiredSize.Height));
 return finalSize;
 }

 return base.ArrangeOverride(finalSize);
 }
}

Visual Studio 2010 Solution : download

Remove ListBoxItem Highlighting

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:25:58 +0000

A Silverlight/Wpf ListBoxItem is highlighted when selected or when the mouse hovers over it.

I need to display a list of items that are not highlighted when selected. This is a common scenario when displaying an inactive list for simply listing out some information.

ListBoxItem’s default template can be easily inspected and modified using Expression Blend - Select a ListBoxItem in Objects and Timeline pane, Right click and select Edit template > Edit a Copy. Name you template and save it at the scope of your choice.

Sideload Windows Phone

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:02:12 +0000

1. Create your AppHub account here - http://create.msdn.com. Registration walk through is here.

2. Unlock your phone - using PhoneReg.exe (usually) located here - “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\Phone Registration\PhoneReg.exe”

3. Sideload xap into your phone. Use XapDeploy.exe (usually) located here - “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\XAP Deployment\XapDeploy.exe”

You can also deploy straight from Visual Studio to Windows Phone Device. Connect your phone to your computer. Make sure Visual Studio deployment target is “Windows Phone 7 Device” :

Getting Started with MVVM

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 16:29:24 +0000

I just finished presenting here at RDU Code Camp. It was a great crowd ! Here are the slides -

Getting started with MVVM

View more presentations from ashtewari.

Win Advanced MVVM Book

Mon, 10 May 2010 03:33:06 +0000

I am presenting a session on Building WPF Application using MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) on May 15th at the Carolina Code Camp 2010.

I will dissect a Sample WPF MVVM application and then highlight the most important aspects of the MVVM by coding a brand new ViewModel and incorporating it into the application. You will learn about the Roles of the MVVM triad, the advantages of using MVVM and Characteristics of the ViewModel.

SVN Merge - Selecting Changesets

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:15:31 +0000

Here is a simple scenario – I have already merged changesets 45-55 from the trunk to branch b1. After this merge, more changes (56-60) were submitted into the trunk and I now need to merge those changes also to branch b1.

Which changesets do you select to merge ? 56-60, right ? Well, not exactly. It depends. If you are using Subversion merge command, you will need to specify 55-60. If you are using TortoiseSVN, you will select 56-60. You should keep this in mind if you are used to TortoiseSVN and you are attempting a merge using SVN merge command. Otherwise, you will end up with a merge without change 56.

Code Validation in TortoiseSVN pre_commit_hook

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:32:10 +0000

If you want to abort a commit if your code fails certain rule and you don’t have access to the SVN Server to configure a hook. What do you do ?

Assuming you are using TortoiseSVN, you can configure a Client-Side hook.

Here is an example - Say you want to abort commit if you have a comment in your code that starts with //Do Not Commit. You can create a PowerShell script that validates all the files in your changeset and use this script as a Client-Side pre_commit_hook in TortoiseSVN.

Using Model-View-ViewModel in WPF Applications

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:23:39 +0000

I am presenting at SoCalCodeCamp this weekend (January 30th, 2010) - Advanced WPF - Using Model-View-ViewModel in WPF Applications.

tasklist-mockup

Agenda :

1. Roles of the M-V-VM triad

2. Why use M-V-VM ?

3. Characteristics of the ViewModel

4. Build a Sample WPF Application using M-V-VM

Resources :

MSDN Magazine Article and Sample Application Download
Martin Fowler’s description of the ‘Presentation Model ‘
Jeremy Miller’s ‘Build Your Own CAB’ series

Use Legacy Printer From Windows 7

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:10:04 +0000

I have NEC SuperScript 870 laser printer connected to my Home PC. I was not able to print to this printer from my new HP dv6-1375dx Windows 7 laptop. My machines are connected via Hamachi. Here is what I did to get around the lack of NEC driver for Windows 7 (I found this tip here) -

1. Created a new printer (pointing to the same LPT port that is connected to NEC 870) on my Home PC using HP Laser Jet III driver.

Should you get into Silverlight or Flash ?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:31:44 +0000

Take a look at these trend lines from Indeed.com (Yes, you read that right. That is EIGHTY THOUSAND percent growth in silverlight jobs) -

Here is the trend line for Flash jobs -

Growth is there but the total number of jobs are clearly stabilizing. Here are the absolute number of jobs -

Session Recommendations for SoCal Code Camp @ USC

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:02:24 +0000

SoCal Code Camp is coming up on November 21st & 22nd 2009 at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. There is just an incredible lineup of sessions. If you are trying to make up your mind about the sessions to attend, here are my recommendations -

1. Attend as many of Llewellyn Falco’s and Woody Zuill’s sessions as you can. Specially, Unit Testing The Easy Way and one of the Dojo sessions. Any one of these sessions will make your entire trip worthwhile.

Using DbUpdater with MySql

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:13:02 +0000

DbUpdater can be used with mysql.

Here are the files you need to jumpstart the integration - DbUpdater-MySql.zip

1. You might need to change the path to mysql.exe in mysql-exec.bat.

2. Modify values in mysql-sample-command-line.bat.

Make sure mysql.data.dll is placed in GAC or in the same directory as DbUpdater.exe. Connector binaries can be downloaded from here - http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.1.html

SQL Azure Notes

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:45:26 +0000

My invitation code for SQL Azure CTP finally arrived. I had been waiting for this.

You can create a database in from the SQL Azure Management page, shown above.

After you have created the database, of course, you can use DbUpdater with your SQL Azure databases. Here is the command-line : DbUpdater.exe ..\SqlScripts /server:“tcp:SERVER.ctp.database.windows.net” /db:DATABASE /user:“USER@SERVER” /password:PASSWORD /confirm:true

And you will need this DbUpdater.exe.config file :

You can run sqlcmd.exe directly to execute t-sql scripts on SQL Azure. Here is a sample command : sqlcmd.exe -S SERVER.ctp.database.windows.net -U USER@SERVER -P PASSWORD -d DB -i “baseline.sql”

Online Backup Solution

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:40:40 +0000

Finalized online backup solution : JungleDisk. I can run it on all of my machines without paying extra. I get to keep the ownership of my data - by using my own Amazon S3 storage. Backed up all family photos - all 30 GBs. Feeling good :)

Switched to Thematic

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:36:31 +0000

I have switched to Thematic theme on this blog over the weekend. I created a child theme after playing around with the customization hooks. I added a widgetized area below main asides, did some css modifications and created a three column, flexible layout just the way I wanted. I am so glad I switched to Thematic. ThemeShaper Forums ThemeShaper forums are very helpful. These articles were just what I needed to get started : How to make a child theme for WordPress and How I used a WordPress Child Theme To Redesign My Blog.

Is Scrum Bad For Developers ?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:22:25 +0000

SoCal CodeCamp was a blast. Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation : If it walks like a Scrum.

The slide-deck can be downloaded from here.

GUI Prototyping Tools

Sun, 17 May 2009 05:34:41 +0000

Special purpose UI prototyping tools, like the ones listed on C2 Wiki, offer a convenient blend of usability and flexibility. I have tried some of these tools. I was looking for something that -

doesn’t become unwieldy when used to prototype a large and complex GUI
allows me to use my own screenshots/images/icons
allows me to modify the prototype without making it a hair-pulling experience.
can prototype all aspects and artifacts of modern web and desktop interfaces, specially -
- tree controls - you will be surprised how many prototyping tools don’t have this. Pencil, I am looking at you :)
- tabbed panels - can you position your tabs at the bottom ? on the right edge ?
- film strips
- ribbons
- NavBars

Create Games From Scratch

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:31:26 +0000

My 18 month old son woke me up at 4 in the morning. I got him to go back to sleep, but … and here I am writing.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded Scratch from M.I.T’s website. Scratch is a programming language for kids. You drag/drop and (literally) snap together programming constructs to create games. Within a couple of minutes, I had a diver chasing a ball bouncing around on the screen.

RIA with Silverlight and WCF - Los Angeles .NET Developers Group

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:43:01 +0000

I will be attending Jason Beres’ “RIA with Silverlight and WCF” lecture on Saturday the 4th. Check-out the details here : Los Angeles .NET Developers Group. Let me know If you are planning to be there. It will be a great opportunity to meet.

Job Opening - Windows GUI Developer

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:04:30 +0000

We have a 3-4 month contract position open for a Windows GUI Developer in our group at Calabasas, California:

2+ years experience developing C++/C# Windows thick-client applications
Expert in GUI development on Windows
Expert in Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOA/OOD)
Deep understanding of client-server software development
Experience in multithreading, and thread synchronization
Excellent communication skills (written and verbal)
Highly organized and detail oriented
BSCS/BSEE or equivalent

If you are interested, contact me. The position is available now.

Scrum Tools

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:41:10 +0000

List of Scrum Tools:

Other Lists:

ReSharper vs CodeRush + Refactor Pro

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:43:03 +0000

I have been playing with JetBrains ReSharper(version 4.1) and DevExpress CodeRush + Refactor! Pro (version 3.2.2) lately. I wanted to decide on which one to go with. Here are some notes -

R# = ReSharper CodeRush = CodeRush + Refactor! Pro

R# seems to be better for refactoring, because it does not assume that I follow a rigid work flow when writing code. For example, I don’t always decide on the class hierarchies upfront. I do discover them as I write code. So, when I discover that I need to extract a base class from the class I am working on, I can do so with R#. I couldn’t find a way to do extract a base/super class with CodeRush.
In R#, I can create an overloaded constructor using “Change Signature” refactoring (Ctrl+R, S). I couldn’t find a way to do this in CodeRush. CodeRush does allow me to create overloaded methods.

However, comparisons that only focus on how many refactorings each tool can do are not very important to me. After all, it should be easy for the individual missing refactorings to be implemented in the subsequent releases of these tools. I want to know which one is a better investment in the long run. The investment is not just a couple of hundred dollars, it is going to be an investment of time too.

Using NHibernate With SQLite in DbUpdater

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:46:39 +0000

DbUpdater (version 1.3 onwards) can be used with sqlite3.

Review the files included in DbUpdater-sqlite3.zip

1. DbUpdater.exe.config must be modified. Note changes to the following keys - exe-file, exe-args, dialect, driver_class, connetion_string. 2. SchemaVersion.hbm.xml must be modified. The ‘class’ attributes value for the ‘generator’ of ‘id’ must be changed to ‘identity’. No other changes are needed here. 3. \SqlScripts\schema-version-table.sql is modified. Note that the datatypes of all columns are changed to TEXT, except for SchemaChangeId, which is changed to integer primary key. integer primary key is used for auto-incremented columns in sqlite. 4. \SqlScripts\baseline.sql is modified. Note the use of current_timestamp function. The actual sql syntax in this file must conform to sqlite dialect. 5. All other .sql scripts in \SqlScripts directory are also modified to conform to sqlite dialect.

DbUpdater on SourceForge

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:36:35 +0000

By popular demand, DbUpdater is now up on the sourceforge. Latest download (v1.2) is now available from there.

Internship Position Available

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:39:17 +0000

We have a position open for a 6 month internship in our group in Calabasas, CA. We do cutting edge Network Performance Analysis work. A candidate with C#/C++/C background on Windows/Linux is preferred. If you are interested, contact me. The position is available now.

Dial Gauge is a ProgressBar

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:49:43 +0000

I am not just being philosophical here. In WPF, ControlTemplates allow you to transform a control’s appearance. This is not the same as applying stylesheets. This is an entirely new level of customization. What you see in the screenshot below looks like a Dial but is actually a simple ProgressBar control wearing a “Dial” template. The Dial template was created using Microsoft Expression Blend .

Include the ControlTemplate as a Window.Resource and then assign it to ProgressBar element’s Template attribute :

PostSharp with SharpDevelop

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:04:43 +0000

SharpDevelop3.0 uses MSBuild. Including PostSharp in your build process is transparent if you are doing a global install using PostSharp installer. If you are doing a per-project installation using “Binary - No Installer”download, you will need to import the PostSharp targets into your .csproj file -


 True

C:\code\PostSharp-1.0.8.316-Binary\

For more details, read the install instructions included in the PostSharp download and under-the-hood-of-msbuild-integration.

To use local PostSharp binaries (relative to your project) , modify your .csproj file as follows -

Using Custom Converter in XAML

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:22:12 +0000

In my previous post : WPF-LINQ To SQL Sample, I had to resort to modifying .dbml file to get the images stored as varbinary into the WPF ListView control. I had to change the Type of image fields to System.Byte[], instead of using System.Data.Linq.Binary. A better way to do this is to use a custom converter. WPF allows you to specify custom converter as part of the Binding in .xaml, like this -

WPF - LINQ to SQL Sample

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:15:35 +0000

This exercise in binding a WPF ListView control with LINQ to SQL was a lot of fun ! The following image shows data from AdventureWorks sample database displayed in the ListView control. The end result is very admirable, even in this very basic demo. Feeling a complete sense of freedom is unavoidable when working with WPF.

This sample demonstrates :

LINQ to SQL mapping.
WPF ListView Control DataBinding.
Displaying images stored in database as varbinary in WPF control.

The sample code can be downloaded here : WPF-LINQ to SQL Sample License : Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Customize log4net Output Path

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:56:55 +0000

The default log4net output path is relative to the startup directory of your executable. To customize the output path, you can override the base Appender’s File property in your own Appender class. The following example describes how to route the log files relative to the temp folder :

 public class MyOwnAppender : log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender
 {
 public override string File
 {
 get
 {
 return base.File;
 }

 set
 {
 if (Path.IsPathRooted(value))
 {
 base.File = value;
 }
 else
 {
 base.File = Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), value);
 }
 }
 }
 }

Your log4net config file must be modified so that log4net can locate and use your custom Appender. If MyOwnAppender is in MyNamespace and you have implemented it in MyLoggerLib.dll :

Career Advice

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:04:11 +0000

The value of any advice is tied to the degree of its relevance to your particular situation and circumstances. Very specific advice, like legal and medical advice, is very expensive. It is very relevant to the individual’s situation and therefore quite valuable. The degree of relevance of inexpensive/free advice to your specific circumstances is usually very low. Inexpensive/free advice, as in sayings and quotes, but also in everyday personal and business communication, is very generic. The same message is usually perceived differently by different people. Especially when the entire message is very succinct and pithy. Various aspects of the message are accentuated differently as it is filtered through individual perception.

Database Schema Version Control Tool

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:05:52 +0000

It is essential to treat database schema as source code and apply all the norms and best practices applicable to it. From what I hear and read, database schema version control is non-existent in too many projects.

Various techniques to accomplish version control of database schemas have been discussed and published. Martin Fowler and Pramod Sadagale has written a comprehensive article on Evolutionary Database Design. It is a must-read for everyone involved with database development.

Printing Blog Posts

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:44:14 +0000

I like printing blog posts and reading them later, but too many blogs don’t provide functionality to print well formatted posts. I end up printing sidebars, advertisements and other clutter along with the post, thanks to lousy print formatting in browsers. What a waste !

It is actually quite easy to add a “Print This Post” button to a WordPress blog. One great option (the one I use on this blog) is WP-Print. Make sure you read Installation and Usage instructions. Brilliant job !

OpenSimSim 1.0-RC is out

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:04:31 +0000

OpenSimSim : Your Password Solution. Download 1.0 Release Candidate here : OpenSimSim 1.0-RC

Leveraging XPATH Axes

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:14:29 +0000

XPATH axes come in very handy when nodes need to be selected based on (attribute’s or child element’s) values that must match those of other nodes elsewhere in the xml tree. Consider the following log4net configuration file :

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<configuration>
 <configSections>
 <section name="nhibernate"
 type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler, System,
 Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
 <section name="log4net"
 type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler,log4net" />
 </configSections>
 <nhibernate>
 <add key="hibernate.connection.provider"
 value="NHibernate.Connection.DriverConnectionProvider" />
 <add key="hibernate.connection.driver_class"
 value="NHibernate.Driver.SqlClientDriver" />
 <add key="hibernate.connection.connection_string"
 value="Server=servername; Database=dbname;
 User=username; Password=secret;" />
 <add key="hibernate.connection.isolation" value="ReadCommitted" />
 <add key="hibernate.dialect"
 value="NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2000Dialect" />
 </nhibernate>

 <log4net>
 <appender name="NHibernateFileLog"
 type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
 <file value="Logs/nhibernate.txt" />
 <appendToFile value="true" />
 <rollingStyle value="Size" />
 <maxSizeRollBackups value="10" />
 <maximumFileSize value="100KB" />
 <staticLogFileName value="true" />
 <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
 <conversionPattern
 value="%d{HH:mm:ss.fff} [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n" />
 </layout>
 </appender>

 <appender name="GeneralLog"
 type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
 <file value="Logs/general.txt" />
 <appendToFile value="true" />
 <maximumFileSize value="100KB" />
 <rollingStyle value="Size" />
 <maxSizeRollBackups value="5" />
 <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
 <conversionPattern
 value="%d{HH:mm:ss.fff} [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n" />
 </layout>
 </appender>
 <appender name="DataLog"
 type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
 <file value="Logs/data.txt" />
 <appendToFile value="true" />
 <maximumFileSize value="100KB" />
 <rollingStyle value="Size" />
 <maxSizeRollBackups value="5" />
 <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
 <conversionPattern
 value="%d{HH:mm:ss.fff} [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n" />
 </layout>
 </appender>

 <!-- levels: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL -->

 <root>
 <level value="DEBUG"/>
 <appender-ref ref="GeneralLog" />
 </root>

 <logger name="NHibernate" additivity="false">
 <level value="DEBUG"/>
 <appender-ref ref="NHibernateFileLog"/>
 </logger>
 <logger name="Pushable.Data" additivity="false">
 <level value="DEBUG"/>
 <appender-ref ref="DataLog"/>
 </logger>
 </log4net>
</configuration>

The s are referenced by s using ‘ref’ attribute of their ‘appender-ref’ child elements, using the same value as the ’name’ attribute of the . This type of linking is quite common in xml documents. Now, The first question is : How to list files that are referenced by s ? In order to solve this problem you will need to reach the s that are referenced by each and then extract the ‘value’ of their s.