I made a small change to my Quick Perfmon tool so that the performance counter definition set files (qpmset files) can also save the location of the application window’s size and location. This is useful if you want it to always load up to the same position on the screen – say when you have multiple sets and you want to position a couple of these windows with a specific layout.
Go grab it here…
I’ve updated this little utility library by simplifying some method overloads plus added a static method for getting escaped html special characters.
To make the code more maintainable for the special characters (like adding new ones in the future) I’ve added an enum that use some .Net ‘attributes’ so you can see, use and reference everything about these ‘things’ in one place. To do that I had to add a special helper class so the enum can carry some additional properties (like the actual strings for the special character and the escaped string). To do this I created a custom attribute class called ‘StringValueAttribute’ like this:
public class StringValueAttribute : Attribute
{public string StringExpandedValue;
public string StringValue;public StringValueAttribute(string value, string stringExpandedValue)
{this.StringValue = value;
this.StringExpandedValue = stringExpandedValue;}
}
To retrieve the associated values from an enum another static helper class is needed: StringValueAttributeUtil
internal static class StringValueAttributeUtil
{public static string GetStringValue(Enum value)
{// Get the type
Type type = value.GetType();// Get fieldinfo for this type
System.Reflection.FieldInfo fieldInfo = type.GetField(value.ToString());
// Get the stringvalue attributes
StringValueAttribute[] attribs = fieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(
typeof(StringValueAttribute), false) as StringValueAttribute[];
// Return the first if there was a match.
return attribs.Length > 0 ? attribs[0].StringValue : null;}
public static string GetStringExpandedValue(Enum value)
{// Get the type
Type type = value.GetType();// Get fieldinfo for this type
System.Reflection.FieldInfo fieldInfo = type.GetField(value.ToString());
// Get the stringvalue attributes
StringValueAttribute[] attribs = fieldInfo.GetCustomAttributes(
typeof(StringValueAttribute), false) as StringValueAttribute[];
// Return the first if there was a match.
return attribs.Length > 0 ? attribs[0].StringExpandedValue : null;}
}
Then to actually make use of this helper class you decorate the enum like this: (showing only part of it…)
public enum HTMLSpecialCharacter
{[StringValue(“<“, “&lt;”)]
LessThanSign,
[StringValue(“>”, “&gt;”)]
GreaterThanSign,
[StringValue(“\””, “&quot;”)]
DoubleQuote,
[StringValue(“‘”, “&#39;”)]
SingleQuote,…
}
Happy HTML’ing 🙂
Update: Version 1.6 has now been released since…
I created a new release with only Viewer application changes. *.elvw files are now associated in Windows Explorer with the viewer so you can launch them (or from the Windows 7 jump list) and start the application with a predefined set of filters.
Another update to this ‘old workhorse‘ tool of mine. This time just a few UI changes to the viewer app. I changed the interface to be much more compact so the essence of the app – the list of events, is the most prominently visible by default. The detail filters can accessed by just clicking F6 or the button above the event list.
Except for the admin module where only the ‘About’ window was modified nothing else was changed.
As luck would have it, just after creating the 4.4 release I started thinking of another improvement… again with the viewer… Being able to open the .elvw from Windows Explorer with the viewer app. This way you can create short cuts to different views (say on the taskbar) or from the jump list in Windows 7.
I’ve created a new project on CodePlex for ‘Mail Aggregator Service‘ so others can share and contribute if they want to.
There is no dedicated installer yet but installing the service is quite easy as the service exe supports my command line installation options like my other services (i.e. -install command line option).
It can be used with or without QuickMon.
I even have a new project icon/image for the project… mail gator 😉
Another quick note – QuickMon 2.6 has been released. The biggest change is the introduction of some parallel threading when calling collectors – using the .Net 4.0 parallel extensions. No new collectors or notifiers added yet.
The first update to one of my tool projects on CodePlex is a QuickMon release. It is actually a very small change – bug fix of a silly little UI bug.
Hopefully I’ll have some time this year to improve the tool further – there are several ideas in the pipeline…
I’ve eventually added an Event log notifier for QuickMon. It is actually really simple and does a basic job of logging alerts to the event log. It could be useful for those users that might not have a full SQL server database to log alerts to.
Some features:
* It use the alert level for the event log entry ‘type’ – like warning or error.
* You can log events to the local and remote event logs – but remember the permissions!
* The event source can be customized – including 2 macros for specifying the collector name or type.
Have fun monitoring!