Windows Error Reporting is a 'free' service from Microsoft that integrates into your product and allows end-users to report detailed error information to Microsoft. Microsoft then passes this information on to the vendor (you) in the form of mini-dumps and error reports that can then be debugged inside of Visual Studio and/or WinDbg. This seems like an invaluable service to an ISV that runs their products on Windows. For WinForm applications, there is a dialog that appears that allows the user to click 'Send Error Report'. I would hope there is also a way to automate the error reporting as there could be no user interface to the product (e.g., Windows Services).

The kicker to WER is that you need to have a digital certificate which is not cheap. However, depending upon the breadth of your customer base, it may be well worth it.

Microsoft has a shareware starter kit that appears to provide quite a few useful tools to help a new author get started and it is free of charge. Here is a run down of some of the features:

• Buy Now Web Service
• Activate Now Web Service
• Product Registration Web Service
• Product Feedback Web Service
• Exception Handling Web Service
• Multi-Threaded Splash Screen
• Configure Your Token
• Upgrade Version Web Service
• Log File Web Service
• Custom Developer Portal

So, after three years of development on a new version of our product (at my fulltime job), the development manager has decided that we ought to start thinking about the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and how we would like to manage the process. The humorous thing here is that we have already released the product at this point; not that we should not correct our past wrongs in this department though.

Before this latest idea to implement a true SDLC, we really have been managing the process by chaos, a close derivative of management by exception. The plan was very difficult to make out through the maze of task changes, context switches, smoke and mirror projects and fires to put out that have been thrown at us over the years. To be honest, I am not certain there ever was a true project plan, or at least not one that has kept up-to-date and managed.

So, out of the blue, the development team gets notice about our new goal to create a true SDLC within our team. Of course this cannot happen overnight, but we are all very in favor of making this happen for obvious reasons. The problem is that chaos still reigns and that is actually the way the development manager prefers it! The development manager piles about a dozen of us into a room to plan out the entire SDLC. Of course, what happens when you get a dozen developers in a room with no clear plan, no clear focus and no subject boundaries really? Exactly, you get an hour long meeting that bounces from random subject to random subject with nothing to show for it. Even discussing a world without servers was thrown out there?

I discussed this with the development manager and this chaos theory is actually his strategy. He doesn’t want to narrow the focus. He wants everyone involved and committed to the ultimate outcome and he believes the best way to do that is to have these sorts of meetings to hammer through the process. Now, he has been doing this a great deal longer than I have, so although I am skeptical of the tactics, I am going with the flow for the time being. However, my prediction is that this process will take the better part of 2008 just to discuss, and the results will be less than perfect. I doubt everyone is going to be committed in the end, if there is an end. Most of these sort of initiatives around here die out after a couple of months, with little to show for it.

I know I sound negative, but I prefer to think of it as realistic after having been at this employer for 6+ years now.

Well, the hard drive on my main machine started throwing read failures this weekend, and then finally would no longer boot the system because of it. The sucker is only 6-months old from Western Digital. I still have IDE drives that work fine from 10+ years ago. I'm not writing off SATA, but I certainly have had more drive failures recently compared to past history and they've been SATA drives, one at full-time work and one at home. I played a bit of musical chairs with drives at home as I can't wait for the warranty replacement to get back up and running. I moved a 250GB drive that was acting as my network file store out of my server to the client PC and bought a 500GB drive from Circuit City to replace it in the server.

Really this just brought to the forefront my data protection strategies at home. I currently store any data that means anything to me on a central server at home that then gets backed up to a separate (geographical) host every night, encrypting the sensitive data. Unfortunately though, I do not mirror any of my local drives. So, the process of recovering from a failure is still a bit painful. If the drive went out on my server, I would be hurting. I wouldn't lose any data, but it would still be tremendously painful, especially because it is the PDC, SQL Server, Forefront Server and WSUS for my entire network. It has two drives, one being for the server itself and the second being the aforementioned file store for the whole network.  

I'm thinking I should mirror the drive on the server (RAID-1) and then purchase a separate NAS device to use for the central storage. It is too costly to mirror all of the client PCs in the network, but I need to shore up the server. I need to find a drive enclosure that acts as a NAS device and plugs directly into the network. That way I can take the 500GB replacement drive move it to NAS, then take the warranty drive they are sending me and use it for mirroring in the server. Wow it is fun taking care of a home network. Sometimes I wonder if it is truly worth all of the hassle.