I have some pretty in-depth experience working with the VB6 exception handling mechanism. I still get an occasional email about my article on Try-Catch exception handling in VB6 in the Sept 2001 Visual Basic Programmer’s journal.

So when I finally got a chance to crack open the Enterprise Application Block and check out the Exception Handling App Block, I was hoping for some pretty nice stuff, or at least something to give me a few ideas.

But what’s there seems pretty underwhelming.

The good news is that most of the stack tracing and related informational-type things that you really had to work very hard at with VB6, are part and parcel to VB.NET. The bad news is that the exception handling application block doesn’t seem to contain much at all to actually make handling exceptions any easier than piling mountains of Try-Catch lines into your source.

Hmm, Try…Catch…Finally, or On Error Goto Handler…Handler: …Resume next

Under the covers, I know they’re very different, but seriously, what I see is just syntactic shuffling.

I’ve always believed that virtually all exception handling in an app should be attributable to individual routines. That’s the way my exception handler for VB6 worked, just without all the syntactic niceties of .NET.

For instance, why shouldn’t I be able to attribute a routine as to how exceptions within it ought to be handled?

<HandleExceptionsByContinuing> _

Public Sub MySub(arg1, arg2, arg3)
    x = 1 / 0

End Sub

In this case, I’ve declared that for this particular method, exceptions ought to be handled by simply continuing execution of the code.

Other cases might raise a specific error, reraise the original error, reraise the original error wrapped in an outer exception, etc. Granted, my example may not be great here.

Most routines are supposed to be so small that having more than one TRY statement would be lame anyway, right? And most of the code I’ve looked at containing Try Catch blocks only contain one in a method anyway.

For those routines where you definitely need to handle specific exception in specific ways, you still have the Try statement to fall back on, but even then, I tend to believe that every exception in an app should be routed through a single handler that can be configured to do certain things, be it emailing the exception, logging it, or (and I’m not recommending this, mind you!) ignoring it altogether.

Littering the workings of your code with boilerplate Try Catch filler strikes me as equally onerous as those comments like:

'Increase the count variable by one

Count = Count + 1

Ugh.

But, just like a well placed comment, when the workings of the code are better explained with inline exception handling, TRY away!

Might be time for my own Enterprise Exception Handling Block…

I’ve seen a very nice effect on a number of blogs where code snippets were formatted and (somewhat) syntax highlighted.

I finally got a chance to do some digging and turned up the very cool javascript package called dp-highlighter.

In a nutshell, you put the dp-highlighter files in a folder on your website, then add the following code toward the bottom of any page that needs code highlighted:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="./dphighlighter/SyntaxHighlighter.css"></link>
<script language="javascript" src="./dphighlighter/shCore.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" src="./dphighlighter/shBrushVB.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" src="./dphighlighter/shBrushXml.js"></script>
<script language="javascript">
    dp.SyntaxHighlighter.ClipboardSwf = 'dphighlighter/clipboard.swf';
    dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll('code');
</script>

Make sure you change the shBrushVB.js to whichever language parser you want to use. Also, I put the files in a dphighlighter folder, but you can put them anywhere, really, just be sure to update the paths above.

Finally, for code you want to highlight, just stick it in a <PRE> tag, and add NAME=”code” CLASS=”VB”, like this

<pre name="code" class="vb">

if you got it right, you’ll end up with something like this:

Public Property Let HelpFile(ByVal NewValue$)

   If rbPrologueActivated Then
      rExc.HelpFile = NewValue$
   Else
      VBA.Err.HelpFile = NewValue$
   End If
End Property

There’s lots more documentation and examples at the link above.

I’m working my way through the quite laborious installation of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server when I came across this gem (seriously, it’s in the TFSInstall-v071203.chm Team Foundation Server installation guide):

Before you install Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1,

you must first download and install the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Quiescence GDR.

Now, I love big words as much as any logophile, but to name a service pack a Quiescence GDR? And what the hell is that, anyway? It means “At rest or still”. So… That SP is for all your machines that aren’t installed in motor vehicles, maybe?

I’m already waiting for agonizing install processes and prerequisites. Now MS is improving my vocabulary, too. Grrr.

Who said IT isn’t just one big wild and crazy ride!

I recently had the need to burn several duplicates of a CD I made, and I’ve always used Nero Burning Rom for that in the past.

This time, however, I’d upgraded to Vista, and my copy of Nero (a version that came in the box with a DVD drive I bought some time ago) wouldn’t run any longer.

Strike 1

I fire up VMWare, thinking I could install it to a VM. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like VMWare supports the virtualization of a DVD RW or CD RW drive yet.

Strike 2

So I start rummaging around the net for something.

What I found was a mountain of programs to do the job, but they all seemed lacking in one respect or another. Worse, they generally sell for 20-50$, which isn’t bad, but considering this is Vista, I’d have thought a decent CD/DVD package would have been in the box.

Eventually, I came across BurnAtOnce, www.burnatonce.net, a freeware front-end to the open source cdrdao and cdrtools programs (which are linux-bred command line apps, and not the friendliest things in the world to work with).

It’s a bit old, and from what I could gather, it’s not being actively developed anymore, but… it’s small, simple, free, and best of all, it seems to work great for grabbing images of a disk, no matter what the format, burning from the images, and in general, doing disk dupe and backup operations.

Good stuff.

I also found an app called DeepBurner. They do have a PRO version for 25$, but the freeware version (and better, the portable freeware version), seems to do everything with ISO files I’d need to do. Great for data only cd’s. And that portable version is just copy and go. No install necessary.