Chapter 10-Lesson 3

• An isolated task performed by Operating System is called a Process.
• An application may be using 1 or more processes.
• 32-bit processors can allocate a maximum of 4GB memory.
• Within the memory, a Virtual Memory Manager keeps setting in the form of 4KB memory pages (chunks) that it assigns to processes as and when required.
• Process class in System.Diagnostics namespace is used to handle processes through .NET
• GetProcessById( ) static method takes ID of a process as argument and throws an ArgumentException if one is not found.
• Performace for applications running on Windows can be measured using PerformanceCounter class, since it uses Registry to store values retrieved from code.
• CounterCreationData may be used to specify Name, Type and other information related to a PerformanceCounter.
• PerformanceCounterCategory class is used to manage and manipulate PerformanceCounter objects.
• The Start( ) method of the Process class may be used to invoke an outside process.
• If we use the overload of Start( ) method that takes Username and Password, then the UseShellExecute property must be set to false.
• ProcessStartInfo object may also be passed to Start( ) method to specify process name and any Command-line arguments.
• The StackTrace object represents the CLR Stack trace for a given application.
• StackTrace is composed of StackFrames which represent individual method calls.

Chapter 10-Lesson 2

• Debug and Debugger classes are used to programatically control the debugging of code.
• .NET Runtime considers these classes only when program is built in Debug mode.
• Debugger.Log( ) static method logs a given message to a target. For that, we need to confirgure the Listeners collection of the Trace object. (overloads define the target which could be a File, Output Window, etc)
• Debugger class provides only two useful methods, namely Break( ) and Log( )
• To have more control over debugging, we may use Debug class.
• Debug.Assert( ) evaluates a given condition and if it is false breaks into the debugger and displays a given message.
• The following methods send messages to the output window with difference only in either formatting or in use of conditions: Write( ), WriteLine( ), WriteIf( ), WriteLineIf( ).
• The Print( ) method, however, sends message only to any attached Trace Listeners.
• DebuggerBrowsable attribute over any member of class would determine its visibility in the Debug window whenever a breakpoint is set. (It is supported only in C#.NET)
• DebuggerDisplay attribute determines how particular members of a class will be shown when an object is displayed in the Debug window. This method is used to decorate a class.
• DebuggerHidden attribute tells the debgger to ignore the lines of code that it decorates.
• DebuggerStepThrough attribute tells the debugger to Step Over the code it decorates. (This will save time for code that we are sure won't cause problems)
• DebuggerVisualizer attribute is new in .NET 2.0
• Trace class is implemented both in Debug and Release builds.
• DefaultTraceListener is attached to the output window.
• TextWriterTraceListener can redirect trace messages to a text file or Stream. (which is mentioned in the constructor)
• XmlWriterTraceListener directs Trace or Debug information to a TextWriter or Stream object. However, the file will contain XML as ouput rather than plain text as in the above listener. (XML indeed contains more information than plain text)
• XmlWriterTraceListener is new in .NET 2.0. If no filename is specified in constructor, CLR uses a GUID to create a filename.
• EventLogTraceListener directs messages to an EventLog specified in the constructor.
• DelimitedListTraceListener works the same as the above two but can use a delimiter to seperate entries.
• All of the above listeners may be configured either by using code or the configuration file.

Chapter 10-Lesson 1

• Event Log is available in Windows 2000 and above.
• Event Logs should be avoided in partial trust environments.
• System.Disgnostics nampespace is required to use objects such as EventLog.
• WriteEntry( ) method of the EventLog class is used to actually create an entry.
• The Entries property of the EventLog class is a collection containing objects of type EventLogEntries.
• We may use any of the existing logs or we may choose to create our own by specifying its name in the EventLog constructor.

Chapter 9-Lesson 2

• Installer class allows for creation of Setup files to help deploy our Assemblies.
• Adding a class to the project that inherits from Installer class and overriding Install( ), Commit( ), Rollback( ) and Uninstall( ) methods will make an Application installable. Additionally we add a RunInstaller Attribute and set it to true.
• To initiate an Installer programmatically, we use AssemblyInstaller or ComponentInstaller classes.

Chapter 9-Lesson 1

• To put Application settings without using Windows Registry or database, we use configuration files in .NET
• System.Configuration namespace is required to use classes that serve to read/write configuration information for .NET applications.
• ConfigurationManager class provides properties and methods that return Configuration objects related to a particular Assembly.
• CodeBase section of the configuration file tells the CLR which .NET Framework version to use.
• ConfigurationSettings class is obsolete in .NET 2.0. Instead use ConfigurationManager.AppSettings
• ConfigurationManager.AppSettings is a NameValueCollection containing strings
• ConnectionString settings can be accessed as ConnectionStringSettingsCollection. It is exposed as ConfigurationManager.ConnetionStrings property.
• It is better to use WebConfigurationManager in ASP.NET applications rather than ConfigurationManager.
• We may create settings file by hand or we may add a SettingsFile to our project in order to visually create settings.
• Configuration Settings are case-sensitive and white-space sensitive.
• System.Runtime.Remoting section may be used to define settings for remote applications.

Chapter 8-Lesson 3

• Windows Services are processes that run in their own user-session without any UI.
• Windows Services inherit from ServicesBase class.
• The Main( ) method in a service contains code to call Run( ) method responsible for starting/executing the service.
• The OnStart( ) method method should NOT stick into an infinte loop not should it get blocked. If we wish to create polling mechanism, use System.Timers.Timer object.
• To override OnPause( ), OnContinue( ) and OnShutDown( ) methods, first set ServiceBase.CanPauseAndContinue or ServiceBase.CanShutdown to true.
• Remember to always set the ServiceName property in the property pane.
• System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController class is required to interact with a service from .NET Assembly.
• To install the service, we need ServiceInstaller and ServiceProcessInstaller objects (automatically created in Visual Studio when we right click Service Design View and choose Add Installer)
• LocalService is the least previliged Account and LocalSystem is the most previliged Account property for ServiceProcessInstaller.
• While creating MSI installer for Service, add Project Output from Service Project as Primary Output and then add a Custom Action. (refer to page 462-463)
• To record Exceptions for a Service use EventLog.

Chapter 8-Lesson 2

• In-depth security means we are able to prevent damage caused due to a vulnerability in a (third-party) Assembly that we are not aware of, cannot prevent and cannot fix.
• We may run Assemblies within an AppDomain with certain previliges by specifying an Evidence object to the Assembly. An Evidence is an object that behaves as an ID card displaying role/status of an entity. The authorities may then use this object to determine what kind of previliges an object (an Assembly in this case) recieves.
• The Evidence object takes an object array in its constructor. We may store anything in that array or we may use any of the predefined enumerations to define a specific type of previlige-level. The Evidence object will then be passed when ExecuteAssembly( ) method is run on an AppDomain.
• We may also pass such an Evidence object to CreateDomain( ) method to limit previliges for the entire AppDomain.
• Certain properties of an AppDomain are configurable via the AppDomainSetup class, which may be passed along with the Evidence object while creating new AppDomains.