XML Notepad 2007

Microsoft released an editor for XML files, you can download it here.

Handy features include:
- Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.
- Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.
- Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.
- Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML - Notepad and from the file system.
- Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.
- In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.
- Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.
- Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.
- Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.
- Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.
- Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.
- Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.
- Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.
- Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.
- Built-in XML Diff tool. New features included in this version:
- Added keyboard accelerators for find again (F3) and reverse find (SHIFT+F3).
- Added support for loading IXmlBuilder and IXmlEditor implementations from different assemblies using new vs:assembly attribute.
- Made source code localizable by moving all error messages and dialog strings to .resx files.
- Added a default XSL transform.

New icons, a play on the Vista "Notepad" icons. Bug Fixes included in this version:
- Fixed install on Windows Vista machines using Windows Installer XML 3.0.
- Performance of expand node when validating.
- Fixed bug where changed schemas and transforms were not being re-loaded.
- Fixed spurious warnings about file being changed on disk.
- Fixed handling of very long text nodes.
- Fixed round trip of DTD content in tags.
- Fixed validation of elements with xsi:type attributes.
- Scroll bar not updating when node expanded/collapsed in some cases.
- Tree view needs horizontal scrollbar.
- When XML Notepad is minimized and file changes on disk, the file reload prompt is confusing. - Notepad should be restored first.
- XSL output window should pick up new xsl-transform based on input document.
- Fixed unhandled exception when closing a group of XML notepad windows.
- Added registration of "Edit" action for .xml file extension.
- Move source code to CodePlex.

Passed 70-235

Last week I passed the 70-235 exam. The day after that my collegue Bas de Gier passed as well.
Today 2 other collegues (Suresh Booms and Edwin Vriethof) took the exam as well and passed! Congratulations to all!

Besides project experience and many hours of self study, the BizTalk 2006 Recipes book by Apress helped me a lot to get at the level to pass the exam.

Interesting book coming up

Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation
http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10185

Requested registry access is not allowed

At the project I am working on I mainly use the Event Log to write progress statements from my orchestrations. On my develop-machine I ran into the error message 'Requested registry access is not allowed'.

It appeared that the user account under which the processing host runs, did not have enough authorisations to access the Event Log.

This can be fixed by giving that user account full control to a certain Registry Key.
To achieve this you must start the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog. Right click on the node and click 'Permissions...'.
Next add the user account under which the processing host runs and give this user full control.
Close the dialog and the Registry Editor and finally restart the processing host.

You should now be able to write to the Event Log.