The busy folks on the FxCop team have posted a new release, 1.312. There’s 43 new rules and some of those rules look outstanding. A couple of my favorites are the “Avoid unnecessary string creation” (which looks to see if you are creating extranious strings on the heap) and “Do not raise reserved exception types” (which ensures you don’t throw something like System.Exception directly). The Read Me file discusses all the new stuff.
The team changed the custom rule SDK yet again, but the changes are for the better. See the Read Me for all the changes. Since many people are using the rules I developed for FxCop as part of my June 2004 and September 2004 Bugslayer columns, I updated all the rules I did to support FxCop 1.312, which you can download here. Porting the rules to the new SDK interface wasn’t too bad. In the near future, I’ll post an article here at the site which describes what’s necessary to do the porting. If you have your own rules to port, take a look at the Empty Rule example in my code to see what’s different.
For rule writers, one major feature has been added to FxCop 1.312: when loading a rule that has a broken XML description, it finally tells you exactly which part of the XML is wrong! In previous versions it was a complete trial and error process to find the error in your XML description. Now FxCop tells you in the output window exactly what piece was wrong and why. It’s a huge timesaver. Thanks to the team for adding that.
If you have any ideas for rules, we’d love to hear about them! Shoot me an email (john at this web site) or post in the comments. The rules are fun to develop and if there are some good suggestions, I’ll write them.
Deploying ERP in the Cloud
Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) for two years had been hosting various components of Icebreaker’s IT when the company’s dramatic growth rendered obsolete its enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. “About 12 months ago, we determined that our ERP wasn’t growing to scale with the company’s growth overall,” Swain says.
“We’d gone past its limits and we decided to upgrade the entire system. We determined that moving to a single instance that everyone globally accesses here at Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) is the right move.”
Icebreaker’s private cloud at Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) includes its core ERP, its lifecycle-management system and all of the auxiliary systems that comprise these vital systems. “We had a choice – we could either go out and have a look at other providers with an RFP, or we stay with a relationship that we already knew, where trust had been built up between the two companies,” Swain adds. “So it was a bit of a no-brainer.”
Icebreaker also is finding Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet)’s cloud deployment to be cost-effective, with monthly charges based on usage instead of having to purchase equipment. In addition, it is having Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) develop geo-distant disaster recovery in Arizona.
“Our new ERP is much larger,” Swain says, adding that its complexity has reinforced Icebreaker’s earlier decision to outsource the system to Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet). “The number of servers is increasing and, this way, we don’t have to literally employ someone just to manage the system. And on the infrastructure support side, it’d take a lot of time for us to do all of the building, patching and maintaining.”
A Deeper Relationship
“When we were looking for a company to handle our IT, we found that Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) was a good fit with our own values – things like a commitment to sustainability, which is a big one for Icebreaker,” Swain explains. “We matched up quite nicely, both from an IT and philosophical perspective.”
Swain says that Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet)’s performance in the first two years of working with Icebreaker proved to the New Zealand company that Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) could handle the added work. “As time has gone on, both companies have become a lot more comfortable with each other, and we’re confident in handing over the extra work
and responsibility.”
“With Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) there have been no issues with support, and the response to any problems has always been very quick, and the service we’ve received from Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) has always been very proactive,” he says. “Carrying it on and making a deeper relationship is a bit of the Icebreaker philosophy of narrow and deep – having a more limited number of vendors but having very deep relationships with them.
“We have this relationship with Atmosera (formerly EasyStreet) and it’s working well,” he says. “And I don’t see it changing anytime soon.”