Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category

Generating Random Names as Test Data

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Ever need to generate thousands of names to use as test data? I just created an Excel sheet that uses the 1990 US census data to generate random male and female names. Columns: A: Male First Name B: Female First Name C: Last Name E: Male Full Name (Proper Case) F: Female Full (Proper Case) Columns A,B,C are ...

What tools do you use?

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

I get this question a lot. The short answer, of course, is “it depends”. That is, I’m a right-tool-for-the-right-job kinda guy. However, since I make my living in the Microsoft ecosystem, I’m naturally biased. Generally speaking, I use mostly open source tools, unless there is a compelling reason to use a commercial one. Here’s ...