Tech-Review.Org

Unable to Install SP1 for Vista?

Jody — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:12:00 GMT

Today, trying to update Vista Ultimate to SP1 (released today), I ran into a bizarre error message: "Service Pack can not be installed. System does not have required supporting Langauge Pack." All of the language packs were installed but there was a exclamation point on the English one, in the Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Keyboard and Languages -> Remove. Note that main tab indicated English was set as preference. To correct. Using the afore mentioned navigation - click...(read more)

Unable to use ASPNET_REGIIS -I for installing Asp.Net 2.0 on Vista / Windows 2008

Jody — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Vista and Windows Server 2008 have radically re-shaped the simplistic handling of IIS functions and features in terms of both interface and ability to capitalize on cmd line options. In the previous blog entry I outlined the issues I had with uninstalling the Microsoft Device Emulator to properly install VS 2008 on a x64 system. During that process - I uninstalled .Net 2.0 which rendered IIS useless for hosting my applications. The issue is - >Net 2.0 does not recognize IIS7. With IIS 5 and 6...(read more)

Can not uninstall Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0 on 64 bit Vista / Server 2008

Jody — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:18:00 GMT

I recently upgraded from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 on my Quad Core server. Note keyword was upgraded. Other than having to grab Vista Drivers for the 3 NVIDIA graphics cards, was relatively painless. Visual Studio 2008 Beta Version was already installed. It ran fine for the last week or so but I decided to revisit the Ajax coding in one of my projects and found that with the latest bits for the Ajax Toolkit (targeting .Net 3.5) - too many issues occurring (after all everything worked...(read more)

Debugging TIP of the Day

Jody — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:33:00 GMT

If you are like me, you probably have a overall project that consists of many solutions. For whatever reasons it doesn't make sense to have the various solutions and projects all included into a single solution. That makes debugging rather difficult - especially difficult when say solution #2 only gets invoked when a web project, console application, or other is 'live'. With VS2005 and above you can actually multi-select the wp3svc, service hosts etc and the debugger of whatever solution will go...(read more)

.NET 3.5 issues on 64 bit Windows 2003 Server

Jody — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:31:00 GMT

Recently I decided to forgo using my laptop for developement and instead put together a brand new system that has six monitors and a dual core Intel 64 bit system. Since Vista would not install - I opted to go for Windows Server 2003 instead, as I will probably reire my older web server once 2008 comes out. A fresh install was done, with all of the updates and service packs. I installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta - and everything was working fine, with exception when I tried launching my site / project...(read more)

When the Random() Function always returns 0 and not a random number

Jody — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:57:00 GMT

While working with Greg on the .Net Trade 6 refresh update, we ran into a bizarre behavior. The load balancing is accomplished by using the .Net random method based upon the number of servers in the list. Part of the testing we do, is a ton of fail-over scenarios and it is kinda my responsibility to wreck havoc on the system, to actually break it - and then identify where. In the scenario which we discovered the bug, was having four - five Business Service Hosts handling the web requests. Downing...(read more)

VS 2008 - It does increase productivity...

Jody — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:33:00 GMT

It has been two weeks or so, with using VS 2008 (Beta) exclusively and to date have not used the VS 2005 to do any coding. While I really see no use for LINQ and some of the other newer technologies (mainly because I code for performance and not ease of coding such as using master pages etc - instead I would rather craft the code to do what it needs to do with the least amount of perf hit as possible).. there are some really cool productivity enhancements with VS 2008. The first: The split view of...(read more)

My Biggest Beef with -Vista: Uninstall doesn't un-install anything

Jody — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:02:00 GMT

If there is one thing about advertising I despise - is when any manufacturer advertises better reliability from other versions to justify the upgrade. The opening tone is serious because this is a serious issue, because unlike subscribing to take the risks with a BETA or Pre-Release version of some software product - I shelled out money to have to have Vista Ultimate. And while less the issues with video drivers, I could be happy with Vista less this one MAJOR issue... Uninstalls are not uninstalls....(read more)

Orcas - Are you getting the most out of it...(Conversion Process)

Jody — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:05:00 GMT

Since my exposure of playing with Ajax during all the Beta cycles, and ending up so frustrated - I kinda stepped back and stopped participating in anything related to a Beta. So, it may be a surprise that I actually installed Orcas (Beta of VS 2008) and unlike my terrible experiences with converting my projects to VS 2005 - surprise - all converted without any drama what so ever (less one where when I started VS 2008 the first time it crashed during applying settings). That is good news. There is...(read more)

Images and working with a DAL

Jody — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 09:50:00 GMT

Most examples of working with saving images to a SQL Server database within a application that does not implement a DAL, usually work off only a HTTPPosted file and looks kinda like this: //create a stream Stream imgStream = proposedFile.InputStream; //get the length of the http posted file int imgLen = proposedFile.ContentLength; //now loop through the stream and assign it to the byte[] (which is an array) byte[] imgBinaryData = new byte[imgLen]; int n = imgStream.Read(imgBinaryData, 0, imgLen);...(read more)

Latest Benchmark Source Code Released: .Net StockTrader

Jody — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:30:00 GMT

I am happy to report that the .Net StockTrader Benchmark Application (and subsequent source code) are now released. Visit: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684.aspx Also, this is one of the first times that a benchmark application has an associated forum to discuss installation issues, coding strategies, and overall perceptions of the code / application. This is Rev 0 (so to speak) and overall - should be a very stable application for most users that install it and play around with...(read more)

The IDataReader - Frustration in DAL land and other frustrations

Jody — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:41:00 GMT

The problem with programming sometimes is learning the annoyances that plague a development language. I was troubleshooting my SQL DAL, which instead of using the "it COULD work with every data provider" (the caveat being - if the only data relationships are those you generate from drag and drop IDE)...has a semi-generic abstract base, but utilizes generics such that parameters and provider specific annoyances can be fully exploited and not merely addressed. Most DAL implementations either go to...(read more)

System.Security.SecurityException: The source was not found, but some or all event logs could not be searched. Inaccessible logs:

Jody — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:36:00 GMT

Adding Event logging works the same with VISTA as it does in XP. Unfortunately there is no programmic method to make it work the first time. The symptoms are you check and check the event logs to see where your entries are but alas nothing. Under VISTA you will see a sporadic "Uable to find Type Initializer" in the event logs. The later is an indication that you have not yet performed the following: For XP , 2003, and Vista 1. Right Click on "My Computer" 2. Select "MANAGE" 3. Select "USERS AND GROUPS"...(read more)

The SqlParameter is already contained by another SqlParameterCollection

Jody — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:15:00 GMT

A few days ago, I closed the laptop lid on my Toshiba and went to where I was going. It never came out of standby and as a result - had to cold power it. Unfortunately for me, I had Visual Studio open, and when I re-opened my solution - only 36 of the 90 some projects were showing. Considering a majority of the projects are module specific DALs, I realized that after spending 6 hours getting the projects back into the solution and properly configuring them, that the time was now and not later to...(read more)

Sample Applications you should learn from.. c# / VS Studio 2005

Jody — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:26:00 GMT

In the world of adopting .Net as a programming language of choice, the ultimate question is, "Where are the samples I can learn from". If you are reading this, you learned your basics maybe on your own or from some programing class, but you probably actually learned the advanced stuff from dissecting sample applications and code snippets off blogs. What you may not know, is that the published 'sample' apps differ greatly from the 'benchmark' applications that are also published. The former address...(read more)

Detecting if a Database or Service is online

Jody — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:57:00 GMT

No matter what kind of project one develops, there usually is a requirement to use some sort of external service such as a database engine, WPF service, and the likes. Especially when dealing with a web application that needs to be online at all times, the typical method is to just throw exceptions and deal with it in some fashion. Usually, involves a ton of code and overhead - after all applications are only as intelligent as the programmer that coded it. However, there are timeouts to consider...(read more)

A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share.

Jody — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:22:00 GMT

Having spent a good two hours troubleshooting the : An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file D:\Sites-Easy\Web\App_Data\LocalRepository.mdf failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException:...(read more)

Concrete Example: Convert Hashtable to Dictionary (Generics)

Jody — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 06:47:00 GMT

This entry will be short and sweet. After trying to find some kind of guide for converting from Hashtables - to using the generics Dictionary...I wanted to provide a more complex yet simple code comparision. In this example the first code snippet is the hashtable method. What this class does is store a requested url as string, and places into the hastable a object that contains all the data to dynamically create the page. using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Specialized;...(read more)

URIs..System.Net (Part III)

Jody — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 03:23:00 GMT

This part of the series will cover some practical uses of the URI as well as some other URI issues I have run up against when developing. The previous articles in this series discussed how to properly use the URI method. Those articles demonstrated how the URI can be a very powerful method and thus eliminating the need to code a bunch of string parsing routines and regular expressions to parse a string that represents a URL. However, beyond parsing URLs and determining the validity of one – as far...(read more)

URIs..and System.Net (Part II)

Jody — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:31:00 GMT

In Part I of this series, the rudimentary basics of the URI class was covered. Covered were the components that the URI() breaks down into, the overloaded methods of the URI() and how they are used, and a highlight on some of the issues when relying on the URI() alone. As stated before the URI() while it contains what is needed to dissect a URL - it is not necessarily capable of properly identifying the proper domain or checking to see if a domain extension is a ICANN approved extension. However,...(read more)

URIs..and System.Net (Part I)

Jody — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:36:00 GMT

The overall URI features of the System.Net is probably one of the worst and least documented aspect of .Net 2.0. While the basics of the URI class is reasonably documented, there still has to be additional issues addressed by the developer to provide a truly robust routine to identify a valid url. In this series of articles where I discuss various ways to tackle analyzing URIs for various tasks - the overall assumption is that the URI can be used by the HttpWebRequest object and subsequently the...(read more)

Working with Response Codes...

Jody — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:03:00 GMT

When developing custom IHTTP handlers; a developer has to handle when a parsed incoming url request does not match any dynamic content - or in other words - "404 Page Not Found". A well written IHTTP handler will most likely - when exhausting all possible matches, will usually redirect to a custom error page that maintains the sites branding. However, depending on how the IHTTP handler is coded, it is quite possible that a HTTP Status code of 200 (success or OK) will be returned if the content requested...(read more)

Using Uri's to determine valid urls with minimal RegEx

Jody — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:56:00 GMT

If there is one aspect of programming I understand the least (less javascript and Ajax) it is using Regular Expressions. For simple stuff - it is relatively easy - but I wanted to write a robust url checker and seems everyone has a different way of doing it when it comes to Regular Expressions... Is there an Alternative? You betcha... use the Uri feature to grab all pertinent information of the url and only use Regular Expressions to determine if the domain extension is valid...It saves in the frustration...(read more)

AjaxToolKit: Dynamic Service Path / CalendarExtendar

Jody — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:57:00 GMT

Rant: Even though I have blogged and Shawn Burke acknowledged and stated this issue would be resolved with the official release of the Toolkit - the ToolKit is still referencing FilePath instead of RawUrl. Again as previously blogged, and posted on Asp.Net Forums - it wrecks havoc for those of us whom use custom IHTTP Handlers and dynamically generate URLs as resources being requested may not be found. Secondly, it is simply the wrong syntax to be using. This is a rant mainly because each time a...(read more)

Comments on: Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException - what it is and how to avoid it

Jody — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 02:52:00 GMT

Elion Lipton recently wrote - Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManagerParserErrorException - what it is and how to avoid it , which explains some of the reasons the PageRequestManagerParserErrorException occurs. Please, take this in the spirit it is intended - it is not a rant or complaint, just my own personal observations on the reasons. I do not intend to stomp on toes of such technical expert and again have to state - I do not blog to create flame wars - only merely - to 1. document my own stupity or...(read more)