Love that ASP.NET and SQL Server : Software Development

MSDN Smart Client Developer Center REBOOTED:

benmiller — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 10:16:00 GMT

Check out this entry from Jonathan Wells about the MSDN Smart Client Developer Center

This is the link http://blogs.msdn.com/onoj/archive/2004/12/03/274799.aspx

From the site 'The goal of the site is to help you understand smart clients, what they are, when they are most appropriate, and most importantly, the best and most efficient way to construct them.'

This is a great resource for anyone doing Smart Client development.

Installing VS 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Team Server

benmiller — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 04:35:00 GMT

I spent the better part of my day a couple of days ago helping out someone having problems installing Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Team System.

It was such an experience that I decided to blog about it.

I began with 2 VPC images (cause I found out that you could install it on 2 machines and could not install it on 1) with Windows Server 2003 on them. The first thing I recommend is to become familiar with the Installation Roadmap that is on the DVD’s. This illustrates that you need a DB Server (for the DB Tier) and a Application Box (for App Tier, and Client Tier). On the DB Tier machine (VPC) I created a domain controller and Active Directory. I allowed the installer to create a DNS server so that I could have name resolution between the 2 VPC’s. I then added the Server Role of Application Server (IIS and ASP.NET Enabled). I then installed SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 that came with the VS 2005 Beta 1 Refresh DVD, and configured it as the DEFAULT instance (as this is required for this version of TS).

Then I turned to the other VPC. I joined it to the domain I just created and then added the Server Role of App Server (IIS and ASP.NET but NOT Frontpage Server Extensions as it will break the install). Then created a User that is a domain account and gave it admin rights. This will be used for the Application Pool identity. Then the key was to install the components that were on the list of components to install from the Roadmap. (included .NET Framework 2.0, Sharepoint Services 2.0 – link is in the Roadmap, and ADAM.)

These are the short steps, but the key is to follow the Roadmap and I highlighted the main points that cannot be missed or you will not succeed in installing it (from my experience).

1. DB Server must be installed as the Default Instance.

2. App Server Role on AppTier cannot have FrontPage Server Extensions enabled.

3. IIS Installed before the SQL 2005 Beta 2 is installed on the DBTier.

What you will see that may alarm you when you install is when you go to install Team Server on the App Tier is that the install will hang installing the newbanner.gif file and it will continue to bring the blue bar across as it is installing. There will be no visual indication that it is connecting to the DB Tier to create databases, etc. but that is what it is doing. I found out this by when I installed the Database Server as a named instance, it would continue to go after the newbanner.gif and then it would fail with a 26205 and a 26201 and a 26204 error. In the event logs, I found that it indicated that it could not connect to the server (db). When I changed the DB Tier to be a default instance of SQL, then it succeeded (and it took a while, so be patient).

Hope this helps people out there that may run into problems. I did this on VPC using Virtual Server 2005 on 1 box with 2 VPC’s each with 256 MB RAM. More would have been better, but it worked at least.

Have a great one.

Brad Abrams talk at the San Jose dotNet User Group...

benmiller — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:24:00 GMT

I attended the San Jose dotnet User Group and listened to Brad talk about the CLR. It was a FANTASTIC talk and was very informative.

We talked about the architecture of the CLR and where the BCL’s sit (that is what Brad worked on is the BCL’s). He just gave a great talk.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that I actually knew what a Singleton was and how it was defined as a Pattern. I was pretty much amazed that I understood. We had a talk in the SLC DotNet User Group about that and Aaron Zupancic (don’t know if Aaron has a blog) gave a great talk on Patterns in development. Singleton happened to be one of them. Brad called it the “double check lock”.

Anyone who does not currently attend a User Group, should hop onto INETA’s website and find the local one and get involved. It is a great time and you even learn things.

Great job Brad.

Visual C# Express application ScreenSaver

benmiller — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 01:16:00 GMT

Just wanted to post my successes on working on the Visual C# Express project. I modified a ScreenSaver program that came from the template that is installed with Visual C# Express. It has an RSS Feed that gets loaded from a application setting in the .config file pointing to a main feed of an RSS (but could just as well point to the individual's RSS Feed.

The thing that I modified on it was to use the RegEx libraries to remove the HTML tags and the   stuff so that when you saw the description on the screen, that you did not see tags, but just text.

I was talking to Brad Abrams about the project and how it was displaying the tags and I thought, well, why don't we just remove it so it would just show the text. So I set out to do just that.

I have completed the project, thanks to some Regular Expressions from RegExLib.com. Great stuff there. If anyone wants the finished project, let me know and I will post it up here or somewhere you can get to.

I have definitely decided that I am jumping in now and doing more Whidbey stuff so that I can catch up with my MVP's.

More to come from BorCon as we still have 1 more full day.

PICT to JPG image format

benmiller — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:50:00 GMT

I encountered another interesting question. This individual is using an application that has PICT formatted pictures stored in a database Image field. This data is then brought out of the database and put in an image control. The problem is that this app that is being written cannot use PICT images and therefore PICT needs to be able to be converted programmatically. I found that there are many apps including the ones at 2jpeg.com but they are not components that can be used inside code. It is a console application (command line app) that can run without a UI but is an app that must be launced.

I found LeadTools products, but then found out that the .NET Vector Imaging product was 2000.00. So that puts it out of reach for someone developing an app that is for one customer or friend or whatever.

I was a little disappointed on how little conversion code there was for things like this as we get more standardized on coding techniques, etc. there is still a gap in the imaging front between platforms (PICT = Mac, JPG = Windows, etc.)

Just an interesting day here at BorCon.

How do I change the value in an XsltArgumentList

benmiller — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:44:00 GMT

I encountered a customer today with a question. Remember I am at BorCon this week.

The question was around the XsltTransform and using parameters. So I quickly looked up the object and the method of Tranform and found that indeed I could pass parameters in an XsltArgumentList. Now the question was this. If I am using the same xslt and the same parameters (obviously), but want to just change the value of the parameter for another run, how do I do this?

So I looked up the XsltArgumentList and found that there is an AddParam, and a GetParam, and a RemoveParam, but there no reference to an indexer, or anything that would allow me to change the value of the parameter without doing a RemoveParam and an AddParam. Then there is the curious GetParam and it returning an Object instead of a type of like say XsltArgument so that you can just change the value or the namespace without removing and re-adding with a new value.

Are there any takers? I could not find anything on it and it would be great to learn a little more about a space that I have little experience in.

Down here at Borcon 2004

benmiller — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:25:00 GMT

Just down here in Sunny San Jose California working the exhibit hall for the Borcon conference.

The major interest so far is the SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 stuff. Many people are aware of SQL Server but not so much as to what is new in the Engine and toolset. I am down here with Matt Nunn, and Euan Garden.

Should be a great show, and a great chance to show off ASP.NET and SQL Server.

Stay tuned....

Going to Borcon 2004

benmiller — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 21:37:00 GMT

I was browsing some blogs and found my buddy Euan Garden and found that he blogged about going to Borcon 2004.

I will be there as well, and I am going to be helping out in the booth. If you are going, and want to meet up, let me know in the comments.

Have a great one.

My first blog post from my new tablet PC.

benmiller — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:29:00 GMT

I are my new tablet and thought that I world post. Tonight was the Salt Lake Dot Net users group. Our meeting sponsor was 6PM at www.sixpm.com .

The talk was on Design Patterns and was given by Aaron Zupancic. He did a fantastic job and I think the meeting was very well attended. We had about 40 people there. Aaron talked about practices and patterns that we may use in design. Some were Singleton, Façade, Observer and Adapted. He did a great job and even showed code examples as well. I found out that singleton objects are those that will only be instantiated1 time per appdomain.

At the end of the night we found out that Rob Howard will be coming on October 7^th to speak to us on Whidbey.

It was a great meeting. All this was written on my tablet and it definitely took longer than me typing it. But I got more familiar with my input panel (the new one that came with XP sp2 on a tablet that is XP Tablet Edition 2005) in the process.