“Please wait while the installer finishes determining your disk requirements”

benmoore — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:29:22 GMT

That’s rather annoying message that I kept getting today while trying to install an MSI into a VM. A quick Bing search showed a few people with this issue, most stating that you need to run the msi from the command line using MSIEXEC to work around the issue.

A slightly easier one – that worked for me at least – was simply to restart the Windows Installer service. Once this was done the MSI installed fine.

Visual Studio Team Database – Properties List

benmoore — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:42:00 GMT

VSDB provides a number of configuration properties that can be used during deployment. These options are found in the Database.sqldeployment file that is included in your database project:

These options can also be specified on the command line when using the VSDBCMD tool, using the following syntax:

VSDBCMD /a:Deploy /cs:"connectionstring" /dsp:Sql /model:ProjectName.dbschema
/p:TargetDatabase=targetDB /manifest:manifestFileName.dbmanifest /script:outputScriptFileName.sql
/p:PropertyName=PropertyValue

The following table lists all the options available along with descriptions and default values:

Option	Description	Default Value
/p:AbortOnFirstError	Generate the deployment script to break on first error	ON
/p:AlwaysCreateNewDatabase	Generate the deployment script to always create a new database (and drop one with the same name if it already exists on the target)
/p:AnsiNulls	Override to explicitly set the AnsiNulls connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:AnsiPadding	Override to explicitly set the AnsiPadding connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:AnsiWarnings	Override to explicitly set the AnsiWarnings connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:ArithAbort	Override to explicitly set the ArithAbort connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:BlockIncrementalDeploymentIfDataLoss	Emit script to verify if there is potential data loss due to actions in the script.
/p:CommentOutSetVarDeclarations	Comment out the :setvar block at the top of the deployment script. This is useful if the script will be executed with another tool like SqlCmd.exe
/p:ConcatNullYieldsNull	Override to explicitly set the ConcatNullYieldsNull connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:DeployDatabaseProperties	Specifies whether or not scripts to database-level properties should be generated when differences are detected.
/p:DeploymentCollationPreference	This option specifies which database collation should be used when generating the script. For consistency’s sake, this should be left to its default which is to use the source model’s collation since that is the collation used when the model was tested and verified.
/p:DeploymentConfigurationFile	The deployment configuration file to use.
/p:DisableAndReenableDdlTriggers	Generate scripts that disable any database triggers prior to execution and then re-enable the triggers after deployment has been completed.	ON
/p:DoNotUseAlterAssemblyStatementsToUpdateCLRTypes	If set to true, the deployment script will always drop and recreate an assembly and its objects if difference are detected
/p:EnforceMinimalDependencies	If this option is set to true it might result in a faster deployment if your database has many large stored procedures, but the stored procedures in the deployment script could be incorrectly ordered.
/p:GenerateDeployStateChecks	Generate TSql statements to verify that the instance and database used to generate the script are the same as the ones the script is currently being executed against. It was a common request to expose a way to turn these state requests off	ON
/p:GenerateDropsIfNotInProject	Drop objects in the target that are not in the source model.
/p:IgnoreAnsiNulls	Ignore AnsiNull settings when comparing two objects.
/p:IgnoreAuthorizer	Ignore an object’s Authorizer when comparing two objects
/p:IgnoreAutoGeneratedNames	Auto generated names are always ignored
/p:IgnoreBodyDependencies	Controls whether analyzed dependencies are used when determining whether two objects are the same. Since object scripts are also compared this option should be left to true	ON
/p:IgnoreCollations	Collations specified on objects other than columns are never ignored
/p:IgnoreColumnCollation	Controls whether the column collation differences should be ignored
/p:IgnoreComments	Ignore comment differences when comparing script bodies.
/p:IgnoreDdlTriggerState	Ignore DDL trigger state differences when comparing two DDL triggers
/p:IgnoreDefaultSchema	Ignore default schema differences
/p:IgnoreDmlTriggerOrder	Ignore DML trigger order differences
/p:IgnoreDmlTriggerState	Ignore DML trigger state differences
/p:IgnoreExtendedProperties	Ignore and exclude extended properties from deployment
/p:IgnoreFileAndLogFilePath	Ignore path differences, these almost always should be ignored due to machine differences. Vsdbcmd will not generate a script to modify the path
/p:IgnoreFilegroupPlacement	Ignore file group differences for tables and indexes	ON
/p:IgnoreFileSize	Ignore size differences – they will always be different if you have data	ON
/p:IgnoreFillFactor	Ignore the fill factor on indexes	ON
/p:IgnoreFullTextCatalogFilePath	Ignore path differences
/p:IgnoreIdentitySeed	Ignore seed differences
/p:IgnoreIncrement	Ignore increment differences
/p:IgnoreIndexOptions	Ignore other index option differences like row and page locks
/p:IgnoreIndexPadding	Ignore padding differences	ON
/p:IgnoreKeywordCasing	Ignore keyword casing like FROM <-> from.	ON
/p:IgnoreLockHintsOnIndexes	Ignore other index option differences like row and page locks
/p:IgnoreLoginSids	Ignore SID differences where the names of the logins are the same
/p:IgnoreObjectPlacementOnPartitionScheme	Ignore partition scheme differences	ON
/p:IgnorePasswords	Ignore password differences	ON
/p:IgnorePermissions	Ignore all SQL permission statements
/p:IgnoreQueueEventNotifications	Event notifications are never ignored
/p:IgnoreQuotedIdentifiers	Ignore quoted identifiers setting differences
/p:IgnoreRoleMembership	Role memberships are never ignored
/p:IgnoreSemicolonBetweenStatements	Ignore semicolon differences when comparing script bodies
/p:IgnoreStatisticsSample	Ignore sample size and style differences
/p:IgnoreTableOptions	Ignores sp_table option differences on tables
/p:IgnoreUserSettingsObjects	Ignores all option differences for a user as well as its login and default schema
/p:IgnoreWhitespace	Ignore whitespace when comparing script bodies	ON
/p:IgnoreWithNocheckOnCheckConstraints	Ignores differences between a check constraint enabled state
/p:IgnoreWithNocheckOnForeignKeys	Ignores differences between a foreign key’s enabled state
/p:IncludeTransactionalScripts	Generate a transactional deployment script. Some statements cannot be executed within a transaction, these will be executed before or after the transaction.
/p:NumericRoundAbort	Override to explicitly set the NumericRoundAbort connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:PerformDatabaseBackup	Backup the database before executing the deployment script. The database will be backed up even if the database is being recreated.
/p:QuotedIdentifier	Override to explicitly set the QuotedIdentier connection setting. This is sometimes needed to correctly create the objects in your model
/p:SingleUserMode	Set the database in single user mode while updating
/p:SqlCommandVariablesFile	The SqlCmd variables file that contains name value pairs representing Sql Command variables and values defined in the deployment script.
/p:TargetDatabase:(string)	The name of the target database
/p:TreatVerificationErrorsAsWarnings	Plan verification is a new feature that verifies the deployment plan prior to generating the deployment script or executing. Plan verification can generate errors that will block deployment. This option will cause all errors to be generated as warnings even though the script itself might fail when executed.
/p:UnmodifiableObjectWarnings	Controls whether warnings are generated for objects that are different but no script is generated to update them. An example is file path differences.	ON
/p:VerifyDeployment	Controls whether to verify the deployment plan prior to generating the deployment script.	ON

Note – this list is based on the version 2 of the Database Edition GDR, which have be downloaded from here.

For more information on VSDBCMD see here.

C# - to var or not to var?

benmoore — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:58:19 GMT

After a discussion about ReSharper with yet another colleague the other day, I decided that it was finally time I installed the trial and gave it a go. After all, it's only on version 4 already :)

I've un-installed it after only a day or so, I won't go into that right now, but during the time I had it installed it kept prompting me to change the way I declared variables. Every time I declared a variable like this

string myValue = "Hello";

I would get a prompt suggesting I replaced the declaration with

var myValue = "Hello";

This prompt appeared for any local variable declarations, but I find myself questioning whether this is good coding practice or not. I understand the benefits of the var keyword and in certain scenarios, such as when using LINQ or anything else that uses anonymous types, it is an extremely powerful tool to have at your disposal. However, in plain old coding, surely you want to be explicit about what you are declaring? The two expressions may well get compiled down to the same code, but in a world where code readability and maintainability rank highly on the priority list then I personally like being able to see at a glance what types I'm dealing with.

Just my 2p...

Using environment variables to set web test context

benmoore — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:10:00 GMT

While investigating ways to control parameterised web servers in Visual Studio web tests yesterday I found out that you can use environment variables to set the values of context parameters within your test. If you have a context parameter called, for example, 'WebServer1' (original I know), then you can use an environment variable called 'Test.WebServer1' to pass a value in to the test. This is of course not limited to web server names and can be used where appropriate for any other environment specific context values by specifying an environment variable of the format 'Test.ContextParameterName'.

This problem can also be addressed using data binding or test plug-ins, depending on your requirements.

The use of environment variables for this scenario is mentioned in a note on the following MSDN page.

Hello World

benmoore — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:13:00 GMT

Ok, so it's not exactly an original title for a first post on a technical blog, but I felt it had to be done...

You can find out a little about me and what I do here. My aim for this blog is to provide useful technical information based on the work I do at Microsoft and the challenges and problems that I see customers facing.

I can't promise to be the most frequent poster, but hopefully someone will benefit from what I post on here :)

Ben Moore's Blog

“Please wait while the installer finishes determining your disk requirements”

Visual Studio Team Database – Properties List

C# - to var or not to var?

Using environment variables to set web test context

Hello World