Technical Weblog of Eric Charran : .NET Development

HOWTO: Enable Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugging

echarran — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:33:22 GMT

See this link for methods to enable Remote Debugging:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt727f1t.aspx

INFO: Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Chart

echarran — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:15:19 GMT

One of the greatest resources for examining the differences between all versions of Visual Studio.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc149003.aspx

Exposing LINQ Generated Classes through WCF

echarran — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:42:36 GMT

The lure of using LINQ to generate classes and expose them as data contracts through WCF is extremely attractive. The designer-driven LINQ to SQL interface allows for generation of LINQ classes based on database objects (i.e., tables and stored procedures). The power here is that if any of those elements change, generation of the classes to accommodate those changes are easy and maintainable.

However, combining LINQ and WCF before Orcas was daunting because the LINQ classes were generated code. Any decoration of the methods there (required by WCF in order to make the LINQ classes data contracts) would easily be overwritten because the dbml designer would overwrite the accompanying .cs file which contained the definition of the LINQ classes. With Orcas Beta 2 there is a Serialize Mode property on the dbml design space that allows for the automatic decoration of the LINQ classes for WCF exposure.

Now you can automatically decorate your LINQ classes for WCF and specify namespaces for them without writing code and all through the LINQ to SQL designer. Simply focus the designer (don't select any classes) and examine its property sheet as below. Serialization Mode is normally not set. By specifying a serialization mode, all of the code receives the corresponding DataContract and DataMember attributes.

WCF Test Client: Failed Adding Service

echarran — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:36:00 GMT

When writing your first WCF service in Orcas Beta 2, you might set the service as a start up project and attempt to debug it. The challenge you will face is that the service will start and the WCF Test Client will launch and try to add the service. The problem that you will encounter may be as follows:

svcutil.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close....

WCF Test Client: Failed adding service./
Unhandled Exception: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'svcutil, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. Strong name validation failed. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8013141A)
File name: 'svcutil, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' ---> System.Security.SecurityException: Strong name validation failed. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8013141A)
The Zone of the assembly that failed was:
MyComputer

The workaround is as follows in the forum post:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1932994&SiteID=1

This is a known issue in Beta2. Svcutil.exe is not signed correctly.

1. Open the VS command prompt.

2. Browse to the bin directory of the windows SDK

3. Type: sn –Vr svcutil.exe

You only need to do this once. The test client will work.

How to Pass Parameters to a Method on a New Thread

echarran — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:52:22 GMT

Most of you will find this relatively simple, but it took me a while to figure this out. When executing a method on a new thread, I found it almost impossible to pass the method any parameters. My code looked like below.

Method Signature to be Executed on Thread:

MyMethod(object parameter1)

Thread Creation:

Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(MyMethod));

t.Start();

This would fail compilation because MyMethod expects a string parameter. Enter the ParameterizedThreadStart delegate.

New Thread Creation:

Thread t = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(MyMethod));

t.Start(passedParameter1)

Thing to note here is that the method being used in this fashion needs to be passed an object.

MOSS Performance Tests

echarran — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:48:19 GMT

The following URL goes to some recently released Performance Tests for MOSS that can be used in conjunction with VSTS.

http://www.codeplex.com/sptdatapop

MOSS Performance Tests.zip.

System.OutOfMemory Exception Thrown in MOSS 2007 In Place Upgrade

echarran — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:47:55 GMT

When upgrading a SPS2003 installation with an unusually large number of sites, the in place upgrade process may run into a condition where it runs out of memory. The following message will appear in the upgrade.log:

[SPWebTemplateSequence] [ERROR] [1/15/2007 11:30:03 PM]: Template SPSPERS#0: Exception thrown in activating SPSite scoped features for SPSite with URL http://servername/personal/mysite (Id=bbbbabb-bbbb-bbbb-8f74-ee639a937347). Skipping this SPSite for template upgrade. Exception: System.OutOfMemoryException: Server Out Of Memory

There is no memory on the server to run your program. Please contact your administrator with this problem.

Try configuring the server so that it supports a web garden as outlined in this article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823547

This also goes for ASP.NET applications as well. This typically can be encoutnered when the number of SPS2003 sites are greater than about 100 or so.

How to Copy a Data Row from One DataTable to Another DataTable

echarran — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:44:35 GMT

The long story is in this KB article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308909

The short story is to use the DataTable's ImportRow method as mentioned in the article.

destinationDataTable.ImportRow(sourceDataTable.Rows[i]);

How to Configure a Server to Address 4GB of Memory or Greater

echarran — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 01:06:22 GMT

We were having trouble with a MOSS 2007 upgrade in that it was throwing out of memory exceptions that are common with ASP.NET applications that are running on a server with more than 2 GB of RAM, but the application consumes it all. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/820108 for details. The fix in this article is to apply the /3GB switch and optionally the /USERVA switch to allow applications to utilize more than the standard 2GB of RAM.

For a sample boot ini, see this article and below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823440

[Boot Loader] Timeout=30 Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [Operating Systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows Server 2003" /fastdetect /3GB /USERVA=3030

Programmatically Retrieve an Image from an Assembly Resource File

echarran — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:53:29 GMT

As many times as I do this, invariably it slides from my brain and I have to gather all the information I can to do this again. So here it is for my sake as well as others that might have to do this.

A good practice for Windows Forms development is to include most icons/images into an assembly resource file so that they don't show up a separate objects that can be meddled with on the file system when the application is installed. To programmatically access these images in resource files, you can use the properties class.

For example:

this.Icon = Company.ProjectName.Properties.Resources.DesiredImage;

Enterprise Library 3.0 CTP Uses Now

echarran — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:31:49 GMT

The Enterprise Library 3.0 CTP is of significant use to developers even if you don't plan to write code against the 3.0 version. It is based now in GAT and GAX (Guidance Automation releases) and now allows developers to have an integrated configuration experience with Visual Studio 2005. Additionally, there is a capability for strong-naming the Enterprise Library both 3.0 and 2.0 (although I've yet to test it but from what Tom Hollander indicates it should work fine).

Download below:

http://www.codeplex.com/entlib/Project/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=4926

Tom Hollander's Blog entry about Ent Lib 3.0

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2006/12/22/just-released-enterprise-library-3-0-december-2006-ctp.aspx

Great MSDN Search

echarran — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:10:11 GMT

Might be late with this, but check out the AJAX auto complete search from MSDN.

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/search/refinement.aspx

ASP.NET Control Registration Simplicity

echarran — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:32:12 GMT

Scott Guthrie has done it again and talks to us about how to register controls for pages in a web application one time instead of on each page.

Trick- How to Register User Controls and Custom Controls in Web.config

Basically, instead of this:

<% Register TagPrefix="scott" TagName="header" Src="Controls/Header.ascx" %
<% Register TagPrefix="scott" TagName="footer" Src="Controls/Footer.ascx" %
<%@ Register TagPrefix="ControlVendor" Assembly="ControlVendor" %>

Do this in the web.config:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<system.web>
<pages>
<controls>
<add tagPrefix="scottgu" src="~/Controls/Header.ascx" tagName="header"/>
        <add tagPrefix="scottgu" src="~/Controls/Footer.ascx" tagName="footer"/>
        <add tagPrefix="ControlVendor" assembly="ControlVendorAssembly"/>
      </controls>
</pages>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Load Testing SQL Server Reporting Services using Visual Studio 2005

echarran — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:23:42 GMT

Here is a great article on how to leverage the unit testing engine built into Visual Studio to test SQL Server Reporting Services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/VS05PLTSQL.asp

ClickOnce Community Resource Kit

echarran — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:38:33 GMT

Deploying a ClickOnce Applicaiton or asked by your manager to determine what its all aobut? Being faced with IT infrastructure groups who are baging down your door to determine what will be required in order to deploy a ClickOnce? Is your manager asking questions like "Why do ClickOnce, and don't tell me because its cool?!"

PAG (Prescriptive Architecture Guidance) Team to the rescue. See the ClickOnce community reskit here:

http://www.gotdotnet.com:80/codegallery/releases/viewuploads.aspx?id=941d2228-3bb5-42fd-8004-c08595821170