Bad data models can happen to good people.

What seems like one person's "good" natural key can make another person wish like the dickens that that somebody had used a synthetic key, eh?

I was happily blogging away (elsewhere), when I encountered this fun little, specific (but unhelpful) error from Windows Live Writer:

Server Error 0 Occurred
The post could not be added

After roundly cursing WLW, flaming my ISP for dorking around with my shared hosting environment and sundry other possible root causes, I came to learn that apparently the text of that error is what Community Server spews when you try to add another post with a title that's already been used once in your blog, and it's not WLW's fault at all (or the ISP's et al).

Windows Live Writer: Server Error 0 when Posting - Community Server

Now I can imagine the design session that resulted in the Community Server team or whoever designed the Metablog API deciding that the title of a blog post made for a "great key" value, but... Am I (the user) supposed to actually remember what titles I've used for all my previous posts? And figure out from that LAME error message that all I need to do is change the title by ONE lousy character just to get past the error!?!

#@$&ing bad data model!!!

Published 26 February 08 09:00 by reedme

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# Karen Lopez said on February 27, 2008 1:53 PM:

While I do empathize with your situation, we can't tell from the error that this uniqueness is caused by the data model.  It appears to me to originate from the need for Community Server to have a user friendly URL and not from the need to have a unique index/key in the database.

It also seems from the article that it would be a post with the same title on the same date.

Finally, we don't know if the uniqueness is enforced by the database or the URL generator.

Sounds like we should be logging this behaviour as an enhancement request for CS.

# reedme said on February 27, 2008 3:08 PM:

Karen, I know from my own experience that it's not date-related or URL-related. I haven't bothered to investigate the database RI, being the vic-, er, consumer of the services exposed by the app. Frankly, if it's that way in the database, that's a worse indicator for the application's data model.

What difference (to the application data model) does it matter where it's enforced? In a SOA world, the database is not the sole repository of the data model.

I've exchanged email with Telligent on the subject already... and with the current version, that's just how it is. ;-) The MetaWeblog API enforces this for whatever reason.

# Laura Robinson said on December 9, 2008 7:07 PM:

Thanks for posting this - I tried deleting the draft post I had saved and now it works when I publish from WLW.  This error message does not really help you troubleshoot.

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Assimilation is complete. I was beamed aboard the mothership in December 2007 when I finally moved to Redmond after several years in the field with MCS. If you're ever in the vicinity of Building 36, come say howdy!!

I'm one of the dozens of David Reed clones aboard the mothership, but I'm the only David Reed who is a Microsoft Certified Architect:SQL Server. Go me!

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