netify

Recovering your SQL Server 2005 db from suspect status

2011-10-24T10:07:00.009+02:00

Today I noticed that the central admin application on one of my machines was not responding and after looking in the event log and in Management Studio I found that the db was in suspect status.

How do I make it ok again?

The following advice fixed the problem for me anyway:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/reporting-services/SQL_2005_Suspect_Database.aspx

Thanks / Jakob

Restore SharePoint production content database to test environment

2011-06-01T14:18:00.007+02:00

The other day we updated our system test environment based upon SharePoint 2007 with data from production for one of our customers.

The system test was already installed and we wanted to update to a more recent version. There are many different ways to do it if you ask around some more cumbersome than others. The following list is the simple steps that we took to get it up and running with new production data in system tes environment.

Backup database in production and copy backup file to system test
In system test envirionment go into "Central Administration > Application Management > Content Databases > Manage Content Database Settings" check remove and save
Shut down sharepoint services
Restore database with replace checkbox filled in SQL Server Management Studio
Start sharepoint services
In Central administration add content db
Change site collection owner in the central administration for the wanted site collection.
Make a new content crawl in SSP site to enable search

Thats all :)

Happy config

SharePoint indexing, mulitilingual search and swedish characters

2011-05-31T16:10:00.010+02:00

Having problems finding words that include e.g. "åäö" when doing your SharePoint 2007 searches? You know the words are indexed and you are only able to find them when exchanging "å", "ä" with "a" and "ö" with "o". That would make important search capabilities useless in Sweden where these characters exists.

The underlying problem is that diacritic sensitivity is turned off be default which means that SharePoint treats these characters as accents. To make SharePoint index and search correctly run the following stsadm command:

"stsadm -o osearchdiacriticsensitive -ssp -setstatus TRUE"

The search capabilities can also be enhanced by enabling stemming on the search controls to be able to handle inflections.

Some more links regarding this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2006/12/01/multi-lingual-search-diacritic-sensitivity-and-what-you-need-to-know-about-it.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262590(office.12).aspx

Happy config / Jakob

CSS design

2011-04-25T14:13:00.003+02:00

During my parental leave I did som css and SEO studying and tried to put it into practise. The site is a simple setup for my father in law which matches the requirements that he has to update the site to be a bit more clean and visible on the net. For a peak on the site have a look at www.juristfirmanbark.se.

ILSpy

2011-04-13T23:28:00.005+02:00

Looking for an free alternative to .NET Reflector as Redgate is nowadays charging for Reflector? .NET Reflector is well worth its money but if you want to try an alternative, SharpDevelop has started working on ILSpy.

The tool is as it is in very early development not as powerful as Reflector when it comes to plugins and features but it will be fun to see the future of it. Already all the basic IL-functionality is in place which is great value to everyone when inspecting the internals of any assembly.

To try it out have a look here.

SharePoint 2010 accounts

2011-03-22T07:54:00.003+01:00

I have installed some SharePoint 2010 servers now and this post will be a reminder for myself and everyone else about which accounts that should be in place on the domain. Essentially you need three accounts:

One standard user account running the Sql Service and agent. I prefer to name it sql_service. No specific priviliges for this account
One setup admin account sp_admin that will be used when installing SharePoint and future pathes and service packs. This account should be a domain user account and member of the local admin group on the machines in the farm. The account should also have securityadmin and dbcreator roles on SQL Server to be able to create databases during setup.
One farm account sp_farm which will be the farm account that is used to login to central administration and accessing databases in the farm. This account have to be member of the local admin group on all servers in the farm.

For more information regarding the accounts:

http://www.sharepointproconnections.com/article/sharepoint/Least-Privilege-Service-Accounts-for-SharePoint-2010.aspx

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2010/07/15/what-service-accounts-do-you-need-to-install-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Happy setups

customErrors in SharePoint 2010

2011-02-12T17:06:00.009+01:00

The other day I wanted to debug an test environment where SharePoint 2010 was installed. To get informative output I made the normal changes that applies for a web application. Changed the customErrors elements mode attribute to "Off", set the debug attribute to "true" in the compilation element and set CallStack to "true" in the SafeMode element.

That would do it I thought.

After going through the different config files on the machine (machine.config and web.config) I found SharePoint 2010 has introduced a new file in the 14hive: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\web.config

In this file the customErrors element is set to "On" which overrides all changes that has been done on the web application level... It did not take so much time to find the solution for it but it was a bit frustrating and gave me some head scratching when all the "standard" settings did not have any effect. What had I done wrong... Good to know for future SharePoint projects :)

HTML 5 and CSS3

2011-02-07T16:20:00.005+01:00

Interested in using capabilities of HTML5 & CSS3? Based upon your browser requirements the following sites can be very useful to quickly get an overview of what you will be able to make use of:

http://fmbip.com/

http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html

The first site mentioned above uses Modernizr which is a javascript library that gives the html tag a number of different classes depending of what the browser support. http://www.modernizr.com/

If you use IE which probably does not support the behaviour that you want using CSS3 the following library could be useful:

CSS3 Pie: A javascript library that make IE6-IE8 support a number of different CSS3 properties by using VML. You can easily create rounded corners and gradient backgrounds. http://css3pie.com/

Happy web dev

Cheap home page

2010-12-20T13:13:00.008+01:00

If you want to have a place on the net with small operational costs you should try Google Sites. And with small operational costs I mean only the fee that you annually pay for you domain. Cheaper than that will be hard to find ;)

The UI for administering your web site is quite intuitive and works like most simple CMS products. It might be hard to find some of the settings for the page elements but that hurdle you will have with all new programs. The advantage is that you with no css and html skills can effect the site look. So its a perfect for people that want to have their own site without having to know anything of the underlying html and css.

Advantages:

Easy to use for persons without any html and css-skills
Cheap, only annual domain fee

Drawbacks:

Customization (can be done within google site templates with gadgets)
CSS (inline element style only)

I have done a simple setup for my mother in law which matches the requirements that she have to be visible on the www. For a peak on the site have a look at www.boutiquesueb.se

For more information on how to make use of this simple and free hosting see the following sites:

www.cheaphomepage.com

www.hemsidautankonsulter.com

Happy holidays

Simple wordpress installation with Web Platform Installer

2010-09-21T14:31:00.005+02:00

Old news but have you tried the new web platform installer from Microsoft? If not test it for your next web app installation. I was going to test some wordpress themes and did not have a wordpress installation at hand and instead of installing php, mysql and wordpress in steps they are all bundled in one installation which is very time-saving :)

http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/06/02/microsoft-web-platform-installer.aspx

So for your next wordpress, umbraco or drupal installation test the web platform installer and save some time.

/ Jakob

Reuse in documentation

2009-10-04T11:24:00.005+02:00

In software engineering and desing we often strive for reuse in form of componentization and patterns. This happens when we it comes to developing software but documenting it is a different thing. I don't know if it is the lack of enthusiasm when it comes to documentation that makes to many of us developers to not make use of the simple reusability capabilities of word documents.

Simple scenario of reuse is when your product comes out in a new version or when a server changes name. Wouldn't it be better to do these changes in one place rather that tedious updates of system documentation.

Custom fields are there to make updates like these a small concern. As long as you have these in mind when making your documentation you will be able to update your system and release documentation in a few minutes.

How dou you use these? They have been a built in functionality since quite a while and I have in all projects as I worked in utilized this functionality. But when I come to a new project is not uncommon that these capabilities are not utilized by the developers.

So for adding the custom reusable field go Office menu > Prepare Document > Document Properties > Custom. Here you add the key value pair that you want to use in your project. Project_DbName, Project_ContinousBuild_Name, Version and so on.

When you want to use the fields you can access them via Insert > Quick Parts > Field > DocProperty > [KeyValuePairName]. Or you can use the faster shortcut key Ctrl + F9 which inserts a new field reference, then type your field name e.g. {DocProperty Version} and press F9 to update the document reference. To toggle between the values and the field references use Alt + F9.

Simple but can save some tedious document updates :)

sharepoint wsp package install failure

2009-05-27T17:17:00.003+02:00

Today I got the following exception message from our CI-build when it tried to deploy the latest changes: "The file manifest.xml does not exist in the solution package"

When trying to add my solution command line to the local solution store, I got the exception The file manifest.xml does not exist in the solution package. I checked the contents of the latest build and the manifest.xml was in place. When googling the exception I found the answer:

You get this error the moment your package gets too big. Which is over 1,4Mb. The simple solution is to add the following lines to be an output of your generated *.ddf file:

.Set CabinetFileCountThreshold=0
.Set FolderFileCountThreshold=0
.Set FolderSizeThreshold=0
.Set MaxCabinetSize=0
.Set MaxDiskFileCount=0
.Set MaxDiskSize=0

Rebuild and everything will work as expected again :)

Kick start your "Windows Sharepoint Services Web Application"

2009-05-13T13:58:00.004+02:00

Do you have trouble starting or stopping your “Windows SharePoint Services Web Application" in Central administration?

Nothing happens when you try to administer this in Central Administration but you can use stsadm to jumstart it.

To stop the service you use the following command:

stsadm -o provisionservice -action stop -servicetype SPWebService

And to start the service you use the following command:

stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype SPWebService

If they fail you will always get much better response (exception messages) than in Central administration so hopefully you can go further with the issue based upon the stsadm response.

Sharepoint administration can be a bit cumbersome...

Alternate access mappings and sharepoint security for extranet

2009-05-06T12:30:00.030+02:00

Do you have access to log in as an administrator on your public sharepoint web site? This can be an security risk and can easily be avoided by having alternate access mapppings in sharepoint that only allows you to log in as an administrator from within your internal domain.

Do the following to enable alternate access mapping to secure your site from being tampered with. If we have an scenario where you have an public website called http://yourpublicwebsite.com that we want our public users to access and view but not our administrator to login to via thier windows domain accounts. The following is one way to do this and works as an check list for myself when performing the operation.

Extend existing web application with another iis web site

In Central administration > Application management > Sharepoint Web application Management Click Create or extend Web application and then click extend and existing Web application.
Choose the web application that you want to extend and specify the port, host header, url, zone and path of web site root.

Add alternate access mapping

In Central administration > Operations > Global Configuration: click Alternate access mappings.
Choose the Access Mapping collection for http://yourpublicwebsite.com. Click Change alternate access mapping collection on the Alternate Access Mapping Collection menu.
Add a new url called http://yourpublicwebsitefba.com and define its zone to Extranet and click save.

Authentication Providers

To mock forms based access to your public or extranet web site you can do the following. Build your own authentication provider called FbaMembershipProvider which only implements the functions that are needed for mcoking the behaviour (GetUser, ValidateUser, FindUsersByName, FindUsersByEmail). The provider is then shipped as an separate solution or in your Sharepoint app solution to be used by the web application. All this can be done quite easily outside of Sharepoint but to have it configured via Central administration this is what to do:

In Central Administration > Application Management > Authentication Providers add the FbaMembershipProvider to your extended web application. set authentication type to Forms, enable anonymous access and disable client integration.
In the web config file make the following additions to the system.web element:

<membership defaultprovider="FbaMembershipProvider">
<providers>
    <remove name="AspnetSqlmembershipProvider"></remove>
     <add name="FbamembershipProvider" type="YourAppAssembly.Security.FbaMembershipProvider, YourAppAssembly, Version=YourAppVersion, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=YourPublicKeyToken">
</add>
</providers>
</membership>

When this is done you test the different urls and if everything works you should on the externa l site be able to browse anonymously and not being able to log in. On the internal url you will be able to log in and handle you administrative tasks.

A bit to much work for such an simple solution but Sharpeoint can sometimes be a bit cumbersome to configure.

Sharepoint 2007 SP2

2009-04-29T10:05:00.004+02:00

Microsoft relesed SP2 to Sharepoint 2007 yesterday. There are several different improvements and once again they are working on the performance issues of Sharepoint. We will uppgrade our dev and test environements to see if we can measure any performance improvements on our end to end tests.

For more information about the service packs go here.

Enjoy the sun :)

Fresh air in MSDN magazine

2009-02-10T15:29:00.006+01:00

It good to see that Microsoft and MSDN magazine is reacting to the community response about the MSDN articles. The articels has formerly been to focused on RAD-technology and drag-and-drop development and seldom given insight in how it affects your overall design and maintainability. And as we all know maintenance of an applications is the part that will cost your company a lot of money if not considered early in the development-process.

In the last issues there have been articles about fundamental design practices and principles which should be in every developers head during the evolution of an application. One of the writers are Jemery D Miller also known as the "Shade tree developer".

Take a look at his blog for topics to come.

The Art of Agile development

2009-02-05T22:51:00.004+01:00

Last evening we had the first meeting in a book circle that I have joined. The first book we are reading is The Art of Agile Development which is quite focused on XP practices. I myself have only used bits and pieces of agile devlopment in the context of Scrum as framework and its good to get the introduction from an XP angle.

Chapter 1-4 so far and the book seems well structured and quite easy to read at the same time. Hoping for good discussions next week as well :)

Checking Sharepoint dispose patterns

2009-02-05T22:34:00.003+01:00

One of the projects I'm working on is based upon Sharepoint and includes a lot of untested legacy code. The other day I saw that a CheckDispose tool had been released to check that Sharepoint resources are disposed accordingly.

As I'm quite new to the project and it includes quite a lot of code I had a go on the webpart assemblies and it dicovered some potential memory leaks. Some of them were just potential but the tool also discovered some actual memory leaks in the application.

So why dont let the tool go through your code and discover any potential memory leaks. Download it and try it out.

Increase virtual machine hardisk space

2008-12-06T13:46:00.006+01:00

The other day I was upgrading a project to Visual Studio 2008 on my VmWare virtual development environment. But there was not enough space on the virtual hard drive to perform the installation.

There might be smarter ways to solve it but this is how I did it:

1. Shut down your virtual machine from your host machine.

2. run vmware-vdiskmanager from your vmware installation folder on your host:
\vmware-vdiskmanager -x 25GB "v:\VirtualHarddisks\jahevmdk"

The command will take some time to complete so prepare todo some other work
meanwhile.

3. As my disk is the system volume I mounted it in another vm.

4. On the machine with the mounted disk run the following commandline actions with
diskpart:

a. diskpart
b. list disk (list the mounted disks)
c. list volume (lists the different volumes, mine to extend was F: and # 1)
d. select volume=n (n was in my case 1)
e. extend (and your disk is now extended to chosen size)

My user stories were updated during step 2 which was a good thing.

Have a good weekend!

Northwind or Adventureworks

2008-11-06T21:23:00.003+01:00

Am I or senitmental or just slow on adapting new stuff... I don't know really but every time I setup samples with I tend to use the NorthWind database. Have not yet got close with the AdventureWorks database though it has been around for years.

Anyway after installing SQL-Server 2008 I looked for the old familiar databases and did not find them so I searched around for them and can recommend the following links:

The new Adventureworks samples for SQL-Server 2008 can be found on codeplex together with various other SQL-Server resources: SQL Server Resouces

And if you are sentimental about the Nothwind and Pubs databases like me you can find them here: here and here.

Have fun

Contract first WCF services and new tool

2008-10-21T21:52:00.004+02:00

If anyone used the contract first approach for developing asmx web services and used the thinktecture tool wscf for this there is a new tool out on codeplex that targets wcf development with vs2005 and vs2008 that might interest you.

The tool is called wscf.blue and can be downloaded here: http://www.codeplex.com/WSCFblue.

The classis variant can now also be downloaded from codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/WSCFclassic.

Shall hopefully be useful the next couple of days :)

ASP.NET AJAX and JQuery

2008-09-30T22:43:00.008+02:00

Microsoft has announced that they will ship jQuery support for ASP.NET AJAX which is good news. jQuery is a lightweight javascript library that many use for optimization due to that it gives you more control over the postbacks and the server load that might occur to the standard postback behaviour of the Updatepanel. The library have some other usage areas as well and you can read about them on the jQuery website.

For more information about the ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery integration:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx

and if you want to use the jQuery library you can find it here:

http://jquery.com

ASP.NET MVC preview 2

2008-03-07T15:12:00.004+01:00

Hi all,

yesterday a new preview of the ASP.NET MVC was released. Download, review and blog your thoughts.

ASP.NET MVC preview 2

Windows Live Writer plugins

2008-02-11T20:31:00.001+01:00

Ever found windows live writer to be limiting when it comes to some special tasks. In the links below there is plugins to help you with e.g. copy source from visual studio, add amazon book information and some more nice additions. Explore use and contribute if you have some ideas.

http://www.codeplex.com/WLWPlugins/

http://www.jtleigh.com/people/colin/software/CopySourceAsHtml/

Embedded NVelocity templates

2008-02-11T19:52:00.001+01:00

Last week I was working with building up email messages from web forms. The html format of the email body with it's different elements was ideal to break out in dumb views that were migrated with data model data from the presenter classes.

As the web app was deployed as an single dll web application project I wanted to simplify the deployment and embed the templates. I found no real documentation about this in the Castle Project fork of NVelocity so I thought that I should share the configuration with you:

_engine = new VelocityEngine();
ExtendedProperties props = new ExtendedProperties();
props.SetProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, "assembly");
props.SetProperty("assembly.resource.loader.class", "NVelocity.Runtime.Resource.Loader.AssemblyResourceLoader, NVelocity");
props.SetProperty("assembly.resource.loader.assembly", typeof(NVelocityUtility).Assembly.GetName().Name);
_engine.Init(props);

Training issues

2008-01-17T21:52:00.001+01:00

the past 2 months have really been disappointing when it comes to training. Normally I don't run during the winter but this winter I had planned to train with my brothers to be fit enough to accompany them on some of the races in the swedish multisport cup.

I have the will but my physics have not been the best. I have tried to get started several times but has run in to the same problems every time: way to high pulse! The pulse lies 10-20 beats higher than it normally does when under strain and its really frustrating when the body feels fit but the "engine" just cant cope.

I tried to get a doctors appointment today but I must say that it was impossible. After 5 calls I could get an appointment 5 weeks from now but this will mean 5 more weeks of no quality training which sucks... Will give it another try tomorrow morning.

The Swedish medical institutions are getting worse and worse, but that's another story. They are really understaffed at "primärvården" in Malmö.

Happy running / Jakob

Free E-books

2008-01-02T13:40:00.000+01:00

Microsoft has released some free pdf-versions of the following books:

* Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo (ISBN: 9780735623910)

* Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX by Dino Esposito (ISBN: 9780735624139)

* Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney (ISBN: 9780735625396)

If you are interested you can get them here.

ASP.NET MVC presentation

2007-12-14T08:14:00.001+01:00

Hi, last week I made a short presentation of the ASP.NET MVC framework "UI testability and restful urls". As study code I used the presentation code that Scott Hanselman used in the DevConnections talk. Since then the extensions preview has been released which I have downloaded but sadly have not had time to lab with it properly yet.

The presentation slides can be found here: ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET extensions preview

2007-12-10T11:04:00.000+01:00

The ASP.NET extension preview has been released, be sure to download it and play around. I'm especially keen on giving the MVC addon some testing.

ASP.NET MVC demos

2007-11-12T22:55:00.000+01:00

Waiting to get started with the ASP.NET MVC framework CTP. Until then the demos from Devconnections and PnP-summit are available at Scott Hanselman's blog.

Download, explore and review :)

Visual studio 2008

2007-11-08T22:46:00.001+01:00

Now there is a release date set for Visual Studio 2008. There are a lot of features that are really exciting in this release as it comes with large parts of the .NET framework 3.5 wich is specked with new features.

Read more about the release at http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=9216.

As there is a lot of tools in this release that has been lacking since the 3.0 release of the .NET framework and many new features in the 3.5 release it will be nice to have a RTM version to work with.

ASP.NET MVC

2007-11-08T22:24:00.001+01:00

At devconnections I went to the session about the new ASP.NET MVC extension announced at the ALT.NET conference a while ago. Scott Hanselmann and Eilon Lipton presented features that looks really promising. The ability to do testdriven development of the controller layer by mocking or stubbing the view interface and mocking the ASP.NET infrastructure is provided by the new framework.

The MVC framework adresses the testability issues and complex page lifecycle that exists with web forms development on the ASP.NET platform. When using the web forms approach in form of a page controller your gateway into your application is the asp.net page which not gives you the control you want. The MVP supervising controller pattern tries to address the testbility issues. The MVP pattern is used in the Web Client Software Factory but you still have the problem of that your presenter is instantiated by your web form and its code behind class.

With the more lightweight MVC approach your gateway in is the controller which enables you to address the testability issues with the standard ASP.NET approach. The asp.net team has implemented this gateway in form of an front controller which gives you this behavior.

The front controller implementation is very flexible and the webadress link is defined by your Route settings defined in the App_Start event of your application which gives you a lot of flexibility when defining your url look.

The new approach really sets the boundaries of what your view and your controller purpose are. This separation of concerns will change and simplify the layering of your UI code where the controller will handle the logic and the rendering will be done with a "dumb" view.

The ASP.NET MVC framework is really extendable and pluggable as it is provider based so you can i.e. use the rendering engine of your choise: NVelocity, Brail, the IoC framework of your choise: Spring.NET Windsor and so on.

The presentation really adressed the testability, flexibility and extendability with the new framework.

The ASP.NET MVC framework will be available as an ctp later this year and will be shipped as an addon to the .NET framework 3.5 in the first half of next year. I'm really eager to start using it and explore how I will be able to deal with "resuable" components as user controls. As your entry point is the controller this should be the instantiation point of your resusable page segments but this is one of the things I'm looking forward to investigate.

There are not so much information about the framework yet but for more information read one of the following blog entries:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottGuMVCPresentationAndScottHaScreencastFromALTNETConference.aspx

Windows Live Writer

2007-11-07T23:19:00.001+01:00

I have had problems with connecting to internet the last couple of days and the Windows Live writer have really come to use. Being able to write your posts offline and publish them to alternate sources when coming online again is really helpful when travelling or as in my case having DHCP problems.

I was writing this with an beta verison of the windows live writer but as soon as I came online again I discovered that the writer actually had gone from beta to windows live writer 2008. If you havn't used it yet, take a look at the Windows Live Writer where you can download a version of the tool.

CAB or Acropolis?

2007-10-30T21:44:00.001+01:00

If you have been developing winforms applications with the Patterns and Practices Composite Application Block CAB were maybe wondering if you were going to look into the Acropolis framework (http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis/) or not. Well CAB is here to stay for a bit longer and Acropolis is "dead" in the means of a standalone framework.

See the post below for more info:

Requiem for acropolis fanfare for CAB

Toolbox of an agile developer

2007-10-10T21:37:00.000+02:00

Last week I held an presentation at work with the title: "Toolbox of an agile developer". My methodology may not be agile but the presentation presents some of the tools that make my everyday work more productive.

Presentation

To be more productive I'm always open to new methodologies and tools, any suggestions?

Wix votive properties UIRef and translations

2007-10-08T21:03:00.000+02:00

I ran into a non-intuitive problem the other day when automating our build process with the help of wix 3.0.2925.0. I wanted to use the built in stock user interface sequences available in the UiExtensions. When referencing one of the predefined UIs via the tag I got an not to intuitive exception:

The answer was quite simple, the answer is in the picture. Just add an one of the following supported languages:

* English (culture en-US)
* German (culture de-de)
* Spanish (culture es-es)
* Dutch (culture nl-nl)

rebuild and the problem is solved. I did not find is among the properties at first and firstly I thought that a default culture should be used (en-us).

Berlin Marathon

2007-10-08T20:45:00.000+02:00

The rehabilitation week is now over and tomorrow I will start training again. No more ache in my legs as a reminder of the race. The past week started out quite painfully and walking down stairs was impossible, luckily there are elevators at work :)

The marathon preparations were not the best with runners knee during the summer so it wasn't strange that the race and week after were quite painful. But it was kind of a nice pain as it reminded me of the race and I quite pleased with the result.

I haven't set a new goal yet to keep me motivated during winter but a new marathon spring 2008 would be fun.

Happy running!

Castle RC3

2007-09-24T14:47:00.000+02:00

Castle RC3 is out, go get it: Castle R3

Automate your build process with Wix

2007-09-22T10:15:00.001+02:00

Do you have vdproj project fiels to build your msi installation files which you build by hand for every new release of your product. Or in best case build by shell-execute on devenv on your build server? There is a way around this by using Windows Istaller Xml (WIX). It can be downloaded from http://wix.sourceforge.net/. I have used the latest "unstable" version 3.0.2925.0 in our automatic build process.

After reading the documentation I decided to go with as I thought was the simplest solution:

1. Reverse engineer our current msi with the dark tool. dark.exe /x tool.msi tool.wxs.

2. Setup a wixproject with the votive integration in visual studio based on the wxs file output from the reverse engineering step.

Started of by reverse engineer with the dark tool and got an overwhelming, almost unreadable file containing the installer xml. To be able to maintain the file I extracted the UI parts to UI.wxs, the components and files to Files.wxs and the Registry parts to Registry.wxs. Thereafter I renamed the original file to SetUp.wxs.

Maybe no the prettiest setup project but now maintainable. When making my next installer project I will look into the installer API a bit more to make a template for upcoming projects. The wix learning curve was quite steep for me so this quick and dirty solution will have to do until next time. The build process is with the help of wix now a bit closer to total automation :)

CC.NET and msbuild output xsl transformation exceptions

2007-09-12T22:24:00.000+02:00

I upgraded to CC.NET 1.3 today and ran into an exception when wanting to see the msbuild output for the project I'm working on. I hit the following exception:

Unable to load transform: c:\ccnet\webdashboard\xsl\msbuild.xsl

with the following detailed information:

ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.CruiseControlException: Unable to load
transform: e:\dev\CruiseControl.NET\webdashboard\xsl\msbuild.xsl --->
System.Xml.Xsl.XslLoadException: XSLT compile error. An error occurred
at e:\dev\CruiseControl.NET\webdashboard\xsl\msbuild.xsl(0,0). --->
System.Xml.XmlException: For security reasons DTD is prohibited in
this XML document. To enable DTD processing set the ProhibitDtd
property on XmlReaderSettings to false and pass the settings into
XmlReader.Create method. at
System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)

This exception is caused by a violation of the xsl transformation rules that was changed between the 1.x and 2.0 version of the .NET framework. In 2.0 DTD:s are not allowed by default. To resolve this issue remove the DTD from the msbuild.xsl file and change the code in the file that the DTD was taking care of. In this case all has to be exchanged to . You also have to put an element of any kind in the empty <xsl:choose></xsl:choose> element to get you up and running. Anyway it fixed my stylesheet problems. Hope it helps you to :)

RhinoMocks DynamicProxy and protected internal constructors

2007-09-03T08:34:00.000+02:00

The other day at work we wanted to mock some classes that had a protected internal constructor. Protected internal constructors due to the fact that the classes should only be creatable from a specific Factory. But thats not the story here...

When creating mocks of the classes via Rhino Mocks MockRepository an MissingMethodEception was thrown at us. Firstly I began debugging RhinoMocks to find the root cause which lead me to DynamicProxy.

When emitting the proxy object no considerations where taken to the protected internal constructor so I added a check of the IsFamilyOrAssembly property of MethodInfo class to add the constructor to the proxy object :)

A new ProtectedInternalConstructorClass and a new unit test and it all worked like a charm.

Here's the issue if you want to have more details about the specific changes:

http://support.castleproject.org/browse/DYNPROXY-66

Happy coding / Jakob

Update 070912:
If you are coding in C# which is no the case for me in my current customer project this can be solved by using the InternalsVisibleTo compilation attribute. The reported issue is not the right way to go, instead should there be possibilities to change the creation behavior. This could maybe be solved by passing your own BindingFlags in overloaded alternatives to the CreateClassProxy method. I will look into it and evaluate if the solution is viable.

Xsl extensions

2007-08-23T08:25:00.001+02:00

The other day I was working with an xslt-transformation where the main challenge was to tranform the node elements depending on their element name and a category telling me which context they where supposed to be put in.

<root>
<elemA cat="catC" class="Penguin">
substuff...
</elemA>
<elemB cat="catA" class="Frog">
substuff...
</elemB>
<elemA cat="catA" class="Horse">
substuff...
</elemA>
<elemB cat="catB" class="Rhino">
substuff...
</elemB>
<elemA cat="catA" class="Ant">
substuff...
</elemA>
</root>

was supposed to be transformed to:

<transformed>
<namespace id="elemA.catA">
<class id="Ant">
substuff...
</class>
<class id="Horse">
substuff...
</class>
</namespace>
<namespace id="elemA.catC">
<class id="Penguin">
substuff...
</class>
</namespace>
<namespace id="elemB.catA">
<class id="Frog">
substuff...
</class>
</namespace>
<namespace id="elemB.catB">
<class id="Rhino">substuff...</class>
</namespace>
</transformed>

Piece a cake I thought, just sort the nodes by element name and category and then iterate over the nodes and check for preceding sibling name and category to get unique namespaces . After a few tries i read the the xpath documentation and saw that the preceding-sibling referred to the original document and not the sorted version I was eager to use.

I could have used two transformations to accomplish the result but I was under the specific circumstances restricted to one. After some googling I found stumbled over the xslt-extensions supported by .NET 2.0 (XslCompiledTransform) and found the msxml-extension I was looking for: node-set.

The msxsl:node-set function enables you to convert a result tree fragment or node tree into a node set. The resulting node set always contains a single node and is the root node of the tree. So sort the elements you want to get hold of in template and hold the resulting node set in a global variable then use this nodeset to check for preceding-sibling when transforming to get unique namespaces.

To use the xslt extensions you have to add the msxml namespace to your xslt-declaration:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
              xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
              xmlns:user="http://yourcompany.org"
              version="1.0">

Then you can access the node-set function via:

msxml:node-set

in your style-sheet and iterate over the nodes in the resulting node set.

Here is some more information about the xslt extensions and the .NET 2.0 XslCompiledTransform class.

Web Client Software Factory release

2007-06-19T23:29:00.000+02:00

The Web Client Software Factory have released a new version. Read more about the 1.1 release and the opening of the contrib projects here.

I'm dowloading it while I'm writing and will try to make a sample and presentation when having upgraded my old sample apps (WCSF presentation).

Hestra Adventure Race

2007-06-19T23:11:00.000+02:00

This saturday I joined a race in the swedish multisportcup together with my brother Jon. I was replacing one of my other brothers Kristoffer who had the bad luck to catch a cold a few days before the race. The race consisted of 4 phases, first canoe orienteering followed by a shorter orienteering, bicycle orienteering and finally a longer orienteering

As beginners we had heavy canoes instead of kajaks as the top teams had. All went ok except for an incident with my mountainbike chain. It broke but luckily my brother Mårten and his teammate Heide passed us and borrowed us tools to repair the old bike. We suceeded and could follow through :)

How about the start? It was one of the smaller slopes ;)

I will definitely team up with one of my brothers in a new race in a not too distant future.

Here you can find more information about the swedish multsport cup and Hestra adventure race.

Castle ActiveRecord

2007-06-10T11:39:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I looked into the CastleProject ActiveRecord implementation for a short review and presentation at work. Depending of what your need are and what design constraints you are working after I had a pleasant time working with ActiveRecord.

The scenario was to update a Web Client Software Factory presentation solution form using bolierplate ADO.NET data access code to instead use the ActiveRecord pattern. Already having a database (Northwind) is maybe not the most desirable situation but maybe the most common one.

The framework that encapsulates NHibernate was easy to get started with and flexible concerning naming of domain model classes and members contra the database design. The fr
amework is a it intrusive but that is in many cases a design drawback you have to take as you get a very rapid application development process with the ActiveRecord base classes and attributes in the domain model. This approach also makes (in my eyes) the solution very maintainable as it is very domain model centric with all framework configuration in code.

Download source and presentation here.

Corsica

2007-05-16T08:57:00.000+02:00

The past few days have been spent at Corsica which is a really beutiful island. The weather hasn't been the greatest, cloudy and windy but that hasn't stopped us (Me and my brother) from doing some cykling and hiking.

There aresome really steep hills on this island I must say :) The first days bicycleride took five hours and went up (600 m) and down to water-level (several times). The scenery is excellent and likewise the food :) Which tates even better when having done some excersising :)

Every evening we have enjoyed a three-course dinner with wine and avec which has been really well prepared. Compliments to the Langley travel chef. The only dissatisfying thing about the food is that we still are kind of hungry after the three-course dinner. We have to prepare before and after dinner... but we constantly hungry so it might not be so strange.

After yesterdays hiking we are today trying to get to higher slopes by doing a bicycle-ride a few hours inland where we hopefully can find trails on both higer and steeper challanges :)

Hike along

ADO.NET Entity framework delayed

2007-04-30T12:37:00.000+02:00

I am really looking forward to start working with the ADO.NET entity framework by making a comparison study between the different frameworks that are available (i.e. NHibernate) for a small presentation at work.

Unfortunaltely will the ADO.NET entity framework not be shipped with the Orcas release so that we can start working with it in a more recent future. It will be shipped as an update to Orcas in the first half of 2008 (If they will manage to keep that planned release).

For more information of why the ADO.NET entity framework will be delayed take a look at the following post.

Saving for later

2007-04-10T15:00:00.000+02:00

Last week was the first week of my 25 week training plan for Berlin Marathon. The week plan "almost" went as planned with a "few" exceptions:

1. I did not get three trainings for the week (missed the interval training)
2. I ran way to long on my first long distance run. I did the classic mistake and got overambitous which my legs tells me all about it today...

Summarized a crappy start...

Hopefully I will perform better this week and follow the plan a bit better and get all the planned trainings and keep the distance that I'm told. But it will be quite hard to spread the trainings over the week as I have to many evening obligations this week. Maybe I will do another classic mistake and save the three training sessions for the weekend... We'll see on saturday.

WCSF workshop material

2007-04-10T14:57:00.000+02:00

The Web Client Software team has published material from some of their workshops. Blaine Wastell has provided us with some links in this post.

Web Client Software Factory bug fix

2007-03-26T21:54:00.000+02:00

Have you run into the exception:

"Microsoft.Practices.RecipeFramework.ValueProviderException: An exception occurred during the binding of reference or execution of recipe CreateView..."

when adding a new view with presenter with the visual studio integration? Now there is a bug fix available which is described in the following post:

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=websf&title=AddViewPresenterException

New Sandcastle CTP

2007-03-21T09:56:00.000+01:00

The other day microsoft released a refresh CTP to the march release of Sandcastle. I peeked at one of the earlier CTP:s but ran into proxy troubles and could then not find a solution. But a lot has happened since the last look :)

When looking for information about the proxy problem i found that Eric woodruff has made a NDoc like gui application to SandCastle which works well. The project is called Sandcastle Help File Builder. The Sandcastle help file builder can be downloaded from http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB. Try it out.

Back to the proxy problems: To get around them add a BuildAssembler.exe.config file in the Sandcastle installation folder with the following content:

<configuration>
<system.net>
<defaultProxy useDefaultCredentials="true">
<proxy usesystemdefault="true"/>
</defaultProxy>
</system.net>
</configuration>

It worked for me :)

Web Client Software Factory

2007-03-11T14:06:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I held a short presentation about the Web Client Software Factory and the different mechanisms that it provides.

In the sample I exemplifies the following patterns and mechanisms:

View Presenter pattern
Controller pattern
StateValue mechanism
[CreateNew] attribute
[ServideDependency] attribute
ObjectContainerDataSource

The framework was quite simple to use and I really like the way it helps you and leads you to a test driven approach. I will look further into the framework at a later time and until then I have uploaded the sample source and the ppt-presentation.

To get the sample application running you have to have the Northwind database installed and the stored procs in procs.sql file the dependencies folder in place. I have not put any effort in the data layer so ignore these parts of the application :)

Presentation / Source

InternalsVisibleTo

2007-03-03T10:15:00.000+01:00

Want to separate your unit tests from your distributed code and not want your API to be as clean as possible? Make use of the handy InternalsVisibleTo attribute:

using System;
using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;

[assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("YourUnitTestAssembly")]

As with many other things it is only available with c# in the 2.0 version of .NET framework.

Read more about the attribute at MSDN.

Motivational gadgets

2007-02-15T21:32:00.000+01:00

The company I work at have come up with an excellent idea to improve team spirit and to make us software consultants to exercise a bit more . Actually we will have to move more than a little bit to be able to handle the challenge that they have offered us.

The deal is that they will pay for the trip and entering fee for Berlin marathon if we agree to take on the challenge. This is an excellent opportunity for me to get some routines and continouity into my training. I like running as a training form but not when it's freezing cold outside.... which means that I start training in april and stop in oktober. Way to many months with inadequate training.

To focus on other things than the temperature I have bought myself an motivational gadget :
http://www.loplabbet.se/system/search/product.asp?id=872

So the training plan looks like this in the moment:

1. Buy motivational gadget

2. Plan my training

3. Do som actual training

As I have fulfilled step 1 I feel that I am on my way... or I should maybe have focused a bit more on step 3? ;) Anyway I now know my resting pulse :)

Web Client Software Factory

2007-02-12T22:29:00.000+01:00

Started reading the documentation for Patterns and Practices Web Client Software Factory last week and it looks very promising. It will be interesting to investigate the samples and see how they implemented the View Presenter pattern in comparison to the Model View Presenter implementations we have been using. See my winforms MVP implementation (http://dotnetjakob.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!4A8D45457A27E6B9!183.entry).

I will be back with more info as soon as I have delved a bit deeper.

The factory can be downloaded from codeplex.

Moving from dotnetjakob.space.live.com

2007-02-10T09:42:00.000+01:00

I'm now moving my blog from http://dotnetjakob.spaces.live.com.