The art of simplicity

ASP.NET MVC: Error during serialization or deserialization using the JSON JavaScriptSerializer. The length of the string exceeds the value set on the maxJsonLength property.

2012-02-01T13:20:00.000+01:00

When loading a big JsonResult from the server, the request fails with the following error message:

“InvalidOperationException:Error during serialization or deserialization using the JSON JavaScriptSerializer. The length of the string exceeds the value set on the maxJsonLength property.”

Thanks to this descriptive error message, its quiet clear what’s happening. The size of the JSON object exceeds the maxJsonLength value of the JavaScriptSerializer class that’s used behind the scenes.

But how can we change this value?

You cannot access this property directly through the JsonResult. Instead you can create your own result:

public class ExtendedJsonResult : ActionResult
{
    public ExtendedJsonResult()
    {
        this.JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet;
    	this.MaxJsonLength=Int.MaxValue;
	}

    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        if (context == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
        }
        if ((this.JsonRequestBehavior == JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet) && string.Equals(context.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod, "GET", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException(MvcResources.JsonRequest_GetNotAllowed);
        }
        HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response;
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ContentType))
        {
            response.ContentType = this.ContentType;
        }
        else
        {
            response.ContentType = "application/json";
        }
        if (this.ContentEncoding != null)
        {
            response.ContentEncoding = this.ContentEncoding;
        }
        if (this.Data != null)
        {
            JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
            serializer.MaxJsonLength=this.MaxJsonLength;
			response.Write(serializer.Serialize(this.Data));
        }
    }

    public Encoding ContentEncoding { get; set; }

    public string ContentType { get; set; }

    public object Data { get; set; }

    public JsonRequestBehavior JsonRequestBehavior { get; set; }

	public int MaxJsonLength{get;set;}
}

Internet Explorer rendering modes

2012-01-31T12:50:00.000+01:00

I have a hard time understanding all the different rendering modes inside IE. I never remember when what mode will be used.

Thanks to the following flowchart created by Henri Sivonen, I have a cheat sheet available.

He shared the flowchart in his great article: Activating Browser Modes with Doctype.

The Firefox fieldset bug… and a possible workaround

2012-01-30T12:46:00.000+01:00

In an ASP.NET MVC application we are building, we have a long list of items inside a form. These items are wrapped inside one <fieldset>tag.
The problem is when we try to print this form inside Firefox only the forms part on the first page gets printed, there is no second page but instead one page with the form sliced.
Turns out that when printing a document, Firefox truncate <fieldset> to one page. This mean that a form with a <fieldset> that would take more than one page in print can not be printed correctly. This is apparently a known bug tracked on bugzilla since 2008 (see bug 471015).
I couldn’t find an ideal solution, in the end I replaced the fieldset by a div and styled it using some css to make it similar.
The original fieldset:

<fieldset>
 <legend>Products</legend>
</fieldset

The alternative:

<div class="fieldset">
   <span class="fieldset">Products</span>
</div>

div.fieldset
{
    border: 1pt solid #755418;  
    padding:10px;
}

span.fieldset
{
    color: #755418;
    font-size: 13px;
    font-weight: bold;
    display:inline-block;
    position:relative;
    top:-20px;
    background-color:#fff;    
}

ASP.NET MVC: AsyncController Timeout

2012-01-27T12:45:00.000+01:00

For long running operations in ASP.NET MVC the AsyncController is your friend. One thing that was not so obvious to me is that the AsyncController will not be running forever but has a timeout setting(I think it’s about 45 seconds by default, could not find the exact number). So if your long running operation takes more time, don’t forget to set the timeout of the async controller action in order for this to work.
You do this by setting the AsyncTimeoutAttribute Action Filter on the action that you want to extend its timeout:

public class PrintController : AsyncController
{
 private readonly IReportService _reportService;
        
 public PrintController(IReportService reportService)
 {
  _reportService = reportService;
 }

 [AsyncTimeout(60000)] //6000 milliseconds= 1 minute
    public void PdfAsync(string reportName, ReportType reportType = ReportType.PDF)
    {
  AsyncManager.RegisterTask<byte[]>(RenderReport(reportName, ReportType.Excel), data => new { data = data, reportName = reportName, reportType = ReportType.Excel });
    }

 //Some extra code...
 //...
}

And if you don’t want that the AsyncController times out, you have the NoAsyncTimeoutAttribute Action Filter.
Don’t forget to do this(as I did)!

ASP.NET MVC AsyncController Helper

2012-01-26T12:30:00.000+01:00

The AsyncController is a really nice feature introduced in ASP.NET MVC 2. It allows you to process your actions asynchronously increasing the throughput of your web server.
Although implementing it is not that hard, I’m not a big fan of the current syntax(The new async api in ASP.NET MVC 4 looks promising).
In the meanwhile I have written a small helper class to simplify the usage of the AsyncController.

public static class AsyncManagerExtensions
   {
       public static void RegisterTask<T>(this AsyncManager asyncManager, Task<T> task, Func<T, object> func)
       {
           asyncManager.OutstandingOperations.Increment();
           task.ContinueWith(task2 =>
           {
               object propertyObject = null;

               if (!task2.IsFaulted)
               {
                   //invoke the provided function with the
                   //result of running the task
                   propertyObject = func(task2.Result);
               }
               else
               {
                   propertyObject = func(default(T));
               }


               //use reflection to set asyncManager.Parameters
               //for the returned object's fields and properties
               var ty = propertyObject.GetType();

               foreach (var f in ty.GetFields())
               {
                   asyncManager.Parameters[f.Name] = f.GetValue(propertyObject);
               }

               foreach (var p in ty.GetProperties())
               {
                   var v = p.GetGetMethod().Invoke(propertyObject, null);
                   asyncManager.Parameters[p.Name] = v;
               }

               asyncManager.OutstandingOperations.Decrement();
           });
       }
   }

Using it is simple. I create a controller that inherits from AsyncController:

public class PrintController : AsyncController
{
    private readonly IReportService _reportService;
        
    public PrintController(IReportService reportService)
    {
        _reportService = reportService;
    }
}

I add a method that returns the Task I want to execute and and the Action Controller method that will be called by the View(in this case through /Print/Pdf) . In this Action Controller method I call the RegisterTask<T> extension method and pass 2 properties:

The method that needs to be executed
An expression that takes the output of the task and maps it to the parameters of the Completed method(based on the parameter name).

public void PdfAsync(string reportName)
{
 AsyncManager.RegisterTask<byte[]>(RenderReport(reportName)), renderReportResult=> new { data = renderReportResult, reportName = reportName });
}

private Task<byte[]> RenderReport(string reportName)
{
 return  Task.Factory.StartNew(()=>_reportService.RenderReport(reportName));
}

public ActionResult PdfCompleted(byte[] data, string reportName)
{
 var fileName = reportName + ".pdf";
 var fileContentResult = File(data, "application/pdf", fileName);
 Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("inline; filename={0}", fileName));
 return fileContentResult;
}

What’s new in WCF 4.5?

2012-01-25T12:08:00.000+01:00

Interested in learning some of the new features of WCF 4.5? Check out this blog series by Ido Flatow:

1. What’s new in WCF 4.5? let’s start with WCF configuration

2. What’s new in WCF 4.5? a single WSDL file

3. What’s new in WCF 4.5? Configuration tooltips and intellisense in config files

4. What’s new in WCF 4.5? Configuration validations

5. What’s new in WCF 4.5? Multiple authentication support on a single endpoint in IIS

6. What’s new in WCF 4.5? Automatic HTTPS endpoint for IIS

7. What’s new in WCF 4.5? BasicHttpsBinding

8. What’s new in WCF 4.5? Changed default for ASP.NET compatibility mode

TFS: Change MS Project Field mapping

2012-01-24T12:05:00.000+01:00

One of the nice features of TFS is it’s integration with MS Project. However I always forget how to update the Field Mapping between MS Project and TFS.

So as a quick reminder:

1. Download the MS Project field mapping file from TFS:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE>tfsfieldmapping download /collection:”http://serverName:8080/tfs/collectionname” /teamproject:”teamprojectname” /mappingfile:”c:\fieldmapping.xml”

2. Update and save fieldmapping.xml

3. Upload the MS Project field mapping file to TFS:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE>tfsfieldmapping upload /collection:”http://serverName:8080/tfs/collectionname” /teamproject:”teamprojectname” /mappingfile:”c:\fieldmapping.xml”

Visug: Future of the Web–Slides and Demos

2012-01-23T11:59:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday I gave a session at the VISUG(Belgian Visual Studio User Group) together with Kevin DeRuddere about the Future of the web.

The slides are available here:

Javascript omg!

View more presentations from bwullems

And the demos can be downloaded here.

App_Offline.htm

2012-01-20T16:52:00.000+01:00

One of the little known features in ASP.NET is the "App_Offline.htm" feature. It provides a super convenient way to bring down an ASP.NET application while you make changes to it.

To make this feature work, you have to place the app_offline.htm file in the root of the application. When ASP.NET sees it, it will shut-down the app-domain for the application (and not restart it for requests) and instead send back the contents of the app_offline.htm file in response to all new dynamic requests for the application.

Once you remove the app_offline.htm file, the next request into the application will cause ASP.NET to load the application and app-domain again, and life will continue along as normal.

One remark: there are some gotcha’s when using this in ASP.NET MVC context. More information about this here: http://blog.kurtschindler.net/post/app_offlinehtm-gotchas-with-aspnet-mvc

31 days of SSIS

2012-01-19T16:42:00.000+01:00

I’m far from an expert in SQL Server Integration Services.

So the 31 days of SSIS series from Jason Strate were really helpful to me.

Now he has packed all this information in one, easy-to-read ebook.

A must read for every SSIS developer!

Auto-Start ASP.NET(MVC) applications in IIS 7.5

2012-01-18T16:36:00.000+01:00

If your web application has to execute some pre-initialization work, the “Application_Start” event handler within the Global.asax file of an application is the logical place. However as a consequence the unfortunate first customer that accesses the application has to wait while this logic finishes before processing the request (which can lead to a long delay for them).

ASP.NET 4 and IIS 7.5 introduce a new feature called “auto-start” that better addresses this scenario. The auto-start feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application worker process, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests.

First configure the IIS “application pool” worker process that the application runs within to automatically startup when the web-server first loads. Open up the IIS 7.5 applicationHost.config file (C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config) and add a startMode=”AlwaysRunning” attribute to the appropriate <applicationPools> entry:

<applicationPools> 
 <add name="MyAppWorkerProcess" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" startMode="AlwaysRunning" />
</applicationPools>

A single IIS application pool worker process can host multiple ASP.NET applications. You can specify which applications you want to have automatically start when the worker process loads by adding a serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" attribute on their <application> configuration entry:

<sites>
 <site name="MySite" id="1"> 
  <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PreWarmMyCache" />
 </site> 
</sites>
<serviceAutoStartProviders> 
 <add name="PreWarmMyCache" type="PreWarmCache, MyAssembly" />
</serviceAutoStartProviders>

The serviceAutoProvider="PreWarmMyCache" attribute above references a provider entry within the config file that enables you to configure a custom class that can be used to encapsulate any "warming up" logic for the application.

public class PreWarmCache : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient 
{
 public void Preload(string[] parameters) 
 { 
 // Perform initialization and cache loading logic here... 
 } 
}

More information and all the details in Scott Guthrie’s post: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/15/auto-start-asp-net-applications-vs-2010-and-net-4-0-series.aspx

WCF IsRequired Attribute

2012-01-17T16:25:00.000+01:00

For a customer we are developing some WCF webservices. Our message contracts are defined by using DataContract and DataMember attributes on top of our classes and their properties.
The DataMember attribute has some extra properties that allows us to add some extra rules. For example if a property should always be available, we use (IsRequired=true); to indicate this. These rules are checked when a message is received or send.

[DataContract]
public class TestClass
{
        [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
        public string RequiredValue { get; set; }
}

However during our test we noticed that it doesn’t work.

What’s confusing here is that a DataMember has (EmitDefaultValue=true) set by default. An string property’s value starts as String.Empty.

Turn this off by using (EmitDefaultValue=false). Now, a property’s value is null, letting (IsRequired=true) do its validation work as desired.

[DataContract]
public class TestClass
{
        [DataMember(IsRequired = true, EmitDefaultValue=false)]
        public string RequiredValue { get; set; }
}

Although it’s still not what we expected. If we add a not-required property(e.g. NotRequiredValue) that refers to a class(e.g. ChildClass) that has a required property(e.g. RequiredValue) the validation fails saying that the RequiredValue is missing. Anyone who has a solution?

[DataContract]
public class TestClass
{
        [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
        public string RequiredValue { get; set; }
  
  [DataMember(IsRequired = false)]
  public ChildClass NotRequiredValue { get;set; }
}

[DataContract]
public class ChildClass
{
        [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
        public string RequiredValue { get; set; }
}

VISUG: Future of the Web

2012-01-16T16:12:00.000+01:00

This Thursday I’m giving a session at the VISUG(Belgian Visual Studio User Group) together with Kevin DeRuddere about the Future of the web:

In this full evening on the future of the web, Visug offers you an evening with 2 sessions on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Session 1: Everything you need to know to get you started with HTML5 (Kevin DeRudder)
HTML5, HTML5, HTML5 everything is HTML5. Should we really implement it in our web apps. Well yes, why not?
In this quick overview you will get some interesting points to get you started. We will have a look at some of the new tags, forms, canvas and what the future will bring.
Level 200

Session 2: JavaScript OMG! : An introduction to the unusual and unexpected features of JavaScript(Bart Wullems).
This session is an introduction to the weird side of JavaScript, and it definitely has a weird side! .NET developers will find a lot of intriguing "features" when they begin to write code in the world's most widely used language. Join us to learn about all the gotchas to watch out for and discover some of the great functionality that JavaScript has to offer…

On: Thursday, January 19, 2012

Location: Combell offices, Gent

Subscribe here: http://www.visug.be/Eventdetails/tabid/95/EventId/50/Default.aspx

OWASP Top 10 for .NET Developers

2012-01-13T15:08:00.000+01:00

I loved reading this series by Troy Hunt. In the meanwhile I learned a lot about application security and risks involved.

If you have never heard of OWASP before a short introduction:

OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project, is a non-profit charitable organisation established with the express purpose of promoting secure web application design. OWASP has produced some excellent material over the years, not least of which is The Ten Most Critical Web Application Security Risks – or “Top 10” for short.
The Top 10 is a fantastic resource for the purpose of identification and awareness of common security risks.

Oh, by the way, the current the Top 10 Security Risks for 2010 are

A1: Injection

A2: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

A3: Broken Authentication and Session Management

A4: Insecure Direct Object References

A5: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

A6: Security Misconfiguration

A7: Insecure Cryptographic Storage

A8: Failure to Restrict URL Access

A9: Insufficient Transport Layer Protection

A10: Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

To make it even better Troy decided to turn this piece of art into an e-book. So just go and download these 255 pages of .NET web development security goodness.

And thank you, Troy Hunt!

Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 MOSS Configuration Tool

2012-01-12T14:57:00.000+01:00

Configuring your MOSS environment to enable Team Foundation Server integration can be a daunting task.

Microsoft tried to simplify this task by releasing the TFS 2010 MOSS Configuration Tool.

Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 MOSS Configuration Tool

You can use this tool to configure an existing installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for use with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. The tool automates the configuration of the following features with certain default values, which are explained in the configuration instructions that are included with the tool. The tool will skip configuring a feature if it is already enabled and configured.

The configuration tool is designed to configure relatively simple deployments of Office SharePoint Server 2007 or SharePoint Server 2010. The tool uses default settings to configure the features. You should not use this tool if any of the following is true:

your deployment requires the use of specific ports or protocols

your deployment utilizes multiple application-tier servers for the server farm

you want to configure your deployment with settings other than the default ones used by the tool

I was able to get the tool working on my local test environment, but on our tightly secured company environment, I had one error after the other.

Anyone who had more success with this tool?

Official Oracle support for Entity Framework v4

2012-01-11T14:47:00.000+01:00

Although Oracle support for Entity Framework was available through some 3th party components, Oracle has finally released it’s (free!) version of ODP.NET that supports Entity Framework for use in production environments.

This is great news for many developers! Unfortunately features like Code First and DbContext can not be used with this release.

ODAC 11.2 Release 4 Production Released with Entity Framework and LINQ Support
ODAC 11.2 Release 4 (11.2.0.3) has arrived for Entity Framework and LINQ developers! It includes 32-bit and x64 versions with the option of using an automated installer or xcopy deployment.
The release incorporates Oracle Database client 11.2.0.3, which can access Oracle Database 9.2 and higher. Oracle supports Entity Framework and LINQ with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, including Entity Framework 4.1 and 4.2. Code First is not supported in this release.

Download ODAC 11.2 Release 4
Article: Use Entity Framework with ODP.NET
ODAC 11.2 Release 4 Data Sheet
ODAC 11.2 Release 4 Documentation
ODAC New Features List
Discussion Forum: ODP.NET - Post feedback on Entity Framework data access
Discussion Forum: Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio - Post feedback on Entity Framework tools

TFS 2010: What to install where?

2012-01-10T14:40:00.000+01:00

With all the updates, fixes and service packs it’s hard to keep up with what component you have to install where.

To help us Grant Holiday provided an installation overview.

A short summary:

Server side:

Application Tier

Database Tier

Client side:

Generate a help page from a Word document: chmProcessor

2012-01-09T11:20:00.000+01:00

In my ongoing quest to find a good tool to create our help files for a web application we are building, I stumbled over the following tool: chmProcessor

“chmProcessor is a tool that allows generating a help project and a compiled HTML help (CHM file) from a MS Word or HTML 4 file. If the file is a word document, the section titles must use the “Title 1”, “Title 2”, etc styles that offers by default Word. If the file is a HTML 4 file, the titles must use the <H1>, <H2>, etc. tags.

From this original file, each section of the document is split to different HTML files. Each of these files will be a topic page at the help. From the original document, you can generate:

· A Microsoft Help Workshop project.

· A compiled HTML help (CHM file).

· A web site like this.

· An Adobe PDF file.

· A Microsoft XPS file.

· A Java Help JAR file.”

More information here: http://chmprocessor.sourceforge.net/

And the download is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chmprocessor/

TFS: Securing Work Item Definition updates

2012-01-06T12:38:00.000+01:00

Recently I got the following question from a customer:

“Can you prevent a user from updating a project's work item definition or its project template?”

This is not so easy to achieve as there is not a specific permission that controls this feature. By default members of the "Project Collection Administrators" and "Project Administrators" group have hard-coded admin permissions. Even if you remove the "Edit Project-Level Information" permissions, they have the ability to give that permission to themselves again.

The only way to prevent users from modifying the work item definitions, is to keep them out of the Project Admin groups. If you still want to make these people administrators, I recommend to create a new administrators group and give them the same permissions, except for the following set:

Manage process template(Project Collection level)
Manage work item link types(Project Collection level)
Edit project-level information(Project level)

CleanUp HTML tool

2012-01-05T12:27:00.000+01:00

On a recent project, we got our documentation in a Word document. Very useful until we had to integrate this documentation inside a web application. You can save a word document as an html page but the end result is ‘less than optimal’.

There comes the CleanUp HTML tool to the rescue!

Cleanup HTML is online tool based on Tidy to clean up HTML code from excessive tags. Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office products are known from generating cluttered HTML code and big files when you try to save as web page. This online tool is able to strip all unnecessary <font>, empty tags, non-breaking spaces and Microsoft Word Styles and output properly structured clean code.

Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Training Kit: December Update

2012-01-04T12:22:00.000+01:00

Last week Microsoft released an update to the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Training Kit.

The Training Kit is available in two different offline packages and is also available to browse online at MSDN. You can download the kit as a single package (37.2mb download), or you can download the Web Installer (2.5mb download) to browse the available content and download only the labs that you need.

Below is the list of hands-on labs that are included in the Training Kit.

Visual Studio Development Environment

A Lap Around the Visual Studio 11 Development Environment
What's New in Visual Studio 11 for C++ Developers (new)

Languages

Asynchronous Programming in the .NET Framework 4.5

Web

What's New in ASP.NET and Web Development in VS 11
What's New in Web Forms in ASP.NET 4.5
What's New in ASP.NET MVC 4 (new)
Using Page Inspector in Visual Studio 11 (new)
Build RESTful APIs with WCF Web API

.NET Framework

Using Portable Class Libraries (new)

Application Lifecycle Management

Building the Right Software: Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11
Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11
Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11
Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11
Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11
Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11: MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone

Windows Metro-style apps

Windows 8 Developer Preview Hands on Labs from BUILD (link to http://www.buildwindows.com/labs)

Community TFS Build Extensions: December release

2012-01-03T12:20:00.000+01:00

Just before the year ending, a new version of the Community TFS Build Extensions is released. This release contains 100 Activities / Actions for Team Foundation Build 2010 and Team Foundation Build 11.

New in this release is the Community TFS Build Manager. It is intended to ease the management of builds in medium to large Team Foundation Server environments, though it does provide a few features which all users may find useful.

Current Feature Set

View and sort Builds and Build Definitions across multiple Build Controllers and Team Projects
Bulk operations on Build Definitions
- Change Build Templates
- Queue
- Enable
- Disable
- Delete
- Set Retention Policies
Clone Build Definitions (includes workspace mapping translation)
Create a DGML image of your Builds and Controllers
Bulk operations on Builds
- Delete
- Open Drop Folders
- Retain Indefinitely

The Community TFS Build Manager is now available on the Visual Studio Extensions Gallery
A blog post by Jakob Ehn describing the features of the Community TFS Build Manager can be found here

TFS 2010 Build: TF215087 error

2012-01-02T12:10:00.000+01:00

If you ever tried to build some custom activities in TFS 2010 Build you’ve probably run into the following error message:

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition \TeamProject\MyBuildDefinition: Cannot create unknown type '{clr-namespace:[namespace];assembly=[assembly]}Activity

This means that the TFS build service couldn’t create an instance of the customer workflow activity that is referenced inside your build process template.

So here is a short checklist with some possible reasons:

You have checked in the modified version of the XAML workflow.
Your custom activity has the the BuildActivityAttribute.
Your custom activity is public.
You have configured your build controller with the path in source control where the custom activities are located .
Verify that all dependencies for the custom activity assembly/assemblies have been checked into the same location as the assembly.
The reference to the custom activity assembly in the XAML workflow is correct.

HTML 5 and CSS: Six Complete Lessons

2011-12-23T14:29:00.000+01:00

You want to learn HTML 5 and CSS? Microsft has created six complete lessons that cover the most interesting and dynamic new features of HTML 5 that are ready to drop into a web development or intro programming course. Each lesson comes with instructor PowerPoint slides, a complete reading assignment with hands-on examples, including the files and assets to use in each assignment. A single lesson has enough content for a 75-100 minute class session, and the hands-on examples are great for either a lab session or homework assignment.

The six lessons are:

Lesson 1 – Defining HTML 5
Lesson 2 – Fundamentals of HTML 5, XHTML, and CSS
Lesson 3 – Introduction to CSS Layout
Lesson 4 – Using HTML 5 Markup
Lesson 5 – Working with Canvas
Lesson 6 – HTML 5 Multi-Media and Drag and Drop

This content is available at no charge and can be downloaded from here: http://www.mis-laboratory.com/faculty/

Telerik MVC Grid won't refresh after delete

2011-12-22T12:02:00.000+01:00

For a project we are using the Telerik MVC controls. I have to say that I was really pleased with the experience in general, although I had some small issues.

One of the problems I had was with the editing feature of the Telerik MVC Grid. Everything appears to work as expected except for the delete. The delete MVC action is called and the row is deleted from the database but the grid does not refresh.

[HttpPost]
[GridAction]
public ActionResult DeleteCodetable(string codetableType, Codetable codetable)
{
	_codetabelService.Delete(codetable);
	//Rebind the grid
	return LoadCodetable(codetableType, refreshCache: true);
}

It took me some time to find the answer on the forums. The delete action only passes the id of the element to delete to the action method. This causes some model binding validation errors as the Code and Description field are required on my Codetable object.

public class Codetable
{
    [Required]
    public virtual int Id { get; set; }
    [Required]
	public virtual string Code { get; set; }
	[Required]
	public virtual string Description{ get; set; }
}

By design if there are model state errors (validation didn't work) the grid is not rebound. So when the DeleteCodetable method returns the result, the grid will not refresh. I solved it by introducing the IgnoreModelErrors attribute in my code.

[HttpPost]
[IgnoreModelErrors("Code,Description"]
[GridAction]
public ActionResult DeleteCodetable(string codetableType, Codetable codetable)
{
	_codetabelService.Delete(codetable);
	//Rebind the grid
	return LoadCodetable(codetableType, refreshCache: true);
}

Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search

2011-12-21T11:40:00.000+01:00

I get a lot of questions about the lifetime and end of support of multiple Microsoft products (especially about one you probably heard of before… Silverlight ).

So how do you know how long Microsoft will officially support a product or technology?

It’s not a secret. You only have to browse to the Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search Page and search the product or technology.

Let’s do the test with Silverlight 5:

So now it’s official… Silverlight 5 is dead in 2021. I guess that gives you the time you need to upgrade…

Look up DB2 error codes: the fast way

2011-12-20T10:30:00.000+01:00

I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of DB2 although there is not much wrong with the database itself. I have more problems with the far-from-perfect tooling.

One of the things that keep annoying me are the cryptic error messages including an even more cryptic SQL error code that DB2 returns. Normally I look up the error code in the DB2 Information Center, but if you need a shorter and faster way to get at least a short explanation of what an error code means, you can use the following SQL query:

VALUES SQLERRM(-161)

Result:

1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL0161N  The resulting row of the insert or update operation does not conform to the view definition.

Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools for Eclipse

2011-12-19T10:23:00.000+01:00

Visual Studio users already know this for a long time, Microsoft has the Team Foundation Server Power tools. These tools extend the Visual Studio and Team Explorer IDE with lots of extra functionality.

Now these features finally become available to Eclipse Developers as Microsoft released the first version of the Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools for Eclipse.

“A set of Team Foundation Server power tools targeted for Eclipse developers already using Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 with SP1 to talk to TFS. This release brings the ability to be able to sign up for Team Foundation Server alerts directly from Eclipse, to save common work item details into a work item template for quick creation of new work items and to allow searching of files in source control by file name, wildcard or by the developer who has the file checked out.”

Techniques to improve your training feedback: The happiness door

2011-12-16T15:55:00.000+01:00

Useful feedback is one the best ways to improve your training skills. But how do you know what people think?

Of course you can always ask to fill in a questionnaire but that takes a lot of work, so you probably only do this at the end of your training. But this gives you only a general overview and actually it’s already too late. Wouldn’t it be nice to get feedback during the training and adapt immediately?

One feedback technique I’ll give a try during my next training is ‘The Happiness Door’ as described by Jurgen Appelo in this blog post: http://www.noop.nl/2011/11/the-happiness-door.html. Don’t forget to read his tips before trying this technique.

The method is very simple. You ask people to give you immediate feedback after a training session. They do this by adding notes to on a wall or door and placing it next to the happiness index (5 = excellent … 1 = bad) they want. People can add empty notes or leave some comments.

CSSCop: Integrate CSS Lint into Visual Studio

2011-12-15T15:36:00.000+01:00

To all .NET Web developers: this is a must have tool for in your tool belt!

CSSCop makes it easy to adhere to best practices for writing stylesheets. It catches common errors that affect browser compatibility and much more.

It uses the widely used CSS Lint tool behind the scenes. CSSCop brings it directly into Visual Studio in an easy and convinient way.

Download available here: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a921b98e-9430-4be2-bf53-1169e12bdb50

Team Foundation Server WorkItem FieldControl Attributes

2011-12-14T17:15:00.000+01:00

Probably the easiest way to customize a TFS WorkItem is by using the Process editor, a part of the TFS Power Tools. Using this editor you can add your own work item fields, customize the layout and change the corresponding workflow. Next to the obvious list of settings there are some less known things you can change using the Attributes property.

By using these attributes you can add custom attributes to the Work Item XML. Here are some useful attribute samples:

NumberFormat (for FieldControl only): Useful if a number value is displayed in the field. Possible values: WholeNumbers, SignedWholeNumbers, DecimalNumbers, SignedDecimalNumbers. Setting this attribute determines what characters are allowed to be entered in this control.

MaxLength (for FieldControl only): Maximum length of allowed characters for field control in form UI.

Format (for DateTimeControl only): One of values of DateTimePickerFormat enum. Possible values: Long, Short, Time and Custom. Custom format can be set by having 'Custom' as value for this attribute, and setting another attribute named CustomFormat with actual custom format string.

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition: Cannot create unknown type

2011-12-14T14:22:00.000+01:00

While creating some custom build activities for TFS Build I ran into this error

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition \OrdinaALM\TestBuild: Cannot create unknown type '{clr-namespace=Ordina.CustomActivities;assembly=Ordina.CustomActivities}Ndepend'.

I discovered that my solution couldn't be loaded because TFS is looking for a particular attribute to my class. As my custom activity was completely build in XAML I had to use a partial class definition to get the attribute added.

namespace Ordina.CustomActivities
{
	[Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client.BuildActivity(Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client.HostEnvironmentOption.All)] 
	partial class Ndepend
	{
	}
}

QFEs and Hotfix Rollup Package for Microsoft Test Manager 2010

2011-12-13T16:21:00.000+01:00

If you are using Microsoft Test Manager, this post is for you.

It’s a good idea to check if you have all the hotfixes and updates installed.These updates contains features like:

Multi-line support for editing test cases in Microsoft Test Manager
Reduce the size of test data saved to the TFS Database
Performance improvements for loading automated test cases from a build-drop path
Performance improvements for publishing test results on a test suite that contains thousands of test cases in Test Manager

I recommend to have a look at the full list of updates(QFEs for Microsoft Test Manager 2010) and download them if one or more are missing.

Team Foundation Services Update

2011-12-12T16:14:00.000+01:00

Last week Microsoft releases the first Team Foundation Services update that introduces some significant new functionality. Normally all features we’ll see are also going to be part of the new TFS 11.

So what’s new?

Redone navigation model to add a bit more style, rework administration mode and more.

Enhanced homepages for teams and team projects to make them more interactive and intuitive.

Simplified Web UI for Small Teams
Improved performance
E-mail Notifications and a new UI for managing subscriptions.

Forecast Lines to project where your iteration boundaries are likely to fall based on your team’s velocity and the estimates on your product backlog items.

In-Tile Taskboard Editing on the taskboard.

Read the official announcement and all the details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2011/12/08/team-foundation-service-december-update.aspx

Microsoft Patterns & Practices Roadmap

2011-12-09T15:20:00.000+01:00

Interested in what the Microsoft Patterns & Practices has in the pipeline for us? Have a look at their roadmap. I’m especially looking forward to the Windows 8 Guidance and the CQRS guide.

More information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/bb232643

Clean up your development PC

2011-12-08T14:30:00.000+01:00

Maybe you didn’t notice it yet, but Visual Studio leaves tons of temporary files all over your hard drive. This is why, over time, your computer loses hard disk space. Same thing for Windows updates, fixes, etc…

As I was running out of disk space I was looking for some ways to free some space. I found two very useful links that saved me a lot of disk space:

Unlocalize.com: Translate localized error messages

2011-12-06T14:12:00.000+01:00

If you are working on a non-English OS, you probably have seen it: these localized error messages. Very useful for the end user but very annoying for us developers who want to google or bing for this specific problem. And while searching for an English error message gives you thousands of hits, you only get a few when you use the localized error message as the search term.

Last week I got the following tip from a colleague: Unlocalize.com, a very useful website which allows you to translate your localized error messages back to English. It’s even available as a browser plugin for your favorite browser.

A must have for every developer!

TFS Build: Build by label

2011-12-05T14:05:00.000+01:00

By Default Team Foundation Build services allows you to build your solutions either based on the latest version available or on a combination of the latest version and a specific shelveset.

But what if you want to build a labeled version of your code?

You can specify a Label in the GetVersion parameter in the Queue new Build Wizard, going to the Parameters tab (for labels add the “L” prefix):

Integrate NuGet in your build process: TFS NuGetter

2011-12-02T11:43:00.000+01:00

Although it’s not that hard to integrate NuGet in your build process, it can always be easier.

NuGettter is an extension to the Team Foundation Server 2010 build process that will perform all of the necessary versioning, packaging and deployment functions in a customizable and completely repeatable way.

Capabilities/Features:

Includes all phases of the build process: compile, version, pre-package, package, push/deploy and publish - managed within TFS 2010 automated build
NuGet Package and deploy features for a simple to an extremely complex library package
Single or multiple solution builds
Single or multiple configuration builds
Manage versioning of the assemblies coordinated or separately from the NuGet package
Create a package, create and push a package or create a package and push and publish to a NuGet gallery
Build and have immediate access to the package in a test environment through inherent "Push/Deploy" feature
Push locations include the NuGet Gallery, a local directory, network share or web site
Use in any combination of manual, continuous integration or scheduled builds
Ability to execute PowerShell scripts prior to packaging to organize the files (e.g., lib, tools, content) for the NuGet packaging process (pre-packaging)
No requirement for NuGet.exe to be installed on the build machine – NuGet.exe can be held in source control and deployed only at the time of the build
All of the above is managed through the standard TFS Build Workflow process
Remotely store/manage package information such as version numbers, API keys, and NuSpec manifest files
All of this is managed via a Team Foundation Server automated build process
Includes updated build process template "NuGetterVersioningBuildTemplate15.xaml" to work with the TfsVersioning v1.5 extended versioning capabilities.

NuGetter Build Process:

Build Definition Sample:

JavaScript Unit Testing in Visual Studio: Chutzpah 1.3 released

2011-12-01T11:38:00.000+01:00

A new version of Chutzpah is now live on Visual Studio Gallery, CodePlex and now NuGet.

This release contains the following changes:

Features

1. Chutzpah is now able to run Jasmine tests in addition to QUnit.

2. Added a new configuration option to set the timeout on a test file.

Official announcement here: http://matthewmanela.com/blog/chutzpah-1-3-0-released/

Unity IsRegistered throws exceptions when registering Open Generic types.

2011-11-30T11:34:00.000+01:00

For a long time, I had a very annoying error message when I called the IsRegistered method on the Unity container.

Error Message:
System.ArgumentException: GenericArguments[0], 'T', on 'Infrastructure.Data.NHibernateRepository`1[T]' violates the constraint of t
ype 'T'. ---> System.TypeLoadException: GenericArguments[0], 'T', on 'Infrastructure.Data.NHibernateRepository`1[T]' violates the c
onstraint of type parameter 'T'.

Last week I finally found the root cause of this issue. Let’s have a look at my code first:

public interface IRepository<T> where T:Entity
{

}

public class NHibernateRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : Entity, new()
{

}

So what’s causing the issue? Have a look at the generic constraints. You see that my interface is less restrictive than my implementation and that is what makes Unity chokes...

One workaround(which is still far from ideal) is that you can apply the same type constraints to the interface. Another (better) workaround is posted by Walter Almeida. Either way I hope it will be solved in the next release of Unity…

Creating test data using ElasticObject

2011-11-29T11:14:00.000+01:00

For a recent project I had to write a lot of data-oriented tests. This required me to populate the domain model with lot’s of test data. Having to write a lot of new statements and property setters, I was looking for a cleaner alternative when I stumbled over this library: ElasticObject - An expandable dynamic object for .NET 4.0.

A dynamic ElasticObject implementation using .NET 4.0 dynamic features, for fluent access of data types like XML - Access XML <entry name="user"/> via fluent dynamic wrappers, like var n=entry.name; - You can also use it like ExpandoObject, with multi level property support
To start with, here are few scenarios you can use ElasticObject

An easier, fluid way to work with data formats – like XML and JSON. Presently, we’ve some support for XML.

Cleaner code though it is duck typed

A hierarchical way to maintain loosely typed data.

I used it to create a whole object hierarchy in a very simple way, like this:

About ElasticObject - Sample Usecases http://amazedsaint.blogspot.com/2010/02/introducing-elasticobject-for-net-40.html
A 10 Minute ASP.NET MVC Twitter searchup using Ducktyped Viewmodels using ElasticObject http://amazedsaint.blogspot.com/2010/02/10-minute-twitter-search-app-using-duck.html

Visual Studio cannot start debugging because the debug target is missing

2011-11-28T11:06:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you lose a lot of time finding the most idiot problems. Last week I had to do a code review so I downloaded the solution from Team Foundation Service and opened it. First I wanted to try to run the application but it failed with the following error message:

“Visual Studio cannot start debugging because the debug target 'D:\dev\ApplicationToReview\bin\Debug\ApplicationToReview.exe' is missing. Please build the project and retry, or set the OutputPath and AssemblyName properties appropriately to point at the correct location for the target assembly.”

Ok. So I rebuild the project a few times, had a look at the output folders only to see that the required assembly was definitely there. In the end I noticed that although the current project was set as the start up project but it was not configured to run in the Configuration Manager.

After checking the project under configuration manager everything worked fine.

Adobe Flex/Flash versus Microsoft Silverlight. And the winner is… HTML 5!

2011-11-25T19:49:00.000+01:00

The last weeks there were some rumors that Silverlight 5 might just be the last version of the technology. Combine this with the fact that Adobe is killing any further development of it's flash mobile plugin and you can only conclude that both Microsoft and Adobe think that the future of web development does not lie in a proprietary plugin technology, but in HTML5.

Flash has long been the standard bearer of richer experiences inside browsers. I’ve always had the feeling that Microsoft only created Silverlight to get a piece of this cake. (Maybe someone still remembers that Silverlight version 1 was based on JavaScript?!). Although I have to admit that Silverlight showed some real potential and allowed to create stunning user experiences , far better than I had ever even seen imagined with Flash. And now that Adobe is refocusing it’s effort to HTML 5, Microsoft no longer cares and I’m guessing that Silverlight 6 will never see the light.

But what about the Windows Phone than you could ask?

It’s all based on Silverlight so it will not disappear right? Even there I think we’ll see Silverlight replaced by a new WinRT alternative(just by guessing that Windows Phone 8 will have the same version number as Windows 8 ).

Should you care as a WPF/Silverlight developer?

No. One XAML framework will be replaced by another. And as long as the tooling for HTML 5 doesn’t keep up, we’ll remain far more productive in XAML development (without even talking about the technical expertise required to build an enterprise level business application, and no that’s not the same as a web application enhanced with some JavaScript here and there…). However in a future were HTML5 will become more and more important, it’s not wise to place all your eggs in one basket.

Should you care as a Mobile developer?

Although a native experience remains the ideal, I don’t see a world where every application will be written for each and every mobile platform. So I think the future of mobile is HTML5 and mobile web applications. For now, there are a few restrictions, but if you know about the device APIs you should realize those few limitations are going away in the near future.

So the safest guess today as a developer is to spend time learning HTML5 and JavaScript and you are ready to build rich user experiences for Web, Windows AND Mobile.

I know how I’ll spend my time the upcoming months…

Mobile website vs Mobile application

2011-11-24T18:14:00.000+01:00

With Mobile being the new hype everyone wants to build web application. But should I build a native Mobile application or is it better to build a mobile version of my web application?

HeadScape released this nice info graphic helping you in answering this question:

Web.config Transformation Tester

2011-11-23T18:06:00.000+01:00

When you deploy a Web site, you often want some settings in the deployed application's Web.config file to be different from the development Web.config file. For example, you might want to disable debug options and change connection strings so that they point to different databases. Starting from Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET provides tools that automate the process of changing (transforming) Web.config files when they are deployed. For each environment that you want to deploy to, you create a transform file that specifies only the differences between the original Web.config file and the deployed Web.config file for that environment.

A transform file is an XML file that specifies how the Web.config file should be changed when it is deployed. Transformation actions are specified by using XML attributes that are defined in the XML-Document-Transform namespace, which is mapped to the xdt prefix. The XML-Document-Transform namespace defines two attributes: Locator and Transform. The Locator attribute specifies the Web.config element or set of elements that you want to change in some way. The Transform attribute specifies what you want to do to the elements that the Locator attribute finds.

More information about creating a transformation file here and about the syntax here.

Last week I discovered the Web.config Transformation Tester, a simple web tool that allows you to test your transformations in a very easy way. It allows you to paste your web.config into the top text box and your transform into the second one. Click the 'Transform' button to see the result of the transformation.

Windows Azure Updates: SDK 1.6 and Training Kit November 2011 update released

2011-11-22T17:55:00.000+01:00

And there is Microsoft again with 3 new updates for Windows Azure—a new version of the Windows Azure SDK, a new Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK, and an updated Windows Azure Platform Training Kit.

Highlights:

Windows Azure SDK (November 2011)—Multiple updates to the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 that simplify development, deployment, and management on Windows Azure. The full Windows Azure SDK can be downloaded via the Web Platform installer here.
Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK— Works in conjunction with the Windows Azure SDK and includes modules and features to author high performance computing (HPC) applications that use large amounts of compute resources in parallel to complete work. The SDK is available here for download.
Windows Azure Platform Training Kit—Includes hands-on labs, demos, and presentations to help you learn how to build applications that use Windows Azure. Compatible with the new Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010. The training kit can be downloaded here.

Here are the details:

The Windows Azure SDK for .NET includes the following new features:

Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010
- Streamlined publishing: This makes connecting your environment to Windows Azure much easier by providing a publish settings file for your account. This allows you to configure all aspects of deployments, such as Remote Desktop (RDP), without ever leaving Visual Studio. Simply use the Visual Studio publishing wizard to download the publish settings and import them into Visual Studio. By default, publish will make use of in-place deployment upgrades for significantly faster application updates.
- Multiple profiles: Your publish settings, build config, and cloud config choices will be stored in one or more publish profile MSBuild files. This makes it easy for you and your team to quickly change all of your environment settings.
- Team Build: The Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 now offer MSBuild command-line support to package your application and pass in properties. Additionally, they can be installed on a lighter-weight build machine without the requirement of Visual Studio being installed.
- In-Place Updates: Visual Studio now allows you to make improved in-place updates to deployed services in Windows Azure. For more details visit http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/10/19/announcing-improved-in-place-updates.aspx
- Enhanced Publishing Wizard: Overhaul of publishing experience to sign-in, configure the deployment, and review the summary of changes
- Automatic Credential Management Configuration: No longer need to manually create or manage a cert
- Multiple Subscription Deployment Management: Makes it easier to use multiple Windows Azure subscriptions by selecting the subscription you want to use when publishing within Visual Studio.
- Hosted Service Creation: Create new hosted services within Visual Studio, without having to visit the Windows Azure Portal.
- Storage Accounts: Create and configure appropriate storage accounts within Visual Studio (no longer need to do this manually)
- Remote Desktop Workflow: Enable by clicking a checkbox and providing a username/password – no need to create or upload a cert
- Deployment Configurations: Manage multiple deployment environment configurations
- Azure Activity Log: More information about the publish and virtual machine initialization status

For more information on Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010, see What’s New in the Windows Azure Tools.

Windows Azure Libraries for .NET 1.6
- Service Bus & Caching: Service Bus and caching client libraries from the previous Windows Azure AppFabric SDK have now been updated and incorporated into the Windows Azure Libraries for .NET to simplify the development experience.
- Queues:
  - Support for UpdateMessage method (for updating queue message contents and invisibility timeout)
  - New overload for AddMessage that provides the ability to make a message invisible until a future time
  - The size limit of a message is raised from 8KB to 64KB
  - Get/Set Service Settings for setting the analytics service settings

Windows Azure Emulator
- Performance improvements to compute & storage emulators.

Click here to download the Windows Azure SDK via the Web Platform Installer.

The Windows Azure Training Kit November 2011 includes the following updates:

[New demo] Publishing Cloud Applications with Visual Studio
[Updated] Labs and Demos to leverage the new Window Azure SDK & Tools 1.6
[Updated] SQL Azure Presentations
Applied several minor fixes in content

Click here to download the Training Kit via the Web Platform Installer.

.NET Framework 4.5–New features overview

2011-11-21T17:44:00.000+01:00

You want to get an idea of all the new features in .NET Framework 4.5? Have a look at this nice poster created by Jouni Heikniemi.

Showing the ‘Runas’ option in the context menu

2011-11-18T11:58:00.000+01:00

Just a simple reminder for something that I always seem to forget:

In Windows you can run the ‘Runas’ command/ This allows you to run a program as if it was running from a different user account on your computer while you are still logged on to your user account.

Press and hold the Shift key and right click on the program's shortcut or EXE file, then click on Run as different user. (See screenshot below)

Type in the user name and password of the user account that you want to run this program as. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: If the user account is on a domain, then you would use UserName@Domain or Domain\UserName for the user name instead.

TFS 2010: TF203028 and TF203071 branching errors

2011-11-17T11:51:00.000+01:00

TF203028: You cannot create a branch at {path} because a branch already exists at {sub path}.

You see this message when a branch root exists at a sub path of the folder you are trying to mark as a branch root.

In the case a sub-folder was incorrectly marked as a branch root, you can recover easily from this by converting the branch root back to a folder , from the File->Source Control->Branching & Merging->Convert to Folder menu.

TF203071: The operation cannot be completed because the source folder that you specified contains a branch. If you want to perform this operation on the branch, then you must specify {path} as the source of the operation.

This occurs when you try to create a branch from a folder and there is a “branch roots” below this.

The reason for this restriction is consider the scenario, I have the following tree structure:

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches – regular folder

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1 – regular folder

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Dev - branch root

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Test - branch root, related to Dev

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Release - branch root, related to Test.

Users were branching v1.1 to v1.2, hoping that the relationship between Dev->Test->Release is maintained. However the relationship being established ends up being:

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Dev -> $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Dev

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Test –> $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Test

$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Release –>$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Release

To prevent users from making this assumption, we have the restriction. If you hit this message, you have a choice:

a. You are in the scenario described above, in that case you can setup your branches by branching $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Dev -> $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Dev and then branching -> $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Dev -> $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Test ->$/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.2/Release

b. If you still want to proceed with the operation (this is likely because $/proj/MyProduct/Branches/v1.1/Dev was incorrectly marked as a branch root). You can do so by converting the “branch root” back to a folder, from the File->Source Control->Branching & Merging->Convert to Folder menu.

TFS 2010: Cube processing failed

2011-11-16T11:44:00.000+01:00

At a customer, we had some problems with the TFS Datawarehouse cube no longer being processed. When looking at the logs, I noticed the following error message:

<LastRun QueueTimeUtc="2011-11-10T13:15:59.497Z" ExecutionStartTimeUtc="2011-11-10T13:16:00.517Z" EndTimeUtc="2011-11-10T13:18:00.637Z" Result="Blocked">

<ResultMessage>[Version Control Warehouse Sync]: ---> MakeDataChanges() result=DataChangesPending. ---> TF221033: Job failed to acquire a lock using lock mode Shared, resource DataSync: [TFSDB].[Tfs_Warehouse] and timeout 30.</ResultMessage>

</LastRun>

Some useful links to solve this problem:

Our solution:

Go to the warehouse control service, which in our case is at: http://tfs:8080/tfs/TeamFoundation/Administration/v3.0/warehousecontrolservice.asmx
From there click on the SetWarehouseJobEnabledState operation. In here you'll see that you can specify the collection, the job, and what state to put it in.
If you want to know the list of jobs, you can run the GetProcessingStatus operation from the warehouse control service.
Set all jobs to FullyDisabled.
Then set one to Enabled and process the warehouse using the ProcessWarehouse link on the warehouse control service page.

TFS 2010: Administrative reports

2011-11-15T11:32:00.000+01:00

After blogging about 2 administrative reports some time ago, I have a new list with useful reports for the TFS administrator.

Microsoft released some reports that visualize the information that TFS stores about the health of the data warehouse.

These reports are useful to TFS administrators, operations/support teams, project administrators & end-users. The reports in this pack display the following kinds of information:

Recent processing times
Current status (whether the cube is processing now and, if not, when it is scheduled to process next)
Schema conflicts
Most recent time that each adapter successfully ran

Interpreting the reports

In the download, there is a FAQ document which includes screenshots of what different reports mean and common questions. The contents of the FAQ are also available at Monitoring the TFS Data Warehouse – FAQ.

Requirements

SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 or 2008 R2
A shared datasource to which you connect the report, as the installation instructions describe how to configure.

Download: AdminReportPack.zip

Download and install this report pack to the Team Foundation Server Reporting Services Instance to monitor warehouse and cube processing status.

For information about how to install this report pack, see Installing Admin Report Pack for TFS.docx that is included in the download.

The pack includes:

Admin Report Pack for TFS FAQ.docx
Installing Admin Report Pack for TFS.docx
Reports\Cube Status.rdl
Reports\Blocked Fields.rdl
Reports\Reportable Fields.rdl

Here’s an overview of how the reports look and what questions you can answer with them.

More information and the original post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/granth/archive/2010/07/12/administrative-report-pack-for-team-foundation-server-2010.aspx

Attempt by security transparent method to access security critical method

2011-11-14T11:21:00.000+01:00

Last week I was spending some time integrating the Microsoft Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block with the MVC Mini Profiler.

After overriding some methods, I was ready to run my first test. But instead of getting some profiling results all I got was the following error message:

“Attempt by security transparent method 'Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Database.CreateConnection()' to access security critical method 'MvcMiniProfiler.MiniProfiler.get_Current()' failed.”

So why did I got this error and what does it mean?

Let me first tell you that the Enterprise Library assembly is marked with the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute and uses the level 2 security transparency model. Level 2 transparency causes all methods in AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers assemblies to become security transparent by default.

In .Net4.0 framework, security tranparency rules prevent any security transparent code to call into security critical code. In .Net4.0 default security transpareny of library assemblies is security critical. The Enterprise Library assembly is marked with AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute. This explicitly tells the security framework that this library will accept calls from security transparent callers. But the assembly MvcMiniProfiler do not have AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute on it. This means it will not allow partial trusted or untrusted code to call into it.

I solved the problem by forking the MvcMiniProfiler code and adding the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute on the assembly. Anyone who knows a better(read=more secure) alternative?

Windows Azure Training Kit: October 2011 release

2011-11-11T11:04:00.000+01:00

And there is the Azure team again…

The October release of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit (WAPTK) is now available as a free download. Download the full training kit including the hands-on labs, demo scripts, and presentations here. Browse through the individual hands-on labs on MSDN here.

The October 2011 version of the training kit includes the following new and updated content:

HOL: SQL Azure Data-tier Applications NEW
HOL: SQL Azure Data Sync NEW
HOL: SQL Azure Federations NEW
DEMO: Provisioning Logical Servers using Cmdlets NEW
DEMO: Parallel Computing on Windows Azure - Travelling Salesman NEW
SQL Azure Labs and Demos with the new portal and tooling experience UPDATED
Applied several minor fixes in content UPDATED

For more information about the new SQL Azure content, including the new HOLs, please refer to the blog post, “New and Updated SQL Azure Labs Available”, just posted to Roger Doherty’s blog.

Waterfall project management was a mistake

2011-11-10T11:01:00.000+01:00

Last week I was reading the ‘Are project managers living a lie?’ blog post by Peter Saddington, when I noticed the following eye-opening paragraph:

“It has always been eye-opening to many people when I tell my workshop participants or clients that they old waterfall way of doing software was never intended to be used. It was a misinterpretation of Dr. Royce’s seminal paper. What happened was that government agencies read the first page, saw a diagram (with a poorly chosen caption), and said: “Hey, that’s how we do software development!

Yes, that’s right. Waterfall project management was never the point. It was actually iterative development that Dr. Winston Royce was pointing to… later in his paper.

If they had read the second page of Dr. Royce’s paper, they would have found the following quotes:

“I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.”

“Yet if these phenomena fail to satisfy the various external constraints, then invariably a major redesign is required.”

“The required design changes are likely to be so disruptive that the software requirements upon which the design is based and which provides the rationale for everything are violated. Either the requirements must be modified, or a substantial change in the design is required. In effect the development process has returned to the origin and one can expect up to a 100-percent overrun in schedule and/or costs.”

It’s kind of sad that the most used Project Management technology today is based on a misinterpretation of a paper. I hope that some (project) managers will read this paper and maybe even start thinking about how they are managing their projects today… (and yes, I’m also talking about the ‘Scrum but…’ adepts!)

Waterfall Managing the Development of Large Software Systems Royce

Visual Studio 2010: NUnit support

2011-11-09T10:27:00.000+01:00

Microsoft announced full support for NUnit and other Testing frameworks in Visual Studio 11. However today you still don’t have NUnit integration out-of-the-box. Of course you can use the Resharper plugin or TestDriven.NET but these are not free(although worth every cent). Last week I discovered Visual Nunit, a free alternative to run your NUnit tests inside Visual Studio.

Visual Nunit is an open source NUnit runner for Visual Studio 2010. It provides convenient view to test cases and enables debugging (red arrow) tests easily inside development environment. It does not require separate test project. Implemented as Visual Studio Integration Package.

Features:

Easy test debugging
Easy and fast NUnit test execution
NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 support
Test execution progress, time and summary
Stack trace view
Test filtering based on project, namespace and fixture

JavaScript Patterns: Settings object

2011-11-08T10:18:00.000+01:00

One of the patterns you see a lot in jQuery and other JavaScript based framework is the use of a Settings object to pass configuration data to a module or function.
Again without spending too much words, a short sample:

(function ($) {
      $.fn.blink = function (options) {
      var settings = {
     'speed': 'fast', 
    'repeat': 3
        };
        //if the options isn’t null extend defaults with user options.
        if ( options ) { 
        $.extend( settings, options );
        }

        for(var i = 0;i<settings.repeat;i++)
        {
      this.fadeOut(settings.speed);
      this.fadeIn(settings.speed);
        }
      }
})(jQuery);

This is a function from a jQuery plugin(can’t remember the exact name). But the important things to notice here are:

The blink method allows you to pass an options object.
Inside the blink method a settings object is created with some default settings.
If the user specified the options object, it will override one or more defaults by using the ‘extend’ method.

Learn it, love it…

IBM Rational to Team Foundation Server Integration Tools - Training and Exploration Sandbox

2011-11-07T10:11:00.000+01:00

While I’m busy working on a IBM Rational ClearCase to Team Foundation Server migration, I discovered that the ALM rangers have provided an evaluation and training sandbox. It offers an easy to use and near-zero-admin exploration, training and testing environment for IBM Rational ClearCase and/or IBM Rational ClearQuest migrations to Team Foundation Server, based on the latest supported Team Foundation Server Integration Tools.

Supported scenario’s

Some of the supported scenario’s in this environment are:

IBM Rational ClearCase to Team Foundation Server migration
IBM Rational ClearQuest to Team Foundation Server migration
Team Foundation Server to Team Foundation Server migration

How do you get started?

Access the sandbox in three steps:
1. Register at teamdevcentral.com
2. Check your e-mail
3. Connect using RDC over the Internet as per received instructions

More information here.

Telerik MVC Grid: Client Side filtering

2011-11-04T11:35:00.000+01:00

One of the nice features of the Telerik MVC Grid is filtering. What makes this even cooler is that you can easily add your own filters using the client side API.
An example:

$(function () {
    var button = $("#filterButton");

    var filtered = false;

    button.click(function (e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        var grid = $("#ordersGrid").data('tGrid');

        if (filtered === false) {
            button.html('Remove filter');
            filtered = true;
   //Add filter
            grid.filter("OrderID~eq~10255");
        }
        else {
            button.html('Add filter');
            filtered = false;
   //Remove filter
            grid.filter('');
        }

        alert("clicked");
    });
});

Remark: Unfortunately this only seems to work when operationmode of the grid is not changed to GridOperationMode.Client.

Javascript Patterns: The Module pattern

2011-11-03T10:37:00.000+01:00

There are a lot of different ways to structure your Javascript code (and the most popular one remains no structure at all ). One of the most used patterns out there is the Module pattern. Instead of giving you a long explanation, let me show you a short sample:

var module=(function(){
 var helloText='Hello world'
 
 function sayHello(){
  alert(helloText);
 }

 return { sayHello: sayHello}; 
})();

module.sayHello();

What’s happening inside this code?

I create a JavaScript function that I immediately invoke. The result is assigned to the variable ‘module’.
Inside this function I create a variable called ‘helloText’. As JavaScript uses function scope instead of block scope, this variable is available everywhere inside this function but not outside of it.
I add a function ‘sayHello’, this function is also only accessible inside the ‘Module’ function.
As a last step I create a new JavaScript object with a function sayHello on it that refers to the internal ‘sayHello’ function I’ve just created. This object is then returned. When I immediately invoked the function in step 1 I got the object back we’ve created with one public function ‘sayHello’.

By following this Module pattern, I can create nicely scoped functions and variables without fear for naming conflicts and without polluting the global scope.

Learn it, love it…

Bug in Telerik MVC Grid Control: Displaying items 1 - NaN of undefined

2011-11-02T10:19:00.000+01:00

After starting a project with the jqGrid control, we decided to move to the Telerik MVC Grid control. Although a very powerful control, some advanced scenario’s were just too painful to implement with the jqGrid. So we replaced the jqGrid control with the Telerik MVC Grid control and were really happy with the result(we were able to get the same functionality with half the amount of code).

However it still has some rough edges here and there. One error we got was when our grid control was bound to an empty list, the following text was shown in the pager part: ‘Displaying items 1 - NaN of undefined’. This issue is mentioned on the Telerik MVC forums and a bug fix is available here.

UPDATE: Last week Telerik released their first beta of the Q3 2011 version of the Telerik MVC controls. I validated the beta and it seems that the issue is no longer there. Great job Telerik!

OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 - v1

2011-10-31T09:52:00.001+01:00

A few months ago Microsoft released the beta of the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010. Last week they finally announced that v1 of this service is now available and you can download it here.

What is it?
The purpose of this project is to help developers work with data from Team Foundation Server on multiple device types (such as smartphones and tablets) and operating systems. OData provides a great solution for this goal, and has been embraced by numerous developers for building great device-specific applications. OData is accessible from any device and application stack which supports HTTP requests. This OData service interacts directly with the TFS client object model.

Check out Brian Keller’s post for more information.

Visual Studio Troubles: The project file has been moved, renamed or is not on your computer

2011-10-28T15:04:00.000+02:00

After doing a rename and merging a solution inside Visual Studio(one tip: never try to combine these two things at the same time), one project don’t want to load anymore. Instead I always got the following error:

“The project file has been moved, renamed or is not on your computer.”

I tried a lot of stuff but in the end the following solution worked:

Close Visual Studio.
Browse to the solution folder of the project which is giving you problems.
Find the .suo file and delete it.
Reopen your solution. Visual Studio will recreate the .suo file and everything worked.

Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2

2011-10-27T14:58:00.000+02:00

Between all the fuzz about Windows 8 and Visual Studio 11, you should almost forget that we still have a long way to go with Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft extended the rich feature set of VS by releasing the second Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack. This Feature Pack has following features :-

Testing features:

Playback tests using the Mozilla Firefox browser. You can use Windows Internet Explorer 7 (or later versions) to record UI actions on a website or a Web-based application and then play back the tests using the Mozilla Firefox browser version 3.5 and 3.6.
Edit coded UI tests using the Coded UI Test Editor. The editor lets you easily modify your coded UI tests. You can locate, view, and edit your test methods, UI actions and their associated controls in the UI control map.
You can create coded UI tests or action recordings for Silverlight 4 applications. Action recordings enable you to fast forward through steps in a manual test.

Testing the Application with Feature Pack 2

Code visualization and modeling features:

Use the Generate Code command to generate skeleton code from elements on UML class diagrams. You can use the default transformations, or you can write custom transformations to translate UML types into code.
Create UML class diagrams from existing code.
Explore the organization and relationships in C, C++, and ASP.NET projects by generating dependency graphs.
Import elements from UML sequence diagrams, class diagrams, and use case diagrams as XMI 2.1 files that are exported from other modeling tools.
Create links and view links from work items to model elements.
Create layer diagrams from C or C++ code and validate dependencies.
Write code to modify layer diagrams and to validate code against layer diagrams.

Remark: This package is only available for MSDN subscribers.

Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Training Kit October 2011 Release

2011-10-26T14:47:00.000+02:00

Microsoft released their first Training Kit for the upcoming Visual Studio 11.

“The Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Training Kit includes hands-on labs to help you understand how to take advantage of the variety of enhancements in Visual Studio 11 and the .NET Framework 4.5, how to support and manage the entire application lifecycle and how to build Windows Metro style apps.”

Instructions

There are two files you can download to install this Training Kit:

The file VS11TrainingKitOctober2011.Setup.exe will install the entire training kit, After downloading this file, you do not need an Internet connection to install the files. Download and launch the self-extracting package. The Training Kit will uncompress to the selected folder and launch a HTML browser for the content.
The file VS11TK_WebInstaller_Preview.exe provides you with the ability to install all or only some of the training kit. Download and launch the self-extracting package. Then select the labs you wish to install. You can rerun the installer to add labs in the future. This installer requires an Internet connection.

Download link: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27738

Compiler as a service: Project Roslyn

2011-10-25T14:43:00.000+02:00

Microsoft announced the availability of the Roslyn CTP last week.

This release marks a significant step to the new way of thinking of compilers, and the agility that is now possible with language innovation, IDE tooling, and powering the ecosystem. The C# and VB compilers are no longer black boxes – something we put source text into, do some magic on, and get an assembly out. All that rich information about code is no longer thrown away, but is now exposed as a full-fidelity object model that can be easily consumed by all. In addition, it was released a preview of the first-ever Interactive window for C# that contains full IDE support – including IntelliSense and even automatically detecting missing using directives.

How to get started:

Download the CTP. The CTP installs on Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and can be safely installed side-by-side with Visual Studio 11.
Go to Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Codename Roslyn CTP -> Getting Started to launch the entry point into all the documentation, samples, and tools.
Read the Roslyn Project Overview for a good overview of the project.
Learn from the rich samples included (paste as C#/VB, refactorings, code analysis, and code generation tools).
Run the walkthroughs to learn about the Compiler APIs, the Services API, or using the Interactive window.
For those of you that aren’t extension writers, download the CTP to try out the Interactive window and use the Copy Paste C#/VB extensions that were built to help with your daily work now!

The release includes the following features:

Visual Studio Project Templates
These project templates help you get started using the Roslyn APIs and building new Visual Studio extensions using the C# or VB APIs.
Reference Assemblies
The Roslyn assemblies can be added to projects via the Add Reference dialog.
Interactive Window
A new tool window called C# Interactive is available in Visual Studio by invoking View -> Other Windows -> C# Interactive from the menu. You can explore by either executing snippets of code in the C# Interactive tool window, or cumulatively building up execution context as you experiment.
Script File Editing Support
C# Script (.csx) files allow top-level statements much like the C# Interactive window. You can create a new C# Script file by invoking File -> New File -> Script -> Visual C# Script from the Visual Studio menu. In addition to typing directly into the tool window, you can also select code in C# and C# Script (.csx) files and invoke "Execute in Interactive" or "Copy to Interactive" from the context menu. C# Script editing features like IntelliSense are powered by the Roslyn Language Service.

Some Links:

Downloading an old version of a NuGet package

2011-10-24T14:34:00.000+02:00

By default NuGet will always download the latest version of a package. But what if you don’t want the most reason version? Luckily there is a way to specify the package version by using the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio.
First bring up the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio. Go to Tools|Library Package Manager|Package Manager Console.
You can install a package by using the ‘Install-Package’ powershell command. This command has a Version argument that can be used to specify a specific version.

Install-Package PackageName -Version 1.3.1

See the command reference for details. If you use the Intellisense feature inside the Package Manager Console(by using the TAB key), you even get the list of available versions.

The same thing works if you want to update an existing package, this time by using the ‘Update-Package’ powershell command.

Update-Package PackageName -Version 1.3.2

The power of HTML 5 and Javascript: Rendering PDF’s in your browser

2011-10-21T18:38:00.000+02:00

Today I was once again amazed about the power that HTML5 and Javascript can offer when I discovered PDF.js. This Javascript library is written by a couple of clever guys over at Mozilla and allows you to display PDFs inside your browser using Javascript and HTML5. The code is available for download on Github.

Benefits

The traditional approach to rendering PDFs in a browser is to use a native-code plugin, either Adobe’s own PDF Reader or other commercial renderers, or some open source alternative. From a security perspective, this enlarges the trusted code base and increases the risk of code based injection attacks. An HTML5-based implementation is completely immune to this class of problems.
If you want to see a demo of pdf.js, click on this link. There are still glitches and rendering artifacts but it already shows the potential of this library.

A quick sample

Download the latest code required from Github to start developing. Create a web page and embed the following Javascript references:

<script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/pdf.js"></script>  
<script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/metrics.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/fonts.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/glyphlist.js"></script>

Add the new <canvas> HTML5 control to the body of your page

<canvas id="pdf-canvas" style="border:1px solid black;"/>

Now you can start rendering your PDF by writing some Javascript code:

<script type="text/javascript">
'use strict';      
getPdf('myPDFFile.pdf', function getPdf(data) {
 // Instantiate PDFDoc with PDF data          
 var pdf = new PDFDoc(data);          
 var page = pdf.getPage(1);          
 var scale = 1.5;

 // Prepare canvas using PDF page dimensions          
 var canvas = document.getElementById('pdf-canvas');
 var context = canvas.getContext('2d');
 canvas.height = page.height * scale;
 canvas.width = page.width * scale;          
 
 // Render PDF page into canvas context
 page.startRendering(context);      
});  
</script>

Enterprise Library: Windows Azure Autoscaling application block

2011-10-20T18:08:00.000+02:00

Last week Microsoft released a beta version of the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block.To learn more about this application block watch the video walkthrough:

The easiest way to download the block is via NuGet. There are two packages – one with binaries and one containing the source. The beta includes a sample application for hosting the block and for exploratory testing.

This version offers a lot of new features as well as bug fixes. Check this page for the change log.

Getting Started

Please follow the instructions in the included Readme file to learn how to use the block binaries and about the pre-requisites if you want to build the block from source. They also released a first draft set of documentation, which includes the reference documentation and an early preview of the Developer’s Guide. Both are available via Codeplex.

There is also a sample app that showcases various usages of the Autoscaling Application Block. Therefore they expanded the scope of the Tailspin reference implementation originally shipped with the Developing Application for the Cloud Guide by making it more elastic. The sample app is also available via Codeplex.

Team Foundation Server Source Control Explorer VS 2010 Extension

2011-10-19T17:59:00.000+02:00

TFSSCExplorerExtension is a Visual Studio 2010 Extension Package that adds new functionality to the TFS Source Control Explorer window. Most important features are Drag & Drop support, Move and Branch functions even for multiple files selection and Merge from Sources feature.

There is a version available both for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview:

Telerik MVC Extensions: Using a more recent jQuery version

2011-10-18T17:52:00.000+02:00

If you are looking for custom ASP.NET MVC controls, the Telerik MVC Extensions are one of the options. If you are using them you probably included them in your ASP.NET MVC web application by using NuGet. These extension are jQuery based and jQuery 1.5.1 is included out of the box.
Including the required Javascript files is easy. Just at the following code to the bottom of your Razor page(your Telerik controls should be placed BEFORE the scripts).

@(Html.Telerik().ScriptRegistrar())

This will include jQuery and all other required Javascript files automatically. But what if you are using a more recent jQuery version? I first removed the jQuery script from the Scripts\2011.2.712\ folder but this resulted in errors. Instead what you need to do is change your script as follows:

@(Html.Telerik().ScriptRegistrar() 
   .jQuery(false) 
)

The ScriptRegistrar will no longer complain and you can reference the jQuery version of your choice. I tried it with jQuery 1.6.2 and everything worked fine.

Running your build server on Azure

2011-10-17T17:53:00.000+02:00

With the first preview of TFS Services(read: Team Foundation Server on Azure), you’re ALM environment in the cloud get’s a lot closer.

But what about my build server? Do I still need to host some servers myself or is their an alternative available?

Although not an official solution (yet), one of the options you have is using an Azure VM Role with a build service, and configure it against your TFS Services instance.

What’s needed to get this working?

First of all you need a Windows Azure account of course. Login to the Windows Azure portal(http://windows.azure.com) and sign up for the VM role beta program(yes it’s still in beta). It can take some time before your subscription is approved so be patient(it took a few weeks before our subscription was activated).

While you are waiting for your subscription approval you can already create the VHD required for your VM role. Follow the steps as described in the following post: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wazplatformtrainingcourse_vmrolelab_topic2. Replace task 2 with the installation of TFS build Service 11 (Look here for the steps), but only do the installation and skip the configuration part. Replace Task3 and only change the port number in bullet 9 to 9191(This is the default one for the TFS Build Service).

After your subscription is activated you can upload the VHD to Windows Azure(on my slow ADSL connection it took me a few hours). As a final step use the Remote Desktop functionality to connect to the VM Role instance(More info here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wazplatformtrainingcourse_vmrolelab_topic3) and configure the build service according to the steps described by Brian Harry.

That’s it!

TFS Build Error: The process cannot access the file 'data.coverage' because it is being used by another process

2011-10-13T21:26:00.001+02:00

Last week we had a situation on our build server where the build was running indefinitely. After stopping the build, the following error was thrown:

The process cannot access the file 'data.coverage' because it is being used by another process.

As the problem only happened when code coverage was enabled, I guessed that it had to do something with the test runner. One thing I noticed on the build machine that the VSPerfmon.exe kept running.

After killing this process, the build completed and the issue was gone.

Customizing TFS Build 2010

2011-10-13T15:45:00.000+02:00

If you are looking into TFS Build customizations, I can recommend starting with the following blog series by Ewald Hofman:

Afterwards you can get into more detail by browsing through Jason Prickett’s blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jpricket/.

Use Fiddler to validate version problems with Javascript libraries

2011-10-12T14:41:00.000+02:00

I’m a big fan of Fiddler for a long time. Last week I had to test some jQuery compatibility issues with a new web application we were building. At first I was replacing all the Javascript files with newer versions, updating all the references and so on… Although this approach worked it was cumbersome and error-prone. Isn’t there a better alternative?

Fiddler to the rescue!

I found the following post by Eric Law where he uses Fiddler to load a different version of jQuery without updating any reference:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2011/08/19/using-fiddler-to-verify-a-jquery-update-will-fix-a-compatibility-problem.aspx. Exactly where I was looking for!
So how can you do this?

First, download the (newer) version of the library you want to test.
Start Fiddler and go to the AutoResponder tab. Use the Add… button to create a new rule to map requests for your Javascript library to the newly downloaded file.
Also set the Unmatched requests passthrough option to ensure that Fiddler doesn’t automatically generate 404s for requests that don’t match any of the rules.
Reload your web application you’ll see that Fiddler intercepts the request for the older library and returns the newer one instead.

If I only found out this feature sooner…

Remark: Don't forget to remove this rule afterwards.

Developer cheat sheet

2011-10-11T14:21:00.000+02:00

As a developer there are so many things you need to remember: keyboard shortcuts, programming language syntax, code snippets, … and the list keeps growing.

So make your life as a developer a little bit easier and use this ultimate cheat sheet at http://devcheatsheet.com/.

“DevCheatSheet.com is a directory of free cheat sheets and quick reference cards for developers, programmers, engineers, and nerds”

NServiceBus Modeling Tools

2011-10-10T13:09:00.000+02:00

If you are still not convinced that NServiceBus could make your message based architecture a lot simpler, maybe this new feature can convince you:

NServiceBus Modeling

“Visual Studio integrated modeling tools for NServiceBus allow you to graphically design your distributed solution and have all of your projects created, appropriate references set up, configuration of queues and routing made to "just work", on top of all the regular NServiceBus goodness.”

This first version includes Visual Studio integration and really makes developing with NServiceBus much more productive and enjoyable.

NServiceBus Modeling Tools for Visual Studio from NServiceBus Ltd. on Vimeo.

You can get this tool on the NServiceBus download page or via the Visual Studio Gallery here.

WPF is still alive!

2011-10-07T21:37:00.000+02:00

With all the fuzz about the dead of Silverlight, we should almost forget that it still has a big brother WPF.

After the announcements at Build it looks like that WPF isn’t dead either. It even has some very useful new and enhanced features

Ribbon control: WPF 4.5 ships with a Ribbon control that hosts a Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, and tabs.
Improved performance when displaying large sets of grouped data
New features for the VirtualizingPanel
Binding to static properties: You can use static properties as the source of a data binding. The data binding engine recognizes when the property's value changes if a static event is raised.
Accessing collections on non-UI Threads: WPF enables you to access and modify data collections on threads other than the one that created the collection. This enables you to use a background thread to receive data from an external source, such as a database, and display the data on the UI thread. By using another thread to modify the collection, your user interface remains responsive to user interaction.
Synchronously and Asynchronously validating data: The INotifyDataErrorInfo interface enables data entity classes to implement custom validation rules and expose validation results asynchronously. This interface also supports custom error objects, multiple errors per property, cross-property errors, and entity-level errors.
Automatically updating the source of a data binding: If you use a data binding to update a data source, you can use the Delay property to specify an amount of time to pass after the property changes on the target before the source updates.
Binding to types that Implement ICustomTypeProvider
Retrieving data binding information from a binding expression
Checking for a valid DataContext object
Repositioning data as the data's values change (Live shaping): A collection of data can be grouped, sorted, or filtered. WPF 4.5 enables the data to be rearranged when the data is modified.
Integrating WPF with win32 Graphical User Interfaces(My favorite!): WPF 4.5 provides better integration between WPF and Win32 user interface components.
Improved Support for Establishing a Weak Reference to an Event: Implementing the weak event pattern is now easier because subscribers to events can participate in it without implementing an extra interface. The generic WeakEventManager class also enables subscribers to participate in the weak event pattern if a dedicated WeakEventManager does not exist for a certain event.
New methods for the Dispatcher class: The Dispatcher class defines new methods for synchronous and asynchronous operations.
Markup Extensions for Events: WPF 4.5 supports markup extensions for events. While WPF does not define a markup extension to be used for events, third parties are able to create a markup extension that can be used with events.

More information and all the details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613588(v=VS.110).aspx.

JBOWS: Just a Bunch of Web Services

2011-10-06T21:27:00.000+02:00

Sometimes you know that something is an anti-pattern but you don’t find a good name for it. Last week I discovered the following old blog post about JBOWS. I immediately recognized this as something I had seen before in a lot of so called ‘SOA’ architectures. Unfortunately this anti-pattern still applies today.

JBOWS stands for Just a Bunch of Web Services and indicates a service oriented architecture that focuses on tooling and technology rather than architecture and analysis. Most of the time this happens because IT is leading the SOA initiative(instead of the business). And SOA with little or no cooperation from the business is meant to fail. Therefore most JBOWS architectures deliver little or no value to the business. If anything, overall business agility will decrease over time as more and more disorganized services spring up with considerably more complex and brittle dependencies that need to be maintained.

So if you recognize this inside your own organization, know that it has a name .

Brain meltdown: Practical Foundations for Programming Languages

2011-10-05T21:17:00.000+02:00

Last week I found the following free programming book at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf on "Practical Foundations for Programming Languages".

As the title states it focuses on the foundations of programming languages. The idea is that most programming language features start from the concept of a type
structure that governs its syntax and semantics. Although very interesting to read, it almost cost me a brain meltdown.

Read at your own risk!

Scrum for Team System became Open Source

2011-10-04T21:04:00.000+02:00

Crispin Parker, the original creater of the great Scrum for Team System template has left his company. Luckily for us he took the Scrum for Team System template with him and turned it into an open source initiative. Let’s hope that this will bring the template to the next level.

So from now on if you are looking for a new version of the template, go to http://scrumforteamsystem.codeplex.com/.

BTW: Old versions are still available at http://www.scrumforteamsystem.co.uk/

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – September 2011 Update

2011-10-03T20:55:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month Microsoft released an updated version of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. The September 2011 update of the training kit includes updated hands-on labs for the Windows Azure SDK/Tools version 1.5 (September 2011.) The September update also includes a new hands-on lab for Service Bus Messaging, which demonstrates how to send and receive messages using the new Service Bus Message Queues and Topics that were just released.

You can download the full training kit including the hands-on labs, demo scripts, and presentations from the Microsoft download center here: http://bit.ly/WAPTKSept2011.

If you don’t want to download the complete training kit, you can try the new Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – Web Installer. This new training kit web installer is a very small application weighing in at 2MB. It enables you to select and download just the hands-on labs, demos, and presentations that you want instead of downloading the entire training kit. As new or updated hands-on labs, presentations, and demos are available they will automatically show up in the web installer – so you won’t have to download it again(and it has a nice Metro style UI).

ASP.NET MVC: Performance tips

2011-09-30T16:49:00.000+02:00

Although there are a lot of different ways to optimize your ASP.NET MVC web applications, some are cheaper then others. Here are some very simple tips that still can make a significant difference:

Run in Release mode

Always make sure that your application is compiled in Release mode and that your web.config file is configured with <compilation debug="false" />. Use the web.config transformations feature to automatically change this value in release mode.

Use only the View Engines that you need

As you probably know the MVC framework supports multiple view engines. This means that each time MVC is trying to find a view it’s searching through all these view engines. In MVC 3 two view engines are registered by default (WebForms and Razor). So if you use only one view engine, remove the ones you are not using:

protected void Application_Start() 
{ 
	ViewEngines.Engines.Clear(); 
	ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RazorViewEngine()); 
}

Use the CachedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider from ASP.NET MVC Futures

In the ASP.NET MVC 3 Futures you can find a little gem called the CachedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider. For using this provider, just open global.asax file and add the following line in the Application_Start method,

ModelMetadataProviders.Current = new CachedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider();

Avoid passing null models to views

Don’t pass in a null model to a view that uses strongly-typed html helpers (such as Html.TextBoxFor). Strongly-typed html helpers such as Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name) will try to emit the value of the model using the provided expression. However when something along the expression chain is null a NullReferenceException will be thrown when the expression gets evaluated. MVC’s expression evaluator catches the exception but on a page with multiple such html helpers the cost of the exception adds up. You can avoid that cost by always passing an empty instance of the model to the view:

public ActionResult Insert() 
{ 
	return View(new Product()); 
}

Uninstall URL Rewrite if you don’t use it

When performing URL generation (for example via a method like Html.ActionLink) in some cases MVC checks to see if the currently requested URL has been rewritten by the URL Rewrite module. If that is the case the result is processed so that it correctly matches the URL requested by the client. The act of checking if a URL has been rewritten has a non-trivial cost (because it involves checking server variables). ASP.NET MVC 3 checks to see if URL Rewrite is turned off and can cache that fact thus avoiding the need to inspect server variables for each request. If URL Rewrite is turned on MVC will have to check server variables even if no rewriting happened for a particular request so if you are not using URL Rewrite you should turn it off.

Writing Powershell scripts inside Visual Studio: PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension

2011-09-29T12:49:00.000+02:00

You want to write Powershell scripts inside Visual Studio? Thanks to the PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension this becomes very easy.

Here is the list of available features:

PowerGUI Console Tool Window
PowerShell Project Type
IntelliSense support through a custom PowerShell editor
Syntax highlighting and script analysis
Supports PowerGUI settings
Supports PowerGUI imported modules
Supports PowerGUI Snippets
PowerShell debugging
PowerGUI Console Tool Window
PowerShell Project Type

JScript Editor Extensions for Visual Studio

2011-09-28T12:44:00.000+02:00

While browsing through some Channel 9 videos, I discovered the following session:

Damian Edwards, a member of the ASP.NET team at Microsoft talks in this episode about the JScript Editor Extensions(Microsoft calls it JScript because Oracle owns the rights on the name JavaScript) and about what can be expected in Visual Studio vNext.

This JScript Editor Extensions bundles the following functionality:

Brace Matching

Adds support for automatically highlighting the matching opening or closing brace to the one currently at the cursor. Supports matching parenthesis: (), square brackets: [], and curly braces: {}. Braces in strings, comments and regular expression literals are ignored.

Outlining / Cold-folding

Adds support for automatically creating outlining regions for JScript blocks. Blocks are detected via opening and closing curly braces. Braces in strings, comments and regular expression literals are ignored.

Current Word Highlighting

Adds support for highlighting all instances of the word currently at the cursor.

IntelliSense Doc-Comments <para> Support

Adds support for the <para> element in JScript IntelliSense doc-comments to allow display of new lines in IntelliSense tooltips, e.g.

function hello(name) {
/// <summary>A great function
/// < para>Some info on a new line</para>
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name" type="String">The name to say hello to</param>
return "hello " + name;
}

Download the extension here: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/872d27ee-38c7-4a97-98dc-0d8a431cc2ed?SRC=Home

And if you want to know more about the improvements in the Visual Studio 11 JavaScript editor: http://www.asp.net/vnext/whats-new#_Toc303354500

The type or namespace name 'Linq' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Data'

2011-09-27T12:24:00.000+02:00

Last week I was creating a demo application to show some ASP.NET features when I kept getting the following error:

“The type or namespace name 'Linq' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Data'”

I had the System.Data.Linq DLL referenced in my application and verified through the Object Browser that this namespace was indeed part of this assembly. Although a very stupid error it took me some time to figure out why it wasn’t working….

I was finally able to solve the issue by adding the following line in my web.config:

<add assembly="System.Data.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

JavaScript weirdness

2011-09-26T12:16:00.000+02:00

Interested in some of the curiosities inside the JavaScript programming language? Have a look at Mike Taulty’s blog where he walks through a lot of (little known) JavaScript features.

JavaScript OMG! #1 to #5

OMG #1 – Optional Semi-Colons
OMG #2 – JavaScript Type System
OMG #3 – JavaScript and Underflow, Overflow, Div Zero
OMG #4 – JavaScript and RegExp
OMG #5 – Truthy and Falsy

JavaScript OMG! #6 to #10

OMG #6 – The Global Object
OMG #7 – “Expando Objects”
OMG #8 – Wrappers
OMG #9 – Type Conversions
OMG#10 – Object to Primitive Conversions

JavaScript OMG! #11 to #15

OMG #11 – Variable Scope and Hoisting
OMG #12 – Bitwise Operators
OMG #13 – Equality and Strict Equality
OMG #14 – “use strict”
OMG #15 – Magic of Short-Circuiting ANDs and Truthy/Falsy

JavaScript OMG!: #16 to #20

OMG#16 – Function Arguments
OMG #17 – Nested Functions
OMG #18 – Arrays versus Lists
OMG #19 – Function Invocation Context & Strict Mode
OMG #20 – Nested Functions & Invocation Context

JavaScript OMG #21 to #25

OMG #21 – Everything’s a Function
OMG #22 – array.sort() won’t sort numbers “correctly”
OMG #23 – parseInt() needs help
OMG #24 – Callbacks and Scope
OMG #25 – Function Literals Create Functions

How to connect to tfspreview.com from Visual Studio 2010?

2011-09-25T12:06:00.000+02:00

After registering an account on TFS Preview, I immediately wanted to add some code and start playing with it. However just entering [your account name].tfspreview.com in Team Explorer had no effect.

So what do you need to do to get this working?

First you need Visual Studio 2010 with SP1 applied. Secondly you need to install KB2581206.

After installing the hotfix, a connection can be made through the “Add Team Foundation Server” dialogue in VS2010:

URL of Team Foundation Server = [your account name].tfspreview.com
Connection Details:
- Path = tfs
- Port = 443
- Protocol = HTTPS

You’ll get a connection dialog to connect through Live Id:

That’s it!

What after BUILD?

2011-09-24T11:57:00.001+02:00

After 2 weeks of vacation I’m working myself through all the information that was released at the Microsoft BUILD conference. If you couldn’t be there(like most of us) certainly start with the 2 keynotes(Keynote #1 & Keynote #2). This will inspire you enough to browse through all the other sessions(http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011).

One nice thing I noticed is that if you have an HTML5 enabled browser, the videos are shown using the HTML 5 <video> tag giving you the option to change the play speed(most sessions are still watchable at 1.4x speed). Unfortunately a full screen option is not available(yet), but you can always switch back to the Silverlight player.

Continue your journey by downloading and experimenting with

TFS Preview

Design Patterns: Null Object

2011-09-09T20:51:00.000+02:00

‘If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. My favorite pattern today is the Null object pattern, so I’m applying it everywhere
But what’s this pattern exactly and why is it so useful? Let’s consider the following code :

class DiscountRepository
{
    public Discount GetDiscountFor(Order order)
    {
    }
}

public abstract class Discount
{   
   public abstract int Calculate(Order order);
}

We have an abstract class that represents our object and a repository.

Now what if you have an order for which there is no discount information available in the database. You always have to check for null and having this all over the place make the code less readable.

public void ProcessOrder(Order order)
{
    var discount=_repository.GetDiscountFor(order);
    if (discount != null)
        discount.Calculate(order);
}

I don’t like this code. So let’s apply the Null Object pattern to make the above code prettier and less error-prone. All we need to do is to implement the abstract class(you can achieve the same result by using an interface) one more time but this time we will do it inside our Discount class like this :

public abstract class Discount
{
    public abstract int Calculate(Order order);
        
    public static readonly Discount NULL = new NullDiscount();
    private class NullDiscount : Discount
    {            
        public override int Calculate(Order order) { return 0; }
    }
}

Our ProcessOrder now looks like this :

public void ProcessOrder(Order order)
{
    var discount=_repository.GetDiscountFor(order);
    discount.Calculate(order);
}

And our GetDiscountFor method looks like this :

public Discount GetDiscountFor(Order order)
{
    if(/* Not Found */)
        return Discount.NULL;
    else
        /* The db record */
}

Impress your colleagues with your knowledge about… private builds

2011-09-08T20:31:00.000+02:00

One of the little known features of Team Foundation Server 2010 are private builds (a.k.a. “Buddy Builds”).A Private build is just like a Gated check-in build, but without the automatic check-in and enforcement.

It’s a way to manually queue a Gated check-in build and provide a Shelveset name. It provides another sanity check beyond F5. You specify a private build by selecting a Shelveset to merge with the latest source code when queuing a build.

You queue a private build if you want to build the changes that you have put into a shelveset. You can use a private build (also known as a "buddy build") to validate changes to your code before you check it in. By performing a private build of your changes before you check them in, you can reduce the chance that they will break any builds that your team runs regularly (such as the nightly build).

From the MSDN website:

How Private Builds Differ from Public Builds

The results of a completed private build differ from a completed public build in the following ways:

A private build resembles a gated check-in build in that you are building code that includes changes in a shelveset. However, your changes are not automatically checked in for you after a private build as they are after a gated check-in build.

The following build process parameters are presumed to be False and therefore have no effect, regardless of the setting specified in the build definition:

Label Sources

Create Work Item on Failure

Associate Changesets and Work Items

In Build Explorer, the completed build appears next to the following icon:

The completed build is named by using the format Build N where N is a unique integer value. This format differs from that of public builds, which you specify by using the Build Number Format parameter.

For each build definition, you specify a separate (and optionally different) retention policy to limit the number of completed private builds that are stored in the system.

Queue a Private Build

In Team Explorer, click the appropriate team project.
On the Build menu, click Queue New Build.
In the Build definition list, select a build definition.
In the What do you want to build? list, select Latest sources with shelveset.
Perform one of the following steps:
- If you already have a shelveset, type its name into the Shelveset name box, or click the ellipsis (…) button to search for the shelveset.
- If you want to put some pending changes from your workspace into a shelveset and then build those changes, click Create.
Click Queue.

Team Foundation Server Training Kit + TFS vNext

2011-09-07T20:09:00.000+02:00

Microsoft released a new version of the Team Foundation Server Training Kit.

“The Introduction to Team Foundation Server 2010 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs and demos designed to help you get acquainted with the features of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010. This Training Kit contains several demos and hands-on labs that require some additional setup. For instructions, please see the Setup document.”

Download available here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27152.

And while you are looking at the current TFS features, also have a look at the following posts by Brian Harry about what’s coming in TFS vNext:

Unity: Interception Call Handler called multiple times

2011-09-06T18:00:00.000+02:00

For a project we are using Unity 2.0 interception with policy injection to create and manage our NHibernate session. Therefore we created a custom ICallHandler in combination with a HandlerAttribute.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method)]
    public class NHibernateUnitOfWorkHandlerAttribute : HandlerAttribute
    {
        private bool _createTransaction;

        public NHibernateUnitOfWorkHandlerAttribute(bool createTransaction=false)
        {
            _createTransaction = createTransaction;
        }

        public override ICallHandler CreateHandler(IUnityContainer container)
        {
            return new NHibernateUnitOfWorkHandler(Order,_createTransaction);
        }
    }


    public class NHibernateUnitOfWorkHandler : ICallHandler
    {
        public NHibernateUnitOfWorkHandler(int order,bool createTransaction)
        {
            this.Order = order;
            this.CreateTransaction = createTransaction;
        }

        public IMethodReturn Invoke(IMethodInvocation input, GetNextHandlerDelegate getNext)
        {
            IMethodReturn result=null;

            try
            {
                using (var uow = DataFactory.CreateUnitOfWork(TransactionMode.Explicit))
                {
                    if (CreateTransaction)
                    {
                        using (var tx = uow.CreateTransaction())
                        {
                            result = getNext()(input, getNext);
                            if (result.Exception == null)
                                tx.Commit();
                            else
                                tx.Rollback();
                        }
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        result = getNext()(input, getNext);
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                result = getNext()(input, getNext);
                result.Exception = ex;
            }
            return result;
        }

        public int Order { get; set; }
        public bool CreateTransaction { get; set; }
    }

Problem is, that this policy injection call handler executed twice when we expect that it only executes once. It took us some time to figure out what caused the problem. The reason was that the InterceptionExtension was registered twice:

One time explicitly through registration by using the AddNewExtension<T> method on the Unity container.
One time implicitly by registering the EnterpriseLibraryCoreExtension which also adds the Interception extension.

After removing the explicit registration everything worked fine. To further improve the solution we started to use the AddNewExtensionIfNotPresent<T> extension method which is available in the Enterprise Library Shared Assembly.

Windows Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure

2011-09-05T17:48:00.000+02:00

Last week Microsoft released the Workflow Foundation (WF) Activity Pack for Windows Azure. The package is also available via NuGet(Package name=WFAzureActivityPack) and through their CodePlex page.

“The WF Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP 1 is the first community technology preview (CTP) release of Windows Azure activities implementation based on Windows Workflow Foundation in .NET Framework 4.0 (WF4) and Windows Azure SDK. The implementation contains a set of activities based on Windows Azure Storage Service and Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service, which enables developers to easily access these Azure services within a workflow application.”

The current release includes the following Workflow activities:

For Windows Azure Storage Service - Blob

PutBlob creates a new block blob, or replace an existing block blob.
GetBlob downloads the binary content of a blob.
DeleteBlob deletes a blob if it exists.
CopyBlob copies a blob to a destination within the storage account.
ListBlobs enumerates the list of blobs under the specified container or a hierarchical blob folder.

For Windows Azure Storage Service - Table

InsertEntity<T> inserts a new entity into the specified table.
QueryEntities<T> queries entities in a table according to the specified query options.
UpdateEntity<T> updates an existing entity in a table.
DeleteEntity<T> deletes an existing entity in a table using the specified entity object.
DeleteEntity deletes an existing entity in a table using partition and row keys.

For Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service

AddCacheItem adds an object to the cache, or updates an existing object in the cache.
GetCacheItem gets an object from the cache as well as its expiration time.
RemoveCacheItem removes an object from the cache.

TFS: Setting a default value for an iteration

2011-09-02T15:03:00.000+02:00

Last week I was trying to change the work item type definition so it will set a default value in the iteration path. But when I tried importing it back with the TFS Power Tools, I always got the following error:

Error importing work item type definition:

TF26062:Rule '<DEFAULT from ="value" value="283" />' is not supported for the field 'System.IterationId'.

It seems like it is not possible to set a default value for the area or iteration path. In the end I solved this by creating a Work Item Template(part of the TFS Power Tools) with a default value for Iteration Path. I really like this approach because I can change the value in the template when a new sprint starts.

More about Work Item Templates and their usage:

JavaScript: Where to start?

2011-09-01T14:10:00.000+02:00

JavaScript, you love it or hate it. It’s ubiquitous, useful, powerful and at the same time clunky and confusing. But … there is no way around it. Sooner or later you’ll have to (re)learn this language. So you can better start today.

Where to get started?

Forget all those bad JavaScript samples out there, instead have a look at JavaScript Garden, a site created by Ivo Wetzel and Zhang Yi Jiang.

JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language.

Add it to your bookmarks!

JavaScript: The good parts

2011-08-31T13:58:00.000+02:00

If there is one book about JavaScript I recommend reading, it’s JavaScript: The good parts. It was a real eye opener for me and brought back the love for this misused but beautiful language.

I really like the book size, especially if you compare it with the full JavaScript reference book. It makes you wonder how much bad parts there are in JavaScript…

Error message in IIS 7.5: HTTP Error 401.2 – Unauthorized

2011-08-30T20:50:00.000+02:00

IIS is really great. But sometimes you get an error message without any clue how to fix it. When I was testing an ASP.NET MVC website on my Windows 7 64-bit machine, I got the following error:

HTTP Error 401.2 – Unauthorized

You are not authorized to view this page due to invalid authentication headers.

After trying to change almost every possible setting in IIS I finally found the root cause of the issue. My default installation of IIS was running without the Windows Authentication module installed. As my website was expecting windows authentication, it was not unexpected to see this error. After enabling this feature in the list Windows Features, everything worked!

Web.config transform for all config files

2011-08-29T20:03:00.000+02:00

If you did some web development in .NET you probably know the web.config transform feature. This allows you to link config transforms to your web.config. For example if you make a web.debug.config it can contain all the changes you want made specific for your debug environment. Unfortunately this feature is only supported for web.config files out-of-the-box.

So what if you want to transform your app.configs, or any XML file? Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi and Chuck England bring you the solution with this Visual Studio Extension called SlowCheetah XML Transforms.

An overview of the features:

Added tooling to desktop project to create XDT transforms
Ability to transform
- app.config for desktop projects based on build configuration
- any XML file to the output folder based on build configuration
Added tooling to enable previewing XDT transforms
For web projects you can easily transform other XML files during package/publish

You can find more information at the following places:

Windows Azure Pricing Update

2011-08-26T14:45:00.000+02:00

Beginning October 1, 2011, Microsoft will make two pricing related updates to the Windows Azure Platform.

First, the price of extra small compute will be reduced by 20 percent. Additionally, the compute allocations for all of the offers will be simplified to small compute hours. Additionally, current Introductory Special offer customers and customers who sign up for this offer prior to October 1 will receive both 750 extra small compute hours and 750 small compute hours for the months of August and September.

Details about this pricing update can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/08/15/announcing-simplified-data-transfer-billing-meters-and-swappable-compute-instancess.aspx and some extra comments at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-cut-its-low-end-windows-azure-cloud-pricing/10343.