February 2005 - Posts
Following are the interesting articles which I read in the last two weeks on whidbey and yukon.
Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer
In my current project we are using VS.NET 2005 class designer for our class design. This is one of the cool feature I liked in VS.NET 2005. This article will gives you an introduction to this tool. After reading this article, i was able to quickly use this tool for my class design
Query Notification in ADO.NET 2.0
SQL Dependency caching in yukon works based on push/notification methodology when compared to SQL 2000 SQL dependency caching which works based on pull methodology. This article explains how exactly SQL dependency caching works in yukon.
System.Transactions in ADO.NET 2.0
Whidbey comes with a framework for implementing distributed transaction using new namespace system.transaction. So no more serviced components only for implementing transaction...This article neatly explains about how it works and how we need to use this feature in our distributed applications.
All the articles listed above are must read articles...
Florida researchers found in their study, windows web server is more secure than a similarly set-up linux server. They compared Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Server 3 running databases, scripting engines and Web servers. Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk — the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued. On average, the Windows setup had just over 30 days of risk versus 71 days for the Red Hat setup, their study found.
More details at source....
Lots of comments about this study at Slashdot.
This series of presentations by Jeff Prosise of Wintellect introduces you to many of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0. Features that are covered in his presentations are,
- Introduction to web forms
- State Management
- Security
- Master pages and site navigation
- Data Access
- Application Infrastructure
I am going to start with Application Infrastructure presentation...
Today I installed a tool “Tweak UI” of PowerToys in my machine. This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. You can download it from here.
First menu in this tool provides few tips on Windows XP. I found some of the tips in that list were new to me; here I am listing those tips which might be new to you also..
- To arrange two windows side-by-side, switch to the first window, then hold the Control key while right-clicking the taskbar button of the second window. Select "Tile Vertically".
- Hold down the shift key in the shutdown dialog to change "Stand By" to "Hibernate". Or just press H to hibernate instantly. You can even use the Power Control Panel to configure your power button to hibernate.
- You can rename multiple files all at once: Select a group of files, right-click the first file, and select "Rename". Type in a name for the first file, and the rest will follow.
- If you create a file called Folder.jpg, that image will be used as the thumbnail for the folder. What's more, that image will also be used as the album art in Windows Media Player for all media files in that folder.
- To close several windows at once, hold down the Control key while clicking on the taskbar buttons of each window. Once you have selected all the windows you want to close, right-click the last button you selected and pick "Close Group".
- In Internet Explorer, type Ctrl+D to add the current page to your Favorites.
- This and many more keyboard shortcuts can be found by going to Internet Explorer, clicking the Help menu, then selecting Contents and Index. From the table of contents, open Accessibility and click "Using Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts".
- In some applications (such as Internet Explorer), holding the Control key while turning the mouse wheel will change the font size.
Last week I installed Foundation Server Dec CTP, it went very smoothly when compared to its previous release. During installation I got only one error that too because of memory problems. I tried to install foundation server in my desktop with around 400mb memory for app tier and data tier, I got few timeout errors like this;
Event Description: Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.Pcw.Rosetta" failed with error: "Failed to retrieve projects from the report server"
Exception Type: Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.ELead.ProjectCreationNew.RosettaInitializationException
Exception Message: Failed to retrieve projects from the report server
InnerException:
Exception Type: System.Net.WebException
Exception Message: The operation has timed-out.
WebException: Status : Timeout
Then I guessed this might be due to memory problems, and then I moved my virtual machines to server where I could allocate 1 GB memory for both data tier and app tier. It installed very smoothly.
You should take care of following things while re-installing foundation server in same machine after any error
1. Uninstall Adam Instance
2. Restart app tier after Adam uninstall
3. Uninstall Data tier and restart Data Tier. [Uninstall of Data tier works perfectly]
Though foundation server installation went through smoothly, I got following errors when I tried to create portfolio project.
1. Currituck failed error during portfolio project creation like this,
Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.Pcw.currituck" failed with error
"Access Denied: Not a system user"
This is a known bug in this release. Reason and Solution for this problem is explained in my another blog,
2. SccTask failed error during portfolio project creation like this,
Task "Scc.SccTask" failed
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException
The added or subtracted value results in an unrepresentable DateTime
This is also a known bug. Workaround for this problem is explained in Team system blog.
When you create portfolio project in Team System Foundation Server, you might get the following error
Event Description: Initialization for plugin "Microsoft.Pcw.currituck" failed with error: "Access Denied: Not a system user"
Exception Type: Microsoft.VisualStudio.Currituck.Client.NotASystemUserException
Exception Message: Access Denied: Not a system user
This is a known issue in DEC CTP and it is mentioned in Foundation Server Team Blog. This error will come if you have user principal name different from email address of the user in active directory. This error has come in Beta 1 refresh also, I have blogged about it here..
I also faced this problem when i installed Foundation Server Dec CTP. I solved this problem using following workaround. User information for team system is stored in ADObjects table in Currituck database. So if you update this table to have email address alias name to be same as user principal name. This problem will be solved. To do this, run the following script in currituck database in foundation database server.
Update ADObjects set mailnickname = SamAccountName where Domainname like '<YourDomainName>'
GO
ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[NewTrigger_1] ON [dbo].[ADObjects] WITH EXECUTE AS CALLER AFTER INSERT, UPDATE AS
Update ADObjects set mailnickname = SamAccountName where Domainname like '<YourDomainName>'
Note: Since ADObjects table is synched with Active directory by a Currituck service, this table values will keep changing. therefore you need to create trigger to update this table when there is a change in this table.