NIMTUG

(Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008) Service Pack 2 Customer Preview Program (CPP)

Damien McGivern — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:58:00 GMT

Mike Nash has announced that the betas for both Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 will be released to the public shortly, however if you have a TechNet or MSDN subscription then you can access them now.

NIMTUG Event "The Best of the PDC" on Dec 1st with Martha Rotter

Damien McGivern — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:32:00 GMT

Didn’t make it to the PDC in Los Angeles this year? Feeling overwhelmed by all the developments and announcements that went on that week? You’re not alone! Come join NIMTUG for rePDC, and you’ll learn all about the best of the best including Azure, Windows 7, Oslo the modelling platform, the new Silverlight Toolkit, Windows Live Framework announcements, OpenID support, VS2010 and .NET 4.0 and much more. We’ll have a look at what’s available now from the new platforms and where and how to get started.

For more details see the event registration page http://nimtug.org/events/61/default.aspx

Cancelled Event - Introduction to Silverlight 2

Damien McGivern — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:57:00 GMT

Unfortunately Jesse Liberty has had to cancel his Silverlight talk that was to be held on 23 Sep.

SQL Server - Index Internals and Fragmentation

Damien McGivern — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:41:00 GMT

Indexes and indexing are huge topics and given half a chance, Kimberly and Paul could talk for days on this stuff! In this session, they've chosen their favorite indexing topics to discuss. The internals section will cover the structures and benefits of various kinds of indexes and show the 2005 feature "INCLUDE" and the 2008 feature "filtered indexes". Fragmentation is often mis-understood and so this section will explain the various forms of fragmentation, how they can occur when a schema or workload is poorly designed, then how to detect and remove fragmentation in a way that causes least disruption to the production workload.

Details

Thursday, 04 Sep 2008, 18:00 to 21:00
Cost: Free
Contact: ndflanagan@o2.ie

Location

The Auditorium in Microsoft Atrium

Block B, Carmanhall Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate
Dublin

Registration

Registration for this event is on an external site. Click on the link below to register.
http://sql.mtug.ie/Events/EventInfo.aspx?ID=2a6f555f-c4f9-40c6-8971-097f46cba063

Who is the customer at Google?

mattohare — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:09:00 GMT

I was pondering this idea when I read a blog:

http://1-800-magic.blogspot.com/2008/06/back-to-microsoft.html

A lot of people go to Google every day. We search for things, check our mail, find something on the map, and the list goes on. But are we customers.

That blog pointed out that everything is free. If there's one thing I learned about the market place is nothing is free for a customer. At best, it's 'included in a price'. To be a customer, value has to go both ways.

So, where is the value we give back to Google. We are not the customers. Users, yes! But not customers. Took me a minute, then I realised that it's the advertisers. Pure and simple. They are the customers.

It's great for Google. Their web properties do not have to be great. Even their search engine has become less effective with all of the defense measures to keep it 'objective.' One quote from the blog (above) is "The culture at Google values "coolness" tremendously, and the quality of service not as much."

Google Maps is "cool" but try getting walking directions, or even drawing them. We are bound by directions of car traffic. The word processor will strip almost all formatting from uploaded documents. Search for some organisations, and their own site will not appear in the results.

With Microsoft, for all their issues, at least I'm still the customer.

ReSharper 4 doesn't like VS 2008 SP1/ .Net 3.5 SP1

Damien McGivern — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:05:00 GMT

I’m a big fan of ReSharper and lately I’ve been installing the nightly builds which has resulted in a little pain with some dodgy builds but overall I’m still allot more productive. Yesterday I noticed that Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta had been released and as I’d no other VS beta software installed (there are issues with it if you do) I went ahead and tried it out. The installer is very small and downloads the required files before continuing the install. I’m not sure how long it took as I went off to play Grand Theft Auto 4 on the PS3 but about 1 hour later I returned to the laptop to discover that the install had failed. I opened up VS and checked the about dialogue – no mention of SP1 so I left it. This morning when I opened up VS I noticed that ReSharper no longer worked. I downloaded the latest nightly build and installed but still ReSharper didn’t load within VS. Checking the Installed Programs I noticed that .Net 3.5 SP1 was listed (I assume the VS SP1 installer installed this but didn’t uninstall after it failed) and once this was uninstalled ReSharper came back to life. Pity as I was looking forward to checking out some of the bug fixes and performance improvements with WCF which SP1 claims to add. I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit but haven't seen any other reports of issues.

Update: 19 May 2008

seems that my install may have failed due to issues with certain KB's see http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/05/15/remove-kb945140-before-installing-visual-studio-2008-sp1-beta.aspx - don't think I'm going to try it again though untill I know R# will work. Some people do seem to have it working (with issues) though http://www.intellij.net/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=275245&tstart=0

SCRUM Agile Methodology Process using Team System

Simon Phillips — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Next Monday (28th April) we have Mike Azocar coming over from the States to talk about Scrum development with Visual Studio Team System. Scrum is a incremental process commonly used with Agile software development.

Mike will be covering Scrum development and the community-based Light weight Scrum Process template for Team System.

This will be a great chance to catch Mike if you can't get down to Galway for DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! event on the 3rd May.

You can register for this free event here

Links

Mike's Blog

Code Project: What is SCRUM?

Wikipedia: Scrum (Development)

Vista Tag Tip

JimboEfx — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I recently solved something that was really annoying me in Vista. I had just started tagging photos when i mis-spelled the tags.

So I right clicked the tag in the left pain and chose to delete (and remove from all pictures).

To my irritation the option was still in the right hand drop down when I started to type a similar tag. No delete button here.

To remove the offending item you need to get into the registry.

- Exit Photo Gallery if it's open.
- In Vista, run Regedit as Administrator
- Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\Library\PreviewPane\LabelAssignment\MRU
- Right-click the MRU key in the left pane and Export it to a .reg file, in case you need to restore the original values.
- Click to select the MRU key in the left pane
- In the right pane, delete the MRUnn value entry or entries you don't want.
- Exit Regedit

VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix Roll-Up Available

Damien McGivern — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:07:00 GMT

Some initial performance glitches with VS 2008 Web Development have been resolved and a patch has been released. Read more about it on Scot Guthrie's blog post http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/08/vs-2008-web-development-hot-fix-roll-up-available.aspx

Direct download https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826 (requires a live account)

Vista SP1 & Windows Server 2008 both RTM

Damien McGivern — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:03:00 GMT

Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 have finally been RTM. For those of you also on the W2K8 beta program you will be able to download from the connect website. Unfortunately Vista SP1 hasn't been made available to beta testers on connect yet.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2008/02/04/windows-server-2008-rtm.aspx

Community Launch Registration Closed!!

Simon Phillips — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:35:36 GMT

We've had to close registration for the Community Launch this Thursday because we've hit the limit on the number of attendees. Well actually, due to a small issue with the code in our events module, we've gone over it, :S.

We're having to email those people who registered last that they are actually on a waiting list and might not be able to get into the event. We're also sending out an email to those people who will be able to get in asking them, if they are not able to make it, then please can they un-register themselves so we can free up some space for people who can.

The Launch kit will only be available to those people who actually turn up for the event.

Remember those who can't make it that we will be holding more detailed events later in the year.

Microsoft are also holding the Official launch event in Dublin on the 11th March and we're hoping that they will also be coming to Belfast sometime in April, though this has yet to be confirmed.

Community Launch Registration Closed!!

Simon Phillips — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:04:59 GMT

The Launch kit will only be available to those people who actually turn up for the event.

Remember those who can't make it that we will be holding more detailed events later in the year.

Microsoft are also holding the Official launch event in Dublin on the 11th March and we're hoping that they will also be coming to Belfast sometime in April, though this has yet to be confirmed.

WCF requires precompiled ASP.Net sites to be updatable

Damien McGivern — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:01:00 GMT

Today I was testing a deployment ASP.Net site build that I added some WCF services to. All other non deployment builds passed all testing so I was stumped when testing one of the services I got the following error.

Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the 
current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the 
exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key]
   System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument argument) +51
   System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.FindEntry(TKey key) +5295964
   System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.TryGetValue(TKey key, TValue& value) +20
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetTransportSettings(String virtualPath) +154
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetAccessSslFlags(String virtualPath) +9
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHostedTransportConfiguration.GetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath) +113
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedTransportConfigurationManager.InternalGetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath) +146
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.CreateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) +162
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) +46
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath) +738

[ServiceActivationException: The service '/demo2/services/memberservice.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation.  The exception message is: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key.]
   System.ServiceModel.AsyncResult.End(IAsyncResult result) +7571873
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.End(IAsyncResult result) +4504815
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.ExecuteSynchronous(HttpApplication context, Boolean flowContext) +288
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule.ProcessRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) +273
   System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +80
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +177

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433

The only difference with the deployment build is that the website is precompiled and the assemblies merged. Then I checked the even log and noticed that for every request of memberservice.svc the following two errors occurred.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    System.ServiceModel 3.0.0.0
Event Category:    WebHost
Event ID:    3
Date:        30/01/2008
Time:        11:30:35
User:        NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Computer:    ELGRECO
Description:
WebHost failed to process a request.
Sender Information: System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment+HostingManager/30607723
Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service '/demo2/services/memberservice.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key. ---> System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument argument)
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.FindEntry(TKey key)
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.TryGetValue(TKey key, TValue& value)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetTransportSettings(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetAccessSslFlags(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHostedTransportConfiguration.GetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedTransportConfigurationManager.InternalGetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.CreateService(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.EnsureServiceAvailableFast(String relativeVirtualPath)
Process Name: w3wp
Process ID: 708

Followed by:

Event Type:   Error
Event Source:   System.ServiceModel 3.0.0.0
Event Category:   WebHost
Event ID:   3
Date:       30/01/2008
Time:       11:30:35
User:       NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Computer:   ELGRECO
Description:
WebHost failed to process a request.
Sender Information: System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult/49972132
Exception: System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service '/demo2/services/memberservice.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key. ---> System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument argument)
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.FindEntry(TKey key)
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.TryGetValue(TKey key, TValue& value)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetTransportSettings(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.MetabaseSettingsIis.GetAccessSslFlags(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHostedTransportConfiguration.GetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedTransportConfigurationManager.InternalGetBaseAddresses(String virtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.CreateService(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.ServiceModel.AsyncResult.End[TAsyncResult](IAsyncResult result)
   at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.End(IAsyncResult result)
Process Name: w3wp
Process ID: 708

After a bit of searching I found the following post http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1150859&SiteID=1 which states that WCF hosted in a precompiled ASP.Net site requires the site to be updatable. So adding the -u switch to our build scrip which calls aspnet_compiler solved the problem.

Update - Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

Simon Phillips — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:07:50 GMT

We'll like to confirm some of the details about this Thursdays event.

Schedule

The schedule will be as follows:

1:30 – 2:00 Registration

2:00 – 2:05 Intro

2:05 – 3:05 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 1) – Dave Northey

3.15 – 4:00 Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Part 2) – Dave Northey

4:00 – 4:15 Coffee Break

4:15 – 5:30 Business Intelligence Highlights of SQL Server 2008 – Bob Duffy

5:30 – 6:15 Coffee Break

6:15 – 7:30 Visual Studio 2008 Highlights – Ronan Geraghty

7:30 – 8:00 Highlights of SQL Server 2008 for developers – Ronan Geraghty

From 8:00 Reception

Launch Kit

The following products will be made available to all Community Launch attendees.

Vista Ultimate Edition with SP1 + subscription to OneCare.
Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition.
SQL Server 2008 CTP 5.0 plus a voucher for the full release of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition when available later in the year.
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (64 + 32bit) for internal testing & evaluation only.

Unfortunately, the kits won’t be available on the day of the community launch – however, they will be posted out as soon as they become available. We’ll be mailing attendees in order to get postal addresses after the event. So please be sure to use an email address that you check frequently!

Links

2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events

Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

SQL Server Reporting Services - Opening up hyperlink in a new window

Simon Phillips — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:17:00 GMT

By default if you create a navigation link in Reporting Services it opens the link in the same window. In the majority of cases this is fine as you usually use these for navigating to bookmarks within the same report or other reports. However there are many times that you would want to open the link in a new window, say opening up a customers site. The problem with the default behaviour is that it will open in the same window and you will loose the report being shown. You can hit the back button on the browser but this, unless you're using execution or snap-shot cache, will re-run the report.

If your report is being rendered as a web page you can modify your Navigation expression to use the JavaScript function window.open.

e.g.

="j avascript:void(window.open('{url}','_blank'));"

Wrapping the window.open function with a void is good practice as tells the browser not to expect anything back from from the JavaScript.

You could also extend this to use a name window or even specify the dimension of the window. If you need help on windows.open the head over to these web sites

One word of warning that these links will only work with the report being rendered in HTML,if you render in PDF or Excel then you really need to keep the links as a url without the JavaScript. At this time I haven't worked out how to determine, programmatically, the rendering option.

Windows Mobile Briefing 2008

Simon Phillips — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:05:49 GMT

When: 21 February 2008
Welcome Time: 10:00am

Microsoft EPDC2 Auditorium

South County Business Park
Leopardstown Dublin D18
Ireland

Microsoft invites you to join them for the Windows Mobile Developer Briefing 2008

“A day of Windows Mobile Discovery”

The Microsoft Mobility Communication Business group is pleased to invite you to a day of Windows Mobile discovery! Attend this event to accelerate your ability to develop applications for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. Learn about the platform and tools that enable you to build powerful and rich applications - rapidly and effectively. Prior experience is not necessary as we will take you from step 1 and explore the many technologies you can leverage to make the next killer mobile solution!

Last year’s event was a huge success, visiting 13 countries around Europe including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Poland, Portugal and Spain to an audience of 2,400 people. Thanks to the success of the 2007 events, this year the tour will run again to visit 15 countries across EMEA. Added to this, an impressive line-up of speakers has already been confirmed.

As a valued Microsoft developer, the Microsoft Mobility Communication Business Group is pleased to invite you to attend this exclusive event.

OVERVIEW: The appetite for information anywhere, at any time, and on any device is growing. Consumers are increasingly relying on their devices for information, entertainment and keeping in touch. Enterprises are mobilizing solutions to increase productivity, cut costs and enable new capabilities. If you are interested to learn how the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform helps developers deliver effective solutions fast, this unique demo-packed technology day will show you how. You will also see many code samples, tips and tricks!

Why you should come to this exclusive event…

This is a completely FREE full-day event to answer your questions and help you improve the way you work with your Microsoft software. Join us for insights, tips, and real-world examples of what Windows Mobile solutions can do for you. At this event there will be many opportunities for you to network with your peers and to have your technology and business questions answered by the Microsoft team. We hope to see you there!

Agenda:

10:00 – 10:30 Registration

10:30 – 12:00 Session 1 – Windows Mobile in Practice

This first session sets the scene for the day and kicks off with a look at and demos of the brand new Visual Studio 2008 development environment which promises even better integration and powerful new features for device developers. The session then takes a realistic scenario and shows how Windows Mobile 6 and the upcoming .NET Compact Framework 3.5 can be leveraged to provide a compelling Proof-of-Concept in very few lines of code. See a wide variety of features being demonstrated, from location awareness to making phone calls programmatically. The session will provide an understanding of how everything can be tied together in an end-to-end solution.

12:00 – 13:00 Networking Lunch

13:00 – 14:15 Session 2 - It's the Business

Enterprise solutions are increasingly being mobilized for the new technically-savvy workforce. However, these solutions need industry-strength quality and features that will support the complex requirements these organizations have. This session will begin by looking at SQL Server Compact Edition, the sophisticated data storage solution that allows data synchronization with back-end databases. We then show how you can leverage industry design patterns and application blocks to provide a lower-risk, tested approach to solve common problems. Finally, a quick review of the Microsoft Dynamics mobile offerings will round off the options available for enterprise use.

14:15 – 14:30 Summary, Q&A, close

Click here to register or find out more!

Cryptic error messges in WCF?

Damien McGivern — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:25:00 GMT

I've recently started working with WCF on a project at work, I've read about it and played about with it but never got into any depth with it before now. So far it's going well except for a few cryptic errors I was getting when running my unit tests for a patictular service. The error in was:

Error    1    TestCase 'CPD.Services.Test.CourseTest.Test10'
failed: System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException : An error occurred while receiving the HTTP response to https://lap001.office.aurion.co.uk/cpdengage/Services/CourseService.svc. This could be due to the service endpoint binding not using the HTTP protocol. This could also be due to an HTTP request context being aborted by the server (possibly due to the service shutting down). See server logs for more details.
----> System.Net.WebException : The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive.
----> System.IO.IOException : Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
----> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException : An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

Server stack trace:
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelUtilities.ProcessGetResponseWebException(WebException webException, HttpWebRequest request, HttpAbortReason abortReason)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelFactory.HttpRequestChannel.HttpChannelRequest.WaitForReply(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.RequestChannel.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SecurityChannelFactory`1.SecurityRequestChannel.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.RequestChannelBinder.Request(Message message, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs, TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.InvokeService(IMethodCallMessage methodCall, ProxyOperationRuntime operation)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.Invoke(IMessage message)

Exception rethrown at [0]:
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
   at CPD.Services.Test.CourseServiceReference.CourseService.GetCourseHeader()
   at CPD.Services.Test.CourseServiceReference.CourseServiceClient.GetCourseHeader() in c:\users\damien.mcgivern\documents\dev\aurion\cpdengage\src\cpd.services.test\service references\courseservicereference\reference.cs:line 1027
   at CPD.Services.Test.CourseTest.Test10() in C:\Users\damien.mcgivern\Documents\dev\aurion\cpdengage\src\CPD.Services.Test\CourseTest.cs:line 157
--WebException
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelFactory.HttpRequestChannel.HttpChannelRequest.WaitForReply(TimeSpan timeout)
--IOException
   at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
   at System.Net.FixedSizeReader.ReadPacket(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
   at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartFrameHeader(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security._SslStream.StartReading(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security._SslStream.ProcessRead(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.TlsStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
   at System.Net.PooledStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
   at System.Net.Connection.SyncRead(HttpWebRequest request, Boolean userRetrievedStream, Boolean probeRead)
--SocketException
   at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Receive(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags socketFlags)
   at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)    c:\users\damien.mcgivern\documents\dev\aurion\cpdengage\src\cpd.services.test\service references\courseservicereference\reference.cs    1027

It was the first method that used a generic collection and at first I thought this may be to fault but testing other generic collections proved that I was using them correctly (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.serialization.collectiondatacontractattribute.aspx)

But just to make sure I wrote a test method that only returned the type that was being used for the generic collection items, and indeed it still failed with the same error.

This got me thinking that I must have defined the DataContract or DataMember attributes for the object incorrectly, going through each of them I noticed the following code:

[DataMember(IsRequired = true, EmitDefaultValue = false, Order = 5)]
public bool IsEnabled

The value for IsEnabled was always false in the test data, when I set this to true the error never happened and then changing the attributes IsRequired to false stopped the error altogether. Checking the code I found a few other value types that had IsRequired set to true these hadn't and so far no more errors. So setting a value type DataMember to true will cause thie error if the value is the value types default value, bool = false, int = 0 etc.

What bugs me is that this seems to be a serialisation issue, in that the object doesn't match the requirements defined in the DataContract, however the error message doesn't seem to indicate this at all.

Updated 24 June 2008: also see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa347792.aspx#Mtps_DropDownFilterText - states that SerializationException is thrown. Although the exception details don't make it down to the client.

RunAs Radio - Podcast for ITPros

Simon Phillips — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:40:57 GMT

As some of you know I listen to a few technical podcasts. I've just come across RunAs Radio, from the people who bring you .NET Rocks! and Hansel minutes. Also think that Martin also mentioned this on the plane back home from TechEd this year.

RunAs radio is an audio podcast for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products.

I know that I'm a little bit behind the time as the shows started on the 11th April 07, but sometimes it takes a bit of time for me to filter through the mass of information that bombards me every hour of the day and I'm sure I'm not the only one ;).

Head on over to the site (http://www.runasradio.com) and choose to download the format of your choice (mp3, wma or aac) or better still subscribe one of the show feeds using your favourite podcast application. You can also find the show in the podcast directory in iTunes.

How do I - Get Ticks and Crosses in an Excel Table?

Simon Phillips — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:57:33 GMT

There are a few ways to get ticks and crosses in cells in Excel, the old way of doing this was to use a font, like the Wingdings, in the cell format. The only problem with this method, was that it didn't always format correctly, you had to remember the character which the corresponds to the tick and cross and if you used the spreadsheet as a data source then you would have 'strange data' in the column.

The better way of doing this in Excel 2007 is to use Conditional Formatting.

If we say that want to format a boolean, true / false column to use ticks and crosses. Firstly ensure that you use 1 for true i.e. where you want a tick and 0 for false.

Select the column and Select from the Home tab on the Excel ribbon bar, Conditional Formatting / Icon Sets and choose one of the 3 set tick sets.

What you will get is a tick and a cross next to the number.

What we now want to do is to remove the number so we are just left wit the icon.

Select the Conditional Formatting menu again and from this menu select Manage Rules...

Select the Icon set and click on Edit Rule

At the bottom of the Edit Formatting Rule dialog you will see a check box called Show Icon Only, tick this control and confirm this dialog and the rules manager dialog.

What you are then left with is just the icons :)

How do I...

Simon Phillips — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:56:28 GMT

I've got a series of posts at work that I keep when clients, colleagues, friends or relatives ask me any questions about IT. It could be on anything from programming, use of application such as office. I thought that I cross-post them to NIMTUG as well for no other reason than then I'm saving them somewhere.

2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events

Simon Phillips — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:13:36 GMT

I've just blogged details about the up and coming Belfast Community Launch for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, as well as some details about the official Microsoft Launch in Belfast later in the year and details about a Microsoft event on deploying Vista and Office 2007.

2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events

2008 is going to be a busy year!

Simon Phillips — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:09:17 GMT

With the holidays quickly becoming a dim and distance memory and all we're left with is our belts being having to be fastened on the next notch up, it's time to get down to the technology.

As I am sure you all know that this year around March / April Microsoft will be running official launch events for this years 3 big new releases; Visual Studio 2008 along with .NET Framework 3.5, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 (codename Longhorn).

Belfast should be chuffed because on the 8th April Microsoft will be bringing the launch machine to Belfast. Keep an eye here at NIMTUG and we'll keep you posted with all the details as soon as we get them.

In the mean time to get you're all in the mood we're running with Microsoft Ireland a Community Launch Event on the 31st Jan 2008 at the Radisson SAS Hotel Belfast in the Gasworks site.

We're planning on started at 2pm and running it through to about 8:30pm, this we hope will mean that we can get a larger audience as you will not have to take the whole day off. The event will be targeting both IT Professional and Developers, though we will be running the content focused on IT Pros with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence from 2-5pm and then for the evening sessions will be more developer orientated. Though if you are like me then you will probably get a lot out of all the sessions.

I'm not promising that these sessions will be deep and technical, I am sure that we will be covering these of the new products and features in more details later in the year in 'normal' NIMTUG talks, but the launch will give you all a chance to at least get a understanding on all the new features.

You can register for the event on the NIMTUG site here.

Here are a list of the top 5 features in each product as listed in the January Edition of the TechNet UK magazine.

Visual Studio 2008

Multi-targeting - using Visual Studio 2008 you can create applications that will target .NET versions 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 so no more switch between different versions of Visual Studio for support and development of older applications.
Language Integrated Query (LINQ) - LINQ simplifies the way that you connect and query to data sources, enabling you to use the same syntax to query any data source.
Office Development - New improved Visual Studio Tools for Office, providing support to create Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications and add-ins. Also improved experience in created applications which use SharePoint technology
Web development - Improved AJAX support, New data controls and improved WSIWG editor and CSS support within the IDE.
.NET 3.0 / 3.5 development. Better support in the IDE for developing application using WPF and WCF framework.

SQL Server 2008

Reporting - New Reporting designer as well as improved reporting visualisations.
Location intelligence - In built logic to ask questions such as 'Show me customers more than 50 miles from my warehouse'.
Unstructured Data - SQL Server is now able to store any type of instructed data above the previous file size limit of 2Gb.
Performance - New performance governor, allows a more granular control on how much resources a specific application uses.
Auditing - New inbuilt audit abilities enabled at the server or database, allows logs to be written to either a log file or application log.

Windows Server 2008

Read-only Domain Controllers (RODC) - Useful for branch offices, where you are wanting a local DC that branch office users can authenticate quickly against. Without having a full DC, which might be a security risk.
Network Access Protection (NAP) - Prevents clients that do not meet a level of security features (Firewall, Anti Virus etc) from accessing the network.
Terminal Services - The ability for Terminal Services to present a specific application rather than the whole desktop as well as the ability to tunnel RDP traffic over HTTP.
Task automation - The inclusion of PowerShell and a new scheduling engine.
Virtualisation - Windows Server 2008 contains Hyper-V, Hypervisor-based virtualisation with full 64-bit support for the host and guests.

Also Microsoft TechNet Ireland are bringing a "Deploying Windows Vista and Office 2007" event to Belfast on the 22nd January 2008.

For organisations considering the deployment of either Windows Vista or the 2007 Office system - or both, this interactive training session has been specially designed for Technical decision makers, IT implementers and Infrastructure architects, to show how straight-forward deploying these technologies can be.

The session will update participants on the proven business, management and technical benefits provided by both technologies, will address the issue of application compatibility with Windows Vista, and demonstrate how best to deploy in organisations of all sizes.

More details and registration information can be found on the Microsoft Event site at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032364100&Culture=en-IE

More agile .NET developments on the way.

paulanthony — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:16:00 GMT

Looks like Microsoft is cooking something up - developing Model View Controller based architecture support for ASP.NET. Scott Guthrie gave a presentation of how his team are working on the implementation at a recent conference in Texas.

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

It'll be interesting to see whether bits of the Castleproject get rewritten to take advantage of native support. It already offers MVC capabilities at present, as well as integration with NVelocity which in my opinion is the best template engine for .NET.

http://www.castleproject.org

Microsoft Unified Communication Launch - Belfast

Simon Phillips — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:44:02 GMT

This week, Microsoft is holding it's launch event for it's Unified Communication solution using Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server 2007 in Belfast.

What is Unified Communications?

"Unified Communications bridge the gap between telephony and computing to delivery real-time messaging, voice and conferencing to the desktop environment."

The Belfast event will be held on the 25th Oct 2007 09:00 to 16:00 at the Radisson Hotel on the Gasworks site in centre of town.

The event is free and you can register on the Microsoft Event site here.

A lap around Visual studio 2008 and .NET 3.5

Damien McGivern — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:33:00 GMT

Visual studio 2008 and .net 3.5 will be out shortly, and this session will showcase some of the forthcoming IDE improvements such as JavaScript Intellisense & improved debugging, the new HTML editor, CSS style management and .net version targeting, many of which can be used with your existing asp.net 2.0 projects. In addition we'll take a quick look at a number of language enhancements such as LINQ, lambda expressions, extension methods and automatic properties, as well as the new ListView, DataPager and LinqDatasource controls.

http://nimtug.org/events/42/default.aspx

Speaker: Cathal Connolly

Cathal works as a Principal Software Engineer for Liberty Information Technology based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Cathal has previously worked for IT companies in the UK, US and Austria, developing both Web and Client/Server applications using Microsoft technologies. His current focus is the development of secure Banking applications and bespoke Smart Client .net products. In his "free" time, Cathal is a Core-team member and trustee of the popular opensource asp.net portal product, Dotnetnuke (www.dotnetnuke.com).

http://blog.developers.ie/cconnolly/Default.aspx

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SQL Server - Index Internals and Fragmentation

Details

Location

Registration

Who is the customer at Google?

ReSharper 4 doesn't like VS 2008 SP1/ .Net 3.5 SP1

SCRUM Agile Methodology Process using Team System

Vista Tag Tip

VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix Roll-Up Available

Vista SP1 & Windows Server 2008 both RTM

Community Launch Registration Closed!!

Community Launch Registration Closed!!

WCF requires precompiled ASP.Net sites to be updatable

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Update - Community Launch of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

SQL Server Reporting Services - Opening up hyperlink in a new window

Windows Mobile Briefing 2008

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RunAs Radio - Podcast for ITPros

How do I - Get Ticks and Crosses in an Excel Table?

How do I...

2008 is going to be a busy year! - Events

2008 is going to be a busy year!

More agile .NET developments on the way.

Microsoft Unified Communication Launch - Belfast

A lap around Visual studio 2008 and .NET 3.5

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