Prairie Dev Con 2010 Announcement

In central Canada we’re not treated to too many events where developers can meet en masse and be exposed to a wide array of topics, in streams that are right in-line with what we’re doing on a day-to-day basis.

Enter Prairie Dev Con 2010, which will be in Regina this year on June 2 & 3.

Winnipeg UG leader and accomplished presenter D’Arcy Lussier is chairing the event and it looks to be a solid couple of days of learning.

The tracks scheduled are as follows:

• Web/Rich Internet Applications
• Development Fundamentals
• Application Lifecycle Management
• Database/Business Intelligence

Stay tuned for more information at the following locations:

• Blog: http://www.prairiedevcon.com/blog/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/PrairieDevCon
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prairie-Developer-Conference/270303997999

See you all there!

SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified

After adding a ton of new features in this week’s build I was totally pumped up to get my bits onto the test server.  I published the web application hit my browser and BLAMO!:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)

Lame!

As a background, I am using Visual Studio 2010 LCTP with SQL Server Express 2008.  The client is written in ASP.NET with the MVC Framework.

The Hunt Begins

I assumed that there must have been some kind of error in my connection string.  I chased that down and there was absolutely nothing different.  In fact, I don’t even publish my web.config on new builds when I’m deploying.

No problem with the configuration strings, the web.config is unmodified.  I logged into the SQL Server, and sure enough it was at the unexpected shutdown prompt.  I checked with our network admins and they (no so) graciously recycled the VMs last night.  So it was some kind of trouble with that, right?

I go in and had to manually start the SQL Browser service.  Still haven’t figured out why it keeps resetting to disabled.

That out of the way, I hit the web browser again and get the same error.

Bing me some Google…

Here’s what I already knew to be true:

• Firewall was not blocking and appropriate ports were open.
• SQL Server was configured to accept remote connections.
• The instance name was right in my web.config file.
• I could ping the SQL Server from the IIS Server and vice versa.

I was running out of things I knew how to do, so I resorted to Binging and Googling until I found something new to try.

Here are some pages I worked through to find settings and ensure things were configured as expected:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2007/05/13/sql-network-interfaces-error-26-error-locating-server-instance-specified.aspx
• http://aquesthosting.com/sqlerror26
• http://fellowdeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/03/sql-network-interfaces-error-26-error.html
• http://www.linglom.com/2009/03/28/enable-remote-connection-on-sql-server-2008-express/

…and of course the MSDN docs on prepping an SQL 2008 box for remote access.  None of these lists helped me out.

Finally a Solution

Over my lunch hour a light came on inside my head. 

Shoot!

Remember those new features I added?  Yeah, well one of them had a LINQ to SQL file in it that was using a hard-coded connection string.

I went back to the browser and looked at the error more closely.  This let me trace down the code where the error was happening. 

I would like to make clear that this wasn’t my first choice as the code was executing locally and previous builds worked fine in this environment.  “Not looking at the error” is a strategy I might have to revisit in subsequent debug sessions. Or not.

I found two instances where, rather than passing in the connection string from my web.config file, I was using the default constructor which was trying to access a database that didn’t exist on the test server.

Lesson learned: stick to best practices and use a connection string when initializing data contexts!

Hope this helps someone else.

Updating the Stack

Another reason you should definitely participate in the beta cycle of the software you use: early access to builds.

Participating in a beta doesn’t mean downloading and installing the software.  It doesn’t even mean that, plus using it.  If you’re going to participate, instead of just observe, you need to get your hands dirty.

Go into the forums.  Blog about issues. Read the developer posts on their respective blogs.  Watch the videos. Read the documentation.  You can’t possibly do all that and not run into something you have a question about.

I had a few.  Actually, more than a few.  So I asked. Microsoft responded and the feedback loop began.  I’ve submitted multiple minidumps and perf logs to the team, logged defects and got involved in the forums as best I could.

Today, I get this:

Woohoo!  New bits!  The download link actually takes me to the January LCTP 3 build, released earlier this week.

Looking forward to the performance updates…

Mac Mini versus Dell Zino HD

This is based off the current specs in January 2010 with CDN pricing.

I am – for the life of me – trying to figure out where the value is in the Mac Mini.  Is it only in the subtle shade of gray on the case?

I shouldn’t be too harsh.  In fact, the the Mac Mini server edition actually looks pretty decent as a small office server (you’d want to use it with a time machine plus off-site backup) but for the entry-level PC it leaves me scratching my head, especially when you consider Dell’s Zino HD.

You’re not going to win any performance awards with either one.  These are not power-user machines designed for the world elite gamers.  These are surfing machines, meant for browsing the web, checking email and watching TV and movies.

The Mac Mini

By default the Mac Mini ships with no keyboard and no mouse.  If you get it up to a respectable sized hard drive (500Gb) and add the ability to type and move the cursor you’re over $1100.

The unit itself sports a decent processor and 4Gb Ram if you go with the larger option available on the site. 

I have a Mac Mini on my desktop at the office, used for compatibility testing on the customer portal web site and a couple experimental applications we’re working on for the iPhone (our entire company revolves around GPS locations).

It does what it is designed to do and is easy to set up.  I’ve had no problems with this machine.

Dell Inspiron Zino HD

By all accounts, these are well-regarded machines that are growing in popularity.  It makes it real easy to leave one of these in the living room attached to your high def display at it’s price point.

With the medium level configuration you get a keyboard and mouse (wow!), 4Gb RAM, a 640Gb hard drive and an upgrade on the wireless card gives you all the latest flavours of WiFi.

The latest iteration comes with Windows 7 Home Premium and clocks in at $598 configured as above.

Comparing the Two: Mac Mini vs. the Dell Zino HD

I started this as a comparison for a friend who asked me about buying a second, small computer to surf, chat and email in the living room, but also wanted to throw movies and pictures on the box.  He was considering a Mac Mini to do the job but suspected the price was a little steep for what he needed.

Now I’m not trying to be too trite here, but the fact is that there isn’t much to compare.  A 1Ghz processor is more than fast enough to browse the web and when properly equipped with a good, HD-video-compressing video card, there is no need for any more juice in the processor to watch videos.

Both video cards hold up fairly well for this application, and while the the Mac Mini processor score is 2x that of the Zino HD, my argument is that the processor in the Zino is already overkill.  Anyone ever hear of a netbook?

So, they both have the juice they need, and the graphics required for a little HD lovin’ on the TV set.  You can add options to level the playing field on both sides for the shortcomings (peripherals, RAM and HDD for the Mini, wireless for the Zino).  No one yet has been able to show to me how Mac OS is better than Windows 7.

They are both more than capable at surfing the web, sending email and watching video.  They are both dumb-as-nails-simple to set up.  Both look pretty sharp (I actually prefer the black Zino to the Mac Mini, the others remind me of iMacs when they first came out with the colors).

All we’re left with is the price.

Mac Mini: $1,107

Dell Zino HD: $598

And I thought there was no such thing as the “Apple Tax”.  For the $500 difference you could buy two Netbooks, lose one and still be further ahead.

Visual Studio 2010 – Code Browsing Tip

Thanks to Brittany on the Visual Studio Editor team (blog here) for a great tip on moving through code.  There are some great tips in there on the theme of ‘Navigating Code’. Some points are new, some we’ve been able to chew on for the last few versions of the IDE.

I’ve already mentioned symbol highlighting in a previous post.  This is where you see all instances of a symbol when your caret is in the symbol:

Here’s the tip part: you can use CTRL+Shift+Up/Down Arrows to navigate between the highlighted texts.

Extension Opportunity

There are a couple of ways that these features could be even more useful and allow even easier movement between symbols, token use and files.

I’ve posted before on my desired ability to navigate through code easier using a thumbnail view of the code.  If that thumbnail were in a persistent view like other tool windows you’d also be able to see the highlights as you moved from symbol to symbol.

Also, and I would have to think through this more, but it might be useful to be able to move not just through the current file when navigating, but into other files as well.  The current behaviour is to loop back to the beginning of the current file. 

We’re in WPF, though, right?  Let’s do some cool stuff.  First, give me an adorner of sorts when I activate the CTRL+Shirt+Arrow symbol browsing, like in Office 2010’s copy/paste feature or the CTRL+. to help with the namespace/object binding in Visual Studio.  Show me the count of uses, give me a link to the definition and make it keyboard accessible.  Have a button that will pull up the find symbol results.

Opportunity Insanity

I am a huge supporter of bringing things into context and providing users the highest level of manoeuvrability possible in their work.

If you’re on the customer, you should see invoices.  Click on an invoice to see products, click on a product to see orders.  Click on an order and see company. Click on a company and see contacts.  Click on a contact and see the invoices their name is tied to.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

As far as I can tell, the IDE team has opened a Pandora’s Box of sorts: by tying into one of the most advanced, extensible UX frameworks we’ve seen as developers (that being WPF), they’ve now got years of development to do with the innovative features that have not yet been developed.

Lazy-Loading Web Page Components with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery

I am currently working in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
with .NET Framework version 4.0 Beta 2.

Here’s the scenario: you want a web page to return to the end user and render out as fast as possible, but you have some long-running parts to your page.  You’d like to get the page loading instantly, displaying a “please wait” message while you load the components.  If you program on ASP.NET, you’re in luck.

It seriously takes about 4 minutes to get yourself some fancy, fast, Ajax-enabled web pages, complete with lazy-loading sections that would typically slow down the page load for the end user.  With jQuery integration and support in Visual Studio 2010, master pages and the MVC Framework you are, in fact, already there without (maybe) knowing it.

Here’s everything you need to get to asynchronous web client bliss.

First Things First

Create a new project in Visual Studio 2010 (not a new web site).  Go the the ‘Web’ category of projects and select the 2.0 version of MVC for ASP.NET.

Add Script Support

Navigate to the Site.Master code file in the project.  It will be located under the Views\Shared folder.  Double-click to open it.

Next, expand the Scripts folder in Solution Explorer.  Drag the jquery-1.3.2.js file to the <head> section of Site.Master.

Blamo! jQuery support!

Rig up the Controller

In MVC, controllers contain the code that decides which view, or part of a view, is returned.  Open up the HomeController.cs file and add two new methods.  Both will be return type PartialViewResult, one named Peek and one named Poke.  Set both of them to sleep the thread for 3 seconds, then return a PartailView of the same name.  It should look like this:

The sleeping is just so that we can emulate some long-running function.  Imagine you’re dynamically building an image, or placing a reservation on a remote system.  In fact, do whatever you like, it’s your three seconds! ;o)

Sweet.  Controller’s all set.

“Make Mine an Easy View”

Sure, no worries.  Right-click on the methods in the controller that you just created and click on “Add View…”.  This will start a wizard to do some auto-generation for you.

Now, there’s a bunch of cool stuff in here, like strongly-typed views and whatnot, but we’re just going to make sure we have the partial view creation checked off and click on Add.  This creates the view for us that we need in the Views\Home folder.

Sweet.

All that’s left are some goofy comments in our ascx’s to try to make the readers laugh.  But first…

A Side Note…

…that’s entirely inline with the rest of this post.

Why did I choose PartialViews and ascx?  We don’t need to render a whole page here, just part of a page and that’s exactly what PartialViews do, and what ascx’s are.  If we try to return a full page it would also return all the HTML associated with that page and if the page uses Master Pages, it would also invoke the related classes for the master page and render the whole shebang.

We could also just put html pages on the server and request those, which you might argue would be simpler.  But, by going this route and creating methods on the controller – along with the related views – we’re able to leverage our models, existing web references, our repositories…everything that’s available to us through MVC (and the .NET Framework).

Back to the Story

In this sample, I’m actually going one step farther: the async bit we’re loading will make a call to another async bit as soon as it loads.

Page loads –> Peek is called –> Poke is called

We need to go to our View\Home\Index.aspx markup and add the part of the page that will be populated by the jQuery call.  All you need is a <div> with an ID.  Add the helper method jQuery load call, which makes a request to the web server and puts the result in the component you specify.  The $("#name") syntax is short-hand for returning the page element. 

The only other thing to note here is that I am telling jQuery to load “home/peek” and “home/poke”, which doesn’t look like web pages.  They aren’t.  These calls will be routed by MVC to the controller, and Peek and Poke will be found with reflection in the controller class.  That will invoke our methods and return the ascx components we created.

Put together, it all looks like the following:

Index.aspx (in the content tag):

Peek.ascx:

Poke.ascx:

hehehe…get it? Polkalicious?!  Man, I’m funny.

A Simple Summary

Here’s all we have to do to get the thing running in a more abbreviated form:

1. In a new ASP.NET MVC project, add the jQuery script to the head section of your Site.Master
2. Add methods to your controller to handle the calls.  These will be of type PartialViewResult and return a PartialView
3. Add the ascx files to the project by right-clicking on the controller methods and selecting to create partial views
4. Add a <div> to the Views\Home\Index.aspx page and a piece of script after it to make the jQuery call.  Invoke the method on the controller through the routing features of MVC

And that’s everything you need to get partial lazy-loads going with jQuery and MVC. 

May the force be with you.

Microsoft SQL Server Wishlist

High on the list of designer and management features I would like to see in Microsoft SQL Server is the ability to create folders to group tables.

From an RDBMS perspective I would suggest that these tables be absolutely meaningless; I’m talking about pure user convenience.

Sure, we have filters support (through the context menu on Tables), but we don’t have a way to even save filters for later use.  Also, filters work great if you have common names and only by name do you wish to work with your tables, but it falls short if you want to work on a domain with variously named tables.

For instance, you might want to work on tables for customers, invoices and work orders, as well as the dozen or so history tables, the system data tables and others related to the domain.  No filter will easily be created to cover this gamut, and the filter is lost when you lose the connection to the server, restart Management Studio or decide you want to work with a different list of filtered tables.

Yeah, but “Work On” What?

What do I mean when I say work on?  I’m talking about when I’m authoring a diagram, or writing a stored proc (I make heavy use of the drag and drop features with tables and columns).  It’s just super handy to have a shorter list to work from.

How about this: instead of using folders, why not let me tag the tables?  Each tag you add could become a virtual folder and you apply as many tags as you like to each table.  That would be brilliant.

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio – which is also the development environment of most ‘softies on the MS SQL stack – has come leaps and bounds in the last couple of builds, but compared to some of the features in other IDEs we work with daily there is still a lot of room for growth.

Here’s an old request I made: plug-ins.

Diving into Workflow Foundation 4.0 – Hiring Request

I am currently working in Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010
with version 4.0 Beta 2 of the .NET Framework.

The first thing I’ll have to note in working with the Beta 2 samples in Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 is that you’re not going to survive the sample as a passenger – at least not without a few notes on running it.

If you want some tips on what the app is supposed to do, head to the end of this post.

The description of the sample is still a little lacking, which is understandable considering it’s in Beta. 

You’ll likely find this on your own, but the script required to run the application must be run from a command prompt with .NET environment variables loaded and run in a context with administrative privileges.

The HiringSample solution out-of-the-box does not work on 64bit systems because of the build settings.

Further, you’ll need to be aware of the service endpoint collisions that might occur if you try to debug from the a normal F5.

Lastly, I found that I had to manually create a folder used for request history in the data folder in order to get the application running.

Let’s start with the admin and 64 bit issues.

Configuring the DB and Loading the Services

First off, you need to get a prompt running with the .NET 4.0 environment variables set up.  In Vista or in Windows 7, simply hit your start button and type in “2010 prompt” (without the quotes) and it should be the first thing on your list.   If you need to locate it manually, check in Program Files –> Visual Studio 2010 –> Visual Studio Tools –> Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010). 

If you can’t find the prompt as a shortcut installed to your machine, check out my earlier post for that.

Next, navigate to the [samples root]\WF\Application\HiringRequestProcess\CS directory.  In there you’ll find the setup.bat and startservices.bat files.  Run setup.bat (this should be the only time you need to do this).

Next, open the HiringProcess.sln and build it (don’t run).

Pop back over to your command prompt and run the startservices.bat file to get everything fired up.

If you get an error at this point it may look something like this:

System.BadImageFormatException{"Could not load file or assembly 'HiringRequestProcess, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format."}

You may not see the error without attaching a debugger (or trying to run the project directly from the debugger) but I did get this message while trying to build.  To get around this – and again, I am on a 64 bit machine – I changed the HiringRequestProcessDefinition to target x86 machines (the HiringRequestProcess DLL project is set to target x86 and it is a dependency of the Definition project).  This allowed me to build the service projects and run them from the command prompt.

I initially made some progress and was able to get everything to compile by changing HiringRequestProcess to x64 and recompiling…except the web site, which starts throwing the same error as above.

Resolving DirectoryNotFoundException

The next bit was a little more tricky to get going.  You can’t debug the WebClient project directly through the solution as you get a host of other errors (endpoints already exist) with the WCF services.  This was a red herring of sorts as I tried to chase the other peripheral problems.

The issue at this point was that, while I could use the web site, persistence was not working and errors were not being reported to the WebClient.

I launched the web application per the instructions (right-click on the project, view in browser) and then attached to the process.  I also attached to HiringRequestProcessDefinition, which is where the XML persistence was failing.  This allowed me to expose the said exception.

To resolve this issue, simply add a directory called RequestHistory to the Data directory in the solution.

A Sample Overview

I couldn’t find a document that described the projects in any level of detail, so I’m writing a quick summary that it might help someone out there.

There are five projects in HiringRequest solution, the first listed in Solution Explorer being the WebClient.

WebClient has references to HiringRequestService, InboxService and OrgService, the three services that drive the overall project.  The web site is set up with a drop down box

InboxService has methods needed to fill out the default view in the web client as well as add and remove methods for inbox messages.

The OrgService is the human resource component of the application and handles pulling up corporate roles, lists of employees or specific employee details.  These are all readable with no write functionality.  The employee list and all supporting data is loaded on demand when the service is called and is not cached.

Note that in the solution OrgService and the IOrgService interface live in files named HRService and IHRService respectively.

The HiringRequestProcessDefinition is the last stop on the tour, along with its dependency on HiringRequestProcess. HiringRequestProcess contains the repository for requests and some base classes and constants used in the application.  The Definition project is actually two-part: the WF diagram (declarative) definition of the workflow and the HiringRequestProcess service.

A Few More Tips…

Make sure you read the MSDN help on getting the app to run.  There’s a lot said there that I didn’t say again.

If you set up the database on a non-default instance (meaning, if you’ve changed the default name of SQL Server Express on your machine) you’ll need to update the connection string used by the service in the  HiriringRequestProcessDefinition project.  You will get a confusing, misleading error if you don’t.  It is located in app.config as the second group of entries.

When you’re using the web client, there is a drop down box that lets you change who you’re “logged in” as.  There is no login procedure other than changing the dropdown.

Make sure you keep the service windows open and in view when running the sample.  Someone in the organization of a certain role must act on hiring requests per the business rules and org structure.  The service console windows give you hints (employee ids) on who needs to do something next.

Hope this helps some!  Best of luck in exploring Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0.

OT: Epicilicious

May can’t come too soon:

Oh, yes, my friends.  This will be good.

I can’t wait for the upcoming SDK from Microsoft with the extension libraries to support the Iron Man suit (licensed from Stark Enterprises).  The Stark.MannedFlight namespace looks most interesting, but I’m also looking forward to using the Stark.FistsOfPower classes.

Sadly, it is rumoured to me a do-it-yourself kit for the suit.  I’ve got watches set up on eBay for cheap arc reactors.  Let me know if you find one.

Visual Studio 2010 Command Prompt

If you don’t do a full installation on Visual Studio 2010 (I’m on Beta 2 at the time of this posting) then you may not get the Visual Studio Command Prompt which loads up with all the environment variables needed to run framework applications and tools from the command line.

Thankfully, it’s easy to fix.

Grab the Beta 2 Web installer and run the Add or Remove Features command.

Next, drill into Visual C++ and select the compilers and tool option.

The web installer will have to go off and grab some bits from the Microsoft servers.  At my desk I am pulling down the package at 1178 KB/second (did I mention I like where I sit heheh). 

Go get a coffee. ;o) Your work at this point is pretty much done and it’ll take a bit for the download/install.

OK out of the install dialogue and you’re done!

Your Visual Studio 2010 command prompt should now be available from the Start Menu.

A Separate Tool?

I’m hoping in the final build that the Command Prompt is a separate option in the installer, broken out from the very large 2GB chuck that C++ is.  I guess in the grander scheme of things that 2GB is a trivial amount of space (a vendor gave us thumb drives of that size for Christmas), and if I wanted to I could rig up the environment variables myself.  Even still, all the work’s been done and an option in the installer would at least save the 2GB download.

Happy New Year All!

I have readers now in 75 countries and while we are all of different backgrounds, nationalities and mother tongues it is neat to be in a field of work that finds people passionate about their jobs around the world.

If you’re learning a new part of the .NET Framework, refining your skills or troubleshooting Visual Studio or MS SQL and have participated in this conversation that I have (mostly with myself), I wish the best to you and yours in this new year.

Peace and grace to you in 2010!