Tony Sedgwick's Notebook

Programming Entity Framework: Rough Cuts Version, Second Edition - O'Reilly Media

2010-04-28T16:34:00.002+01:00

Programming Entity Framework: Rough Cuts Version, Second Edition - O'Reilly Media

try the O'Reilly rough cuts to see books in development

Referencing ASP.NET Wizard Buttons

2010-03-10T09:24:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: aspnet,wizard

When you use the StepType of Finish a Finish Button is automatically generated and its ID is “FinishButton”, e.g. the WizardStep looks like this:

<asp:WizardStep ID="ConfirmWizardStep" runat="server" Title="Confirm" StepType="Finish">

Due to a business rule you may wish to disable the Finish button and to do this you would think that a FindControl on the WizardStep would work but it doesn’t as the Button is nested below many other tables/templates etc.

The method I used involved a custom recursive FindControl function as follows:

Dim finishButton As Button = CType(FindControlRecursive(WizardControl, "FinishButton"), Button)

Public Shared Function FindControlRecursive(ByVal root As Control, ByVal id As String) As Control

            If root.ID = id Then
                Return root
            End If
            Dim c As Control
            For Each c In root.Controls
                Dim t As Control = FindControlRecursive(c, id)
                If Not t Is Nothing Then
                    Return t
                End If
            Next
            Return Nothing

Function

SSIS Lookup Transformation with Date values

2009-10-06T13:57:00.001+01:00

When comparing Oracle dates to SQL Server I have found that it only works when the Oracle and SQL dates are strings.

Therefore in your Oracle query add a new column like this:

TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'DD/MM/YYYY') as DATE_STRING

then in your SQL Server query add a new column:

CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), GETDATE(), 103) AS DATE_STRING

You can then map the columns in the Lookup Transform dialog.

Using SSIS to connect to Oracle

2009-09-30T09:57:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: SSIS

Using the OLE DB Data Source for Oracle you will most likely come across this warning/error message when setting up your OLE DB Data Source:

The component reported the following warnings:

Warning at {EDFCB4B5-2102-4C54-8B8C-DC2362FDAB6B} [OLE DB Source [1]]: Cannot retrieve the column code page info from the OLE DB provider. If the component supports the "DefaultCodePage" property, the code page from that property will be used. Change the value of the property if the current string code page values are incorrect. If the component does not support the property, the code page from the component's locale ID will be used.

The fix is to exit the OLE DB Data Source and then examine its properties. Here you will find a AlwaysUseDefaultCodePage property. Set this to True and all will be good.

asp:Menu does not render correctly in Chrome fix

2009-07-24T23:40:00.001+01:00

Just add this to your master page:

Protected Overloads Overrides Sub AddedControl(ByVal control As Control, ByVal index As Integer)
        If Request.ServerVariables("http_user_agent").IndexOf("Safari", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) <> -1 Then
            Me.Page.ClientTarget = "uplevel"
        End If
        MyBase.AddedControl(control, index)
    End Sub

Technorati Tags: Chrome,asp:Menu

AJAX Control Toolkit and DOCTYPE used

2009-06-16T21:51:00.001+01:00

I was adding Ajax functionality to an ‘old’ asp.net page and was stuck as to why the tab container control was rendering in an strange way, e.g.:

It turned out that the DOCTYPE was wrong. To fix the problem I changed from:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

the control then rendered as expected:

The xhtml doctype is added by default by visual studio so only a problem when enhancing

Technorati Tags: ajax,doctype

older code.

Windows App Web References

2009-03-18T10:14:00.001Z

A simple one which can cause problems when deploying windows apps referencing web services.

Make sure that you web service reference is setup using Dynamic URL Behaviour.

You can see the effect of this in the Reference.vb Sub New, where it reads the path to the web reference from the app.config (as we would like to happen):

This is defined as a property of the web reference:

If you change the web service property URL Behaviour to Static the Reference.vb Sub New is automatically updated for you by Visual Studio and is then hard coded to your local development machine (not good):

Technorati Tags: dynamic web reference,deployment

get SQL Server Database Restore Dates

2008-08-06T19:30:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: sql server

use msdb
select
    DBRestored = destination_database_name,
    RestoreDate = restore_date,
    SourceDB = b.database_name,
    SourceFile = physical_name,
    BackupDate = backup_start_date
from RestoreHistory h join BackupSet b
    on h.backup_set_id = b.backup_set_id
        join BackupFile f
    on f.backup_set_id = b.backup_set_id
order by RestoreDate

Technorati Tags: sql server

installing Team Foundation Server 2008

2008-05-19T17:30:00.001+01:00

It took approx 2 days to get this installed! This is one install where you must read the docs before installing.

Had numerous errors during the install relating to security errors for the TFS user accounts and also, after aborted installs, had to manually delete files to get the install through.

TIP: When you get errors read the msi log files carefully and you should be able to work out why it went wrong.

Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server

error starting IIS 0x8ffe2740

2008-04-22T11:07:00.000+01:00

Had been using the server built into visual studio 2008 but today needed to use IIS but when I went to start I got a weird error message:

Did some googling on this and found that the problem was related to another program using port 80.

Using the tool CurrPorts I was able to see that skype had used port 80 already, e.g.:

To fix open Skype then Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection. Then untick Use Port 80 for incoming connections then re-start Skype.

You can then start IIS as port 80 is free again!