RUSSELL MCCLOY

Saving the internet

2011-12-06T08:11:00.001+11:00

All,

Quote from: http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?mzla

"As concerned global citizens, we call on you to stand for a free and open Internet and vote against both the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. The Internet is a crucial tool for people around the world to exchange ideas and work collectively to build the world we all want. We urge you to show true global leadership and do all you can to protect this basic pillar of our democracies worldwide."

Please sign up to save the internet. This is important for all of us to continue to have an open and uncensored internet. Imagine if the police monitored all your phone calls, you wouldn't like that would you?

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?mzla

thanks
RuSs

Explanation of Ninject Bindings and where we used them in our MVC Website (Part 1 - MVC Website)

2011-11-07T17:05:00.003+11:00

Afternoon,

Im going to summarize what we have done with our Ninject bindings and injection which allows us to follow the "Inversion of Control (IOC Container)" principle in a project we are working on.

As mentioned we are using Ninject as our IOC container: http://ninject.org/

The project architecture looks much like the following diagram:

Architecture Diagram

I will work my way from the top to the bottom of the architecture. Starting with the MVC web site all the way through to the Microsoft Crm layer.(This post (Part 1 - MVC Website) just refers to the web site.)

One of the 2 BIG reasons we are using an IOC container (Ninject) is to allow us to separate all our layers (separation of concerns) so that they are Unit testable and also so that we can swap components out at a later date. We may want to replace our Crm later with a Sql server layer, doubtful but we are catering for this anyway as you never know what will be a requirement in the future. As long as our Sql server repository layer implements the same interface as our existing Crm repository layer, we can more or less swap out the Crm Repository with a new Sql Repository.

Mvc Website:

On the website layer we will be using Ninject to inject the following:

A GatewayAgent layer into our controller - the GatewayAgent layer separates the concerns of the controller from the concerns of our WCF SOA layer.
An AutoMapper implimentation into our GatewayAgent - the mapper will map our presentation entities to our Domain entities.
Our presentation entity validation classes into our presentation entities - as we are using Fluent validation, we may want to ditch this later and inject a different type of validation.

The following diagram show part of the web site's global.asax file. This code uses Ninject to inject the above 3 items.

The Ninject Binding in the Global.asax class

Obviously, the web site has a reference to the Ninject.dll.

Most of this is set in stone for our site but one thing to note. As more development is done we will need to add more validators as we add more presentation entities to our site. So when we add an Invoice presentation entity to the site a related Invoice Validator class will need to be added to the ConfigureKernel method, shown above, in our global.asax file.

Note: the line:

- kernel.Bind<IValidator<Contact>>().To<ContactValidator>();

means, when we call validate on a Contact presentation entity,

we would like to use the ContactValidator class to carry out the validation

Sample Contact Validator

You can see in the ConfigureKernel method above that we also inject a ContactGateway.
The following line shows this:

kernel.Bind<IContactGateway>().To<ContactGateway>();

This means that when we refer to IContactGateway we would like to use the concrete class ContactGateway.
So in our controller we see the following code:


Sample controller

Why is this good? Because you can then mock up a ContactGateway in a unit test to test your controller.

A unit test for the controller

As mentioned above, we also inject a mapper implementation into our web site:

kernel.Bind<IMapper>().To<AutoMapperMapper>();

This is used to map our domain entities to our presentation entities on the way up and our presentation entities to our domain entities on the way down.

Why is this good? We may way to use a different mapping tool other than AutoMapper in the future. Injection will enable us to swap AutoMapper out for a different mapper tool.

This is the end of Part 1 - Explanation of Ninject Bindings and where we used them in our MVC Website

I will do another couple of posts on the other layers mentioned in the architecture diagram at the start of this post.

RuSs

How Jimmy Bogard does MVC

2011-10-03T16:26:00.002+11:00

Bonjour,

Following is a link to a very good post called "How we do MVC" on some DOs and DON'Ts of MVC. We are about to start a fresh enterprise level project and this article is great for getting a few things done correctly from the start.

http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2009/04/24/how-we-do-mvc/

There is also another article he has written on "How we do view models":

http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2009/06/30/how-we-do-mvc-view-models/

Hope you find this useful.

RuSs

Entity validation, unit testing and MVC 3 with Fluent - RuleSets and Predicates

2011-09-26T10:56:00.000+10:00

Morning all,

I have been looking at validation for my current project. We are building an MVC 3 site that calls a wcf service later that is wrapped around Crm 2011.

Initially I was looking at data annotations out of the box. These work really well and MVC 3 works seamlessly with these with client validation and unobtrusive JQuery.

When I came to look at rulesets however it seems a lot more complicated. I them stumbled upon Fluent validation:

http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/

This is a very user friendly clean way of writing validation on your entities in the same way that data annotations are written. The difference came when I started to look at rule sets which you will see in my attached screen shots.

Firstly I defined 2 classes in my domain model. Thsese are called ContactForValidationPOC and AddressForValidationPOC as shown below:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see there are no data annotations and ContactForValidationPOC has a complex property of Addresses.

We are going to write some rulesets that will validate the contact for a STAFF ruleset and a public ruleset. (Note that there are not real world validation needs as of yet,it's just proof of concept code.)

You will notice that at the top of the ContactForValidationPOC class we have an attribute shown as follows:

[Validator(typeof(ContactValidator))]

This tells the class that there is a validator class call ContactValidator somewhere.

Also please note that I have referenced the correct Fluent  validation dlls in my project.

You can find the details of this here:

http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/

So back to the ContactValidator. Here it is:

You can see that we have 2 rule sets. The first is a staff rule set and the second is a public rule set.

They are quite similar and the only difference really is that the Age must be over 18 for a staff member.

Both rule sets also use a .Must predicate validator.

This is a great place to put more complex logic.


Here we need to ensure that there is at least 1 address in the Addresses collection that is marked as IsPrefferedAddress.

Ok, so that is all done, now we need to unit test or validation rules.

 
So I have a unit test written here. Firstly I set up a new ContactForValidationPOC entity and add a couple of addresses to it.

I then call Validate on it and ask it to validate using the Staff rule set. After validation we check that the ValidationResult (result) is valid

and then do a simple check for the number of validation errors. Obviously my test could be more detailed in a real world example.

As I debug through my test I can see that my entity is not valid (IsValid = false)

and it has a collection of validation errors on it.

This is good as we didn't enter a first name, our Age is under 18 and we set all AddressForValidationPOC's in the Addresses collection to IsPrefferedAddress = false.

Ok so we now know that our validation is working correctly on the server side.

We haven't even touched the MVC code yet.

I have whipped up a quick MVC controller with a view and have disabled the settings

in the web.config that make client side validation work as shown in the following picture:

Note: they should be set to false to prove that server side validation is still working correctly now that we are validating through MVC.

Here are my controller and view:

Note: I have just forced 2 addresses into the ContactForValidationPOC entity to make things easier, these are both set to IsPrefferedAddress = false

Here is the view that kicked off the validation:

You can see that, when debugging the controller we get the same validation results.

IsValid = false and a number of errors relating to our Staff rule set.

Note that in our controller we could have control over what rule set is loaded if we so desired:

We could use some logic to check what type of rule set to load, staff or public.

Now I will change the web.config setting to ensure that client side validation gets included:

We now can fire up the view in a web browser and see client side validation in action:

Well that is it, a high level explanation of domain entity server and client validation using Fluent, unit tests and MVC.

Some positive points:

All the validation for an entity is contained wholly on the entity.
Fluent validation is very easy to write and read.
More more complete business rules you can use a predicate delegate.
You can unit test your entity validation results with ease.
It works seamlessly with jquery.validate and jquery.validate.unobtrusive.
With MVC you could also use IOC to instatiate your validators:
http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=ValidatorFactory&referringTitle=Documentation

Some possible negatives:

Only the following validators are supported on the client:
- NotNull/NotEmpty
- Matches (regex)
- InclusiveBetween (range)
- CreditCard
- Email
- EqualTo (cross-property equality comparison)
- Length
Cant think of any more at the moment.

I hope this was helpful.

RuSs

EDMX or DbContext API

2011-09-06T10:54:00.000+10:00

Hi all,

I have used EF for a while. I am used to using an EDMX file for my model. I have also recently used Code First and the DbContext API and I really like this.
Last night I started building an app. and was thinking, am I starting on the right foot? Do I use EDMX or DbContext API? If the thing i'm building turns out to be big, will I have chosen the right technology.

What if I use DbContext API and get it to generate my database. Obviously I don't want this to keep generating my database down the track when i'm at a stable point in development (or do I?). Then if I want to tweak my database or domain model will all the strings come un done?

The DbContext API is a simplified version. Will it do everything I need? I dont think ill need stored procedures as I can do everything with linq.

So my real question is. If I am building something that is serious and out there is the real world and it may turn out to require some complex coding, which way do I go? EDMX or DbContext API?

Is EDMX now old school?

Comments / thoughts?

RuSs

A small update

2011-09-05T15:35:00.000+10:00

Morning all,

Well it's been a while since I posted in my blog that i'm sure no one reads! I have finally got used to living in Melbourne and have started enjoying it more now that the weather is getting better.

I will hopefully be posting some interesting stuff on MVC up here is the next few weeks.

Here is a list of things I have looked at in the last few weeks.

MVC(3) - I have been trying to get around to getting up to date on MVC for years. Ever since I tried and failed to read Martin fowler's book on design patterns (http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/uiArchs.html).
Well finally I have got around to it and I love it. Combined with the Entity Framework edmx or code first it is such a great way to work. This is the way, for most sites, the web should be built. No hidden viewstate, no nightmare page load order and code that you have total granular control over. Awesome!!
Razor view engine - initially it looks dodgy but after a little playing around it's cleaner and easier to read than traditional asp.net forms. One thing I have learned about Razor is, if it looks messy and hard to read, then you probably have started putting business logic where it should not go.
Unit testing and TDD with MVC - Combined with Ninject and Moq this is easy. You can directly test your controllers. Compare this to ASP.NET web forms where your controller was, sort of, your code behind. You needed httpContext etc. Now you can test just your controller logic without other webby things clouding the test.
JQuery - ok so this is not new but im loving it so far.
NuGet - the NuGet package manager is quite cool. NuGet is a Visual Studio extension that makes it easy to add, remove, and update libraries and tools in Visual Studio projects that use the .NET Framework. When you add a library or tool, NuGet copies files to your solution and automatically makes whatever changes are needed in your project, such as adding references and changing your app.config or web.config file. When you remove a library, NuGet removes files and reverses whatever changes it made in your project so that no clutter is left.
For example if you need to get the latest JQuery libraries into you solution you open Tools > library package manager > package manager console and type:

PM> Update-Package jquery

PM with auto update your JQuery to the correct version. Note that your references inside Views > Shared > _Layout.cshtml (for example) will not be auto updated.

Well, I know this is a bit of a lame post but it was more to get me back into the habit of writing on my blog. I hope to come up with some more interesting stuff soon.

RuSs

SQL Profiler - Being self-centered is a good thing (thanks Jeff Handley)

2011-06-08T09:34:00.010+10:00

When I'm faced with app. debugging, especially procedures that take awhile to run, or require a series of steps in the application to fire off, I often use SQL Profiler to capture the SQL call. Then I'll re-run the call directly in SQL Management Studio. But SQL Profiler can bring back a lot of noise, making it tough to grab only what I need.

I finally created a custom trace template and set it to be my default. It will only show me calls made from my local workstation to the development database. (we have a shared development database*)

This article will help you set up a personalised trace. For expample you can filter by Application Name or Host Name to reduce the noise in your trace.

Link to the full article by Jeff Handley

Thanks

RuSs

Finding all stored procedures updated in the last (n) days

2011-03-23T12:23:00.004+11:00

This was quite helpful:
SELECT name
FROM sys.objects
WHERE type = 'P'
AND DATEDIFF(D,modify_date, GETDATE()) < 30

My new life in Melbourne

2011-01-15T14:33:00.000+11:00

Morning,

After 8 years in London I have decided enough is enough. I'm on the way to Melbourne to see what the future holds.
Im currently getting my CV ready and if anyone out there has any leads I can follow in Melbourne that would be great.
I'm currently in Sydney with my family and will head south in the next couple of weeks.

RuSs

Re-map an SQL server login to a database login

2010-11-11T03:41:00.000+11:00

Hello,

Sometimes users get un-mapped from the server to database login after a database restore.

Here is the command to fix it:
EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'SRSUser'

RuSs

Workflow 3.5 and MOSS 2007 - This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited.

2010-11-10T22:52:00.000+11:00

Morning,

Today I had an interesting issue with my WF3.5 SharePoint workflow.
A user was attempting to action a SharePoint workflow task and was given the error:

This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited.

I have seen this error a small number of times (5-10) amongst the 1000's of workflow instances that have passed through my production system.

I am always very careful with quiescing and always release a new workflow version the correct was using workflow.xml, feature.xml and stsadm.

There was a time a few weeks ago when we had to do an emergency bug fix as some of my business logic was not functioning as expected.

I know that I can never change an activity in my workflow without quiescing otherwise the serialization and deserialization (dyhydrate / re-hydrate) from the persistence store gets confused and hence an error like this occurs.

The funny thing is, I only changed code in a utility class and only the code inside an existing method (ie...method definition was not changed) so I thought that there was no need for quiescing. (no core workflow code was altered).

Anyway,just writing here incase anyone has an opinion on this.

From now on I will quiesce no matter what the emergency is!!

RuSs

Workflow 4.0 Activity Designer

2010-10-19T19:54:00.001+11:00

In this post i'm going to explain how to make a custom activity better visually.
First of all I have a custom code activity called RequestManagerAction. It inherits from CodeActivity and overrides its Execute method. (I may do a post on code activities later).

The visual representation of code activity, by default, looks like this:

And by the end of this post it will look like this:

The first step is to create a new peoject for your activity designer. As we want to "design" RequestManagerAction I have created a new project called: RequestManagerActionDesignerLibrary. And inside this I add a new Activity Designer Item from the Workflow - installed templates called RequestManagerActionDesigner.xaml.

the initial view after opening RequestManagerActionDesigner.xaml is a split screen with the Xaml that represents the design in the bottom part of the screen and the actualy visual design in the top part.

In the bottom pane we can see the Xaml. First of all I want to set the Collapsible property to false as I don't want my designer to be collapsible.

The 2nd taks is to add an ArgumentToExpressionConverter to my Xaml. This defines the mapping between arguments and expressions and provides the functionality to convert between these objects. Typically, this converter is used declaratively when using an ExpressionTextBox in a custom activity designer.

The next thing I want to do it sort out my layout. As my custom activity has 3 properties:

The main aim of what we are doing here is to show ExpressionTextBoxes for all 3 of these.
I will add a grid of 2 columns and 3 rows for our properties.

You can see that inside this grid we have some (3) collapsed TextBlock sections. I will explain these now.

Each TextBlock is for a property.
The first TextBlock is for the ExpenseRequest property of our custom activity:

You can see the obvious items marked out in the above picture.Note that the position inside the grid defined above is set by the Grid.Row and Grid.Column indexes which are zero(0) based.
You can also see that our expression text box is bound to ModelItem.SubmitExpenseRequest.

SubmitExpenseRequest is a class in my Contracts project that is part of my domain model:

The ModelItem represents the activity that that the designer is currently editing. This object sits between the visual elements that present an activity to the developer and the in-memory representation of the activity.

You can now see that we are well on the way to building our custom design:

I will now go ahead and add the other 2 ExpressionTextBoxes and the relevant properties.

You will notice the little smiley icon in the top left of the designer. To add this, I added the following xaml:

Now I am ready to associate my designer with the actual code activity that is already part of my workflow. If you remember it currently looks like this:

First I will add a reference to the project that my code activity is part of:

Once its referenced we can add an attribute to the top of our codeActivity class (Don't forget the System.ComponentModel import at the top!):

Once you have built the projects you will see the "RequestManagerAction" code activity in the toolbox. Drag this onto your workflow surface if it's not already there and you will see that the look of the activity is not just a small yellow box any more. Nice!!

This is obviously more useful as we don't need to use the properties pane to set the properties for our code activity, we can just type them straight into the workflow.

RuSs

Workflow 4.0 - Adding annotations to your workflow tracking profile

2010-10-08T20:54:00.003+11:00

Lets say you have a workflow that is running on a DEV / TEST and LIVE server. Lets say, also for the sake of it, that we are using the same AppFabric database for all 3. (yes, this is not the best idea but to explain annotations it helps.)

So what we want to acheive is the show, in AppFabric monitoring, which server we are using. So the monitoring with show either:

ServerThatEmittedThis: DEV_Server
ServerThatEmittedThis: TEST_Server
ServerThatEmittedThis: LIVE_Server

Again, this example is useless in the real world but i'm sure by the end of this post you will be able to imagine some real world uses for this functionality.

So you can see that in my current tracking profile I have added an annotation of my DEV server as follows:

You can see in the pic. "ServerThatEmittedThis: DEV_Server" which will now show up in AppFabric monitoring.

So I will now run the workflow which is hosted in IIS / AppFabric.

My workflow runs and is persisted into my persistence store. So I click on the Active or Idle Intance in my AppFabric dashboard:

Note I could also navigate to the annotated info if my workflow wasnt using a persistence store by Looking on the dashboard for the WCF Call History section and click on the link in the Completed Calls section.

Once I can see the instance I click to select view tracked events:

Once here, I can see all the events that my workflow has passed through.

Note that I am using a custom tracking profile that emits less than some of the default profiles. My custom tracking profile named: ExpenseServiceTrackingProfile is shown in the first screen shot of a part of my web.config in this post.

As i placed my annotation in my web.config as a child node to the activityStateQuery named Screen Expense I know to expect to see my annotation in AppFabric at the point where my screen expense activity emitting its tracking record.

As you can see from the above pic. I have clicked on the Screen expense item and at the bottom you can see a tab called "tracked variables" shown below:

So I know that the workflow (server) emitting this tracking record is from my dev server.

Rubbish example, but I hope you get the point.

AppFabric Hosting PowerShell Cmdlets

2010-10-05T20:22:00.009+11:00

This seems to be the place for the AppFabric Hosting PowerShell Cmdlets:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767662(v=WS.10).aspx

The following shows the current state of my AppFabric. It has nothing persisted.

I start a workflow that I know will persist to my persistence store:

I can then look back at my AppFabric dashboard and see that 1 workflow is persisted and active.

I can then open Windows PowerShell Modules. It calls this from the server menu behind the scenes:
%SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoExit -ImportSystemModules

Ok so it's loaded. Now, just as a simple example we can query for all instances in the default persistence store.

We call "Get-ASAppServiceInstance".

It returns all the info about my persisted workflow instance.

This is interesting as I have just noticed that I have an extra unnecessary service contract name, a spelling mistake and hence an extra bookmark.

Ok, so I went in, altered the service contract name to get rid of the extra IService ref as it should only have an IExpenseService ref. I also renamed my bookmark from ManagerActionComplete to ManagerActionCompleted. Then I re-ran my workflow thinking all was ok.

An exception was thrown so obviously I just did something incorrectly.

I re-ran my "Get-ASAppServiceInstance". and saw the following information which of course is very obvious:

The exception is:

ExceptionMessage: A bookmark with the name 'ManagerActionCompleted|{http://tempuri.org/}IExpenseService' already exists.

Obviously I just named a bookmark in my workflow to the same name as another one.

I renamed ManagerActionCompleted to ManagerActionCompletedReminder as this bookmark gets resumed after a delay activity expiration time has elapsed.

So "Get-ASAppServiceInstance" now shows:

We then wait for the delay time to expire and run "Get-ASAppServiceInstance" again and we then see:

Ok so I set off to write myself an investigative blog into Windows PowerShell Modules for AppFabric and this technology already showed me a couple of issues with my workflow. Nice!!

Again, look at this link for loads of other useful commands:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767624(v=WS.10).aspx

thanks

RuSs

Why does my workflow die when I add a TransactedReceiveActivity?

2010-10-05T19:17:00.006+11:00

dzien dobry,

I dont know the answer to this one but hopefully I will be able to update this post when I find out.

The issue is this:
When I add a TransactedReceiveScope to a fully functional, persisted workflow monitored by AppFabric the workflow throws an exception.

I have looked at the exception and my trace / log files and can't find any useful information.

My Workflow looks like this:

And the error is this:

The error text is:

The execution of the InstancePersistenceCommand named {urn:schemas-microsoft-com:System.Activities.Persistence/command}LoadWorkflow was interrupted by an error.

And the stack trace is:

Server stack trace:

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.HandleReply(ProxyOperationRuntime operation, ProxyRpc& rpc)

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.EndCall(String action, Object[] outs, IAsyncResult result)

at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.InvokeEndService(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 WindowsClient.ExpenseServiceRef.IExpenseService.EndGetData(IAsyncResult result)

at WindowsClient.ExpenseServiceRef.ExpenseServiceClient.WindowsClient.ExpenseServiceRef.IExpenseService.EndGetData(IAsyncResult result) in C:\PROJECTS\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\WindowsClient\Service References\ExpenseServiceRef\Reference.cs:line 532

at WindowsClient.ExpenseServiceRef.ExpenseServiceClient.EndGetData(IAsyncResult result) in C:\PROJECTS\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\WindowsClient\Service References\ExpenseServiceRef\Reference.cs:line 537

at WindowsClient.Form1.OnStartCompleted(IAsyncResult asr) in C:\PROJECTS\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\TelerealTrillium.Expense.Workflow.Soln\WindowsClient\Form1.cs:line 93

Ill keep hunting for solution and will post back when I find it.

========================== Time passes =========================

Ok so I came back to this little issue after remembering about the MSDTC.
I realized that my app. updates my persistence store AND my custom expense database inside the TransactedReceiveActivity. (I update my custom expense database using Entity Framework 4.0)

Now my connection strings for these 2 things are different obviously so I am trying to wrap a transaction around some activities that span 2 databases.

So what I did first was enable MSDTC on my local server that hosts my WCF Workflow 4.0.
It was like:

Now its like:

But that still didnt work. Although I did see a one off Transaction Aborted error which I can't reproduce.

I then went to my remote SQL server that hosts my Persistence store and custom Expense database which is what I should have looked at first really.

I enabled the same open-ish security on the Sql box and it fixed everything!!

thanks

RuSs

Resetting the AppFabric dashboard whilst in development iterations

2010-10-05T18:41:00.001+11:00

Bonjour,

I have found a little bit of t-sql that cleans out the required sql tables that the AppFabric dashboard uses. I have not researched this much but it seems to do the job.

It is very useful if you are doing constant development iterations and you don't want loads of instances of your workflow clogging up the AppFabric dashboard.

The t-sql is this:

delete [dbo].[ASWfInstancesTable]

delete [dbo].[ASWfEventsTable]

delete [dbo].[ASWcfEventsTable]

delete [System.Activities.DurableInstancing].[KeysTable]

delete [System.Activities.DurableInstancing].[InstancesTable]

Probably not a god idea to rely on this in anything but a development context.

Please comment if you know any more on this.

thanks

RuSs

Workflow Tracking Profile Editor

2010-10-02T02:02:00.022+10:00

Here is a great link on Dennis van der Stelt's blog about info. about the workflow tracking profile editor.
http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/dennis/archive/2010/06/08/workflow-tracking-profile-editor.aspx
This tool makes it easy to create a tracking profile. It allows you to load up a WF4 XAMLX file. It then shows the editor and you’re allowed to browse through all (composite) activities. After right-clicking an activity (with a blue circle on it) you can specify what you exactly want to track. It even knows everything about arguments and (scoped) variables so you can use checkboxes to turn them on or off.

Here are some screen shots:

So following on from my other post:
http://russellmccloy.blogspot.com/2010/10/workflow-40-sample-development.html

I will create a simple tracking profile for my workflow.

Currently my workflow is using a default tracking profile that is set by my root web.config:

You can see that it is using the "HealthMonitoring tracking Profile"which seems to be the default one. there are a few others to choose from and to configure these you:

right click on your WF in IIS and select "Manage WCF and WF services" and then "Configure..."
Click on Monitoring
then use the slider to choose what you require.

And you can see that in my web.config that is local to my service that I have no tracking profile:

So I will use the Workflow Tracking Profile Editor to point to my current workflow definition and add a tracking item.

For the purposes of this exercise I have added an int32 variable to my xamlx file called:
TempTrackingExpenseId

I then use an Assign activity to set the variable. I suppose I could track the expenseId that hangs of my custon ExpenseResponse object. I tried that before and I could not get anything to appear in appFabric. So for now i'll just stick with a simple integer.

I then right click in the blue spot in the Workflow Tracking Profile Editor:

and select "track variables in this activities scope...":

And for now ill just select every event type for my variable:

I then save my new tracking profile using the Workflow Tracking Profile Editor and insert the resulting Xml into the web.config of my xamlx service.

Now that I have done this I will fire up my workflow using a windows form client as mentioned in my earlier blog:

http://russellmccloy.blogspot.com/2010/10/workflow-40-sample-development.html

Workflow 4.0 - Hosting with AppFabric

2010-10-02T01:29:00.007+10:00

Following on from my last post I will attempt to share with you, the steps I took to get my workflow hosted in AppFabric with Persistence and Monitoring enabled.(I will not talk about AppFabric's caching abilities as I know nothing about these at this point!!)

Ok so from my first post which is here:
http://russellmccloy.blogspot.com/2010/10/workflow-40-sample-development.html

I outlines how I began with workflow 4.0 and a few of the issues I had. I eventually got to a point where I developed a workflow application that, in a very simple way, allowed for the approval of an expense.

what I will now try to talk about is getting that workflow and it's parts hosted in AppFabric.

To start with, I created the workflow project as follows in this pic:

Workflow project creation

When you create a new WCF Workflow Service Application the settings default to using the visual Studio 2010 development server. If we want to use AppFabric we need to change the project so that it is hosted, first of all in IIS. The following picture shows this:

Visual Studio Project Properties

If you use the "Create Virtual Directory" button, then VS 2010 will, hopefully create the IIS vertual directory for you as shown here:

IIS virtual Directory

Right so we now have a Wcf service in IIS but it's sort of useless unless we built our own monitoring and hosting tools. Remember that AppFabric gives you loads of stuff out of the box. It also manages hosting and will re-hydrate a workflow from the persistence store when a delay timer expires.

So now what we need to do is install AppFabric.

Once appFabric is installed you need to configure appFabric.

To configure AppFabric click on the following link:

You will get an explanation page:

then the connection setup page for your monitoring and persistence database:

Before you point to the database you will need to run the following scripts that are @:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\SQL\en:

SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreSchema.sql

and

SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreLogic.sql

the setup wont work with out these. I think they setup a basic persistence store and appFabric then adds additional functionality to it. Not sure right now.

After you run these 2 scripts successfully on the database of your choice. (You can use any SQL db with any name to store persistence and monitoring data) you can then continue with the AppFabric setup. You may get a warning about Sql agent not being detected as in a runnable state but I checked and mine was running so I think you can assume everything is still ok.

Following this you should get a success message.

And then a final restart IIS message:

Note: I did not select to setup the caching part of AppFabric.

After this you need to configure the local details for your site / xamlx service hosting in IIS and AppFabric. The setup we have just done relates the overall global setting for our IIS / AppFabric server. We can get more granular at the site level:

Setup monitoring. Accept default as specified earlier and add some trace and message logging as shown in the following pics:

You may get an issue with net.pipe missing. You can add this in the sites advanced settings as shown below:

After this is done we can run our windows client in Visual Studio. The windows client submits expense requests to our workflow.

Before we do this please not that I have neglected to add the c:\MailboxExpenseApproval directory on my server. This will enable us to see the workflow experience and error and "suspend" its self. Using AppFabric we will be able to add the directory to the file system and "resume" the workflow.

So here is the windows client

You can see that after submission we get an error:

It looks like an Smtp error because c:\MailboxExpenseApproval directory on the server is set as the pickupDirectory for sending mail. As it's not there, we get an error which is good for us right now.

If we look in AppFabric we will see that the workflow is suspended:

We can then add the c:\MailboxExpenseApproval directory and then resume the workflow using AppFabric.Nice!!

I have then build a web site that is hosted in the same IIS / appFabric as the xamlx service. The website is used to response the the Smtp emails that managers receive asking them to approve expenses. There are links in the emails to point to the approve / reject form:

Once approved the user will see this message:

The persisted instsance of the workflow will then complete and be automatically removed from the persistence store. (Note: you can set some config to keep completed persisted workflow instances if you prefer).

That's all for now. Will add more later.

RuSs

Workflow 4.0 a brief overview

2010-10-01T19:28:00.071+10:00

This is a very simple post about my recent findings on using workflow 4.0 (WF 4.0). I build a simple WF which managed expense approval.

Server Specs

Windows server 2008 R2 standard (Virtual server with 4gigs RAM)

Components:

Visual Studio 2010
SQL 2008
IIS and Appfabric

Technologies:

Visual Studio 2010
Workflow 4.0
Entity Framework 4.0
Linq
SQL 2008
IIS
AppFabric
SMTP

Initial setup steps:
Install Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Install appFabric (More on appFabric configuration in a later post hopefully)
Setup monitoring and persistence (I used the default settings - ie. root web.config in IIS holds settings for any child sites.)

Visual Studio 2010 Development:
I decided that I wanted to try this technology with a useful purpose in mind. It is not a full scale app. but most of the basic building blocks are there.

The app. I build is an expense approval app. using workflow 4.0 (WCF Workflow Service Application):

This project allows you to build a workflow and expose it as a WCF service. I ended up at this decision as I started developing workflow using System.Activities.WorkflowApplication. This worked well until I tried to use a delay timer in my WF. I was persisting my workflow successfully but after the expected time period for my timer had elapsed, the workflow was still "asleep" in my persistence store.

Following this I hunted the web for a better soln. I didn't necessarily need a delay timer for anything at this stage but, because the WF was unusable with a delay timer I thought I should keep hunting for a better solution. I came across loads of posts (some wrong, some out of date - this was very frustrating).

I decided to try and use the WorkflowServiceHost (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.workflowservicehost.aspx) as it says on the "tin" that this will manage the re-hydration of my workflows from the persistence store.

I can't remember where I got to with the WorkflowServiceHost but in the end after I posted a question on this post:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wfprerelease/thread/ebfa7571-9879-4b0c-93ff-0134764262f7

and Stuart pointed me in the right direction I moved to my current, as mentioned above, setup.

This being windows server 2008 R2 with full appFabric monitoring and persistence installed. I thought, why try and reinvent the wheel when this great infrastructure is provided more or less out of the box.

So, back to the actual workflow development. Here is an overall picture of my workflow. It needs refactoring but i'll plonk it here for now and come back to it later. (Certain parts, like the duplication in the parallel activity need refactoring).

Note: I wont be going into to much the detail with regard to my code as i'd rather explain the steps taken and a higher level.

The workflow receives an ExpenseRequest. If amount of this ExpenseRequest is under £100 the expense gets auto approved and the expense submitter is notified.

If the expense is over £100 a notification is sent to a manager for approval. If said manager does not action this request within a period of time the workflow re-hydrates from the persistence store and reminds the manager.

I tested this re-hydration (with my WF hosted bty AppFabric but submitting an expense for over £100 and letting the expense notification reach the manager (Note: the delay activity for the reminder was set to 10 minutes at this point)).

I then rebooted the server and waited the remainder of time that the delay timer required.

After the timer was due to expire the workflow came alive and sent the reminder to the manager. Good times!!

So anyway, The workflow "code" functions correctly. Some points about it that I will point out are.

The workflow (workflow as a Wcf service hosted in AppFabric (IIS)) is consumed by 3 clients:

One is a console app. that I have just for some initial setup testing.
The second is a windows forms client that is used to submit the expense request.
The third is a web app. that is used to approve or reject the expense.

Note: the manager links to the web app. from a link in the Smtp email that the workflow sends out.

If you right click on the workflow ExpenseService.xalmx file and select "view in browser" you can see the Wcf definition and Wsdl for your workflow. This is good to know as we now know we can definitely host our workflow in IIS / AppFabric. More good times!!

In my clients I added a service reference to my Workflow .xamlx service. Here are the steps to to this:
Note: that I selected to "generate asynchronous operations" as I dont want my client apps. to hang around waiting for a "long running process" to complete when all I really care about is whether my ExpenseRequest was sent correctly.

Once I have my xamlx service referenced in my client apps. I need to write some code to instantiate it. first of all I need these lines:

private static ExpenseServiceClient client = new ExpenseServiceClient();

request.Expense = new Expense();

request.Expense.Amount =200;

request.Expense.Title = "";

client.BeginSubmitExpense(request, OnStartCompleted, null);

As I said, I am doing this asyc so I only care that my request was successful. Do be sure of this I subscribe to the IAsyncResult.
The code looks like this:

SubmitExpenseResponse result = (SubmitExpenseResponse)client.EndSubmitExpense(asr);

Within the method that waits for the IAsyncResult I have some try catches.

catch (CommunicationException)

catch (TimeoutException)

catch (Exception)

I can then decided what do in my client app. when something goes wrong.

You can probably see in my workflow that there are some custom activities like:
AutoScreenExpense, NotifyExpenseSubmitter, RequestManagerAction, SaveExpense, UpdateExpense. These are my own activities that inplement System.Activities.CodeActivity. AutoScreenExpense is a flowchart xaml workflow that I have built that just takes are of the £100 limit decision mentioed earlier.

After you build your custom activities they will appear in the toolbox.

AutoScreenExpense is a separate workflow that I have exposed as a custom activity inside the ExpenseService.xamlx workflow. Nice!To write a code based activity you can either implement System.Activities.CodeActivity or System.Activity.NativeActivity.As you can see I implement CodeActivity. Also note that this activity has a public InArgument which is the ExpenseRequest coming into the activity. the expenserequest is then mapped to my Entity Framework 4.0 entity and then saved and a response is sent back to the workflow.

Another thing I nearly forgot is that the way to get data into and throught a workflow is to use arguements or variables. In this case, I think because I have used a xamlx project type, I only have access to variables as follows:

you can see my ExpenseRequest variable another one for response and a boolean that is used internally by my workflow. Also, I have an ExpenseIDHandle that is used for correlation so that the workflow know which instance of a workflow to work with when a caller asks it to do something.

I mentioned that I am using Entity Framework 4.0 to manage my database updates. I have a couple of tables in an SQL 2008 database. One holds the record of the expense to be approved and the other is just a lookup table:

Obviously this is not very fancy but I plan on building on it later.

So now I have a workflow that I can host in IIS and AppFabric. In my next post I will do this.
Over and out!!
RuSs

Ps. If I have got anything wrong here please let me know

Building queries for working with Folders

2009-04-07T18:47:00.005+10:00

Credit to:
http://sharepointmagazine.net/technical/development/writing-caml-queries-for-retrieving-list-items-from-a-sharepoint-list for this info.

------

A first variant I will explain is how you can work with folders and sub folders. A folder is a special list item on a list or document library. If you execute a standard CAML query you will end up with list items from the root folder.

If you want to query all folders and sub folders of a list or document library, you have to define extra query options. If you are working with the object model you have to set the ViewAttributes property of the SPQuery object as follows:

qry.ViewAttributes = "Scope='Recursive'";

If you work with GetListItems method of the Lists.asmx SharePoint web service, you have to define an extra node with the QueryOptions element:

XmlNode queryOptionsNode = camlDocument.CreateElement("QueryOptions");

queryOptionsNode.InnerXml = "";

If you want to query a specific sub folder using the SPQuery object, you have to set the Folder property:

qry.Folder = list.ParentWeb.GetFolder("Folders DocLib/2008");

When working with the web services you have to do the following:

XmlNode queryOptionsNode = camlDocument.CreateElement("QueryOptions");

queryOptionsNode.InnerXml = " Folders DocLib/2008";

-----

So my CAML looked like this:
<Query>
<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='FileLeafRef'/><Value Type='Text'>testdoc.docx</Value></Eq></Where>
</Query>
<ViewFields>
<FieldRef Name='Title' />
</ViewFields>
<QueryOptions>
<Folder>Documents/[002643][Test%20project%20for%20Adam]/[ACPC][126573][1][writeFileAndXmlTest2]</Folder>
<OptimizeFor>FolderUrls</OptimizeFor>
</QueryOptions>

RuSs

DLL Binding Redirect

2009-03-10T21:53:00.007+11:00

We had an issue where an old app was breaking because it was looking for an old version of Microsoft AJAX when we had upgraded to Microsoft AJAX 3.5.

To quickly get around this issue we did a binging redirect:

<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Extensions" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />

<bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.61025.0" newVersion="3.5.0.0"/>
<publisherPolicy apply="no" />
</dependentAssembly>

Pretty easy. Although we may move to the machine.config for a more global solution.

RuSs

Detect columns and copy a row - t-sql

2009-03-05T02:18:00.001+11:00

This is a way to copy a row in a table without caring whether someone has added new columns.

USE [TRAM]
GO
/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[COPY_Subleases_2] Script Date: 03/04/2009 15:16:34 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[COPY_Subleases_2]
(
@iSourceTable VARCHAR (150),
@lPrintIt INT,
@CurrentAssetID INT,
@NewAssetID INT,
@CurrentsubleaseID INT OUTPUT,
@executeIt int
)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @cName varchar(150)
DECLARE @lCnt int
DECLARE @lColumnList varchar(MAX)

SET NOCOUNT ON;

-- SET @iSourceTable = 'PropertyAnnualProperty'
-- SET @lPrintIt = 1
SET @lColumnList = ''

DECLARE _LIST
INSENSITIVE SCROLL CURSOR

FOR

SELECT column_name

FROM

information_schema.columns

WHERE

table_name = @iSourceTable AND
data_type <> 'timestamp' AND
column_name <> 'SubLeaseID' AND
column_name <> 'AssetID'

ORDER BY
ordinal_position

OPEN _LIST

IF @lPrintIt = 1 print 'Column names returned...' + convert(char(8),@@cursor_rows)

-- Check for an error
IF @@CURSOR_ROWS = 0

BEGIN

GOTO Done_Loop_LIST

END

-- Grab the first record
FETCH FIRST FROM _LIST

INTO @cName

SELECT @lCnt = 0

Loop_LIST:

SELECT @lCnt = @lCnt + 1
SELECT @lColumnList = @lColumnList + '[' + @cName + '],'

FETCH NEXT FROM _LIST

INTO @cName

-- Any more ?

IF @@FETCH_STATUS != -1

BEGIN

GOTO Loop_LIST

END

Done_Loop_LIST:

DEALLOCATE _LIST

-- Remove the trailing ','
print '@lColumnList: ' + convert(varchar(MAX), @lColumnList)
SELECT @lColumnList = substring(@lColumnList,1,datalength(@lColumnList)-1)

IF @lPrintIt = 1 PRINT @lColumnList

DECLARE @stm varchar(MAX)

SET @stm = 'INSERT INTO ' + @iSourceTable + ' (AssetId, ' + @lColumnList + ') SELECT ' + Convert(varchar(10), @NewAssetID) + ', ' + @lColumnList + ' from ' + @iSourceTable +
' where assetid = ' + Convert(varchar(10), @CurrentAssetID)

PRINT @stm

IF(@executeIt = 1)
BEGIN
EXEC(@STM)
END

SELECT @CurrentsubleaseID = @@identity

END

Cant Install Message Queuing

2009-02-04T01:51:00.006+11:00

I get an error everytime i install message queing "MSMQ cannot be started error 0x42c dependency service or group failed to start"

I fixed it by doing this:
start cmd prompt
net stop msdtc
msdtc -uninstall
msdtc - install
net start msdtc

Then I reinstalled MSMQ and it worked.

RuSs

'Sys' is undefined

2009-01-28T03:06:00.001+11:00

Things are missing from your web.config.

Look at:
<add assembly="Microsoft.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>

under <httpHandlers> (this is the new one)
<add verb="GET" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="Microsoft.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler" validate="false"/>

RuSs

Sharepoint web service and HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed

2009-01-23T22:28:00.006+11:00

Hello all,

Well, I just spent 3 weeks on this issue and it has been the most frustrating time.
I built a SharePoint workflow that was tested on our development server. I then started to deploy it to our TEST server.

The deployment process was easy and I expected it to be up and running in a couple of hours.

Note: The TEST SharePoint server had Kerberos on it.

So when I started a workflow running I realised that all the endpoints that were talking to the builtin SharePoint web services failed with various security errors. Ititally I realised that all my endpoint and binding settings needed to be converted for the Kerberos environment so I began setting up everything for Kerberos.

Ie.. using setspn to create SPNs etc..

Did all this and using System.Diagnostics and the trace I could see I was getting somewhere but getting what I thought were Kerberos errors.

Remember that I was using WCF that was wrapped around (old fashioned) SharePoint web services.

Anyway, spent too long on this so it was decided that I should forget WCF and use old fashioned web services as I really had no need for all the functionality and security of WCF as the data being passed was internal and then not that important.

So I changed everything to old fashioned web services assuming that this would "just work".

Then I deployed and started getting 401.1 errors. (HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed)

I could not get around these errors. I checked everything from Sharepoint list access, app pool accounts in IIS... etc....

Then I tried talking from my DEV server's old fashion webservices to my TEST server's Sharepoint web service and it worked. WEIRD.

So at this point I could talk from a remote client to the TEST server but not from the TEST server to the TEST server. Grrrr.

Another few days went past and my boss stumbled apon this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;896861

Notes from the link:
Symptoms:
When you use the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or a custom host header to browse a local Web site that is hosted on a computer that is running Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 or IIS 6, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed

This issue occurs when the Web site uses Integrated Authentication and has a name that is mapped to the local loopback address.

Note You only receive this error message if you try to browse the Web site directly on the server. If you browse the Web site from a client computer, the Web site works as expected.

Cause:
This issue occurs if you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 include a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.

Resolution:

Method 1: Disable the loopback chec

Follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Method 2: Specify host names

To specify the host names that are mapped to the loopback address and can connect to Web sites on your computer, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0
Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IISAdmin service.

I chose method 1 and then rebooted and everything just started to work.
BUT, what a nightmare 3 weeks I had.

To summarize. I registry hack needed to be done to make server1 to server1 calls.
Whilst this was there to stop attacks on the server, I am still very annoyed that it took so long to find the solution and we only found it by accident.

Just wondering if anyone else has had the similar issue?

I am assuming that now, if I could be bother, I could go back to using Kerberos and things would probably work.

Grrrrrrrrrr!

thanks
RuSs

Reconnect an SQL login to a user

2008-12-09T21:17:00.006+11:00

Sometimes a user in a database gets disconnected from a server login and you can re-map the login to the database as the user is already there.

This usually happens after you restore a database to a server.

So the following gived you a report of all the disconnected users:

sp_change_users_login report

And this remaps a login(tramdba(server login)) to a user(tramdba(user))

sp_change_users_login update_one,tramdba,tramdba

thanks

RuSs

Batch Deleting in T-SQL

2008-12-04T00:17:00.002+11:00

DECLARE @BatchSize int

DECLARE @Rows int

SET @Rows = 1

SET @BatchSize = 100000

WHILE (@Rows > 0)

BEGIN

delete TOP (@BatchSize) FROM PropertyMonthProperty
from PropertyMonthProperty PMP
inner join Property P
on
PMP.propertyid = P.propertyid
where
p.scenarioid = 14149

SET @Rows = @@ROWCOUNT

END

Convert a c# datetime to the XML format

2008-12-03T23:36:00.008+11:00

XmlConvert.ToString(DateTime.Now, "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss")

Getting all the column names in a table

2008-12-03T23:31:00.002+11:00

SELECT COLUMN_NAME from information_schema.columns WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'table name'

Branching in TFS

2008-11-26T22:24:00.001+11:00

Ahhh... I think I know what you're running into.

Are you getting "The target item $/foo/sub cannot be under the source item $/foo"?

Basically, we don't allow you to branch everything in a folder to a subfolder of itself. The branch itself would work, but subsequent merges would get...messy.

The way to deal with this is to create a single top-level folder directly under your team project (so, if your Team Project is "foo", put all of your source in something like "$/foo/Main"); then, if you need multiple branches within the team project, you can branch $/foo/Main to $/foo/a, or $/foo/a to $/foo/a.1, etc.

Let me know if that will work for you or not; or especially if you're seeing some other error when you attempt your branch.

Top ten things that waste my time in Windows Workflow

2008-11-20T21:38:00.009+11:00

The reason for this list is I keep running into dodgy issues and keep spending time on them only to remember I had the same issue from 6 months ago (this list is for my personal use so I appologise if it doesnt not seem clear, it's just to jog my memory!):

I suffer compile hell and then I remember that IIS caches my DLLs in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files for my WCF service. I try everything and then I remember this after throwing my laptop against the wall. I recommend restarting IIS and delelting Temporary ASP.NET Files every time you recompile. I just dont trust what is being cached.
Some of my DLLs may be set, by default, to copy local so the GAC doesnt get updated and I cant figure out what is going on.
Always remember to separate each bit of functionality into separate projects. If you have it all in 1 project then VS 2008 parses the whole workflow every time and this takes ages.
Work on a machine with loads of power, when I changed machines from a blade to a super dooper machine by development time increased by and 10*. Also, to deploy to Sharepoint rime decreased from about 40 seconds to about 6 sencinds..NICE!!!
Always remember to do an "UPDATE SERVICE REFERENCE" on your WCF refs. It seems theses do not get updated sometimes and this caused datatype errors with little red errors in your workflow. This is also related to point 1 above (Temporary ASP.NET Files).
Because workflow is so complex I recommend writing unit test on every layer other wise you will spend too long looking for issues in one layer when they could be raised elsewhere.
If you change a SN.KEY file your Public key token changes. Pretty obvious but spend ages thinking I had another issue.
Dont forget to map dependency activities declaratively to child activities. This is the most trustworthy way of passing data / properties between activities.
If you get the designer cant load type errors that give you no info what so ever firstly do IIS reset, then delete Temporary ASP.NET Files then restart visual studio. Then recompile the repen the WF design surface. (sounds like over kill but worth the effort I reckon)
Was having DLL hell and then I ran a visual studio CLEAN command on my Solution and the DLL hell went away.

Workflow Public Key Tokens

2008-11-19T19:23:00.007+11:00

Sharepoint workflow assemblies must be strongly named. The feature installation requires that you indicate the publick key token for the workflow assembly. There are a number of hoops one can jump through in order to obtain this public key. Here's some I've heard today:

* Drag the built assembly into the GAC, browse to the GAC, copy and paste the public key token from the explorer window;
* Drop to a command prompt, browse to the SDK/Bin directory, use the SN.EXE command line tool to retrieve the public key token, copy all the contents of the command window into notepad, find the public key entry, copy and paste into your xml file

or

You can be a lazy programmer like me and simply take the following steps:

* In Visual Studio
* Tools/External Tools
* Title: Get Public Key; Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\sn.exe; Arguments: -Tp "$(TargetPath)"; use Output Window

Now you'll have an option on your Tools menu called "Get Public Key." Simply build your strongly named assembly, select Tools/Get Public Key and in the output window you'll be presented with the public key token, simply copy and paste... wala lazy programming shortcut.

this is from:
http://blogs.officezealot.com/jkremer/archive/2007/01/17/20075.aspx

RuSs

Add columns to t-sql table

2008-10-29T21:47:00.006+11:00

ALTER TABLE ModelDataByID

ADD

A_DebtFeesRate decimal(11, 2) NULL,
A_CcaFeesRa decimalte (11, 2) NULL,
A_ExchangeDate decimal NULL,
A_ConditionalDate decimal NULL,
A_CompletionDate decimal NULL

OR

ALTER TABLE [User] ALTER COLUMN Internal_External varchar (20);

that's it.
RuSs

Finding Duplicates with SQL

2008-10-23T20:08:00.000+11:00

Info was found here:
http://www.petefreitag.com/item/169.cfm

Here's a handy query for finding duplicates in a table. Suppose you
want to find all email addresses in a table that exist more than once:

SELECT email,
COUNT(email) AS NumOccurrences
FROM users
GROUP BY email
HAVING ( COUNT(email) > 1 )

You could also use this technique to find rows that occur exactly once:

SELECT email
FROM users
GROUP BY email
HAVING ( COUNT(email) = 1 )

RuSs

How to install WSS and MOSS SP1

2008-10-10T21:07:00.001+11:00

Thanks to the Sharepoint farmer's almanac for this:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/12/14/how-to-install-wss-and-moss-sp1.aspx

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint is here. The SharePoint Team blog has a great full length article on all of fixes and tweaks. You can read it here Announcing the Release of WSS 3.0 SP1 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1.

This post is just meant to give you the easy version of the install instructions. If you have complex scenarios or have issues I highly recommend you read Planning and deploying SP1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server instead of my instructions. Cool?

Ok here is my setup that I am about to patch. Server 1 is the SQL 2005 SP2 database box. Server 2 is a Windows Server 2003 SP2 with MOSS 2007 Enterprise installed. I am doing everything on Server 2. I give you run times on the longer parts for reference points. Your times will vary!

Backup SharePoint! Seriously handy little paper here if you need help.
Download the software you need. For my servers I downloaded the 32 bit editions. You must install BOTH the WSS and MOSS update if you have MOSS installed.
1. WSS SP1 downloads
2. MOSS SP1 downloads
Stop the World Wide Web Publishing Services to keep your users off the server.
1. Start > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list, click World Wide Web Publishing Service
3. Click the Stop button
Install the Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now it starts processing the update.
7. At the installation complete message click OK
Now if you have just WSS skip to step 8
If the configuration wizard opens close it.
Install the MOSS update (total time less than 2 minutes)
1. Find the downloaded file. For me this was officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
2. Double click to run the file
3. Read the license terms, click accept
4. Click continue
5. At the reminder message click OK
6. Now the update processes…
Run SharePoint Configuration Wizard (15 minutes)
1. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
2. Click Next at the Welcome screen
3. Click Yes at the warning about restarting services
4. Click Next at the Completing the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard
5. Your server is now processing step 1
6. You will be prompted to now install the updates on other servers in your farm. Click OK since you only have 1 SharePoint server.
  1. NOTE: If you did have multiple servers you would repeat all of the above steps on each of those servers before moving on. Also, if you are wondering you should probably start with the server that host central admin.
7. Now your server is processing steps 2 through 9.
8. Speaking of step 8 it took my server approximately 13 minutes to process 4.4 GB of content. I am sure your times will vary. Just don't panic on this step if it takes a while. It is essentially touching all of your content.
9. At Configuration Successful click Finish
Check out Central Admin
1. Restart the World Wide Web Publishing service you stopped in step 2. If you had to reboot this is not necessary.
2. Click Operations tab
3. Under Topologies and Services click Servers in farm
4. Next to your server you should see Version 12.0.0.6219 not 12.0.0.4518. If you do you should be good to go.

That is it. :)

Seeing decent error messages in Sharepoint

2008-10-10T18:26:00.005+11:00

I dont know about anyone else but I am sick of seeing:

"An error has occurred"

in Sharepoint then having to look in the logs to see what the error is.

I just found out that if you set CallStack="true" in the relevant sites web.config you get the error on the screen. How easy is that!!!

I knew this already but you can also turn on tracing which will provide lots more info.

RuSs

How do delete a TFS team project

2008-10-09T21:33:00.002+11:00

open visual Studio 2008 command prompt from

START > Programs > VS 2008 > VS tools > VS Command Prompt

enter:

tfsDeleteProject /force /server:TLONDEV002 "MSDN Calc v2"

You will get the following info and it may take a few minutes:
E:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC>tfsDeleteProject /force /server:
TLONDEV002 "MSDN Calc v2"
Warning: Deleting a team project is an irrecoverable operation. All version cont
rol, work item tracking and Team Foundation build data will be destroyed from th
e system. The only way to recover this data is by restoring a stored backup of t
he databases. Are you sure you want to delete the team project and all of its da
ta (Y/N)?y

Deleting from Build ...
Done
Deleting from Work Item Tracking ...
Done
Deleting from Version Control ...
Done
Deleting Report Server files ...
Done
Deleting SharePoint site ...
Done
Deleting from Team Foundation Core ...
Done

Using XPath with XML returned by SharePoint Web services

2008-09-26T20:44:00.002+10:00

Using XPath with XML returned by SharePoint Web services

I've seen quite often people writing code that parses thru XML returned by SPS Web services as strings instead of using XPath - cause the XmlDocument throws this error all the time if you dont use an XmlNameSpaceManager

"Namespace Manager or XsltContext needed. This query has a prefix, variable, or user-defined function."

Heres a snippet that tells you how to use the XmlNameSpaceManager to use XPath with the XmlDocument.

Dim Document As New XmlDocument
Dim xml As String

xml = "<listitems xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882=" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882=" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset=" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema=" TimeStamp="2004-12-20T20:57:26Z=" xmlns="http:="//schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/"><rs:data ItemCount="0="></rs:data><rs:data ItemCount="0="></rs:data></listitems>"
Document.LoadXml(xml)

'Since the XML returned by SPS contains namespace prefixes - we need to create a XmlNamespaceManager
Dim SharePointNamespacePrefix As String = "sp"
Dim SharePointNamespaceURI As String = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/"

Dim ListItemsNamespacePrefix As String = "z"
Dim ListItemsNamespaceURI As String = "#RowsetSchema"

Dim PictureLibrariesNamespacePrefix As String = "s"
Dim PictureLibrariesNamespaceURI As String = "uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882"

Dim WebPartsNamespacePrefix As String = "dt"
Dim WebPartsNamespaceURI As String = "uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882"

Dim DirectoryNamespacePrefix As String = "rs"
Dim DirectoryNamespaceURI As String = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset"

'now associate with the xmlns namespaces (part of all XML nodes returned
'from SharePoint) a namespace prefix which we can then use in the queries
Dim NamespaceMngr As XmlNamespaceManager
NamespaceMngr = New XmlNamespaceManager(Document.NameTable)

NamespaceMngr.AddNamespace(SharePointNamespacePrefix, SharePointNamespaceURI)
NamespaceMngr.AddNamespace(ListItemsNamespacePrefix, ListItemsNamespaceURI)
NamespaceMngr.AddNamespace(PictureLibrariesNamespacePrefix, PictureLibrariesNamespaceURI)
NamespaceMngr.AddNamespace(WebPartsNamespacePrefix, WebPartsNamespaceURI)
NamespaceMngr.AddNamespace(DirectoryNamespacePrefix, DirectoryNamespaceURI)

'run the XPath query and return the result nodes
Dim xNodeList As XmlNodeList
xNodeList = Document.SelectNodes("//z:row[@ows_Title]", NamespaceMngr)

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

2008-08-13T17:07:00.002+10:00

VS2008 sp1 is finally realeased.

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver high quality and rich user experiences. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create secure, manageable, and reliable applications that are optimized for Windows Vista™, SQL Server, the Microsoft 2007 Office system and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 continue Microsoft’s investment in market leading development tools and developer platform. SP1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer and partner feedback, as well as internal testing. These service packs offer customers improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

SQL GetDate() in Oracle

2008-06-12T20:15:00.001+10:00

SQL GetDate() in Oracle is SYSDATE

For example:
INSERT INTO WORKFLOW_RESULTS
(XML_INPUT, INSERT_DATE, STATUS, PROCESSED_DATE)
VALUES
(
'testing1'
,SYSDATE
,'TTT'
,SYSDATE
)

Using an Oracle Function in .NET

2008-06-12T19:25:00.001+10:00

Hey,

Just blogging this as it was a pain in the bum to get right:

public Acres.DataContracts.BusinessCaseContentType GetFullCaseDataFromClarity( Acres.DataContracts.BusinessCaseContentType contract ) {

string xml_clob = string.Empty;

System.Data.OracleClient.OracleConnection conn = new System.Data.OracleClient.OracleConnection( ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[ "ClarityConnection" ].ConnectionString );

using ( System.Data.OracleClient.OracleCommand cmd = new System.Data.OracleClient.OracleCommand() ) {

conn.Open();

cmd.Connection = conn;
cmd.CommandText = "Workflow_procedures.webcall_business_case";
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

OracleParameter p_retval = new OracleParameter("p_retval", OracleType.Clob);
p_retval.Direction = ParameterDirection.ReturnValue;
cmd.Parameters.Add(p_retval);

cmd.Parameters.Add( "p_bc_id", OracleType.Int32 ).Value = contract.ClarityBusinessCaseId;

cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

xml_clob = ( (System.Data.OracleClient.OracleLob)( p_retval.Value ) ).Value.ToString();

contract =
(Acres.DataContracts.BusinessCaseContentType)Acres.Workflow.UtilityCode.Utility.DeserialiseObject
( xml_clob, typeof( Acres.DataContracts.BusinessCaseContentType ) );
}
return contract;
}

Sharepoint and .resx files with workflow task form

2008-06-05T22:15:00.005+10:00

Bonjour,

I just figured how to use a resx file in my workflow aspx task form.

I needed to style my aspx task form with XSLT and I just hard coded it in the page knowing that I would come back to it and put it into a resource file.

NOTE: the resx files are in the following location on your sharepoint server:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\Resources

When I tried this it was not easy.

I tried many things but then stumbled upon the SPUtility.GetLocalizedString code.

Orginally this would not work as I was trying to embed an XSLT file inside the resx file and both are XML so it was gettign confused. I then replaced all the < + > tags with < + > but only in the XSLT part of the resx file (the red bit below)

Then in my c# code I do the following:
string theApproversXSLT = SPUtility.GetLocalizedString( "$Resources:Approvers", "Acres", SPContext.Current.Web.Language );

Approvers is the name you can see in the resx file and Acres is the name of my file: Acres.resx.

You can use this also for language options but as you can see I just used the current:
SPContext.Current.Web.Language

So here is my resx file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root>

<xsd:schema id="root" xmlns="" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">
<xsd:import namespace="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" />
<xsd:element name="root" msdata:IsDataSet="true">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xsd:element name="metadata">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name="value" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="0" />
</xsd:sequence>
<xsd:attribute name="name" use="required" type="xsd:string" />
<xsd:attribute name="type" type="xsd:string" />
<xsd:attribute name="mimetype" type="xsd:string" />
<xsd:attribute ref="xml:space" />
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="assembly">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:attribute name="alias" type="xsd:string" />
<xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" />
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="data">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name="value" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="0" msdata:Ordinal="1" />
<xsd:element name="comment" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="0" msdata:Ordinal="2" />
</xsd:sequence>
<xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" use="required" msdata:Ordinal="1" />
<xsd:attribute name="type" type="xsd:string" msdata:Ordinal="3" />
<xsd:attribute name="mimetype" type="xsd:string" msdata:Ordinal="4" />
<xsd:attribute ref="xml:space" />
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="resheader">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name="value" type="xsd:string" minOccurs="0" msdata:Ordinal="1" />
</xsd:sequence>
<xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" use="required" />
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:choice>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
<resheader name="resmimetype">
<value>text/microsoft-resx</value>
</resheader>
<resheader name="version">
<value>2.0</value>
</resheader>
<resheader name="reader">
<value>System.Resources.ResXResourceReader, System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</value>
</resheader>
<resheader name="writer">
<value>System.Resources.ResXResourceWriter, System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</value>
</resheader>
<assembly alias="System.Windows.Forms" name="System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
<data name="Approvers" type="System.Resources.ResXFileRef, System.Windows.Forms">
<value><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl">
<xsl:template match="/">
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Name</td>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Role Type</td>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Seq</td>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Action Type</td>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Email</td>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="BusinessCaseContentType/Approvers/Data_ApprovalChainMember_Contract">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="IsCurrentInWorkflowChain = 'true'">
<tr>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="FirstName"/>.<xsl:value-of select="LastName"/>
</td>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="AuthorityRoleType"/>
</td>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="ResourceSeqNumber"/>
</td>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="AuthorityActionType"/>
</td>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="Email"/>
</td>
</tr>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<tr>
<td style="background-color:#eeeeee;color:#999999;" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="FirstName"/>.<xsl:value-of select="LastName"/>
</td>
<td style="background-color:#eeeeee;color:#999999;" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="AuthorityRoleType"/>
</td>
<td style="background-color:#eeeeee;color:#999999;" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="ResourceSeqNumber"/>
</td>
<td style="background-color:#eeeeee;color:#999999;" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="AuthorityActionType"/>
</td>
<td style="background-color:#eeeeee;color:#999999;" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="Email"/>
</td>
</tr>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
</value>
</data>
<data name="ExpenditureLines" type="System.Resources.ResXFileRef, System.Windows.Forms">
<value>?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:decimal-format name="euro" decimal-separator="," grouping-separator="."/>
<xsl:key name="cowKey" match="ExpenditureLine" use="CowType"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Cow</td>
<td class="ms-formlabel">Amount</td>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="//ExpenditureLine[generate-id(.)=generate-id(key('cowKey',CowType))]">
<xsl:sort select="count(key('cowKey',CowType))" order="descending" data-type="text"/>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
<b>
<xsl:value-of select="CowType"/>
</b>
</td>
</tr>
<xsl:for-each select="key('cowKey',CowType)">
<tr>
<td class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="position()"/>.<xsl:value-of select="Cow"/>
</td>
<td class="ms-formbody">
£<xsl:value-of select="format-number(Amount, '#.###,00', 'euro')"/>
</td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></value></data>
</root>

Hope this helps someone

RuSs

SharePoint Manager 2007

2008-06-03T20:17:00.002+10:00

The Sharepoint Manager 2007 tool is a great tool for visually seeing the heirarchical tree of your MOSS 2007 site.

http://www.codeplex.com/spm

It requires no installation as it's just an EXE so no risk of stuffing up your sharepoint installation.

RuSs

Approval Workflow does not send Email to approvers

2008-06-03T20:15:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Bryant Duke for this one:
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1964290&siteid=17&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=1

I finally found the underlying problem with email being sent with the Workflow. After much research and digging, I found several different articles which addressed the issue. Each one of them presented a portion of the solution, but none of them clearly explained it to me. I will try to explain what I mean.

First of all, I didn't know of a MAJOR limitation to the task list of a site collection. Apparently, you can only have ONE task list in a site collection with advanced option of "Send email when ownership is assigned". This option can be found under List Settings, Advanced Settings. After testing on two separate installations, I can conclude that if you turn this option on for both Task Lists, only one of them can actually send email on immediate notification. They will send email for late tasks, deleted tasks and even changed tasks, but the behavior was intermittent.

While creating, deleting and changing the options of two or more task lists, I watched the property and values which changed in the background. You can do this by downloading and installing "Sharepoint Manager 2007" from code-plex. http://www.codeplex.com/spm After you download and install this tool (which is a great tool), you can use the tree structure to explore your way down your portal farm configuration. First open the main + at the farm level, then

-{name_of_farm}

-Content Service

-Web Applications

-[name_of_web_app}

-Site Collection

-http://{url_name}

-{name_of_portal}

-Webs

-Alert Collection

This is assuming you are using a fairly default portal installation, and you are using the default Task List in the Document Center. If not, explore to the appropriate Webs section you are working in.

Under the "Alert Collection" of the appropriate Webs section, you should see a "System" object which will show you the properties of the "Immediate" alert template. If the object is not present, no immediate alerts will be sent. Also notice, that if you set two separate Task Lists with the option "Send email when ownership is assigned", that there will still only be ONE system object. In the properties of the object, you can see which list it is bound to under the "List" property.

If the task list is not sending immediate emails, then go to the list and change the option "Send email when ownership is assigned" to NO, close the list and wait a few minutes (usually about 5 minutes). The timer service should delete the "system" object.

Once the object is gone (you can check Sharepoint Manager 2007 using the "Refresh" option), then go back to the task list and re-enable the option. After about 5 minutes, the "System" object should return for that list.

I hope all of this make sense, and can help people solve the "Missing Emails" mystery.

Bryant

HOTFIX 946517 and MOSS 2007

2008-06-03T19:00:00.002+10:00

Was wondering why my MOSS 2007 server was not sending emails so I went into the relay settings and tried to change some options that would allow my server to send email to ALL recipients.

As shown in the following post by VIJAYSHINVA KARNURE you get an unspecified error with no event log info.

This is caused by hotfix 946517.

See here for more info.

cheers
RuSs

How to group with XSLT

2008-05-31T19:43:00.003+10:00

Bonjour,

Note: I used Altova 2008 XML Spy which is a great tool.

I just spent a little while trying to understand grouping of data using XSLT.

I first started out using XSLT 2.0 and was quite happy with how easy it was to group until I tried to transform the XSLT with C#. Guess what, .NET 2.0 doesnt support XSLT 2.0 even though W3C says it's the current standard.

Anyway, so I went back to using XSLT 1.0 which was not my friend until now. It's a lot more complex to group using XSLT 1.0 but I eventually got there.

Here is my XSLT:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:key name="cowKey" match="ExpenditureLine" use="CowType" />

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>

<xsl:for-each select="//ExpenditureLine[generate-id(.)=generate-id(key('cowKey',CowType))]">

<xsl:sort select="count(key('cowKey',CowType))" order="descending" data-type="text"/>
<h2>
<xsl:value-of select="position()"/>
<xsl:text>.</xsl:text>
*<xsl:value-of select="CowType"/>*
<br></br>
<xsl:text> Count: </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="count(key('cowKey',CowType))"/>
</h2>
<ol>
<xsl:for-each select="key('cowKey',CowType)">
<li>
<b><xsl:value-of select="Cow"/>:</b>
<xsl:value-of select="Amount"/>
</li>
</xsl:for-each>

</ol>

</xsl:for-each>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

and here is my XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ExpenditureLines>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>RAND</Cow>
<CowType>Capital</CowType>
<Amount>2222</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>LAND7</Cow>
<CowType>Capital</CowType>
<Amount>000005</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>LAND3</Cow>
<CowType>Furniture</CowType>
<Amount>9875</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>ACPB</Cow>
<CowType>Revenue</CowType>
<Amount>1111</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>LAND2</Cow>
<CowType>Furniture</CowType>
<Amount>3333</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>LAND1</Cow>
<CowType>Furniture</CowType>
<Amount>7677</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>YELK</Cow>
<CowType>Other</CowType>
<Amount>000005</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
<ExpenditureLine>
<Cow>LAND3</Cow>
<CowType>Furniture</CowType>
<Amount>9875</Amount>
</ExpenditureLine>
</ExpenditureLines>

and here is the result:

1.Furniture
Count: 4

LAND3:9875

LAND2:3333

LAND1:7677

LAND3:9875

2.Capital
Count: 2

RAND:2222

LAND7:000005

3.Revenue
Count: 1

ACPB:1111

4.Other
Count: 1

YELK:000005

Workflow Send activity + WCF [DataMember] and the story of why I am an idiot!!!

2008-05-15T00:12:00.011+10:00

If you have a class BusinessCaseContentType whose properties are not decorated with the [DataMember] attribute and you try and use a Workflow SendActivity to receive this class BusinessCaseContentType it will always come back un-populated.

using System;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Acres.DataContracts
{
  [Serializable()]
  [DataContract]
  public class BusinessCaseContentType
  {

  private string _BusinessCaseType;

   [DataMember] // - not my friend at the moment
  public string BusinessCaseType
  {
    get { return _BusinessCaseType; }
    set { _BusinessCaseType = value; }
  }

}
}

Thing is, you wont get an error you will just get a NULL instance of BusinessCaseContentType.

Now this really sucks as I spent 2 days looking a for a needle in a haystack when in fact I was looking for a tractor in a haystack!!

Oh well, at least I know for next time!!

Can I have a beer please!!

RuSs

Making sharepoint RSS feed work behind your firewall

2008-05-14T18:10:00.005+10:00

Morning,

Just found a great little post here that shows you how to make RSS feeds work in Sharepoint inside your company firewall.

You add the following inside the section in the site web.config.

<defaultProxy>
<proxy autoDetect="true"
usesystemdefault="false"
proxyaddress="http://YOUR_PROXY_SERVER:YOUR_PORT_NUMBER"
bypassonlocal="true" />

</defaultProxy>

Works perfectly.. just wait a few more seconds for your site to recompile.

thanks
RuSs

Starting out with Sharepoint 2007 BDC

2008-05-13T20:37:00.020+10:00

This post is a simple step by step of how to set up BDC.

Here is a great video that walks you though it.
Here also is a virtual lab but you will need an MSDN login for this and it needs to run in IE.
Here is the PDF that goes with the lab.

Firstly go and get:
BDC Meta Man - this will save you hours as it creates the XML defintion files for you.
http://www.lightningtools.com/bdc-meta-man/default.aspx
This tool is great although unless you pay for it you will only be able to add 2 tables max and you get a lot of popup messages telling you about the paid for version. But the free version is really good besides that.

Then you just select the type of connection you want. This post will only cover database connections.

So connect to your SQL 2005 database using the connect to datasource drop down inside BDC Meta Man.
then drag the table(s) on to the design surface. Drag 2 tables that are relates as you get more functionality in Sharepoint if you do this. (ie.. master details stuff)
Go and choose the columns you want etc... but you are better to get most of the columns as you can filter them later in MOSS.
One thing I had trouble with is not being able to connect to my database as the credentials it was passing were the IIS settings.

So in my XML defintion file that was created by BDC Meta Man I did the folllowing:

<LobSystemInstances>
<LobSystemInstance Name="PropertyPortal_030Instance">
<Properties>
<Property Name="AuthenticationMode" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.ApplicationRegistry.SystemSpecific.Db.DbAuthenticationMode">PassThrough</Property>
<Property Name="DatabaseAccessProvider" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.ApplicationRegistry.SystemSpecific.Db.DbAccessProvider">SqlServer</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection Data Source" Type="System.String">MY_SERVER_NAME</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection Initial Catalog" Type="System.String">MY_DATABASE_NAME</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection Integrated Security" Type="System.String">False</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection Password" Type="System.String">MY_PASSWORD</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection Pooling" Type="System.String">false</Property>
<Property Name="RdbConnection User ID"Type="System.String">MY_USER_NAME</Property>

</Properties>
</LobSystemInstance>
</LobSystemInstances>

As you can see I have put a user name and password in the config.

Ok so now you have your definition file.
Go to central adminitration and select your shared service from share services admin.
Look in the Business Data Catalog section on the right and select "Import application defintion".
Browse to your XML def. and upload it. I left all the setting the same.

Now go to your site and enable:
Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features
Stay in your site and edit a page you want to add these things to.
Click on Add a web part.

Choose Business Data List
AND
Business Data Related List

These 2 will be part of our master detail functionality.
The web part will prompt you to open the tool panel so do this for the business data list first.
Type: click on the book and select the parent table you configure in BDC Meta Man
Apprearance: you can change the title and widths etc..
Click ok.

Do the same for the child table.
Then click ok.

Go to the child webpart and click Edit drop down in top right corner and select connections / Get Related Item From .. and choose your parent web part.
You can also edit the view to remove some columns and do filtering if you like.
Think that's it... spend a bit of time configuring the page as it takes a while to get it looking good.
The most important thing was the SQL username and Password I mentioned above.

RuSs

How to Serialize and Deserialize objects. Greate for WCF

2008-05-02T00:50:00.003+10:00

This code rocks thanks to Raymond Skelly for stealing it from someone to give to me!

public static string SerialiseObject(object o)
{
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
try
{
XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(o.GetType());
s.Serialize(sw, o);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
string x = e.Message;
}
return sw.ToString();
}

public static object DeserialiseObject(string ObjectString, Type ObjectType)
{
XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(ObjectType);
return s.Deserialize(new StringReader(ObjectString));
}

Serialize a class into XML

2008-04-30T23:06:00.005+10:00

To serialize a class into XML do the following:

FileStream fs = new FileStream("SerializedDate.XML", FileMode.Create);

// Create an XmlSerializer object to perform the serialization

XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Acres.DataContracts.Data_NewCase_Contract));

// Use the XmlSerializer object to serialize the data to the file
Acres.DataContracts.Data_NewCase_Contract newCase = new Data_NewCase_Contract();
newCase.CaseId = 7;
newCase.CaseName = "caseSerialize";

xs.Serialize(fs, newCase);

// Close the file

fs.Close();

And the result is:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Data_NewCase_Contract xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<CaseId>7</CaseId>
<CaseName>caseSerialize</CaseName>
</Data_NewCase_Contract>

Delete Infopath 2007 Forms from Sharepoint

2008-04-30T20:38:00.012+10:00

I was trying to delete infopath 2007 forms from:

_admin/ManageFormTemplates.aspx

I could delete them but they just remained in the deleting status.

I found I had to do the following at the command prompt:
cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN
stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs

It outputs the following:
Executing .
Executing solution-deployment-form-ebformpublished1-370.wsp-0.
Operation completed successfully.

RuSs

TFSDeleteProject

2008-04-30T17:18:00.003+10:00

Hello me,

You can use the FTSDeleteProject command line tool to delete a project from Team Foundation server.

The Microsoft post is here:
TFSDeleteProject

The syntax is
Use CMD prompt

cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE

TFSDeleteproject [/q] [/force] [/server:servername] team project name

It goes through and deletes the following stuff; (NOTE: it takes ages)
Deleting from Build ...
Done
Deleting from Work Item Tracking ...
Done
Deleting from Version Control ...
Done
Deleting Report Server files ...
Done
Deleting SharePoint site ...
Done
Deleting from Team Foundation Core ...
Done

Seems to just mark is deleted but not permanently delete it.

RuSs

My Sharepoint Workflow is not seeing my custom content type column

2008-04-16T22:09:00.015+10:00

Just like to say a big thanks to Andrew Carter for pointing me in the right direction on this one.

Andrew Carter's post
http://suguk.org/forums/thread/9820.aspx
Scott Wickham's post
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1131769&SiteID=1

It seems you have to create your own hash variable along side the other variable:

taskHash["UserInputField"] = UserInputField.Text;
taskHash["UserInputField_ForHash"] = UserInputField.Text;
taskHash["Status"] = "Completed";
taskHash["Status_ForHash"] = "Completed";

=============================================================================
Here is a copy of the answer from Scott in the above link:
Since we're using WSS 3.0 and not MOSS 2007, we have to create and use ASP forms for any custom Workflow Task Edit pages instead of being able to use InfoPath forms (which would be nice...maybe some day we'll step up to MOSS). The custom Workflow Edit Pages are used for custom Task Content Types that we create so that our Workflow Tasks can have additional fields beyond the standard Workflow Task fields. Once you've collected the values for the Task fields from the user on the ASP Workflow Task Edit form, the typical procedure is to create a hashtable and fill the hashtable with key/value pairs that represent the names of your Task fields and their associated values, as such:

// This function is called when the user clicks the Save/Submit button
// on the Custom Task Edit ASP form
public void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Create a hashtable that will be used to update the values of task fields
Hashtable taskHash = new Hashtable();
// For each field, create two values in the hashtable. If the field name
// matches a field in the Task content type, the field name will not be
// searchable as a key within the ExtendedProperties hashtable. So
// create a second field that is a duplicate of the first but having a
// name that doesn't exactly match an existing field in the Task
// content type. That way it will be a searchable key within the
// ExtendedProperties hashtable.
taskHash["UserInputField"] = UserInputField.Text;
taskHash["UserInputField_ForHash"] = UserInputField.Text;
taskHash["Status"] = "Completed";
taskHash["Status_ForHash"] = "Completed";
// Alter the task using the vaues in the hashtable
SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask(taskListItem, taskHash, true);
// Redirect to the appropriate web page
SPUtility.Redirect(taskList.DefaultViewUrl, SPRedirectFlags.UseSource, HttpContext.Current);
}

When you make the SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask() call, the values in the hashtable are stored in the Task in the ExtendedProperties collection for the Task. That having been done, the onTaskChanged() event of your Workflow (if you have defined one for this task) will fire. If you want to access the just-changed values for this task, you will find them in the ExtendedProperties collection of the AfterProperties for the task:

private void onTaskChanged_Invoked(object sender, ExternalDataEventArgs e)
{
// The taskIsComplete boolean variable is used as the
// test for the while loop in our workflow that controls
// when we break out of the loop and move to the
// CompleteTask() step. When the value is set to
// "Complete" on the ASP form, the ASP form saves it
// in the Task and then we retrieve it here in the
// onTaskChanged() event
if (taskAfterProperties.ExtendedProperties["Status_ForHash"] == "Completed")
taskIsComplete = true;
else
taskIsComplete = false;
}

The thing to note (and the thing that caused us a lot of grief trying to figure out) is that you cannot access the field in the ExtendedProperties hashtable using the actual name of the field. This is because, for some reason, even though you store the field in the hashtable using the Name of the field as the key (e.g., "Status"), the ExtendedProperties collection actually uses the GUID of the field as the key and not the field name.

To show it visually, here are the actual contents of the hashtable from the code above (using Visual Studio debugger). The first column shows the key values for the hashtable, and the second column shows the corresponding values for each key:

ExtendedProperties Count = 10 System.Collections.Hashtable

[{53101f38-dd2e-458c-b245-0c236cc13d1a}] "DOMAIN\\swickham"
[{c15b34c3-ce7d-490a-b133-3f4de8801b76}] "Completed"
["Status_ForHash"] "Completed"
[{1c5518e2-1e99-49fe-bfc6-1a8de3ba16e2}] "ows_UserInputField_ForHash='yes' ows_Status_ForHash='Completed' "
[{f1e020bc-ba26-443f-bf2f-b68715017bbc}] "512"
[{8cbb9252-1035-4156-9c35-f54e9056c65a}] "\n \n \nTABLE.mail\n{\n..."
[{1d22ea11-1e32-424e-89ab-9fedbadb6ce1}] 155
[{4c12d635-7607-4911-a54a-7c239acdfcc3}] "yes"
["UserInputField_ForHash"] "yes"
[{4d2444c2-0e97-476c-a2a3-e9e4a9c73009}] "2007-01-19T17:10:55Z"

Notice that both values got saved for each field, but in the case of the field name for "Status", the GUID for the Status field is saved as the key and not the string "Status" that we asked it to save. Therefore, you can't retrieve the value of the Status field using "Status" as the key to the hashtable. The only time the ExtendedProperties will actually use the values you store as Field Names for the key is when the Field Names you use do not match any actual field names in the Task Content Type. That's why we use the scheme in the first block of code where we save the value of the field twice...first using the actual Field Name and the second time using a modified version of the field name that is similar enough to recognize. Then whenever we want to access the Task Field values in situations where we can get at them directly through the Field Collection (vs. through the ExtendedProperties Collection), we can use code such as:

string taskStatus = taskListItem["Status"];

And whenever we want to access the Task Field values in situations where we can't get at them directly through the Field Collection and must use the ExtendedProperties Collection, we can use code such as:

string taskStatus = taskAfterProperties.ExtendedProperties["Status_ForHash"];

and both values will be the same.

Please let us know if we're missing a much better way of doing this!

Scott
=============================================================================

SendActivity with Workflow, WCF and Sharepoint MOSS 2007

2008-04-07T16:55:00.000+10:00

Recently, I had to include a Sharepoint Workflow SendActivity in one of my workflows as I needed to talk to a remote WCF service I had written to talk to an Oracle database.

Everything was working great until I deployed my workflow to Sharepoint. Alas there was no config for the WCF endpoint and it took me ages to figure out where to put it.

In the end it was easy that's to some tips from Andrew Carter:
http://suguk.org/members/Hope4sun.aspx

All I had to do was paste my System.ServiceModel config into the configuration section of the Web.config of my current Sharepoint Site.

Nice and seems like the type of thing that a lot of people would run into but it was a nightmare trying to find posts on this item.

RuSs

oh..ps...
This guy has some commments to:
Click here

The debug settings are not valid. Restart the SharePoint Workflow Project Setup Wizard to enter the settings again.

2008-04-03T18:44:00.001+11:00

I recently renames a workflow project in Visual Studio and in Visual Source Control.

All was fine but then my project would not deploy to sharepoint with the following message:

The debug settings are not valid. Restart the SharePoint Workflow Project Setup Wizard to enter the settings again.

I couldnt figure out what it was but then I right clicked on the workflow project and selected

Sharepoint debug Settings ...
(VS 2008)

And I saw that it had reset the SPList that I was pointing to.

I put it all back the way it should be and all was ok after that.

RuSs

My sample cursor

2008-03-14T23:02:00.001+11:00

set ANSI_NULLS ON
set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
-- =============================================
-- Author:
-- Create date:
-- Description:
-- =============================================
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[COPY_MASTER]

@scenarioID int,
@NewScenarioName varchar(50)

AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @NewScenarioID int

DECLARE @CurrentPropertyID int
DECLARE @NewPropertyID int

DECLARE @CurrentAssetID int

DECLARE @NewAssetID int

DECLARE @CurrentHeadleaseID int
DECLARE @CurrentSubleaseID int

SET NOCOUNT ON;

-- COPY SCENARIO
print ' - BEGINNING TO COPY SCENARIO - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @scenarioID)

EXEC COPY_Scenario @scenarioID, @NewScenarioName, @NewScenarioID OUTPUT
DECLARE Properties_Cursor CURSOR FOR

SELECT propertyID
FROM [Property]
WHERE ScenarioID = @scenarioID

OPEN Properties_Cursor

FETCH NEXT FROM Properties_Cursor
INTO @CurrentPropertyID

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN
print '====================================================='
print ' -- The current propertyID is - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @CurrentPropertyID)

EXEC COPY_Properties @scenarioID, @NewScenarioID, @CurrentPropertyID, @NewPropertyID OUTPUT

-- GET ALL ASSETS TO LOOP THROUGH ------------------------
DECLARE Assets_Cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT DISTINCT AssetID from [asset] WHERE propertyID = @CurrentPropertyID

OPEN Assets_Cursor

FETCH NEXT FROM Assets_Cursor
INTO @CurrentAssetID

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIn
print ''
print ' --- The current assetID is - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @CurrentAssetID)

EXEC COPY_Assets @NewPropertyID, @CurrentAssetID, @NewAssetID OUTPUT

EXEC COPY_Headleases @CurrentAssetID, @NewAssetID, @CurrentHeadleaseID OUTPUT

IF @CurrentHeadleaseID > 0
BEGIN
print ' ----- The current HeadleaseID is - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @CurrentHeadleaseID)
END
ELSE
print ' ----- NO HEADLEASE'

EXEC COPY_Subleases @CurrentAssetID, @NewAssetID, @CurrentSubleaseID OUTPUT

IF @CurrentSubleaseID > 0
BEGIN
print ' ----- The current SubleaseID is - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @CurrentSubleaseID)
END
ELSE
print ' ----- NO SUBLEASE'

FETCH NEXT FROM Assets_Cursor
INTO @CurrentAssetID
END

CLOSE Assets_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Assets_Cursor
---------------------------------------------------------

FETCH NEXT FROM Properties_Cursor
INTO @CurrentPropertyID
END

CLOSE Properties_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Properties_Cursor

print '*******************************************************'
print '*******************************************************'
print '***** THE SCENARIO - ' + Convert(varchar(20), @scenarioID) + ' WAS COPIED SUCCESSFULLY ****'
print '*******************************************************'
print '*******************************************************'

END

Determining the correct w3wp process

2008-03-13T00:16:00.001+11:00

Determining the correct w3wp process can be a bit tricky. To isolate the correct process:
- From the server machine, open a command prompt
- Navigate to the System32 directory and run the following script: iisapp.vbs. This script will list all the currently running w3wp.exe processes, listing their PID and associated application pool id. The application pool id is the only relation between the pid and your application.
- Use the PID to identify the correct w3wp.exe on the “Attach to Process” screen.

Toolbox drag fails in VS 2008

2008-02-27T18:22:00.000+11:00

When creating a new custom activity in VS 2008 and dragging this new activity from the toolbox it fails and says it's removing it from the toolbox.

What you need to do is shut VS 2008, uninstall the .dll from the GAC, restart VS 2008, rebuild project to put the .dll back into the GAC and you should now be able the drag your new custom activity from the toolbox.

Thanks for wasting my time MS!

RuSs

Free Download: Sticky Notes tool for Visual Studio 2008

2008-02-07T13:14:00.000+11:00

This is an interesting little utility! Imagine being able to attach notes to code to remind you of "issues" or things that you need to remember about that piece of code. In the past, I would have put those messages into comment blocks within the code, but honestly those notes get lost in the mix with my regular code-comments. So, although this will be one of those tools that you might install and forget to use it, you might find it useful and the cost is reasonable: FREE.

Get it here

Create SQL 2005 pivot table

2008-01-12T01:50:00.000+11:00

CREATE TABLE #FinalTable
(
[Name] varchar(10),
[Month] varchar(10),
amount float
)

Insert into #finaltable values ('Ray','Jan',1)
Insert into #finaltable values ('Ray','Feb',2)
Insert into #finaltable values ('Ray','Mar',3)

Insert into #finaltable values ('Eimaer','Jan',5)
Insert into #finaltable values ('Eimaer','Feb',6)
Insert into #finaltable values ('Eimaer','Mar',7)

select
[Name],
isnull(sum([Jan]),0) as 'Jan',
isnull(sum([Feb]),0) as 'Feb',
isnull(sum([Mar]),0) as 'MAr'
from #FinalTable
AS Data PIVOT(
SUM( amount)
FOR [Month] IN
([Jan],[Feb],[Mar])

) AS PVT

group by [Name]

drop table #FinalTable

Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Utility

2008-01-07T21:15:00.000+11:00

The 2007 Office System Starter Kit: Enterprise Content Management Starter Kit (ECMsk) has in it some Visual Studio project templates to get you started with using SharePoint and Workflow together. However, it’s in beta so it’s not perfect…

The first issue isn’t that bad, it adds a reference to Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Tasks – which isn’t installed with WSSv3 – even with Office 2007 Pro and InfoPath 2007 installed. It means removing the reference and the using line ‘using Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Utility’ in the workflow1.cs file. Not that big a deal all things considered.

Where is my PostBuildActions.Bat file GRRR

2008-01-05T01:42:00.001+11:00

This is from Scott Guthrie:

Microsoft called me at work and confirmed that, out of the box, VS 2008's new Build/Deploy option will not support deployment of InfoPath workflow forms (intialization, association, task, modfication) required by a SharePoint workflow project. VS 2005, via add-ons created by Microsoft, supported deployment of those forms, as long as they were published to the DeploymentFiles\FeatureFiles subdirectory. To bring VS 2008 to the same level of support as VS 2005 provides, I was told that I would have to (1) manually create the same directory structure as VS 2005 uses, immediately after creating the new Project of type SharePoint workflow, (2) move workflow.xml and feature.xml from where they were originally created to the DeploymentFiles\FeatureFiles subdirectory, (3) borrow a copy of PostBuildActions.bat from an older VS 2005 project and make extensive (but unspecified) changes to it comment/remove lines that duplicate the functionality of the Build/Deploy menu item.

Developers will have to decide for themselves if the gains outweigh the losses when it comes to using VS 2008 for creating SharePoint workflow projects. I have sent Microsoft a revised edition of my analysis of this situation.

Until and unless enough developers demand that VS 2008 provide at least as much support for SharePoint workflow development that includes InfoPath task forms as VS 2005 provides, there is no way to tell when VS 2008 will be the equal of VS 2005 in this particular area.

Deactivate and delete a workflow feature from Sharepoint

2008-01-04T20:21:00.000+11:00

You must deactivate the feature first. You can do this with the following line or click deactivate in the browser.

Use command line.

You may need to navigate here first:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -filename RollOffDiceWF\feature.xml -url http://my2003server
stsadm -o uninstallfeature -filename RollOffDiceWF\feature.xml

You can uninstall from the GAC as follows:

Navigate to:
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

I just right clicked "uninstall" as the comment line way would not work

Also navigate to here:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES
Delete the folder that relates to the project you want to read

Where are all the sharepoint DLLs

2007-12-17T23:28:00.000+11:00

copy the DLL's from C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI on the server to the same folder on my development machine.
B) Register the following in the GAC (Just drag drop from the ....\ISAPI folder

How to get all your GAC DLLs ?

2007-12-17T22:50:00.000+11:00

From CMD prompt enter: C:\windows\assembly\ : XCOPY GAC_MSIL c:\temp /E

And you have your dlls, classified by namespace !

(if you want to extract DLLs from the non-msil part of the GAC, the command line become : XCOPY GAC c:\temp /E)

Always wondered how to get them out!

RuSs

Visual Studio 2008 - Code snippets Missing

2007-12-12T01:24:00.000+11:00

Afternoon,

I just started to write a sequential workflow and noticed that the DependencyProperty code snippet for workflow was missing. Had a hunt around on the web with no luck.

I looked at the existing snippets and noticed they were located here:
e:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC#\Snippets\1033\Visual C#\else.snippet

So I looked around and found a folder called:
E:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC#\Snippets\1033\Other\Workflow\DependencyProperty - Property.snippet

I clicked Add in my Tools > Code Snippets Manager... and went to the path mentioned for the workflow properties above. I noticed that the propd shortcut was still not available in intellisense so I opened the DependencyProperty - Property.snippet XML file in visual studio and changed the following to:
propd
instead of:
wfd.

Thanks
RuSs

Setting up Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008

2007-12-06T18:52:00.000+11:00

Morning,

Came in early today to set this up on a new fresh server with windows Server 2003 R2 standard x64 edition SP2.

After much installing of pre-requisites I realised that TFS 2008 cant run on a x64 bit machine.

What a waste of a day.

Stay tuned for a post later when get a 32 bit server.

Bugger!!