Gumpies Blog - A little on the other side

thanks

Just a quick post to say thanks to sadeveloper.net (aka craig and andre) for the interesting evening last night.

It was really interesting to watch the movie.  I guess that i am not going to be sleeping for the next few nights playing with all my new toys.  This will include VS 2008 with all the fun tools (silverlight 1.1 ect ect.) and the movies from the guys on ruby.  

It was my first time and if you have not been before i def recommend it.  It is just good fun to sit around talking uber geek development talk.

 Looking forward to the ruby chat from Armand next week.
 

Publishing a website using sqlExpress

I have been having a few issues loading a web application using SQLEXPRESS to our production server.  Basically what I was doing was using a SQLEXPRESS database for simple database transactions.  I was then running "publish web site" from VS 2005.

When I then tried to connect to the database I would get the error

Failed to update database "MYDBNAME.MDF" because the database is read-only

Basically thanks to this blog here I was able to get the fix.

What happens seems to be a bug with VS by not giving the app_data directory correct permission to access the mdf file.  So with no access you cant read or write.  Not very useful for a database.

Here are the steps to fix the issue.

1.  Make sure the app_data directory is not read only

2.  Give the aspnet user modify permissions on the app_data directory

3.  Give the Network service  user modify permission on the app_data directory

4.  Open a command line and run the command iisreset . This will basically restart the IIS service and make sure the permissions are loaded again.

5.  Have a fully functional database / application system!!!!

What I did learn from this task is that it really is worth your time to not give up and actually keep clicking on all the Google links and trying multiple search variations.  I only got this link after about the 10 try.

Code - HTML converter

Hey guys.  Not sure if this has been mentioned before but this is a really nifty tool for converting code to post on blogs of forums.

http://www.simple-talk.com/prettifier/default.php

Posting from windows live writer

Wow what a nightmare!!

I have been trying to set up my blog from windows live write for about a week now.  And i can say it was not a plesent experince (so much for betas).

Basically i was getting the following error.

Unable to cast COM object of type 'mshtml.HTMLMetaElementClass' to interface type 'mshtml.IHTMLElement'.
This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{3050F1FF-98B5-11CF-BB82-00AA00BDCE0B}'
failed due to the following error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004002 (E_NOINTERFACE)).

Now unless i absent in the class that tought how to fix this error i dont have a clue what this is on about.

So here is how i fixed it.

1.  Where they ask you what your webpage homepage url is add the following: http://dotnet.org.za/blogs/metablog.ashx

2.  Enter your username and password.

3.  Click next

4.  It will then tell you that it cant determine what the blog settings are.

5.  Select Community server from the drop down list.

6. Enter "http://dotnet.org.za/blogs/metablog.ashx" in the remote url text.

7. Select your blog (if avaliable)

8. Post to your hearts content.

I know most people may have done this already but i struggled.  Its just a freindly way to make people blog more.

Software

Hi Everyone.

I was just wondering if some one could give me a bit of info regarding places in joburg that sells visual studio licence's (already got the software) for relatively good prices.

Thanks

Running in debug modes on asp.net 2.0

I have been sitting on this problem for the past few irritating hours and i have finally discovered how to get it to work.
in dot net 1.1 i was able to write code that would only execute in debug mode and other code that would only execute in release mode. 
How this helped is for example you wanted a variable that would be different on your development code to your release code.
For example:

In debug Mode you wanted a variable ROOT to be "/developmentROOT/" and in relese it would be "/productionROOT/".
you used to do this in the following code:

#if(DEBUG)
{
     ROOT = "/developmentROOT/";
}
#else
{
    ROOT = "/productionROOT/";
}

And you would change your release mode using the configuration manager.

NOW.
to do this in asp.net 2.0 is a little more different.
you would still use the same code as above but changing the release mode on the configuration manager would not make any changes.
To change it from debug mode to release mode you will now change the Debug="true" to Debug="false" in the web.config file to make the change.  I know that you need to change this when ever you put a site live.  But i just discovered that it does that change as well.

Developers blog

I was wondering. 
What other blogs do all you people read out there.  I mean my day is not compleate without reading dotnet or sadeveloper forums but there must be sooo many other good blogs to read out there.

reply with comments and let me know?

Got my tech-ed access card

Wooooo hoooo.
I just got my teched access cards and letters delivered. 
So now there is nothing that can stop me.

Looks like they have released the agenda for teched

The agenda for teched 2006 has gone live.  (only seen that now).

the agenda is here

Man now i have to try and see where i want to go.

but everything looks so cool.

Testing from windows live writer

I am just testing the new windows live writer.
Cool stuff

Devdays Johannesburg 2006

Forms Autentication

Hey folks

I have been pondering.
I use the wonderful forms authentification methods in my web applications.  its all great and wonderful but then yesterday something hit me.

How secure is web forms authentication????

I know that the system uses cookies to store the info about the users session and that is great.
But we all know that cookies are vunerable.

So i did some research
found some wicked links....

1. http://www.foundstone.com/resources/whitepapers/ASPNETFormsAuthentication.pdf
2. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=900111
3. http://www.dotnetjohn.com/articles.aspx?articleid=19

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This has got the best the best way to launch software.

synical error of asp.net programming

I just made the most "dumbest" mistake of my life.
You know when you sit on a problem for a day and a half and you dont have a clue what going on so you come up with alternatives and then you have sleepless nights cause you want to do the right thing.

arg.

so heres my problem. 
I was binding to a datagrid and trying to raise events from a image button in a template coloum.
The problem is that the events just would not get raised.  I tried and tried but no help.

Here is how i bound the data to the datagrid.

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    DataTable dt = new DataTable();
    dt = campaignManager.GetAllCampaigns();

    dgCampaigns.DataSource = dt;
    dgCampaigns.DataBind();
    
}

Yes you do see correct..... No if(!isPostBack) statement

So i desevere the medel for the stupid non-postback error.

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