Entries for dotnetjunkie

Programming the Task Scheduler from .NET [Programming the Task Scheduler from .NET]

dotnetjunkie — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:55:20 GMT

Does anyone know of any good resources, documentation or sample code of how to leverage the power of the new Vista / Windows Server 2008 Task Scheduler from .NET applications?
(Preferably with some VB.NET code.)

Is there a class in the .NET framework 3.0 / 3.5 to program against the task scheduler?

A lot of applications need some sort of scheduling, and it seems to me that it would be better to use the robust and extensive framework that the OS offers for this, instead of trying to roll your own.

in reply to Programming the Task Scheduler from .NET

ASP.NET 2.0 databinding to webservice [ASP.NET 2.0 databinding to webservice]

dotnetjunkie — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 01:01:42 GMT

This is driving me crazy!

I developed a very simple webservice, just one webmethod that returns a datatable.

Then, in my ASP.NET 2.0 website, I added a web reference to this webservice, and used the ObjectDataSource to databind the results to a DataList.
So far so good, everything works like a charm on my dev machine.

BUT when I put this website online, it doesn't work anymore!!!

When using Eval("FileName") in the DataList I get the following error:

System.Web.HttpException: DataBinding: 'Webmedia.GetImagesResponseGetImagesResult' does not contain a property with the name 'FileName'.

Webmedia is just the name I gave to the web reference, and GetImages is the name of the Webmethod that I call in the Webservice.
FileName is one of the fields in the DataTable that the webservice function returns.

When using Container.DataItem("FileName") the error changes to:

System.MissingMemberException: No default member found for type 'GetImagesResponseGetImagesResult'.

Again, no matter which technique I use, it works perfectly when I run the website on my local Windows 2003 server.
(it doesn't matter whether I run the webservice online or locally as well, it works both ways)
Only when I run the website from the server on the Internet, I get the above server errors!
I even tried on 2 different hosting servers to be sure it isn't related to the webserver itself...

Anyone please have a clue what is happening here?

Thanks!!!

in reply to ASP.NET 2.0 databinding to webservice

Parent-Child Tree path to xml [Parent-Child Tree path to xml]

dotnetjunkie — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:35:02 GMT

From a stored procedure on our SQL Server 2005 database, I currently get results for parent-child relationships like this:

11 > 7 > 2
11 > 7 > 8 > 5
11 > 7 > 8 > 6 > 2
etc...
(just to be clear: this is a single column output, so in other words: varchar fields)

Now, in my VB.NET application, I need to convert these hierarchical tree paths to xml format:

<node id="11">
<node id="7">
    <node id="2" />
    <node id="8">
      <node id="5" />
      <node id="6">
        <node id="2" />
      </node>
    </node>
</node>
</node>

I think you get the picture :)

What would be a quick and efficient way to accomplish this?

Any help with code (VB.NET or C#) would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

in reply to Parent-Child Tree path to xml

What is happening on MSDN? [What is happening on MSDN?]

dotnetjunkie — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:52:13 GMT

Tried to access the subscription downloads for over an hour now, but always get an error.

But that's not all, the whole msdn site is terribly slow, even get "server overloaded" messages!

Somebody knows what they're doing or what's causing the extreme load on the servers?

Thanks!

in reply to What is happening on MSDN?

Exchange 2007 RTM? [Exchange 2007 RTM?]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:04:04 GMT

Is it true that Exchange 2007 RTM'd?

And if so, when can we download it on MSDN subscriber downloads?

in reply to Exchange 2007 RTM?

WPF/E sound problem [WPF/E sound problem]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:28:20 GMT

When I look at any of the video samples in WPF/E, the sound is completely distorted.

Help appreciated.

in reply to WPF/E sound problem

AddWithValue [AddWithValue]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 04:23:43 GMT

For SqlParameters, what is best?

.AddWithValue("@Param", value)
or
.AddWithValue("Param", value)

So with or without the @ ?
They both work, but is one recommended over the other?
It would be interesting to know if under the hood the @ is added if you omit it or rather stripped off if you put it in!

in reply to AddWithValue

Strengths of Opteron and Xeon [Strengths of Opteron and Xeon]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 23:20:19 GMT

My client has 2 machines: a single Xeon 3,6 Ghz, and a dual Opteron 248, both with 4GB of RAM, both x64 Windows 2003, and identical raid config.

I need to run the following services distributed over these machines:

* Web server (IIS6)
* Mail server (XMail, no exchange)
* Database server (SQL2005)
* Windows Sharepoint Services

What would you install on which machine, or put otherwise, what works best on Xeon and what on Opteron? (considering single vs. dual cpu, memory architecture, etc...)

in reply to Strengths of Opteron and Xeon

Asynchronous Lookup and display of server results (AJAX?) [Asynchronous Lookup and display of server results (AJAX?)]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 08:23:17 GMT

I'm in the process of moving a domain registration system over to ASP.NET 2.0

One of the pages has the traditional domain lookup: the user enters a domain and it is checked server-side against a few extensions for availability or status...

Well, this works, but as you can guess, the user experience is sub-optimal if you have to check a lot of extensions or if one of the whois servers responds slowly...

What technique would you use to improve the user experience?
One thought I had is doing the server-sides lookups in several threads?
Or dynamically update the page when new results come in? (is that possible? would that require the use of ajax?)
Does anyone have a small example of something similar or code sample by any chance?

in reply to Asynchronous Lookup and display of server results (AJAX?)

This is exactly why Linux/OSS scares people away... [This is exactly why Linux/OSS scares people away...]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 04:42:38 GMT

I came across an interesting article containing a link to a website with a few articles and code samples.

Well, try visiting the site, using Internet Explorer:

http://www.lobstertech.com/solutions.php

and read the text (yeah a full page insulting us..., and Microsoft)

"Internet Explorer users are not welcome on this website. You are a horrible person for using Internet Explorer; and the fact that you are trying to access highly technical information suggests that you know better. Shame on you. " etc... etc...
"I consider making a request to my web server with such an awful browser very RUDE."

Why does he think that so many businesses and windows users are reluctant to join linux/oss communities? Exactly, because of jerks and fanatics like him.

Could you imagine putting detection scripts and writing a full page long text with "GO AWAY FIREFOX USER!" on your website?

in reply to This is exactly why Linux/OSS scares people away...

VB string question [VB string question]

dotnetjunkie — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:44:31 GMT

When dealing with multi-line strings, C# has a very elegant solution

String s = @"line1
line2
line3
line4"

However in VB.NET you have to do
Dim s as String = "line1" & vbNewLine & _
"line2" & vbNewLine & _
"line3" & vbNewLine & _
"line4"

Now, I was wondering: does this cause string concatenation in VB.NET? Or is the compiler smart enough to make this into 1 string, so that the performance is exactly the same as the C# version?

Actually, how do you VB.NET guys deal with chunks of text like that? (for example, a html or javascript fragment) All the line breaking, changes to double quotes etc... make it a hell of a job to integrate such a snippet in your code! Is there an easier alternative?

in reply to VB string question

Live Favorites on Opera [Live Favorites on Opera]

dotnetjunkie — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:09:46 GMT

Somebody wondered why Live Favorites (favorites.live.com) does not work in the Opera browser (it does work in IE and Firefox) ?

in reply to Live Favorites on Opera

I received Karma +1 from the Linux guys :-S [I received Karma +1 from the Linux guys :-S]

dotnetjunkie — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:34:32 GMT

I installed the one application that is said to be bigger than Linux itself (in the sense of more successful, taking over the world...)
So you all know which application I'm talking about (yes its name starts with A)

And after 5 minutes playing with it I hit against a very obvious bug.

Although I've never programmed in C or C++, and don't know much about linux (or let alone linux development), I managed to track down the bug in the source code, and even fixed it and successfully recompiled the whole damn thing.

So I posted this bug on the bug tracker, and... shortly after, I received a message that my fix was incorporated, in the current stable build AND trunk versions... !!!
and those linux guys told me that I would now receive Karma from them!... OMG... one Karma-point to be exact. :D

Now apart from being a funny story this really makes me wonder about the quality of Linux / open source software. It's totally unbelievable that nobody managed to see this bug before, mind that I was using the stable version, and that bug was there in previous versions as well... and it's like one of the first things that you hit upon when trying basic features of the app!
Where is the testing/quality control???
If such a thing happens with the number one linux app in the world, it makes you want to stay FAR away from any other linux app... :(

in reply to I received Karma +1 from the Linux guys :-S

Table shouldn't be dropped if no connection [Table shouldn't be dropped if no connection]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:05:46 GMT

Hi,

I have a DTS package (sql server 2000 at the moment, but could be migrated to 2005), that basically does the following:

- drop local tables / data
- connect to remote SQL server over the Internet
- transfer the new data over from that server

Now, the problem is simple: in the first step all the local data is deleted, but if consequently the connection to the remote server fails, the users are left with no data!!!

So how it SHOULD work is that the drop tables are ONLY executed IF the connection succeeds!

What's the easiest way to accomplish this?

Thanks for your suggestions!

in reply to Table shouldn't be dropped if no connection

Socket Server & Client class/component [Socket Server & Client class/component]

dotnetjunkie — Mon, 01 May 2006 02:32:09 GMT

I've looked at at least 10 different open source socket server & client classes / components, but not yet found the one truly good :)

They all had shortcomings like not supporting async (aw!), not using a threadpool (or not using a custom threadpool as the .NET built-in one is not suitable for heavy-duty server apps), or bad error handling...

So, which class or component do you use? What is the best one out there?
It must be rock-solid and fast to support thousand of sockets connections, and of course preferably be free and open source...

in reply to Socket Server & Client class/component

SQL 2005 Database Design (Table names) [SQL 2005 Database Design (Table names)]

dotnetjunkie — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:21:25 GMT

In the past, we had table names such as:
PurchaseOrders
SalesOrders

Now with SQL 2005, you can use schema namespaces, so it could become:
Purchasing.Orders
Sales.Orders

So essentially you can use exactly the SAME table names, in different schemas.

So... would you recommend to change to the last model, or just stay with the old way?
What is best practice?

in reply to SQL 2005 Database Design (Table names)

String to webservice [String to webservice]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 11:52:25 GMT

When I pass a string to an ASP.NET webservice function and that string contains linebreaks (CrLf) they are not preserved (only one of them -> so the result seems like a Linux file :))

Is that expected behaviour?
Should you UrlEncode strings before passing them to a webservice???
Or should I use a byte array parameter instead or so?

in reply to String to webservice

IP's in same subnet function [IP's in same subnet function]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 11:46:36 GMT

What would be the most efficient way to check whether two IP addresses are in the same subnet.
In .NET 2.0 code I mean.
So think of a function that takes 2 IP addresses and a subnet mask and that returns true if the 2 addresses are in the same subnet.

Is there something useful in the framework itself?
Or does anyone have a quick routine for this?

in reply to IP's in same subnet function

Generate PDF's from .NET [Generate PDF's from .NET]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 08:53:36 GMT

What is the best (preferably free) library / component to generate a PDF file from within our .NET code?

BTW, I'm using Visual Studio 2005 - .NET 2.0, so it would be best if the library were 2.0 as well...

in reply to Generate PDF's from .NET

IP Address Control [IP Address Control]

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 08:42:26 GMT

I could have sworn that there was a windows forms control in Visual Studio 2005 that allowed for entering an IP address (mask control).

But I can't seem to find it...
Was it cutted in the RTM version???
Or do I just look in the wrong place?
(I really hope so, cause I need it !!!)

Thanks

in reply to IP Address Control

Milestone: 10,000 threads! + Beer28 back online! [Milestone: 10,000 threads! + Beer28 back online!]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 02:32:40 GMT

So I went to Channel9 this evening, clicked on "Forums" and immediately these 2 things catched my attention!

First, 10000 Coffee House threads, wooohooo!!!

Secondly: Beer28 can log in again and is active again over here? I thought he was banned?

in reply to Milestone: 10,000 threads! + Beer28 back online!

Control Panel [Control Panel]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:46:42 GMT

I heard that Microsoft is developing a Control Panel for ISP's.
Does anybody know more about this?

in reply to Control Panel

Spawn process as impersonated user with ASP.NET 2.0 [Spawn process as impersonated user with ASP.NET 2.0]

dotnetjunkie — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:35:52 GMT

I'm going to start a new thread for an old problem.

How can you spawn a process from an ASP.NET webpage or service under the impersonated user credentials (impersonate=true in web.config).

The question has been asked before here on Channel9: