All posts by : Geekswithblogs.net

1 of 887 | CallQueue: Implementing a Sequential Web Service Call Queue for AJAX application - In AJAX based applications its common that user might end up breaking your AJAX calls by clicking on numerous places in very short interval of time. Let us assume there is a page where there are several of hyperlinks which make WebService calls and do some stuffs on callback. If user clicks on five hyperlinks being impatient or may be just for fun, there will be five different WebService calls made. All of those calls had the same parameters or UI state while they were invoked. But on completion of one or more WebService calls it may happen that the UI state or data passed to the rest of the WebServices calls no longer exist or expired, thus will be result in inconsistent UI behaviour and/o......

2 of 887 | How to pass C# object to sql procedure? - I'll give a sample in TSQL: Here is the TSQL statement for getting a Case object that was Xml serialized: DECLARE @xmlCase XMLSET @xmlCase = '<case xsi="<a href=">http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance</a>"><id>3b98cf5a-6faa-dd11-9299-001e0b8014eb</id><court> <id>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</id>     <courtregionid>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</courtregionid> </court><createdon>2008-11-07T13:54:44.727+02:00</createdon><assignedon nil="true"></case>';SELECT Cases.fields.value('(Id/text())[1]', 'UNIQUEIDENTIFIER') [Id_Cases], Cases.fields.value('(Court/Id/text())[1]', 'UNIQUEIDENTIFI......

3 of 887 | Senior Developer in OKC Needed - Being a user group leader (Bartlesville .NET User Group) I get a lot of messages for recruiters looking for jobs.  Given the current market situation I like to pass these on.  This one looks pretty interesting.  If you are interested give Darbi a call and let him know I sent you: Know anyone (maybe you) who might be interested in the following position?  It is located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  It is a direct hire position with a great company.  If you are interested or know someone who is, send me a current resume in word format.  THANKS!! Senior Developer in OKC .NET 2.0 Framework (ADO, ASP) Heavy experience with Web Services and SOA Web User Controls M......

4 of 887 | Testing WCF Service Apps (Part 0 of 4) - When you are writing automated tests for your application, it is important that the tests do not rely on the file system or external services.  The only problem is that when you write applications using WCF, you are writing code that relies on external services.  It is very tempting to create service references in your test DLL and test against them, but please refrain.  There is a better way, I promise! This series will focus on testing every part of your application -- including round-trip functional tests -- without employing the WCF framework directly.  We need to remember that the WCF framework is code that we do not control.  We need to trust that it does what it claims to and focus ......

5 of 887 | Failed to load web service proxy - I started work on a solution new to me this morning. The solution was currently in production and working fine. I had opened it up because enhancements were required to consume new web methods from a third party.   After getting the source files from the source control repository I had the usual problem of missing references to sort out. I then noticed that the solution contained a web service project with two set of web references; one pointing to the live url of the 3rd party and another pointing to a mock service on local host. My initial thought was that this was unnecessary and would confuse matters - why not just have one set of web references and set the runtime target URL in the S......

6 of 887 | List Does Not Exist - In working through an issue with workflow I stumbled across an interesting 'feature' of workflow and MOSS. Essentially I have a "Project Sites" root web where I am creating child sites via a workflow: Project Sites           Child Site 1                     List 1                     List 2 In these child sites I am creating some lists and setting alerts on them based upon things that happen in the workflow. In attempting to create an alert on a list, I received a "List does not exist" error.  In stepping through the code and inspecting all the objects everything seemed valid.  SPList is a valid list in the site, SPUser is a valid user. I went down the path of it being a security is......

7 of 887 | Log Web Service Call - When troubleshooting calls made via the BizTalk SOAP adapter I often find myself wanting to check the data that was posted to the web service. Adding the following to a test asmx page does the trick: HttpContext.Current.Request.SaveAs("D:\\log_folder\Request_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".txt", true); Don't forget to grant access to the log_folder for the id that the web service runs under. ...

8 of 887 | Map Test Fails with 'Value cannot be null' - I have a biztalk map which uses a custom XSLT file rather than the graphical mapper. This map makes use of methods held in a custom dll, accessing via a custom extension XML file.   I created this map a while ago, came back to it today (on a new vm) and found that I was unable to run a successful test - right click the btm in solution explorer and hit 'test map'. On trying this I was presented with a lengthy error message - the important bit being:   Value cannot be null. Parameter name: extension   My first though was that the custom dll probably hadn't been gac'd on the new VM, so I remedied this. Still the problem persisted. The solution was to simply restart Visual Studio - it......

9 of 887 | MSI Import - Phantom Binding - Had an error today when attempting to import a BizTalk MSI through the Admin Console. It was complaining that a particular adapter had not been configured to work with a particular host. Indeed this was true, however what puzzled me was that there was no refernce to this host in the binding file which had been added to the MSI.   After a fair amount of head scratching I tracked back to the orchestration that contained the logical port which matched to the physical port (SOAP) that was mentioned in the error message. It seems that the problem was caused by the fact that the binding on the logical port had been inadvertently set to 'Specify Now'. It seems that this cause a physical port t......

10 of 887 | My eye friendly Visual Studio dark theme - I am not sure about how you guys feel about your IDE look & feel. First few years it was alright for me. However the more I used Visual Studio, the more I experienced problem with my eyes as well as monotony of the same old white background IDE. So, I made a dark theme of Visual Studio which stopped hurting my eyes again. I also tried to keep the syntax yet readable and make careful selection of colors so that important IDE benefits of syntax highlighting was not overlooked. I also tried to avoid absolutely black background, because that demands your eyes to have extra attention to the text since they were prepared to see nothing. So I choose deep navy blue so that it does not hurt your......

11 of 887 | SSL Send Port - Had to configure a send port today to post an XML message to a website secured over HTTPS. The send was failing, with the following being written to the even log:   "The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel."   This got me thinking that we must be missing the public key for the site but I was able to browse to it from Internet Explorer and could confirm that the key could be found in the expected certificates stores on the client (my) server.   In the end, the problem turned out to be caused by the fact that 'Enable chunked encoding' was enabled in the 'General' tab of the HTTP transport properties page for the send......

12 of 887 | Web service response - I started developing a new BizTalk application today which must call an existing web service. Unfortunately I didn't have access to the web service from my test environment so I had to create a test stub. The web service method I needed accepted a string and returned an object containing an int and a bool. My first step was to examine the wsdl of the existing web service to get a good idea of the type my stub should be returning. Because the input / output parameters were simple it was only ten minutes or so before I was able to run my first test. I dropped a trigger file into a receive folder, this was picked up by my new orchestration and my test stub web service was called. Of course n......

13 of 887 | XSLT - if then else - If you try and implement if then else logic in XSLT in the same way that you would in a procedural language then you'll probably end up tying yourself in knots.   I had some XSLT to write today where I simply needed to check the existance of an attribute in the source document. If it existed then I would execute and addition against the value else I would substitue for a zero.   I had initially approached this with something like:   <xsl:choose>   <xsl:when test="referenceToElemen/@attribute">     <xsl:variable name="x" select = "referenceToElemen/@attribute">   </xsl:when>   <xsl:otherwise>      <xsl:variable name="x">0</xsl:variable> ......

14 of 887 | Tools Roundup 2008 - Here is a list of the tools and extensions which I have downloaded and enjoyed this year: XML Notepad 2007 (Microsoft, free) Tail 4.2.12 NUnit for Windows WebServiceStudio/SoapBits BizTalk ScheduleAdapter Microsoft Enterprise Library 3.x ...

15 of 887 | [SharePoint] [Visual Studio] Where do we use Rule Mechanics in SharePoint Workflows? -   There are mainly two situations where rules are used: As a full ruleset on Policy activities Rulesets are a set of rules It is most of the time a business logic collection which is not related to the rest, and so it is kept in a set/unit by itself.       2.    As conditions on activities While ConditionedActivity Group Replicator IfElseBranch     Reference taken from a Book - Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System by David Mann ...

16 of 887 | Maximum Characters allowed in an xml element - Today I found that in BizTalk, there is a maximum limit for the number of characters that can be sent in an XML element. The limit is 50,000,000 chars. ...

17 of 887 | The Horse and the Stag - AT ONE TIME the Horse had the plain entirely to himself. Then a Stag intruded into his domain and shared his pasture. The Horse, desiring to revenge himself on the stranger, asked a man if he were willing to help him in punishing the Stag. The man replied that if the Horse would receive a bit in his mouth and agree to carry him, he would contrive effective weapons against the Stag. The Horse consented and allowed the man to mount him. From that hour he found that instead of obtaining revenge on the Stag, he had enslaved himself to the service of man. Aesop's lesson here is about the dangers of Lock In: once you choose a tool or platform, you've surrendered some control to that tool or......

18 of 887 | Ulterior Motive Lounge Episode 23: Girls Just Wanna Write Code - In our last Episode, Linguist Coder and Prototype Analyst kidnapped The UML Guy and demanded he explain arrows in UML. After a rescue by the police, The UML Guy returns to the Lounge. (Click the picture for a larger image.) This one is for Jennifer Marsman, who is quite possibly the second-most-fanatical UML geek that I know. She's also the creator of Featured Women in Technology, an ongoing series of profiles on women who shine in technology fields. Jennifer does her part to show young women that technology isn't an all-men's club. And boy, is she right! Besides her profiles of Dianne Marsh, Katy Kneale, Janet Galore, Carey Payette, Amity Binkert, and Lidiane Souza, I would add (o......

19 of 887 | Client Perspective of Windows Azure Services Platform - Windows Azure was announced on PDC 2008 (Oct 27) and will hopefully be released mid next year. You probably already know about Azure by this time. If no, I would like to quote some from www.azure.com as intro: The Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Azure Services Platform provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer web to enterprise scenarios and includes a cloud operating system and a set of developer services. Fully interoperable through the support of industry standards and web protocols such as REST and SOAP, you can use the Azure services individually or together, e......

20 of 887 | Getting Document Values from Repeating Nodes in BizTalk - To access a variable in a document in BizTalk is quite easy. First you go to the schema of the document and right click on the value you want to promote. Select Promote -> Show Promotions. To promote the variable as a distinguished property simply click the add button. If you messages are in a separate project make sure you build the solution before continuing. Accessing the promoted property in the orchestration is a simple process. Typing the message name, that represents the schema, in an expression shape. Intellisense will then guide you the rest of the way. Now try that if the document variable that you require can have multiple values. As soon as you try to promote the field BizTa......

21 of 887 | Notes on Resolving BizTalk Connectivity Issues with Ponton clients - Notes on Resolving Connectivity Issues During the first stage of the Integration project a number of challenges were encountered. Some of these obstacles could have been avoided but we chose to resolve them so that we would have a solid solution for further development. Challenges Encountered ·         Server 500 error when posting messages to customer with a static port configuration and document that worked for other customers. ·         Ponton responds with an ‘Internal Storage’ Error. ·         The dynamic port fails with either a 500 server error or a 204 (StatusDescription=No Content) server error. Issue 1 After a lot of work and Microsoft’s help we tracked the first error down......

22 of 887 | The $64 String... - With apologies to the game show... I was working on a cryptography project, and, without going into detail (it's SECRET, duh), I was having some issues. The other party sent me their test key in a text file, and it was Base64 encoded. Naturally, being the smart id10t that I am, I popped open my handy dandy, Base64 decoder site, decoded the string, and placed the string in the proper location for it to be used in the decoding process. Lo and behold the decryption process broke...because the key was too small! In my investigation, it turns out that decoding it by any means other than Convert.FromBase64String() resulted in a byte array with only 31 bytes. Since a 256-bit key requires a 32-......

23 of 887 | Asus R50A UMPC review - So, I got new branded Asus R50A UMPC for test. This ultra mobile machine with 5.6" WSVGA (1024x768) screen, based on Intel US15W chipset, comes with Intel Atom Z520 (1.33 Ghz, 533Mhz) processor, 1Gb of RAM and 20GB SSD. Also it has 3.5G mobile unit, integrated 802.11b/g network card and GPS. First impression was very cool. Slick design, big screen build in fingerprint reader.   What in the box? Power adapter (110/220V), compact keyboard, bunch of cables, extra stilus and handling strap. What else this machine has? Microcard reader, three mini-usb sockets, one regular USB and camera. Looks like pretty fine machine, but not for $2K+ price tag. But who cares when we buy real good gad......

24 of 887 | Singleton Design Pattern in C# - /* The Singleton pattern assures that there is one and only one instance of a class, and provides a global point of access to it. There are any number of cases in programming where you need to make sure that there can be one and only one instance of a class. For example, your system can have only one web service manager, or a single point of access to a database. The easiest way to make a class that can have only one instance is to embed a static variable inside the class that A static variable is one for which there is only one instance, no matter how many instances there are of the class. To prevent instantiating the class more than once, we make the constructor private so an......

25 of 887 | The begining.... - Welcome to the very first post of Under The Influence (of code). I am Software Design Engineer based in SF Bay area. I have a deep and keen interest in Computer Science and Software Engineering. I've been wanting to start blogging for a long time now, but haven't been able to do so either due to schedule pressures an/or personal commitments and/or the lack of motivation thereof. I tend to do a lot of code prototyping and recently  I was in need to some stuff I had proptotyped a while back, I searched for nearly 2 hours in vain but was unable to find what I was looking for and this was motivation enough for me to start blogging and have a personal diary of code I have written and or ......

26 of 887 | Understand SharePoint Permissions - Check these really good articles by James Tsai. Understand SharePoint Permissions - Part 1. SPBasePermissions in Hex, Decimal and Binary - The Basics Understand SharePoint Permissions - Part 2. Check SharePoint user/group permissions with Permissions web service and JavaScript Thanks Suranja for sending me these links.   ...

27 of 887 | using using (free connection) - Considure the following code: public static DataSet GetCity() { SqlConnection connection = GetConnection(); SqlDataAdapter adataper = new SqlDataAdapter("select * from City", connection); DataSet City = new DataSet(); adataper.Fill(City, "City"); return City; } This function loads the city table from the database to a dataset, the problem with code is: 1. connection object and adapter object both had a Dispose method but it's not executed, 2. close connection method is not executed. Why it's good to execute the Dispose method? The Dispose method usually realese unmanaged resources (resources that Garbage collector doesn't clear without class finilizer), So why not letting t......

28 of 887 | COM, RPC and Heap Corruption - Windbg Part 2 - Mr. Bugsy Elusive We have a C# client and a Local COM server hosting a VoIP stack. We use COM interop. for API and events to the COM server. Today after some changes, when we started to  load testing the system a nasty crash happened. From initial observation it's look like some kind of Heap Corruption(may be leaked from stack boundary and stuff like that). I used DTW / Gflags to run the server(sipserver.exe) under windbg and symbols are properly set. Stack traces refer to RPC calls as usual but how to know which thread/function from client made the LPC/RPC call. Following are my initial observations : -------------------------------------------------......

29 of 887 | Programming for Windows 7 - Well, Windows 7 is going to be released by the end of next year. This is great news, because it seemed, that Microsoft finally understand how to get the best of Windows Vista and make it to work not only on monster machines. It even works on new brandy my wife's pinky machine. And if it works there and my wife is happy with it, this OS going to be very impressive. But from the other hand, we, as developers should be ready today to developer Windows 7 ready application (by the way, Vista Battery Saver works for Windows 7 as well as for Windows Vista, in spite of the fact, that power management in Windows 7 was improved dramatically). So let's start! First thing we need is to read b......

30 of 887 | What a WF4.0 Workflow looks like in code - This code contains a sequential workflow running in a console application. There is a sequence and inside the sequence a QueryActions and ForeachLoop. The QueryActions Activity is a custom activity that you can create through Visual Studio add >> new >> .... etc... it gives you a design surface where you can drop standard out of the box activities.  In this case the QueryActions activity has inside of it a standard toolbox DBQuery activity which lets you point and click your way to a database select.  The QueryActions activity also takes some parameters it can supply to its DBQuery Acitivity.... Actions and DBConnectionContext.  The QueryActions activity outputs a List<Ac......

31 of 887 | [Visual Studio] [SharePoint] Workflow Toolbox doesn't have SharePoint section -   Workflow Toolbox doesn't have SharePoint section This is what you need to do to add the SharePoint Section: Go to the toolbox Right Click and choose ADD NEW TAB Rename the new tab as SharePoint Then right click on new tab and click on CHOOSE ITEMS Browse to: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI" Locate the following dll: microsoft.sharepoint.WorkflowActions.dll Click OK Now you have other activities etc to make use of example: CreateTask, SetState, DeleteState etc :-) ...

32 of 887 | AI RoboForm, BHO and C# - Remember the awesome AI RoboForm. Its the smartest of all web form fillers exist on earth. In case you haven't used it you can found it here. From password memorization (I'm extremely shaky about trusting any third party software expecially those deals with password, CCs etc.), to secure transfer of user data profile to removable devices by Pass2Go RoboForm has it all. Although its seems easy until I myself went on creating some proof of concept equivalent to this. To achieve anything closer to this I need to create something called plugin. You must be saying a - 2yr-old kid also know about plugins. What's your point? To be exact I need to create something called BHOs or browser h......

33 of 887 | BizTalk Server a fait des petits... - v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tableau Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:" "; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} ......

34 of 887 | The bad then the good… - I haven’t had the chance to update lately (by lately I mean this week really) because my grandfather has passed away. He was a great guy and I loved him. I just hope that he’s happier now than he was for his last few days on earth. That was the bad news, but he was a great guy and I am better for knowing him. The good news is that I’m really motivated to get some new series under way. The underlying idea when I made WTFNext was that I’ve seen so many tutorials that I’ve felt were incomplete or could be explained so much better, I felt that I should try to do those tutorials better myself. The name of this blog is a reference to how I felt after reading those incomplete and somewhat hard t......

35 of 887 | Building applications for Windows Azure - Windows Azure is an upcoming operating system for the cloud from Microsoft, announced on October 27 at PDC. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. Azure goes beyond what other providers, such as Rackspace's Mosso or Amazon's EC2, offer. First, it will be available with a complete suite of tools and technologies for building your next big cloud application. Second, the Azure platform's goal is to support all developers and their choice of IDE, language, and technology; meaning that you can use your favorite tools for all kinds of development as well as Python, PHP, Ruby, ......

36 of 887 | Oslo - The Future of Software (from SOA Conference 11/2007) - Models enable SOA which enables agility Messaging Platform Spreads SOA out over the Internet User Enablement The Tools Future Business Models and Opportunities The SOA and BPM Conference at Microsoft was a great time, got to meet old buddies, made some new ones and learned quite a bit about the possible future of business and the software that drives it.   It wasnt all fun and games though, I was recovering from pneumonia and had to pull an all-nighter to get a Demo up on Microsoft's ESB for some potential business.  But anyway...... . At the SOA and BPM Conference Microsoft unveiled the evolution......

37 of 887 | Performance tuning - A perfect collection of all BizTalk 2006 R2 performance tuning documents: http://intltechventures.blogspot.com/2008/11/2008-11-01-saturday-biztalk-2006-r2.html. Keep this URL in mind!! ...

38 of 887 | Custom Code Snippets Series Part 3: XML Example - Hey guys, Here we are, and I’m taking the time to finish up my first series at my new host geekswithblogs! For this part of the series we’ll be taking a look at a practical example of an XML snippet, namely the snippet to create snippets. I’ve created my own version, but if you’ve toyed with XML snippets before you would know that Microsoft has already included a snippet snippet. This is a good alternative to the “Hard” way described in Part 1, but what if you want a little more of a custom feel to your snippet snippet?   Getting Started This time around I’ve published the code on Codeplex, at the following address: http://www.codeplex.com/wtfnextsnippetseries You can download the pr......

39 of 887 | Debugging in BizTalk - I recently opened a ticket with Microsoft due to a connectivity issue with a customer.  The problem was ultimatly resolved by turning off the message chunking feature in the HTTP adapter configuration.  It turns out that HTTP chunking is a HTTP 1.1 version feature and our customers servers still use HTTP 1.0. While trying to resolve this issue the Microsoft technician asked me to add some XML to the BizTalk configuration file.  The XML turns on the .Net Tracing feature that is built into the System.Net, System.Net.HttpListener, System.Net.Sockets and System.Net.Cache framework code.  By adding the XML a file is generated in the same folder as the configuration file.  The debug information ......

40 of 887 | Documenting C# Code - An interesting application I was shown for documenting C# code is called Ghost Doc. Roland's summary of the tool:- GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments for C#. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.   ...

41 of 887 | PDC Recap and Session Recommendations - It's been a three or four days now since I returned from PDC.  After seeing all the other bloggers give detailed descriptions of the sessions and parties I didn't feel too obligated to add too much of my own spin on topics heavily covered by others.  Instead, I thought I'd wait till the recordings were available and share links to the highlights I was witness too.  As to my thoughts on having the recordings available so quickly after the conference and of such a high quality, I can only say I am very impressed.  It doesn't mean I'm not eagerly looking forward to attending next years conference because the networking opportunities and social interaction with some great developers were pricel......

42 of 887 | Repair: FTP (Main SyncServer) Synch random hang when running sync as a service - There's been a problem plaguing our SalesLogix install since 6.2x. Our sync service would randomly hang on our Windows 2003 Server box. Eventually it became more well known as more people began upgrading to Win2003 I believe and this confirmed it. My fix was to either babysit the service by checking MonitorConsole every day for log errors, or waiting until remotes reported a problem which usually ended up being around a week into it being broke, which in today's world isn't really practical or cool. I heard of a PowerShell script used by one of the BPs for repair if I recall correctly, so I wanted to see if I could build my own. I've decided to release a consolidated version of the script......

43 of 887 | Dynamic WCF location mapping and configuration - So, I have a situation where I need to look at different web service addresses depending on where my application lives (local vs. test vs. production).  In the .NET 2.0 world, I could dynamically change the URL property like so: myserviceProxy.URL = “http://localhost/myProject/myService.asmx” It’s hard coded there, but I could set that string based on a config parameter.  Now, in WCF we don’t have a URL property, but we have something similar in Endpoint.Address. So, now my code looks more like this: myservice = new ServiceClient(); string loc = "http://localhost/myProject/myService1.svc"; EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress(loc); myservice.Endpoint.Address = add......

44 of 887 | PDC 2008 Recommends List - I thought I would share the sessions at the PDC I really enjoyed and would recommend for viewing for those that didn't attend.  And you know who you are.  :)  And those who did attend but didn't get to watch these.  I'm sure there are more that were great, but these are the ones that stuck out to me. Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in Microsoft .NET Jim Hugunin gives a great session on Dynamic Languages.  This was the best talk I went to the entire PDC so I'm listing it first, but you should watch The Future of C# below first.  It is very reminiscent of the few Computer Sciences courses I've taken.  You won't learn any skills here that will directly apply, but covers theoretical aspects ......

45 of 887 | Non-Optional Claims in the Geneva Framework - I'm currently doing some work with the Geneva Framework (formerly known as "Zermatt"), which I am very excited about; With the SOA wave and now the coming Cloud wave, federated identity becomes a crucial component in the enterprise and it is great to see such a good story for it from Microsoft. Using the "Zermatt" SDK (I now need to download the updated framework and align with it) I have succesfully, and quite simply, managed to create both an active STS scenario and a passive STS scenario, both sharing the same underlying STS code; this was a great experience and I hope to post some more details over the next few days. I was, however, a little bit surprised by the behaviour of the fra......

46 of 887 | [SharePoint Designer]: “Unable to load workflow actions from the server.” -   Today I encountered a new error at work which is: “Unable to load workflow actions from the server. Please contact your server administrator.”   This occurred when I opened a SharePoint site in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, and then tried to add a Workflow. Apparently, if one makes a mistake when deploying his/her custom activities, no workflows work. The solution to this is to find the error in Visual Studio and then restart the IIS and try over again. Most probably, the error is in the new XML you wrote in the .ACTIONS file, so make sure to first check that out. Goodluck! ...

47 of 887 | [SharePoint] State Machine Workflow vs. Sequential Workflow -   The two types of workflows which exist out of the box in Visual Studio are: Sequential Workflow State Machine Workflow Below, find the differences between them, so that when you are thinking of implementing a workflow, you would use the one that fits the most: State-Machine workflows: State-machine workflows are workflows which are driven by particular events. Example: OnTaskChanged OnTaskCreated OnTaskDeleted OnWorkflowActivated etc In order to move to another event, the workflow needs to meet another state. If a task is created, the workflow stays on that event until another even is c......

48 of 887 | [C#] [Java] Testing [Part 3]: Gray Box Testing -   Gray Box Testing Gray Box Testing is the combining of black box, and white box testing. It involves having access to internal data structure and algorithms, but the testing is still done at a user's level, therefore as black box testing. It is said to be mostly used in web services applications since the Internet is quite stable. Advantages: The testers do need to have the source-code while testing. Disadvantages: The testing is done based on limited knowledge of the internal code. Difficult to resolve bugs as the internal code is not known and it is not easy to determine from where the problems are coming ...

49 of 887 | Silverlight Cream for October 31, 2008 -- #415 - In this issue: Jeff Wilcox, Jordan Knight, Justin Angel, Imran Shaik, Corey Schuman, Jeff Paries, and Jafar Husain. I stopped at these 9 entries for now just to get them out. I've got 9 queued up behind these and that's just from me running my big list-o-blogs about 10:30 last night and what's been submitted since! ... a very prolific bunch you are :) From SilverlightCream.com: AutoCompleteBox: The 5 things you need to know Jeff Wilcox has a trilogy about the AutoComplete box. This first is exactly what it says: 5 things you need to know. He followed that up immediately with AutoCompleteBox: Video introduction, and then this one Introducing the AutoCompleteBox with l......

50 of 887 | About "Dublin" - Microsoft have announced "Dublin" in September, but up until now (PDC) there' has been very little information about how that is going to look now. Over at PDC are finally able to see some sessions as well as visit the various .net booths and get first hand look at the "bits" and ask questions about the new technologies. However, at this time of writing this, I have not yet attended any Dublin sessions, which really means anything I write here currently is stipulating on some stuff I've seen and heard "in the corridors of PDC". I have, however, spent enough time at WCF/WF booth to probably make them call me various names behind my back (I'm sure) :-) and I think have got at least an ide......