"Atlas" Setup - April CTP

The April CTP of Atlas is available along with the Atlas Control Toolkit and Sample Applications.  I was impressed with the installation and samples.  This is the first CTP version of Atlas that I have installed, and the MSI installed without incident.  The same goes for the sample applications (ran the MSI, open the AtlasControlToolkit.sln, and hit F5 to run the samples without any issues).  Very impressive!!! J

 

 

Team Foundation Server (TFS) - Task Description links not clickable

Well, I found my first annoyance in TFS. HTML links in the description field are not hyperlinked, so it looks like you have to copy and paste the link. Anyone know a way around this or is this something developers will not do often?

Team Foundation Server

I finally finished installing Team Foundation Server (TFS) on a virtual machine.  My advice would be to read the installation help file provided in CHM format in the root of the installation media.  I tried installing TFS at least 10 times before admitting to thy self that instructions were necessary, or I was going to be prematurely bald from pulling my hair out.  Once I read the help files, the installation went very smooth.  I plan to start using TFS for a small project, and I am sure there will more interesting stuff to post at that time.  But, for now, this is a good milestone to have the environment up and running.

ISA Server 2004 SP2 bails on http://www.delta.com

I recently bumped into this annoying little problem with ISA Server 2004 SP2 where you get an error message when attempting to access http://www.delta.com.  The error message is The HTTP request includes a non-supported header.

 

As described in the following news group posting, there is a hot fix available that resolved the issue for me.  When calling Microsoft reference kb article 915045.

 

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.isaserver/browse_thread/thread/139732a3cefacbda/932e408b88f8b7d3?lnk=st&q=The+HTTP+request+includes+a+non-supported+header.+Contact+your+ISA+Server+administrator.&rnum=2&hl=en#932e408b88f8b7d3

 

 

CHM Help File - DNS Error

When attempting to open certain *.chm Help files, the table of contents displays correctly, but when selecting a topic you receive a DNS Error. The following link contains many fixes, but my problem was resolved by right-clicking on the chm file, going to properties, and clicking the “Unblock” button.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896358

I hope this helps you.

Windows Vista February CTP on Virtual Machine - II

So, I finally get Vista installed and running.  The first thing I do is add the machine to my domain and get a message indicating a need to re-start for the changes to take.  ARGGGH!!!! – I think this is a step backward; not forward.  Hopefully, this is something that will be fixed.

Windows Vista February CTP on Virtual Machine

If you are attempting to install the February CTP of Windows Vista on a Virtual Machine, be sure your DVD drive is configured to use the primary controller.  If you use the secondary controller (which seemed to be the default when I was installing), you may get the following error message “An internal Setup error occurred while displaying the image selection wizard”.

 

This news group posting also discusses the issue.

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.developer.winfx.general/browse_thread/thread/ce587e1a30b0fad0/3cb3502d47ddd45c?lnk=st&q=An+internal+Setup+error+occurred+while+displaying+the+image+selection+wizard&rnum=1&hl=en#3cb3502d47ddd45c

 

My install is in progress, and my fingers are crossed that the install will complete successfully.

ASP.NET 1.1 - Save ViewState in Session

The team lead for a development group came to be today asking if there was anyway to reduce the size of the rendered page. This particular page requires significant legitimate use of ViewState. I knew I had read about saving ViewState to a custom store to override the default behavior of stuffing it into the page and sending it back to the client. This application is also using SQLServer to store session state.

So, the thought occurred to me that I should be able to store ViewState in Session. Below is the implementation in my Default.aspx

private string ViewStateName = "ViewStateName";

protected override object LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium()

{

string m_viewState;

LosFormatter m_formatter;

object viewStateBag;

m_viewState = Session[ViewStateName] == null ? null : (string )Session[ViewStateName];

m_formatter = new LosFormatter();

try

{

viewStateBag = m_formatter.Deserialize(m_viewState);

}

catch (Exception e)

{

throw new ApplicationException("The View State is invalid or corrupted", e);

}

return viewStateBag;

}

protected override void SavePageStateToPersistenceMedium(object viewStateBag)

{

// string file = GetFileName();

StringBuilder sb =

new StringBuilder();

StringWriter sw =

new StringWriter(sb);

LosFormatter formatter =

new LosFormatter();

formatter.Serialize(sw, viewStateBag);

sw.Close();

Session[ViewStateName] = sb.ToString();

}

.NET Web Services, SOAP and handling exceptions

Below are some links that I found valuable when developing a web service framework for a client. SOAP extensions provide an opportunity for additional research.

• Handling and Throwing Exceptions in XML Web Services
• SoapExtensionReflectors in ASP.NET Web Services - Matt Powell discusses ASP.NET Web service architecture and an extensible piece of the puzzle that is rarely discussed and is not well documented: The ability to extend the WSDL generation process during initial reflection of a Web service assembly.
• Fun with SOAP Extensions

SQL Server ASP.NET session storage

We recently started using SQL Server to store ASP.NET session on our web farm and encountered a problem where session was being lost.  The following article indicates Session_End is not fired when using SQL Server to store session state.  I was able to confirm this by creating simple application using SQL Server session state.  What I also realized is this

 

• Session_End is not called when using SQL Server session storage.  But, when Session.Abandon is called the stored procedure called ASPState..TempRemoveStateItem is triggered to remove the session row from the sql server database.  This was confirmed using sql trace while running an ASP.NET application that called Session.Abandon.

 

My question is who calls the ASPState..TempRemoveStateItem stored procedure when Session_End event is not fired?