Google Voice Quick Reference Card

Useful!

http://www.coolgeex.com/google-voice-quick-reference-guide-v2-0/gv-card-v2-2/

Boilerplate HTTPHandler

I have a couple of aspx pages (that I inherited from a project) that are never really used to render HTML content to an end user and instead are used to receive a HTTP post message and process the contents. Granted that I could use a web-service to process the messages being sent – but that would involve changing the clients that send the post messages and those are out of my control.

Today I came across the IHttpHandler and this will work perfectly for me:
1. Clients can continue sending their post messages
2. I can re-architect the pages to be HttpHandlers and save on a lot of extra handling that the normal aspx page would have to do.

IHttpHandler defines the contract that ASP.NET implements to synchronously process HTTP Web requests using custom HTTP handlers

And here is a base class HttpHandler by Phil Hack that I think will be useful for just such a project: http://haacked.com/archive/2005/03/17/AnAbstractBoilerplateHttpHandler.aspx

Phil Hacks HttpHandler base class is based on a Scott Hanselman base-class: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,5c59d662-b250-4eb2-96e4-f274295bd52e.aspx

More Info: Code-behind for HTTPHandlers: http://aspnetresources.com/blog/httphandler_code_behind.aspx

JQuery/JavaScript Demo – a Photoshoot plugin

Bet you didnt think Javascript could do this: Demo

And here is how they did it: http://tutorialzine.com/2010/02/photo-shoot-css-jquery/

Very Cool!

Visualizing patterns using GraphViz

An interesting use of GraphViz to analyze senate voting patterns: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/05/us-senato-social-graph-1991—.html

U.S. Senate Social Graph, 1991 - Present

View more presentations from O’Reilly Media.

Allowing a SQL Server user to execute stored procedures

There doesnt seem to be a straightforward way to do this using the GUI in SQL Server Management Studio.

I like managing users using roles and the following method is an easy way to provide a user the permission to execute all stored procedures in that database.

You create a role called db_executor and grant the role Execute priviledges. You then assign the user that needs the ability to execute stored procs to the db_executor role.

CREATE ROLE db_executor
GRANT EXECUTE TO db_executor

I am not a DBA – so I am not sure if this is not a good practice (because you end up giving execute permissions on all stored procs to all users assigned to that role). Leave a comment if you know otherwise.

Attaching a SQL Server database file (mdf) without an associated log (ldf) file

If you try and attach a mdf file that does not have an associated ldf file in SQL Server Management Studio, SSMS will throw an error. The simplest way around it is – click on the ldf file location in the dialog and click Remove. SSMS will then attach the MDF file and create the associated LDF file for you.

MSDASQL for 64 bit windows

Most articles that I found about MSDASQL for 64 bit Windows said that MSDASQL support was not going to be available.

This was a big let down for my team, as we had this brand spanking new 64 bit web-server and we had some old ASP apps that needed to be hosted on it. The reason this was a let down was that these old ASP apps were using a MSDASQL data provider with a MSDataShape provider and the app just would not run.

After some more debugging we found that a desktop app that used the same connection string would work if it was built as a 32 bit app but not as a 64 bit app. This meant that the server had 32 bit versions of the ODBC drivers needed for MSDASQL/MSDataShape, but not the 64 bit versions. (The 64 bit app would fail with the “Class not registered” error – the same error I was getting when the ASP app was running).

The reason this was a let down was that, without 64 bit OleDb ODBC drivers, we would have to run IIS in 32 bit isolation mode (we have IIS6 which supports an either or as far as running in 32 bit or 64 bit mode is concerned – I think this is not the case with IIS7). As we were not going to be able to move to IIS 7, it looked as though we were going to have to run IIS in 32 bit isolation mode – which means that I cannot load any 64 bit dlls – what good would the 64 bit environment be then?

Fortunately I found the following Microsoft Download page, where version 2.82.4250.0 of the OLEDB Provider for ODBC can be downloaded, which provides support for 64 bit Windows 2003.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=000364db-5e8b-44a8-b9be-ca44d18b059b&displaylang=en

After installing and rerunning the application – the old ASP app began working in the new environment. Hallelujah!

Testing your WCF service

If your WCF service has a BasicHttpBinding endpoint – then you can use SoapUI for testing.

If you need to test a WSHttpBinding endpoint – then I found that SoapUI had a problem creating the correct requests. Instead you can use the WCF Test Client that comes with VS 2008 and can be found at: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\WcfTestClient.exe"

Javascript – a quick and robust check for NotANumber (NAN)

Javascript provides the NaN property that returns a value that represents NotANumber (NAN).
eg: Number.NaN

But you cannot use the following check to test for a variable containing a NaN:
(someValue == Number.NaN)

The reason is because Number.NaN != Number.NaN by definition of the IEEE standards.

This inequality can be used to your advantage by using the following check:
(someValue != someValue)
The only time the above check will fail is that if someValue contains a NaN value.

Or you can use the global function isNaN(someValue).

note: the (someValue != someValue) is a check that works in many other languages (eg: c, c++, SQL, etc) which is why it is a useful idea to brush into the recesses of your memory.

Looking for a new website host

I am looking for a website host. They should support:

• ASP.Net (2.x,3.x and 4.x when it comes out)
• Silverlight
• SQL Server 2008 (at a minimum Express edition)
• Should be cheap ($5 a month? – I was spoiled – for the last 2 years I had all of the above for free – courtesy of the Denver Dot Net Developer Group and www.Verio.com)

Any suggestions?