This is one of these things that bother you but not enough to make you take any action about them.

Ever since I started using Visual Studio I've been bother by the fact that if your solution contains multiple web projects, when debugging, an instance of "ASP.NET Development Server" is started for every one of them, even if you have selected a "Single startup project" on your Solution properties.

I'm currently multitasking: writing this post and also running the uninstaller for the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR.I was very excited with all the new features, already planning in my mind how I was going to create new database projects as part of my solutions, how I was going to stop using SQL Management Studio to write stored procedures, how I was going to start deploying my SQL changes as part of my releases until I actually installed the application and tried to use the functionality I need the most from the VS Database Edition: Schema and Data comparisons.After trying for several hours to make it work, excusing the application and blaming the “learning curve” for the lack of progress I just decided to wait until the next version of the GDR is released.Too many things just don’t work when comparing schemas; maybe too much attention was paid to the “new” features and the “old” features that...

I took an old script I had and modified it to:

- Include Schema support.
- Replace the old DBCC DBREINDEX statement with ALTER INDEX ALL.
- Rebuild the indexes online if the Enterprise edition was installed.
- Generate information about the tables processed.

When you try to compile in .Net 2.0 (and up) web pages created using .NET 1.1 and automatically migrated by Visual Studio you may receive an error like this: The name "SampleControl" does not exist in the current context.

If you try to declare the control in your code-behind file you will receive the following error: The type "SamplePage" already contains a definition for "SampleControl".

The solution is very simple - but hard to find - and involves making the Page class partial and moving all control declarations to a .designer file.

This can be done automatically with the following steps:

1- Right click on the .aspx file for the codebehind file that doesn't compile.2- Choose the 'Convert to Web Application' option.This will create a .designer file, and the page will compile.

...

Last week I found this site on digg.com it caught my attention and since I was busy at that moment I saved it on my del.icio.us bookmarks to check it out later.This Sunday I had an extra free time - since there is not much to do outside when it feels like -28C outside - and decided to go back to the article.Well this is excellent reference material for any developer/software architect. The video tutorials are excellent and guide you step by step in understanding and implementing the given pattern.Here is the link to the article: http://sourcemaking.com/design-patterns-and-tips...

This month while involved on the redesign of a very popular website I decided not to use HTML tables anymore - or at least avoid its use as much as possible. Ten years ago - when I started building websites - Tables were your friends not your foe. Along came CSS and the idea of separating the content from the way it is presented. CSS is been around for a while and almost all the sites currently use it somehow but do they use it well? Check out CSS Zen Garden and decide if your site allows being re-skinned as much as this site.It’s been an excellent experience and I’ll be posting some tips about how to build CSS-friendly sites in the future.

 

...

This error kept me busy all morning and part of the afternoon:

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server.  When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)

This error seems to be affecting more developers - according to some forums and blogs - but none of them had a solution.

After trying some workarounds I finally found one that worked: The SQL port - 1433 -  needs to be included as part of Data Source on the connection string:...Data Source=mysqlserver\instance1,1433;...

That did it for me.

Note that the error was happening when connecting to a SQL Server 2000 from a .NET 2.0 web application.

I'm not sure the real cause of this problem or why it was happening in the first place.

I also posted my workaround on the following forums:http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2007/03/31/named-pipes-provider-error-40-could-not-open-a-connection-to-sql-server.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessagehttp://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2475976&SiteID=1&mode=1

I was asked how to convert SAS dates to SQL datetimes. Most of the time all it takes is simple Google search to find the solution for requests like this one, well not this time.

I created a function that do the conversion and wanted to share it with you all :-)

Follow these steps to reset the MySQL root user privileges on Windows:

1- Stop the MySQL service

2- Open a command prompt and run the following command:

D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1\bin>mysqld-nt --skip-grant-tables

3- Open a new command prompt and connect to the mysqld server with this command:

D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1\bin>mysql -u root

4- Issue the following statements in the mysql client:

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

mysql> USE mysql;

mysql> REPLACE INTO user VALUES ('localhost','root','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','','','','',0,0,0,0);

mysql> REPLACE INTO user VALUES ('%','root','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','','','','',0,0,0,0);

mysql> quit;

5- Open the windows task manager and kill the process with name mysqld-nt.exe

6- Start the MySQL service and now you will have the...

I remember that some time ago I had the need to interact with a library written in .NET from MS SQL 2000. Creating a COM+ object using managed code was the first thing that came to my mind (I had done it before using C++). I googled it for a little bit but couldn't find the right way to get this done and since I was really in a hurry ended up creating a simple console application that was called using xp_cmdshell.

Today I had the time to revisit this issue and this time in less than 1 minute the right article came on top of my search results: Microsoft Enterprise Services allows you to create Microsoft COM+ applications using the .NET Framework.

This is the article that explains this process in details:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306296

How to invoke COM applications from SQL?http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/dasanka/callingcomfromtsql.asp