Jeffrey's Blog

WCF Test Harness Guide updated

Chilberto — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:03:45 GMT

I've added a new page to the Guide: Adding a New Proxy via Assembly.

First CodePlex Project: WCF Test Harness

Chilberto — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:45:55 GMT

I've just published my first CodePlex project: WCF Test Harness. This is a testing utility I have been working on for a while now and I thought it could be helpful for others.

I wrote a short Overview and I plan on adding additional information depending on interest.

Sharepoint Lists.asmx UpdateListItems: Root Folder

Chilberto — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:51:30 GMT

The RootFolder attribute on the Batch element controls the folder of the item. This can be used to access a sub-folder. The structure is Lists/list/folder where folder is optional.

For example, if the list being updated is Contacts and there are two sub-folders Work and Personal. To update an item in the Contacts list:

And to update an item in the Work folder:

Sharepoint WSS 3.0: Lists.asmx Error Codes

Chilberto — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:59:06 GMT

Just some notes relating to error codes received during Sharepoint integration using the UpdateListItems method of the lists.asmx service.

A value in the update for a column exceeded the maximum column size.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">Invalid text value

A text field contains invalid data. Please check the value and try again.</ErrorText>

A column to be updated was passed in that did not exist.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">One or more field types are not installed properly. Go to the list settings page to delete these fields.</ErrorText>
</Result>

The field being updated was a lookup field that allows multiple values and the value passed in contained a trailing ";". A trailing semi-colon only seems to be an issue when it is the first item in the list.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">Bad parameter passed to Web Server Extensions. Check the information you entered and try again.</ErrorText>
</Result>

BizTalk Map: Choice Element

Chilberto — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:50 GMT

In my schema file, I have a choice element that only contains a single child element. For example:

The above example is actually a crude schema of the where clause of a Sharepoint call to Lists.asmx where in the case I have only 1 item, I want to send a where clause of

<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="ItemID"/>
<Value Type="Text">99900</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>

And in the case that I have multiple items, I want to send something like:

<Where>
<Or>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">3394</Value>
    </Eq>
...
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">9867</Value>
    </Eq>
</Or>
</Where>

In my map, it is a simple operation of using

A Record Count functoid to receive a count of the number of items
A Greater Than functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1
A Equal To functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1

The map is then composed by connecting the items record in the source document to the Record Count functoid, the result of the Greater Than functoid to the Or choice element, and the result of the Equal To functoid to the Eq choice element.

Where, oh where has my Sharepoint feature gone...

Chilberto — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:56:18 GMT

Yes, another newbie to Sharepoint post; but it may help the others out there who are working through labs and exercises and not getting the "expected" results.

If after you have deployed your new feature (e.g., workflow, web part, etc) you do not have it listed as an available content type, it might have been added successfully but not activated.

To activate a feature go to the Site Settings:

Select Site collection features option from the Site Collection Administration section.

A list of loaded features is presented with the option of activating and deactivating.

BAM Tip: Visual Studio External Tools

Chilberto — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:32:46 GMT

Here is a simple way to open a command window from within Visual Studio that is aware of the BizTalk Management Utility (bm.exe). I have found this useful while working with interceptor configuration files. This tip will add the Visual Studio Command Prompt to the Tools menu.

Nothing too dramatic here, just a time saver when defining interceptor configuration files from within Visual Studio without adding shortcuts on my desktop or quick launch bar.

Add Visual Studio Command Prompt to External Tools

Simply select the External Tools option off of the Tools menu. To keep thing simple, I basically duplicated the Visual Studio Command prompt settings by viewing its properties.

Modify Visual Studio Command Prompt's PATH

Depending on the operating system you are running Visual Studio on, the following will be different. To determine where to modify, open the file indicated in the command arguments. For me it was: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat.

In the file you will see a supplied parameter, e.g., x86, indicates were the settings are located for the specific operating system. Note that %~dp0 indicates the where the batch file was run from. For me it was: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat.

This file just pointed to another file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat. In this file is where the environment settings are stored. I modified the file to include the location of bm.exe as part of the PATH environment variable. The following line was inserted after the current @set PATH line:

@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Tracking;%PATH%

Guidance Automation blues...

Chilberto — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:57:53 GMT

I've recently had a battle updating Guidance Automation to the most recent release.

The main issue was I had to remove old Guidance Automation Packages without the original source project. The only way I found was to an xml file in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\RecipeFramework folder that contains a list of the installed packages.

WCF Trace ServiceLevelReceiveReply body is ...

Chilberto — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:28:58 GMT

If the WCF binding is using streaming, the body of the trace record will be recorded as "...". This is true for the Oracle LOB Adapters.

For Example:

</System>

<s:Envelope xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing" xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">

<s:Header>

<a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">http://Microsoft.LobServices.OracleDB/2007/03/ADMIN/Package/Example/response</a:Action>

</s:Header>

<s:Body>...</s:Body>

</s:Envelope>

</MessageLogTraceRecord>

</DataItem>

</TraceData>

</ApplicationData>

</E2ETraceEvent>

Oracle ODP.Net Transactions

Chilberto — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:36:27 GMT

The Oracle Data Provider for .Net (ODP.Net) version 10g does not support local database locking unless Patch 5916667 is applied. Because all transactions will be treated as distributed (i.e., spanning multiple databases), this might have adverse affects on performance, block level locking (as opposed to row level) and limited functionality (e.g., not supporting global temporary tables).

This affects the Microsoft Line of Business Adapter for Oracle (Oracle LOB) as it relies on ODP.Net for interacting with the Oracle Client.

Applying the patch is pretty straight forward and can be downloaded via Oracle Metalink.

Even after the patch, the default behaviour is to create a distributed transaction. This can be manually specified by creating and setting the following registry key:

The Transaction List of the Distributed Transaction Coordinator can be used to verify if the patch and setting has been applied successfully. The following screenshot illustrates that the registry PromotableTransaction key has been set to "promotable" and distributed transactions are being generated (assuming the locks do not belong to any other processes):