electronic wonderl@nd

Patching issue on SQL 2000 breaking BizTalk Deployment.

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:24:00 GMT

Had this issues when I tried to deploy a BizTalk 2004 assembly to a recently patched SQL 2000 SP4 Instance:

[Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.DeploymentException] [System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException] Failed to load msxmlsql.dll. [System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException] Failed to load msxmlsql.dll.

A few sites pointed to potential fixes but these appeared to be red herrings. In the end our DBA re-applied SP4 and the issue was cleared up. Most bizarre. Will teach us to deploy security updates so quickly!

Top 20 Programming Lessons

Campbell McNeill — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:56:00 GMT

Good Article:

http://www.dcs-media.com/desdev/Detail.aspx?ArticleId=578

Google Reader

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:26:00 GMT

Just got to mention Google Reader. This is the panacea of RSS readers that I've been looking for.

I've previously used RSS Bandit which I thought was excellent, but even though you could do some synchronisation with it's files, it wasn't very portable.

Google reader lets you upload your OPML file with your feeds to it, and it just does a generally excellent job of presenting them to you, and giving you a huge pile of keyboard shortcuts for working through them.

I recommend that you all give it a try!

Behavior patterns of a good programmer

Campbell McNeill — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:24:00 GMT

I found this article, very interesting:
Personality_Traits_of_the_Best_Software_Developers.aspx

Makes a lot of sense to me, may be of particular interest to anyone that is hiring at the moment.

StarUML - An excellent open source UML tool

Campbell McNeill — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:12:00 GMT

Recommend that anyone who needs a UML tool checks this out http://www.staruml.com/

This is a most excellent free tool that supports UML 2, various approches, code generation, reverse engineering, Gang of Four design patterns and document generation to name but a few features.

I also find that the GUI allows you to create diagrams a lot quicker than you can with the likes of enterprise architect, which is kind of bloated and cumbersome.

I recommend that anyone needing a UML tool for a small to medium size project check this one out! Better than a lot of the paid for offerings out there.

Mail2Web + MDA Pro

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:01:00 GMT

Just thought I would quickly post about a neat wee piece of kit.

I got a T-Mobile MDA Pro WM5 mobile phone. The network just released a patch to enable the exchange email push on it.

I discovered www.mail2web.com do a free service that allows you to have an exchange account to which you can forward email and, this in turn allows you to use activesync over a secure connection.

Most impresed by this. Works very quickly, nice way of using the inclusive data allowance I have, and of course being able to more in touch (as if I really need that).

WinInternals / SysInternals

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:56:00 GMT

Have been bought out by MicroSoft, and have taken the key staff with them too.

Check this out: http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2006/07/on-my-way-to-microsoft.html

Does this mean future rootkits and other vulns will be covered up?

Do not use SleekHost

Campbell McNeill — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:08:00 GMT

Under no circumstances use the provider "SleekHost". Their service is terrible, regular downtime, rotten support, poor performance. I thought I would warn everyone that reads this just in case they ever look at them.

Visual Stuidio and NDoc Integration

Campbell McNeill — Fri, 19 May 2006 12:31:00 GMT

Just been messing around trying to integrate nDoc with VS 2003.

I've got it so that I can compile using the external tools, but unfortuantly I can seem to make this as slick as I would like. I've added the console with the following:

Title : NDoc Compile
Command: C:\Software\OpenSource\ndoc\1.3.1\bin\net\1.1\NDocConsole.exe
Arguments: -project=$(SolutionDir)Solution.ndoc
Initial Dir: $(SolutionDir)

This ties me to the solution.ndoc though for hte ndoc project file. Would be good if I could get the add in to automatically look for .ndoc

Anyone got any ideas?

Visual Studio 2005 and Integrated unit testing

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:10:00 GMT

Please, help? Do I really need to buy VSTS to get integrated unit testing?

I've got an MSDN subscription which I thought was kind of universal but it seems I dont get any of team system. Now, I wasn't particuarly bothered with a lot of the stuff but I dont get the integrated unit testing in the pro edition.

I guess this means that I am going to be sticking with NUnit and as such recommending that my clients do exactly the same.

I don't see why Microsoft should be putting this kind of an additional expense on independant consultants, not given the amount of money I have made them in server licences from my clients!

Podcasts - A cracking resource

Campbell McNeill — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:23:00 GMT

Hi, don't know how many of you have found the wonders of podcasts as yet. I'm quite into them, as a good podcast can make the walk to work a better use of time than it would be listening to the latest Green Day album.

As yet the podcast scene is in its infancy but there are several good resources out there. The best one I have found is delivered by the folk who host my blog. It covers all manner of useful developer information including plenty of interviews etc.

Check out Podcast Studio .NET

If like me you are the proud owner of an ipod then iTunes 4.9 includes pod cast access and this podcast is synicated through this. This makes it a lot easier to make sure you have the latest episode.

NAnt Deployment and Log4net for BizTalk

Campbell McNeill — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:46:00 GMT

All, Just to let you know that Scott Colestock has released new versions of many of his very useful tools.

Someone I know gets a notable mention with the log4net stuff too ;)

A noteable mention to Scott Colestock

Campbell McNeill — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 03:40:00 GMT

I'd like to take a moment to blog about the excellent work Scott Colestock is doing with regards to BizTalk supplemental tools

I've been working with both his Nant deployment script and his implementation of Log4net. Both are absolutly must haves for the BizTalk developer. If you haven't checked this stuff out then I sincerely hope that you do. Your life will be better with it!

I even updated his Log4net library to use the latest version. Hope he gets it up on his site soon

Many thanks for your good work Scott. Check him out at Trace of Thought

Useful BizTalk FAQ

Campbell McNeill — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 20:48:00 GMT

Enjoy: http://www.netologi.se/default.aspx?Contents=BizTalkFAQ

Adding / Removing a BizTalk Adapter using a Custom Action

Campbell McNeill — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 03:13:00 GMT

Just been working on getting a BizTalk adapter to install using windows installer. I used the adpater wizard to create the adapter, which kindly provides a nice .reg file to handle the registry stuff. This is nice and easy to use in conjunction with the registry editor function of the setup project in VS.NET. What I also wanted to do was add in support for getting the adapter to show up in the BizTalk admin and also remove it from there when you uninstall it. You can do this by using WMI in a custom action. First what you need to do is add an installer class to your adapter project. You can do this using visual studio. This is covered in the documentataion. Then you need to add in the following statment at the top. You also need to add in the System.Management assembly.

using System.Management;

For the install action, use the following, changing the relevant sections:

            //Run the base class stuff.

            base.Install(stateSaver);

try

                PutOptions options = new PutOptions();

                options.Type = PutType.CreateOnly;

                //create a ManagementClass object and spawn a ManagementObject instance

                ManagementClass newAdapterClass = new ManagementClass("root\\MicrosoftBizTalkServer", "MSBTS_AdapterSetting", null);

                ManagementObject newAdapterObject = newAdapterClass.CreateInstance();

                //set the properties for the Managementobject

                newAdapterObject["Name"] = "<YOURADAPTER>";

                newAdapterObject["Comment"] = "<Comment you want to appear in BizTalk>";

                newAdapterObject["Constraints"] = "<Constraint Bit Mank>";  //Bitmask appears in registry file.

                newAdapterObject["MgmtCLSID"] = "<Adapter Management Class Id>"; //Guid that appears in the registry file.

                //create the Managementobject

                newAdapterObject.Put(options);

                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Adapter has been created successfully");

            catch (Exception ex)

                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(ex.ToString());

                throw;

And the following for the uninstall:

try

                ManagementClass adapterClass = new ManagementClass("root\\MicrosoftBizTalkServer", "MSBTS_AdapterSetting", null);

                ManagementObjectCollection adapterObjects = adapterClass.GetInstances();

                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("We have {0} management objects", adapterObjects.Count.ToString());

                foreach (ManagementObject adapterObject in adapterObjects)

                    System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Current adapter object is {0}", adapterObject["Name"].ToString());

                    if( adapterObject["Name"].ToString().ToUpper() == "<YOURADAPTER>" )

                        adapterObject.Delete();

                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Adapter has been removed successfully");

            catch (Exception ex)

                System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(ex.ToString());

                throw;