Jawad Khan

Microsoft Learning Announces Thomson Proemetric to be the sole Test Delivery Provider ...

Jawad Khan — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:00:49 GMT

Microsoft learning has announced that after August 31st, 2007 only Thomson Prometric will be allowed to conduct Microsoft Certification exams. Pearson Vue can take registration for exams till August 31st,2007 and can conduct the tests till December 31st,2007. In case you have any Pearson VUE vouchers its the time to book your registration for the exam.

The official details are here

I have recently taken exams for WSS 3.0 and MOSS with Pearson Vue and have taken exams with Prometric as well. I personally think that Pearson VUE was much better in conducting the exams. There customer service was much better and much less problems then Prometric. Being a MCT as well thats what I have heard from my students as well.

15 % Discounts on Pearson VUE Microsoft MCP Exams / 20% off on MeasureUp Practice Exams for Certification ...

Jawad Khan — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:00:00 GMT

Hi,

Perason Vue offer Microsoft Certification Exams ...

15 % discount on MCP exam

• Online at www.pearsonvue.com/ms
• By phone at 1-800-TEST-REG (800-837-8734)
• In person at your local Pearson VUE Authorized Center

20 % discount on MeasureUp Practice Exams at www.measureup.com

Voucher number to use :

MSAU919E1289

Dell Customer Service - Worst I have ever encountered ...

Jawad Khan — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:04:00 GMT

I have recently bought a Intel core 2 duo system with 2407FPW monitor from Dell through one of their Dell Kiosks in Toronto.I requested them to expediate the shipment since I need it early. The sales person informed me that they will try their best to get it early. I placed the order on 12th of Novenember that was due to be delivered on 22nd November. I got the System on 22nd but the monitor was missing.

I looked at th Packing list and the monitor was supposed to shipped with the system.

I immediately called Dell Customer care to notify them of the missing item. They informed me that by mistake the monitor is shipped seperately and gave me the tracking number and opened the case. They adviced me to wait for 24 hours. I keep calling purolator and was told the monitor will arrive after five or next day.

After 24 hours I have to call Dell again and they have to place another Order for the Monitor. I was informed since this is a missing item they epediate the order and I should get it it with 2 or 3 days. I waited for 7 days but the online status keep displaying that Monitor is in Production. Very strange that Monitor need to go through Production too. I kept calling customer care to no avail. Finally on November 29th I was told that Monitor was shipped on November 28th but they can't provide me with the Tracking Number yet and I should call on 29th. I called Customer care agin on 29th but was told quite rudely by the customer care representative that there is no tracking no and that the Dell will not extend the warrantly period on the CPU that I already have though I can't use it. Also Dell went ahead and placed the Bell sypatico 3 month free trial which I will not be able to use til I get the monitor.

I insisted to talk with the Customer care manager who has the same answers and was quite rude too. And told me that Monitor actualy is not even shipped because of bad weather in US and will be shipped after 2 days and implied that I should not even bother calling them for 3 more days .... Also he can't do any thing about High speed 3 month free offer that was part of Dell New order. I never talked with the ISP provider during whole process of ordering the Dell and getting the service but now He wanted me to call them directly to stop activation and Dell has nothing to do with it what so ever ..Surprise ...Surprise ......

I was not expecting such a Customer care service from company like Dell though i have read alot of horor stories in the newsgroups. All I wanted was courteous Cutomer care representative that take initiative to solve the customer issue and are proactive and contact the customers and update them with the status of their case.

Dell can easily provide a rental Monitor or replacement if they can't accomodate 2407 because of some production issues.

Dell Just lost another customer in IT industry and I would definitely not recommend to any one that I know. Please feel free to share your experiences with Dell ...Extending warranty on a system for 3 or 4 weeks or extending 1 month of Sypatico internet and Just showing that you are doing something about the Customer complain doesn't take much but makes all the difference and all the Good companies make sure they keep there existing and potential customers Happy ...

I called bell Sympatico after that to directly talk to them to stop activation of High speed internet till I get the system. Th person was really courteous. I signed and received the Modem a day earlier. The Customer representative from Bell told me no problem he will make sure that the conection is not activated till I get the Dell system and in case I get charged he will readjust the charges. I smiled ... Thats what a good Customer service should be like .. though I do know that some individuals had issues with Bell too ...

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 - Service Pack 2 ships!

Jawad Khan — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:33:00 GMT

Real exciting news from Web Content Management team at Microsoft.The MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2 now provides much awaited support for Microsoft SQL 2005 and Viusla Studio 2005 is now available in MCMS 2002.Master Pages as well as the authentication and navigation provider models support. Much more exciting stuff is planned for the next WCM (Web Content Managment) next release of MCMS with Office 12.. It requires you to install Service pack SP1A before you upgrade to SP2 even if you have SP1 you need to upgrade to SP1A. The difference between two is some multilanguage support enhancements.

To Download SP2 Click Here

How to make sure that the file is downloaded completely by the Users of Web Application ...

Jawad Khan — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:00:00 GMT

While developing a Website you might want to limit the users to download the file only once or would like to hide the link if they successfully downloaded a particular file. In traditional way of downloading the file its hard to know on the server side that file is downloaded successfully by the client. Solution is to stream the file in small chunk and make sure that is connected before streaming the next chunk. If you sucessfully transmitted the whiole file then this would mean that client has successfully downloaded the file.

Here is the Code ....

public class DownloadFile : System.Web.UI.Page
{

  private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
  {
   System.IO.Stream iStream = null;

// Buffer to read 10K bytes in chunk:
byte[] buffer = new Byte[10000];

// Length of the file:
int length;

// Total bytes to read:
long dataToRead;

// Identify the file to download including its path.
string filepath = Request.MapPath("TSDCJan21.sdo");

// Identify the file name.
string filename = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(filepath);

   try
   {
    // Open the file.
    iStream = new System.IO.FileStream(filepath, System.IO.FileMode.Open,
     System.IO.FileAccess.Read,System.IO.FileShare.Read);

// Total bytes to read:
dataToRead = iStream.Length;

Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + filename);

    // Read the bytes.
    while (dataToRead > 0)
    {
     // Verify that the client is connected.
     if (Response.IsClientConnected)
     {
      // Read the data in buffer.
      length = iStream.Read(buffer, 0, 10000);

// Write the data to the current output stream.
Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, length);

// Flush the data to the HTML output.
Response.Flush();

      buffer= new Byte[10000];
      dataToRead = dataToRead - length;
     }
     else
     {
      //prevent infinite loop if user disconnects
      dataToRead = -1;
     }
    }
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
    // Trap the error, if any.
    Response.Write("Error : " + ex.Message);
   }
   finally
   {
    if (iStream != null)
    {
     //Close the file.
     iStream.Close();
    }
   }

}

MCMS 101 - Free downloadable eBooks to get you started with MCMS 2002 ...

Jawad Khan — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:28:00 GMT

Via MSDN

Here are few useful online free books listed on MSDN that will get you started with Microsoft Content Management Server before you do your own investment and buy a MCMS 2002 Book or take an official MOC Training.

Note these books are not meant for beginners though. For beginners I will still Recommend the Book Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server as per my post here earlier.You can get good deal on this book from Amazon and other online book sellers.

(1) Building, Deploying, and Maintaining Intranet Sites for the Enterprise

           Chapter 1. Setup
           Chapter 2. Examining OTGWeb's Network Architecture
           Chapter 3. Day-to-Day Operations
           Chapter 4. Building OTGWeb with Best Practices
           Chapter 5. Final Thoughts

This book discusses how a small team within the Operations and Technology Group (OTG) at Microsoft uses Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 to build, deploy, and maintain OTGWeb, an internal Microsoft site. OTG uses OTGWeb to provide information and tools to keep Microsoft employees informed and productive. OTGWeb is, as far as we know, the largest intranet site running MCMS today.

(2) Integration Techniques and Strategies for Internet Business

Using the MCMS .NET-based managed APIs
Using the MCMS COM-based Site Deployment API
Creating user controls and dialog boxes within the Web Author
Creating custom placeholder controls in Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET
Creating components that communicate with each external system

In Integration Techniques and Strategies for Internet Business, we'll examine a variety of integration options available to you when designing your Web sites. The methodology we present is simple, secure, and extendable. We take the WoodgroveNet sample site which shipped as a sample with MCMS 2002 and build integration components to show integration with search engines, workflow engines, authentication systems, and other software.

(3) Performance Planning and Deployment with Content Management Server 2002

Explains performance planning for MCMS 2002
Demonstrates capacity planning with transaction cost analysis for MCMS 2002
Provides detailed instructions and best practices for installing a sample MCMS 2002 deployment that can be scaled out to meet your needs.
Provides troubleshooting information and answers to frequently asked questions for getting the best from your MCMS 2002 site.

This Book shows you how to plan your MCMS 2002 deployment to maximize performance, how to estimate site capacity with transaction cost analysis, and provides best practices and instructions for installing an MCMS 2002, 13-computer, 3-tier, sample, secure deployment that can easily be scaled out to meet the needs of your enterprise. Additionally, it provides troubleshooting tips and answers frequently asked questions about installing and using MCMS 2002

Troubleshooting ASP.Net Validation Controls ....

Jawad Khan — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:22:00 GMT

VIA article from Peter Blum on ASPaaliance

Validating user input is an important requirement of most web applications. However, many ASP.NET developers find the standard ASP.NET validation controls to be either hard to use or lacking in features. Peter Blum answers the most frequently asked questions concerning ASP.NET validation.

Some of the topics he discussed are:

(1) Client-side validation does not work at all
(2) Buttons do not submit
(3) When to Validate
(4) Preventing a button from validating
(5) Several buttons associated with their own validators
(6) AutoPostBack and validation
(7) How to display MessageBoxes on Validation errors.
(8) Validators support for globalization
(9) Using validators with DropDownLists and ListBoxes
(10) Making the CustomValidator support blank textboxes

Here is the article Solving the Challenges of ASP.NET Validation

Utility for searching a substring in Microsoft Content Management Server for Admins/Developers

Jawad Khan — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 12:27:00 GMT

I have created a Windows App utility that can search All or Specific Portal for any particular string to be found in any of the placeholders.

Portal is determined to be the First Level Channel after /Channels root.

All you need is run the attached file from the MCMS Server with admin rights. (i.e. logged in with a user that has admin rights on MCMS local Server). Note you can run as Subscriber too but you might not be able to search all the postings if you don't have rights to them.

This could be very useful for checking for a particular resource file/Image or a URL that needs to be changed because of change in domain names etc.

This is to be used by webmasters/Site Admins to search for a particular SubString in any of the placeholders. This Utility also created a MCMSSearch.log comma delimited file listing the detailed information about Portal, Posting Name, Path and Placeholder where the particular string was found. You can click on Silent Checkbox so that user is not prompted and entries are only written to the file.

MCMS Search Utility

You can alternatively download the .Net Windows App from

http://briefcase.yahoo.com/jawadblogapps (in the folder MCMSApps)

User Id: JawadBlogApps

Password : jawadblog

Note: Don't forget to SignIn or you will get the message that Folder is Empty.

MCMS 101 - What is a Web Publishing CMS System, Features,Benefits and Current Market ...

Jawad Khan — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:43:00 GMT

Here is a Great article explaining Web publishing Content Management Systems in general. Who should be using them. What are the advantages and benefits of using a web based Content Management System and the different players offering Web based Content Management Solutions.

Web Publishing CMS System

MCMS 101 - Recommended Book to Learn Microsoft Content Management Server 2002

Jawad Khan — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 13:39:00 GMT

I get lot of queries from the Clients and from my Blog readers about the recommendation MCMS 2002 Book/Tutorial. The following book is great for Starters as well as seasoned MCMS professionals. I would highly recommend it ....

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Lim Mei Ying, Joel Ward, Stefan Goßner

Here is what packtpub has to say :

A fast-paced and practical tutorial guide for C# developers starting out with MCMS 2002

Learn directly from recognized community experts

Rapid developer level tutorials build logically through out the book
Develops a feature rich custom site incrementally
Tips and Tricks from developer newsgroups and online communities

Get this Book from Here

MCMS HotFix KB# 836895 - Problem installing on XP - The query string arrays are not correctly passed to the posting

Jawad Khan — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:14:00 GMT

Recently I came across this issue with KB#836895. It installs perfectly on Windows 2003 machines but refused to install on Windows XP development machines.

Since we are using some custom parameters that needed to be passed to different MCMS posting it was hard to debug since all the development machines where Windows XP.

After contacting Microsoft they acknowledged the problem and now have fixed it so it installs on Windows XP development machines as well. So make sure you download the latest copy from Microsoft site.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=836895

ASp.Net: Search for a Particular User in Active Directory

Jawad Khan — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:07:00 GMT

If you are using FomrsAuthentication against ActiveDirectory you might want to search if a User Id exist in Active Directory or not before taking certain action like creating new profile.

Here is a Code Snippet used to Check for existance of a User in Active Directory. Some of the setting are stored in web.config.

Note: IT is highly recommended that you do not store usernames or passwords in web.config unencrypted here for demonstration I have put them in clear text to connect to AD.

ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings are read from web.config and you can add your own app settings for those variables.

  public bool IsUserExistInActiveDirectory(string UserId)
  {
   bool IsValidLoginName = false;
   string domain = "LDAP://" + ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["Domain"];
   System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry entry =
    new DirectoryEntry(domain, ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["ADServiceAccount"], ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["ADServiceAccountPassword"],
    AuthenticationTypes.Secure);

   DirectorySearcher adSearcher = new DirectorySearcher(entry);
   adSearcher.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;
   adSearcher.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(samaccountname=" + UserId + "))";
      SearchResult oResult = adSearcher.FindOne();

   if ( oResult != null)
   {
     IsValidLoginName = true;
   }
           return IsValidLoginName;
  }

Microsoft Content Management Server Support for ASP.Net version 2.0

Jawad Khan — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:52:00 GMT

Via Andrew Connell Blog

MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2 will have the support for ASP.Net 2.0 though there will still be some New features that will not be supported or fully suported by MCMS running under ASp.Net 2.0 framework for example Web Parts ...

MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2: Expect this to be released after the .NET 2.0 Framwork is released (BTW: today’s keynote at TechEd announced that Visual Studio .Net 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be released to manufacturing [RTM] the week of November 7, 2005). The primary focus of SP2 will be to add .NET 2.0 Framework and SQL Server 2005 support to MCMS. Yes, you how have access to using master pages (just no placeholders within the master pages… that’s not supported) and all the other great features that are provided by the next generation of ASP.NET 2.0. This does not mean I’m not saying that you can touch the MCMS database, you just can host your database on the new platform. The only thing that isn’t supported is using the new ASP.NET 2.0 web parts within MCMS templates.

MCMS vNext aka: futures: Yes, speculation can now end in the newsgroups and blogs that it's now confirmed there is a new version of MCMS in the works. When will it be available? MCMS is now part of the Office System. At the recent CEO Summit, Bill Gates announced that Office 12 will ship at the end of 2006 and you can expect a beta at the end of 2005/beginning of 2006. Because MCMS is in now part of the Office System, it will fall in line with those dates. Packaging & licensing is still being hashed out so no details on that. Again, just stay tuned for news in the coming months.

How to Bind Enum Types to the Dropdown or any other bindable Control in ASP.Net .....

Jawad Khan — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:05:00 GMT

While working on a Data Form in an ASP.Net application you might want to get a value from the user that corresponds to the Enum you created in your Business Layer. Since Enum types are not strings or .ToString() function doesn't work directly with Enums you need to do it in slightly different way ...

Solution:

Lets take an example ...

public enum Color
{
    RED,
    GREEN,
    BLUE
}

Every Enum type derives from System.Enum. There are two static methods that help bind data to a drop-down list control (and retrieve the value). These are Enum.GetNames and Enum.Parse. Using GetNames, you are able to bind to your drop-down list control as follows:

protected System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList ddColor;

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
     if(!IsPostBack)
     {
        ddColor.DataSource = Enum.GetNames(typeof(Color));
        ddColor.DataBind();
     }
}

Now if you want the Enum value Back on Selection ....

  private void ddColor_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
  {
   Color selectedColor = (Color)Enum.Parse(ddColor.SelectedValue);
  }

Free Internet Explorer (IE) Spell Checker ...that spell checks text Imput Boxes on WebPages ...

Jawad Khan — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:48:00 GMT

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application.

ieSpell - A Spell Checker for Internet Explorer

ieSpell is free for personal use only. All other use requires a commercial license