Project Cool

WCF Add Reference Error: The document at the url was not recognized as a known document type…Report from ‘DISCO Document’ is ‘Root element is missing’…Report from WSDL Document is ‘There is an error in the XML d

Harish Ranganathan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:28:30 GMT

Recently I surfaced this error while trying to add reference of a WCF Service in Visual Studio 2008 running on Windows 7. Even when the WCF Service was browsed normally, it didn’t expose the Service Description Page that usually shows an implementation sample. I tried removing all code in the service, tried commenting, nothing worked. The ‘Root element is missing’ didn’t give much details on what could be the issue.

Every time this error throws up, The “Add Service Reference” operation could not be completed because the options get greyed out. This was frustrating. After a bit of research, I found out that the WCF ServiceModel had to be registered and since I had recently upgraded to Windows 7, I hadn’t done this. The solution for the same is to run the ServiceModelReg utility.

To do that, if you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, type “cmd” in run command.
It lists you the Command Prompt Icon
Right click on the icon and select “Run as Administrator”
Select “Yes” to continue and the command window shows up
In the command prompt, navigate back to C:\ by typing cd\
Navigate to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation
Type ServiceModelReg –i and press the enter key.
It would do a series of installations and changes.

Thereafter you should be able to add reference to your WCF Services and also, when you browse the Service you can see the sample implementation screen as well.

For reading more about ServiceModelReg and the different switches that can be used, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms732012.aspx

Please note, this was for WCF and if you surface the above error for WebServices, this solution may/may not work.

Cheers !!!

Quick post on setting up Visual Studio 2010 on a Windows 7 RC

Harish Ranganathan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:25:56 GMT

Recently, I upgraded to Windows 7 RC and found that the experience has been great. Zero compatibility issues, all works as it worked in Vista and the integration with Windows Easy Transfer (WES) has been phenomenal. If you don’t know WES, it is a tool available by default with Vista and Windows 7 that allows you to migrate your Outlook, IE, Desktop and other personal settings easily, in addition to backing up your files across different locations.

Coming back to the original intent of the post, as always I have the Beta versions and Visual Studio 2010 is something I can’t resist trying out on Windows 7 RC. Surprisingly, there was zero issues when installing on Windows 7 RC. The only work around that is running all over the internet is that SQL Server 2008 SP1 must have been installed before installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta on a Windows 7 RC machine.

I had it already so faced zero issues. If you don’t have SQL Server 2008 SP1 installed, you would want to do that first from here before installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 on a Windows 7 RC machine.

Go ahead, install Windows 7, install SQL Server 2008 SP1 and Visual Studio 2010 and get to experience the latest with Application Development.

Cheers !!!

ASP.NET 4.0 QueryExtender, AutoCompleteExtender and UpdatePanel – mashing it up all

Harish Ranganathan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:59:19 GMT

I am playing with the ASP.NET 4.0 QueryExtender released as a part of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 recently. It provides endless opportunities for working with data without writing much code and when you combine it with a few Ajax features, gives a truly great user experience with very less effort.

To begin with you need the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1. You can install both from http://msdn.microsoft.com/hi-in/netframework/dd819232(en-us).aspx

Also, I am using the Northwind sample database and this can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=06616212-0356-46A0-8DA2-EEBC53A68034&displaylang=en

To make things more fun, I am also using AJAX Control Toolkit. You can download the same from http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=27326 You can download just the DLL from the AJAXControlToolkit-Framework3.5SP1-DllOnly.zip link in this page since in this sample, we are just going to use the control. However, if you already have the AjaxControlToolkit installed, you can simply reference the AjaxControlToolkit.dll file in the Website.

Note that, due to a security implementation in VS 2010, the AjaxControlToolkit DLL cannot be used as is in the projects in VS 2010. Check this post on using AjaxControlToolkit with VS 2010 Beta 1 http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2009/05/26/using-microsoft-ajax-control-toolkit-with-visual-studio-10-beta-1.aspx

Once you are done with the installation and other steps, create a new ASP.NET Website. Note that, for the QueryExtender to work well, you need to make a small web.config update. You can find the details about this, in my previous post here This is just a Beta behaviour.

In the ASP.NET Website, first we will create a LINQ to SQL Class (Right Click Website – Add new item – LINQ TO SQL Class. Provide this the name “Northwind”. It would create a Northwind.dbml file, a class file as well as layout file. Using the server explorer link, connect to the Northwind Database. For this sample, I am using the Products table. So, select the table from Northwind database folder under “Tables” and drag and drop it into the LINQ to SQL designer view. Build the solution.

Once this is done, open the Default.aspx page and add the following code after the form tag.

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="true">
</asp:ScriptManager>

We are adding the above since we are going to use Ajax Futures. Normally this is not required to use the QueryExtender

Then, add a LINQ Data Source and configure it to use the Products table in the Northwind DataContext created. The code should look something like below:-

<asp:LinqDataSource ID="LinqDataSource1" runat="server" ContextTypeName="NorthwindDataContext"
TableName="Products">
</asp:LinqDataSource>

Post this, I am adding a TextBox, Button and QueryExtender as follows:-

<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

<asp:Button ID="Button1" Text="Submit" runat="server" />

<asp:QueryExtender ID="QueryExtender1" runat="server" TargetControlID="LinqDataSource1">
          <asp:SearchExpression DataFields="ProductName" SearchType="StartsWith">
            <asp:ControlParameter ControlID="TextBox1" />
          </asp:SearchExpression>
        </asp:QueryExtender>

Note that the ControlID for QueryExtender’s ControlParameter is TextBox1 and the TargetControlID is LinqDataSource1. Update these if you gave different ID Names.

Post this, add a GridView to the page and configure it to use the LINQ DataSource created above. I am not posting the code below since it would make this post too big.

If everything works fine, you should be able to see a GridView populated with the Products Data and a TextBox and Button when you run the page.

When you type a particular Product Name, say “Anideed Syrup” and click on “Submit” Button, it would filter and show only that particular record in the GridView. Note that, you haven’t written any code for this filtering so far. All happens by virtue of the QueryExtender control. We have used SearchExpression in this case and it has stuff like StartsWith, EndsWith, contains for SearchType that can be used exhaustively for different requirements. Also, there is RangeExpression, PropertyExpression etc.,

The input for the QueryExtender can also come from various sources. In this case, it is TextBox and hence ControlParameter. You can also use QueryString, Cookie, Form, Profile, Session etc.,

For a more exhaustive sample on QueryExtender, check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd537669(VS.100).aspx

Now that we have a search behaviour, we would like to go little further and make this whole stuff asynchronous so that the operation is smooth.

Add an UpdatePanel and place all the above inside the ContentTemplate of the UpdatePanel.

When you run the page now and type a search item and click on the “Submit” button, the results bind asynchronously without a postback, making it look better.

One final touch is to provide search suggestions. For this, I would be using the AutoCompleteExtender feature. If you already have the AjaxControlToolkit installed, you may want to remove it from ToolBox and do the step in paragraph 5 (security implementation in VS 2010) above and then add it to the Toolbox again.

Drag and drop the AutoCompleteExtender into the page and set its TargetControlID to TextBox1.

Now, the AutoCompleteExtender requires a Web Method to retrieve the values asynchronously. We will use PageMethods for this so that we avoid creating a separate webservice. For this purpose, we will use the same DataContext created by the LINQ DataSource Control above.

Swtich to the code behind of the Default.aspx page i.e. Default.aspx.cs file and add the following using statements

using System.Web.Services;
using System.Configuration;

Post that, the method for retrieving product name is as below:-

[WebMethod]
    public static IQueryable GetProductNames(string prefixText)
    {
        NorthwindDataContext nwdc = new NorthwindDataContext();

        var productList = from Product in nwdc.Products
                          where Product.ProductName.StartsWith(prefixText)
                          select Product.ProductName;

return productList;
}

With this, we are getting a list of Products whose names start with the prefixText. The prefixText is the one used in the AutoCompleteExtender and length can be set using MinimumPrefixLength from 1 to 2,3 etc., This is basically the number of characters you need to type before the suggestions need to show up. Then configure the ServiceMethod for the AutoCompleteExtender to GetProductNames (the method above). The updated AutoCompleteExtender code should look like

<cc1:AutoCompleteExtender ID="AutoCompleteExtender1" runat="server"
MinimumPrefixLength="1" TargetControlID="TextBox1" ServiceMethod="GetProductNames">
</cc1:AutoCompleteExtender>

Once you have all of these, run the page and when you start typing the ProductName in the TextBox, it should start showing suggestions. Select one of them and click on the “Submit” Button and you should get the result bound to GridView, all happening without a postback.

You can improve the layout with better CSS for the AutoCompleteExtender, better layout for GridView, Button etc., to further improve the experience. I have posted a few sample screen shots below and also attached the source code for the above sample with this. Note that there are far too many steps involved in setting up the website rather than the actual code work, so if something doesn’t work, make sure you have checked all the initial steps mentioned by me in the beginning. Hope you find this sample useful.

Download the sample from http://cid-069f94a102eff49a.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/QueryExtenderSample

Cheers !!!

Unknown server tag ‘asp:SearchExpression’ error with QueryExtender control in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Harish Ranganathan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:46:21 GMT

One of the cool things about ASP.NET 4.0 is the Query Extender and the ability to search within DataContext without using WHERE clause, writing extensive code etc., It works on the new set of namespace i.e. “System.Web.UI.WebControls.Expressions” namespace.

I am trying to put up an extensive sample using QueryExtender in the next post, but for this post, I wanted to share an error that you might hit when trying to implement the Query Extender control with Search Expression, Range Expression etc., This error is specific to the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 build that was released to public.

If you look at the MSDN sample for Query Extender it ports a markup like below for Query Extender

<asp:QueryExtender runat="server" TargetControlID="LinqDataSource1">

<asp:SearchExpression SearchType="StartsWith" DataFields="Name" >

<asp:ControlParameter ControlID="SearchTextBox" />

</asp:SearchExpression>

</asp:QueryExtender>

As you can see, the QueryExtender is useful only when you add SearchExpression etc., since they define the action that QueryExtender performs. However, when you try the above sample with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you might get a build error and/or a runtime error that Unknown server tag ‘asp:SearchExpression’. The same error occurs for RangeExpression, PropertyExpression etc.,

You won’t even get intellisense for the above inside the QueryExtender tag.

The reason for the same is a simple mismatch in the web.config namespace reference entry. Once you add the following entry in the web.config file, this error would be gone.

<add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls.Expressions" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

Note: The PublicKeyToken needs to be updated as per the other entries in this section, if different.

The above tag needs to be placed between <pages><controls>..</controls></pages> tags in the web.config file. Post this, you would also be able to get intellisense for these within the QueryExtender

Cheers !!!

Mozilla Crash Reporter – the death screen

Harish Ranganathan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:50:29 GMT

As a part of my various experimentations, I do run Mozilla FireFox, Safari as well as Google Chrome. Recently, Mozilla had a crash and it doesn’t allow me to proceed further upon restarting it. The above screen shows up. I thought, clicking on “Restart Firefox” after submitting the information would help, but everytime I try running FireFox, the same dialog comes up.

There must be some indication that Mozilla wouldn’t function and I would need to reinstall or something like that.

Compared to the IE8’s crash recovery which not only restores the tab/browser and says that this has been recovered, the experience Mozilla Firefox gave is annoying.

Huh !

Bingo Bing :)

Harish Ranganathan — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:02:55 GMT

Our new search engine, more than just search, it would be a decision engine.

In a bid to provide better search experiences, we will be releasing a new decision engine next week. The official name is Bing. I think it is a cool name and this would definitely improve the traditional experience people find with Search.

Today, people go to search engine to find results which are assumed the best. But these are mostly rated based on the number of links, word presence, meta tags etc., However, in a day where people search for just anything and everything, more analysis, relevance, combined with intelligent decision making would be true way for getting the best results.

For now, Bing is coming soon and you can find more about it at http://www.bing.com/ComingSoon

As always, a new release first goes through the initial criticisms, comparisons and the denial phase before it gets adoption and I am sure, with your feedbacks and support, Bing would be a great release just as the Windows 7 Beta, we did recently.

I have used a variety of search engines, including Live and the other popular engines, but have rarely got what I want, although the engine thinks that it is the most relevant result.

With Bing, I look forward to that perfect result, I have always wanted.

Cheers !!!

Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2

Harish Ranganathan — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:44:37 GMT

The Windows team put up quick work and released the SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 despite the parallel Windows 7 work that has been keeping them busy. So if you are running Windows Vista SP1 or Windows Server 2008, you can install SP2 released from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a4dd31d5-f907-4406-9012-a5c3199ea2b3&DisplayLang=en or better turn on automatic updates and it should do the update sometime during this month.

Currently it is available for 5 languages and more general availability might be over the next few months. Note that Windows Vista SP1 is a pre-requisite and it can be downloaded from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bb738089.aspx

In the case of Windows Server, when it was released, it came by default with SP1 so this is technically the Service Pack 1 although, for versioning consistency it is SP2.

The Windows Team proactively blogs about these new releases and other updates at http://windowsteamblog.com/

The particular post which talks about this and the links for other flavours such as x64, Enterprise etc., is http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2009/05/26/windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008-sp2-rtw.aspx

For the folks interested in details about this Service Pack, it is KB948465

Cheers !!!

Error: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Transactions, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest.

Harish Ranganathan — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:27:19 GMT

Recently, I was trouble shooting an error for my friend. Despite having all the necessary framework and service packs installed, this error “Could not load file or assembly 'System.Transactions, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest.” was surfacing, every time we tried connecting to a SQL Server instance using SQL Server Management Studio.

At first, I thought the issue must be with SQL Server and tried reinstalling SQL Server. During the installation, the SQL Server Agent, SQL Server Instance and SQL Full-text filter would fail while the rest of the components install successfully. Again, the Management Studio would fail with the above error while trying to connect to an instance running on a server (same is the case with local as well)

Then I tried reinstalling Visual Studio 2008. It installed although there seemed to be some issue somewhere during the installation. Trying to reinstall the Service Pack 1, repairing it, didn’t solve the issue and I was again hitting the road block.

When I did a search, there were hardly any links on an elaborate error message like above although I found one (http://forums.asp.net/t/1145885.aspx)

The solution mentioned was talking about a possible GAC Failure for System.Transactions (System.Transactions is a part of .NET 2.0 and in the machine it was already installed although some how it had been removed from GAC i.e. C:\Windows\Assembly).

Now, I found this DLL (System.Transactions) in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

I had to install this into GAC.

If you are running Visual Studio 2005, then gacutil.exe must be present inside “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin”

You would have to navigate to the above location in cmd prompt (elevated mode in Vista) and then execute

gacutil -I "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Transactions.dll"

If you are running Visual Studio 2008, you could use the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt (Start-All Programs-Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – Visual Studio Tools – Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt) and execute the above command.

Once you do that, you should be able to proceed with SQL Server installation as well as connect with other database servers or to put it simply, get rid of the above error in some other scenario.

The other error that was appearing occasionally before I did the above fix, in SQL Server Management Studio, was

Cannot connect to <servername>

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

“The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002) (System.Data)”

This got solved as well after I GACed the System.Transactions DLL in my scenario but if there is an alternate solution, please post in comments.

Cheers !!!

Finding installed version, edition and service pack version of SQL Server

Harish Ranganathan — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:20:37 GMT

Today I wanted to find the version of SQL Server 2008 installed in my machine. I did a quick search and the first support article from Microsoft had the answer to it http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321185

I just modified it a little bit with column headings so that if you are using it in an SP, returning it etc., it would help. So the modified query is as below

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion') as 'Product Version', SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel') as 'Service Pack Version', SERVERPROPERTY ('edition') as Edition

If there are better/alternate ways, please post in the comments.

Cheers !!!

Some important links

Harish Ranganathan — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:22:54 GMT

Update for .NET 3.5 SP1 (Important if working with Dynamic Data)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209

ASP.NET Compilation Enhancement Fix

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB967535/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2328 (for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008)https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=18157 (for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003)

Microsoft .NET RIA Services May 2009 Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=76bb3a07-3846-4564-b0c3-27972bcaabce&displaylang=en

ASP.NET 4.0 in VS 2010 Doc

http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet40

Some of them are a little old but thought worth putting them up.

Cheers !!!

PPTs opening very slowly? – Check your printer drivers - Microsoft Office 2007 PowerPoint

Harish Ranganathan — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:02:31 GMT

Recently I seemed to have issues with opening PPT files. I am running Office 2007 for a long time now and one of the things that I use most with respect to my work is PowerPoint files. Over the last 2 weeks I saw a certain weird behaviour with PPTs specifically related to printer options.

Every time, I try to open the PPT or unlock the system with the PPTs open, they try to print to my default printer. The specific error message would state that the default printer could not be accessed. I dismissed them couple of times and thereafter, the PPTs start working normally.

However, I did realize that there is some issue somewhere. Today, any PPT I try to open was extremely slow. Initially I was opening them from a SharePoint portal, so thought, the issue must be with the network. But when I tried opening some local PPT files, they took similar time and were simply hanging.

Did some research and seems my initial suspicion was true. The printer driver was causing some concern here. I opened up the printers folder and tried to remove the printer. Now, the printer started giving “Printer cannot be removed. Access Denied” error message. The problem was getting interesting since I made sure that it is not the default printer and neither there are any pending print jobs.

In the end I re-installed the printer driver from the vendor website and post that, I could delete the printer.

After that, the PPTs started behaving normally. They were opening quickly and I didn't have any issue with PPTs after that.

I am still researching on what relation PPT has with printers to hook up automatically and would post once I find something significant. Meanwhile, if anyone is aware of it, please post in comments.

Cheers !!!

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Beta 1 Download today

Harish Ranganathan — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:56:13 GMT

After the tremendous amount of interest the VPCs of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 generated, the Beta 1 bits would be available for download for MSDN Subscribers later today. The general public would also be able to download the bits starting this Wednesday.

Visual Studio 2010 combines the power of .NET 4.0 and the tremendous enhancements done to areas such as Web Development, WPF as well as native development and provides the best so far platform for developers.

While some of the features were available as v1 in .NET 3.5 SP1 as well as individual downloads over the last few months, with Visual Studio 2010, all of these are bundled into one install and has much richer integration support for many of what developers wanted.

While it would be very hard to post all of the enhancements in one single post, to name a few, here below are some of the key aspects

ASP.NET 4.0 – Support for rich client side development, complete control on mark-up, business oriented data controls etc.,
ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 – complete client side development with JavaScript – support for UI Templates etc.,
ASP.NET Dynamic Data – moving away from just scaffolding to integration with existing applications, richer validation and support for entity framework.
WPF 4.0 – best experience for client application development
Developer focussed improvements in code editor (rapid code generation)
One Click Deployment for Web Applications
Lots of enhancements for native developers

And much much more….

While, I have had the privilege to play with some of the early builds, I look forward eagerly to install this build as much as you would be and also would love to hear from you folks on your experiences.

If you are an MSDN Subscriber, visit the

MSDN Subscription Center

Cheers !!!

ASP.NET Sessions at Tech.Ed India 2009

Harish Ranganathan — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:18:10 GMT

I am back from delivering Tech.Ed India 2009, particularly the web platform track where I delivered three sessions across 2 days. In addition, we also had Stephen Walther from the ASP.NET Team deliver sessions on ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET AJAX.

Over the next few posts, I would like to get all the content that we discussed during Tech.Ed India and possible videos so that even if you missed the action over there, you could benefit right here. To begin with, the sessions focussing on ASP.NET were

ASP.NET 4.0 by Stephen Walther
ASP.NET MVC by Stephen Walther
ASP.NET Dynamic Data by Harish Ranganathan (that’s me)
IIS 7.5, Server Core with ASP.NET – Windows Server 2008 R2 by Praveen Srivatsa
ASP.NET AJAX by Stephen Walther
VS 2010 Web Deployment features by Harish Ranganathan
ASP.NET – A day in the life of an ASP.NET Request by Harish Ranganathan

While bulk of the above require VS 2010 bits, to begin with, lets pick up the sessions which don’t require ex.- The session on ASP.NET Dynamic Data. In this post, I would specify the things to get started and cover up the actual content in the next post.

Pre-requisites for this sample

1. Visual Studio 2008 SP1 & .NET 3.5 SP1

2. Dynamic Data Preview (CodePlex)

3. .NET RIA Services

4. SQL Server 2008/2005 or Express Editions

5. Northwind Sample Database

Also, you need a bunch of DLLs that you get from the above download (Dynamic Data Preview)

In the following posts, we will examine, how you can take the Dynamic Data Preview, .NET RIA Service Domain Data Source controls to build your 3 tier architecture website which uses/doesn't use Dynamic Data features.

To sum it up, Dynamic Data and Domain Data Source controls are mutually exclusive and can be used selectively according to your requirement.

Cheers !!!

Twenty 20 Action in my Tech Ed Sessions

Harish Ranganathan — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:45:41 GMT

Twenty 20 is the happening thing at the moment and most of you attending Tech Ed might worry on missing out watching it, although majority of the matches would happen only in the late evening and you can still catch up after attending TechEd.

However, to keep your Twenty20 interests alive, I am planning to maintain the theme for my sessions around Twenty20.

Although you wouldnt be able to see live matches, you would still deal with the raw data that you keep analyzing over and over again from websites and post match analysis.

That much I can ensure that your Twenty20 experience doesnt get spoiled by attending TechEd.

Well, thats like revealing too much of information and killing the suspense, but if you are regular follower of my blog, you deserve to know it upfront than the less fortuned, who dont

See you at Tech Ed India

Cheers !!!

Cannon PI – Title Sequence – Microsoft Web Platform

Harish Ranganathan — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:01:41 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/web/

Cheers !!!