Visual Studio - SharePoint, XBOX, .NET, Technology

2:59 Problem after deploying ASP.NET AJAX RC1 app ? >> ASP.NET Blogs

You've deployed your app in prod server, you run it on the browser and you get an exception:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an

	object.]
System.Web.Script.Services.WebServiceData.GetWebServiceData(Http

	Context context, String virtualPath, Boolean failIfNoData,

	Boolean pageMethods) +378
System.Web.Script.Services.PageClientProxyGenerator.GetClientProxy

	Script(HttpContext context, IPage page, Boolean debug) +45
System.Web.UI.ScriptManager.RegisterServices() +728   System.Web.

	UI.ScriptManager.OnPagePreRenderComplete(Object sender,

	EventArgs e) +244
System.Web.UI.Page.OnPreRenderComplete(EventArgs e) +2012740
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBef

	oreAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)+1566

It happens when your site use ASP.NET AJAX RC in a VS 2005 Web Site Project and you deploy with "publish web site" or "web deployment project" utility with checkbox "allow the site to be updatable" unchecked.

It's a bug from ASP.NET AJAX RC1 and will be fixed in next version.

Until this you can make everything work fine if you precompile with checkbox "allow this site to be updatable" checked.

21:49 Using the ASP.NET Small Business Site Starter Kit >> ASP.NET Blogs

I just put up my new web site at KenCox.ca which is based on Microsoft's Small Business Site Starter Kit . One of the problems with sample sites is that they're often too elaborate and completely undocumented. By the time you reverse engineer the code to figure out what's going on, you could have built your own site from scratch. This small business kit is quite easy to work with and has just enough functionality for my needs. If you're design-challenged like me, a starter kit is...(read more)

15:37 Visual Studio "Orcas" Web Designer Integrated into Main >> ASP.NET Blogs

This weekend was a really exciting one for the VS Web Tools team. On Saturday they checked in their new HTML and ASP.NET WYSIWYG designer into Visual Studio. This designer is a major, major improvement over previous HTML designers within Visual Studio, and will be a shared component used by both Visual Studio and Expression Web Designer going forward.

Among other things, the new HTML designer provides:

Split View Support (the ability to have both HTML Source and WYSIWYG design open simultaneously)
Extremely rich CSS support (CSS property window, CSS inheritance viewer, CSS preview, and CSS manager)
Dramatically improved view switching performance (moving from source->html design mode is now nearly instantaneous)
Support for control designers within source view (property builders, event wire-up and wizards now work in source view)
Richer ruler and layout support (better yet, values can be automatically stored in external CSS files)
Designer support for nested master pages

Below is a screen-shot with a lot of the new features in action:

We actually began working on the new designer in November 2004 - almost a year before VS 2005 shipped (there was a lot of work todo!). Mikhail Arkhipov was the dev manager who led and architected the work. You can learn more about the project and see some initial screen-shots of the new designer in his blog post here.

I"m planning to record some videos over the next few weeks that show off the new HTML designer as well as other cool new "Orcas" features. The next "Orcas" CTP will also contain the new designer (and a ton of other new features) to try out yourself.

Hope you enjoy it,

Scott

18:52 ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Released >> ASP.NET Blogs

I am really excited to announce that the final release of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (aka "Atlas") shipped this morning. You can download it here.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 delivers a rich client-side AJAX library that provides cross platform, cross browser support for a core JavaScript type-system, JSON-based network serialization stack, JavaScript component/control model, as well as common client JavaScript helper classes. ASP.NET AJAX also delivers a rich server-side library that integrates AJAX functionality within ASP.NET, and enables developers to easily AJAX-enable existing ASP.NET 2.0 sites with minimal effort.

ASP.NET AJAX is available for free, and can be used with ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005. It is a fully supported Microsoft product, and is backed by a standard 10 year Microsoft support license (with Microsoft Product Support available via phone 24 hours a day x 7 days a week).

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

In addition to the fully-supported ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release, you can use the more than 30 free ASP.NET AJAX enabled controls available within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. The control toolkit is a shared-source collaborative project built together by a team containing both Microsoft and non-Microsoft developers (visit the CodePlex Project to learn more, or volunteer to contribute). All source for the controls is provided completely for free (with full re-use and modification rights).

The majority of controls within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit leverage the "Control Extender" pattern that the core ASP.NET AJAX library introduces, and which delivers a super powerful way to easily enable specific AJAX scenarios on a site with minimal effort.

For example, consider the scenario where you want to add a cool AJAX calendar picker to a page (note that the browser below is Opera):

To enable this with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit you can simply add a <ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender> control to a page and point it at a textbox to store the date (no additional code required):

  <asp:TextBox ID="DateTextBox" runat="server" />
  
  <ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender ID="Calendar1" runat="server" TargetControlID="DateTextBox" /> 

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit will continue to grow and expand in the months ahead - with more controls, features (and bug-fixes) being added every month. The new version of the AJAX Control Toolkit that ships today adds support for 4 new controls to the Toolkit: <ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender>, <ajaxToolkit:MaskedEditExtender>, <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer>, and <ajaxToolkit:AutoCompleteExtender>. You can try samples of them all out online here.

(Special thanks to Ron and Fernando for implementing the new Calendar, Tab, and MaskedEdit controls added this month).

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Source Release

In addition to shipping the source code for the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit controls, we are also releasing all of the source code for the fully supported ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release. Specifically:

We are releasing the client-side ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript library (which we also call the "Microsoft AJAX Library") under the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL). This grants developers the right to freely customize/modify the library, as well as to redistribute the derivative versions of the JavaScript library for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

To help with debugging and development, we are also releasing all of the source code for the server-side ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 implementation (including the UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress, ScriptManager, and Network Serialization code) under the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL).

Changes between the ASP.NET AJAX Release Candidate and RTM Build

We made a number of improvements and bug fixes between the ASP.NET AJAX Release Candidate and RTM builds. These included:

Performance and scalability improvements for shared hosting scenarios.
Globalization fixes to ScriptManager and ScriptResource handler to support date & number parsing and UI culture fallback.
Updated ScriptResource handler to support automatic enabling/disabling JavaScript compression based on browser type.
Support for substitution caching to enable more fragment caching scenarios.
Additional bug fixes and overall robustness improvements.

More complete documentation covering all changes can be found on the http://ajax.asp.net website.

If you have installed previous versions of ASP.NET AJAX on your system, I recommend that you delete the cached VS schema files for control markup that VS maintains to provide HTML view intellisense. This will ensure that your HTML source editor Intellisense for the ASP.NET AJAX controls is correct and doesn"t get lost (otherwise it might incorrectly use the old values from the Beta2 release and generate errors).

With Windows XP you do this by deleting all files in this directory: c:\Document and Settings\[YourUserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ReflectedSchemas
With Windows Vista you do this by deleting all files in this directory: c:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ReflectedSchemas

Future Plans

While the core ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release is now officially shipped, we are definitely not slowing down. :-)

All of the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 features will be integrated directly into the next release of ASP.NET (codename: "Orcas"). Visual Studio "Orcas" will also provide client-side JavaScript intellisense, JavaScript compilation checking, and rich JavaScript debugging support for ASP.NET AJAX scenarios.

We are also already at work on the next ASP.NET AJAX release, and will continue to add new features and improvements to the supported ASP.NET AJAX core. You can already start using many of these new features with the ASP.NET AJAX Futures CTP (available for download now on the ASP.NET AJAX site - it also supports a "go live" license).

Summary

We are really excited about having the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release finally out. It will dramatically simplify adding rich AJAX functionality to ASP.NET 2.0 applications, and is going to significantly improve user experience for customers. We are really looking forward to seeing all the great applications you build with it!

Thanks,

Scott

4:32 Visual Studio Orcas ASP.NET designer improvements >> ASP.NET Blogs

I"m happy to hear that the next VS ASP.NET designer will be huge!
It will fix some stuff and bring nice value additions to the poor actual VS2005 one :

Split View Support (the ability to have both HTML Source and WYSIWYG design open simultaneously)
Extremely rich CSS support (CSS property window, CSS inheritance viewer, CSS preview, and CSS manager)
Dramatically improved view switching performance (moving from source->html design mode is now nearly instantaneous)
Designer support for nested master pages : this is a must-have, and certainly the main reason why nobody use nested MasterPage (and yes, I know, solution exist but...)

Please read more on Scott Guthrie"s blog entry :
Visual Studio "Orcas" Web Designer Integrated into Main

21:26 Jim Fawcette and 1105 Media Keep Their Word >> ASP.NET Blogs

I've done a lot of articles and product reviews for Visual Studio Magazine over the years, mainly because I enjoy technical writing but also for some pocket change for new toys. When Fawcette Technical Publications ran into financial trouble a few years ago, they stopped paying me and many others. However, Jim Fawcette promised that authors would be paid eventually . Today, I received a cheque from 1105 Media , the new owners of the company. When Jim Fawcette sold FTP , he convinced the new owners...(read more)

8:43 VPC with VSTF Single-Server Deployment >> MSDN Blogs

Below is a walkthrough of the steps I took to install VSTF (Visual Studio Team Foundation) on a VPC. I found a path that worked for me. I"m providing it as a reference both for myself and for others that might need it. I ran into issues during my initial installation. These turned out to be problems with my base installation of Windows on my VPC, not VSTF.

Here"s the steps I took:

Downloaded the most current version of the VSTF installation guide from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=40042
Created a VPC with windows 2003 SP 1. I installed Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Enterprise Edition.
Created three local service accounts. I created the following custom accounts: "tfsetup", "tfserviceaccount", "tfreportingaccount." I added my "tfsetup" to the local administrators group. I added my "tfservice" account and "tfreportingaccount" to the IIS_WPG group.
I logged out of Windows and then logged in using my "tfsetup" account.
Installed IIS 6 and selected ASP.NET during the installation.
Rebooted.
Ran Windows Update at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. I ran the Express check.
Installed SQL Server 2005 Enterprise. On the SQL Server Database Services page, I installed the following components: Analysis Services, Integration Services, Reporting Services. On the Feature Selection page, under Client Components, I selected to install Management. On the Service Account page, I selected to use the built-in System account. I selected local system. In Start services at the end of setup, I selected all services: SQL Server, SQL Server Agent, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and SQL Browser. On the Authentication Mode screen, I chose Windows Authentication Mode. On the Report Server Installation Options page, I chose Install default configuration. On the Error and Usage Report Settings, I chose "Automatically send Error reports for SQL Server 2005 to Microsoft or your corporate error`reporting server" and "Automatically send Feature Usage data for SQL Server 2005 to Microsoft."
Rebooted
Installed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP1 (SQLServer2005SP1-KB913090-x86-ENU.exe) from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=57414. SP1 included the hotfix that updates SQL Server Analysis Services to support reporting more efficiently. When I encountered locked files during the install I stopped the SQL Services using the SQL Server Configuration Manager.
Rebooted.
Installed the .NET Framework 2.0 HotFix. I installed KB913393 (NDP20-KB913393-X86.exe) from the VSTF installation media.
Installed SharePoint Services with Service Pack 2 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=55087) On the Type of Installation page, I selected Server Farm. After setup completed, I browsed to http://localhost:13667/configadminvs.aspx. I didn"t make any changes. I went to Windows Update and checked for critical updates using the Express option.
Rebooted.
Installed Team Foundation Server. I chose Single-Server Installation. On the System Health Check, I ran into an error. The error message told me that the SQL Server Agent service was stopped. I enabled the SQL Server Agent using the Services applet from the control panel and set it to automatic. On the Service Account page, I used my custom local account: "tfserviceaccount" On the Reporting Data Source Account page, I used my custom local account: "tfreportingaccount." I completed the installation without further issues.
Rebooted.

I don"t think it was actually necessary to do all the reboots that I did. Personally, I"ve found that interspersing reboots during product installations help me avoid common installation hiccups.

0:23 AJAXToolkit prefix in ASP.NET >> ASP.NET Blogs

If you want to prefix your code to use the AJAX Control Toolkit, add in the following item to your web.config.

<system.web>
    <pages>
      <controls>
        <add tagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" />
      </controls>
    </pages>

I think it helps out with the Intellisense in Visual Studio .NET 2005

7:28 Video: Using LINQ with ASP.NET in VS "Orcas" (Part 1) >> ASP.NET Blogs

One of my goals this year is to use video more with my blog. My theory is that video is often a better medium than text to walkthrough how something works, and can also help you avoid the tedium of reading though some of my really long blog posts... :-)

Over the next few months I"m going to try and create a new video every other week or so on various topics. Many of these videos are going to involve first looks at some of the new features coming with Visual Studio "Orcas", which is our new release that will ship later this year. For today"s video I decided to focus on introducing LINQ - which I think is one of the most exciting features coming with "Orcas".

At a high-level, LINQ makes the concept of query a first class programming concept within .NET. Using LINQ you can easily query relational databases, XML files, as well as any plain-old .NET object. You can also easily use your own data source abstractions with LINQ to provide rich domain models for various data providers (for a great example of this check out Fabrice"s LINQ to Amazon implementation that supports LINQ queries against Amazon data exposed via web-services). Both VB and C# include rich language integration with LINQ as part of the "Orcas" release, including full intellisense, compile-time checking, and debugging support.

Watch or Download the Video

This first video starts with a new project, and then demonstrates the basics of using LINQ against a SQL Database to build a simple data reporting page (including support for aggregate values computed from multiple tables, and efficient server-side paging within the database).

You can watch the video online here (it is 24 minutes in length). Or you can download a .zip version of it here if you want to save and watch it locally. Note that it might take 30-60 seconds to buffer (since it is a large video). In the event that my server is swamped with requests, I"ll update the location and post it on one of the Microsoft video servers later this week.

For more information on LINQ (including the slide deck for a "Building ASP.NET Data Driven Application Using LINQ" talk of mine), please check out my previous post here. For other ASP.NET 2.0 Tips, Tricks and Tutorials please check out my ASP.NET Tips and Tricks summary listing page.

Specifics Topics Covered in this Video

My walkthrough in this video illustrates a number of new features:

1) A brief demonstration of some of the new WYSIWYG HTML designer capabilities (including split-view and a brief look at the new CSS manager - both of which I"ll cover in more detail in the future in a separate video):

2) How to create classes that model data using the new VS "Orcas" ORM designer for LINQ to SQL:

3) How to use the new LINQ intellisense support within the VS "Orcas" code editor to get full intellisense and compilation support for queries:

4) How to use LINQ to SQL to create a data report that combines Product entity data with aggregate unit and revenue values computed from OrderDetail entities associated with the Product entities. This data report uses server side database paging to efficiently retrieve only 10 rows of data at a time (so that with a 100,000 row products table you only ever retrieve 10 rows of data from the database regardless of which page index you are on within a report):

Future Videos

I"ll be drilling into LINQ some more with future videos (I barely scratched the surface with this one). Additional segments will include content on:

Type inference and the "var" keyword (and why that is so cool)
Supporting Insert, Update and Deletes scenarios using LINQ to SQL
Validation rules and logic within LINQ Data Models
Using SPROCs with LINQ to SQL
Richer JOIN support with LINQ to SQL
LINQ to XML and LINQ to Objects
Using the new LINQDataSource controls and other ASP.NET Data Controls to easily create Web UI with LINQ

I"ll also obviously have many more ASP.NET and web-related video topics to cover including:

The new HTML WYSIWYG Designer and CSS support
Client-JavaScript Intellisense
JavaScript Debugging
ASP.NET AJAX Extender Support
Database Dump and Upload Integration
Unit Testing
Multi-targeting support (showing how you can use VS "Orcas" to build ASP.NET 2.0 projects - without having to upgrade your framework/server)

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. If you have other topics and/or subjects you"d like me to drill in on with videos, please post them in the comments section of this post.